Dark Elves MSU (Close Combat) - Starting into Potsdam League 2014

In meinem ersten Spiel im neuen Liga Jahr musste ich im Angriff bei Morgengrauen gegen die Skaven ran - 1500p
Einerseits war ich guter Dinge, dass ich gewinnen würde, da eine MSU Armee (mit vielen Immun gegen Panik-Einheiten und hohem MW etc.) bei der besonderen Aufstellung ganz gut dasteht und zudem mein Gegner ein Warhammer Neuling ist.
Andererseits wurde er bei seiner Liste von einem Skavenveteran beraten, der alle meine Tricks auch bereits kennt und ich war gespannt, ob das Nahkampf-MSU auch gegen die ewig standhaften Skaven-Blöcke bestehen würde.

Meine Liste hatte gar keinen Beschuss dabei (bis auf magische Geschosse)

Skaven müssen zuerst aufstellen, Mönche, ein Block Klanratten und das Katapult sind weit vom Rest der Armee (und dem Generalsblock) abgeschnitten.

Ich durfte mich eher mittiger platzieren, musste drei Einheiten auf die rechte Flanke stellen (gegenüber dem Generalsblock) und nur meine Echsenritter mussten auf die linke Flanke, wo sie sich entschieden, Kurs Rest der Armee zu schauen, statt allein gegen die Seuchenmönche vorzugehen. In der Mitte und ganz rechts außen sah ich Lücken, mit denen meine leichte Kavallerie eventuell mit Vorhut+Marsch am Gegner vorbei zischen könnte, weshalb ich sie entsprechend aufstellte.

Skaven dürfen (5/6 Chance) beginnen, und starten mit einem defensiven Zug. Die Mönche unterdrücken ihre Raserei (12" Angriffswurf notwendig zu meiner Vorhut-Kavallerie) und stellen sich defensiv nah an den Turm heran, was eine Flanke schon mal vor Angriffen schützt.
Der Graue Prophet wartet erstmal ab und schaut, ob seine KM's und Zauber den Feind dezimieren werden. Leider ist von dort aus nur ein Zauber in Reichweite, und dieser kann gebannt werden. Die WBK verwundet den AST der Dunkelelfen, aber sein Umhang rettet ihn. Nur noch 1 mal retten, bis er sich in den sicheren Nahkampf gegen die Kanone flüchten kann!

Beide Fluchfeuerhexer schaffen wie geplant den Sturm nach vorn aus dem Frontfeld der Gegner hinaus in deren Flanken hinein. Die erste Einheit Hexen stellt fest, dass ein giftiger Wald vor ihnen liegt, und die anderen Hexen warten daher erstmal ein Stück außerhalb des Waldes, bis die äußeren Infanterieblöcke (erste Hexen und Henker) weiter vor zum eventuellen Flankieren gerückt sind. Die Erzzauberin überlegt, ob sie ebenso in der Mitte durchbrechen soll, wartet aber auch erstmal ab, um nicht von Seuchenmönchen eventuell überrascht zu werden. Die Ritter sind verwundert, dass die Skavne auf der rechten Seite nicht vorwärts kommen, glauben dass sie auf der Flanke daher nicht mehr gebraucht werden, und sehen zu ob sie einen Weg an den Mönchen vorbei zum Katapult finden.

Dem Grauen Propheten fällt auf, dass ihm die Sklaven im Weg sind und er nicht schwenken kann. Gnadenlos werden sie im vollen Marsch daher nun vorgeschickt. Die Hexen platzieren sich anschließend so, dass sie die Sklaven sobald sie angreifen abfangen, bevor sie den Wald verlassen können. Der Graue indes erkennt, dass der AST der Dunkelelfen seine Kanone angreifen wird und versucht sich so auszurichten, dass er anschließend kontern kann. Zudem versucht er ihn mit einem Warpblitz aus dem Sattel zu werfen. Die Angst um die wichtige Kanone ist so groß, dass zu viele Würfel zu totaler Energie führen. Die 6 Treffer des Zaubers prallen an der dicken Rüstung und dem Umhang ab, und der KV beendet die Magie-Phase. Erneut hält der Mantel des AST einen Warpblitzschuss auf, sodass ihn nur noch ein extrem kurzer Angriffswurf vom Ziel abhalten könnte. Das Seuchenkatapult versucht wie in der Vorrunde die Magierin samt leichter Kavallerie zu erschießen, erreicht aber wieder keine Wunde.

Während die Hexen auf die Sklaven warten, stürmen die Henker aus dem Frontfeld der Sklaven heraus Richtung Generalsblock. Zauberei schwächt die rechte Sklavenflanke und sichert so minimale Verluste bei den kommenden Nahkämpfen. (Seelenfäule) Echsenritter nähern sich weiter dem Katapult.
Durch seinen Flugangriff und die Möglichkeit an einer KM den Angriff an einer beliebigen Stelle abzuschließen schafft der AST es, mit seinem Angriff auch außerhalb des Generalsblocks der Skaven zu bleiben.

