Here is the report. Photos are put in at the relevant points. I took all photos at the end of turns or before the first turn.

Battle report Saturday 15th April 2017 Squat vs DE

After terrain was set out DE won the roll and chose standard setup rather than corner deployment as the Squats had the longer range. They also chose the side with the large ruins to help protect their Blitz.

DE set up. Squats placed garrisons out on overwatch - the Thunderers in the woods near the objective. Dark Eldar placed the first formation, first placing their Reaver, Scourge and Ravage formations out before placing their heavier formations with WE. Squats placed their long range artillery, their guild bikers, overlords, and iron eagle formations before placing their Cyclops protected by the warrior brotherhood. Squats left the Berserker Brotherhood in reserves.







The DE marched the Coterie up and into the church yard and shot at the Thunderfire cannons in the woods protected by the Thunderers - 1 BM and threw out the portable wraithgate, retaining they moved the 1st flotilla up to sit near the front of the ruins, spreading them out in case of enemy artillery fire.

The Squats fired the Goliaths targeting the Tormentor Titan, and removing 2 shields, and also killing off a Reaver in the same 6BP salvo. Squats retained moved up the iron eagles that fired at the Coterie removing 2 shields from one of the Barges of Pleasure, and killing off a Wych unit.

DE advanced the Tormentor up, shooting at Thunderers killing off the Thunderfire and a Warrior unit – 4 BP (Broken). The Thunderers move back further into woods. Then the Talos emerged from the portable wraithgate to assault the iron eagles. DE with support from some of the coterie, and the tormentor engaged the Iron Eagles killing them off, losing 1 unit – 1BM to Talos. The Talos reformed to just outside the woods.

Squats advanced the Overlords up, and shot at the Talos killing none due to their RA 4+.

DE moved the VoP up and shot at the Overlords causing 1 DC – 2BM. Retaining, they moved the Reavers (who had been shot at) and hid them in the cover of the military compound (passing their DT tests).

Squats advanced the Cyclops up and shot the second Flotilla killing 2 Ravagers breaking them. They withdrew over to the protection of the ruins near their Blitz. Retaining the Squats marched the warrior brotherhood up to take the hospital and shot at the Reaver formation in the DE back board edge – 1BM.

DE moved the 2nd Reavers gang up to support the flotilla hiding behind the ruins near the Blitz. They then activated the Razorwings avoiding Squat AA zones, and shot at the Goliaths. Successful crit and one blew up. The Goliaths broke, but did not move.

The Squats moved up a Guild biker gang, to provide the Thunderers support. Retaining they brought the second guild biker gang up surround the Cyclops.

DE advance the Scourges to the edge of the ruins for next turn.

All formations remove BM except the overlord airship (even with help from SC re-roll), aircraft leave, but get BM from AA on way out.

Turn 2

I forgot to place the Berserkers, and would have put them up near the Coterie to threaten the enemy BTS.

Squats win SR

Squats move the Thunderers up, and shoot at Talos – 1 BM, retaining, they assault with guild bikers who help kill off 2 Talos, and lose 3 bikers as a result. Talos break and withdraw (fearless) to church yard. The guild bikers pull back, and the Thunderers break due to BM from assault. Tormentor and VoP get a BM for supporting assault.

Tormentor advances and shoots at the last Goliath killing it. Retaining, the Vop doubles to side arc of the Cyclops and shoots, it removing shields – 1BM.

Squats move the Cyclops up, and shoot at the Coterie hoping to kill of the BTS. They destroy one Barge of Pleasure, and then remove last shield of the second.
The warriors in the Hospital go on overwatch.

DE advance the Scourges up to threaten warriors in hospital, they lose 2 units, break and withdraw to front of ruins. Retaining, they move the Flotilla at front of ruins up and shoot at the Cyclops, removing remainder of its shields.

Squats have no more formations, so DE advances the Reavers in military compound up to near church to hold objective. DE activate Razorwings, and shoot at warriors in Hospital – 1BM only.

End of turn, aircraft leave – 1BM from AA, all DE formations rally as do the Squat formations.

Turn 3

Squats place Berserkers out (Tunnelling) to hold their Blitz

DE win SR

DE engage the Thunderers with the Talos and win the assault killing off the Thunderers, and reform back to the Church Yard. They retain, advance and shoot up the Cyclops with the Ravager flotilla (from near oil refinery), Cyclops loses a DC and gets criticalled.

