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I had been planning on taking my Tyranids to the ‘Ard Boyz but I was unable to get the big bugs and bone swords necessary to get the army together, so it was on to plan B.

So it is back to my old standby of Foot Eldar. I almost switched to Chaos the night before (and maybe I should have) but at that point it was too late.

I am playing at Empire Games in Mesa. Since there are only 4 stores running the tournament in Arizona, and the other stores are smaller, a lot of the overflow came there to play so they had 20+ players.


My list:

HQ
Eldrad
Avatar

Elites
8 Harlequins w/Kisses, 2 fusion pistol
Shadowseer
Troupe Master w/power weapon

Troops
10 Guardians w/Brightlance
10 Guardians w/Brightlance
10 Guardians w/Brightlance

9 Dire Avengers

3 Jetbikes w/Shuriken Cannon
1 Warlock w/Singing Spear, Destructor

3 Jetbikes w/Shuriken Cannon
1 Warlock w/Singing Spear, Destructor

Fast Attack
9 Warp Spiders
1 Warp Spider Exarch w/2 Spinner, Withdraw, Surprise Attack

9 Warp Spiders
1 Warp Spider Exarch w/2 Spinner, Withdraw, Surprise Attack

Heavy Support
Wraithlord w/Brightlance, Missile Launcher, 2 Flamers
Wraithlord w/Brightlance, Missile Launcher, 2 Flamers

4 Dark Reapers
1 Dark Reaper Exarch w/Fast Shot, Missile Launcher


So on to the games!

Game #1 Vs. Mundar’s Blood Angels

I have played against Mundar a couple of times before, and so far, he is one of the best players in AZ that I have found. There might be others that are better, but I have not played them. So going into this game I knew this will be trouble.

His list (from memory):

HQ
Dante
Sanginator

Elite
2 Sanguinary High Priests

5 Sanguinary High Guard

Troops
9 Assault Marines in Jump Packs w/2 Melta Guns
Sergeant

9 Assault Marines in Jump Packs w/2 Melta Guns
Sergeant

9 Assault Marines in Jump Packs w/2 Melta Guns
Sergeant

9 Assault Marines in Jump Packs w/2 Melta Guns
Sergeant

Fast Attack
10 Vanguard Veterans w/a bunch of weapons

10 Vanguard Veterans w/ a bunch of weapons


Well, that sure is a lot of jump troops.

Mission: 5 Objectives
Set up:We had 3 objectives in one deployment zone, and 2 in the other.

He wins the dice roll to go first, and chooses the deployment zone with the 3 objectives, leaving me the one with 2.

He starts with everything on the board except for his vanguard squads. He is dispersed through cover so everything gets a cover save.

I start in my standard deployment with everything around my avatar, and the warp spiders and the jet bikes off to the sides.

The Setup:


When he gets a turn, he does not advance and hunkers down. I shoot a few shoots and he goes to ground. Outside of the Dark Reapers, I really do not have much long range shooting.

The game is basically a standoff with both of us over 18” apart. He does not want to get close to get shredded with my short range shooting, and I do not want to get into charge range.

So in round #2 he gets his Vanguard squad on and goes after my right side Warp Spider squad and takes them out, and in my turn the harlequins take them out.


In turn #3 the second Vanguard squad goes after my jetbikes, but deviates out of range and hits my dark reapers. They take them out, and my Harlequins drift back to take them out as well. He pushes Dante and the Sangunary High Guard forward and they get shot to pieces. He ends up with Dante with 2 wounds left after the shooting match is over.

Dante then assaults one of my jet bike squads, but he only kills 2. I counter assault with a squad of guardians (they were the only thing in range) and Dante whiffs, and with doom the guardian were only able to do one wound to Dante. In the next round Dante kills the jet bikes and the guardians kill Dante.

