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Well, the Eldar codex is almost here for the masses and it's been getting me thinking about my own Eldar army.  I've built an Ulthwe army that I've had very good success with locally and this year's GD RTT in Atlanta. It was based on a theme I've liked since 2nd edition; this was the Guardian based army. Almost everything in the army was a Guardian or piloted by a Guardian equivelant. Ok, the Seer Council isn't a Guardian, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

Anyways, I wanted to try and build something a bit different from the standard min sized Starcannon Guardian squads, but had to tweak how to do it. Reading through a lot of the rules and playtesting how to make what was seemingly like worthless troops was quite a feat. But, throughout a lot of gaming, I realized one rule many folks simply were not utelizing and seems even more important now with the new Eldar codex.  This rule is what is commonly referred to as Torrent of Fire.

Looking at all the rumors and reviews by various posters, it seems the way to go shooting wise is lots of high strength shots, but without heavy AP killers (AP 5 and 6).  I'd gone this way with pretty good success with my current Ulthwe army, but always seem to have to explain what torrent of fire is during my shooting phase "turn to the Remove Casualties section, about halfway down the page...".

With all the Shuriken Catapult, Cannon and Scatter Laser shots the Eldar can put out, this rule seems scarily important to me. I kinda giggled when first read Doom was making a return (man, I miss 2nd edition). However, Doom combined with Torrent of Fire seems like this can really jam up units moreso than not. With the mass number of shots being put out by each Eldar unit, it seems reasonable to assume Eldar players will have a greater chance to render certain units combat ineffective. The old 96'ers seem to be replaced by 6 strong squads now, but that's not all that difficult to force 6 armor saves. I'm no statistics wizard, but in the past, I've had no problems getting my Guardians (and Destructor Warlock) to wound every member of a squad by shooting.

At 2000 points, I typically fielded 4 Starcannons, 4 Shuriken Cannons and a couple Scatterlasers. Now, I'm thinking of going about 5 Scatterlasers, 1 Starcannon and 4+ Shuriken Cannons. Torrent of fire, combined with judicious use of Doom and even Guide, I'm thinking  the Eldar move and shoot are going to be even more viable. Heck, I'm even excited now that I have to run at least 10 Guardians and a support platform; they can go in a Wave Serpent and be a credible threat, which will cause my opponent to focus on them rather than the 'hey, we're cooler than Demonettes' Harlequin squad that is bound to show up in every Eldar army. Heck, I just remembered I can still fit in a Warlock to throw down the Heavy Flamer template...

Sorry for the rambling-not the best at expressing my thoughts to word. In short: a general tactic that seems horribly underused that the Eldar seem truly geared to be able to exploit.

And oh yeah, that Torrent of Fire thing applies in assault too. Wonder how Doom will work there?

Just thought I'd share a bit of generic tactics from a person who thinks too much about 40K rather than work.

 

 

 

 

Just be sure you have something to deal with the MCs of zilla lists, as well as termie heavy lists that mass 2+ saves. If the massed fire is cheap enough it will work well on MEQs, but 2+ saves or higher toughness is harder to get past.

Doom and wounding on 4s would be fine at hurting zillas. Downside is more seen when zilla shoots back

You seem to be missing the key point (or failing to enunciate it properly) that when wou wound every member of a squad you can force saves on certain members. Killing off powerfists and heavy weapons is a useful ability.

Scatterlasers are as good at killing marines in cover as starcannons in the new book. sweet.

I agree

But counting on killing lots of powerfists by making them make a single 3+ save is not great odds. For every 3 torrent of fires you produce you get one powerfist. Excuse me while I do not dance for joy at those odds.

For me what's worked great is forcing Chaplains/librarians/masters to make 3+ saves vs. venom cannon/barbed strangler shots or be instakilled But the payoff is much better there.

Considering normally the enemy army does not make it onto CC all on the same turn, you get to focus your fire on the closer units with fists....

I have been doing it quite alot with tyranids and necrons already and it seems to work just fine.

Course you can also destroy coherency on heavy weapons squads to stop them from firing aswell.

vsurma- Coherency is something that has been getting me caught offguard with. I've had to really readjust how I place my models in coherency. I've lost las cannons to being the only one in range and have had to remove the plain joe between my two heavy weapons at times.

