Sites of Power: Eldar vs. Deathguard – Warhammer: 40,000 10th Edition Battle Report

Welcome back to another Eldar v. Death Guard Battle Report! This time, I am trying out Wraithguard for the first time, dropping my beloved Avatar of Khaine and trying something a little more mainline.

The only proxies in this game was the Visarch standing in for Fuegan.

Chris took a very similar list to this to a 3-0 finish at a local RT last weekend, finishing a few VPs higher than me for a nice second place finish. The primary things he is experimenting with is the double Plague Marine units and the Rhino.

We played Mission G from the Leviathan Tournament Companion. This mission gives players 3 VPs per objective they control during their command phase, and an additional 3 VPs for any of those controlled objectives that have characters on them to a cap of 15 per round. Deployment was Hammer and Anvil, or as I tend to call it, deploy on the short edges.

We randomly rolled terrain layout #2 from the Leviathan Tournament Companion, which is a terrain layout I’ve barely played on compared to the other three. With both of our lists being extremely ranged heavy, the long firing lanes down the center were interesting.

I won the roll off for Attacker/Defender, and forced Chris to deploy first.

From top to bottom, he has a Plagueburst Crawler and a Blight Hauler, then a Helbrute and Mortarion. Beneath them, a second Plagueburst Crawler hangs out in the back and a unit of Plague Marines with the Tallyman sits a little farther forward.

The next rank of models is the third and final Plagueburst Crawler hiding behind the big ruin and a Rhino chilling behind the smaller. His final deployed model is another Blight Hauler which has a nice bunker there from my guns thanks to the interesting terrain layout.

Chris was deep striking both units of Deathshroud Terminators with Typhus and Lord of Virulence.

Left to right, the Yncarne is hanging out with a Nightspinner and the Farseer. In front of them, primed and blending into the black ruin, is the unit of Wraithguard with their attached Spiritseer.

On the objective, Illic hangs out on his own with the War Walker directly in front of him. The Autarch Wayleaper is chilling on the inside of the ruin on the right, and both Fire Prisms are hiding behind the ruin.

I put both units of Shadow Specters and Fuegan into deep strike.

I think my deployment of the Wraith Guard was a mistake. If they had been right behind the War Walker, and the War Walker had been off to the left side, I would have been in a much better position to shut down counter play.

If I’d gone first, they would have moved up centrally and been safe. If I go second, Phantasm can move them up into the shadow of the central ruin and force some VERY difficult choices about where to put models from the other side.

I lost the roll off and Chris had to go first. I think neither of us really wanted to go first here, but he wanted to go first least.

Death Guard Turn 1:

Chris got an extra CP from the Tallyman and then drew Bring It Down and Behind Enemy Lines. He opted to ditch Bring it Down and drew Assassinate.

He moved up his smaller vehicles semi-aggressively. After his movement was over, I used Phantasm to move my Wraithguard up. Chris then trained all three Plagueburst Crawlers on my Farseer under Mortarion’s aura of re-roll 1s to wound and ignore all modifiers. The Farseer went down to the third tank, scoring Chris Assassinate, and he passed over the turn.

Eldar Turn 1:

I got my 2 CPs and drew No Prisoners and Behind Enemy Lines as well.

I moved my Wraithguard further up, backed up my War Walker and moved the top Fire Prism into the fire lane.

The Nightspinner did 2 wounds to the Rhino and slowed it down. The Wraithguard obliterated the Helbrute, and then my Fire Prisms and War Walker utterly whiffed thanks to the Stealth and Smokescreen stratagems, leaving the Rhino on 2 and not touching the Plagueburst Crawler. I used Fire and Fade to hide the exposed Fire Prism and called it a turn, scoring 2 on No Prisoners.

Death Guard Turn 2:

Chris’ Rhino failed its battleshock test, and he drew Overwhelming Force to go along with his kept Behind Enemy Lines. He scored six on Primary.

His Rhino disgorged its passengers and backed up 8 inches (thanks Nightspinner), and Mortarion, a Plagueburst Crawler, and the Blight Hauler on the top moved aggressively forward.

His other two Crawlers hung back to screen out Fuegan (good call!) and his Terminators popped down in front of my Fire Prisms and with Typhus looking angrily at Illic within 18″. In order to keep Illic alive, I moved him back with Phantasm.

