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Hi Everybody,

First of all, Yay 1st post... I lurk on these forums quite often however I never think about posting.. I have been working on an eldar list in either mech Inf form or in foot slogger form and it has been really hard to decide on what is a better list.  Last weekend I played at the GT Northern Europe with IG mech inf and finished in 8th place (I had a lot of bad luck in 2 battles where the dice really failed me )....

Before this tournament I thought that mechanized troops have some distinct advantages. I found out that foot slogging is still more resilient. I also realize that there must be something über nasty in a list if you want it to compete for final victory in a GT environment. For eldar you have 2 options: 3 falcons with the works or eldrad/avatar. I have chosen for eldrad avatar because it gives me more options... I also chose for cheapness of certain units by deleting certain upgrades such as concealocks and upgrades for the fire prisms.. Anyway, here is the list. I envision that I can go offensive with this list in a much more constant manner than with all mounted Eldar.. Please let me know if this is viable.

Total: 1699

Regards, Slaydo

 

 

I would drop the hawks to bump up the spiders to 9 or 10, and to tool out your prisms with holofields/spirit stones.

the brightlances seem somewhat purposeless on your guardians.  Between the vibrocannons, the fireprisms, and the swooping hawks you've got enough for taking out heavily armored vehicles.

take scatter lasers instead.  They are more versatile, and free up thirty points.

drop powerblades from your WS exarch.  On the charge, youre killing one space marine with them.  not on the charge, you might maybe be able to kill one.  if you roll well.  the rest of the squad should kill one marine on the charge.  off the charge?  good luck.  powerblades make you feel comfortable doing something with the squad that they really shouldnt do.  save the charging for the harlequins.  withdraw is too useful, if you get charged on your opponents turn, you've only got to stick through it and then pull out.  besides, those ten points can be better spent elsewhere.

were up to fourty-one points right now.

now pull the odd guardian from your 11 man squad.

fourty-nine.

now take your pathfinders down to rangers,  and pull the sunrifle from your exarch.

this takes you up to 89 freed points.

spend those to give your fire prisms holofields and spirit stones.

given that your avatar and tanks are the only real targets for high str weaponry, you should really be doing everything possible to make them as survivable as possible.  upgrade the tanks, and keep your avatar fortuned.

TheDuke gives sound advice. Things like the Sun Rifle and PBlades are fun luxuries, not necessities like HF + SS. I concur completely.

Eldrad Ulthran 210
Avatar 155

6 harlequins with h/kisses, shadow seer 162

10 dire avengers, exarch upgrade with power weapon/shimmer shield and defend 162
10 guardians, scatter laser 95
10 guardians, scatter laser 95
5 Rangers 95

6 swooping hawks, exarch with intercept 143
6 warp spiders, exarch upgrade with additional death spinner and withdraw 164

2 Vibro Cannon heavy weapon platforms 100
Fire Prism, holofield, spirit stones 160
Fire Prism, holofield, spirit stones 160

Total: 1700 pts.

I must say that I am happy that I could fit in the extra upgrades for the tanks... I am only wondering about the cost of these upgrades... I have read that people have been having success with bare bones fire prisms... What is your opinion on this matter?

Another issue IMHO is the fact that the rangers aren't that good as pathfinders. I Think that pathfinders are waaaaay better than rangers, both in survivability and shooting ability. Would it maybe be wise to dump a warp spider instead of the lost pathfinders??? 

Regards,

Slaydo

You only consistently see pathfinders perform well when you are fielding multiple units of them. As it is, you can use your rangers to push back enemy infiltrators, claim a nice little piece of terrain somewhere off to one flank (and ideally near an objective), with a unit that is just survivable enough to make your enemy think twice about committing the resources necessary to break them. At best, he can claim 95 points. Whereas pathfinders are such a pain in the arse that most people will rank them fairly high on the target priority list. Eldar players cant really have sacrificial lambs, and thats what a single unit of pathfinders becomes.

At least, in my experience.

Suppose I would dump the 2 fire prisms.. They are currently a bit out of tune anyway (being the only 2 vehicles in the list). Maybe it would be an idea to get rid of them and replace them with something different.

- 2 extra vibro cannons for AT (100 pts)
- bulk out the harlies a bit (2 extra) and add banshees as a second countercharge unit (8x howling banshee+exarch with acrobatic&executioner)
- add warlocks with conceal to the guardian squads..

The fire prisms represent a lot of AT and anti Infantry firepower... IMHO the above mentioned units would fare reasonably well against AT or help bulk out the army..

your opinions?

