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I call this list "Eldar Monstrous Creatures" or "Elfzilla"
List is intended for competitive/tournament play, not concerned about 'comp' scoring. All criticism and advice welcome!

HQ:
Farseer w/Bike, Sp.Stones, RofWard, Fortune, Mind War
5 x Warlocks w/Bikes, 2 x Enhance, 2 x Embolden, Destructor
Super Choppy bike squad. The warlock psychic powers were doubled up to help with incoming fire saturation and the new wound allocation rules... is this sane?
-445 pts

Avatar
-155 pts
Run Forrest, Run! Basically just ram him hard and fast into something soft and squishy.

Troops:
3 x 6 Guardian Jet Bikes w/2 Shuricannons per squad (152 each squad)
2 x 6 Rangers (114 each squad)
Jet bikes JSJ/harass and Rangers focus on taking out TMCs and the like

Heavy Support:
3 x Wraithlords w/Brightlance and Eldar Missile Launcher
Fairly Reliable AT and some decent CC stompy

Total: 1749

What do you all think?

The HQ is half strength. Max it out.

The jetbikes are 2/3 strength. Reduce to 1/3.

Rangers and wraithlords are your firebase?

So Avatar goes it alone.

How does this army work together?

Seems like alot of pretty models without a coherent concept.

Are you Shooty? Hidy? Assaulty? Annoying? Durable?

I see all those elements without a focus in any of them...

It isn't designed to be a one-dimensional army.

I envision it working under these basic principles:

-Avatar/Bike Council are high threat targets that can't be ignored as they advance up the board.
-Wraithlords are also high threat AT, providing more dilution to enemy High strength/low AP weaponry. They trundle up the board firing off pot shots with their BLs/EMLs. They're not horrible in CC and can easily tarpit any non-CC focused units that manage to get by the bike council/avatar.
-The jetbike squads can each put 6 S6 24" shots downfield each turn, granted it's only BS3 but with a little luck, who knows... I've always been a huge fan of Heavy Bolter type saturation fire. 18 S6 shots a turn that can JSJ isn't bad.
-Rangers are static firebase, dealing out sniper shots to enemy MCs if possible or going for pins on strategic targets if there aren't any big targets around.

In my head it seems like a good plan, I've only tried it out once so far, hard to gauge the effectiveness due to what I perceived to be an inexperienced opponent.

Avatar is low-threat and gets dropped by everything.

Wraithlords are moderate threats to vehicle armies ONLY, and in your army will eat every heavy weapon shot.

Jetbikes are fine, but why bring not bring 4 units so concentrated fire doesn't bring you down.

Cannot pin enemies with snipers in a high LD based game. It's false hope.

I didn't say it was one-dimensional, I'm trying to say it isn't focused and your many disparate elements will not work together.

That's usually a "Bad Sign" for an Eldar army...

Probably a topic best reserved for a different thread... however, I think you're underrating the Avatar now that he can Run.

I'm going for force multiplication by providing the opponent with threat saturation. With the potential to use the bike council as a moving screen and then interlacing JB squads behind that to screen the wraithlords I'm not too worried about someone trying to focus fire the them. T8, W3, 4+ Cover save is going to be a pain for anyone to chew through.

Sorta like this (?):
..............SC..SC..SC..SC..SC..SC...................
.JB..JB...JB..JB..JB..........JB..JB..JB..JB..JB..JB.....
..........WL................WL...................WL.............

SC=Bike Council, JB=Guardian Jetbikes, WL=Wraithlord

I know that's a very specific case, and would require a fairly open area with no terrain bottlenecking.

Maybe I am just crazy though. I'll try it out at the next RTT and see how it goes.

Everyone can shoot anything they want.

I personally will shoot your Avatar dead, then you aren't fearless.

Cause 2 casaulties per jetbike/ranger unit per turn as my army allows, and wait for you to break.

If you run your Wraithlords at me, I've already won...Jetbikes do not win games.

Trust me. Seer Council can, but the JSJ bikes are there to whittle your opponent down...and that's about it.

