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What is the best way? The only things Ive found are SL'ing the crap out of the unit with only medicore results, or wasting a fire prism blast on them. Would Banshees or some other foot unit be able to do this better (i doubt so)? Would taking doom on a farseer be worth it?

Are we talking about Purifiers or are we talking about Paladins with FnP? Against paladins with FnP scatters are crap but against a 3+ marine scatter WILL do the job

Sorry, I guess I meant specifically Paladins

Best way to beat GKs is to kill the things that matter to your list and stay away from the bulk of his as long as possible. So plan A.

Figuring out what matters is a judgement call based on what flavor of eldar you running. Target priorities for mechdar differ from footdar which differs from hybrid or battleforce armies (mishmash of units that starting players usually have).

For mechdar concentrate your high strength fire on the dreads if they have them. They will shoot you down as multi shot S8 models that are CHEAPER than your transports and fire support is not good for you. Playing footdar they are not nearly as important, so concentrate fire on the assault elements of the GK list. This doesn't mean just CC units btw, it also includes units designed to get in your face like rhino/rhazor rushes. If you are playing a hyrbrid list, good luck, GKs have exactly the right tools to shoot you off the table in 2 turns. Decent quantity of long range shooting will ground your few skimmers, and high volume of stormbolter and S6-7 fire will murder infantry.

If you play a farseer (as most eldar players do), don't forget your runes. Against GKs its far more important to keep the defensive runes in play than any sort of fortune/guide/doom stuff eldar like to do.

Tank shock.

My last game against a Draigowing army, I destroyed two units of paladins without scoring a single wound on them by tank-shocking both of them off the table. And that was with mech guard--Eldar fast skimmers can do it even better.

Remember that once a unit fails its first tank-shock test, every subsequent tank shock on that unit causes it to auto-fail and fall back again immediately. So with some skillful allocation of units, you can drive a unit all the way across the table and off the board in one movement phase.

If there's a huge unit of 10 paladins led by Draigo and you have to deal with it, just keep throwing all your grav tanks into it one after another. Eventually he'll fail, and then you've won the game.

I didn't even think of repeated tank shocking, thats genius

That sounds so hilarious to watch. The cream of the space marine crop getting chased off of a battle field by an eldar falcon or something.

Hilarious and useful. Win Win

Works on BAs too (the other FNP nightmare for Eldar), particularly against players who are fond of separating their Ld10 characters from their Ld9 infantry units, or anybody who combat-squads part of a Ld8 unit away from the Ld9 sergeant. The jump pack guys run off real fast.

Just don't run over the melta or powerfist guy (only models you actually run over can use Death or Glory) until after they break. Once they're falling back, they can't DoG on subsequent shocks.

And make sure there's something durable within 6" of them at the end of your turn so they can't rally if you don't get them off the table in a single turn.

And if you have a tank or two with star engines, you can hit em again in the shooting phase.

Oh, and don't be an idiot (like I was the first time I tried this) and assault them with something in the assault phase. If you assault a unit that's falling back, they get a chance to rally. If you don't get them off the table in one turn, just herd them off with tanks that stay within 6".

Then turn around and ram all their tanks with your wave serpents.

You really feel that you can repeatedly get enough tank shocks to make them fail an LD 10 in 1 movement phase? I can see it happening occassionally, but consistently? It seems to good to be true.... I will try this the next time I face purifiers, I too have trouble dealing with them as well as the Psyflemen Dreadnaughts.... arg. The two wounds on the Purifiers, our old codex and expensive units that have a hard time with LR always make fighting marines tough for Eldar. Unfortunitely, they are the most common force we face. With luch when 6th ed comes out and all armies get a FAQ update, we will be more competative. Plus add in that we are S and T 3 vs S and T 4 we have an uphill battle.

I have had luck with Harlequins fortuned with terminators, but Paladins it is doubtful you will get enough wounds to kill the squad, and when they hit back, get ready for the pain. Banshees, the power weapons are nice, but at S 3, needing 5 or 6 to wound, even with doom, you will NOT take out a squad of Termies or Purifiers and with no invuln saves, say goodbye to the squad.... Scorps forget about it.. You may get more hits, but with 2up armor saves, you might get lucky and kill 1-3 termies and 1-2 purifiers, then they get punked back.....

If you can shoot them with Fire Dragons, once out of their transport you will kill a lot of them, but getting within 12" in a boat, takes a little skill and hope that you kill them all.....
But I am interested in everyone's opinion, because I too would love a good way to deal with them.
Cheers...

GKs are Ld9. They only have Ld10 if Draigo has joined the unit.

