Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Allright, I'm preparing for a local GT and I created this list from the units that I have available. I'd like comments on the power level of the list, inefficiencies or glaring weaknesses against specific opponents. How competitive is this list?

Mal'Ik-Kun Main Battle Force: Biel Sen'Ranadan (Blade that Rains Death)

Great Seer Carellin Larethon (Uses rules for Eldrad Uthran)  Carellin is a member of the Great Council of Seers on Craftworld Mal'Ik-kun (trans. "Isha's Gifted Herders" . The council has forseen times of dire conflict ahead, and Carellin once again finds himself performing the rites of battle...  [210 pts]

Avatar [155]

8 Howling Banshees, Exarch w/ Mirrorswords and War Shout  [155]

5 Pathfinders [120]

10 Guardians, Starcannon Platform, Warlock w/ Conceal   [145]

10 Guardians, Starcannon Platform, Warlock w/ Conceal   [145]

8 Warp Spiders, Exarch w/ Dual DS, Powerblades [208]

Vyper w/ Scatter Laser [60]

Vyper w/ Scatter Laser [60]

5 Dark Reapers, Exarch w/ Eldar Missile Launcher, Fast Shot [217]

5 Dark Reapers, Exarch w/ Eldar Missile Launcher, Fast Shot [217]

Wraithlord w/ Eldar Missile Launcher, Brightlance  [155]

[1847 pts] 10 Scoring Units (51 Infantry, 2 Monstrous Creatures, 2 Vehicles)

My general strategy will be to secure a firebase position using Divination to my advantage to redeploy dark reapers into optimal positions. The Guardians hang around the Dark Reapers and Rangers, and the Avatar stays nearby the whole lot to ensure they stay put and shooting. Corellin wanders the field lending his psychic support, and will spend much of his time guiding the guardians and fortuning/guiding the avatar/wraithlord. The whole lot stay pretty much put during battle, the guardians and avatar/wraithlord/corellin combo can move to contest objectives toward the end. The warp spiders harass any flankers or play seek and destroy, and the banshees run around the mid field if there is ample cover, threatening to counter-charge if the spiders get caught in melee and also support the firebase (ah...fleet of foot...)

The idea is that the opponent will have his heavy weapons occupied with my firebase while the banshees and spiders are more or less free to harass along with the vypers.

This list compensates nicely for every eventuality I think, and the only real problem might be with horde-style imperial guard.

the bansees will never make it into combat. at T3 4+ it just won't happen. I've tried it and it doesn't work.
the lack of vehicles, falcon, serpents, prisms is a bit surprising. Those are the toughest(and most aggravating) vehicles in the game and will enable you to deliver your troops, keep victory points, and kill lots of troops or vehicles with ease. I'd consider dropping one of the guardian squads for a serpent for the banshees

I've gotten banshees into combat, more often a 10 man squad on foot will make it than the same squad in a serpent. While I won't comment on your list composition, I will say you will be better served using Eldrad err.. um Carellin to guide the reapers or doom a squad you want dead. Reapers hit hard but when they are guided they evaporate units. I don't see where your army has much to challenge a long range terminator squad, or worse two squads. But if you know your enviroment then you know what your up against. I'd save points on the banshees drop the exarch and buy two more girls. Drop the warlocks off the guardians squads, add more pathfinders or make an warlock squad that can wander around on their own.

I've found time and again that using only one Wave Serpent is just asking for it and it's cargo to be annihilated turn 2 or sooner.

I don't have much to contest terminators at 48"...but if they get any closer than 36" they suddenly have two Starcannon to deal with, and if they get within 24" or closer they're asking for a full doom+shuriken death+starcannon+banshee charge combo. If I really really need to take out 2+ save units at range, I'll simply guide both the Guardian's starcannon for a turn and direct sniper rifles at the target as well.

