Embolden is a must!

Nick speaking,

I don't mean Embolden on your Warlock, I am talking about an up and coming Blog that I have found called Embolden 40k. Rob over at Embolden is a great guy who has been doing a lot of fantastic posts on his Blog recently, including battle reports, conversions, general Eldar, Necrons and 40k stuff. Please go and have a look at his Blog and give him some support by following...
 

For those of you who haven't already gone over to check out Robs Blog, here is one of his battle report posts for you to enjoy...

Battle Report: Eldar V Grey Knights (Paladins) 1750

Hey everyone,

After my recent tournament at Caledonian which I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about! I wanted to get some play testing in against a Paladin list before the Battlefield Birmingham Tournament at the end of this month.

We were playing mission 4 from the rules pack, Supply Drop, which is a strange mission, it’s take and hold with 3 objectives, 1 goes dead centre worth 4pts, with the other 2 worth 3 each which deep strike randomly in, deployment is Dawn of War.

Grey Knights:

Draigo

Libby – quicksilver, shrouding, sanctuary, might of titan

10 Paladins – 4 psycannons, apoth, banner, stave, then a mix of halberds and hammer

1 Paladin – hammer

2 Dreads – autocannons, psybolt ammo

1 Venerable Dread – autocannons, psybolt ammo

Eldar:

Farseer – guide, warding

Autarch – fusion gun, chainsword

6 Dragons in Wave Serpent – scatter lasers, shuriken cannon

6 Dragons in Wave Serpent – scatter lasers, shuriken cannon

5 Avengers in Wave Serpent – scatter lasers, shuriken cannon

5 Avengers in Wave Serpent – bright lance, shuriken cannon

5 Avengers

2 Vypers – scatter laser, shuriken cannon

Falcon – bright lance, holofields

3 War Walkers – 6 scatter lasers

3 War Walkers – 6 scatter lasers

The plan is to totally ignore/hide from the dreadnoughts best I can, I don’t plan on going in reserve, I want maximum turns of shooting, walking on turn1.

We roll for first turn, the Paladins win the roll and choose to go first.

Deployment:

The Paladins roll for the Grand Strategy and make the ven dread and a normal dead scoring.

The Paladin squad and Draigo deploy in the middle, and then trail back to about 8” in from the board edge.

I choose not to deploy anything and will walk on turn1.

Early Game:

The libby walk’s on and moves into the Paladin squad, which then run further into the centre of the board, 2 deads including the ven dread walk in on the left flank, with 1 normal scoring dread in the centre behind a LOS blocking ruined 3 story building. I then move on with the walkers on either flank, everything else moves on in the centre, my shooting is fairly ineffective, I wound a couple of Paladins and take a wound off Draigo. With my army now in light, the Paladins shuffle move of the Paladins lagging behind inc the libby, while the dreads move further infield, the scoring dread moves into the ruin and up a level (still out of sight). The Ven dread opens up into the falcon in cover, stunning it, while the normal dread destroys a dragon serpent, killing 2 dragons in the explosion. I then move up with that squad of dragons and the other squad moves up and disembarks from their serpent, the walkers move infield with the vypers (now guided) shuffle out of LOS from both dreads on the left flank, both Avenger serpents move further right. My shooting is much more effective thanks to the libby failing shrouding! I then throw both dragon squads into the Paladins, wounding draigo twice more! And killed 2 paladins! I both Walker squads and the vypers open up into the Paladins but can only wound 2 more paladins.

Mid Game:

The GK objective deep strikes in, which then scatters about 2” from the central objective that the Paladins are camped on! The Paladins move further into cover in the centre, they dread in the ruin moves up to the top floor, while the dreads on the left flank move infield again, the Paladins open up and kill the 6 man dragon squad, the dread on the top floor stuns the falcon again, the dreads on the left flank kill the remaining dragons. My objective still doesn’t arrive, so I then turbo boost one avenger serpent to the far right behind a ruin, out of LOS from the dreads and paladins, the, the walkers then target the paladin squad again, torrenting the libby and killing a paladin, the Vypers then torrent off Draigo, now my opponents army starts to crumble with the rest of my shooting killing another 2 paladins (now down to about 4 paladins, inc the apoth). The lone paladin deep strikes in, my opponent tries to hide him behind the ruin the dread is in, but it scatters out into the open... then runs towards the central objectives (in cover) the Dreads open up in to the Serpents they can see, they destroy one avenger serpent with bright lance and the remaining empty dragon serpent while the Falcon loses its pulse laser, but can finally move. My objective comes down on my left flank, which I move the falcon onto, the war walkers move up to give it cover, I move the avenger serpent on my right flank to shoot the paladins, I then open up with everything I can into the Paladins I finally kill the unit to a man, then with the final shots I fire into the single paladin, but do no damage.

Late Game:

With very little left, the dreads move towards the centre of the table, shooting my Falcon, taking it’s bright lance off and stunning it, the single paladin moves onto both objectives, while the Dread in the ruin moves and runs down through the levels and into the open heading towards the objectives in the centre. I then make a dash for the central objectives, the Vypers turbo boost to contest both, the wave serpent on my right flank turbo boosts to tank shock the paladin, which passes the test, and stays contesting 1 objective (the 3 pt objective) with walkers on my right flank move infield and run towards the objectives, while the walkers on my left flank shuffle round to protect the falcon. My shooting it brief and all I can do is take a wound of the paladin.

We roll to see if the game continues and it does!

The paladin moves to punch the tank, which it does, knocking the scatter laser off, the dreads close in the central objectives, the non scoring dread destroys the vypers, the ven dread shoots the serpent, doing no damage while the other scoring dread moves and then runs to contest the objectives with the serpent. With not much I can do to stop the contesting, I jump the autarch out the back of the serpent, he fusion guns the scoring dread, destroying it, the war walkers on my left flank open up into the paladin, killing him, the walkers on my right flank move up and shoot the ven dread, getting 5 glancing hits!! Blowing both weapons of and immobilising it! Then with re-rolls it still loses a weapon and is badly shaken...

We then roll to see if the game ends and it does!

It was a close game and with the Battlefield Birmingham rules I win 16-4 by holding both 3pt objectives, while the 4pt objective is contested so worth nothing.

Overall I was happy with how the game went, ignoring the Dreads gave them free rain until I could kill the Paladins, the Farseer was a game changer, my opponent rolled a lot of 3’s when making cover saves! I still made a number of mistakes, not hiding the Falcon turn1 when it moved on, after the game I had another look and there was a space to hide it, so need to be more careful with placement, the bright lance serpent didn’t need to be so close the paladins and if the dread hadn’t destroyed it, the Paladins would have! And a number of silly mistakes that where just me being slightly lazy and wanting to get greedy with shooting turn1, I should of just played for position knowing I wouldn’t do much damage turn1.

More play testing to come!