Right, first I'd like to announce a change in name for my Hive Fleet. Heimdallar was naff - far too austere and pompous for a Tyranid fleet. I'd thought about Hive Fleet Corpse Fly, and was going to settle on that, but after suggesting it in the pub, Stewey suggested Ossaury. (Don't know what it means? Look it up; it'll be a learning experience.) I've embellished and gone for Vile Ossuary. So, unless someone has objections or better suggestions, Hive Fleet Vile Ossuary will be what people are facing in the near future. Anyhow, back to the game.
So James was playing, effectively, for the first time. I had to teach him the rules. First lesson: we should've played 750 points but, because one of us was sleep deprived from having been awake for 30 hours, so we somehow settled on a 1500 point game.
OK, the game itself was a training game so I'll say little about it. But I did learn some things about the Dark Eldar. First, they break like twigs. Until they've picked up that first Pain Token, they snap like twiglets in a Cliff Clavin's Mouth. Their low toughness and low saves make them exceedingly vulnerable. The list which was played - I won't say James's list as I helped come up with it - was not great. The footwalking Elite Kabbalite Trueborn threw their lot in with an Ancient Homunculus, and - sat in a forest with their weapons levelled - got chewed up by the horde. James correctly put Nightshields on his vehicles, and they all fared a lot better. However, he still got too close and they got gnawed on. I think the best plan is for the Dark Eldar to sit on their skimmers and just shoot away, picking up pain tokens, until absolutely necessary, and then coming in for an attack. Those Wyches are pretty mean - they can go toe to toe with Tyranids. Incubi can't - at least not in the fielded numbers - but Dark Eldar, in general, can. In fact, having looked through the Codex (which I bought on the train over) they look sweet. Lots of options, lots of choice, and lots of really cool stuff. The pain token that gives FNP easily makes up for their crap save, and I'm *certain* James will figure out the rules and the tactics and start mopping people up with his Dark Eldar. We didn't really end the game - I was ahead in Kill Points when we called it quits at the end of turn 4, but even then it was close (admittedly, I got overconfident and sent my Tervigon against the Huskbladed armed Archon and Wyches, ending its life. Also, many kill points were missed by James by poor dice rolls leaving the odd figure in a unit alive. 3 Genestealers, a single ripper swarm, a single termagant and a single Shrike were hiding in a forest when we ended the game - 4 Kill Points ripe for the slaughter.) I think it was close, although I should've been more careful. Like, A LOT more careful.
Notably, lots of rules questions were raised such as:
* Can the unit in an open topped vehicle shoot a different unit from that which the vehicle shoots at (we said yes.)
* If a figure is hit by a Huskblade, and it has Feel No Pain, does it get to make a Feel No Pain roll to ignore the unsaved wound which would otherwise result in instant death (by my reading of the rules, I said no. Hence a few figures died with no FNP roll.)
* Can vehicles run in the shooting phase? (I said no.)
* What does a two handed weapon do? (As far as I can tell the only result is that you can't wield another weapon. There's no extra attack or anything.)
Answers on a postcard please.
I look forward to everyone at the club learning the rules so we can stuck into some proper battles. I think James might want to either buy somemore skimmers, or only play at a points value where all units can be in the skimmers - outside of them the Dark Eldar are just tasty twiglets on legs. I might be wrong - might just be a Nid orientated way of looking at things. Certainly, I think that a Drak Eldar list exclusively made up to defeat Nids will easily wipe the floor with me. Man, Dark Eldar can probably do a number on me just as much as regular Eldar. However a tournament/campaign list will be less successful, I think. So I look forward to running the first LWA campaign and finding what James fields in his army when he can't just think about killing me and has to think about handling all comers.
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