Combat drug roll of "Durrr!"

Alright I've putting off writing this post since last Thursday. I mean who likes to admit publicly to stupidity right? And the game I'm about to tell you about was lost for no other reason the sheer, unbridled stupidity. But before I do check out the picture on the left. That was a model fielded against me in this game, and while not a dark eldar, its still sweet!

So about this game. The list I was up against was horrible, especially when going against a list with plenty of darklight weapons (which I had). It was against Gray Knights fielding Draigo and about 20ish paladins split into two squads. The mission was annihilation with the deployment being dawn of war. I lost the deployment roll and was forced to go first. We both placed out entire army in reserve so the game didn't start until turn 2. Everything I owned save 1 unit of wyches came on that turn, but with nothing to shoot at it was mostly just setting myself up so I could respond no matter where he cropped up. On his turn one unit stays in reserve and one unit deep strikes onto the table. Now this is where things went to pot. I tried to use my regular tactics against this army, which generally amounts to overwhelm a flank until it collapses then move up on the rest of their forces from the side. Of course this army didn't have a flank, this army didn't have any tanks. All this army had was 21 dudes, and I got cocky. I basically tried to throw every wych I had against the one unit he had on the table. He was able to slaughter me before I even got a chance to attack thanks to that psychic power that makes them initiative 10. He only had 4 kill points in his army. The game was called as soon as he scored 5 against me which didn't take long.

Now most of you reading this are going to be able to point out exactly where my screw up was and what I should have done. But for the sake of my own recollection and any newer players reading this let me lay it out. My first mistake was not deploying anything on turn 1. A relatively minor mistake and one that didn't really effect this game at all but one I shouldn't have made regardless. The biggest mistake I made was throwing my wyches at them such as I did. Paladins are powerful but slow as all get out and after their deep strike they had almost 0 maneuverability. I should have used my speed to keep my raiders, ravagers, and jet-fighter out of arms reach of the paladins and blasted away with my darklight weapons? why? Paladins might have 2 wounds a piece but they are toughness 4. A Paladin takes a wound from a strength 8 or higher gun (IE: Darklances) then its insta-death, game over, good night Mr. paladin. Now its true he had Draigo a toughness 5 model with a 3+ ward save as well as a nemesis staff which is another ward save. However Draigo can be killed and once he is your home free as the nemesis stave only works in close combat (don't let your opponent tell you otherwise, like mine did). After that happened the rest of the squad would have gone up like kindling in a fire storm. And all this without him able to retaliate in any meaningful way.

So hopefully my foolishness in this game will serve as a good lesson for any other commanders out there (especially other dark eldar commanders) about the proper way to deal with this list and a list like it.

See you in the webway