...and I'm not sure if you picked up on the fact that they only need to fail *once.* After the first failure, they automatically fail all morale tests--including further tank shocks.

So you shock them a couple or three times and get lucky and they fail one. Then you keep shocking and, *every time* you shock them after the initial failure, they fall back 2d6 automatically with no test and no chance to rally.

If you're running 6-9 grav tanks against a big unit of paladins--even with Draigo--and you just shock all your tanks in there over and over again, there's a decent chance for at least one failure. If you don't get it the first turn, he'll maybe stun a few tanks and maybe kill one, and then you do it again (make sure to move everything at least 7") And once they fail even one time, they're dead.

This is really the big weakness of all GK lists--they're not fearless, and they're only Ld9 with no way to get a reroll.

And I wasn't kidding about ramming the tanks. The best way for Eldar to kill a psyfleman dread is to ram a wave serpent or falcon into it at full speed. If you can nail it in the back that's bonus, but it only has str6 so its DoG attack will do nothing, and if you can get the 21" draw on it, you're guaranteed a str10 hit with no rolling against the crappy Eldar BS3. You might lose a tank or two, but if you've taken out his paladins and psyflemen, he's probably not got much left.

I did pick up and understand that they only need to fail once. I like the idea of ramming Psyfleman, I think that would work really well. I am not trying to be a pain. I am just really curious, so obviously you have used this tactic, did it work every time? My main concern, most run paladins with Draigo LD 10. If the tanks fail in their tank shock, the paladins can strike back their turn, if they immobilize one and god forbid get locked in CC (which is unlikely), then you are SOL. I guess then you could run the other tanks away and wait for next turn to Tank shock again. Now question, during this, I am assuming you have Prisms that are shooting at the rest of the army? Thanks for the feedback. Sorry to be a pain.
Cheers.

Yeah, sometimes I can't spare the shots from the prisms for troops. It is pretty nice if you can get them to clump up and a plate on them though.

Yeah Esp with Guard, Nids, Orks, Tau Fire Wariors, and Dark Eldar. It does okay against regular MArines, but termies... not really with the big template. I like scatter laser spam a lot, but against marines, esp termies, they are so ---- Meh. I like the tank shock idea. I probably should not play Eldar since I love to do stuff in my turn and not just run around or away from the enemy, hoping to contest or steal an objective. But with the tank shock rule, I can still get rid of the heavy hitters and still be able to shoot stuff once the heavy hitters are out of the way. I just worry about it working. I did not know that once tank shocked and failed that when they are again, they move another 2d6, that is wicked. I really like that idea. They just need to get out of their vehicles first. That is what the prisms are for I guess.

Yes, I have actually done this, for a long time with Eldar, and more recently with mech IG. Looking back over my last couple of game notes, three games ago I tank-shocked a strike squad out of a table quadrant with a hellhound that had had both weapons blown off (they were near the table edge and fell off the first turn). Two games ago I tank-shocked an almost completely unwounded unit of crisis suits off with an outflanking chimera (crisis suits are easy to nail, though, with only Ld8 and a 3d6 fallback). My most recent game I used chimeras and hellhounds to drive off two intact units of paladins, the first one in the first turn, and the second one a turn later. Draigo and an immobilized storm raven were the only models my opponent had left at the end.

Right, if you have passengers and you want to move over 12", then disembark the turn before you make your run. Otherwise, if you immobilize in your turn, then the passengers die.

A vehicle can still shoot in a turn when it tank shocks as long as it didn't move too far. So you can make a 12" tank shock, shoot one non-defensive weapon, and disembark fire dragons who can then shoot, all in the same turn. Run your serpents in a spearhead pattern, and the fire dragons can't be countercharged.

Even a big unit of paladins multi-charging a unit of wave serpents that has moved over 6" (thus hitting on 6's) is not going to score a lot of kills. Some shaken/stunned, and maybe one tank down from the daemonhammer guy. Then you shock him again the following turn. Infantry models can't be locked in HtH with vehicles--you can still shoot them (or tank shock them) again in your own turn.

I have to modify what I said earlier about ramming--wave serpents are good, but a grav tank with a holofield is better because you get your holofield against the damage result on your tank. So falcons, or prisms with holofields can kill psyflemen with ramming more surely than any gun in the Eldar arsenal other than fire dragons.

