Just before 8th Edition was released, I got in touch with one of my old gaming friends, Mike Basc, who runs increasingly popular Objective Secured blog, tournaments and events, and we agreed to do some challenge games between our Gaming Blogs to generate new 40K battle reports for both audiences.

Mike is a seasoned and successful 40K player who has captained the state team, won dozens of events on the local and national stage and been an organising force behind some of the best regional tournaments.

A few notes about this army:

This is a lean, mean alpha-striking machine. Everything has been trimmed down to its most efficient version, with the result being just about as much firepower as anyone could help to fit into 1500 points. The HQs are fairly basic, the troops are minimal, and close combat ability is low, but this lets the points be spent on a great big sucker-punch of firepower.

The Dark Eldar vehicles have really benefited from the profile changes in 8th Edition, and their improved survivability has been boosted in this list by Night Shields and flicker fields. They won’t win any durability awards, but they are a far cry from the paper planes of the past.

In among all the other weapons there are a full dozen Dark Lances. With 36″ S8 AP-4 D6 these hit most vehicles as hard as a Lascannon, and when mounted on a DE vehicle can move and shoot without penalty. The anti-tank is rounded off by 5 Blasters with a the same strength and AP but ‘only’ D3 wounds (18″ Assault S8 AP-4 D3) and some Razorwing missiles.

Lord Commissar Boltgun, Power sword

Heavy Support Hydra Manticore Wyvern



Vanguard Detachment +1CP (Imperium – Adeptus Astra Telepathica) HQ Primaris Psyker – Force Stave, Psychic Barrier, Gaze of the Emperor

Elites Astropath Psychic Barrier Astropath Gaze of the Emperor Astropath Terrifying Visions



A few notes about this army:

This game was played just after the change that limited Tempestus Command Squads to 1 per officer – a very good change. I prefer to only put 3 specials in my CS anyway so there’s an ablative wound to take the first hit, but regardless it was a sensible change.

My army has 3 officers, doing up to 6 orders per turn. This is not overkill; the imperial guard forces operate much more smoothly and effectively when squads are receiving orders.

Yes, there is a good reason why the Tempestus sergeants take a bolt pistol (or plasma pistol if points allow) instead of their Hotshot pistol -people tend to forget hotshot pistols are only 9″ range, but that means they are always out of range when deep striking.

I discovered HWT have more flexibility than ever, so since everything can split fire I am experimenting with 2 mortars and 1 Autocannon. The Mortars are useful, but also provide ablative wounds for the more expensive gun.

I have been finding the Heavy Flamer on the Chimera so useful I am seriously considering ditching multilasers entirely and running double HF Flameras with storm bolters. Move freely without decreasing main weapon output, suffer little impact from damage and just dare people to charge you! Rough Riders remain in the list – I’ve been using them in the majority of my Guard games. They are just fun, it’s as simple as that.

HAMMER AND ANVIL – 6 Objectives

Objectives were placed in the balanced manner of people who are hedging their bets due to not knowing which end of the board they will get – although in the Dark Eldar’s case there is also an element of not caring. Mike’s army is built to go all-in and deliver a massive alpha-strike; there are no natural home-objective holders.

Dark Eldar chose to go first (duh).

Deployment is shown below, with an overhead photo taken just after the first move of the game.

(Note this army is a work in progress, so mortars are temporarily medium bases that are placed on large bases etc).

The Dark Eldar are fully mechanised, so there isn’t a soul to be seen on their side of the table. By contrast, the Imperial Guard have a wall of 60 conscripts across their side, with supporting characters just behind it.

Note that it is almost impossible to get cover for large infantry units like this and still have them do their job, so I’ve adjusted to just letting them wear the damage.

A Tank in Cover!

Have you read all the comments saying that getting cover for vehicles is impossible in 8th Edition? If so Marvel at the sight of a Hellhound in cover!

To be honest this is about the only time I’ve found a piece of terrain that allowed a vehicle to be fully on it, and more than 50% obscured to enemy firing units, and still be in a useful position on the board, so I took full advantage of it.

Troops brace as the enemy fighter comes screaming in.

The remainder of the DE army performed a maneuver known as ‘Charge at the enemy in a straight line’, which frequently is as effective as it is simple.

As noted earlier, this is an Alpha Strike army, and it immediately got to work on firing at the key targets.

Mike’s chosen primary targets for his Dark Lances were the Hellhound and Manticores. The cover save did pay off a couple of times, granting the Hellhound a successful 6+ save against lances, but its demise was inevitable. Twin splinter cannons and embarked infantry shredded masses of guardsmen. Even after some above average saves, the north squad lost 8 men and the south lost 13, followed by the explosion of the Hellhound.

At least as damaging however was the amount of pain inflicted on the Manticores – they managed to just stay on the table by the skin of their teeth, but were reduced to 2 and 3 hull points and a dramatic decrease in accuracy.

Deployment Notes

One note here is that I could have deployed a bit further back. When deploying, you should always have clear goals when placing units, and one of the most basic is to maximise the damage you can do in the first turn while minimising the damage from the enemy.

Venoms move 16″ and these were armed with double Splinter Cannons (36″ Rapidfire 3) so there is not much chance of escaping them, but 20 of the 25 Kabalite Warriors on board the Venoms and Raider also carry 24″ rapid fire guns. These transports are all open topped so the troops on board will be able to fire.

