Night fight Tonight!!

Okay, so Tuesday last, I went to play 40k as I always do, except that I knew we'd be a man down as one of our regulars had headed out to S.F. to hang out with his wife's family.

When I got there, one of the other regulars bowed out of the fight because three way batttles are kind of dull and that left me playing Eldar versus my buddy Russ who plays IG, and Russ suggests that we play this new scenario that he found that he really thought looked good. The scenario allowed for reserves, no deep strike, no infliltrators, but most importantly it started as a night fight and on turn four you rolled a dice, on a 4+ the sun came out and the night fight was over.

It sounded good. Let me say that. I love the idea of a night fight because it means that tanks aren't going to be as important. People with long range weapons just don't get to fire all the way across the board and the hand to hand troops are more likely to get in close before they can be fired upon. Or so I thought.

Here's what I learned. First of all, the Eldar (ex rulers of the universe) have yet to master the highly technical advance of the searchlight. Whereas, the IG have a searchlight every third man or so. All those tanks pretty much get searchlights, the IG player need only highlight a squad and everybody on his side can annhialate you.

As it turned out, I needed to worry more about cover more during a night fight because the IG could see me, and I couldn't fire back because they were always out of range. Oh sure, I could rush across the battlefield (not a very strong Eldar tactic), but I still wouldn't be able to open fire until I was within 21" on average.

The game lasted something like 30 minutes. It was a route. I managed to destroy one sentinals multilaser, but it didn't matter because it still had a search light.

I think the bottom line is that night fights have tactics to them, but not the one's you'd expect. The game becomes about annhialating one foe at a time. Shining down one search light so that one vehicle is vulnerable and then unleashing with everything on the target it illuminates.

This is well enough for most armies. IG excel at it, but if you're playing a night fight battle, leave the Eldar at home. They can't get searchlights so they're pretty much just waiting to get destroyed. They can only attack the thing that hit them with the searchlight, and if they're fighting IG, that target will always be a Chimera (because its expendable) or a Leman Russ (because very little can kill it). The hundreds of little guys out there will stay safe for most of the battle.