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I have limited experience playing big bug lists, there is really only one I see on any kind of regular basis in my area, but I've been considering getting into a bit more competative play and have been wracking my brain for the last few hours on how to defeat a zilla list with my chossen army, Eldar.

I realize that at small points like 1500 and 1750 the mech eldar list can win games through point denial and objective taking, or at least that's how I believe things should go, correct me if I'm wrong.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to take down the big bugs in a game of 2000 or 2500 points where you can't simply avoid them, but rather you realy need to deal with at least some of them.

The hive tyrant/flying hive tyrant might be dealt with by throwing everything including the kitchen sink at it in order to get it down.  This poses and interesting thought then in my case because once the tyrant is down, and because people don't run a lot of synapse usually, you should be able to instant kill those fexs, right?  They are high toughness/low armor save beasts, but they are not synapse creatures iirc. 

I guss my question in this case is, has anyone considered using a squad or two of wraithguard to instant kill them, or at least get them down with numerous wounds.  If the fex has 4 wounds, you'd only need to hit 5 times on average to get it down, and that's assuming you don't roll a 6 which gets it immediately, assuming you are a. out of synapse range, or b. have downed the tyrants by then.

It's about 5 in the morning so I could be talking completely out of my, well, you know.

Let me know,

Cogito

The Wraithguard will not insta-kill a tyranid in synapse range.

Which is why the 'fex's have to be

Correct?
It looks like it should work, but then I don't know if 'nids have tricks to stop it. It should work with force weapons etc. as well, right?

Posted By skyth on 09/03/2007 7:41 AM
The Wraithguard will not insta-kill a tyranid in synapse range.

The OP covered that bit.

I have considered it, I had a wraithxxxx heavy list but I never played against a big bug list with it to try out the tactic of kill the 2 tyrants then insta-kill the fex's, though that would have been the basic idea if I had played it.  To be honest I expect it is harder to do than it sounds, and remember most zilla lists (at least those posted here) also have 3 zoeys, which may or may not provide extra synpase.

The other issue is that the wraithguard are pretty vulnerable to stealers, the small squad size of the guard makes it pretty renderable to death, exchanging 175pts of wraith guard for a 114 pt dakka fex isn't a great exchange.

Not much point trying to instakill MCs when an equivalent points value of Fire Dragons or Harlequins would flat-out kill them anyway, synapse or no.

Posted By tegeus-Cromis on 09/03/2007 9:51 AM
Not much point trying to instakill MCs when an equivalent points value of Fire Dragons or Harlequins would flat-out kill them anyway, synapse or no.

Unfortunately that equivalence will not survive shooting nearly as well as Wraith Guard, and if your opponent has any smarts at all, you'll likely run into the 8-12 twin-linked etc. Devourer shots from a given carnifex/hive tyrant, which is the same range as you :-|

A Wraithguard is not quite twice as likely to survive a given Devourer hit than a Fire Dragon is, but the Wraithguard is more than twice as expensive. . . .

Wraithguard are not the way to go. How  are you going to them in range? If you walk them, genestealers will destroy them, and nothing can take out Waveserpents and skimmers like Godzilla nids.

You are better off killing the winged tyrant with a couple of Falcons.

Dark Reapers are another good unit for anti-nids. For defense they have a range of 48" compared to the nids 36". Also they have a 3+ save, and nid shooting has no long range, high AP weapons. As far as offense goes, they can take down a TMC a turn.

I think everyone is overlooking the simplest answer here and that is Pahtfinders.

Hitting on 2+ wounding on 4+ with 5or 6 to hit AP1 MC's drop like mutated flies.

If you use Eldrad you can move your firepower after deployment to counter specific threats

Any farseer can doom those flying MC's

Fire dragons in a falcon or better yet Wave Serpent can jump out and blast big bugs

Practice with harlies and your opponent will hardly ever see them to fire directly and if spread out or with an avatar nearby don't have much to fear versus templates (like the occasional spore mine).

Eldar work best using everything together and I think the above mentioned combos are best.

Orion

So am I getting my mech eldar list correct:

Autarch on Jetbike
Autarch on Jetbike
6 Pathfinders
6 Pathfinders
5 Shining Spears
5 Shining Spears
3 Fire Prisms
1500

For 1750 I add 2x5 Pathfinders.