The only 2+ save troops to be concerned about at range are Obliterators and Broadsides. This list can effectively ignore broadsides by Fortuning the Wraithlord (always in cover) and Avatar. Obliterators would be a bit more trouble, but luckily I can count on not seeing more than 2 squads of them duplicated. And if I really, really, REALLY have to kill a 2+ save target, then I can always dedicate my Reapers to firing plasma missiles and reaper rockets into the target in the hopes of causing enough wounds (one volley should easily kill one 2+ model; except Obliterators once again...)

But to be perfectly honest, the Reapers are so darn good at killing everything else that 2+ save units usually end up isolated or nullified, or are the only unit left standing on turn 4. That's the theory anyways.

And about the banshees...I plan on using them more as a "reserve." They will help deter deep-strikers and protect my more forward elements (such as Reapers/Rangers/Spiders). If my opponent has indirect fire such as Whirlwinds, and he fires upon the Banshees, well then all the better! He's not firing on my Guardians (and therefore my main firebase where the chance of a scatter still hitting something is very high) then he's doing me a favor. And if I really think I need the counter-assault, I can always sit them in cover with fortune... I also chose a squad of 8 (I know 10 is better for the gals) because that's all the painted minis I own!

I've found Eldrad to be highly effective by Guiding my Wraithlord if there are armored targets around and keeping the two monstrous creatures alive with Fortune. I could have built a more "lean" list, but I think that Eldrad is just too cool to pass up. I mean, he basically makes the Eldar army play the way it's *supposed* to play (with Divination and all) and he's the perfect example of a "fluffy" Eldar master-psyker, instead of the meager stats afforded to "production line" Farseers.  He just feels right, and that's why I made up the fluff to fit him in my Craftworld.

I just wanted to let the community know that this list performed spectacularly in a major tournament setting including more than half a dozen participating regular GW-GT competitors and/or winners from around NY state.

The tournament consisted of 5 games using scenarios from the rulebook and a GT scenario called Head of the Snake (kill opposing general) and another new scenario called Unplanned Assault (turn 3 roll randomly for 1 of 3 game objectives: table quarters, center, or victory points). All force descriptions are based on my limited memory.

Round 1: Opponent: Vanilla Marines [1 Chapter Master w/ bike, close combat upgrades; 5 devestators 2 lascannon 2 rocket; 3 squads of 10 tactical marines with a rhino each (no upgrades), 2 landspeeder tornadoes, 1 tankhunting ven. dread, 1 regular asscannon dread, 5 jump pack assault marines w/ power fist] Played by GT-Competitor "Jim"
Mission: Recon Gamma
Summary: He took the first turn and set the tone of the game--he was all-out rushing me. He didn't have smoke on his rhinos (!?) and left his squads inside them. His shooting was mostly unimpressive. My first turn consisted of destroying both rhinos I could see and pinning the squads. Eventually his Captain on bike hit my left flank and was counter-assaulted by howling banshees. The combat lasted a while and included my warp spiders, where the powerblades were somewhat useful. The warp spiders worked perfectly as a bait unit, just as I planned (after destroying a rhino). The assault marines counter-charged the banshees, but the banshees simply turned around and with an impressive 5 wounds thanks to doom destroyed the assault marines before they felled a single blow. I spent the rest of the game mopping up the rest of his force with my firepower squads, and my mobile elements (the warp spiders had 5 models left and were still scoring, and one vyper was left with no main weapon; both made it to his deployment zone). Solid win for my army.

