The Eldar's path of: The Dysfunctional

o/

After a 4ish month hiatus, I decided to play 40k to see if I still liked the game. Thus I loaded up my biggest army, the Eldar and headed down to the FLGS where I fought against William and his Eldar...dysfunctional Eldar indeed. 1500 points, one of the maelstrom missions which is full of cards that invariably say the same thing as the one you just discarded. As always, the terrain is all Imperial, even in this Eldar vs. Eldar fight because, well GW sucks when it comes to a variety of terrain.

I held the Dragon Knights and Corsairs in reserve. This was my left flank.

My center with a Spiritseer bolstering the troops...

...and what would turn out to be my treacherous Iyanden right flank.

My opponent's left flank and my target priority number one!!!

His center, with the Striking Scorpions deployed far forward...

...and his right which was loaded with a Seer Council, Dark Reapers and bikes.

I failed to steal the initiative, and one of my Expedite Defender squads got chewed up pretty bad but held (the flame template was used to show who needed a LD test).

COWARDS! After just 4 casualties, the Autarch (the schmuck with the sword) and the Iyanden Dire Avengers roll an 11 for LD and flee off the table! With my right flank having already collapsed on turn one, it was probably game over. Suspecting treachery, the Exodites grimly press on with their attack...

The Iyanden Wraithlord stuck around, but took 2 wounds in turn 1!!! The Spiritseer cast renewer on it and it gained one back, but still fell to bladestorm in short order.

Just about all I managed to accomplish in turn 1 was killing off most of the jetbikes. It was pretty sad. Apparently my dice were unhappy with my failed attempts to sell the Exodites on ebay. This experience wouldn't be a deterrent to try again.

Can somebody explain to me why sniper rifles are so fucking useless?

Never mind...they died turn two, so it was a moot point I guess.

I guess I got excited that something was finally going my way because I forgot to take any photos of the Seer council failing to charge my Guardians. They were summarily shurikened to pieces for their failure! Meanwhile the Scorpions charged the other emboldened Guardian squad and in doing so, proved just how lackluster Striking Scorpions really are. This combat would take quite awhile to run its course.

The Corsairs deep strike in and break a squad of Guardians with their shooting!

The also deep striking Venom and Vyper take 3 hull points (collectively) off of the 2 Wave Serpents along with one of the twin-linked Scatter Lasers, but failed to take either of them out.

Turn three and the Corsairs were all but wiped out, however the Dragon Knights (Wraithguard with D-Scythes) arrived from reserve to find that the Warp Spiders forgot to jet-pack out of their cozy little position, hehehe...

Meanwhile this Warlock, the last of his squad, fought to the end and killed the last Scorpion!

This last damned bike was starting to piss me off, between it and the Dark Reapers the other Defender squad was reduced to its warlock and Scatter laser (note, the Dire Avengers and Spiritseer died somewhere along the way). Still, that scatter laser took out the Warwalker which was a nice last gasp effort!

The Corsair prince (sans Blade Sworn and Venom) lobs a haywire grenade, taking a hull point off of the Wave Serpent, but failed to do it anymore harm on the subsequent charge.

Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE D-Scythes? lol, how do you kill cheesy Warp Spiders? With even Cheesier Dragon Knights of course!

His last words: I'm not getting paid enough for this job...

The Hero of the hour! After taking down the last Scorpion, he turned and finished off the Wave Serpent with his Singing Spear!

Gulp! This will not end well...

With everything concentrating on the Dragons, they too fell. Came right down to the last die roll, or else one would have lived to incinerate another squad. Of course that would only have prolonged the inevitable...

Ouch, that was rough. In the end I had 2 VPs, and William probably had dozens...that's what it felt like. My take-aways from the game? I probably held a bit too much in reserve, the dice really didn't like me and when they finally turned around, it was too little too late. I still dislike the psychic phase, as even with psykers everywhere, its damned near impossible to dispell anything. Seriously if they were going to port the Magic phase out of WHFB, then where the fuck are my damned scroll caddies??? Warlocks would make great scroll caddies I think!

Also I think the Maelstrom cards still suck. Its kind of hard to build a strategy vs the opposing army when I'm too busy chasing objectives that are nothing more than luck of the draw. My opponent got several VPs for holding objectives he was already on top of, whereas my cards drawn were for the same objectives which were clear across the board. Gee thanks, let me just run forward suicidally into enemy fire while my opponent can just sit tight in his 4+ cover. There's already too much random shit in this game to make even my mission objectives purely random.

So do I still like 40k? 

Eh, I'm still kinda 'meh' on it to be honest. There's nothing to shift my opinion that 7th ed was nothing more than a poorly thought out and too rapidly shoved out piece-of-shit product that had no other intent than to raise GW's bottom line after THQ tanked. Oh and no, even had I won the game above my opinion of the game wouldn't be any different either. This sentiment certainly wasn't my opponent: William's fault, his army and friendly manner was just what one would hope for in a good game. Sadly, 40k just doesn't seem to me to be a good game anymore.

Unfortunately, 40k is still the #1 game at the FLGS. So I'll begrudgingly bring out the Spess Mahreenz next week and go thru the motions again. Especially as right now I don't have the heart to even bother with my beloved Orks (what little is left of them). That codex still feels like a kick in the teeth (and no, I'm not dropping another $100 on supplements for the good rules...the so-called 'supplement' concept annoys me so much, I don't even want the free Russian-hacked PDFs of them).