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Hi guys, ive been having some trouble with marines lately ie I cant kill enough of them.

Im running

Eldrad
6 s scorpions
2x 10 da, ex w bladestorm 2x cats
2 w/s t/l scatter lasers, shuri cannon. T/l eml
5 da, ex bladestorm 2x cats
5 pathfinders
15 guardians w eml, warlock w embolden
Wraithlord w eml and bright lance
War walker 2x scatter lasers.

Thats my 1500pt list and all the models I own, ive been keeping at an arms lenght but I cant run forever, and I cant kill enough by the time they catch up.

Any help would be great, cheers.

Which flavor of marines are you fighting?

What part of the enemy are you not killing? The infantry or the vehicles? If its the vehicles getting to you (and then dumping cargo) then you need more anti tank fire power. SInce eldar are kind screwed with this short of taking fire dragons and really expensvie weapons on everything, you probably would need to get the models for that. Especially since it looks like you have just a single wrathlord for dedicated anti tank, and some random scatter lasers and wave serpent MLs thrown in. 5 S8 weapons and 4 S6 scatter lasers is just not going to cut it these days.

If you can't kill marine infantry without mech, then you are having issue with deployment and target priority, something I can't really help you with other than say you should read some tactics articles. After all, the game is built around being able to kill marines, if you can't do this with an army dedicated to anti infantry fire, I don't really know what to say.

Its just the tac marines atm, the most common armour is dreads, but I can generaly deal with them, and its been vanilla marines. the list im having trouble with is

Pedro w honour guard 3 man
Marnus w 2x honour guard 3 man
10 man tac
5 man tac
Dread w auto cannon and missle launcher
Devs w 4 missle launcher
Devs w m melta, plas cannon las canon and missle launcher.

I can run rings around him but when I get out to blade storm ect, I just cant take any out. I bladestormed the 10 man tac w doom and fortune and droped 3 of them lol its crazy.

Focus your fire power on them then. Instead of spreading all your blade storms across all of them, how bout pouring them into 1 squad at a time. Thatll do some damage.

Thats what I do with my Orks. I dont pray that only one mob will be enough, so Ill shoot big units with 2 mobs of shootas, and maybe tag team with Lootas. Now THAT will bring down some space marines

KingCracker wrote:Focus your fire power on them then. Instead of spreading all your blade storms across all of them, how bout pouring them into 1 squad at a time. Thatll do some damage.

This, this is what you should do. Standard Guard fire discipline for me, find a target, fire upon it until it is neutralised, pick another target, repeat. Try not to spread your fire, you'll weaken some squads without crippling any.

Erm... scrap your dice? sounds like you could just be unlucky.

Well, your list is absoluletly non-competitive. Sorry to say this.

I wouldn't exactly call the SM list competitive either though...

htj wrote:

KingCracker wrote:Focus your fire power on them then. Instead of spreading all your blade storms across all of them, how bout pouring them into 1 squad at a time. Thatll do some damage.

This, this is what you should do. Standard Guard fire discipline for me, find a target, fire upon it until it is neutralised, pick another target, repeat. Try not to spread your fire, you'll weaken some squads without crippling any.

Sounds like a plan, I think one of the mistakes I make is I want to kill everything at the same time lol, so disiplin and restrant ay. That would also come down to deployment yes? Keep every thing close rather than prepare for anything, plus that would limit a lot of his shooting too as he tends to have a dev squad at either end of the table...... It seems so simple when ya write it out lol.

liquidjoshi wrote:Erm... scrap your dice? sounds like you could just be unlucky.

Thats crossed my mind more than once lol.

wuestenfux wrote:Well, your list is absoluletly non-competitive. Sorry to say this.

Dont be sorry, advise lol, I dont play competitivly but thats not to say I dont want to get better.

I've had a similar problem sometimes against opponents who are just good at rolling their 3+ armor saves. Eldar can bring a lot of shooting to the table and can really pour on the wounds with doom & guide and the massed str6 and striking scorpions. But one thing you can't do is force your opponent to fail armor saves.

The most you can do with the list you have is try to concentrate fire and hope he fails enough saves.

For the next things you add to your army, consider units that actually deny SM their armor saves. Fire dragons, harlequins (competitive) banshees and dark reapers (not competitive, but okay if you only play this one opponent).

Defenantly need dragons, more serpents, at least 1 prisim and a falcon I recon. harlies over banshees?, on paper I thought banshees looked better for meq's with there power weapons, whats your reasoning? And I play more than just him its just his marines im concerned with lol.

Banshees, while indeed wielding power weapons and striking at I10, still have to wound marines on a 5+.

Not too mention that fact that they could easily be gunned down by the same marines before they can even bring their power weapons to bear.

dreadanant wrote:Defenantly need dragons, more serpents, at least 1 prisim and a falcon I recon. harlies over banshees?, on paper I thought banshees looked better for meq's with there power weapons, whats your reasoning? And I play more than just him its just his marines im concerned with lol.

What GangstaMuffin24 said. In a mostly foot-based list like this one, Harlies with veil of tears will at least have a chance to survive in the open long enough to get an assault or two off. Every marine player knows what banshees can do, and will light them up with heavy bolter fire from across the table as a priority target. Banshees in a wave serpent will get probably one assault before being shot down with the numerous AP4 weapons that marines have (not just HBs, but also assault cannons and heavy flamers).