Then in round #5 one of us make a move and it is him. He charges me with everything except on squad and we end up in a huge scrum. In the end the dust settles after round #6 and this is what is left:



A close up of his objectives

He has one squad on three objectives and the Jet Bikes contesting one.
I have 2 objectives

Tie Game

He has killed 1303 VPs
I have killed 1805
I have +3 bonus points, and he as +0


Game #2 Eldar vs. Space Wolves

His list:

HQ
Logan Grimnar
Ragnar Blackmane
Ulrik the Slayer

Elite
Dreadnought w/TL Lascannon, TL Autocannon
Dreadnought W/TL Lascannon, Missile Launcher, Extra Armor

Troops
Wolf Guard Pack
10 Wolf Guard w/6 Frost Blades, 3 Powerfists, MoW
Rhino

10 Grey Hunter w/Melta Gun, Mark of the Wolfen, Powerfist/Plasma Pistol
Rhino w/Extra Armor

10 Grey Hunter w/Melta Gun, Mark of the Wolfen, Powerfist/Plasma Pistol
Rhino w/Extra Armor

10 Grey Hunter w/Melta Gun, Mark of the Wolfen, Powerfist/Plasma Pistol
Rhino w/Extra Armor

10 Grey Hunter w/Melta Gun, Mark of the Wolfen, Powerfist/Plasma Pistol
Rhino w/Extra Armor

This feels like a list out of 3rd edition. It looks like the old space wolf rhino rush army with the special characters thrown in to bring it up to 2500 points.

The game…

I win the dice roll to go first, and I never know what to do with it. I want to keep them as far away as possible and yet want them close enough to do some damage. Whenever I lose the dice roll, they drive forward, drop smoke, and then are on me on turn #2.

So I took the first turn and started blasting away at his rhinos. I immobilize 2, and severely cripple his rush. Then on his turn he moves his first rhino and breaks down in terrain, and then he stops the advance and turtles up. Uh oh…that is not what I wanted to happen. Now I have to do after him and dig him out of his corner.

I start to advance and slowly kill his rhinos. He has a couple of options at this point, he can either move back and try to conserve his units, or he can run everything at me as fast as he can and try to overwhelm my shooting. He chooses option #3, and that is whenever I kill a rhino, he runs that squad at me and I shoot it down. So after 6 turns he has a dreadnought and half of the Wolf Guard squad.


Here is just a look at what I have left at the end of the game.


Game #3 Eldar vs. Tyranids

Well, I am thinking that I need to get another massacre to qualify for the semi-finals, so I need to pull out a big win.

Mission: This is the now-famous kill point mission where fast movers are worth 3 kill points each.

My opponent’s army:

HQ
Hive Tyrant
3 Tyrant Guard

Elites
3 Zoanthropes

12 Ymgrl Genestealers

Troops
13 Genestealers w/Broodlord
13 Genestealers w/Broodlord
13 Genestealers w/Broodlord
12 Genestealers
12 Genestealers
12 Genestealers

Heavy Support
2 Carnifexes w/ Scything Talons geared up for CC
2 Carnifexes w/Venom Canons, Stranglethorn cannon.


Ok, let’s count up the kill points:
Eldar have 25
Tyranids have 11

So let me get this right, for me to get a massacre I have to kill 7 more kill points than he has killed of mine? Piece of cake My opponent said before the game that it will be really hard for me to win. I told him that it will be easy (ok, so I can be a bit of a jerk. That explains why I get bad sports scores at tournaments).


Deployment
My opponent sets up with just his non-genestealer units in the very center of the table. This is standard for outflanking armies because they will hit the sides, and everything ends up moving to the middle where the heavy hitters, can get to them.

I deploy in my standard anti-tyranid/outflanker set-up and squish my army in from 18” from either side of the table. I also keep my jetbikes, and my dire avengers in reserve so they can react to where the outflankers come on and wipe them out.

After I set up he then infiltrate his whole army. For some reason that did not occur to me that he would do that and it took me a bit off guard. He ends up with one genestealer unit to the left, 2 units in the center, and 3 on the right.

Well, this is not good. So use Eldrad’s re-deploy ability to move everything out of the right flank and move it to the left. My strategy is to kill the genestealers on the left, then kill the ones in the center, and then do a fighting retreat to take care of the ones on the right.

Early game
He runs forward

I try to wipe out his Genestealers on the left but do to some great cover saves he has a few still left. I took Dark Reapers in 4th edition to combat Godzilla nids, and they are still work like a charm because my shooting takes out the 3 tyrant guard. (We had a big rules issue here. He had the tyrant and the guard behind them and wanted a cover save because most of the unit was obscured by the Tyrant).

Then he keeps advancing. His CC Carnifexs are rolling 6s to run, but his genestealers on the right are rolling bad for difficult terrain and his run rolls. His Ymgarls come on, but he tries to bight off more than he can chew (so to speak) when he goes after several units and does not do much damage, and I was able to kill some and I only lost combat by 3 and the wounds from being fearless don’t kill much.

