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I haven't yet fought the new eldar (i took a sabatical). I have a fight next week and the store didn't have the codex for me to read up on their new rules.

any suggestions as to what to take, what to eldar avoid, etc..

I play 2 platoons, one that is on the line 4 squads strong, one that drops in which is also four squads strong. I like mortors, autocannons and bassies.

iron dicipline, drop troops, COD, hard vets.

I'm thinking a couple hell hounds woudl be nice for the harliquins. I plan to take a lascannon HQ squad for the falcon and or wraithlord.

gb

At most, stun the falcons and move on. Don't waste shots that will not do much of anything

I believe your love of the Autocannon will serve you well-the two shots helps to make up for the sub-par Guard BS, while also giving you 1/3 chance of glancing (which is reasonably all one can ever do) the Falcon's armor. I use a similar arrangement with my Guardsmen against Eldar, and it seems to work pretty well. Particularly if you bring a Command Plt. Autocannon Squad with Sharpshooters . . . Certainly worth it if you are confident your opponent will be fielding grav tanks. In fact, given the need to hit and glance the Falcon, lascannons are mostly wasted against Eldar, unless you plan on facing a Wraithlord. Even then, a Missile Launcher squad with Sharpshooters is an effective counter without spending the extra points.

I like and regularly use your other doctrines. Remember that Hellhounds still don't negate the Harlies' 5+ invulnerable, but they are still extremely useful for their mobility and reach.

If your opponent is using many Falcons, the key to consider is what you have to counter their cargo. If its a shooty squad (Fire Dragons) have some AP4 fire on hand to shred their ranks. If its assaulty (Harlies/Scorpions/Banshees) have an appropriate counter in mind.

i did not know about the harlies inv save. thanks
can they be targeted by guess weapons? I thought i read somewhere that they couldn't.
Do harlies have a save now in CC? it used to be they were hard to shoot but if you threw enough guardsmen (or the eldar rolled badly) you could drag them down because they didn't have a save

thanks
gb

Harlies usually travel with a shadowseer, who has conceal. (or similar name) It means you must roll 2d6x2 for the sight range. If they are farther, you can't see them, and lose shooting privledges for the turn. I don't think guess weapons get any special treatment.
But without the shadowseer, you can target them normally.

The problem with swamping Harlies, is they have WS5, I6, an 3 rending attacks. So they will get to clear much of the kill zone before you get to hit back. They have an unimpressive T, so you can hurt them, if you have anyone left engaged.
Plus, with fleet, and ignoring difficult terrain effects, it is hard to get to them unless they want you to.

Targeting Veil of Tears (the Shadowseer's power) with Indirect Fire/Guess Range weapons is a rather grey area at the moment. I would recommend clarifying this with your opponent in advance either way.

Their invulnerable save applies to both shooting and to HtH attacks.

I have yet to find an effective counter to Harlequins with the Guard in close combat-between the initiative and number of attacks they will destroy the entirety of the squad, or at least whatever is in the killzone. Honestly, the only way to kill them if they reach your lines is to let them eat a front squad, let them get a massacre, and, provided you set your units up 7" apart or moved them away from each once you saw what was coming, you can rapid fire him to death. Humorously, you opponent will grow to quite dread lasguns. That's a lot of shots that hit on 4s and wounds on 4s.

IG should do fairly well against elder. The trick is to maximize on infantry and only take a minimal (if any) amount of tanks. Eldar pack bright lances and fire dragons so tanks rarely live long. The mobile nature of their forces also means that indirect fire isn?t going to be too effective since they can get inside your minimum range fairly quickly.

That being said, lets look at the ?good? elder units you are likely to see on the field and talk about what can be done against each.

Falcon: These are a must have in any elder army these days. The basic idea with these guys is to just keep them from shooting at you since trying to do real damage takes more fire power than its worth. Shoot at a flacon till its shaken then move on. Once you are out of non-shaken falcons to shoot at, you can go back and shoot some of them some more in an attempt to bring them down?or fire at something else you have a better chance of killing. Mathematically auto cannons and las cannons cause the same number of glancing hits per weapon. I would recommend going with auto cannons since they have the possibility of scoring 2 damaging hits where as the las cannon can only ever get one. I?m also led to believe that auto cannons are cheaper. Be aware that since falcons can transport units, there?s likely to be something inside.