I don't play in a lot of tournaments and I just wouldn't feel right tank shocking my friends off the board. Let's pretend for a minute that this is an unfriendly tactic, or that it will be nerfed in 6th. The OP ask how to kill Paladins...Eldar have a few excellent solutions to that (albeit only a few). Fire Prisms and Fire Dragons are the obvious choices to me. The Dragons offer ID and enough shots to wrap the unit a guarantee dead bodies. The Prism has amazing range, meaning that to deal with the slow Paladins have to walk, be transported or DS.

dnanoodle wrote:I don't play in a lot of tournaments and I just wouldn't feel right tank shocking my friends off the board. Let's pretend for a minute that this is an unfriendly tactic, or that it will be nerfed in 6th. The OP ask how to kill Paladins...Eldar have a few excellent solutions to that (albeit only a few). Fire Prisms and Fire Dragons are the obvious choices to me. The Dragons offer ID and enough shots to wrap the unit a guarantee dead bodies. The Prism has amazing range, meaning that to deal with the slow Paladins have to walk, be transported or DS.

A one doesn't need to participate in tournaments in order to know the rules and utilize them to the best of their advantage.

I play mecheldar and I use tankshock all the time. Its very iffy, but if your opponent gets unlucky, especially with Ork or IG, you can literally tankshock half their army off the board.

Flavius Infernus wrote:And if you have a tank or two with star engines, you can hit em again in the shooting phase.

Tank shocking with star engine move is a rules debate that often does not succeed. If you try this at a tourney, don't be surprised if the TO rules against you.

Tank shocking can be very effective. I used to to run a BA assault marine army off the board the other day.

I don't see what's 'iffy' about using tank shock. They wouldn't have put it in the rules if it wasn't intended to be used.

Nitros14 wrote:I don't see what's 'iffy' about using tank shock. They wouldn't have put it in the rules if it wasn't intended to be used.

What he ment by 'iffy' is that its not something you can bank on working.

A tank shock causing a failure on LD 9 is 16.66% You can tank shock one unit 5 times and not have the unit fail even once.

I do think tank shocking is a good tactic that can be used to great effect, but should not be the overall strategy of your army.

labmouse42 wrote:

A tank shock causing a failure on LD 9 is 16.66% You can tank shock one unit 5 times and not have the unit fail even once.

You can tank shock one unit 50 times and not have it fail even once. That's the nature of probability.

But if I understand probability distributions correctly, you can expect on average that a Ld9 unit will have failed at least once about 50% of the time after 3 tank shocks. A Ld10 unit can be expected to have failed about 50% of the time after 6 tank shocks.

If you can show me another way that 6 Eldar tanks have a 50% chance of taking out a Draigowing uber-deathstar in one turn, then I'll readily agree that tank shocking isn't the "Best way for Eldar to take out GK troops."

Flavius Infernus wrote:You can tank shock one unit 50 times and not have it fail even once. That's the nature of probability.

You know that's irrelevant. We base conversations of probability off what you can expect to see, not extremely off situations. My point was that 5 tank shocks have a reasonable chance of giving no result. Your taking that point and making it a slippery slope.

Flavius Infernus wrote:But if I understand probability distributions correctly, you can expect on average that a Ld9 unit will have failed at least once about 50% of the time after 3 tank shocks. A Ld10 unit can be expected to have failed about 50% of the time after 6 tank shocks.

My point is that's not a way to build your strategy. If you have to tie up 6 tanks to have a 50% of tank shocking the unit, that's horribly inefficient. Especially when they have psycannon dreads shooting at your army.

Flavius Infernus wrote:If you can show me another way that 6 Eldar tanks have a 50% chance of taking out a Draigowing uber-deathstar in one turn, then I'll readily agree that tank shocking isn't the "Best way for Eldar to take out GK troops."

Eldar don't need to take down the Draigowing head to head. They can just move out of range. If your really that worried about them, why not use some STR 8 AP2 weapons, like 2 squads of 10 fire dragons?

The root problem is that Eldar are an old codex, and with the units you either have killy units or survivable units. These serpents are great for living, and you can tank shock when the time is right, but you need to ask 'is this the best thing that I should be doing?' If your tank shocking to put your fire dragons in line to pop his psydreads, then it probably is. If your just using it to remove that one deathstar, then it probably is not.

As such, I say again 'if you are relying upon tank shocking as your army core strategy, you will likely be dissapointed. If you are using it as a tactic during your play, it can be effective, but is not something to bank on'

Labmouse, the OP's question wasn't "what is the best way for Eldar players to win scenarios/games against Daigonwing?" or "What is the best way to build an Eldar strategy?"

The OP question was "What is the best way for Eldar to take out GK troops [meaning specifically paladins]?" I don't disagree with anything your last post says, but that wasn't the question.

Flavius Infernus wrote:Labmouse, the OP's question wasn't "what is the best way for Eldar players to win scenarios/games against Daigonwing?" or "What is the best way to build an Eldar strategy?"