I get a jetbike squad and my dire avengers and they help to take out the Genestealers on the center that are dangerously close, and the Avatar takes out the Ymgarls. Harlequins take out the CC Carnifexes and start to go through his army.

I start to run out of room and hits my Dark Reapers that were stuck because of shooting get taken out. I also lose a guardian squad.

This opens them up to the flamers of the Wraithlords and then assault. Shooting take a huge toll on them as well as an angry Avatar. The harlequins take out the shooting carnifexes.



He assaults my Avatar and loses and gets run down, and then everyone piles in to help out the wraithlord and that was all she wrote.

I lost a 2 guardian squads, and my dark reapers
He lost his army.

I win 11 Kill Points to 3 Kill Points for a massacre.


Wrap Up
I ended the tournament with 59 battle points with 2 Massacres and 1 Draw. I also scored the most VP in the tournament and killed around 6500 points.

In a lot of stores that would have been good enough for a win or at least to qualify, but not in mine I and ended up in 5th place.

This marks the second year I had some bad luck and did not get out of the first round of the 'Ard Boyz.

Meh, seems like that first match-up is what took the bite out of ya.

Good to see that footdar are still doing good, despite their inter-hate.

Cocky tyranid guy got what he deserved.

sexiest_hero wrote:Cocky tyranid guy got what he deserved.

I'm pretty sure the Tyranid player said he would win because of the mission, not his mad skillz. It didn't seem like he was being cocky, but I could be wrong since I wasn't there.

Nice to see some locals posting battle reports Maybe once I get my three years of rust worked off we can get some games in

I would have loved to see Sanguinor go at the Avatar... 3++ versus 4++/4++. It could have been very helpful if Mundar had a psychic hoody in his list (Furisio Librarian quickly comes to mind).

G

Foot Eldar gets a bad rap around my area because it struggles against armies that can out-shoot it like IG. It doesn't have the survivability to get in close against armies with withering firepower. Fortune helps immensely, and it can be used on a couple key units, but it's easy enough to ignore those unit temporarily and focus on the rest of the army which is not very survivable. It's good against armies who want to come to you, but against ones who want to stay at distance (and have the ability to do so), it's a bad match-up.

As a general rule all Eldar armies have trouble against Mech IG. I have played against Mech IG several times with my foot Eldar and I have had some success against them.

Don’t get me wrong though about my thoughts about being able to beat them, I was glad to dodge the several Mech IG armies that were there.

So did the Sanguinor trounce your Avatar? That would be a moral victory for the BA right there.

G

The Dark Reapers shot at him and he rolled bad on his armor saves and never made it into combat.

Actually the first Vanguards killed spiders, reapers and a pile of guardians. I think they accounted for themselves well. While it may not be a good exchange of points, I robbed him of long-range fire power, a scoring unit and a mobile shooty unit.

The Sanguinor never got into combat, Allan just poured tons of basic firepower into him while he was doomed and I failed several enough saves in a row to see him die before he could get stuck in.

Dante killed the jetbike unit he went after, the surviving unit you see in the pics was on Allans right flank. I was going after them with the Sanguinor. They turbo boosted around in the last few turns to avoid becoming a red smear and something I'd have had to scrape out of my boots with a stick.

I think Eldar synapse is a real double edged sword. When I commited to charging his line, I hit several units at once and went after the weaker ones.. Letting fearless sort out the rest. It was a gamble to survive and contest his objectives, leaving me with 3 and him none. I was banking on surviving his final turn with 2 reduced assault squads. Even one marine surviving would have been game changing.. As it was, Allan cleared his objectives and managed to contest one of mine.

I'd have liked to get both Vanguard squads in from reserve at the same time, it wouldn't have allowed the Clowns to pick them off one unit at a time. Instead it would have forced a choice on Allan to go after one, while the other goes on a rampage across basic units.

BBF: A librarian dread would have been nice. This list was a last minute switch. I normally play mech Blood Angels, but my friend wanted to borrow that army. Since he isn't very good and felt more comfortable with the mech marines, I whipped up this list the night before. I'm not a Sanguinor fan, and only really took him because I didn't have another 275pts worth of stuff to fill out this army. The mass jump packs are fun to play, but definitely not my style.. I'd like a go at these Eldar again with my mech army. Not that mech trumps all, its just much more my style.

