Battle Report: Double Beast Pack versus Chaos Demons

Forget the whole better death star debate... its very easy to say beasts are best... well thats over.  Onto more exciting things, battle reports.

Got a game for a little league we are playing in NY at the Battle for Salvation Club.  In this game I was playing my good friend Rob Roda, we play fairly regularly trying to prep for tournaments or just futsing around with toy soldiers.  Invariably he tends to beat me a lot when we are playing in small events or around the club, and I tend to beat him when we are playing in larger events, so overall we are pretty even.

He was using screamerstar with FLying princes.
3 heralds of Tzeentch, Fateweaver, 2 princes of tzeetch, some troops.  2000pts.

My list:
Vect
20 warriors 2 splinter cannons, Sybarite
20 warriors 1 splinter cannon(ran out of points) Sybarite
5 Beast Masters - 10 Kymerra, 6 Razorwing flocks
5 Beast Masters - 10 Kymerra, 6 Razorwing Flocks
Farseer - bike, spirit stone of Anathalin
10 Guardians in a Waveserpent all the shooty upgrades no holofields
10 Guardians in a Waveserpent as above
Wraithknight

This would mark the first time my wave serpents have been put on the board since maybe 3rd edition?  No wait there was that one time in 5th lol.

Anyway Bob got no forewarning(4+ invul) but a bunch of precognitions.  One Dp had 4+ feel no pain the other had IWND and endurance.  Some other powers on them all, the heralds all had flickering fire too, with the locus that makes it str 6.  I had guide and prescience and I duno something else?

We were playing a mission where you had options to choose, part of the new mission initiative over at NOVA and elsewhere.  Anyway Bob chose relic which is in the middle and I chose score objectives every turn, there were 2 on my side of the board and 2 on his.  6 point max for each player.  Then goes to secondaries.

I believe I gave him first turn, and had every intention to simply set up and seize.  Well seizing didnt happen.. but it seemed like such a solid foundation to make a plan on.

So here is deployment, usually I would start my Knight straight across from the screamers because they struggle to kill it, but as I mentioned earlier I was confident that I would simply seize and end the game turn one with shooting and wanted him to insta gib Fateweaver who was hiding in the ruin behind the screamers.

 So Bob went first.  One prince flew up into the ruin at the bottom left of the screen.  The other prince flew behind the big industrial terrain in the center.  Fateweaver flew off the board and screamers moved forward and shot at the beast unit containing the farseer.  Denied one and took a bunch of wounds killing most of the dogs... then rolled an 11 for leadership and off the board we go...

 So... that happened no more powers, bye bye nearly full beast unit... new game plan.  Was planning to bubble wrap stuff with vects beasts and shoot screamers with tons of things and charge with depleted beasts to tie up... but thats done now.  So Vects beasts now need to tie them up because all that shooting is something I cant go through again.  Waveserpent on the left moeves 6 and guardians get out.  Everyone else lines up shots on the dp there... cant get line of sight on the one in the middle.  First wave serpent shoots the DP and wounds a couple times and grounds him, so Im feeling good, but he passes all his saves... boo.  Then the guardians shoot him at full BS... nothing... then warriors with loads of splinter... nothing... then other warriors with less splinter still nothing... then other wave serpent... 1 wounds.... ok thats not good.  Beasts charge screamers... do some damage not tons and they pass their instability check.

So turn 2 Bob gets a unit of demonettes into the area behind that industrial stuff to get near the relic.  Both deamon princes jump into my beasts in the center, cast terrify on me and then beat the stuffing out of me.  I lose combat by 38 and vect is the only one left and he lost his invul save to a screamer.  Well this outa be a quick game.  Vect rolls double 1's for ld... nice.  Princes are too far away to consolidate into him, bonus, so are the 2 spawns that were created by his mutating warp blades or whatever demon nonsense they had... ok.

 So I move the wraithknight back down to shoot a prince who goes to ground to prevent death by str 10.  Then I shoot the other demon prince with a few things and kill him which is good, leaving me with just enough shooting to also kill the spawn so they dont start messing with my stuff.  Had to get the other guardians out to accomplish this.  Also charge the warriors into the screamer fight to try and give vect some support.  Well they lose the fight by 2 and run... boo.  Vect sticks around though, yay.  I also scored 2 points this turn and positioned myself onto 3 objectives for next turn.

Bob's turn 3 and his demonettes move and take the relic and line up a charge on the knight.  Another unit of nettes deepstrikes in behind them to support. Pinned Dp terrifys the already fleeing warriors and they deny it yay.  Fateweaver flys up to contest objective in the ruin on the left where my guardians are hiding.  Demonettes charge with relic(only rolled a 6 so dont drop it) and kill wraithknight on the charge...  But no invul Vect continues to do work on screamers and is still alive.

 My turn 3 I manage to kill the demonettes holding the relic, I also pick up 2 more points.  My warriors rally and toss their snap shots and the wave serpent shooting at his dp grounded near the screamers and bring it down to one wound.  It is at this point I start kicking myself because I sent the guardians on the left up to party with some horrors and Im pretty sure had I come back to the right they would have finished off that prince and put me in a better position.  Oh and Vect continues to live, even kills off a herald getting himself some feel no pain.

Turn 4 for Bob and his demonettes move up but are too far to grab the relic this turn.  Prince terrifies warriors off the board and then flies up and burns some guardians dead, remainder flee, fateweaver flies up and shoots at the waveserpents to no effect.  Vect goes boss style with feel no pain rolls and is still alive.  Guradians on the far left get charged by a few portal spawned demonettes and lose half their squad but kill some demonettes.

My turn 4 I score one more point giving me 5 total.  The way the mission was working was flawed and basically Bob would gain 1 point for any turn 3-5 that he picked up the relic and 3 at the end of the game if he had it.  Well he had already missed it turn 4 so if I could deny it turn 5 his max score would be 4.. and I already had 5 so that became my plan.  There were 3 demonettes that had run on top of the relic, so my plan was to kill those three models with one wave serpent and then turbo boost the other one into the way so no one could pick it up turn 5.  Well that went off without a hitch.  I also positioned the serpents to try and deny that prince a charge into my warriors.  I shot the warriors at the dp to try and take its last wound... but he passed all his saves... boo.  Vect still alive haha.

 Bob casts terrify on my warriors.... my 20 unhurt... un touched warriors... who flee off the board dohh.  He puppet masters one serpent to shoot the other doing 2 hull points.  Then the prince charges the southern one killing it.  5 demonettes from the portal charge vect hoping to help end the screamer stars suffering, they dont... vect kills them all then passes a bunch of 4+ armor and 5+ feel no pains and some  more screamers die to instability.  The other 10 demonettes charge the serpent with one hull point left.. and dont kill it.

My turn 5 is simple... I run that living waveserpent as far as its engines will allow it to go.  And then watch as the two remaining heralds and the lone remaining screamers finally finish off vect.

Then we start bitching about the mission design and how its weighted for the person playing the objectives.  We've since realized that the true mission is the relic is simply worth 6 at the end of the game.  But as we were hashing this out we rolled to see if the game would end naturally there anyway and it did.. thus saving us from a bit of that problem and leading to a dark eldar victory with one wave serpent still on the board and all my silly troops running from ghosts lol.