Die 43 Sklaven sehen keine andere Option als sich in die Hände der Hexen zu werfen, und werden gnadenlos im Wald vernichtet. Der Graue sieht sich von Dunkelelfen umzingelt und die Seuchenmönche glauben immernoch an ihre Verteidigungsposition. Das Katapult erschießt nun die direkte Gefahr und zwei Echsenreiter fallen vom Sattel.

Multipler Dunkelelfenangriff auf den Generalsblock! Nur AST und FFHexer kommen an. Die Skaven stehen, aber der Graue stirbt an der Lanze des Pegareiters.

Heldenblock steht noch! Aber DE-Verstärkung steht bereit.

Der Kommandoblock bricht im kommenden Nahkampf und wird dann durch drei in Folge angesagte Angriffe/Fluchtbewegungen von der Platte gescheucht. Die Ritter links sind endlich nah genug um die Mönche aufmerksam zu machen.

FFHexer vernichten Katapult und Klanratten, was das Spiel beendet.

Nur Ritter und halbe Hexenpunkte für die Skaven, und fast alles an Punkten für die Dunkelelfen, was den Ratten eine vernichtende Niederlage beschert. Ich hoffe es war trotzdem spaßig - aber vor allem lehrreich!
Danke fürs Spiel!

For my first league game I was about to face a rookie warhammer player (that had the support of a veteran player though for building his army) in 1500p Dark Elves vs. Skaven.

The scenario was Dawn Attack. I was confident that the random deployment would benefit the dark elves, especially in a MSU formation, since they have a high Leadership value and many of them are immune to panic.
Lacking the support of BSB or general might hurt the Skaven instead quite a bit. Especially smaller slave or giant-rats troops can easily be driven of the board through panic or terror.

The army I faced did not have such features. It looked similar to this:

Dark Elves list, completely lacking any means of non-magical ranged combat:

Skaven had to deploy first, and the Plague monks as well as a group of clanrats were stranded on the left flank. The general decided to place the catapult behind them.

Stranded rats, hiding behind a tower.

My dark elves were able to deploy mainly in the centre of the battlefield, while one group of warlocks could deploy on the far right, seeing an opening to march out of the front of all enemy units into their flank, using vanguard and a march movement.
My heavy cavalry needed to go to my left flank, but decided to abandon it, rather than facing the plague monks head on, since they were alone for now.

The three units of witches hope to use the forest to break the steadfast of the enemy. Too bad it was not an ordinary forest...

The Skaven started their first turn defensively. The plague monks attached themselves to the nearby tower, likely to protect their flank from the warlocks, that vanguarded forward to race through the middle of the battlefield to the other side. The blocks on the right side wanted to watch the Warplightning cannon annihilate the Dark Elf Pegasus before moving out of their comfy position.
All but one spells were out of range, so magic did not cost dark elf lives, plague catapult failed to wound Dark Riders and the Dark Elf BSB saved the wound from the Warplightning cannon by merging into the twilight. Phew!

Both units of Warlocks were able to rush over to the enemy sight, avoiding any dager to be attacked by staying out of the 45° front-field of the enemy. BSB marched 20" directly towards his greatest adversary - the enemy cannon. One more 3+ saving throw to win his personal 1on1 battle!
The witches entered the forest, suffering casualties from the poisonous fumes in the wild. The remaining two units decided to stay outside of the forest, waiting for the enemy units to make the first move.
The lizardknights on the left flank startet to get confused: The enemy on the right flank did not approach at all! Would they be needed there anyway? So they changed directions again and tried to sneak through to the catapult, by riding along the left-most side of the battlefield.
The Supreme Sorceress led their bodyguards to the right, to be able to eyes of the grey seer. Who would wield greater magical powers in this duell?

In the second turn, the clanrats and plague monks on the left flank try to block any entrance to their precious catapult. The grey seer notices, that his clanrats can't face the enemy, since the slaves nex to him are in the way. Without hesitation he orders them in full march forward! He is sure the enemy Pegasus rider would try to attack his cannon and decides to face his unit that way. He punished the Pegasus rider with a doombolt and is so inclined to keep him from reaching the cannon that the magical powers slip his grasp and the magical feedback vaporizes all remaining magical dice. The doombolt manages to score 6 hits, but none manages to penetrate his mundane and magical protection. He even managed to avoid being fried by the cannon again due to his very effective twilight cloak.

The witches now happily see the slaves coming in to their direction and decide to trap them in the forest. Just the unit of witches that already had entered the forest dares to take the dangerous trip through the forest. Executioners see a chance to slip the front field of the slaves and gladly take that opportunity to threaten the grey seer and his company. BSB charges cannon, Lizards still try to sneak past the monks and some dark magic bolts start to dwindle the enemy forces and make them suffer through ungodly pain, reducing their strength and fighting capabilities.