Fire Dragons: These guys carry meltaguns and usually ride in transports (falcons or wave serpents). They will melt down your tanks but there usually are not enough of them to do significant damage to your foot troops. Once they land and melt whatever it is they want to kill, las gun them to death. If that doesn?t work, charge them. They are only slightly better in hand to hand than IG troopers and they cost twice as much.

Wave Serpents: These transports not only bring deadly troops like fire dragons, howling banshees, and dire avengers to your front lines, they pack twin linked heave weapons. Fortunately for you, they can?t take holofields (the war gear that lets falcons roll 2 dice on the damage table and take the lowest). Their power field reduces the strength of any weapon hitting them to a maximum of 8. This means that las cannons are a waste of points against them and are less likely to do damage than auto cannons. These things are going to be your worse nightmare if they are carrying dire avengers so you may need to make them your primary target.

Dire Avengers: These guys are only ever fielded in wave serpents. The serpents zoom up and drop off the avengers who then pump a whole lot of ap 5 fire into your guys. The only real way to deal with them is to shoot down their serpent. On mitigating thing you can do is move a bunch of squads into the area they are coming into. They will kill one of their choosing and then you can finish them off with return fire.

Harlequins: While these guys look nasty on paper, they really are not that bad. They are toughness 3 with a 5+ I save. Not exactly hard to kill, the problem is shooting at them through the veil. Well if I remember correctly, you have drop troops right? Drop a squad or two next to them and they will simply go away. They can?t take being shot at. If it does look like they will get into hand to hand, move the closest squad to them forward. Then move your other squads in the area away from them. This will give them something to chew up and then leave them out in the open to be shot to pieces by whatever else you had in the area. If you can get one close enough, hell hounds will obliterate the harlequins.

Dreadnaught (wraithlord): With the other options in elder heavy support choices, these guys don?t tend to see the field like they used to. That being said, plasma guns, melta guns, las cannons, and sniper rifles do a number on these guys. Just work it out so you get to put some fairly high strength, ap 3 shots into them and they go down. If you can get some inquisitor troops with strength 8 power fists, those work well too. Strength 6 fists do not.

Scouts/Pathfinders: These are the elder snipers. They are fairly dangerous and often end up with 3+ or even 2+ cover saves. The lesson here is that you should not waste long range shooting power on them since they will only save and move on with life. What you can use on them is flamers. Their normal armor save is 5+ so when they don?t get their cover save, they die in droves. They are also quite expensive (19 each for the regular scouts, 24 for pathfinders).

Striking Scorpions: You?re not too likely to see these guys on the field (and anyone taking banshees against IG probably didn?t know what they were up against) these days but they are worth mentioning. The only real way to get these guys (and their gal counter parts) into hand to hand is with a wave serpent. The serpent will zoom up really close to your lines/squad and end their movement there. If you don?t destroy it on your turn, it will have the scorpions disembark, move, and charge you. So long as the troops get out before the serpent moves, they can also move in that turn. Banshees get the additional bonus of being able to fleet in there too. In either case there are 2 ways to deal with this other than killing the serpent. The first is to run away. If you move back, away from the serpent, the troops inside will be too far away from you to charge (if you estimated the distance well). If it looks like you can?t get far enough away from the serpent, then move closer. Troops can?t be within 1? of you when they get out of the serpent, so if you block the door, they can?t get out. If the serpent moves (or turns) to clear up the doorway, then the troops inside can?t assault that turn (although they can shoot you up with pistols, but you end up winning that fight).

I feel kind of dirty telling you how to kill the army I play, but spreading good tactics is what this board is about. Hope that helps.

@Alpharius/Greg, you might consider roughriders for their countercharge against harlies. I know that they will still swing second, but their charge range and their ST:5 can really work in your favor.

Darrian

i like the idea of dropping next to them.
Phoenix, thank you for the very in-depth reply! I bought the codex today so i can see for myself what has changed from last edition.

Our gaming club is starting the Vogen campaign next week (our second time of running it) and i am fighting eldar on the Palace Gounds. (it is one of the few map places that doesn't use CoD/Cityfight rules. There are 2 eldar players in the game but since this is the first week i don't know what either of their armies look like.
gb

Yes, unfortunately the current GW sculpts are to me rather unattractive, and the nicer conversions I've seen tend to add up rather quickly (ie: x10 Ork bikes, box of Guardsmen, and some lances adds up to about $200 MSRP, or $20/model). The very nice FW Death Riders weigh in at the same cost in USD. So someday they will get tried, but that day is not near.

