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9th Ed Batrep: Aeldari vs. Death Guard

Conor Lobb

The elves vs the stinky zombie guys!

Ahh, sweet, sweet ninth edition. We played Mission six out of the Chapter Approved booklet. I chose Deploy Scramblers, While We Stand We Fight, and Engage on All Fronts. My opponent chose Attrition, Assassinate, and Domination.

Harlequins Battalion:

Ynarri Patrol

So this only comes into the game with 7 CP, which could be a drawback given how hungry the clowns are for it. I had my mind rekindled for wyches after reading a Goonhammer article, and I’ve always loved the Yncarne. I ran Wyches for a long time while I was shamelessly copying Sean Nayden’s 8th ed lists. Coming into the game I figured it would be an uphill fight. The toughest thing about playing combat aeldari at the moment is their inability to stand on objectives for multiple turns. For the most part, out units are expensive and fragile. More rumination after the batrep.

My Opponent’s (Aidan) List

Death Guard Patrol (Poxmongers)

Demon Prince (Wings, Plague Sprayer, Warlord)

Daemons Patrol

I figured, hey, I sure enjoy pain. Why not square off against the nastiest army in the game with an army that I think has dipped in power level pretty steeply? Yeah. Lets go for it.

We each deployed behind a large ruin at the front of our deployment zone. He put all of his Plague Marines into rhinos, and tried to make the best he could of obscuring terrain. He deployed all 15 nurglings in the center of the table on the middle objective. I ended up with the roll to go first, and decided to rock with it.

On turn one i decided to get a bit bloodthirsty with my wyches and take my prize; nurglings. Was it worth it? In retrospect, I think I should have just spent some CP and sent a harlequin unit in there to kill a unit, maybe fight twice to kill a second one, and then use hit and run. His nurglings are great objective holders, and killing them early would save me the headache of dealing with them late game. Alas, my Wyches killed one squad and I decided to tri-tip, which I probably should have to make him spend cp. I was pretty pumped to kill something with my dusty Wyches though! They haven’t seen the table in awhile.

Other than that, I did some ping damage to Aidan’s rhino with 9 Plague Marines in it and his PBC. Otherwise, I Deployed Scramblers in my deployment zone, and then passed turn.

On Aidans turn he ripped my Wyches off the board, moved his Plague Marines in his ruin, and pushed up on the flanks with his vehicles. He charged my Skyweavers on my right side objective with one of his Nurgling units, threatening to deny my primary, and would have done so if I hadn’t fought twice with the bikes to kill a lone Nurgling after he resurrected two with The Great Nurgling Revival Band strat. 3 cp down.

(My Glaive Guys Kept Falling Off)

On my next turn, I yeeted my 4 man Sky weavers into his deployment zone thinking I would kill five plague Marines and use my 6 inch consolidate (Midnight Sorrow rules!) his objective to deny him any points on the primary. Sadly, I only killed two out of five and the two flails wiped out my four bikes by themselves. I shed many tears.

I also moved a unit of players into the middle to clear out his last Nurgling unit, which worked out, and I used the Harlequin Hit and Run Strat to move them back into my ruin. I also used a Harlequin squad to Deploy Scramblers in the midfield.

In his next turn (2) he moved into the middle, and fought the Harlequin squad I hit and ran with the previous turn through the wall. He basically murdered all of them with the plague flails, those things are gross!!! He also pushed up hard on my right side with the Unkillable Super Chicken (Lord of Change) and smote my remaining bike unit to deal two wounds. He glowered at them too.

That Chicken is a bad man in an Impossible Robe. At this point, Aidan had also scored six points on Domination and 4 points on Grind them down. Most of my secondaries are scored at the end, but I hadn’t made any headway on Engage On All Fronts. Eek.

I took a big swing in my next turn. I was about to fall behind on primary pretty bad, but I still had a lot of my hitters left, so I decided to use them. I charged everything; tue murdemaster went into big squad of plague marines, a troupe squad advanced 6 inches to charge his Demon Prince, the solitaire went into the prince, and the Yncarne charged the 5 plague marines who had killed my Harlequin squad in the previous turn.

The Murdermaster

I also sent my second remaining squad to fight his lord of change, thinking I would add one to their damage to balance out his -1 damage ability, and with reroll wounds from the troupe master I could put some work in. Unfortunately, the troupe master was super far away from the troupe, and I only had 2 cp left, which I needed to use for the troupe master so he could fight in death because the foul blightspawn was going to make him fight last. That is a super nasty deathguard combo.

So, yeah. I goofed up the combat phase in that one. Ultimately, the troupe swuad did like 2 wounds to the lord of change, the murder master killed six plague marines when he fought in death, and the Solaitre and the troupes combined did not kill the Demon Prince. There was a small victory, though. The Yncarne killed 5 Plague Marines! ‘Twas a bad turn with some bad play from me. From there, Aidan proceeded to wipe up all the elves, and effectively sewed up the game.

Death Guard are very strong. The ability to hold the middle with a tough unshootable (with cloud of flies and some PBCs and Unchargeable unit (with the Foul Blightspawn) is totally insane. I think my list has some teeth, and if I had used the Wyches better instead of throwing them away to kill one nurgling unit, I would have been in a better position to win. Ultimately the game fell apart for me on Turn four, when I made my big charge. It is just super duper hard to charge the Death Guard and I haven’t quite worked out what to do yet. Ynarri is an interesting option with always fights first, so I’m considering swapping out the Wyches for a little detachment with some Shining Spears or Wraithblades in them.

I do really like the Harlequins, especially the Solitair and the Murder Master. Those two are worth their weight in gold. I’m not sure I need to Skyweaver units, and some of those points may be converted into Shining Spears. I think it’s a bit tough for Eldar right now, and we need to look realistically at what can hold objectives and effectively fight over the middle. Eldar have never been great at standing in the open, and now that you have to survive a whole turn on an objective to score it, it makes it a bit tougher to keep up on the primary against certain lists. Or maybe I’m totally wrong! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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