Tempest of War Battle Report - Death Guard vs Aeldari

Hello!

Another Tempest game, again at 1750 points. As I said before I am trying to play mostly Tempest to see out 9th ed, and as part of that I am planning on attending a 1750 point Tempest event run by Wooden Spoon Wargaming soon. As such, this is more or less the army I'm planning on taking - Death Guard led by Mortarion! 

Now, fair warning, my battle reports are usually pretty vague and focus on the main thrust of the battle rather than all the details. I also find that Tempest is a little harder to remember in detail because of the revolving secondaries. And this game was over a week ago at time of writing. So what I'm saying is it's mostly going to be pictures!

That said, it was a good looking game as it was against Sharpy, who always puts on a good table, and his Aeldari, which are always a bit of a mix of classic space elf units. For this one he brought a Farseer and an Autarch leading Warlocks, Guardians, Warp Spiders, Shining Spears, a couple of units of Rangers plus their jet bike equivalents the Shroud Runners, Dire Avengers, a War Walker, a unit each of the Wraith constructs and the centrepiece - the Avatar of Khaine. His Craftworld traits were to reroll a wound roll once per unit per phase, and to get +1 to hit after a unit has lost a model - which is very nice on those tough Wraith units.

Arranged against them were my Death Guard forces, running as Mortarion's Anvil as usual. The big lad was of course here and the warlord, but I chose not to splurge too heavily on pregame CP to dish out a load of traits and relics elsewhere. Here it's a battalion and a super heavy aux, but this list will fit into the Arks of Omen detachment if it's in use.

HQ: Lord of Virulence (Acidic Malady), Malignant Plaguecaster (Plague Wind, Curse of the Leper)

Troops: 7 Plague Marines (power fist, blight launcher, sigil, two plasma guns), 2x 10 Poxwalkers

Elites: 7 Blightlord Terminators (combi plasma, blight launcher, flail of corruption), Helbrute (fist and multimelta), Foul Blightspawn (Revolting Stench-vats, Viscous Death)

Fast Attack: Foetid Bloat Drone (Fleshmower), Myphitic Blight-hauler

Heavy Support: Plagueburst Crawler (entropy cannons, rothail volley gun)

Lord of War: Mortarion (Miasma of Pestilence, Gift of Contagion, Putrescent Vitality, Warlord, Gloaming Bloat)

Deployment was a pair of opposing triangles with a bubble missing in the middle, 9 inches around the centre. The mission was to hold one, two and extra points for claiming an objective with an action - which was a bit of a problem with me since most of my troops can't do actions (a revision of this list might add in some cultists for this reason). I choose to keep the Terminator armoured units in reserve in case some appropriate secondaries came up, with the Eldar left the Warp Spider and Shining Spears to sneak through the webway.

Aeldari got the first turn and moved up to take shots. Nothing really died apart from some Poxwalkers but the Shroud Runners got in some sniper shots at the Foul Blightspawn, reducing him to one wound. With the Avatar marching up the middle it was obvious there was a challenge issued...

Which Mortarion gladly accepted! Fight! Fight! Fight!

Elsewhere I moved out to try and get towards some objectives, with the Plague Marines engaging some Rangers and smashing them off a point. Shooting was fairly ineffective with the combined firepower knocking off a Wraith construct or two.

Not too many points on offer here, but the big duel raged on, with the Avatar skimming a few wounds of Morty but dropping by half himself.

Turn two saw the Aeldari use their speed and tricksy ways to surround the Death Guard, pouring fire into the units on the flanks. Wraiths caused heavy damage and threatened to take objectives...

But more significantly the Shining Spears made it into melee with a strands of fate 6 to tie up the PBC and steal my backfield objective! Morty eventually slew the Avatar (though it fought on death to wound him further) but the Aeldari's champion was just a distraction to allow the rest of their forces to spring the trap!

In DG turn two I drew the 'Behind Enemy Lines' card and decided to drop my Terminators into the corners to grab some points and pressure the Eldar back lines. Morty stomped forward and dispatched the Dire Avengers, while assorted shooting dealt with the Shroud Runners, but I was unable to shift the Spears or Spiders.

The Lord of Virulence gooped all over Guardians and charged the Rangers, but I messed up here as due to the funky deployment zones this actually took him out of the zone and meant I didn't score the secondary. He didn't even kill all the Rangers on his first go!

As the game wore on Morty basically cleared a bubble around him, but the Eldar were tenaciously sticking to my back lines and denying me load of points. In particular those Shining Spears just refused to die to close range Entropy cannons.

The Terminators failed their initial charge on the Walker, eventually killing it a while later, but wasting their chonky ObSec presence in the far corner of the board - a poor move deploying them all the way over there.

In the end I wasn't able to cycle through a series of secondary objectives that were tantalisingly close to achievable, but the stubborn space elves weren't having it. 

Dramatically at the end the remaining Aeldari forces made a play for Assassinate, reducing Mortarion to a single wound, but he survived. With the too-late Terminators finally adding their firepower the Eldar were all but scoured from the board (aside from a couple of the cheeky Aspect warriors fighting over my objective), but the points told a different story, something like 90-45 to the Aeldari.

Having recently said Tempest produces really close games, I guess this was bound to happen! Still, it was fun and though not tight in the points it did allow Mortarion to do his thing in his first game, which was cool. Also, lots of lessons learned for the future - primarily regarding those Terminators and their deployment (probably best start on the board) and the chasing of marginal objectives rather than discarding them.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Stay safe out there!