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When the Eldar codex first came out I had the idea for a “MSV” army of Multiple Small Vehicles.

It centered around 9 war walkers and 9 vypers. They told me that it would not work, and I tried it and I ended up winning 66% of my games with it.

I abandoned it because that is too low of a win/loss ratio for me, but it showed me that it could work.

Now that 5th edition has favorable vehicle and squadron rules, and with the recent codexes that have been released, there are a lot less heavy weapons, and tank-hunting autocannons than there use to be, and that it might be a viable army build.

Also to add a few points that 5th edition helped them out, vehicle squadrons no longer block LOS other vehicles in the squadron. Also with the new obscured rules, you can shoot now from behind walls etc and get a 4+ cover save.

The deployment rules help out too. You can either go first and start blastin', or come on in reserve sense you can move and fire to full effect. Also war walkers can come in from the sides as well. The reserve rules do help out against units that can kill your squadrons like Lootas, etc.

So what do you think?

Only problem I see is being able to supplement the MSVs with a solid core of scoring units. What would you use?

Jet bikes as a screen for the vehicals is a must (move them behind them for the shooting phase then use the free 6" assualt move to place them back in front) ... +4 cover save on 18 vehicals i don't know that many armys that can deal out enough ranged damage (yes ... tau)

One battle cannon would ruin your day LOL

Hey there Allan! I've ran the list under 5th ed rules versus 45 lootas and lash chaos.

Couple things to help you on your quest. And please share what you find too. My quest is not finished yet.

Here are a couple conundrums for you to try and solve.

You need at least one master strategist, two would be nice. You need at least one guide, two would be nice.

So going first, preferably guided is what you want to do. If you have 2 of the units guided, and you get all their guns in range. Disgusting amounts of casualties will pile up.

I went for wave serpents for my troops. That let me work eldrad in there, and a really cheap autarch. That got me cheap master strategist and 2 guides. And divination for extra good first turn shootiness.

I suppose you need to decide right now if you lose the roll to go first and he takes the first turn, are you going to start the army in reserve? Or are you going to set up for a "seize". And just take it like a man if you don't. If you choose option B you can save 80 points on an autarch. Also, you'll want first turn on any mission that isn't a dawn of war. Even seize ground. (fyi, giving someone first turn on dawn of war and watching them setup 60 boys and a big mek at the 50 yard line thinking that it is a good idea is priceless when playing with this list! I can't wait for you to get that joy )

Even without planning to start in reserve, sometimes its nice to have the option to get side armor shots with your war walkers, which makes you want that master strategist again.

Bikers are cheaper troops and in many cases better for a list like this, but if you choose bikes instead of storm guardians/dire avengers... then eldrad isn't really a possibility.

Bunch guide altogether and go for double autarch? I've tried that. You can never really win big with the games that don't start until the bottom of turn 2. There just isn't enough time for a massacre... would work fine in the UK, but not for us.

I loved shuriken cannon/shuriken cannon on the vypers. A batch of 3 of those with guide can consistently dole out 14 wounds to a unit of marines/orks. A 18+ vehicle army with first turn and 2x guide can 'peace out' 2x30 orks before they even pull out tape. That's usually game over, depending on the list you are facing. You aren't going first? They have lootas? Well, then you are probably starting with 9 light vehicles instead of 18. Thats also usually game over.

With armies that are so front loaded and fragile, you have to figure out if you have enough time to take out their threats, and also take out their scorers. or if you just go double maverick and thrash their troops straight away. Against lash, they'll pick your vehicles apart pretty effectively with oblits, but you'll be able to chew through 600 points of plague marines before they can shut your offense down. if that happens, now their oblits and princes have a lot of chasing to do on your hidden/elusive troops.

I came one 5+ invulnerable save away from beating my usual ork opponent who ran a double nob biker list the other night. The interesting thing about it was. I had 4 pathfinders left out of 1750, and he had 6 units left and one independent character. He was just out of troops. That was with a similar front loaded eldar army. Nob bikers and shoota boys were just trashed right away... And then I got taken down over the next 3 turns

Thats just a lot of scatterbrain thoughts for you to chew on... not a really cogent thesis.... please come back with more thoughts or any playtest experience you come up with. I'd love to get to this list after I finish painting up my ghost army. And having a head start with your help would be cool.

So a recap of the conundrums...

Farseers + going first = cool

Autarchs + going second = cool

wave serpents + Eldrad = cool

bikes + vehicle cover saves = cool

tank kill from war walkers? wave serpents with BLs (fire dragons, storm guardians)? jetlocks?

While 9 war walkers is viable. I dont think the vypers are worth it in 5th edition because of the loss of being able to fire 2 heavy weapons.

