The Warhost Rides Again!

I said the Eldar would be hitting the tables again and boy did they this weekend at the Barn. I managed to get in three games with them. The first game was at 1850pts and the other two were 1500pt battles. The lists I was running were as follows:

1850
Farseer, Jetbike, Spirit Stones, Runes of Warding, Runes of Witnessing, Fortune, Guide
Farseer, Jetbike, Spirit Stones, Runes of Warding, Runes of Witnessing, Fortune, Guide, Singing Spear
9x Guardian Jetbikes, 3x Shuriken Cannons, Warlock with Singing Spear and Embolden
9x Guardian Jetbikes, 3x Shuriken Cannons, Warlock with Singing Spear and Embolden
5x Fire Dragons in a Wave Serpent with Brightlances and Spirit Stones
5x Fire Dragons in a Wave Serpent with Brightlances and Spirit Stones
5x Dire Avengers
5x Dire Avengers
Falcon with Scatter Lasers, Holo-Fields and Spirit Stones
Falcon with Scatter Lasers, Holo-Fields and Spirit Stones

1500
Farseer, Jetbike, Spirit Stones, Runes of Warding, Fortune, Guide
Farseer, Jetbike, Spirit Stones, Runes of Warding, Fortune, Guide
9x Guardian Jetbikes, 3x Shuriken Cannons, Warlock with Singing Spear and Embolden
9x Guardian Jetbikes, 3x Shuriken Cannons, Warlock with Singing Spear and Embolden
5x Fire Dragons plus Exarch with Dragons Breath Flamer and Crack Shot
5x Fire Dragons plus Exarch with Dragons Breath Flamer and Crack Shot
Falcon with Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannons, Holo-Fields and Spirit Stones
Falcon with Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannons, Holo-Fields and Spirit Stones

The first game was the 1850 game against Reese and his Space Wolves. The game was Annihilation with Spearhead Deployment. Reese won the roll to go first and deployed aggressively with a Land Raider Redeemer full of a decked out Grey Hunters pack with Wolf Guard and Wolf Priest. He also had a Rhino with a Grey Hunter pack and Rune Priest. Between these behind a central ruin piece he had a Thunderwolf Lord with a pair of Thunderwolves as escort.  He set up some Long fangs in a ruin in his back corner. He also had a dreadnought drop podding in on turn one.
I deployed opposite with my vehicles in the back corner out of Long Fang range. The jetbikes were set up a bit more forward. I got to an early lead in this game when turn one when his dread failed to do any damage to one of the Fire Dragons Wave Serpents.  I managed to explode the Redeemer with one squad of Fire Dragons while the other squad got out of their ride to deal with the Dread. The Falcons failed to destroy the pod, but did knock off the storm bolter. Meanwhile One of the Jetbike squads took out the Rune Priests ride. The other squad took out a couple of the Grey Hunters that spilled out of the Redeemer. Turn two saw the Grey Hunters and Thunderwolves multi-assault the Fire Dragons and their Wave serpent. The Dragons were wiped out, but they only managed to shake (thanks to Spirit Stones) the Wave Serpent. My turn two saw me shuffle around some. The Fire Dragons dispatched of the Drop Pod while the rest of the army went to work on the Grey Hunters that killed the Fire Dragons.   When the dust settled there was one left along with the Wolf Priest, but they were not in range to do much next turn. His Thunderwolves, however just managed to get the distance they needed in order to take out the remaining Fire Dragons Wave Serpent. In my turn I finished off the Grey Hunter and Wolf Priest and started to go to work on the Thunderwolves, but some good invulnerable saves left all of them alive with only one wound done to each. In Reeses next turn he slit the Wolf Lord off from the Thunderwolves and sent him at one of my Jetbike squads. He wanted to go after the other Jetbike squad with the Thunderwolves as well, but some poor terrain rolls meant he had to go after the Fire Dragons instead. Some poor rolling for the thunderwolves meant that the Fire Dragons lived and managed to pass morale to stay locked in combat. Meanwhile the Rune Priest took a wound attempting Murderous Hurricane on the jetbike squad, but the Grey Hunters did kill two before the Wolf Lord charged in. I ended up losing 4 bike to the wolf lord, but managed to pass morale and stay locked in combat. In my turn the Farseer that wasn't locked in combat Furtuned up his squad and sent them turbo-boosting away while he moved out to try and rescue the Fire Dragons from the Thunderwolves. It was a risky move but with them in my lines it was time to go big or go home. Things kind of bogged down for a turn or two as we were locked in combat. The Grey Hunters managed to take out the last remaining Wave Serpent since I had forgotten to move it (doh!). In the end the Farseer managed to take out the Thunderwolves but the Fire Dragons were wiped out. The Wolf Lord killed off the rest of the Jetbikes and the Farseer he was in combat with, but he did it in his own turn freeing him up for me to shoot at. It took everything I had, but I just barely managed to take off the final two wounds on that toughs s.o.b. In the final turn I managed to cause enough casualties to the Rune Priests squad to cause a break test, and they failed. The game then ended meaning they were removed as casualties and I ended up winning this game 10-6. It was a really fun game, and with my early lead Reese did a good job of making a comeback and turning it into a nail biter of a game. The smart move for me would have been to just run away once I got a healthy lead, but I don't like to do that in friendly games. I'd rather fight it out and see what happens, it's more fun for both parties that way.

