It Was Carnage

We recently played a game of Carnage, the 40k four-player rules. Players were Dark Eldar, Tau, Space Wolves and my Necrons and as well as the core rules we added some additional secret secondary objectives in the form of modifying the table in the Pact of Blood mission from the main rulebook (pg 365).

Dark Eldar dominated the board from early on, claiming first blood by killing off a squad of Tau battlesuits then killing enough drones to force a leadership test on one of the Riptides which fled off the board. I made the mistake of using Counter-Tactics to remove Night Vision from the remaining Riptide, fearing its large blasts would cause havoc amongst my hordes of Warriors, but this meant when he instead targeted the Dark Eldar skimmers with it their Jink saves protected them.

On turn two I got to unleash my gimmick on the Space Wolves. My Night Scythe delivered the first unit of Deathmarks, two more units Deep Struck, and I used a Veil Of Darkness to bring Zandrekh's unit of Warriors up and Obyron's Ghostwalk Mantle to deliver the Wraiths. The Dark Eldar had already opened up the Land Raider and I made quick work of the unit that had been within, but couldn't get past the 2+ save of his warlord. Having thrown all I could at him he was then able to retaliate, killing off Zandrekh's Warriors as the Nemessor himself was swallowed up by Jaws of the World Wolf.

Over the next few turns I traded blows with the Wolves, while the Dark Eldar and Tau fought it out on the other side of the board. The Dark Eldar Archon, Incubi and Grotesques hunted down the Tau Ethereal but were the Tau retaliated by gunning them down, the Archon's Shadow Field shorting out just before the Hammerhead turned its main gun on him to land the killing blow.

Going into turn four we were running short on time, so agreed we'd finish the game after that turn. Dark Eldar moved up a Raider full of Warriors to support the Ravager on the objective. None of us were in a great position to counter them, but I used my remaining Veil of Darkness to bring a squad of Warriors into Rapid Fire range, and Zandrekh who had now joined a squad of Deathmarks used his Ghostwalk Mantle to bring them into firing position. They fired everything they could and did enough casualties to force a Morale Check, but the Dark Eldar weren't for being chased off their prize. 

My last ditch effort was to assault with my two remaining Wraiths, making a Disordered Charge against the Raider and the Ravager. It would have required destroying both and making a good Consolidation roll to contest the objective, but instead they failed to take the last hull point off of the Ravager, and only took two of the Raider's three hull points leaving it intact.

Space Wolves made the next attempt, and managed to gun down the Raider but the wreckage now obscured most of the Dark Eldar Warriors on the objective and he was unable to kill enough with shooting to cause a morale check. He made a final effort to leap-frog onto the objective by charging one of my Deathmark squads in the hopes of consolidating up to the objective, but was unable to consolidate far enough.

Inspired by all our failures to reach the Dark Eldar in combat, combined with the fact it was unable to shoot this turn, the Riptide tried to string out its own assault onto the damaged Ravager, but was unable to reach it in time.

That left the Dark Eldar as the clear winners, with the objective, one Slay the Warlord, the Price of Failure for killing the Ethereal, First Blood, and the Vertigo bonus objective for holding the highest ground on the battlefield. 

I definitely expect we'll be playing more Carnage again, though since we ran into time constraints we've already discussed dropping the point values to 1250 or even 1000 each, instead of the 1500 we used this time. I've also got plans to do a separate article looking at the Necron teleportation gimmick I experimented with here, as it was a lot of fun to use and I expect I'll be giving it another chance.

Our Dark Eldar player has also posted up a battle report and photos for this, you can view that at http://www.thedarkcity.net/t8841-carnage-a-four-player-free-for-all#93981

Dark Eldar deployment

Tau deployment

Space Wolves deployment

Necrons deployment

Dark Eldar Ravager through the ruins

Space Wolf transports advancing

Dark Eldar skimmers

The Tau open fire on the Dark Eldar

Dark Eldar assault the Tau

Space Wolf squad on foot after the Land Raider is destroyed

Necrons teleport in amongst the Space Wolves

Deathmarks and a Cryptek make short work of the Space Wolves

Necron units in the Space Wolf corner

The Space Wolves seek vengeance

Zandrekh and his unit are wiped out

Space Wolves hunt down the Tau warlord

The Lone Wolf charges the Wraiths

No matter how many Space Wolves the Necrons kill there always seem to be more

The battle rages near the objective

Necrons teleport in to threaten the objective

Space Wolves also try their luck at forcing the Dark Eldar off of the objective

Back to some Kill Team, this time with my Eldar. Photos from the first game which was against Dark Eldar. Game stayed very close until about turn 4 when a bunch of combats ended up going his way, after that he was basically just down to mopping up what remained.

Game 2 was against Marines, and I switched my Striking Scorpions for Warp Spiders. I pretty quickly managed to wipe him out, though a large part of that was down to having several buildings to hide behind with Battle Focus and jet pack moves.

Both were good games though. I enjoy Kill Team, and it’s the right size of game to fit in when you’ve only got a little bit of time such as Veterans Night down at Games Workshop.

Wednesday night was a 1500pt Eldar vs Dark Eldar showdown. We rolled Relic on Hammer and Anvil, I castled up behind some ruins while my opponent struck out towards the centre.

I got really lucky when he failed a couple of charges turn 2 against my tanks, allowing me to catch his Wyches in the open with Guardians and gun them down. Although I made a good push and forced him off the Relic some smart play by him kept me from claiming it for long, and an unlucky stunned result in turn 7 kept me from moving far enough to take Linebreaker with my lone surviving Guardian.

End result was a 2vp-2vp draw where I had First Blood and Slay the Warlord while my opponent got Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker.

I may have got carried away with upgrades, but after the fun I had parking my vehicles anywhere  I like I can’t imagine I’ll ever go without the Ghostwalk Matrix any time soon! Holofields are, as we all know, tremendous and Wave Serpents are almost impossible to kill.

I really like my Fire Prisms, but they weren’t a huge lot of use against Dark Eldar. They forced a lot of units to go to ground, but given the cost I’m not sure they justified it. Still, always worth taking to deal with Spehss Mehreens.

Photos from Sunday’s game. Got a chance to use some units I don’t put on the table much, like the Monolith and C’tan. It was a great reminder of why I don’t use those units much, especially having a C’tan against all those poison Dark Eldar shots!

Lost pretty bad, but it was a good game and a chance to use a list that’s a bit different from usual.

Here’s the armies that were on show for the painting competition at Eternal Warrior over the weekend. Some great-looking models there, the painting prize went to the Tzeentch Daemons army.

My ‘Crons are the third photo down (silver on the white bases). I got a chance to play against the Daemons (7th photo), Iron Warriors (9th photo), Necrons (2nd photo) as well as a Tau army not pictured here.

I’ve got another set of photos to post from my games (though unfortunately I never got any of game 3 against the Necrons).