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Tomorrow I am going to play one of my first game with my Eldar army. Bad news are, my opponent has ork speed freaks. Although it will be a friendly game and all, I don't want to completley humiliate myself . He mainly has everything mechanized with a lot of trukks, bikes, burna boyz.. and i do not know quite what yet. How to counter all this? I have 15xdire avengers, 10 guardians, weapon platform, 6xfire dragons, 6xharlequins, farseer, warlock, war walker, vyper jetbike and wave serpent. What weapons to take on walker, jetbike and serpent are also my concerns. Any advice you can give me is appreciated . Since I'm still in army building process my choices are far from great, if needed I can proxy something, bare in mind it's a friendly game.

I don't see eldar on foot standing a great chance against mech. ork due to the eldar lacking a lot of long-ranged anti-armor, and they would likely get crushed on the charge due to their fragility. A mechanized eldar list, however, should provide a challenge for mech orks because they would be able to match their speed roughly, and hopefully eliminate the charge effects of the orks. In a nutshell, if you let his lines reach yours before you sever his charge, you'll most likely lose, because even the lowliest boy will be able to take out at least one aspect warrior each.

As far as specific units, I'd suggest scorpians and against howling banshees. Scorpians high armor save, and high number of regular attacks are good at slaughtering orks, whereas the howling banshees ability to go first is wasted against low initiative orks and the power weaponry is also wasted due to the orks have 6+ armor most of the time. Fire dragons might be a little overkill for his vehicles, i'd recommend shuriken catapults or other mid-strength multi-shot weapons as you're primary method of taking down his trukks.

You want all the Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents/War Walkers with Scatter Lasers that you can get.

Ork trukks are AV10 and s6 will be enough to pop them.

Don't take anything that would be useful against hard targets like MEQ or 2+ armor save infantry; Orks will ignore it. Try to get the largest volume of dice onto the table that you can manage and just keep shooting and scooting.

Avoid combat with them at all costs, with the sole exception of Striking Scorpions. Harlequins will die. Banshees will die.

You want a mobile force vs Speed Freakz.
Shoot down their Trukkz and you will rule the sky allowing you to fly circles around the footslogging Orks and picking mob by mob.

One question: trukks or battlewagons?

Trukks. (three of them)

Ok, thx. It seems I need more mechanized units. Great...

He has deff dread, deathkoptas, trukks, looted tank, 6 or more bikers...and alot of boyz, mainly burnaz.

Dystopia wrote:I have 15xdire avengers, 10 guardians, weapon platform, 6xfire dragons, 6xharlequins, farseer, warlock, war walker, vyper jetbike and wave serpent.

You're going to be in for a rough ride. The units you have here are, for the most part, not all that great against orcs. However, all is not lost. Here is what I would do with what you have to get the maximum effect.

Setup
Dire avengers: 1 squad of 10 with exarch (dual catapult and blade storm). One squad of 5, no upgrades.
Guardians: One squad of 10 with a scatter laser. If you get a warlock (something I would advise against in this particular situation) give him destructor.
Fire dragons: Unfortunately, these guys are almost useless against orcs (unless they have a battle waggon). Take them if you have to but if you can avoid it, i wouldn't spend the points. You can take an exarch with the heavy flamer to give them some anti horde capability.
Harlequins: Buy a shadowseer and leave the rest of the squad naked (rending isn't really useful against orcs so no need for kisses)
Farseer: Doom is going to be extremely useful in this fight. Other than that, you can either get guide or fortune (depending on what you think will be most useful for you).
War walkers: Not sure how many you have (get 3 as soon as possible) but they should have scatter lasers on them.
Vyper: You have a couple of options for the vyper. You can go for maximum fire power and get a scatter laser and under slung cannon but it requires you to move 6" or less to fire both (and be within 24"). You can go for mobility and get just a scatter laser. The other option would be to go for range and get a missile launcher. I think for this battle, you may need all the fire power you can get, so you may want to try the scatter laser and cannon version.
Wave serpent: Against this kind of force, the best option for the wave serpent is probably twin missile launchers and an under slung cannon...and spirit stones.