Round 2: Opponent: Chaos Undivided (played by WH/WH40k back-to-back GT winner "Pete T." ) [demon prince w/ flight and manreaper; bloodthirster; 8 chosen w/ 2 champions w/ infiltrate 2x melta special-icon-thing-with-bound-demons that dropped 10 furies turn 1 AND demonvessel champion; 8 bloodletters, 2 squads of 7 plaguebearers, 10 furies (bound on champions), 1 obliterator, 7 khornate bikers w/ icon, defiler w/ indirect fire]
Mission: Cleanse Omega
Summary: He took first turn, summoned the furies, and moved his champions toward my left flank (they had infiltrated outside of 18" so were very close--I blocked all his other infiltration spots with my rangers so had done all I could do in this regard). He did no shooting as all his firepower elements were still off the table. My reapers move toward the advancing chosen and can *just* see out of the woods they occupy to shoot at the chosen. I knock off 2 chosen with starcannon fire, and my warp spiders and other shooting put an end to the furies before they act. Turn 2 his blood letters come in off the chosen and get a perfect scatter towards my warp spiders, catch them in assault and annihlate them to no casualties in return. I then counter-charge them after shooting them with my banshees and remove them from the table, but lose the banshees in the process. This causes the bloodletter to come into play since I killed the host, and he proceeds to gut my army and ended up fighting Eldrad with fortune on himself :-P)The bikers come on later to destroy my pathfinders, and the guardians get tangled up with the obliterator, who refuses to die. The plaguebearers finally finish off my wraithlord as his demon prince finishes off the locked guardians. At this point I concede the game and admit that I deployed far too agressively against demonbomb chaos. Solid Loss. (this table's terrain coupled with the table-quarters deployment screwed any chance I had at decent firing lanes--I was essentially helpless from the get-go)

Round 3: Opponent: Necros [1 lord w/ phase shifter, destroyer body, warscythe, res orb; 2 squads of 3 wraiths, 10 scarabs, 3 squads of 11 warriors and 1 of 10 warriors, 8 immortals, and one Monolith] Played by Brian (greenhorn)
Mission: Unplanned Assault Gamma
Summary: The mission ended up not mattering, because I had this opponent firmly beaten by turn 4. He made the mistake of exposing his immortals to my reapers early on, and then guessed his assault distance wrong for his wraiths. I essentially was able to focus fire sequentially on individual squads, and destroyed his army systematically taking advantage of the units that were outside res-orb range. I was paired down for my previous loss, and this was the weakest opponent I faced. Solid Win.

Round 4: Opponent: Thousand Sons Chaos [Lord of Change bound to 9 Chosen Terminators (no upgrades), Demon Prince (lots of upgrades) 3 squads of 9 sons with 1 sorcerer w/ bolt of change each, 1 predator annihlator with basic upgrades, 1 defiler w/ indirect fire] Played by GT competitor "John"
Mission: Head of the Snake Omega (kill 1 enemy HQ designated as the "general" by the owning player)
Summary: Basically this game consisted of thousand sons dying incredibly fast to dark reaper and starcannon fire. One of my Vypers came onto the table from reserve and scored a penetrating hit on the side armor of the pred. annihlator that showed up the turn before (wasting its lascannon shot on guardians) and killed it with a beautiful 1 in a 1000 shot. The demon prince hid the whole game for fear of being killed. The game was decided when my opponent took the bait and deep-struck his terminators next to my banshees, who were within 10" of the board edge. He was very worried about them apparently, and despite having other good deep strike locations and my prompting him *are you sure?* he decided to drop next to the banshees for sure. He rolled the scatter dice and fell off the table by 1", losing a good 500 points in one roll. He conceded defeat at that point and we decided to play it out as if they had landed on target. It didn't matter. All the terminators died and the rest of the sons died before reaching rapid-fire range. Solid victory to the Eldar.

