5th Jan 2011 - Ulramarines V Dark Eldar

Well I went down to Hulls Angels gaming club for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed my self.
Had my self a battle against Skaltar's Dark Eldar. 
The force lay outs went something like this.


Dark Eldar:
-Archon and 5 Incubi in a Raider.
-Haemonculus (Carrying a web Way portal) attached to a squad of 8 warriors mounted in a Raider.
-A Squad of 8 Wyches in another Raider.
-A Squad of 7 Wyches and a squad of 8 Helions in the Webway.
-A squad of 4Reavers
-1 Ravanger with Disintegrators 
-2 Ravagers with Dark Lances.

Ultramarines:
-Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius attached to a 5 man squad of Terminators.
-10 man Tactical Squad with heavy bolter. Sgt. had melta bombs.
-10 man Tactical Squad with missile launcher. Sgt. had melta bombs. 
-6 man anti-infantry Devastator Squad with 4 heavy bolters.
-6 man anti-tank Devastator Squad with 2 lascannons and 2 missile launchers.
-Dreadnought with multimelta.
-Landspeeder with multimelta and assault cannon.
-Predator Tank with twin linked lascannon turret and side sponsor heavy bolters.

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The mission roll result was a Kill points battle with Dawn of War deployment.
I won the roll to deploy and go first. I deployed my tactical squads, and chose to deploy everything else on my first turn.
Skaltar kept all in reserve until his first turn. This resulting in him having the upper hand on unit placement. Not a good start you could say.
My side of the board was fairly lacking any cover except for the far left corner with a large tower with a wall in front, giving me a good defensible position.

In turn one I moved all my forces on to the board, with the anti-tank dev squad making it into the tower and the heavy bolter tactical taking up position behind the wall in front. To the right of these I positioned the Predator, and next to that the anti-infantry dev squad.
I started the other tactical squad, which I deployed centrally, towards a central bastion that occupied more or less the exact centre of the board.
Tigurius and his Terminators deployed in the middle of my board edge, with the land speeder and dread to the right respectively.
 I moved all these forward 6 inches in to the board and ended my turn since I had no targets to shoot at, and no idea where they would be to move towards.

Skaltar's side of the board had considerably more cover, with a ruined building complex opposite the tower I had stationed my devs in.
He deployed his Ravagers and all but one raider in and around this location to give them some cover from my field of fire.
The Archon raider deployed opposite my dread.

With night fire rules in place on the first turn shooting at me was some what hindered for the DE but with their night vision some rerolls helped.
Luckily poor dice rolls prevent the fire power of the ravagers doing much but disabling the lascannon on my pred and nothing else did any damage.

In next few turns I did very little damage to anything, except shaking one of the Ravagers. My Tactical squad that were in the centre ran towards to bastion, but fell 1inch short, leaving them in some cover but still open to assault.
The DE pressed their assault, moving a raider with Wyches towards my defence infront of the tower, and another raider with the Haemonculus and his warriors towards my central squad.The Archons raider shook my speeder, and the Ravager with disintigrators took down 3 terminators.
The Haemonculus and his warriors dismounted and charged in to combat.
Luckly for me the Haemonculus failed to drop the webway portal, and the result of this assault prevented that from ever happening. The DE lost the assault by 3 and then failed their morale check, and then with even worse luck were run down and put out of their misery by my tactical squad.
This took the threat of Helions and more Wyches out of the picture.

Following this the raider on the left unloaded its Wyches on to my tactical squad, this assault was uneventful with bad rolls on both sides, it ended in a draw by the end of the match.
After the assault victory in the centre everything went down hill for the DE. The following shooting phases saw most of the vehicals get taken out by either the anti-tank squad, Tigurius' curse of the machine spirit spell or in one case a hail of shots from my heavy bolters. My dread got immobilised way off where his multimelta would reach nothing, but this didn't prove too much of an issue. The Archons raider travelled to the centre of the board and unloaded its cargo in to immediate close combat with my tactical squad in the building, completely wiping them out. Following this i obliterated them with lascannon and missile volleys from my Devs.
The Reaver squad was reduced to 1 unit amongst the carnage also.


By the end of the watch my terminators were gone, as was one of my tactical squads, giving Skaltar 2 kill points. 
I am unsure of the exact number I had by the end of the game, but it was considerably more, being at least 5.

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Despite the victory I came to realise that the Dark Eldar (with a bit more luck on their dice) are a considerable foe to over come. We also realised on turn 4 that Skaltar had forgotten to roll for combat drugs, so that could have been a table turner in this match. Skaltar also mentioned that he will never again forget to deploy the webway portal before charging into combat. 


All in all a very enjoyable game, a good start to my time at Hulls Angels.

I hope to have a rematch at some point to see if my alterations i am going to make, and Skaltar's remembrance of all his bonus' will yield a different result.