Vypers can fire all their main weapons if they move 6", one if they move 12".

Now that 5th edition has favorable vehicle and squadron rules, and with the recent codexes that have been released, there are a lot less heavy weapons, and tank-hunting autocannons than there use to be, and that it might be a viable army build.

Quite true.

However, the missions have changed too. No more missions with victory points.
Marines just deploy at the objective via transports. Eldar eventually has a hard time to clear or contest such an objective.
In kill point missions, a shooty army can bunch up in a corner and target the (approaching) enemy with long range weapons.
Eldar are not really made for those missions.

Nurglitch wrote:Vypers can fire all their main weapons if they move 6", one if they move 12".

I was not talking about the standard 1 heavy weapon, plus catapult configuration. That is only mildly effective. The gunboat vypers with the cannons on top and in the hull were the best configuration. If you fielded a squadron of those than yeah you had some serious fire power. But now that configuration is not possible and so many people have moved away from vypers.

Sabote, vypers are Fast, which means they can move up to 6" and still fire all their weapons. Including dual cannons.

tzeentchling wrote:Sabote, vypers are Fast, which means they can move up to 6" and still fire all their weapons. Including dual cannons.

I know that but that is not what I was referring too. The best weapon for light speeders has been its speed. Before you could fire both heavy weapons on a vyper and move at what is now called cruising speed. Therefore anyone attacking it in close combat needed a 6 to hit it. But with the amount of fire power you could throw out with a scatter laser and a shur cannon that was an ok risk.

Now in order to keep that same mobility and keep the close assualt damage low. You have to move at cruising speed, but that allows you to only fire 1 weapon, or move 6 inches and fire both weapons. Moving 6 inches gives the enemy a chance to hit on 4s in CC. Not a good trade off. Much more now than ever before vehicles are getting assualted by troops ( unless you have strenght 3 units) and why not? You have a decent shot at doing some kind of damage hitting the rear. The only thing that has saved my Wave Serpeants and other skimmers is keeping my vehicles at cruising speed so that hoard of orks or squad of marines still needs to roll a 6 to hit in CC.

So maybe not your tactic for skimmers but that is my tactic to keep them alive.

generally since the loss of the crystal targeting matrix vypers haven't been as effective, in 4th ed people moved away from them to War Walkers, now with 5th ed its all wave serpent and falcons,

i used to use the CTM army and it was so broken it wasn't even funny, i lost two games with it, one too a holofield army and one to a fully mech marine army that castled up in a corner (having all the starcannons i couldn't touch most of his tanks and his Whirlys just rained death on the vypers until they stopped moving)

however, that being said the Eldar MSV can put out a tremendous amount of firepower and against Horde Orks i can see it doing very well with guide etc,

War Walkers correct me if i am wrong can outflank now, add that in with master strategist a unit moving on with 6 Scatter Lasers could decimate ork units (or in fact anything else quite quickly with doom applied for good measure) allowing them also to get in the enemies backfield and start mashing loota squadrons (or again anything else) with glee

what i am interested in is what list did you take Blackmoor? what weapons config etc?

also if we are going for MSV what troops did you take?, Jetbikes or units in Serpents?

Jetbikes would seem the logical choice and using them to screen your MSV's can be useful with their assault movement,

however the one question, where does your AT go, does it go on one or two dedicated units (with 3 Lances or EML), or are you spreading it even, as that was always my problem with the MSV army was not enough anti tank, in my old CTM army i had 2 Falcons and the baby seer council for dedicated AT that was it, how much or how little were you going to incorporate into it?

sabote:

The thing about tactics is that where they work, they work for everyone rather than subjective. Whether that tactic works for you depends on how it works for everyone and the particular circumstances to which you are applying it.

Other people might guard their Vipers with a counter-charge unit, so that any attempts to close with them are met by an over-whelming counter-assault in the next turn. Still other people might drift their Vipers back and forth to exploit that 6" sweet spot between 18" and 24" that lets them use their Shuriken Cannons without fear of retaliatory assault, assuming their flanks are protected.

At first glance Vypers are great bait to lure out enemy assault troops because they're vulnerable and vehicles. Their vulnerability makes them a juicy target, and their vehicle-ness means that they can move away if they survive and open up the enemy assault troops to fire and assaults.

99MDeery wrote:

what i am interested in is what list did you take Blackmoor? what weapons config etc?

also if we are going for MSV what troops did you take?, Jetbikes or units in Serpents?