Yes, he did go after my fast moving units like it was mission #3. That helped him a lot because I could not get to him to assault him and pull him off of his objectives.

As you put it “the elder synapse” is both a good and bad. The only game I lost with this army was to a Space Wolf army that was able to engage a lot of units and cripple them, and they were able to stay in combat. It is good when a guardian squad gets charged by an assault squad because I want their fearlessness to kill any stragglers that might have survived so they can be taken out by shooting. If they guardians live, or even worse, get assaulted and they hit lot of my units at the same time, then half my army will disappear.

And I will be at the ‘Ard Boyz consolidation tournament at Gamers Inn if you want to see how your Mech Angels match up.
http://www.adeptusarizona.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2117

I probably won't step foot in that store again. They've shown me twice now that they have no business running a tournament. I'll consider it, but I'm struggling to come up a good reason to participate at Gamers inn

Thanks for posting Blackmoor, I know I have low motivation to post tourneys that I didn't do as well as I'd like to in. Down in ATL we are all wondering how Foot Eldar cleans up so hard up there. Battle reports like this help to show the exact workings of the list, within the context of the modern meta.

Am I reading correctly that the Tyranid player had Carnifex's with Venom cannon AND Stranglethorne cannon? If he did that is illegal. You can only choose one from the list as a weapon choice.

I have been busy painting up bugs lately, but threads like this make me want to drag out the footdar. I always enjoyed playing them and they have never let me down.

DarthDiggler wrote:I have been busy painting up bugs lately, but threads like this make me want to drag out the footdar. I always enjoyed playing them and they have never let me down.

That is odd, because it has been made perfectly clear to me that you are unable to win any games with foot eldar.

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2010/05/ouch-i-stubbed-my-toe-story-of-footdar.html

Who honestly cares what sort of idiocy is published on YMMV?

Thanks for your reports. They are always a quick read but very insightful. Great Job!

Blackmoor wrote:Eldrad
Avatar

Blackmoor wrote:Dante
Sanginator

Blackmoor wrote:Logan Grimnar
Ragnar Blackmane
Ulrik the Slayer

And this is why I hate 5th Ed. What a sad sorry state of affairs when every army shows up with Special Characters in every game...



Cool BatReps though. I like the army. And the terrain was cool, which is such a rarity in tournaments.

Keep rocking Footdar, Blackmoor! The haters can go suck eggs, they just like to be negative.

Sorry you didn't make it to the next round, but it sounds like you had some stiff comp.

It's not necessarily hate as just acknowledging that Allan likes to play nostalgic lists. Footdar with Eldrad/Avatar is very old school.

G

I'd say it's pretty much completely hate.

Yeah, and he stomps nuts with the old list too, so who cares?

I mean, yeah, he does like the old lists, true, but Footdar are still viable.

If there's one thing I don't understand about monday morning quarterbacking in 40k, is the inability to grasp that the army that won any given event was obviously strong enough for the task it was assigned. Maybe it got lucky, maybe the field was weak, but unless somebody is saying "look at my list, nobody could ever beat it," I think that winning events with a list shows, well, that such a list could win events.

Given the third mission, even the worst threats, such as mech IG, weren't that nasty at a top table. I think the loganwing I took could have given it a tough time, but loganwing and foot eldar are very similar in most ways.

Footdar beat the snot of my nids and really showed me how it was done in round 3. Eldrad/Avatar didn't feel at all outdated clobbering my MC.

I play Footdar and it is pretty good. I don't want people to think it's very good so they dismiss my list and make it harder to beat me.

I think footdar won BashCon, a bit Adepticon Primer in Toledo. Admittedly, there were some second round draws by some top talent, but winning is still winning.

Had #1 BP's in the Broadside Bash as well. The one guy running it at the Slaughter didn't do so well though.

Too many people think a list has to be 100% efficient to win at tournaments. Thats an opinion.

Theres alot of lists that do well, but look questionable on paper. But paper cant take into account how that army is played.

Just like a brief battle report- summing up 2 hours of a game into a few pics and lines of text- cant really convey all the relevant details of a game.

Making 'factual' statements based on insufficient data- is at best, a slowed gesture of trying to look smarter than everyone else on the internet- just because you say so.

Blackmoors record proves his army is viable for him. I'd probly suck with it- doesnt mean the army sucks