The War On The Floor Imperial Knight Vs Eldar Battle Report Part 1

So I was originally not going to play with the Knight until it was finished but I just couldn't help it.

Me and Xtine played a game on the floor this past weekend.  It was 1850 pts and I took my Minotaurs with one Imperial Knight Paladin as an ally vs. Eldar.

We played a Bay Area Open - style tournament mission because I run local tournaments and I wanted to see how Knights work in person.  I have heard a lot about them online but I haven't yet played with one so I was really dying to see if they were over-powered, under-powered or just right.

Now unfortunately some of their rules are hazy.  So we used the rules modifications listed here:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/03/27/dont-fear-the-knight/

The mission was Emperor's Will as Primary (4 pts) and Crusade (3 pts) as Secondary with Slay the Warlord, First Blood and LineBreaker as (1 pt each) tertiary.
Dawn Of War Deployment was used.

The Pennys were used for the two Emperor's Will objectives and the 3 Quarters were used as the Crusade secondary objectives.

Here is her army:

She had:
HQ -
2 Farseers

Troops -
2 Wave Serpents each with a 10 man squad of Dire Avengers inside
20 man squad of Guardians with a Bright Lance and an attached Warlock

Fast -
9 Warp Spiders
Crimson Hunter with an Exarch upgrade.

Heavy - 

3 Falcons with holofields



And here is mine:

(Ultramarines Chapter Tactics)
HQ -
Librarian with Force Axe (he rolled Puppet Master)

Elites -
2 Dreadnoughts with 2 twin-linked autocannons

Troops -
10 Marines - missile launcher + flamer
10 Marines - missile launcher + flamer
10 marines - multimelta + meltagun + combi-melta on sarge (combat-squaded)
in Rhino

10 marines - multimelta + meltagun + combi-melta on sarge (combat-squaded)

in Rhino

Fast -
2 Land Speeders with typhoon missile launchers and heavy bolters (separate squads)

Heavy -
2 Predators with autocannon and 2 heavy bolters
Thunderfire Cannon

Ally -
1 Imperial Knight Paladin



Deployment:

Knight up close.

Turn 1, the Eldar shooting focuses completely on the Knight and they only take off 1 Hull Point.  The Minotaurs' Dreadnought opens up on an Eldar Falcon and blows it up.  The knight stalks forward.

Turn two, the Eldar Flyer flies onto the table.

The Warp Spiders also deep strike, shoot at the Knight and then jump into the woods.

The Knight is down to only a few hull points (2 I think) after turn two.

The Knight on my turn is then able to charge into the 20 man Guardian blob in the building.  It Hammer of Wraths and does nothing then does its normal 4 D weapon attacks it gets on the charge and does nothing.  Then it finally Stomps only once, but it does 8 hits and 8 wounds and kills 8 Guardians. Wow!  That was much better than I thought.

They then fail their leadership and run off the board.

My Rhino has moved up this turn to try and get the Quarter objective in the building.

The Warp Spiders get shot by a whole bunch of units, Predator, Dreadnought, land speeder, etc.  and are reduced to only 3.  I should have tried to kill them all, they became a thorn in my side.

On her turn her Falcon shoots up the Rhino and destroys it. No one inside is hurt but the 5 man squad with the sargent is pinned.

Her flyer flies back around and uses its vector dancer ability to get a nice rear shot on the Knight.

Unfortunately for the Eldar, I had shot at it and it had used its Evade ability to block my shots, this turn making it only hit on a 6.  It did nothing.

The Wave Serpent moves up all the way to my board edge.  The Warp Spiders jump into the relative safety of the ruins.

One of my land Speeders moves up to get better shots.

The next turn I was able to move the Knight to the far board edge and get shots down the table at the Wave Serpent.  He was kind of out on his own with not a lot of options.  The Eldar were out-maneuvering me.

She then flew her Crimson Hunter behind the Knight, got rear-shots and blew it sky-high!  The giant template didn't scatter and nothing else died.  The problem was now she could focus on everything else in my army.

I had a 5 man squad holding a quarter objective in the woods.  They were soon reduced to 2.

I did destroy the Wave Serpent and the Dire Avengers were forced to disembark.

Next time we will finish the Battle report.....

Here is part 2