Now that I've talked about what to take, here's how to make use of it. During setup, you want to generally deploy a fair ways back in your deployment zone. The more space you can put between you and your opponent, the better. With that said, you want to start the game with your guardians as the closest unit to the enemy. The large dire avenger squad should be behind them and the farseer should probably be with the avengers. Put the vyper out on one flank and the quins slightly to the other side (make sure they are going to be able to charge in once the enemy hits your lines). The small squad of avengers should be on the same side as the vyper. The war walker(s) should be in a position where they will be able to fire on the enemy on the first turn and be able to back up towards your board edge in later turns. The more central their position is, the better. The wave serpent (loaded with fire dragons) should be towards one flank or the other (whichever seems best at the time). If you can, make your opponent take the first turn.

During the game: If you go first, shoot at him with some long range shooting, but try to avoid moving forward. If he goes first, move to bring your heavy weapons to bare, but try not to move forward if you can avoid it. The only exception to this is the wave serpent; it should move forward 12" (or more depending on the situation) and shoot at the trucks if possible. In general, you want the serpent to be bait for the trucks. Put it directly in their way if you can. If the orcs get out to assault the serpent then they will be on the ground and vulnerable to being shot on your turn. If they don't get out, then you are in a good position to shoot them. Note: this doesn't work out if they have boarding planks, so check their wargear before the start of the game. Other than that, you want to shoot the trucks up as much as possible to keep them from getting into your lines. Make sure you fire with your vehicle heavy weapons first, that way if you do blow one up, you might be able to shoot the squad in side with shuriken catapults from the avengers or the guardians (although hopefully on the first turn you'll be out of range for that). On the second turn and onward, you need to keep working on staying out of hand to hand if possible. The way you want to set things up is to have your guardians take the brunt of the assault once it gets to you. Spread them out across the front of your army. Anything that hits them is going to obliterate them in hand to hand (hence why I suggest not spending points on a warlock for them). However, once that happens, they will be out in the open and looking down the barrels of lots of dire avenger catapults. At that point, you need to avenge the death of your guardians. Make sure you cast doom on whatever the highest priority target is every turn. If it looks like the enemy is getting a bit close to your farseer, you can have him leave whatever squad he's in and run to the rear of your army to whatever unit is there (or out on his own if need be). Just try and keep him out of hand to hand if possible. The harlequins should wait to be a counter charge unit. Do not charge a fresh squad of orcs with the quins, they will just die. Have them assault unit that have been chewed up from shooting or from casualties caused by their trucks blowing up. You can expect every quin to kill about 1 orc each on the charge, so try not to get stuck in with units that are larger than you are (which may be hard with the orcs). If you doom their target, that number goes up by a moderate amount. A 6 man quin unit can expect to kill off about 10 doomed orcs on the charge. Finaly, your wave serpent should (if you can keep it alive) fly back into your opponent's back field to drop off the dragons either next to his looted tank or his dread and melt them down. If both are in the same area and there are no boys around, aim for the dread first and deal with the tank later. The dragons (if they live) and the serpent can then contest rear objectives in his deployment zone. If they get stuck out in mid field, have them go after trucks (if there are any around) or bikes. One little trick you can try out (possibly in later games) is to put the 5 man dire avenger squad in the serpent. This makes the unit scoring so it can capture rear objectives rather than just contesting them. You may also have the ability (depending on battle field conditions) of going back and picking up the smaller squad after you drop off the dragons. It is something to keep in mind. The vyper should try to spend most of the game on a flank. Move up and shoot the orcs from the sides. That way if they want to kill the vyper, they will have to move away from your main lines in order to do it. Just try to keep it from getting the attention of the dread or the looted tank which might devote the power to killing it. The war walker should generally shoot at whatever is going to be the closest unit to you after your opponent's next movement phase (so you're going to have to think one round ahead). That unit might be the closest to you durring your shooting phase, or it might not be.

All in all though, you got your work cut out for you. One thing you will want to make sure of is that you and your opponent are playing with equal points. Your list looks like it’s in the 900-1000 range so be sure his is too.

Good luck.

Oh my :O

Thx Phoenix, these were some great advices. My army is near completion and now I feel more confident about future games. Still struggling with painting a bit, but I'm getting better. I will definitely invest in more Dire Avengers and War Walkers.

Can't thank you enough