I never ran a game without fielding either a prism or warwalkers, the latter of which always seemed to perform fantastically for me. But, what everyone else has said: focus fire. Kill a target and move on.

GangstaMuffin24 wrote:Banshees, while indeed wielding power weapons and striking at I10, still have to wound marines on a 5+.

Not too mention that fact that they could easily be gunned down by the same marines before they can even bring their power weapons to bear.

Well the 5+ to wound can be negated by attack output. How many attacks do Banshees get anyways? If its a moderate amount, Id say Banshees. If not, then...well I need to re-read the Eldar codex, because I havnt touched one in a long time

Banshees with an active "doom" are pretty good at taking out marines. I'd go with them first... but harlequins are good too and plenty fun to paint, so either way you can't go wrong.

-Myst

Scorpions over Banshees (massing attacks)
Firedragons (2 teams)
Avengers Bladestorming > Scorpions charging > Marines die

Have 2 Avengers and 2 Scorpions work tag team. He will go crazy.

Warp Spiders for harrasment is an option as well.
Your faster than him, use your Aspects well.

KingCracker wrote:

GangstaMuffin24 wrote:Banshees, while indeed wielding power weapons and striking at I10, still have to wound marines on a 5+.

Not too mention that fact that they could easily be gunned down by the same marines before they can even bring their power weapons to bear.

Well the 5+ to wound can be negated by attack output. How many attacks do Banshees get anyways? If its a moderate amount, Id say Banshees. If not, then...well I need to re-read the Eldar codex, because I havnt touched one in a long time

1 attack base, +1 for second weapon, +1 for charging.

So 10 banshees expect to kill nearly 5 marines on the charge, plus 1 or 2 more if doomed.

But that dwindles really quickly if anything varies from the ideal scenario. If they don't get the charge (or in later rounds), it's about 3 kills. If you lose 3 or 4 banshees before the charge, you're also looking at only 3 or 4 kills.

Then if the marines have combat tactics, they fall back and shoot the unit to death. a 160-200 point unit for 5 dead marines? Not really worth it.

KingCracker wrote:Well the 5+ to wound can be negated by attack output. How many attacks do Banshees get anyways? If its a moderate amount, Id say Banshees. If not, then...well I need to re-read the Eldar codex, because I havnt touched one in a long time

Yeah, I had to go back and read it myself. I thought Banshees would have more attacks, hence my suggestion.

I usually kill marines with eldar pretty reliably, then again I've got a full collection. Fire dragons are you go-to for needing something dead. Seriously, they are my "I can't have that thing walking around"-killer. That aside, if foot marines are a problem, dark reapers laugh at them, do the math on a tempest launcher with crack shot, its absolutely hilarious. Expensive (point wise), but fairly cheap dollar wise if its a concern. Personally, I've never used fire prisms successfully, so I opted them out for 9 war walkers with scatter lasers. Take only 6 though, and let eldrad guide each one of them.

My main advice if your looking to expand, is pick up around ~18 fire dragons and have 3 open serpents for them. Or if marines are you only problem, a box of dark reapers and maybe some fire dragons to open the transports, and EML on your serpents.

I might just proxi a few new units and go from there I guess.

Thats the best thing to do, specially if your on a budget.

With the models you have, another idea is to switch out the Scatter Lasers for Star Cannons. Yes I know, they are less shots, and more expensive, but they are low AP, which means the Marines you hit, just die, unless they get a cover save.

Eldar should Guide both Avenger squads, and Doom whatever you want to kill first. Then shoot at just that.

Then repeat with a new target the next round.

The sad thing about starcannons is that, while they are slightly better than scatterlasers against marines in the open, the rate of fire is so low that scatterlasers are actually somewhat better against marines in cover.

Even though starcannons usually cost about 10 points more per gun. Because of its age, pricing in the Eldar codex doesn't take cover adequately into account.

Against marines, I cannot recommend Howling Banshees enough. Get the charge, and that 10 man tac squad is gone! Make sure to put them in a wave serpent and attach a Farser with doom for maximum effectiveness.

p14tinum wrote:Against marines, I cannot recommend Howling Banshees enough. Get the charge, and that 10 man tac squad is gone! Make sure to put them in a wave serpent and attach a Farser with doom for maximum effectiveness.

I guess you missed the earlier part of the conversation...

p14tinum wrote:Against marines, I cannot recommend Howling Banshees enough. Get the charge, and that 10 man tac squad is gone!

Uh, you mean that 10 man Tac squad loses 5 guys, swings back killing 2 Banshees, and falls back from combat only if they choose to, leaving you in a stalemate for next turn.

Another thing: taking an exarch with bladestorm with only 5 DAs is not cost efficient. It costs the same, regardless how big the DA unit is, but gives more shots if it is bigger. With 5 DA it does not really make a difference. But that's just a small optimisation.

Concerning marines: dark reapers work well, but they are incredibly expensive and take a heavy support slot. Also it's heavy weapons so if you have to walk them somewhere you'll not get anything out of them. But if you can deploy them on a fitting piece of terrain right at the beginning they can work wonders against marines. Still too much "if"s in that to field them on a regular base.

The 5 man squad only had bladestorm to make up points, on a lighter note I owned said marine player just now, marnus and his 6 lakies lasted one turn after taking 57 shuriken wounds lol. I won 7 kps to 4

Thanks for the advice guys.

Oh and that was with the above posted lists.