However, if one were to find agreeable models, I imagine they could work quite nicely.

Posted By Darrian13 on 05/25/2007 3:29 PM
@Alpharius/Greg, you might consider roughriders for their countercharge against harlies. I know that they will still swing second, but their charge range and their ST:5 can really work in your favor.

Darrian

I cant see riders working against harlies - 6 harlies with kisses average 6 dead riders before they even get to strike. You'd need a large squad to get to attack back and do anything approaching worthwhile. A 10 man squad with just lasguns will likely do more casualties rapid firing.

Of course, charing into combat also allows one to mitigate the risk of rolling double ones on spotting distance at a truly awful moment in the game.

You are more likely to do nothing in HtH, than you are rolling double ones..

Posted By Alpharius Walks on 05/24/2007 8:03 AM
Targeting Veil of Tears (the Shadowseer's power) with Indirect Fire/Guess Range weapons is a rather grey area at the moment. I would recommend clarifying this with your opponent in advance either way.

Their invulnerable save applies to both shooting and to HtH attacks.

I have yet to find an effective counter to Harlequins with the Guard in close combat-between the initiative and number of attacks they will destroy the entirety of the squad, or at least whatever is in the killzone. Honestly, the only way to kill them if they reach your lines is to let them eat a front squad, let them get a massacre, and, provided you set your units up 7" apart or moved them away from each once you saw what was coming, you can rapid fire him to death. Humorously, you opponent will grow to quite dread lasguns. That's a lot of shots that hit on 4s and wounds on 4s.

I don't really see a grey area re Indirect and VoT. Indirect allows you to target a unit whose location is known (ie you still have to target an individual model withint the unit as your aim point) but cannot be seen. VoT prevents you from klnowing they are even there, so if you don't know they are there, you cannot shoot at them. So IMO, IDF would still have to pass a successful VoT check to target the Harlies.

 

In spite of that, my IG have never had a problem dealing with Harlies. In fact, you posted one of the best ways to handle them, tripwire squad out front and then gun the Harlies down. Deepstriking flamers next to them (Aren't Drop Troops and Special Weapon squads with 3 flamers wonderful.... Or even a remnant squad with a single flamer.) is another fun way to deal with them. A bit random due to deep strike, but that's what makes it fun.

It is sometimes hard to 'tripwire' them because of their hit and run issue.

thank you all for hte great replies. I played the game tonight and I have two things to report to you.
A) droping troops (flamers help) next to harlies makes them disappear! it's was great!!!!!
2) never bring autocannons to a lascannon fight. *laugh* I was expecting falcons and i ended up facing 2 wraithlords. Needless to say 20+ autocannon shots later and 0 wounds on one of the lords.

the hariquins play zero part in the game. Mangu Ra kicked my guard butt as did eldritch storm but the harlies were effectly countered!

gb

Well its good to hear that some of your planning worked out.  Maugen Ra is going to be a pain for you.  The high volume of shots he puts out along with pinning and the ability to remove cover saves is going to cause some hurt.  The one saving grace though would be knowing he costs almost 200 points for the single model.  The only way to get rid of him is to work it out so he's the closest model to you, then you can pick him out for shooting purposes.  The dreadnaughts are going to be a problem if you are packing all auto cannons, although they would have been great for killing skimmers, welcome to the guessing game of fighting eldar.  Next go around (assuming you can change your list) try bringing some las cannons, plasma guns, and melta guns.  If you can work out squads with strength 8 power fists (Inquisitorial allies I would assume) those work well too.

yeah, harlis i find are great against like a squad of termies (six harlies charging, 4 rending attacks)... but i fear against guard they will just get their happy smiling butts kicked... damn the mighty lasrifle!!!

