Craftworld Canathius Crush the Marines!

Well not quite.

From the moment I saw Nick's (aka Bourgui) army list, I pretty much crapped my pants. A Mechanized Imperial Marine force? I'm so dead, I thought to myself. Three Dreadnoughts, a Predator, three Razorbacks, six landspeeders. OUCH! And the ranged tank-busting my army had? One twin brightlance on the wave serpent, and one pulse laser on the falcon. Uh oh.

But it turned out I was not as defenseless as I thought. My three scatterlasers (two on Vypers, one on the Falcon) and two shuriken cannons pitched in against the 'speeders and razorbacks, and the Warp Spiders warped in to kill two speeders and a marine squad themselves.

We rolled up a Take and Hold mission and I deployed my fast army in one corner, drawing his pred and dreads in that flank, then under cover of pre-dawn darkness in turn one I swooped 24 inches to the centre of my deployment zone so that on turn 2 I could turn to the centre and attack from that angle. It seemed to work as the dreadnoughts and predator spent all game fighting terrain and taking long distance potshots, only once getting the armoured walkers into close combat. I concentrated fire on the razorbacks first, and landspeeders second. Force the marines to walk, I thought, and then kill those damned fast skimmers.

We traded bodyblows throughout the game. He killed the jetbikes, I murdered some land speeders. He slaughtered the Dark Reapers, I shot up some marines. It was a bloody chess match, with neither side able to get the upper hand completely.

In the end, we each had about 500 pts of units near the centre of the table: he had three dreadnoughts and a predator and a land speeder, I had my two squads of scorpions and a falcon still counting as scoring. So it came down to the death dealing in that case I had killed almost 1200 pts, he managed about 1000. Small margin of victory for the Eldar!!

Analysis

Up until the points were totalled, I was convinced I had been defeated. The best wins are those you don't expect.

I played a very cagey and cautious game. My large squad of scorpions never saw close combat until being charged in the bottom of turn 6 by a dreadnought, and I moved my Falcon and its cargo like it was made of glass. Nick threw everything at my centre in an effort to break it but the slowness of the predator and dreadnoughts hurt him as I fled the flank and his landspeeders couldn't dodge the hail of strength six weapons I weilded.

In hindsight, I think Nick should have deployed more to the centre and occupied it with everything, forcing me to come to him more, and allowing those big heavy walkers to intimidate from a position of strength instead of the flank that I refused.

Great game!