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Aeldari GT Report: Game 5

Conor Lobb
Aeldari Tournament Report

Aeldari Tournament Report

For the final game of the Crucible GT I squared off against a good buddy!

Aidan is a very good chaos player who was running the now semi-infamous Possessed jank. Here is his list

Demons Battalion

Alpha Legion Battalion

Night Lords Battalion

And here is my list for reference

Craftworld Battalion: Superior Shurkien and Masterful Shots

Craftworld Battalion: Children of Prophecy and Hail of Doom

Harlequin Supreme Command: Midnight Sorrow

Aidan and I played a few test games before the tournament and I got absolutely stomped. Aidan’s army posed some tough questions to answer. The army revolves around a gaggle of characters, a 17 man unit of possessed and a unit of Obliterators. Aidan will use the Alpha Legion stratagem to make one of the units un-targetable and use various buffs to make the other unit -3 to hit. Pretty nasty stuff.

We played ITC Mission #5 and rolled up Vanguard deployment. I chose to move my priority objective back into my corner so I could easily use it to score some points. As for secondaries, I selected Engineers, The Reaper, and The Butchers Bill. Aidan selected Headhunter, Marked for Death, and Old Skool.

Aidan has a lot of tricks in the Alpha Legion build to block out deepstrikers, so I decided to deploy my Spear and a Guardian blob, deepstrike my second blob, and deploy everything else about halfway up my deployment zone. The Possessed have a crazy threat range from turn one, so I screened out my characters with my Guardian Bomb. I placed the characters 7.1 inches behind the Guardian squad to he would be unable to swing at the Guardians with fight twice. I put my Spears in the back corner of my deployment zone behind my Night Spinners. I did not want his Obliterators to get the jump on them early since they can be surprisingly fast, with a threat range of around 40 inches average if they move before the game with the Alpha Legion stratagem, warp time, and decent advance roles.

Aidan Layered units of Cultists in front of his Obliterators and some characters and deployed his Possessed behind that.

I definitely wanted to go first in this matchup. Luckily, fate was with me and I won the roll to take first turn. I immediately got aggressive. I used Phantasm to move my Guardian Squad closer to the line and brought my Spears from the back to the front. My plan this turn was to clear out his cultist screens and send the spears in to try and kill some characters, or event the Obliterators. I shot the Guardians through the NOVA L on his side of the board by using the +6” advance strat on the Guardians. The Spears flew their 16” into the middle of the board. I needed Quicken to go off to make this plan happen. I Guided the Spears, cast Focus Will onto my Quicken Warlock, and got it off. The Spears jumped further into Aidan’s lines, eyeing up several Squads of Cultists

I also had a Shadowseer suffer Perils of the Warp and explode after Aidan used the 2d3 mortals strat. This explosion took a chunk out of all my character and also killed both of my Warlocks. The worst part is, the power the Shadowseer was casting was totally unnecessary. Yowch.

In my shooting phase, The Cultists and the Guardians cleared about 40 Cultists. The Nightspinners in the back also provided fire support. Aidan was also sporting enough to remind me to Fire and Fade my Guardians back behind the NOVA L so it would be more difficult for him to get at them.

The charge was didn’t go exactly as planned. Aidan placed his Slaanesh herald in the middle of his character bomb, and there is a strat to make a unit within 3” of the Herald -1 attack in the fight phase. That makes Spears really, really bad. I could have escaped that bubble if I rolled a decent charge with the Spears but I ended up rolling a 4, and the way the Spears were strung out I couldn’t avoid the aura. I ended up killing one Obliterator and the Herald, but that was a lot less damage than I anticipated.

In Aidans turn he cleaned up pretty nicely. He was able to scoop the Spears, and his Lord Discordant jammed into the space between the NOVA Ls after a warp time and picked up all but four of my Guardians that had moved back there in my shooting phase. The Possessed received some -1 to hit buffs and Aidan positioned some other models onto objectives.

In my turn two I had a large problem to deal with, and that problem’s name was Disco Daddy. I used the last four Guardians form my first squad to move block the Discordant into the L. I positioned m psykers so my Farseers would be able to cast smites on him, and at the end of my Movement phase I dropped my second Guardian bomb down.

I was certainly on the back foot at this point. I wasn’t super far down on points, but two of my big threats were gone. While I would kill the Disco in shooting phase, Aidan still had the majority of his hitting power left. My plan to clear all of his screens with Spears fell apart when they weren’t able to capitalize and kill a few of his Characters on the charge. It also stung to lose the Guardian bomb so easily to the Disco.

The Guardians picked up the Disco with the help of Smites and Doom, and I bunkered down to wait for his next play. Aidan also had his Terminators coming in from deepstrike, and while I had placed the Guardians far enough away from the Possessed that a charge was unlikely, I still had problems. Aidan mostly got into position in his turn. He used his obliterators to pick up some of my screens for a kill. He positioned his Possessed in the NOVA L to explode out next turn and held the Terminators in deepstrike.

Things were grim. If I went forward I died. If I went backward I had a chance to live longer, so I did. My Night Spinners fired away at some nurglings and secured a kill, but that was all I could do in my turn.

In Aidan’s turn he made his big move with the Possessed. They lept out of the ruin and he successfully cast Warp Time to move them again, and they were a decent roll away from my Guardians. I certainly hoped he would fail it. That was probably the only way to pull the game out from there. Sadly, he rolled that sweet, sweet six and the Possessed charged into My Guardians, shredding the majority of them.

The last notable event of the game was a little scrum between Aidan’s Night Lords Demon Prince and my biker psykers. I was able to eventually kill most of Aidan;s possessed between my Nightspinners and smites and executioners. I also managed to get the Demon Prince down to a couple wounds, and made a YOLO charge with the Farseer and the Warlock to try to finish him off. Unfortunately, they failed and got pasted after their swords bounced off his armor.

I think this game fell apart early on. I’m not sure the aggressive spear play was the right move. I should have also seen the Disco coming in and killing my Guardians. I think if I trade the spears for most of Aidan’s screens but keep that first Guardian blob alive for another turn there is still a game. I should have used a small unit, or even a character to move block the lane in the NOVA L to protect the Guardians from harm.

Looking back at the tournament I think my list had a lot of problems. It doesn’t really have the hitting power to hand in most matchups. Moving forward I am looking at multiple squads of Shining Spears, so I can send one in early in the game to do some damage and have a squad to use later in the game. The Guardian spam isn’t cutting it for me anymore, that is probably my biggest takeaway. They are still tough to kill but I would rather invest 90 more points and upgrade one of my blobs into Spears. One squad is good, but I’m not sold on two squads in this meta. I think I can always play games better, but having a list with more hitting power will help me out in general. Thanks for reading this tournament report, and tune in next week for more!

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