Squats shoot at VoP with Cyclops and remove all shields from it and causing a DC and roll a 5+ for the crit – nearly killing it off. They retain move Guild bikers to shoot the Ravager formation, killing off one – 2BM. Guild bikes are just in DE half of table.

DE Tormentor double (jumps over the woods) moves to deny Objective to Squats and shoots the Cyclops destroying it with its TK weapons – BTS killed off. They retain engage the squat berserkers with the coterie who break them. The Coterie move to cover the woods objective, while the Berserkers withdraw to the hill.

Squat warriors shoot at Reavers killing 1, 2 - BM. No more Squat formations to activate.

Dark Eldar advance the Scourges up and shoot the warriors in the Hospital killing off 1 warrior and 2 rhino units, breaking them. DE advance the Reavers that were near the church and hold the Squat Blitz. DE fails to activate the Razorwings. DE put Ravagers on their Blitz on Overwatch. DE move the Reavers shot at by Warriors to front of Ruins to hold objective

















End of turn 3
The Squat warrior rally, the bikers remove BM. All of the DE except the VoP remove BM or Rally

DE has BTS, T&H, DTF, Blitz, and nearly have TSNP however the Guild Bikers are in their half, and thankfully the Warriors broke that turn.

_________________
6mm wargaming is just like 25mm wargaming with more units fitting on the same size table. Thus bigger games to get lost in and avoid the hassles of everyday living, and offerings for the dice gods.

Cool report and pictures. Love the table.

Any thoughts so far on the them. Seams you havt lost a game so far and getting big wins.

_________________
I have 4 laptops in this room and cannot play a pixel pushing tabletop simulator on any of them.

The win in the game against the Squats could be that I do not have experience playing them and may not have use them as other seasoned Squat players would have. Also I forgot to bring in the Berserkers on Turn 2 when I should have brought them in. That Squat list I made up was balanced, and did not have a massive amount of artillery, or spam of either Overlords or Iron eagles. Perhaps a spammed list would have been harder to go against.

I should try them against an artillery heavy force such as guard. They tend to lose a lot against Guard armies. Against Nids, Necrons, Orks and Tau, I think things would also be a lot harder. Marines, Sisters, some Chaos builds, and some lighter Eldar builds are easy meat, however Some Eldar have proven to be very difficult to deal with.

The problem is my regular local gamers have limited armies, and also can only game against me one day a month. To get full on variety and a varied range of gaming experience, I need to face off against more experienced gamers who have different armies.

In the game against Black Legion - a decent game fairly balanced Chaos list that I played the previous day, and still have to get the photos organised, it was very close. Turn 3 had a draw DE 1 vs BL 1. In turn 2, DE won 2:0, but only just.

The list I took for that game were:

Test games DE list 2017 1.1 vs Black Legion

List 8 – 10 formations (43 Units)
50 points 50 Points – Portable Wraithgate
1025 Points
375 Points – Coterie – Archon, 4 Incubi Units, 1 Raiders, 2 Venoms,
325 Points – Flotilla – Dracon, 5 Ravagers
325 Points – Flotilla – Dracon, 5 Ravagers
1225 Points
250 – Reavers – Sucubus, 6 Reaver Units
250 – Reavers – Sucubus, 6 Reaver Units
250 – Scourges – 6 Scourges
225 – Talos - 4 Talos
250 Points – Heavy Barge – 1 Vessel of Pain
700 points
500 Points – Titan – 1 Tormentor Titan [BTS]
200 Points – Razorwings – 2 Razorwings

Black Legion – 13th Black Crusade – 9 formations incl Summoned Daemons (74 units)
Retinues – 700
410 – Retinue – Warlord, 8 Chaos Marines, 4 Noise Marines, 6 Rhinos, Daemonic Pact
340 – Retinue – Chaos Lord, 8 Chaos Marines, 4 Rhinos, Daemonic Pact
Elites – 825
825 – Terminators – Sorceror Lord, 4 Terminators, 4 Landraiders, 3 Defilers, Daemonic Pact
Support – 1040
350 – Chaos Bikes – Lord, 8 x Chaos Bikes, Daemonic Pact, Icon Bearer
275 – Defller Assault Pack – 4 Defilers
340 – Raptor Cult – Chaos Lord – 8 x Raptors, Daemonic Pact
1/3 Titans and aircraft – 400
200 – Hellblades – 3 x Hellblades
200 – Hellblades – 3 x Hellblades
Daemons – 135
135 – 9 x lesser daemons (+ 5 more from daemonic pacts).

I realise I misunderstood the Summoning rules a little (D3 not D6), but the 3 extra Daemonettes I summoned did nothing anyway, as they had no FF value, and returned to the Daemon pool at the end of the turn.