Even though the grey seer had foreseen his attack, the flying move of the Pegasus Rider allowed him to find a spot to land where he himself would not be spottet.

The 43 slaves on the right flank see no other option than to attack the 10 witches on the other side of the forest. The grey seer finds himself trapped in dark elves. The plague monks still believe in their protection strategy of the catapult, which now manages to take two lizardriders out of their saddles.

Where did the slaves go? It's now a "bloody forest" instead of a poisonous one.

Dark Elves attack the grey seer! But only Pegasus and Warlocks connect. They do not manage to break the enemy, but the grey seer dies.

Hero-Block of the Skaven still standing! But Dark Elves reinforcements await.

While the command block of the Skaven breaks in the second round of close combat(They flee off the board after three consecutive fleeing moves caused by various attacks across the board), the lizard riders are finally close enough to get the attention of the plague monks.

The Riders are too close to safely retreat and not close enough to race through the enemy out of their sight. Oops!

Plague monks finally connect... Even though the riders by now have Thoughness 1, their hero fails to wound the enemy. They still flee of the board tough, which causes the monks to chase them off the board too, ending their usefullness for this battle.

The Warlocks manage to kill the clanrats and the catapult, which ends the battle.

A desastrous end for the Skaven Army, since the elves only lost the lizardknights and half a block of witches, while only plaguemonks remain for them.
However, they learned a lot in this battle for sure!

Thanks for the game!

Zitat

Greetings!

First of all let me thank Alandil for being very kind and posting his report in English! It is a great honour for me that he took into account the fact that there is possibly only ne forum member who does not speak German here I really appreciate the fact he took the time to do so and I hope my comments will add a little to the discussion about his very interesting game.

At the same time let me allow to apologise for such a long delay in replying. While it is not an excuse, real life issues sometimes have that nasty way of interfering with important things - such as Warhammer

I usually don't try to comment on the army lists as I believe the players themselves know the best what they wanted to achieve. There is no single way of building the army and that is the beauty of that game. Personally, I strongly believe it is the player, his unique style and skills that make particular list work (or not!). Because of that I don't think there is such a thing as an "optimal" army list. Even if some tend to work more often for wider group of players.

Having said that I find it challenging to estimate the potential of both armies, especially that it was at a very low point level. You see, with MSU armies you are often at the very minimum of character allowance. Because of that it is very hard to scale the army down from 2400/2500 to even 2000 points. With other forces getting rid of one or two support heroes can solve the problem. With MSU you need to decrease the number of regiments and suddenly there is no "multiple" in your MSU. But it is quite possible that I am looking at the thing from the wrong angle and should try to build the army rather than scale it down from the bigger force.

I always envy armies like Skaven or O&G because they seem to be able to have it all. Big units, small units, many characters, many regiments, plenty of support in various forms. It is amazing how many rats you can have even at 1500 points!

There are some usual suspects in the skaven army. I am not sure if the army was specifically tailored to fight DE but banner of the underempire is a good choice against small units of fragile elves. I think for this particular match up it is even better than Storm Banner, that is more often present in the lists. Blocks of infantry are also very good against small regiments as they can fight in the war of attrition very well. Smaller unit of plague monks makes up for their size with the sheer amount of attacks they can dish out (and mandatory plague banner makes them even more dangerous).

Template war machines and the rocket can make life of any infantry miserable too. With some nasty spells on top of it the army can be, indeed, very dangerous.

Having said that it does not have support units. 4 infantry blocks with associated characters and 2 war machines is all the Skaven mustered. It means that even if they keep together (what is a big "if" with Dawn Attack scenario) they will suffer from unprotected flanks and no means to fend off some small sacrificial units that might want to lure out frenzied plague monks. I would seek my chances in here in order to divide the Skaven formation and to be able to attack rats from many directions at the same time. They are numerous but they also die quickly to a well co-ordinated charges.

Would DE have the tools for the job?

DE army list actually shows something that is hard for me to overcome in terms of concept. It has only 2 characters but they are so expensive that they make 1/3rd of the army! That is a huge investment and they need to be very well protected!

Again, I am not sure if the list was built with particular enemy in mind but 3 units of Witch Elves are great against Skaven. They can actually try to fight some units one on one if at full strength and have such a good grinding potential that rats can melt very quickly. Executioners and Cold Ones are hard hitting regiments here that might have less chances to shine against Skaven but Executioners have the potential to killing blow the characters while Cold One knights have good grinding potential with good armour so they are actually well equipped for that fight too.

I expect light cavalry to be on war machines hunting duty and warlocks are incredibly versatile troops that can fulfil multiple roles, even in the same game, depending on how the situation unfolds.