A lot of times, my squads look like they are in little rectangular formations and if I don't have to worry about pie plates, they are all placed well within the 2" coherency. However, you are dead on when looking at your opponent's squad and trying to knock them out of coherency with a heavy weapon. Them's the chances when you start spreading them out.

While Tyranids big critters weren't my focus, I usually had plenty of Witchblades. The only problem were the horde of Genestealers and Guants that get to me first that I've got to deal with. Lucky for me, not all my bug opponents take the 4+ save for their Genestealers (man, I love shuriken fire).

As another example. I am currently out of town and visited a different game store. I was perusing the new Eldar Codex and talking with some of the local gamers there about it. None of them had any idea about the torrent of fire under removing casualties section. This is a rule I've used quite a bit, especially vs. Marines and Chaos (damn Icon bearers). Sure, they have a 3+ save, but my army consists mostly of T3, 5+ Save models. I'll take every little trick I can get.

Now that I've had a read through the new Codex, I just don't see how anyone can just not use this rule. Starcannons are pretty expensive to put on vehicles. I'm still going to use a platform for my Guardians, but they are jumping out of a Wave Serpent so I can get the other 20 shots in there as well. No way I'd hang back just to shoot 2 shots. Then again, we can now fleet with weapon platforms, so getting to a good spot may not be so hard after all.

OK.

Suppose you have a squad of 8 assaulty guys.

To get the veteran sarge with a torrent you need to do around 8 wounds + 5 wounds + 4 wounds roughly. 8 wounds knocks the squad down to 5-6, 5 more wounds drops the squad down to around 4, then 4 wounds to get a torrent, etc.

So by the time you've done 17 wounds to the squad it's already taken almost 6 casualties, is leadership testing on a 3 and might very well lose combat to a carnifex anyway by the time it gets there.

I mean it happens now and again but I wouldn't hail it as some kind of super tactic. Torrent is just something you get every so often.

Knocking dudes out of coherency, range and Los sniping, however, are huge for Tyranids and Eldar both, because of the sheer volume of fire they can put out at particular ranges (Tyranids in particular can really abuse that 18" range). I will very regularly force people to remove the models from the front of a unit with my dakkafexes and thus be further out of range. and also make them very unhappy if they happen to lead with the powerfist guy (which a lot of folks do).

Torrent takes a big fat back seat to all the other horribly mean things you can do with shooting now.

I played against Eldar in a tournament recently. He turboed his wave serpents into my lines to set up his assault. I then used my jump troops to block his only access point around the back, immobilized it and moved some tact troops over behind it to keep them inside the rest of the game. So this made me think maybe the way to match this mobility is to go with mobility of your own and block that one access point, shoot down the skimmer. Rinse and repeat. Especially when you figure the average being two wave serpents and banshees ect. Stopping even one crew and wave serpent should be pretty cost effective when you think of the points dedicated to transport and crew.

Torrent of fire actually becomes very critical with the new Doom psychic power IMO.

Longshot- If I'm reading your posts right, it seems you are looking at it from the perspective of playing your Tyranids. I think a big point I'm making is not what you dubbed a super tactic, rather, a rule that is constantly overlooked and can definitely have an impact. I'm not really familiar with running Tyranids, so it is difficult for me to address how effective this is when using Tryanids.

The bigger issue I've seen is b/c of the Eldar being redone. The masses of Starcannons and Brightlances are most likely history, so I've been looking at how the army can still work but not have the AP killing power it once had. Torrent of fire is a little trick that should definitely be remembered by Eldar players because of the sheer amount of high strength, weak AP shooting it can produce.

As an example, I played a game of Cityfight. I was able to utelize the torrent of fire three times and twice my opponent rolled 1's for armor saves in his Iron Warriors army. One example was I'd race a Waveserpent up and unload Guardians and Warlock w/ Destructor. The Wave Serpent would shoot first at the target unit, killing a couple and making it easier for the Guardians to achieve torrent of fire. Then, the Warlock launches Destructor and getting several wounds and shooting a lot of catapult fire. The squad lost it's Powerfist wielding Aspiring Champion, among a few more casualties. Then, the other cheapo Guardian squad was in line to fire...