Cogito

I don't play mech so I can't say how effective this would be on the board but I will point out that you don't have much to kill with an AV. Only three vehicles, and while tough to kill completely they will be taking all of the fire power from your opponents.

You may drop one Autarch and one squad of shining spears to take something in a wave serpent. And I would drop one fireprism for a falcon. Yes you lose that third link but you gain the fear people have of the falcon and they may focus more on that leaving your fire prisms a turn or two to shoot.

Orion

Posted By Cogito on 09/04/2007 7:54 PM
So am I getting my mech eldar list correct:

Autarch on Jetbike
Autarch on Jetbike
6 Pathfinders
6 Pathfinders
5 Shining Spears
5 Shining Spears
3 Fire Prisms
1500

For 1750 I add 2x5 Pathfinders.

Cogito

I'm a regular tourney NidZilla player, and there's two good tourney Mech Eldar players in my club, and that list looks very easy to beat.

What are the autarchs for? They're junk against NidZilla. S3 power-weapons? You wound on a 6! Why would you give up doom and fortune for that?

Pathfinders are scary, but you only have 12 of them, them can't move and shoot, and there will be some terrain on the board. They're your scariest unit, but a bit of LOS denial and they're out of it. With just two squads it's a lot easier to deny them all LOS.

The shining spears are also nasty, if they get the charge, but 3+ saves aren't much protection against devourers, and they'll have to come within range of them to try and assault. They have to get the charge to do anything against MCs (they need the S6 power-weapon), but there'll be a flyrant with the same assault range as them, and genestealers with a 13" to 18" assault range.

Fire prisms are a bit crap against NidZilla, especially compared to falcons. At 1500 points I run 3sniperfexs, 3 dakkafex, dakkaflyrant, walkrant with VC/Dev, and 20 vanilla stealers. That's 4 MCs with 36" range shooting, that can pretty reliably shake your prisms and stop them shooting. The reason the walking tyrant has 1 VC is Mech Eldar.

I love fighting shooty vehicles, they're easily suppressed and then they're useless. I don't like fighting Falcons. Even if you manage a stunned on 2 dice, they can ignore it and still deliver something nasty to your lines. Put harlequins or firedragons (not remotely as good) in falcons. At least two falcons and two units of harlequins imo.

Nothing kills MCs like rendy death. Plus with harlequins and furious charge, you have almost the only assault unit out there that can actually charge stealers! Assault marines die if they charge stealers. You're not using the best MC killing unit you have.

I'd suggest
2 falcons, carrying 2 squads of harlequins.
1 Shining spears, with the squad leader to give you hit & run. You need hit and run or you'll be exchanging one MC for a squad of spears when the stealers hit you next turn. Either way, I'm not convinced they're not in trouble.
A bike seer, to fortune the spears and make them very resilient to devourers. re-rollable 3+ is a pain. It won't do anything against rending, but that's the hard bit. You have to avoid it.

When I'm playing mech eldar, I'll be happy to swap a dakkafex, or some stealers for their units of harlequins, pr spears. If they're not very careful they'll run out of units that are a threat to MCs long before I run out of MCs...

That is some good advice. Load up on those 6 man squads of scariness to transport in your falcons. This is the key at low points values. It also keeps the heat off your pathfinders to allow them to pick off the big things. 12 is good, but so are 10. 15 are even better.

Orion

I think I may have confused some people with posting that list.  Because this is not the army section and I'm not completely sure about the rules for posting armies on this board I just posted the generic unit type, not what the unit has or anything.  That isn't an autarch on a jetbike, it's an autarch on a jetbike with a laserlance, and a mandi-blaster.  He leads the unit of Shining Spears that contain an exarch with withdraw. 

I've included these in the army because being a competitive army the list isn't meant to deal only with nidzilla but also with SM and IG SAFH.  A autarch led shining spear squad devestates marines and has enough speed to and manuverability to stay out of the way of those guns in return.  Additionally they make pretty short work of any kind of armor.

As for the comments about the pathfinders being good but not enough, the plan is to add an additional 2x5 at 1750, and start taking 10 man units of harlequins after that(they conveniently are right around 250 points).

Sorry for any kind of confusion.

Actually the pathfinders are fine. 10-15 is great at the points value you are talking about. My comment was just on the low number of models in that army.

Orion