Round 5: Opponent: Necrons (they had a heavy showing this tournament) [2 monoliths, 1 lord w/ veil of darkness and staff of light, 10 immortals, 3 squads of warriors @ 10 warriors each, C'Tan "The Deceiver"] Played by GT competitor "Don"
Mission: Take and Hold (Objective Markers)
Summary: We rolled 5 objectives for this game. I ended up placing 3 of them. Four of them were deployed approximately 2 at each deployment zone's edge; each pair 24" apart. The last marker was placed on the left flank about midway, but favoring his side.
    The game was a dawn battle (night fight first round). Turn 1 he forced me to go first. I attempted to shoot at his monoliths (being the only thing I could see) and failed miserably. I did no significant damage. On his turn he moves up with his monolith, his immortals and lord move up around a hill just outside his deployment zone, into LOS of my left reaper squad. His warrior squads shuffle forward but remain hidden 6" into or behind terrain. His monolith scores a direct hit on my forward most guardian squad (which was maneuvering to get LOS on immortals) killing 5 guardians out of 7 wounds (yay conceal!) Luckily my avatar made my forward units fearless, and the warlock in this squad ordered them forward towards the monolith, hurled his spear--and lo!--penetrated the monolith and immobilized the massive vehicle-fortress. My left Reaper squad fell 7 immortals with a spectacular round of shooting, and only 6 stand back up. My opponent can't use his monolith's portal to regenerate the 6 fallen immortals because a warrior squad became available from reserve that turn and had to use the portal instead. The next turn my opponent's second monolith hits the table, and he can't resist dropping it in the middle of my formation and using it's gauss flux arc to attack 7 out of 10 squads in my army. Lots of dice were rolled but little damage was caused. The same warlock that immobilized my opponent's first monolith turns around to attack the fresh monolith, scores ANOTHER penetrating hit, and destroys the massive vehicle with a result of "6", causing a 5" explosion that causes a few casualties to the 5 of my squads caught in the blast. No major damage is sustained by my force. His lord finally uses veil to deep strike on my right flank in a puny attempt to disable my dark reapers, and he gets assaulted by the avatar, who was exactly 12" away, re-rolled the terrain test to get a "6" the second time, and wiped out the rest of the immortals. The lord veiled out of combat on his turn like a coward, causing me to be just a half inch short of the objective on my right. My opponent didn't move his C'Tan forward at all during the game and it did nothing--I used divination to redeploy the obvious feint of placing a dark reaper squad exposed on my right flank, and he had deployed to counter them with his C'tan, who was left without a target. In the end my opponent managed to secure just as many objectives as me, so it came right down to how much we had killed each other. I destroyed a good 700 points of his force, compared to a paltry 250 ish that he had destroyed of mine. Another solid win.

I ended up taking 2nd place in generalship (battle points). 1st was in contention between me and "Don" with his undivided Chaos, and because I lost to him he took 1st place. Thanks to my laziness regarding painting, I had no shot at overall and my sportsmanship score was low because people don't like to be corrected when they're using illegal rules, and because most opponents are poor sports about having their "elite" troops drop like flies to superior Eldar firepower.

Overall I'm proud to know that I'm as good a general as some of the best in the Northeast!

Thanks for the update on the tourney. Looks like some combo missions of RTT and out of the rulebook with additional twists. You took an unconventional list and it worked. Good for you for sticking to your guns. I'm not trying to snipe, but the quotes below piqued my interest a bit:

"My reapers move toward the advancing chosen and can *just* see out of the woods they occupy to shoot at the chosen."

"my sportsmanship score was low because people don't like to be corrected when they're using illegal rules"

Maybe a typo, but I'm pretty sure Dark Reapers can't move and fire.

Posted By Sarigar on 03/13/2007 5:38 PM
"My reapers move toward the advancing chosen and can *just* see out of the woods they occupy to shoot at the chosen."


Maybe a typo, but I'm pretty sure Dark Reapers can't move and fire.

I picked up on that as well, but just decided it was probably badly worded, and he presumbly meant shoot at the choosen the following turn!

Precisely. My opponent was about 10" from the reapers *after* their 5" move through terrain. I was banking on his failed assault roll to get through the terrain, because if he failed his chosen were toast next turn. Lo and behold he rolled a 6 and assaulted me. My reapers were that close to the enemy in the first place because he infiltrated and because the terrain was *very* unfavorable for my force.

