The dastardly Eldar have been trying to thwart the Chaos forces at every turn. Now they were going after our supply route into the Hyperion System. A medium sized Eldar fleet had previously taken a small Chaos fleet in the Charon's Harbor system by surprise, but now as both factions brought more forces to bear in the fight the advantage swung back towards followers of the dark gods.
The Chaos fleet is wysiwyg, but there was a bit of proxying on the eldar side. Their fleet basically consisted of:
2 Eclipse Cruisers (The Void Stalker is really just a proxy for an Eclipse)
2 Shadow Cruisers
4 Aurora Cruisers (The escorts behind the planet are all proxied Auroras)
4 Squadrons of 6-7 Hemlocks
Plus some princes, farseers, etc.
Looking at it now the Chaos fleet only had at most a 400pt advantage depending on the upgrades on the Eldar ships, which is a lot less than I thought I had when fighting the battle.
Turn 1
The Chaos fleet started off with a cautious advance. Some potshots caused a few casualties in the escort squadrons, and several Brace for Impacts. The Armageddon Gun fired, but was tricked by the Eldar holofields and did no damage.
Ordinance was launched, and some sorties of bombers from the Chaos occupied planet damaged one of the Shadow and one of the Eclipse cruisers.
The Auroras and Shadows dropped into low orbit to land troops on the planet, while the Braced Eclipse hid in the shadow of the planet. Meanwhile all of the escort squadrons moved out to attack the Chaos fleet.
The left hand squadron of Murder cruisers were forced to Brace for Impact, but poor rolling from the Eldar lances only managed to take down the cruiser's shields. The right hand Murder squadron also Braced for Impact, but fared much worse with on ship crippled and the other damaged.
Some of the Chaos bombers executed attack runs, but the Eldar holofields were still rolling hot avoiding all damage.
Turn 2
The Chaos fleet took their revenge on those Eldar ships not hiding in low orbit. Unfortunately only one ship was able to Lock On before the comm channels were scrambled.
Fire from throughout the fleet managed to whittle down all of the Hemlock squadrons to one or two ships each. Weapons batteries from the Horrific Styx class heavy cruiser managed to do minor damage to the nearby Eclipse on the right side of the battle, but the ensuing hull breach crippled the Eldar vessel.
The Eldar decided this was their time to strike, and exited the planet's atmosphere into high orbit with their weapons Locked On!
Lances and subsequent torpedo salvoes from the Eldar cruisers managed to hulk the Deathblade murder class cruiser, and cripple its squadmate. A stray torpedo also managed to destroy one of the Idolator escorts nearby. Still shaken from the destruction wrought on them the Hemlocks were unable to properly aim their lances to do any damage.
Turn 3
With the Eldar cruisers so close, and the sun of the inner biosphere silhouetting them the forces of Chaos were able to finally do some damage to the bulk of the Eldar fleet. Fire from the chaos cruisers on the right hulked the Shadow cruiser that had foolishly advanced towards them unsupported, but the eclipse now hiding in a gas cloud at the bottom right still avoided destruction somehow.
On the left Iconoclast escorts moved up to point blank range, and together with the nearby Slaughter cruiser hulked two of the Eldar light cruisers, while the Idolator squadron and blue Devestation cruiser damaged and crippled the other 2 Auroras. Fire forced the black Eclipse cruiser to Brace for Impact, and bombers managed to damage the adjacent Shadow cruiser.
The Eldar continued to maneuver to get behind the Chaos fleet, but were losing firepower quickly and only managed to lightly damage a few of the Chaos attack craft carriers.
Turn 4
This is actually at the end of Eldar turn 4 as I forgot to take a picture on the Chaos turn.
A solar flare that had been lurking during the engagement finally burst over the battlefield obliterating all visual record of the Chaos actions this turn. The Eldar ships all managed to successfully ride the solar flare except one Aurora which took a point of damage. The rest of the Chaos fleet took some quick potshots as we were short on time.
On their last turn the Eldar took all the shots they could, but the Chaos cruiser's shields held and no damage was inflicted.
As their fleet disengaged the Eldar troops that had already landed on the planet watched as the Chaos ships disgorged a seemingly endless horde of Chaos warriors who quickly overwhelmed the small Eldar expeditionary force. On all fronts it was a clear . . .
[Chaos Victory]
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