This means that in order to minimise damage from them, the ideal placement for the conscripts (or any other front-line infantry) would be more than 4 inches back from the central line. This would mean the 16″ Venom and 14″ Raider movement distances wouldn’t get the Kabalite Warriors into 12″ rapid fire range.

The ideal placement in order to maximise my own damage would have been less than 6″ from the deployment line; this would mean my troops 6″ move would get them within 24″ of the units right on the enemy front line, and allow them to at least get 2 lasguns shots each (using the FRFSRF order) lasgun shots in the unlikely event I had seized initiative.

That is a narrow band: more than 4″ from the deployment line, but less than 6″ – but these things can make a big difference in the first turn of the game. As it was my first game vs the new DE I misjudged their speed. It wasn’t the end of the world, but cost about 6 extra conscripts their lives (that’s 18 of the Emperor’s Holy Points!) and ways to improve deployment are always worth discussing.

There are no two ways about it – the Dark Eldar alpha strike is impressive and devastating. With S8 AP-4 D6 Damage Dark Lances that don’t suffer movement penalties when mounted on vehicles, this is an army that could quite easily kill a shadowsword or baneblade before they even warmed up their weapons, and smaller vehicles are completely at their mercy.

Guard turn 1

Two shots rang out from the Commissar, and order was restored.

As I saw it my first priority was to kill the fighter. There are 3 reasons for this:

Mike is good at target priority and had dealt with the Hellhound and neutered the Manticores: I have a Hydra, and next turn I won’t. It would be able to jump my lines next turn and has tremendous ability to be placed where it can ‘snipe’ the closest characters. With several comparitively weak characters that I really need, this is too large a risk. It’s closest, so apart from the temptation to shoot the nearest target I have get a lot of rapidfire weapons onto it.

Movement was less dramatic than the DE’s but included getting the Chimera into Flamer range of the fighter, and bringing the troops from the north to reinforce the south, while also getting them in rapid fire range of enemy vehicles.

Guard Psykers put a Psychic Barrier on the conscripts (increasing their save to 4+) and got a couple of lucky smites into the fighter. What was less lucky was that I realised I rolled a psychic test just as I was supposed to be bringing on reserves – I’ll have to put this error down to learning the order of events of the new edition.

The Hydra, Chimera, Autocannon, and one of the damaged manticores manage to join together and shoot down the aircraft. The really badly damaged manticore would have had its 6+ reduced to the instant-miss of 7+ against the flyers, so it is fortunate it wasn’t required.

Note that I moved Harker right in between the 2 Manticores, giving them reroll 1s to hit. The effect of rerolling 1s is reduced as ballistic skill drops, so the bonus to the Manticore that was now hitting on 6s was increasing it from 16.6% chance to hit to about 20% (Edit: 1/36 + 1/6 = 19.45% chance). Even so, every little bit helps.

I had two options with the remaining weapons; try to destroy a Raider transport, or a considerably more dangerous Ravager (3 Dark Lances to the Raider’s 1). I decided to go for the Raider in order to generate some infantry targets for low strength weapons.

This was successful, with the Raider being destroyed and spilling its contents of Kabalite Warriors, Succubus and an Archon out into the cylindrical ruins at the left of this photo. With one vehicle lost tot he explosion, the Wyvern and 2 mortars managed to take out the Kabalite Warriors.

That was as much as the depleted Guard could manage, and although it left the advantage firmly with the DE at least some of the gap had been made up.

Dark Eldar Turn 2

Mike pushed his Venoms forward, eager to take advantage of the momentum, while the 3 Ravagers fell back slightly to where they would all have a bead on the surviving manticores while slightly decreasing the amount of fire they would take in return.

The Succubus and the archon rushed out of the ruins, ready for combat. Shooting began with the destruction of the less-damaged manticore, and some hits on the Hydra and Chimera. The extra defence provided by the psychic shield proved its worth as twin splinter rifle shots poured in to the Conscript, but even so numbers were dropping. A heavy weapon mortar team was also killed by DE guns.

Clever Charge Shenanigans

Charge Phase – Mike sent a Venom into an astropath and the conscripts, soaking up overwatch before the two characters charged. The characters got good rolls, so were able to hit either end of the line. This is a neat little trick to stretch out the enemy units and keep them from piling into hit back en masse. As they had to maintain coherency, the middle of the line couldn’t join in with the combat (although they were still eligible to die, which I am sure they appreciated).

Another Venom charged the Chimera, losing a hull point to the heavy flamer. Company Commander Vader leapt into the fray with a Heroic Intervention. With Straken nearby, the all models got an extra attack (including the chimera!), and the combat went the Guard’s way. The vehicle was wrecked, and a Kabalite warrior lost as they evacuated.

Meanwhile with an Archon and Venom at one end and the Succubus at the other, the conscript fight was an easy win for the Eldar. Noticing their morale flagging, the nearby Commissar shot another to cheer the boys up. Hoorah!

Guard Turn 2

The Conscripts left combat leaving the enemy exposed to ranged weapons, while their northern buddies took up position to rapid fire at Lelith. The southern conscripts weren’t able to all get in to cover, so instead made a line near Straken in order to make hunting for the Warlord point harder.

And now it was time to summon reserves.