Could you go into more depth about how all of this happens?

I wouldn't run the wraithlords, they would casually stroll and shoot their guns.

EDIT: Wouldn't it take an average of around 12 BS4 lascannon shots to kill the avatar? Granted it could happen in 4, but statistically speaking I'm fine with that for a 155 point model.

Ok let's say I run a marine army with no vehicles.

Every heavy weapon I field takes down the Avatar turn 1.
That means heavy bolters, assault cannons, lascannons.

You kill 10 marines.

I start putting kills into your jetbike units. Your seer council is too small to kill much in CC, so it'll be taken care of by my own assault units.

Sooner or later (meaning turn 2 or turn 3), most if not all of your jetbike units have run away or been destroyed.

Another 10-20 marines die.

Now I focus fire on the Wraithlords. Turn 4 or turn 5, they should be dead.

Now let's say half my army is dead, and my assault units can now run towards your rangers.

If I haven't shot them off the board (not very likely without heavy bolter devs, they're hard to get rid of).

See how it works? You have no support between your different elements, and no 'oomph' to take me down in either CC or shooting.

So, to continue the discussion...

What about switching out the Wraithlords for Fireprisms and the Avatar for Vypers? I'm not 100% sold on the Fireprism as an anti-tank option in 5th but that would essentially complete the transformation into an all-shooty force with only the bike council pulling CC duty as necessary...

That's a fine variation.

I've suggested it several times, but no one believes in it. Well, one person does. hehe.

Fire Prisms when linked are really fine anti-tank weapons....as good as Railguns, only slightly better due to higher accuracy.

If you want to keep with the Elfzilla theme, you can do it and here is how.

First off, you need to drop the bikes…all of them and probably the seer council too. In their place get a 10 man wraithguard squad with a spirit seer that has conceal. In this configuration, it’s a troop choice (and if you can free up the points, get 2 squads). Next grab a farseer with fortune to run with them (or Eldrad if you rather, but I hate to suggest special characters). Now you’ll have 3 dreadnaughts at T8 and 10-20 wraithguard at T6. It should be a fairly hard nut to crack all the way round and you get to stick with your theme.

zmc wrote:Basically just ram him hard and fast into something soft and squishy.

Ummmmm. I'm just going to leave that one alone.

I agree with Phoenix, adding Wraithguard seems more in character with your list than the jetbikes. Jetbikes should support other quick-moving assault units (banshees, harlies, etc.), but they can't hold their own against any sustained fire. Warlocks on bikes have cost me a monolith or two in the past (cursed Witchblades!), but they were so vulnerable that the other player had to wait until the end of the game to take it down, and by then it had done everything I needed it to.

I think Fire Prisms are one of the most useful tanks the Eldar have. I don't understand why I don't see more of them on the table, as they're one of the best anti-Monolith weapons in the Eldar arsenal, once they're linked.

Wait...warlocks on bikes are vulnerable?

Are you talking about a seer council on bikes or are you talking about a guardian jetbike unit with a warlock attached??

Seer council on bikes is just about the toughest unit in the game.

I'm going to have to say Stelek hit this one spot on. I know he has mentioned running a maximum size squad (33 attacks on the charge, ~18 wounds) but even my little 6-man squad mows through just about anything with its 18 attacks and ~10 wounds on the charge...

3+/4++ re-rollable saves, Mind War to snipe PF sgts, T4... yeah they're a mean machine.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that those Attack/Wound amounts take into account that you're fighting WS4 average and the T of your target is irrelevant. Er... and I corrected the maths.

I find that while the toughness of the seer council is unmatched, their ability to kill things in hand to hand is questionable. They hit often (3's most of the time) and they wound on 2 all the time, but your opponents always get their armor saves so its really a spray and pray unit. If you get into it with a big power armor unit, you're going to be stuck there for a while. Those 10 wounds on the charge get dropped to 3.3 after power armor saves are taken and the round after that you'll be doing even less damage.

Now if you have another unit to pile in later (banshees or quins for example) then things tend to work out rather well. The other use is if you are just mopping up units that have already been shredded by shooting from your other units.