I tried to be lenient on the rules bits because so many different people were there from all over and probably play different in their friendly games. I had one opponent try and claim, however, that a half-destroyed squad counts for full VPs. Also, the chaos opponent I lost to supposedly had an illegal list because the Bloodthirster can't be summoned from a squad with Mark of Undivided or something like that. My last opponent in particular probably nuked my sportsmanship because I celebrated when I destroyed his 2 cheddar-mound Monoliths and he seemed to have the most trouble with the rules overall (he thought his C'Tan would be a scoring unit, etc.)

People don't like being corrected. Unfortunately even a tournament is a learning environment.

The Chaos list was fine. You can summon a bloodthirster from an aspiring champion with an undivided or khorne mark. It's also poor form to blame your opponents for getting low sportsmanship scores.

I *blame* my opponents because I wasn't particularly rude or anything. I mention it because it's unfair that sportsmanship always reflects on the list you bring and the random aspects of the battle (such as disabling two monoliths  in a row).

It also doesn't reflect on me well to correct people on their rules. I wasn't nasty about it, but people always feel duped regardless of how you handle rules issues.

You ended up facing 5 meq armies. Your list was basically tailored against meqs so you had a huge advantage. Im acctually amazed you didnt get any horde opponents. So add the fact that your list was geared to face the armies you did plus your opponents bad luck (deep strikign off board) id imagine they werent happy. So this reflected on sportmanship scores especially when they had to fill out the scores probably before many other tables were finished.

This isnt right by any means but nevertheless is what most likely happened. From what it sounds like to me you should have been given extra pts for being willing to play out a game for fun after a unit disapeared.

To be fair, this particular tournament's sportsmanship system forced players to rank their opponents from "best" to "worst" and awarded points based on that ranking.

So if, like what happened to me, you played several guys who were really good sports, you still had to downgrade some of them. It was not allowed to give every good sport top sports scores.

So overall the sportsmanship scores were wonky and all over the place. They didn't really necessarily reflect anyone's actual sportsmanship. It's not that the opponents dinged Col Ellios's sports scores--it's just that they ranked other players higher.

I'm a little confused on the daemonbombing army's ability to summon daemons on the first turn. I thought the Daemon Icon just allowed you to summon a daemon pack without a roll? Meaning you still have to wait to the second turn, but automatically pass the roll. Is this not true? I looked at my dex earlier today and that's what it seemed to say to me.

See several YMTC threads on this topic. There's two sides to this camp and neither side will back down on their interpretation of the rule.

It looks like a pretty good army, but I think you will suffer against non-Marine shooty armies like Imperial Guard and Tau. You have one Brightlance and a couple of S6 fast movers that can take on a Leman Russ, and you don't have much of anything that can hunt down Crisis Suits. I think both of these armies would be able to grind down the Eldar over a number of turns. Sure, you could shred the Guard infantry and any Tau tanks that get cocky, but over all I think you would lose that matchup.

One possible answer to this problem would be to make you firebase tougher and try to outlast the other side's shooting. You could do this by increasing the size of the Guardian squads and maybe adding some Dire Avengers, but since your units are fearless I don't think much will be gained by making them larger.

The other solution would be to add more attack units, like a unit of Harlequins on foot or an aspect warrior squad in a Wave Serpent. Of course, both of these options are pricy so you would have to drop a number of units; maybe a Guardian squad and the wraithlord?

Thanks for the input!

Believe it or not this army has very few problems against Hordes; Dark Reapers are tremendously effective at ruining *anyone's* day.

Flavius thanks for the input I didn't realize it was that way (I gave all my opponents 3-5, I didn't realize it was supposed to be a 1-5 system for all 5 players--nobody said anything about this so I wonder if what you think happened really happened...) If this is the truth I feel better because I do think my list is rather merciless.

Tau are indeed a headache, but this list bunkers against them exceptionally well. With all the 3+ saves most of the Tau long range shooting is useless (read: smart missile systems and missile pods) throw in fortune to the mix and Tau shooting is usually brought to a standstill. After knocking his transports out of the sky or decimating his troop formations in LOS with my reapers, my wraithlord/guardians/avatar/eldrad/banshees/warp spiders all can move up and go hunting. If crisis suits fall back from this advancing formation, all the better as my opponent is giving up ground at that point, and a bunch of unsupported crisis suits, while dangerous, usually fail to accomplish much.

