The Russ company faces off against the revenants, but have a bad time of it after failing their activation (with a re-roll)

With a girly hop, skip and a jump, the revenants leap behind the Russes and break the shadowsword hiding behind the hill. The big eldar titan then strolls along the beach (carefully keeping a few hills and a city between himself and the Imperator)and then pounds the Russes in a nifty crossfire with the revenants.

Ouch! Tricksy eldar

Oh well. Let's cheer myself up by thinking about the Imperial left!

While the guardians were drowning themselves in the raging torrent, the assault Reaver sprinted at them, pounced over the bridge, and ripped them to pieces in assault. I like to imagine that, with those two laser burners cutting through that river, much of this flank would have been shrouded in steam, mud, hissing, splasing and dead eldar once he'd finished!! Oh yes.

They did take his shields though

The Imperator watches his protege at work. He approves.

The Guardians sweep out of the gate in the Engine of Vaul and utterly destroy the hydras to get a firm hold on my blitz objective.

The Baneblades (you can just about see one of them on the far left) retaliated later using their fancy new guns, and destroyed most of the formation at close quarters.

However, with the Russes in a poor way, my right flank and centre were still feeling exposed, so this is when I doubled the Warhound pack across to help out.

That's all the decent photos of Turn 2 - I'll post some more after the Turn 3 write up.

Turn 3:

No teleports

Strategy roll: Imperium

The Imperator strides to stand atop the central hill and targets falcon 2. However in a poor display of shooting only 4 are hit and 2 save! the broken grav tanks retreat away from the monster titan.

The remaining wraith constructs of guardians one sustain fire at the baneblades doing no damage.

Thunderbolt two decide to have a rest and stand down.

Guardians one are ordered to double towards the beach but fail to activate.

The warhound pack engage guardian two and all that remains is one lone wraithguard with one hound losing a single shield.

Nightwings one again pick on the broken russes killing another three.

The baneblades now doubled to get a line of fire on the revenants. One more point of damage is inflicted leaving one titan suppressed.

Storm serpent 2 doubled forward to shoot at shadow sword two. 1 hit is caused but not damage.

Thunderbolts one attach the shining spears killing another one.

Nightwings two attach the broken rough riders killing all but the commissar.

Shadow sword two attempts to sustain fire but the blast marker gained from the storm serpent causes it to fail. It elects to remover the BM's

The Phantom doubles forward to catch the baneblades in another crossfire. 2 points of damage are inflicted on one tank which explodes in a cloud of plasma. Fortunately no other tanks in the company are damaged.

The infantry company march out of the river to hold 2 objectives. However the river takes a toll again with 2 support weapon teams and both ogryns being lost to the torrent!

The revenants double forward to attach the warhounds, but with only one able to shoot no damage is caused.

The reaver doubles forward and wipes out falcon 2.

The final move of the turn sees the shining spears march over the warhound ready for turn 4!

End of Turn:

Once again all aircraft leave without damage.

The Imperium rally all formations except shadow sword one.

Eldar only rally the shining spears, even using the re roll on the revenants (yep back to back ones!)

Score:

Imperium 0 - Eldar 0

It's looking really bad for the eldar now, behind on the activation count and heavily outnumbered.

Surprise!!

The shooting actually turned out to be underwhelming (for an Imperator), but it did enough, breaking the falcons and so denying the Eldar a fast and dangerous activation.

You can't hide you know  

Unfortunately, the beleaguered Russes can't really hide either - they take an absolute pounding from the Nightwings, drenching the sands with their blood.

Whoops, missed one out. Here is the full board at the start of turn three.

The baneblades move forward to draw a line of sight on the revenants. The damage isn't brilliant, what with those holofields, but one of the eldar titans is suppressed at least.

Then their big brother advances to retaliate, vapourising one of the super heavies in a catastrophic explosion.

The warhound pack reinforces my blitz, almost wiping out the guardians in an engagement (apart from one fearless stand). The revenants then leap past the baneblades to have a short range gun up with their rival titans, to decide who will control my blitz. Up close, personal and vicious.

This is getting tense!

Well, it's going to Turn 4 and it's going to be close. I was helped by quite a few of my battered formations rallying at the end of Turn 3, to give me some more activations, but it's touch and go ...

More photos after the Turn 4 write up.

Turn 4.

Avatar arrives near the central hill.

Strategy Roll: Eldar

Keen to do something the shining spears engage the warhounds. In a final display of incompetence they all miss, 5 attacks on 4+ no hits, nil, zero, zilch  . The warhounds kill one unit and the support of the revenants can only strip a shield. So the imperials go in to the resolution at +2 but.....LOSE! So that breaks the warhounds and the shining spears move off to contest the right hand imperial objective.

The revenants then retain and marshal, shooting at the baneblades. One more point of damage is inflicted. They only manage to remove 2 blast markers, leaving them with two.

The baneblades, one bm from breaking decided that marshalling is the best option too, but the order gets messed up resent and still not accepted! They break and move away a bit.

Nightwings one once again attack the leman russes for no hits but breaking the formation once again.

The infantry company advance towards the shining spears but fail to do more than place a blast marker.

Storm serpent 2 now doubles forward to catch shadow sword 2 in a crossfire with the shining spears. One hit one damage and with the bonus bm for crossfire one broken shadow sword!

The commissar rough rider advances towards the beach objective to claim it.

The remaining bits of guardians one double to fire on the leman russes wiping them out.

Thunderbolt two then attacks the shining spears breaking them without any loses to the spears.

Nightwings two move in to attach the lone vulture breaking it before it gets to activate.

The reaver advances to take the Eldar blitz

The Phantom doubles back to take the imperial beach objective destroying the lone rough rider in the process.

Thunderbolt one then swoops in to shoot at... something that's not in my notes! For the record they hit once for no kills!

So Eldar have the Avatar and the Imperium the Imperator. It's 2 - 2 at this point.

The avatar doubles and throws his sword at the Imperator for the blast marker.

So to win the Imperator must activate and double to bring all its weapons to bare on the Revenants. The dice is thrown and comes up............. 5 (or if your imperial!). The shooting takes two more points of damage off the revenants who are now broken, but still standing.

End of Game:

Imperium 2 (Blitz and Take and Hold) - Eldar 0.

A truly Epic game and a wonderful start to gaming in 2009.

Thanks to Gary for hosting this on a great table.