Am I basing the entire army on torrent of fire? Of course not. However, I can definitely see my army fielding lots more Shuriken Cannons and Scatter Lasers as opposed to Starcannons. This will be especially true when playing Cities of Death where AP isn't the end all be all.

I do totally agree with you about the range game in shooting. I try to keep at the outmost edge of range to ensure I can kill the closest models. Sometimes, this may be important models as my opponents may put them way too far up front. Heck, it's happened to me so I'm learnng how to counter that (heck, it actually happened to me today while in asault as I had to lose an important model in order to keep coherency).

Actual tactics is something I don't really see much posted here. I've put out something for folks to thing about. Longshot, you've brought up another excellent concept about the shooting ranges and (very important) troop positioning within squads. Maybe you could put something together regarding this? I know I'd be really interesting in reading what your take is on it.

As a necron player, torrent of fire is one of the most important rules in the book. Your opponent may only fail that armor save one in three times, but if I can take out the powerfist in a squad, they are no longer a threat to me. They are effectively destroyed after taking a single casualty. 5 man destroyer squads will usually cause torrent saves on shooty squads, and 10 man immortal squads will do the same to assault squads.

I play eldar as well, and I see no reason to include starcannons with the new codex.

Well imagine the case of when you have 3 elite devourer fexs, each is putting an average of 6 wounds onto T4 models a turn...

Basically if you can torrent of fire a unit and it looses its fist/heavy weapon then great, move onto the next target, if not you try again, sure it might take a while for 1 unit to take out another enemy unit this way but with multiple units you start to see a result.

Your never up against the entire enemy army anyway so its not like you have to compare 1vs1 situations all the time.

Well, the point he was making is that by the time you get are likely to get a result, the unit is decimated anyways.

It is a nifty little rule, should be remembered and can come in handy at times.

Really though, the choice between having a chance to kill an important member of the squad and wiping the squad out completely, I would much rather do the latter.

THA- I completely agree with your last statement. With my Eldar army, my fragile little Elves can't wipe out a squad one on one. It takes lots of combined firepower. What the torrent of fire gives me is options. If I render one of the old 96'ers combat ineffective in round one by my first squad, I'm going to look at other dangerous units. If there are no other big threats, I'll continue pounding the original target.

I guess to better put it this way:

Watch how folks will roll their to hit rolls, to wound rolls and then armor saves. They tend to do it piecemeal: Roll for the heavy weapon, then roll for the plasma gun, then roll all the other guns etc... As each weapon gets fired, the opponent is making saves and/or removing models as they go down the line firing weapons from one unit. I've had to politely halt several opponents from rolling saves early so I can get a final tally of how many wounds I get. I've had many opponents not understand torrent of fire and had to show them the rule. On occasion, they lose an important model from a unit I was already targetting.

It's something I've been looking at as I think it falls more broadly under target selection. It can have an impact on what order you fire your units and what you target.

The way you put it it has no effect...

The way I see it I have a 1/3 chance of making the unit worthless (assuming 1 heavy/special wep that I fear) weapon only per squad) after 1 round of shooting from a fex (even though chances are only 2 models die)

I have a 2/3 chance of doing it after 2 turns of fire...

So instead of using the 3 fexs to kill 1 unit, I change targets after the heavy wep is gone...

so while 3 fexs for eg would kill max of 6 tac squads per game, now they are making 18*,334=6 units innefective after just 1 round of fire....ok too tired...confused, can't do the math...

But anyway, basically they will be causing 6 torrent of fire kills on 3+ models per game, meaning I can stop shooting that squad and move onto another.... so what? 6 squads made innefective and 4 killed assuming a torrent of fire each turn and 2 kills a turn per fex.

4 killed, 6 made innefective seems a much better deal than just 6 killed if you ask me.....hardly seems a negligable result...

You are assuming that you have to spend 3 rounds per squad to make the torrent of fire work....on the other hand 1/3 will be working so 1/3 times you fire on a squad the first time and cause the first torrent of fire, they WILL lose that weapon your after!

Sisters use it quite well to. Drop the Heavy flamer template first and rapid fire all those bolters then tally the wounds. After a squad is wittle down to about 3-4 models excorsists come into play. Make your character make a seperate save on that st 8 Ap 1 missile please.

Cool concept. Now, I just need to find a single unit that can shoot a lot of AP1 shots; oh wait, Fire Dragons...