I truly believe this is one of the more powerful "universal" Eldar lists you can build with the new dex. It looks "ok" on paper, but really performs well in reality.

FYI--there wasn't a single "horde" type army at this entire GT. They're less and less popular these days, mostly because every horde dex can't make a competitive horde list. Orks and IG are out of date, and Tyranids' small bugs aren't that impressive--nearly every tyranid player around here has a healthy dose of "big bugs" in their list. Really the only list that might cause a serious threat to mine would be an all moster-bugs army with plenty of extended carapace, otherwise the Reapers knock 'em down like everything else.

Col E--the order in which you wrote your opponents' names on the sportsmanship sheet represented the order in which you ranked them, from top to bottom. I'm 100% sure that's what happened: it was clearly described in the rules packet and caused a lot of discussion on the organizers' board before and since the tournament.

Probably the judges ignored the numbers you wrote in for each opponent and assumed that you wrote them in the order you intended by rank.

Hmm, well one of regular opponents runs a list very similar to what you have, but as we play 1500 points the list is a little different. Farseer, 2 Guardian squads, 2 Reaper squads, Vypers, Wraithlord, Banshees in a Serpent, Fire Dragons in a Falcon. I have also played a couple of games against a foot slogging Eldar army with many Guardian squads, an Avatar, and Reapers. So I am familiar with the army.

The armies I use are Tau, Guard, and Iron Warriors. The Iron Warriors can do ok if their indirect fire comes through, but it is an uphill battle against this kind of army. The Tau and Guard, though, have the advantage. The things that give me the greatest trouble in the army are the aspect warriors and their transports - if I can kill those early the game in the bag.

The Reapers are brutal against infantry, but a savvy Tau player will just hide his infantry from the Reapers. With the Guard, so long as the Ordnance is on target, the Reapers can usually be nullified in a two or three turns. Though, to be fair, the Exarchs do a lot of work for the squad so as long as they are around they're a threat and with the Avatar nearby they won't be going anywhere.

But that's just my experience. I'm sure you have your way to address those problems.

Posted By ColonelEllios on 03/13/2007 6:05 PM
I tried to be lenient on the rules bits because so many different people were there from all over and probably play different in their friendly games. I had one opponent try and claim, however, that a half-destroyed squad counts for full VPs. Also, the chaos opponent I lost to supposedly had an illegal list because the Bloodthirster can't be summoned from a squad with Mark of Undivided or something like that. My last opponent in particular probably nuked my sportsmanship because I celebrated when I destroyed his 2 cheddar-mound Monoliths and he seemed to have the most trouble with the rules overall (he thought his C'Tan would be a scoring unit, etc.)

People don't like being corrected. Unfortunately even a tournament is a learning environment.

Its my understanding that a half destroyed squad DOES count for full VP's. If I have a squad of 10 space marines and have not divided them as per the Combat Squads rule, and you kill 5 marines, that squad is not under half, so I still get full points for them. But it is still half destroyed.

I find newbies and people unsure of the rules tend to gack you as much as people who hate losing do. I also dislike people who don't think you play an army correctly and who gack you on sportsmanship. I play a shooting Blood Angels army, where Black Rage is a detriment, and I got zapped on sportsmanship by the winner of the game cause I pulled squads back as I reformed my line ( and out of LOS of of 2 4lascannon havoc squads).

There is nothing in the rules that says I have to give you a chance to win the game. My goal is to make you earn the win. And have fun. I have something like 10 Best Sportsman awards so I usually seem to be doing things right....<shrugs>

Double-check the victory-points rules in the missions section of the BGB...

under 50%- half vp

that one?

Also, a Bloodthirster CAN be summoned from a champ of undivided. Any Greater Daemon can be.