If I were to point at the army that, in my opinion, may have better chances in this game I would choose DE simply because I think they have more flexible and versatile army than Skaven.

Ok, it seems I was carried away with chatting about the army list so I need to stop now and will continue some time tomorrow!

Cheers!

SM

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The armies were indeed specially set up for this battle with the enemy in mind.

The choice of charakters in my army is mainly a result of the victory points system in our league and the nature of the skaven army. Lossing the BSB means a huge amount of points awarded to the enemy, therefore a BSB needs to get as much protection as he can. The flying Pegasus rider offers this in all regards, armour, ward saves and mobility to not get caught by a nasty tearblade of the Skaven or Rat Ogres or similar. Skaven are also able to deploy very uncomforting war machines, and none can take those down more efficiently than a flying hero with a relatively small base. As the only target for cannons and such, the 3+ ward save against shooting and spells is a must.

Since a single plague spell can easily end the game, a dispel scroll is mandatory too. A sorceress would be a terrible coice for a general though, not offering a single unit a better LD value than their own, also without anty protection whatsoever and no more able to dispel spells than the warlocks. A High Sorceress is the only reasonable choice as a second charakter for the general, while leaving the talisman of preservation out would be the only real option to keep the points small.

Let's continue!

1. Deployment

Probably the most crucial phase of the game. If you make mistakes here you will either spend time moving troops to correct them or it will be too late any way and you will start taking casualties. Dawn Attack has this tendency to mess up with the plans of any general. Skaven army definitely were hit by the random deployment as they needed to be together rather in two separate groups. However, seeing that some units are away from the main battle line, I think Skaven player should move both groups towards the centre and create a single formation before advancing against your DE. It is a risky thing to do as you may expose some of them or open the flanks. To limit that he could even stay put with grey seer and his regiments, protect the catapult and move plague monks and clanrats towards the main force. Yet another option, more risky but also more aggressive is to move all groups diagonally towards the centre. They don't have to expose the flanks but would advance towards each other and towards the enemy.

DE deployment looks much better. Fast units are on the flanks and can either stay together with the infantry and protect their flanks or move forward rapidly if there is an opening. Although both war machines have a potential to do damage to any regiment, there is not that much shooting to endanger DE. And they can, in fact, lose some of their numbers while still pose a huge threat to the clanrats. In particular Witch Elves can tear through them as hot knife through butter.

2. Skaven

I think Skaven player was undecided what to do. At the beginning he simply stayed in one place but his magic or shooting were not strong enough to make a difference. While BSB is a juicy target I would shoot at Witch Elves in particular. Also magic missiles make short work of them.

He seemed to be torn apart between the decision to stand still because his units were separated or to move against the enemy. In the end he did neither properly and paid ultimate price.

The good idea in protecting the war machines is to position them 1 inch behind the unit. They can still fight but nothing can land in front of them. It is not going to prevent flying character from finding a spot to do so but it may prove to be more difficult.

The charge with slaves was truly suicidal. Although they don't cost much the fast they lost ranks and steadfast was too much. It would have been better to keep them close and let Witch Elves charge them with opportunity to counter attack. It would not save them but that is not the point. They had a chance to stay longer and that is their role.

There was no need for Plague Monks to stay in the tower. Yes, they are frenzied and can be lured out but that is the reason why they could use clanrats as living shield. And be ready to attack when needed the most. With their higher numbers and significant amount of attacks they could take away small units of DE in one-on-one combats. They would suffer casualties but it also matters if you can take some enemies with you.

As I have mentioned before, Skaven army didn't have support troops and that also allowed faster DE troops to move around and pick the war machines easily. On top of that, also due to the scenario, skaven formation was not solid and was easier to divide and conquer.

3. Dark Elves

They perfectly used the opening provided due to the skaven units being in two different places. BSB was a magnet for the shooting and even he died it would have allowed for warlocks or dark riders to move around and get the skaven artillery.

Witch Elves proved to be very good at killing hordes of cheap and poorly equipped troops. Even more so when the enemy was kind enough to enter the forest to deprive himself from rank bonus and steadfast. It just shows that MSU armies, if use the terrain right, can combat huge units too.

Speed and large volume of attacks allowed relatively small units of warlocks to kill enemy units in quite efficient ways. These guys are extremely versatile and no wonder they are taken in every DE army.

It looked like DE had a firm plan and stick to it through the game. They put the pressure on the enemy from turn one by approaching the main group of enemy units, where their local superiority was even more visible and ignoring for time being two infantry blocks on the other flank.

I hope Skaven player was not discouraged by the heavy loss he suffered. It is quite typical for players to be indecisive when playing against MSU for the first time. There is no big target. The only obvious one seemed to be BSB but he was very well protected and the shots were wasted. I hope that it is just the beginning of a rivalry that will provide even more games in the future!

Cheers!