40K League Battle Report - Space Sharks vs. Dark Eldar 1250pts

My most recent league game has been against the malevolent Dark Eldar.  The mission was the Emperor's Will, with Dawn of War deployment.

The DE took:

Duke Sliscus

Haemonculi w/liquifier

2xwrack squads in venoms, 1 wrack w/liquifier

5xwyches in venom

2xwarrior squads in raiders

3xravagers

I deployed first.  Speeder hiding in near ruins with my objective, dread hiding next door, whirlwind on the other end.  AV holding down the fort while everything else is off the table.

Wrack venoms set up around their objective.  Sliscus, warriors, and raider hiding mid table.  Rest in reserve, deep striking in due to the Duke's rules.

The DE failed to seize, so the Sharks take the first turn.  The Deathfin arrives, teleporting in to get the first strike in on the partial DE force.

Flanking the dud (?) vortex missile, the terminators let loose.  The Whirlwind fired first, but scattered far off of the venoms.  Split fire from the terminators explode one venom and wreck the other.  Belial's large squad rips the Duke's raider apart with assault cannon and storm bolter fire, killing several occupants.  Serious first blood.

The wracks high tail it behind the wall to get away from the nearby terminators, while the Duke and his escort decide to take the large squad on head to head, trusting in the Duke's shadowfield and pointy knives.  The terminator sgt accepts the Duke's challenge and dies, but the rest of the warriors are smashed apart.  The Duke holds, and now Belial steps up to the plate and he and the Duke dink off each other for a couple rounds before the shadowfield fails and ghostplate fails to protect against further blows.  Slay the warlord and The Hunt points for the Sharks.

The whirlwind continues to scatter; apparently the crew isn't satisfied running an artillery piece while there is face-to-face tearing to do.

Dark eldar reinforcements arrive - wych venom near the shark objective, splinter cannons pelting off of power armor to no effect.

Ravagers and the second raider plop down and take out a couple of the small unit's terminators.

The dreadnought's multimelta explodes the venom while tac marines move over to the objective.  Terminator fire finishes off the pinned wyches in the venom's wreckage.

Speeder moves out to challenge the skimmers but low pens and jinks keep it from doing any damage.  Terminators move up and assault the ravager in the woods, exploding it.  Whirlwind hits, pens the raider, he fails to jink, and...stun.

The ravagers destroy the speeder and shake the whirlwind.

 

Unable to fire, the whirlwind elects to take a more direct approach and guns its engines, barrels through the ruins in front of it and rams the stunned raider!  The driver is rewarded with the skimmer exploding, and follow up fire from the terminators wipes out the warriors. 

 

The best weapon on a whirlwind - 12" move.

The ravagers destroy the whirlwind and dread, wracks take out the small terminators.  Big terminators advance and whittle down the wracks.

Ravagers move towards tactical marines on objective, who come out and charge the front ravager, but utterly fail to do anything with their krak grenades.  In the following turn they are dark lanced to oblivion.

Meanwhile Larry the Lucky Haemonculi surivives shot after shot from the terminators while a lone wrack hides and covers the DE objective.  

Game eventually ends, with DE holding their own objective for 3 points, and the Space Sharks with only secondary objectives.  But, the Sharks have all three secondaries, plus a bonus point from The Hunt, giving them a 4-3 victory!

Interesting game with some heavy swings and close moments, but by far my favorite event of the game, and likely of the year was the whirlwind charging out and downing a raider.  

Next round we're up to 1500pts.