His shooting phase dropped my War Walker, and Mortarion nearly killed a Wraithguard. I used their fire back rule to kill his Blight Hauler, teleporting the Yncarne up to that objective.

His Deathshroud Terminators made the charge into the bottom Fire Prism and Mortarion did not make the charge into the Yncarne.

The Deathshroud whiffed a bit, leaving the Fire Prism on 6, but they did score Behind Enemy Lines for Chris, along with one tick on Overwhelming Force for killing the War Walker.

Eldar Turn 2:

I got my 2 CP, passed Battle Shock on the damaged Fire Prism, and drew Capture Enemy Outpost to go with Behind Enemy Lines. I also scored twelve on Primary.

The Wraithguard trundled forward to take shots at Mortarion as their only target, my Fire Prisms ran away, with the engaged one getting to shoot thanks to the strat, and I dropped Specters in the backline to shoot at Deathshrouds and Fuegan in the middle of the table to try and charge the central Plague Marines.

I kicked off the turn with the Fire Prism finishing off the Rhino, and the Yncarne teleporting over to where it used to be. She flamed a couple of Plague Marines out of the back Plague Marine unit.

Fuegan fire speared a middle Deathshroud off the board, and the Shadow Specters killed one Terminator a piece.

The Wraithguard did six damage to Mortarion, and the Fire Prisms did another six, dropping him to 4.

I charged into the back Plague Marines with the Yncarne and re-rolled the Fuegan charge in the middle to make that happen.

The Yncarne finished off her three Plague Marines, leaving the Tallyman alive. Fuegan slaughtered his Marines also, leaving their character alive.

I scored Behind Enemy Lines and Capture Enemy Outpost with the Yncarne.

Death Guard Turn 3:

Chris scored 12 on primary thanks to the way sticky objectives work with tied objectives. He drew Storm Hostile Objective and Defend Stronghold.

Mortarion got 3 wounds back with a Stratagem, and then promptly got obliterated by the Wraithguard overwatch.

All three Plagueburst Crawlers trained their guns on the Yncarne, and the two Terminator units trundled towards the middle of the table.

Chris proceeded to have a very bad shooting phase, succeeding in only killing Fuegan (he came back) and teleporting the Yncarne back to the objective to take it over.

The Deathshroud both made charges, wiping a unit of Shadow Specters and leaving the damaged Fire Prism on one.

The middle unit bounced off the Yncarne and she killed one back.

Chris scored Storm Hostile Objective by taking his home objective back, and we waited to see on Defend Stronghold.

Eldar Turn 3:

My hero Fire Prism passed its battleshock test, and I scored 12 more on Primary. I drew Storm Hostile Objective and Secure No Man’s Land.

Wraithguard moved to take over the top objective, my Fire Prisms ran away, and my Specters survived an Overwatch.

My Specters obliterated the last Deathshroud on my home objective along with the character, and moved back down behind the ruin. One Fire Prism killed the Blight Hauler on the bottom quarter of the table, and the Nightspinner whiffed on Tallyman so the other Fire Prism exploded him letting the Yncarne teleport where he was.

Chris opted to call it here. The Wraithguard were going to kill the top Plagueburst Crawler, the Yncarne had a nice, 9 health Crawler to kill, and Fuegan was going to kill at least the Deathshroud and maybe Typhus as well, leaving him with Typhus and a Plagueburst Crawler to fight my entire army minus a couple small units.

We talked through the rest of the game.

Chris drew Teleport Homers, and we rolled out that Typhus would survive and be able to complete that before dying the round after.

I would have scored A Tempting Target and Engage on All Fronts, scoring both easily, and then maxing out secondaries with Area Denial and Cleanse.

We calculated out that most likely the end of the game would be 98 to 59 in my favor, and moved on to post game discussions.

Post-Game Thoughts:

My primary mistake was deploying the Wraithguard on a flank instead of the center. If Chris had moved all of his models away from them for the first two turns, I would have had a much harder time engaging due to how slow the Wraithguard can be.

In turn, Chris should not have put Mortarion on the opposite side of the board from the Wraithguard.

It’s possible that I need to strategic reserve the Farseer in this matchup, as he just dies instantly, and even one turn of getting fate dice manipulation would be better than none.