So Ryan and I were able to get a game in today at Scifi today. We decided to roll a mission instead of just playing cleanse, and got cleanse. We had a balancedish board using Matt's terrain with the two bunkers the billboard with sandbags and the fantasy style tower in each table quarter with one other piece of area terrain. As I knew I had to get into close combat I set up my troops near the edges of my quarter. Looking back I can't decide if I should have hung back or not. Anyways, Ryan hid most of his jetbikes, falcon, fire prism, falcon and his bikes behind the area terrain, one of the bunkers and a little hill. I had first turn and basically advanced while doing two things. First my long fangs tried to end the falcon before it started annoying me, but I got one pen and with the 2D6 thing, ended up with a one. The other thing was that my wolves got to the pathfinders chilling out in cover, ate them, and consolidated in the cover near a number of bikes and the falcon.
On Ryan's turn two things happened, the Seer council on bikes heavy flamed my wolves to cinders (I did not know they had three of these, nor that they ignored cover) and the shining spears flew over the bunker they were hiding behind and shot and charged my storm claws with attached wolf priest. Thanks to their strength 6 power weapons hitting on 3s, they killed all but one powerfist guy who was out of the combat zone and the wolf priest, and then ran away behind the bunker again. This was unfortunate from my perspective.
After this crushing defeat, I had to re-evaluate things. The wolf priest and lone powerfist guy had nothing much better to do, so they became separate units and headed towards the rest of the eldar forces. My unit of 6 slayers with plasmas moved into rapid fire range of the farseer's forces and managed to kill one despite fortune. One of my 8-strong melta slayer squads tried to gate with the rune priest, but he failed the psychic test so instead they all backed up away from the shining spears. The last and furthest away slayer squad thought it would be a good idea to stay behind a rock in one of the neutral table quarters. My wolf priest had hid behind the other bunker (neutral quarter on my side of the board) and it didn't look like he had anything in range so stayed put.
Now here is where things start to get a little crazy, so we'll start with the easy stuff. The farseer jetbikes moved up right in front of my 6 man plasma squad and shot them, but did not assault, killing 2. The fire prism killed 6 of the 8 man squad that had considered gating and ended up too bunched up for their trouble. The falcon also boosted over the terrain and near the bunker while thinking about unloading the firedragons next turn. Now things got trickier as my wolf priest, lone p-fist guy and the plasma squad were all pretty close to each other. The shining spears elected to charge the p-fist guy (closest model) and the plasma squad behind him, while ignoring the wolf priest who was a little ways separate. They wiped both of these "squads" out and then consolidated in my wolf priest while having the autarch leave the squad and hang back.
While I had lost almost another two squads, the seer council had come well within range of my wolf lord, probably because Ryan had forgotten that he was hiding behind the bunker. He charged out and into the flank of the seer council, staying away from the IC so he couldn't do anything nasty in CC. My rune priest and the remnants of the melta squad we able to move and charge in support of the wolf priest. The wolf lord killed two of the seers but no-one ran away, and the wolf priest/rune priest/squad combo lost the last normal squad guy but finished off the pesky shining spears. Then the rune priest and p-fist guy were able to consolidate into the autarch. Now here is where we initially made a mistake and then had to rewind. At first Ryan had the autarch leave the combat in preparation of charging the wolf lord in support of the seers. This opened up my guys to being blistered by lots of fun firepower as they were chilling out on their own. But the next turn we realized that this was not legal, and rewound the turn. Oh and I think this is the turn that I got tired of shooting un-killable grav tanks and annhiliated the falcon.
On Ryan's second try and his turn we tried to keep the things that would have happened anyway, with his shooting taking out a few units, putting a wound on my wolf priest etc. I think this is also the turn that the warp spiders showed up and killed a couple of guys in the un-injured slayer squad. In close combat the rune priest and p-fist guy were able to take care of the autarch and then head toward the fire prism, hoping for a kill in hand to hand. The wolf lord was also able to dispatch the rest of the seers and then moved towards the unloaded firedragons.
On my turn the wolf priest and wolf lord were able to kill all the firedragons and the grey slayers with help from the long fangs shot and then assaulted the warp spiders, kiling them and then heading toward the billboard terrain feature to secure that table quarter. It strikes me that I've lost 3 jetbikes, cause I know they died, but don't remember how. Maybe I shot them with long fangs? Basically at this point Ryan had the falcon and the fireprism left. I had my HQs, the long fangs, half a slayer squad and one sargeant from another squad left. We then kind fooled around to see if anything would happen and it didn't. Ryan couldn'd instant kill and HQ and I couldn't destroy either of the tanks. He was able to secure one neutral table quarter while I had to contest the other with his fire prism.
We made a couple of mistakes this game, highlighted by the turn three rewind. Also we were having the previously mentioned skimmer height debate and so I was not allowed to get some p-fist attacks on the fireprism. Ryan had 368 points left while I had 1048 (488 in my HQs, 218 in the long fangs, 228 in the at half strength slayer squad and then I forgot while there that having one guy left from another squad would give me an additional 114) But Ryan got the 437.5 bonus for taking one table quarter so it ended up 1382 to 1140 or a difference of 242 which I thought was a draw but now with that extra 114 might be a minor victory?
That was really long...