I think the reason for the decent success by the DE is that I know how to play them really well now, unlike when I first played them at Heavy Bolter last year, and at Castle Assault in 2016. The ground based AA does help a little to aleve the losses caused by enemy AA strafing runs. Artillery still kills of broken non-fearless units.

Also I tend not to use Kalabite warrior Syndicates. I find they are not worth their points for what they can do. I tend to use Ravager Flotillas, and fill the gap left by the warriors with Wych Cults, Reaver Gangs, and sometimes Scourges. I know they now have a 6+ save, and you can build formations up to 10 strong if you do not take a Dracon, but I seem to dislike taking them.

The Incubi/ Coterie is good, and this is where I put 2 warriors backed up by a pair of Incubi to help the formation last longer.

The Reavers are brilliant, and have helped win me games by triple moving 120cm to grab or deny objectives. They do have their downsides, low FF compared to their CC, they have no ranged weapons, only engagement attacks, and they still have to take dangerous terrain tests as they are mounted.

If you need to tone the Tormentor down (providing others complain about how hard it is to deal with), then it could afford to lose a single shadowfield. It tends to lose all but 1 or 2 of the shields in a single round of shooting from enemy concentrated fire, or all of them if the enemy shoot 2 or more formations of Titans against it. This usually causes it to be either dead or near death if ganged up on by Titans. The 4 DC does mean it breaks easily, so enemy can make it a useless unit if they disrupt fire at it. It then runs away a lot.

You will see that I tend to take Dracons, Ancient Haemonculi or Succubus where ever I can. Even at 50 points each, the combination of Leader and Inspiring helps them in engagements a lot. The list does have a flaw to off set this bonus. Only the Archon has the ability to use the commander skill, as he/she is supreme commander. This means the DE have to arrange complex manoeuvres to get forces up to provide support, or arrange it so the enemy has to clip the DE forces, and bring other formations into the engagement. I have become adept at doing this better.

So you will see the DE are generally grouped with 2 or 3 formations supporting each other close by. This makes artillery very happy, even when I tend to spread them out.

You will see that in my reports, a lot of units tend to die off quickly. Those units, well the ones I tend to use, also give back as good as they get. The a-typical Glass Hammer. Reavers, Ravagers, Venoms, and Scourges. In close combat Wyches and Incubi are also good, but can die off easily. Talos, VoP and the Tormentor, are the only units that tend to last longer, and thus deal out more damage as a result, before they also eventually get killed off.

One thing, which I know you will not bring back, is the ability of units to shoot from the open topped vehicles like the venoms, raiders and Barges of Pleasure. The Orks lists that have LV (trukks) transports let units mounted on them shoot from those transports. Perhaps allow the venoms and raiders only to allow the infantry units on board to provide FF support and also shoot from them. If that were allowed I would be taking more venoms and raiders and also warriors. You could then remove the warriors 6+ save.

My general tactics for DE are to move up using cover, some formations designated as support fire platforms like ravagers and VoP move-shoot-move a lot. Other formations which are designed for close combat and FF like wyches, incubi, talos, haemonculi, scourges and the tormentor, tend to move up close to each other, use cover as best they can, get close, and shoot the enemy up before assaulting them. About 2/3 of the list is for engaging the enemy, the other 1/3 that I take is for harassing and providing fire support.

I hope this feedback helps. I think the list is close to being as balanced as it can get. Maybe the removal of a single shield from the Tormentor, but everything is pretty much where it need to be.

_________________
6mm wargaming is just like 25mm wargaming with more units fitting on the same size table. Thus bigger games to get lost in and avoid the hassles of everyday living, and offerings for the dice gods.

Thanks for all your work on this Deb. I must try some of your lists out as they are different to my approach.

_________________
_________________
www.epic-uk.co.uk - home of the UK Epic tournament scene
NetEA NetERC Xenos Lists Chair
NetEA Ork + Feral Ork + Speed Freak Champion

Very cool table!

Agree - that is a great looking table.

Sad to see the Squats getting destroyed so thoroughly. I'd tend to run at least another formation - maybe splitting your Overlords to help with activation count, then using their firepower to help prep for engagements.
I didnt see a SC in your list - you need a Warlord +Grand Warlord (character), or you can add the Grand Warlord to a Guildmaster unit.
Also, note that the Tunnelers have to be pre-plotted before the game starts with the Turn and location of arrival. They can arrive in your half the board from Turn 2, and anywhere on the board turn 3.

