500 pt DE vs Skaven

[Harkonnen]

So, thought i'd post this really small game, both to practice using this chronicler tool and to practice writing a battle report anyway... So bear with me;p
It was a friendly game, played fast with my brother.

Lists:
Dark Elves
Sorc lvl 1, tome of furion, lore of dark magic - 115 pt (general)
12 RBX, no shields, mus, champ - 130
12 black guard, champ, ruby ring of flame 195 (<- thought this would be a fun idea, and had no points left on sorc to give the ring)
6 witch elves 60
total: 500

Skaven:
Lvl 2 wizard with arcane item (extra 5+ channel, powers up the magic missile to d6+2). General.
25 clan rats, full command, shields, light armor
1x poison bomb grenadier (or something, dont know exact name, throws bomb and it scatters. misfire=bad)
2 Rat Ogres with handler
1 Warp Lightning cannon
Total: 500 I guess, don't know point costs of skaven;p

Spells:
-I rolled doombolt and black horror
-he rolled skitterleap and the magic missile (warp something?)

Deployment


Well deployment was pretty straight forward. We decided on simple terrain with a hill on both sides, and some non-interfering obstacles really. I got first turn despite his +1.

Dark Elf turn 1


Move: BG and Witches moved max forward, Xbows moved 5" into range of clanrats for black horror (and shooting).
Magic: Bad WoM roll, succesful channeling (he a 2nd with 5+) and lvl 2 vs lvl 1 caster resulted in a dispelled black horror.
Shoot: Xbow shots on the clanrats resulted in a grand total of 1 dead rat =)

Skaven turn 1


Charge: Rat Ogres charged my black guard, and made it
Move: Clanrats moved slightly backward, bomb dude moved into LoS on the hill
Magic: The lvl 2 got the magic missile off on my witches (had no chance at dispelling 4 dice vs 2 i think, again channeled), rolled 6, so 8 hits, and wiped them out. Xbows(including my wiz) panicked and started running yay!
Shooting: Warp cannon aimed at the (running) crossbows, but rolled 2 on strength roll and failed to wound any. Bomb dude bombed xbows but it scattered away.
Melee: Black guard did 5 wounds, killing 1 ogre, leaving 1 on 1 wound, that one missed all his attacks, they broke and were ran down.

Dark Elf turn 2


Xbows gathered (unable to do anything..... including my sorc)
Charge; Black guard charged warp cannon
Melee: Black guard wiped warp cannon crew, and reformed to face the rats (overrun would have ran them off the board, not into anything juicy)

Skaven turn 2


Move: Angled rats to face my black guard, moved his wiz out of the unit, and his bomber away.
Magic: His magic missile killed 1 black guard i think. (rolled 1 on hit, so 3 hits, only 1 wound luckily lol)
Shooting: His shooting bomb dude killed 4 black guard on a hit...

Dark elf turn 3


Charge: black guard charged into the 24 clanrats.
Move: xbowblock with caster in it forward to get in range... (again chance to remove my general from unit XD)
Magic: I try'd to get off a black horror (only thing allowed to cast, on about half the clanrat unit, but it was a crappy roll and easily dispelled again.
Melee: Black guard killed like 10 rats. Rats killed 1 black guard?, they held on steadfast.

Skaven turn 3


Move: he moved his bomber to the hill
Magic: he skitterleaped his general all the way to other side of the board, out of fire angle but at max magic missile range for him. Which he got succesfully off, killing i think 3 xbows.
Shooting: Again the bomber had a HIT!, on xbows this time, killing another 6. Xbows panicked again, including the general ofc..
Melee: Black guard killed another 9 rats, and they failed to kill anything in return, the 5 remaining fled and were run down.


Don't think i should post the rest of the images hahaha; to sum it up; turn 4 after this my black guard champ attempted to fire his ruby ring (with 5 dice) which was dispelled with 5 dice on the bomber (same thing in turn 5 xD). In turn 4 Skaven the bombers bomb scattered off, and I dispelled skitterleap so his gen could never come in range of my black guard behind hill. On turn 5 basically same thing, except the bomber misfired and allowed me to place template where i wanted --> on him, and killed it....

So end alive: 5 black guard, skaven general. In points about 20 more for him (50% of my black guard unit was like 100), but my general fled off the board, that's +100 VP to him I guess? Else it was draw, we concluded a draw, anyway =P

Thanks for the read. Any suggestions to improve reports very welcome! And ofcourse suggestions on the tactics in this small game^^

A musician would have come in handy in the black guard unit btw

[Atanatari165]

Good battle report! Skaven can be nasty at high points, but at low points I've always beaten them.

At 500 pts I'd recommend a list like

L1 fire
10 crossbowmem with musician, standard
7 knights with musician, standard, gleaming pennant
5 harpies

The black guard are awesome and land way more hits than the knights, but they can easily be blown away by magic and shooting at this level. Think what this list would do to them. At 500 pts nearly everyone will bring fire or some other blasty lore, its just too good. The black guard also have trouble with armor, and at 500 pts an Empire player can bring a unit of 5 ICK and a unit of 3 demis, which both have 1+ armor. The cold one knights will beat almost anything on the charge. I also recommend shields on the crossbows, they go from 6+ (17% save) to 5+ 6++ (45% save), a huge boost. Helps them in shoot-outs.

Keep your units 6 inches apart to minimize panic checks when they get killed.

On Dark Elf Turn 3 it looks like your BG could have charged his wizard and over-ran into the poison wind mortar? If so I think that would have been the better choice, your crossbows and magic can easily kill the clanrats if you kill all his ranged. Also you always want to take out the general, its a huge points bonus (although we often don't count the bonus at 500 pts).

So your BG charge and kill the wizard and the mortar, his clanrats are not in a position to charge them. He reforms to face the BG, you shoot off about 6 rats. Lets say your magic kills another 3 (at least). That leaves 15. Your black guard charge them and win, but even if they somehow lost (suppose it had been something better than clanrats), you move up into close range and get another turn of shooting and magic (should kill 9 more) and then you can charge the crossbows in to finish them turn 6 (after popping the sorc out). If they were fleeing from panic then hopefully that charge would send them off the board.

[Gidean]

The first list with the batrep had 1 witch too many. Exceeded the Special limit.

The second list above needs one more crossbowman to make min. core.

[Harkonnen]

Haha, good point, thanks for pointing out. those limits on 500 point game is well annoying to keep track of and i wrote the list in the train home^^

[Cathel]

My wife also plays Skaven and I do not like the idea of knights, since she fields jezzails everytime.
With 36" range and high S and armour piercing value knights are dead meat.
What I hate are slaves, the mass of them with the added rule of dealing damage when fleeing (cornered rats, I think) makes them a pain to deal with.
I started staking up on crossbows, but we haven't played in a long time.
Nudges wife to get the Skaven out