Against marines, yes you are correct.

Of course, against every other army out there without the 3+ save...they are like a hot knife through butter.

Stelek wrote:Against marines, yes you are correct. Of course, against every other army out there without the 3+ save...they are like a hot knife through butter.

It is quite possible that 50% (or more) of the expected field is marines, and the OP noted that this is meant to be a competitive list - as such, power armour (or equivalents) is likely to be found in large quantitites. I think that Pheonix is spot on in his assessment. Also, the bike bases provide such large frontage that each jetbiker will have several opponents to contend with - increasing the number of saving throws they must make.

I don't think even 30% of the field will be marines, actually.

No idea what you are going on about with the jetbikes. They come with small and large bases. I know I'll never base my jetbikes on large bases.

Marine bikers get cav bases, that's the largest I'd ever use.

Now when we get a new marine dex, I expect the numbers to go crazy--if GW doesn't drop the ball.

It's not like the current marine dexes are so wonderful people are dropping xenos to play say dark angels...

zmc wrote:I call this list "Eldar Monstrous Creatures" or "Elfzilla"
List is intended for competitive/tournament play, not concerned about 'comp' scoring. All criticism and advice welcome!

HQ:
Farseer w/Bike, Sp.Stones, RofWard, Fortune, Mind War
5 x Warlocks w/Bikes, 2 x Enhance, 2 x Embolden, Destructor
Super Choppy bike squad. The warlock psychic powers were doubled up to help with incoming fire saturation and the new wound allocation rules... is this sane?
-445 pts

Avatar
-155 pts
Run Forrest, Run! Basically just ram him hard and fast into something soft and squishy.

Troops:
3 x 6 Guardian Jet Bikes w/2 Shuricannons per squad (152 each squad)
2 x 6 Rangers (114 each squad)
Jet bikes JSJ/harass and Rangers focus on taking out TMCs and the like

Heavy Support:
3 x Wraithlords w/Brightlance and Eldar Missile Launcher
Fairly Reliable AT and some decent CC stompy

Total: 1749

What do you all think?

I've often thought about this list, with the wraithguard mentioned elsewhere, sometimes with storm guardians or shining spears or harlies...

The idea is to make it like a Nidzilla army. The WL's have higher toughness so they ignore for the most part the bolter and heavy bolter fire...but with only 3 wounds, can easily be taken down by las/missiles etc. The fexes can be wounded by heavy bolters, but have more wounds...

It's all well and good to say that Power armor is going to be a "problem", but even with an average of 3.3 wounds making it past power armor you're still going to masssacre on combat resolution unless your opponent is all power weapons... but if that's the case you should have softened them up with your twin-linked shuriken catapults.
After playtesting the list a few times I've decided to keep working on my 5E list. I'm still torn on fireprisms, there are some games where I can find some decent cover (4+) to park them behind and then they are damn near unkillable just like 4th.
I'll definitely keep the biker HQ but will probably sub out the WLs for Fireprisms and the avatar for two EML/Shuricannon Vypers. On the topic of the local "field" it's actually got a slew of gunline guard, nids, and necrons.

Stelek wrote:Against marines, yes you are correct. Of course, against every other army out there without the 3+ save...they are like a hot knife through butter.

Very true. Particularly against nid zilla.

keezus wrote:
It is quite possible that 50% (or more) of the expected field is marines, and the OP noted that this is meant to be a competitive list - as such, power armour (or equivalents) is likely to be found in large quantitites. I think that Pheonix is spot on in his assessment.

I find that power armor is very common where I'm at, but that isn't going to be the case everywhere. I just point it out as a concern I think you should keep in mind. In addition, I would caution anyone using this unit to becareful about where they assault. The biggest threat this unit faces is lots of small arms fire. If the seer council wipes out a unit on their turn and they are in a posision where lots of other unit can fire on them, they will be in trouble. If on other hand, they are in a somewhat isolated position (on a flank or around cover that prevents too many units from seeing them) then they should be fine.

Good advice, Phoenix.