Thanks for the batrep and looking forward to seeing the Squats fully painted (hope they end up looking as good as your DE)

OK was not so sure about how the tunnellers worked. Thought they were like deep strikers (like Terminators) It seems they are more like drop pods, except that you do not need a Spaceship. Tunnellers look to be more a hassle than they are worth. I would probably take more Rhinos or War engine transports for the force.

I think I forgot to add the lists for the armies I used for the game DE vs Squats. I did have a Warlord for the Squats. The write up does mention the squats Overlord failing its rally test even with the SC re-roll.

DE 3000 points – 9 formations, 41 units
wraithgate
50 points
50 points – Portable Wraithgate
1225 points
575 points – Coterie – Archon, 6 Incubi, 2 Warriors, 2 Barge of Pleasure, [BTS]
325 points – Flotilla – Dracon, 5 Ravagers
325 points – Flotilla – Dracon, 5 Ravagers
1025 points
250 points – Reavers – Succubus, 6 Reavers
250 points – Reavers – Succubus, 6 Reavers
250 points – Heavy Barge – 1 Vessel of Pain
275 points – Talos – 5 Talos
700 points
500 Points – Titan – 1 Tormentor Titan
200 Points – Razorwings – 2 Razorwings

VS

List 2 – 3000 Points – 9 Formations, 67 Units
Brotherhood Formations – 900 Points
325 Points – Warrior Brotherhood – 1 x Warlord, 1 x Hearthguard, 9 x Warrior Units, 6 Rhinos
275 Points – Berserker Brotherhood – 1 x Hearthguard, 9 x Berserker Units, 5 x Termites
300 Points – Thunderers – 4 Thunderer Units, 2 Warrior Units, 2 Thunderfires
Support Formations – 1250 points
225 Points – Biker Guild – I x Guildmaster, 3 x Guild Trikes, 4 x Guild Bike Units
225 Points – Biker Guild – I x Guildmaster, 3 x Guild Trikes, 4 x Guild Bike Units
300 Points – Iron Eagle – 6 x Iron Eagle Gyrocopters
500 Points – 2 x Overlord Airships with1 upgraded with a Flak AA cannon
War Engines – 850 points
550 points – Cyclops + Flak turret + Living Ancestor [BTS]
300 points – 2 Goliath Mega Cannon


It is the first time I have used the Squats for anything more than a fun game or minigeddon game. I tend to use the DE, Emperor's Children (although I tend to not use daemons do much) and Vraksian renegades more than Squats, Eldar, sisters, Dark Mechanicus, and White Scars.

Seems the Warlord is just a commander, and the Grand Warlord is the Supreme commander. At 100 points, he does not do as much as you would expect compared to the 50 point warlord. Hearthguard seem to be the more useful with both Inspiring and Leader.

As I said, I need more experience playing squats to be sure I am playing them correctly. I know how to use DE to the best of their abilities. I need more opponents with their own armies that they use regularly. I particularly want to game against more Necron, Ork, and Tau players as there is a definite lack of them in my area, and those that do have those armies tend to play other games like Malifaux, infinity or the dreaded 40K more than Epic.

I did play a good game of minigeddon on the weekend and won both games against one of my mates. In the game with my Squats vs his Knights, he rolled really badly for some of this saves and close combat rolls. that game I got his BTS, and his Blitz, he nearly got T&H, but I moved units in to deny it to him. I used Warrior Brotherhood/Warlord/+4 Berserkers/Rhinos, 4 Thunderers/2 warriors/Rhinos, 1 Overlord, Guild Master/3 Trikes/4 Bikes.

In the game with my Vraksian Renegades vs his Imperial Fists Marines, I killed his BTS, gained T&H, but he also got T&H, neither of us got TSNP, Blitz or DTF. My artillery worked well in that game with 3 Basilisks, and an Infantry Platoon backed up by 3 Griffins. I lost my Leman Russ Destroyers, and some of my BTS Infantry Platoon, and even one of my Sentinel Squadron. I am fairly well versed in fighting standard non-drop Space Marine armies. Surprisingly, he had 5 activations to my 5 in that game. 2 x scouts/rhinos, devastators/rhinos/commander, predators, land speeders vs my infantry platoon/Griffins/Enforcer, Basilisk squadron/Enforcer, Leman Russ Destoyer squadron, Sentinel Squadron.

_________________
6mm wargaming is just like 25mm wargaming with more units fitting on the same size table. Thus bigger games to get lost in and avoid the hassles of everyday living, and offerings for the dice gods.