Posted By Alpharius Walks on 05/23/2007 11:32 PM
I believe your love of the Autocannon will serve you well-the two shots helps to make up for the sub-par Guard BS, while also giving you 1/3 chance of glancing (which is reasonably all one can ever do) the Falcon's armor. I use a similar arrangement with my Guardsmen against Eldar, and it seems to work pretty well. Particularly if you bring a Command Plt. Autocannon Squad with Sharpshooters . . . Certainly worth it if you are confident your opponent will be fielding grav tanks. In fact, given the need to hit and glance the Falcon, lascannons are mostly wasted against Eldar, unless you plan on facing a Wraithlord. Even then, a Missile Launcher squad with Sharpshooters is an effective counter without spending the extra points.

I like and regularly use your other doctrines. Remember that Hellhounds still don't negate the Harlies' 5+ invulnerable, but they are still extremely useful for their mobility and reach.

If your opponent is using many Falcons, the key to consider is what you have to counter their cargo. If its a shooty squad (Fire Dragons) have some AP4 fire on hand to shred their ranks. If its assaulty (Harlies/Scorpions/Banshees) have an appropriate counter in mind.

Fair warning,  for kicks last game I dropped a wave serpent in front of three autocannon armed chimeras and a squad with multiple plasmas. Wave serpent laughed off the shots and danced merrily away...

Playing math-hammer here, it takes (on average) 18 autocannon / plasma gun shots to bring down a wave serpent (destroy or immobilize). This equates to 9 weapons shooting (assuming you can double tap the plasma). It would require (again on average) 12 las cannons to do the same job. In the end the autocannon is more likely to do damage. That doesn't mean it will, this is a dice based game so anything can happen.

I think everyone on this message board can relate stories of the time where they brought down "insert some difficult to kill thing here" with a lucky shot/hand to hand attack. I'm equally sure they can also provide antic dotes of times where a unit of theirs live though incredible odds and massive amounts of fire/assault power.

In the end, you can only really plan for what?s likely to happen and then adjust to what actually happens.

I am also an Eldar player and you should be warned that he missed some of our most dangerous units for IG.

Swooping Hawks with exarch and Sunrifle, pinning 2 squads a turn and possibly wiping out one is very handy.

3 Guardian Jet Bikes with a single shuriken cannon: assault 3, jump shoot jump with a str 6 ap 5 gun

Striking Scorpions don't need a transport they can charge the first turn occasionally because of infiltrate and move through cover, and 3+ save is annoying. )3 attacks and 4 for the exarch each not on the charge

Warwalkers with Farseer support to cast Guide on them, shuriken cannons or scatter lasers: 6 to 8 shots a piece hitting 75% of the time.
Strangely enough I might want to try moving close enough to assault with them since that would moake them unkillable for you and will win combat.

Any of the Phoeniz lords can make your life hell, but especially Karandas with his 7 attacks at ws 7 and str 5.

And here comes the ouchy, Heavy support platforms eat IG, the vibo cannon, or the web one will hurt badly.

hmmm, i have never tried the vibro cannons, what are peoples ideas on them??? although, i do enjoy the Scorps...lol...

personally i distain using guardiens, so i dont use weapons platforms. using dire avengers is the way to go infantry wise in my opinion. for the points, getting an exarch with bladestorm x 2 and a "tripwire" squad with bladestorm and defend, not much is going to be living. now, i only run one D A squad right now (no monies for the other two) but i've tested shooting with the avengers and they just rock. shooting against normal guardsmen without bladestorm should be no problem (as you get 22 shots hit 3 up wound 3 up). maybe its overkill, however, i think there is no such thing.

don't underestimate them. they can mow down pretty much anything you throw at them. and since they are assault wepons, you won't be shooting as much lead as they will be. take them out from long range with HBs.

hope this tidbit helps =-)

I disagree with pheonix about Scorpions not being used against IG much, and being hard to get into CC. As an Eldar player, my Scorpions are one of my best anti-IG weapons. They infiltrate ona flank and go after anything close by, either forcing heavy weapon squads to pick up and retreat or at least drawing plasma fire that could otherwise be targetting my incoming skimmers.

Also, watch out for Warp Spider squads. They'll be closing in fast to shoot up your troops, then lock them into CC before Withdrawing to do it all over agin. These guys are target numero uno for indirect fire or anything with AP3. bassies will neutralize them pretty well.

I agree with Pheonix about dropping flamer squads by the Pathfinder/scout units, though. Killing these guys off will save you some serious headaches.

Just a note, Scorpions can't get a first turn assault unless you move towards them. They don't have fleet.