Being the only two vehicles in the list is not the bad thing it is for the vehicles of other races. In the first place, they have ridiculous range, more than you'll need on most boards, so you should get at least 1-2 turns of unthreatened shooting from them (although once your opponent's mobile AT moves forward, you probably won't be able to find a place for them out of his range). Besides, it's rather unlikely that they'll be destroyed even if the whole enemy army shoots at them every turn, so at the very least they'll be 24" move objective claimers. I'd rather have them than the additions you mention..

That's a cool army. Keep the Fire Prisms. Keep the Vibro Cannons or maybe switch them out for D-Cannons at your whim.

You don't really need Eldrad. In fact I'd say you'd be much better served with more Guardians, bulking out your harlie squad to 10 models and taking Pathfinders over Rangers. If you're looking at upgrades, Fire Prisms don't have expensive cargo like Falcons do but you might get another turn of firing out of them with Vectored Engines.

Guardians love the Avatar. Give them the Scatterlaser as mentioned, march them forward and don't stop until they're in close combat.

Death to the Mon-keigh!

What is your battle plan with these units? What do you plan to do when you see "stand and shoot" marines? What do you plan to do against Nid Zilla? What do you plan to do against mech eldar or mech tau? What do you plan to do against chaos? A little more insight into what you want your units doing might help us decide how best to tweek your army.

One flaw that I see at the moment is your half commitment to forward units. It appears that you have several units that are going to rush forward (warp spiders and quins) while the rest of your army hangs back. In general, that's a recipie for disaster. For the most part you want all of your army to do one or the other. It may be that you are planing on holding your "rush" units back so they don't go off half cocked, but that is another thing that falls into your battle plan.

Posted By Phoenix on 10/25/2007 2:08 PM
What is your battle plan with these units? What do you plan to do when you see "stand and shoot" marines? What do you plan to do against Nid Zilla? What do you plan to do against mech eldar or mech tau? What do you plan to do against chaos? A little more insight into what you want your units doing might help us decide how best to tweek your army.

One flaw that I see at the moment is your half commitment to forward units. It appears that you have several units that are going to rush forward (warp spiders and quins) while the rest of your army hangs back. In general, that's a recipie for disaster. For the most part you want all of your army to do one or the other. It may be that you are planing on holding your "rush" units back so they don't go off half cocked, but that is another thing that falls into your battle plan.

Rush forward!  Die Mon-keigh!  Die!

The Wargod is watching you.  There is nothing to fear.

banshees suck.

they look really cool in theory at first.

they suck. 

threes to hit, FIVES TO WOUND against MEq's.  and so terribly fragile that unless you are very, VERY careful with setting up your assaults and ensure you can clear the kill zone, you'll be trading at a negative sum gain.

and the only way to guarantee that they get the assault without being shot to pieces is to throw them in a falcon or wave serpent.  which gets even more expensive.

leave them out.

vibrocannons are tank control.  they arent really going to go around busting things up.  trading tank killing for tank negating isnt gaining you very much.

More warp spiders, similar situation.  the smaller squad can be more easily hidden behind terrain pieces so you can JSJ and avoid being shot up.

It seems like youre looking for a fun, effective list.  You wont be likely to win any tournaments, as it stands, but thats okay if thats not what youre looking for.

If it is, we should be having a completely different conversation.

banshees suck unless you give them transport, and doom their target which requires a lot of during battle attention.

stick with harlequins or scorpions for a combat squads

bring your warp spiders up to 8 or 10

id swap out the swooping hawks also for more spiders and harlequins, cause lone units near your opponents side tend to become main targets of your opponent and then only make back what they shot down in that one turn, but do tend to be good decoys for a mobilized turn for advancing your units upfield.

leave in the fire prisms with upgrades, they tend to bring chaos to most opponents especially if you hide them first turn.

My battle plan will be dependant on the army I am facing

A) forward advance with everything except the vibro cannons. going into cover with the shooty infantry and those being backed up by eldrad/avatar and the harlies. The hawks and the spiders are for harassment of the enemy line. The Hawks more tuned to Anti heavy tanks and Anti light infantry. The spiders are great flankers and can put a lot of hurt engaging armor on via less armored side armor as well as anti light and medium infantry. 14 S6 shots per turn is nothing to sneeze at. I would mostly use this strategy against shooty/static armies.