Jetbikes would seem the logical choice and using them to screen your MSV's can be useful with their assault movement,

however the one question, where does your AT go, does it go on one or two dedicated units (with 3 Lances or EML), or are you spreading it even, as that was always my problem with the MSV army was not enough anti tank, in my old CTM army i had 2 Falcons and the baby seer council for dedicated AT that was it, how much or how little were you going to incorporate into it?

To answer both of your questions, I had a lot of guardians with brightlances.

In 4th edition I took an avatar and eldrad. With the new reserve rolls of 5th, I would take an aurtarch and jetbikes.


As to the vypers not moving fast, yes and no. They can shoot ok and fly around at 12", then when they are close (24"), they can shoot both their weapons at 6". The thing is that almost every gun that can kill AV10 will shoot at the war walkers, not the vypers so you do not have to worry about them just by target priority. That is unless you load them up with weapons that attract attention.

Nurglitch wrote:sabote:

The thing about tactics is that where they work, they work for everyone rather than subjective. Whether that tactic works for you depends on how it works for everyone and the particular circumstances to which you are applying it.

Other people might guard their Vipers with a counter-charge unit, so that any attempts to close with them are met by an over-whelming counter-assault in the next turn. Still other people might drift their Vipers back and forth to exploit that 6" sweet spot between 18" and 24" that lets them use their Shuriken Cannons without fear of retaliatory assault, assuming their flanks are protected.

At first glance Vypers are great bait to lure out enemy assault troops because they're vulnerable and vehicles. Their vulnerability makes them a juicy target, and their vehicle-ness means that they can move away if they survive and open up the enemy assault troops to fire and assaults.

Your definition on tactics could be used to justify just about most things in the game if a person has a preference for it and resonable skill applying it. My answer was directed towards the fire effectness of vypers which i feel the hey day was in 4th because of the movement rules for firing. That is a thing of the past.

Blackmoor stated in his intial statement that he won 66% of the games in 4th with his vyper list. What has changed in 5th to make it a better army? I say nothing. You may be able to squeeze out an occasional cover save. But the fire power of the gunboat vypers has been reduced by alot.

I have tried the vyper/war walker build and found it mildly successful but not worth of a tournament. Certainly by looking at the majority of Eldar tournament builds and what people mostly take. This does not rank in even the top 5. Though you will find a fair amount of people playing the 9 war walkers.

sabote:

I think you've missed my point about tactics. My point, such as it was, was that there are no "my tactics/your tactics". There's just tactics, and tactical skill is using the right tactics at the right time.

So no, my definition of tactics could not be used to justify just about most things in the game if a person had a preference for that 'thing' and reasonable skill in applying it.

That aside, I'm not contesting Blackmoor's claim of winning x/y games in zth edition. I'm trying to offer some ideas for tactics, what those tactics might be, when they might best be applied, and within which strategy.

I mean, it's nice to say that a player won x/y games in zth edition, but that waves away consideration of what that player did to win some games, lose others, and why.

So if you've tried a strategy of spamming War Walkers and Vypers and found it mildly successful, saying so isn't terribly useful without telling us exactly how you use them, in which situations,

It might be the case, after all, that you used them poorly, either by using the wrong tactics, mis-judged the right application of tactics, or simply chose a sub-optimal strategy - say, Star Cannons on your War Walkers rather than Scatter Lasers, to pick a hypothetical example. You could have been unusually unlucky.

I'm not suggesting you're a bad player. I'm just pointing out that bad luck and suboptimal play haven't been ruled out. More importantly, I'm pointing out that the details seem to be ironed over here. Maybe you're right and nothing has changed in 5th edition to make them better. But likewise maybe you're wrong. I just think a more detailed exploration of the whats, whens, and to what ends would help make this discussion more objective and hence useful to other players.

Nurglitch wrote:sabote:

I think you've missed my point about tactics. My point, such as it was, was that there are no "my tactics/your tactics". There's just tactics, and tactical skill is using the right tactics at the right time.

So no, my definition of tactics could not be used to justify just about most things in the game if a person had a preference for that 'thing' and reasonable skill in applying it.

That aside, I'm not contesting Blackmoor's claim of winning x/y games in zth edition. I'm trying to offer some ideas for tactics, what those tactics might be, when they might best be applied, and within which strategy.

Really?- so at what point in the above topics were you exactly offering ideas for tactics and strategy instead of debating the correctness of my statements which as you pointed out could or could not have been used effectively.

I on the other hand was addressing the lack of fire power which IMO has made the vyper less effective even with the new rules as Blackmoor stated has occured in 5th.