The second Game  was the first of two games against Jeff and his Grey Knights. Jeff runs a tough list with Coteaz, a Librarian, 4 psyflemen Dreadnoughts and a whole bunch of warrior acolytes and Death Cult Assasins in Razorbacks and a Storm Raven. For this game we rolled up Annihilation with Spearhead Deployment. Jeff won the roll to go first and after seeing his deployment I decided to reserve everything. During his first two turns he moved up around the central ruin (we played on the same table as Reese and I did.) In turn two I got in both jetbike squads but neither of the Falcons (which were carrying the Fire Dragons) I turbo-boosted in both squads, but in retrospect I didn't need to as he didn't have a whole lot of shooting that could deny me armor saves anyway. His third turn shooting saw one of my squads lose their warlock and one wound to the farseer due to Mindstrike missiles while the rest of the armies combined shooting took out almost about half the squad. They passed morale though and it was onto my turn three. I got in both squads of Fire Dragons in the Falcons. They move on while the Jetbike squads fortune and guided up. The Falcons came on near the dreadnoughts and the Fire Dragons got out and exploded one while the other squad only stunned another (three pens, but three ones on the damage table!) One Falcon managed to shake the Venerable Dreadnought while the other stunned the Storm Raven. Meanwhile the Jetbikes immobilized one Razorback and destroyed another one. In Jeff's turn four he didn't make a single fortitude check. His venerable got some bad terrain rolls and ended up coming just a bit short of assaulting one of the Fire Dragon squads. The other mobile Dreadnought did manage to kill a few Fire Dragons from the other squad in shooting and then assaulted them, but I managed to get a lucky hit with a melta-bomb and wrecked it before it could even swing. After that we just called it because at this point his remaining dreads were sitting ducks to the my Fire Dragons and he didn't have the speed to catch my jetbikes and assault them and with fortune up and running the Heavy Bolters were never gonna get the job done. We instead decided to reset and play again.

The third game Finally saw a different mission. We got Seize Ground with four objectives, but it once again was Spearhead Deployment. Jeff again won the roll to go first and took it. I again elected to reserve everything. This time I only got in one jetbike squad on turn two and didn't get any other squad till turn 4 when the rest of my army showed up. Unfortunately this game Jeff was on fire and when he shot at my Falcons he managed to roll a 6 and a 4 on the damage table. This wrecked one since it had gone flat out when it arrive and the other one was immobilized way out of position to do anything, especially since he also managed to take off both of the turret weapons. I also misjudged the assault range of a squad of DCA plus characters in the Storm Raven by less than one inch allowing them to assault the jetbike squad that arrived turn two (yes they were still alive at that point against all odds!) I was hurt and definitely playing from behind at this point, but I fought on knowing that with my speed I still wasn't out of the fight for the objectives. If it had been Kill points it would have been over, but I still had the turn five objective grab open to me. So on turn 5 I did just that. I shuffled stuff around so that I controlled one objective and contested two others. He controlled one at that point so if it ended it would've been a draw. It didn't end though and so on to turn 6 we went. This turn saw the Fire Dragons wiped out and the objective they were contesting was claimed by some DCA. The combat between the DCA and the jetbikes finally ended as they wiped out the Farseer. In my turn 6 though I was able to spread out the remaining jetbike squad enough to control two objectives after clearing off a warrior acolyte who was contesting it. The Farseer moved up to once again contest the central objective. I needed the game to end and I would've won 2-1, but it went on to turn 7. We decided to call it there as even if I didn't end up being tabled there was no way I was going to have enough models left to even attempt to draw the game.

So in the end I went 2-1 on the weekend against two very strong Codex's. I had a blast playing the Eldar again and can't wait to get them on the tables for some more games soon! Those jetbike squads with the Farseer attached was money in the bank! 9 guides str6 shots just tears transport vehicles to shreds and against infantry it just torrents them down. The Fire Dragons went nuts in two of the three games, but got stranded out of position in the thrid. The army has teeth and survivability and is a ton of fun to play!

We'll see how it works next weekend when we are starting to plan out a big multi-player mega battle. That should be fun and I'll make sure to get lots of pics of that one ;)