WHW geekend game 1 battle report

So my game 1 of the weekend was a 1500 point 40k battle, my dark eldar vs Dave G's salamanders.

The lists were something like as follows:


My DE
lelith hesperax

9 wyches
hekatrix  with blast pistol, agoniser, phantasm gren launcher
shardnet and impaler
haywires
Raider with a flickerfield
(lelith goes here)

5 warriors
sybarite with blast pistol
blaster
venom with 2 splinter cannons

5 warriors
blaster
venom with 2 splinter cannons

5 warriors
blaster
venom with the splinter cannons

7 reavers
2 heat lances
2 cluster caltrops

3 beastmasters
agoniser
2 clawed fiends
2 razorwing flocks

ravager
flickerfield and nightshields

razorwing
splinter cannon
2 necrotoxin missiles
flickerfield and nightshields

Daves Salamanders
this army was something of a departure, hes recently decided to try lists without vulkan.
his force was led by a master of the forge with a squad of vets in a drop pod

he had 2 tac squads in rhinos

a dev squad with 2 plasma cannons and 2 multi meltas

an ironclad in a drop pod

a regular MM dread

and a dread with a plasma cannon.

we rolled up the D3+2 objectives mission with 1 going in a central ruin, 1 going in a building in my right hand corner, 1 going in a forest in the center of my left flank and the other going on a building in daves corner on my left flank.

Setup was dawn of war, i forced dave to go first. he placed a tac squad in a rhino and nothing else.

i placed nothing.

Turn 1
daves dev squad advances onto the objective building in his corner and runs to get further in, the 2 dreads walk and run centrally to hopefully get firing lanes wherever i arrive, the ironclad in drop pod lands next to the central building on daves side. His rhino speeds up to the objective in the woods and the tac squad unloads into the cover.

My forces all move on, the razorwing hugs the left board edge, the venoms move on central left, using the central building to shield them from the plasma dread. the beastmasters move on next to the razorwing and the raider next to them, the reavers boost over the tac squad on the left flank and bladevane them and the ravager moves on central right to get a direct shot at the plasma dread. the reavers cause a couple of casualties.
the ravager takes its shots, misses 2 and fails to glance or pen with the 3rd. oh well.
the razorwing opens up with all 4 missiles and its other guns on the tac squads, it causes something like 3-4 wounds per guy left, at the end only the heavy bolter is standing. the beastmasters shoot him but fail to kill.
the venoms shoot the dev squad and off a couple of bolter wielders.

Turn 2
the ironclad tries to head for the venoms but whiffs his terrain roll, only managing a couple of inches, the other dreads advance, the drop pod with vets and MotF doesnt arrive yet
the plasma dread hits the ravager, pens and i fail my invun, he rolls a 4, which equals a wrecked result. down he goes.
the lone heavy bolter marine puts a wound on the beastmasters, the dev squad kill 2 reavers, forcing a break test, they fail and run. theyre now close enough to the board edge to run off next turn unless i roll low and theyre within 6" of the heavy bolter marine, so theyre probably gone. sad panda.
the ironclad pops 2 HK missiles at a venom, getting a pen, i fail my invun and it goes down, the occupants are all completely unharmed but do get pinned.

my turn 2, the reavers roll nice and high and flee straight off. the razorwing shuffles about to get some shots off on the ironclad, the raider moves down my left flank behind the wood, hugging the board edge. the venoms shuffle about, getting a bit further away from the ironclad but still in range of the dev squad, the beastmasters advance on the heavy bolter on the objective.
the venoms kill a few more devastators, between the blasters inside and the dark lances from the fighter the ironclad loses an arm and gets immobilised, the beastmasters charge the bolter marine and kill him, consolidating into the woods, spreading out onto the objective.

Turn 3
Daves drop pod arrives and it lands next to the wood ready to deal with the beastmasters, his dreads start moving to my left flank as thats where my forces are all focusing, his tac squad in a rhino moves that way too.
The vets and MotF makes short work of the beastmasters, nothing much else happens from what i recall.

my turn 3
the raider moves onto the objective and the wyches hop out, ready to charge the vet squad and avenge the beastmasters. the venoms and razorwing shuffle about a bit more. The venoms kill another dev marine, the razorwing kills the ironclad, the dismounted warriors move towards the central building.
the wyches assault and wipe the floor with the squad, consolidating towards the dev squad on the objective.

Turn 4
dave crashes his tac squad through the building to dump the marines out in front of the wyches, bolters primed to offload a lot of shots into them, the dreads carry on advancing to that flank. Lots of stuff shoots at the wyches, as the smoke settles only lelith and the hekatrix remain. from what i recall, nothing else happens.

my turn 4
lelith and the hekatrix advance on the tac squad, the venoms with squads in dart onto the 2 nearest objectives, the central building and the woods to the left, unloading their squads onto the objectives ready to fly off and do some blocking and shooting next turn. the razorwing immobilses the MM dread and the on foot squad destroys the weapon of one of the drop pods. the venoms cause another casualty on the dev squad and the wyches charge in to the tac squad, killing 4 and taking no wounds, winning combat easily.

Turn 5 and turn 6 are much of a muchness, the dev squad get whittled to nothing, lelith and the hekatrix whittle down the tac squad, locking them up away from the objectives while my warrior squads camp on 2 objectives, going to ground when the need arose, the fighter eventually deals with the plasma dread and the game is over. 2 objectives to 0.

In the postgame, we were both of the opinion that the razorwing is pretty insane. as is lelith given the right targets. I think i would say that dave moving his squad onto the objective turn 1 was a mistake, as was feeding the 2nd squad to the wyches, but i suppose he figured he had enough firepower to off the whole squad, and he nearly did. From my perspective, i wasted the reavers and the ravager, i need to be a little cagier with the bikes and use a bit more cover with the ravager. lessons learned.