Battle!!

Vs Joels Dark Elves
I lost...
.
.
.
Badly...

So what went wrong? Most things, apart from the one spell that worked. Black Guard are horribly deadly.
But anyway, I ran with
Grey Seer with power scroll and talisman of preservation
Lvl2 warlock engineer with doomrocket and warp energy condenser
2 blocks of 25 rats with full command and attached warp thtrower
2 blocks of 35 slaves with musician
8 jezzails
Doomwheel
Warp lightning cannon.

So turn one, cannon was destroyed by combo of Irresistable withering and being shot a lot. Doomwheel took 3 wounds from a bolt thrower and then went backward 7" from the out of control. It then proceeded to kill 2 slaves in my turn. These would be it's only kills all game. Only spell that worked my side was a warp lightning from the Grey Seer who rolled a one and fried himself, but passed his ward. Jezzails did 2 wounds to the Hydra

Turn 2 found one of my clanrats charged by the black guard and the Hydra. Engineer fired his rocket and missed. They were butchered to a rat and he fled. Black Guard reformed to face my other clanrats. In a desperate attempt to save the clanrats I charged one of my slaves into the elves. Many slaves died, just enough for them to lose steadfast in fact (by 1 model). They broke and exploded, killing more elves in the explosion than any unit had done so far. Jezzails failed to wound the hydra. Doomwheel misfired and found itself with one wound left. One warpfire thrower was shot by dark riders. Other Thrower overshot the black guard by a mile.
Crowning achievement of the entire was the grey seer using his scroll and killing off 17 crossbow elves. 2 more would of wiped out the unit and the lord. The remaining elf and the lord then fled.

Turn 3 saw the black guard in the flank of my clanrats. Bolt thrower finished off the doomwheel. Hydra charged the jezzails in the builiding. Clanrats were very deaded and ran. Jezzails were butchered by the hydra. Leaving me with 70 pts of slaves vs many black guard, a hydra and the Elf wizard who would of rallied turn 4.

So what did go wrong. Losing the cannon early was a nuisance. Doomwheel was a spectacular failure. Black Guard are insanely killy. Didn't expect them to reach me so quick. Two flank charges = gg. Not that a frontal would of helped. They buchered over 15 models each time Should of tried to get the dreaded thirteenth on them. I did think it didn't need los though. And I would of in no way been able to destroy them anyway. At least I had a chance v the archers.
Note to self don't rely on memory . There turned out to many things in my memory that were flat out wrong. I swear I read all these things somewhere though.
Dread Thirteenth + the scroll worked. It's cheese yes, but meh. 6 dice and the scroll is a guaranteed cast success removing 4d6 models. Only thing not guaranteed is the irrestistable.

What would I have changed. Not much. Drop the engineer down a rank, level 2 was a waste. Bump up the unit sizes a bit. Prob make better use of deployment. Had most of my units facing the crossbows, who were miles away, and the dark Riders who are fast cavalry anyway and I could in no way touch. Leaving black guard to tear through my ranks.
Cannon would of benefited from being further back really out of crossbow range, but the hill was where it was and not much could do about that and was still better sitting on that than being further back not being able to see anything.

Things to take away from this -
Learn your rules Matt!!
Don't march to your doom when you wanted to fire the rocket.
Do deploy better.

Edit - things I got wrong. When rank bonus is calculated (in 7th it was start of phase, 8th is end of phase), though doomwheel had bad things happen on triples, this is actually the abomination.
Aformentioned los on the dreaded thirteenth. Tactics in general (just wanted to emphasise that)