Certainly I could go in some kind of indepth description or AAR of my battles with this list. However that anaylsis would be based purely on my playing style and which we have all seen many times in most forums could very well turn in to a contest of " no I am better than you" No I am better than you!! No I have won X amount of games. So instead I chose to address the fire power issue which again IMO is the single biggest factor that prevents the vyper from being a great weapon. Wether you come in from reserve or a first turn deployment like dawn of war, you need to make that fire power count because you have already effectively shortened the game. In addition you are probably counting on a couple of things 1. maybe a first turn shooting fest if you opponent is dumb enough to deploy their forces in a manner to give that to you or 2. Alot of your units coming in on the turns you need them and giving you a turn of intense fire superiority. Yeah you could move your 6 inches for max fire power but that leaves you open to alot of other things. I have yet to fight a battle with a skilled opponent that did not see my vehicles getting assualted. So yeah I like my skimmers to move up to 12 inches for this reason. Certainly you may have alot to shot with this army but nothing that the standard Loota, Oblit heavy chaos or tau player has not seen before in a game.

sabote:

Nurglitch wrote:Other people might guard their Vipers with a counter-charge unit, so that any attempts to close with them are met by an over-whelming counter-assault in the next turn. Still other people might drift their Vipers back and forth to exploit that 6" sweet spot between 18" and 24" that lets them use their Shuriken Cannons without fear of retaliatory assault, assuming their flanks are protected.

At first glance Vypers are great bait to lure out enemy assault troops because they're vulnerable and vehicles. Their vulnerability makes them a juicy target, and their vehicle-ness means that they can move away if they survive and open up the enemy assault troops to fire and assaults.

That's where I offered ideas for tactics and strategies instead of debate your misreading of my definition of tactics.

Nurglitch wrote:sabote:

Nurglitch wrote:Other people might guard their Vipers with a counter-charge unit, so that any attempts to close with them are met by an over-whelming counter-assault in the next turn. Still other people might drift their Vipers back and forth to exploit that 6" sweet spot between 18" and 24" that lets them use their Shuriken Cannons without fear of retaliatory assault, assuming their flanks are protected.

At first glance Vypers are great bait to lure out enemy assault troops because they're vulnerable and vehicles. Their vulnerability makes them a juicy target, and their vehicle-ness means that they can move away if they survive and open up the enemy assault troops to fire and assaults.

That's where I offered ideas for tactics and strategies instead of debate your misreading of my definition of tactics.

You are correct my bad, I appologize I guess thats the penalty for skimming forums with an IPhone you brush through stuff quickly.

So yes I agree that what you have above is a tactic. I still believe the vyper is still too limited in its fire power and yes I know you were throwing out those ideas as a " this is what other people have done". I cannot help but think you are spending to much time protecting a less than ideal vehicle. Even combining it with the other aspects of the army. ie war walkers, assualt units and so on. Its my belief this would put you more on a defensive footing with a fire line. May even stretch out the game further than you want because you begin to cut and slice at your enemy even more than normal with the Eldar.( which is what I discovered with this type of army) Which after playing Blackmoor in the last Ardy Boyz and seeing that he likes his defensive lines maybe he would like this. But this may just be a play style issue because I like fighting it up close with my Eldar and thats what works for me.

I think Vypers are overpriced, personally. Open topped and BS3, compared to Land Speeders. They are feasible as a support unit, but I would not consider them to be a core unit, although there is always something to be said for redundancy.

Ultimately, they are a fast attack choice. And my rule of thumb is that fast attack choices are inappropriate for competitive lists smaller than 2k.

They don't have the survivability/hitting power package that elites have. And they don't have the large blast marker and/or hitting power and/or survivability of heavy supports.

However, when someone who clearly understands list design and the 5th edition landscape like Blackmoor says he's going to look at them, I'd take the context of his list to heart before I wrote off a unit like vypers.

For fun here's some pro's and con's about the newest eldar codex/5th ed and the vyper.

con- can't move 12" and fire all of your strength 6 weapons
con- no crystal targeting matrix
con- star cannon down to 2 shots
con- immobilized destroys even while moving slow (moving 12" and getting immobilized was a kill anyway in the old edition. Unless you bought vectored)
con- wound allocation in assault is much less favorable

pro- damage tables have shifted (this is an underappreciated, big deal change)
pro- vehicles can get cover saves (and can be fortuned)
pro- new codecies have WAY less access to tank kill, and the new cover rules have marginalized many high strength long range weapons
pro- new war walkers are so clearly the higher priority threat
pro- free extra armor

The presence of 9 war walkers, and jetbikes to generate 4+ cover saves and assault screens, and an autarch or two for "always going first" Really casts a new light on vypers.

I do agree with you that they, like all fast attack, are really lacking on the qualities that I look for in a tourney list. But that is in a vacuum. In context, it is always look taking a closer look.