The OP question was "What is the best way for Eldar to take out GK troops [meaning specifically paladins]?" I don't disagree with anything your last post says, but that wasn't the question.

Thats a very fair point. I was distracted.

I've been doing a lot of review on this lately, and will post my thoughts and suggestions in a few.

Looking forward to seeing your thoughts.

Flavius Infernus wrote:Tank shock.

My last game against a Draigowing army, I destroyed two units of paladins without scoring a single wound on them by tank-shocking both of them off the table. And that was with mech guard--Eldar fast skimmers can do it even better.

Remember that once a unit fails its first tank-shock test, every subsequent tank shock on that unit causes it to auto-fail and fall back again immediately. So with some skillful allocation of units, you can drive a unit all the way across the table and off the board in one movement phase.

If there's a huge unit of 10 paladins led by Draigo and you have to deal with it, just keep throwing all your grav tanks into it one after another. Eventually he'll fail, and then you've won the game.

But this event is rather unlikely and I wouldn't count on it. Its much more likely that the Paladin can charge the vehicle in the next round.

Overall Strategies
* Objectives / KP
The trick with playing Eldar, is that your not going to be playing to table the opponent. When playing, its critical to remember that and not get caught up in just 'killing GK models'. While this can make a less entertaining of a game for the GK player, its the way that Eldar play.

* Synergy
Playing Eldar vs GK requires that we utilize the psychic powers available to the Eldar player. The most common one that I can see being used is 'Fortune'. Using 'Fortune' on a flat-out serpent is darn hard to kill.

* Survivability / KP Denial
Eldar are hard to kill when playing 'flying circus'. A GK player brings a lot more easy-to-kill models to the board, mostly in the shape of razorbacks or chimeras. This means that the Eldar player can edge out in KP without to much difficulty. Late turn objective grabbing can be described as the hallmark of Eldar.

* Cripple the GK
GK only have one tool that can reach further than 24". That is the psyback dreads. Once those have been neutralized, then its pretty much game over for the GK. Your army can skirt around him shooting SL the razorbacks/chimeras and and plinking the troops down. At that point you should be up enough in KP, or the ability to contest/objective grab to secure an objective victory. If you are playing table quarters the GK player will be forced to move to the center of board.

* Don't try and out-wrestle the bear
GK out-shoot and out-assault most armies, including the Eldar army. Don't get caught playing his game. Focus on crippling the GK and then winning on KP/Objectives/Quarters.


Exploiting GK weaknesses
* AV 12 spam
GK don't have any melta (barring henchmen). For the most part, you GK have a hard time dealing with AV 12 spam. They only have three tools to do this, psydreads, psycannons, and psybacks. Provided you force the GK to move, the psycannons lose 50% of their effectiveness. The psybacks are only AV 11 and are vulnerable to SL spam. The only one that needs to be addressed quickly are the dreads.

* Short range
With an effective range of 24" on most of the guns, GK weapons are fairly short ranged compared to Eldar. Once you have removed the psydreads from the game, dealing with the GK is much easier.

* Psychic LD of 9/10
If you have runes of warding, then dealing with the psychic powers is not as much of an issue. Since most GK squads are LD 9, they fail tests 62.5% of the time. LD 10 models fail 50% of the time. Both have a 33% of having perils. These are not good odds for the GK player, and smart GK players will not even bother trying to use fortitude. The bottom line is you already have an advantage against the GK going in with Runes of Warding.


Maximizing Eldar Strengths
* Eldar Speed
I have mentioned this many times before, but speed is key to beating the GK. For your sacrificial units, you need to make sure there are star engines on your serpents. This means your squads of fire dragons that you will be sending to kill the psydreads. Being able to move them 36" in a turn means you can get them into position. The difference between having them weather one round of fire vs. two rounds of fire is huge.

* Psychic Powers
Fortune is your friend. When sending in the suicide squads, casting fortune on two of the squads will greatly ensure the success of the units. Negating 75% of the shooting is incredibly effective, even against a solid shooting army like GK. Doom can be useful when combined with Banshees if you decide to go that route.

* Cheap Melltaguns
Fire dragons are awesome tools for winning the game vs. GK. There is never any reason to take less than 2 of them, and a strong reason to take 3.

* Tank Shocking
AV 12 tanks that can move 24" are a great thing If you have taken out the GK vehicles and psydreads, its very easy to tank shock the GK off the board. You can tank shock multiple units with each eldar vehicle, and if you cause enough shocks they will fail. What you really want to be doing here is shocking 3-5 units with 3-5 vehicles. While each shock only has a 1 in 6 chance of scattering the GK, the trick is to make them take enough tests to fail.