B) When facing a pure assault army I deploy my vibro cannons as much forward as possible (depends on scenario really) and deny the enemy a certain zone to operate in. Via Eldrad's special rule I redeploy the cannons and other units in such a way that I create a big kill zone in front of my infantry units, followed up by countercharging harlies and eldrad/avatar. again the hawks and the spiders are harrassment units..

In either strategy I would use the prisms in the AT role and anti med inf role at ultra long range.. When in a pinch I could also use the bank shot to really put a dent in some nasty AV 14 stuff like monoliths, russ tanks, land raiders.. The added speed is a bonus in that they have the same speed as falcons and hammerheads..

your opinions?  Oh and BTW, we had a GT last weekend and the highest placed eldar player (9th place) had footslogging eldar. All the others had a lot of mech in there too and they were stuffed... Mech eldar has a kind of a glass jaw imho... Once your tanks fail to kill something necessary or go down themselves you have a serious problem and your army falls apart. In tournaments resilience and mobility are the 2 most important things. The top tier armies were mostly shooty with some mobility (tanks). For tournaments balance is the key..

I'm not quite sure why you think that footslogging gives you more resilience.  You did very well to get 8th with mech IG, and i think mech eldar is much better.  The tanks are a good deal more expensive, but they have much more resilience with SMF or in the case of falcons/prisms the holo fields make them the toughest tanks in the game to kill.

In fact i believe not being mechanised is much, much more fragile.  In my "hybrid" mech/footslogging list i take DAs groundpounding, and often if they get exposed to immortals/destroyers, landspeeders, HB attack bikes, or anything AP 4 (especially fast stuff) they will get 50% or more wiped out in one turn of shooting from only one of these units.  Sure instead of tanks you can take more bodies, but they are very exposed.  And your body count isnt that amazing.  In my 1750 list I get 5 tanks (three falcons/two WS), an HQ, 18 elite troops (take a guess at what they are lol), and 20 DAs for a total of 44.  Not too few if i do say so myself.  You have 62, while more then me i have 3 more tanks and my infantry is much more protected and more elite than yours.  Though you do have some beasties in the form of eldar/avatar.

Also you say that if the tanks don't kill what they have to, then you get stuffed.  Well with eldar you have the infantry inside the tanks that can really lend a hand.  About tanks dying, if you have problems with too many of your tanks dying its almost garanteed to be because of bad luck (with holofield tanks anyway) because they are simply so resilient.  There is almost no way for an opponent to prepare for it.  Or maybe your exposing your tanks too much, if you can hide your infantry well, im sure you can hide your tanks well too.

I've also been noticing that in my hybrid list, all the stuff i keep on the ground (spiders, DAs, wraithlord, and eldrad/avatar) almost always gets wasted, exept eldrad/avatar.  Then the stuff i keep in my tanks (banshees/fire dragons/scorpions) are still enough to mop up the enemy.

I think that people with mech did poorly in that tourny because many nubs are trying to pick up mech eldar (specially trip falcon w/ harlies and dragons) for easy wins when it isnt alwasy so easy.

Edit: if you do decide to stick with a footy army, banshees are definetly not the thing to take without a transport.  I would also say that two prisms would deal much  more damage than the banshees(almost useless w/o transport), vibro cannon and extra harlies.  If you really want a no tank flavor then go for scorpions instead of banshees and infiltrate them.  They can be quite effective on the ground =)

Just a comment regarding resiliency, the problem with foot slogging Eldar is their leadership, both in and out of close combat. That's why the Avatar is so important, as well as ld 10 Farseers, Autarchs and Harlequin leaders. They have expensive elite units that can be sweeping advanced and destroyed, unlike for example Space Marines.

Another comment, regarding Banshee resiliency, Banshees do OK fleeting and using terrain, especially say a six man squad flanking, but there are probably better options.

If you're talking mech eldar, here's a combo I've been wanting to try. 10x upgraded DA in a WS. 6x Dragon and Harlies in Falcons. 1x Avatar. And Fortune/Doom Seer + Jain Zar + 10 Banshees (no exarch) in a WS. The WS is almost certain to get shot down but hopefully your Falcons will get to shoot something.

I'll also note that as far as combined arms and absorbing your opponent's anti-tank fire is concerned, it usually takes anti-vehicle weaponry to take Support Weapons out. The guns soak up 2/3 of the shooting, they have a good deal of staying power for their points.

Edit:  Note that I guess you can't take the Avatar, the Farseer and the Pheonix Lord altogether w/o two org charts/apocolypse/opponent's permission/etc.