Killing PsyDreads
* Fortuned Serpents
As mentioned, a fortuned serpent is very hard to kill. Sending 4 of them down the throat of a GK player (ok, only 2-3 can be fortuned) is enough to do the job. The goal here is to use the serpent to deliver the suicide squad, and then move back.

* Warlocks
This is an option I have been considering to assist with the parking lot / dread problem. Warlocks can fleet and hit with STR 9 hits at I5. This serves a dual role -- they can tear open parking lots and can be useful vs psydreads. The days of warlocks bikers are gone, due to the amount of small arms fire available on the board today, but 3-5 warlocks in a serpent can be very useful for this role.

* Fire Dragons
The tried and true solution to take down critical armor. I normally only bring 5 to the party, but you can go higher if you want the extra melta gun shots in case they survive.

* SL on rear armor
After your serpent has delievered its payload, take advantage of any rear armor shots you can get on a psydread. AV 10 cracks easily under STR 6 shots. As the GK will be reluctant to 'fortitude', this tactic can be very solid.


Killing PsyBacks and Chimeras
* Scatter Lasers
These are highly effective at destroying those targets.

* Warlocks
These are highly effective at clearing out parking lots. Their close range makes them less ideal, but can be useful if any managed to survive the suicide rush.

* Dragons
As with Warlocks. If any manage to live, they can be used in this role.


Killing Henchmen
Most good GK players will reserve their henchmen. If they are on the board at the start of the game, you can clear them pretty easily.
* Avengers vs Warriors
Most people bring warriors in 3 man squads with melta guns. This is very scary, but once they are out of the transport they are stupidly easy to kill as they are sitting on a guard statline. 5 shuriken cat shots can do the job, or one scatter laser. Hell, you can even use the shuriken cat on your vehicle and make them take a break test. With a LD of 8, they are not that solid. You can also assult them with your DA and expect to have good results.

* Banshees vs DCA
Provided you get the charge, and the DCA have been doomed, your banshees on average will clean the DCA's clock. The secret is the banshees strike at I10 on the assault, and will deliver enough wounds to do the job.

* Warlocks
Warlocks hitting on a 3+ and wounding on a 2+ are a nightmare vs most GEQ.


Killing Grey Knights
* Its just a marine
Normal GK are not that tough. Just keep throwing SL shots at them and you will plink them away. The trick here is to focus fire. Don't be surpised if it takes 5 tanks SLs to plink away a squad. Thats OK, because they cant shoot back at you.

Unless you see a GK squad severly weakened, resist the urge to ever shoot them with DA. Their ability to return fire with storm bolters and assault with force weapons strongly outmatch DA.


Killing Terminators
* No TH/SS save.
GK Terminators are highly effective. There is only one weakness that I can see. That is their 5+ save. There are three tools to defeat this. The first is a squad of banshees, and the second is fire dragons. The third is tank shocking.

While none of these are particularly effective -- well 10 guided fire dragons is, but they will probably have been killed after they destroyed the psydreads -- remember that killing this deathstar unit was not in your overall strategy. Your goal is KP and objectives. This deathstar likely can only hold one objective, and will only have 2 at the most.

Well I don't know about unlikely, but as noted above "if I understand probability distributions correctly, you can expect on average that a Ld9 unit will have failed at least once about 50% of the time after 3 tank shocks. A Ld10 unit can be expected to have failed about 50% of the time after 6 tank shocks. "

It seems to work pretty often for me personally--including on paladins.

Paladins charging tanks that moved fast aren't that scary in my experience. Even if they get hammerhand off (vs. Eldar runes is only about 50%), they still need 6's to hit and then 5s or 6s to damage--actually I think they'd be better off statistically using their krak grenades, but almost nobody actually does this. The hammer guy is the only one who really has a decent chance of actually killing a tank, and he can only hit one.

I know I was not the original poster of this thread, but I find all the posts very intriguing. I have not used tank shock that much in my strategies. My question was too, how often is the tank shock likely to work on big units, my guess was not often. But if it works consistently I would try it. I still will try to incorporate more tank shocks as this is a good tactic to use. The times I have used it in the past was to force someone off an objective to win or take one. Thanks for all the posts, please keep them coming.

I know that Brightlances are so expensive, but is it potentially worth taking a few on tanks to give the army some help taking out hard to kill vehicles?

Cheers

thanks everyone, that's a lot to consider. So basically it boils down to not setting out to killing the troops, just cripple and weather with superior speed and range? (Runes of Warding have been amazing in my experience vs. GK btw). Ive never considered dropping some warlocks on dreads or vehicles before, how effect is that in your experience?