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Hi folks,
I was wondering, having played against orks for the first time with my eldar, how to fight the green guys.
My last army consisted more of anti-elite/meq forces in transports and were seriously outnumbered.
What are good units for crowd control and what are the things I have to focus on playing against orks?
Thanks for tips.

Greets
Schepp himself

Against Orks, there are several units for horde control:
Fire Prisms,
Seer Council with witch blades,
Storm Guardians with flamers incl. Warlock with destructor, and
Dire Avengers with blade storm.

You could always go for a shadowweaver battery. S6 templates hurt orks, and a 6+ armor save won't help that much. And the weavers are cheap, too!

These batteries lost an edge in the 5th edition since they can be targeted if placed behind area terrain.
Lootas would make short work with them, unless the Ork player ignores them.

@ wuestenfux and witzkatz
Sadly I don't have any support batteries. Don't get me wrong, his army was rather balanced as in: had shootas, sluggas, lootas, bikers, gretchnin and artillery. But without prism and seer council support I felt I lacked serious anti-horde weaponry...

Greets
Schepp himself

Schepp himself wrote:@ wuestenfux and witzkatz
Sadly I don't have any support batteries. Don't get me wrong, his army was rather balanced as in: had shootas, sluggas, lootas, bikers, gretchnin and artillery. But without prism and seer council support I felt I lacked serious anti-horde weaponry...

Greets
Schepp himself

Scorpions are also good vs Orks.
They can take on even a maxed-out mob.

3x War Walkers w/ 2 scatterlasers each.

24 S6 AP6 shots.

With guide/doom seer.

3x Fire Prism + Triple Flamer Storm Guardians + Jetseers are all great.

A jetseer squad with 5 destructors can toast 30 orks instantly. Or you could multicharge two mobs (or a mob and a squad of grots), rack up the kills in one and let No Retreat! work it's magic.

A full guardian defender squad also works, with 40 shots + heavy weapon and warlock.

I have had success with Doom + Guide + any shuikens. Units of Guardians could take down lots of Orks with Doom + Guide. So can Dire Avengers and Warp Spiders. Huge amounts of armor saves + Doom + Guide can also take down Bloodthirsters, though the Warp Spiders are better at taking down the Bloodthirsters with that trick. Wraithlords are cheap and with 2 flamers in hand can do some damage to Orks. A Fortuned Avatar might be able to hold up most any Ork unit for several turns.

The problem for Eldar vs. Orks seems to rear it's head when the Eldar player is playing a bunch of Wave Serpents and hoping to use Fire Prisms as anti-horde. The Prisms come under Loota fire and the Wave Serpents can't do enough damage to Orks.

Defender will kick ork butt with either an EML, Scatter Laser, or a shurican cannon. All of these are under 100 points for a ten man squad and can take on full thirty man squads. Remember you can move and fire Eldar heavies as if they were assault weapons abuse this fact and dance around him then when he is almost dead charge let loose shurican catapults and assault. Assault may not sound good against orks but its better than giving them the charge also you strike first and you shouldn't assault until they are almost dead from heavy + shurican fire. Dire Avergers were made to kill ork mobs

Warp Spiders have worked miracles for me before the ability to get close quickly, hit them hard with thier s6 and then assault phase GTFO.

Dire Avengers - They are spartan elves what can I say, they have yet let me down on anything.

Like what has been said before, base guardians can really shine in this type of situation.

If you are mech and have 2x flamer storm guardians, bunch them up with the serpent's tank shock, and flame them. Add doom for extra crispy.

Works well with firedragons too if they have the heavy flamer exarch, and with crack shot, he doesn't even need doom.

Outflanking scatter laser War Walkers and scorpions will ruin his day.

EasyE wrote:Outflanking scatter laser War Walkers and scorpions will ruin his day.

True.
Not all Eldar units are good vs. Orks.

I'd consider an army-core like this:

Farseer w/ fortune, doom, stones
8 to 10 Warlocks w/ enhance, embolden(x2) [upgrade destructors]
Serpent w/ shuricannon, stones

10 Dire Avengers [upgrade Exarch w/ bladestorm]
Serpent w/ shuricannon, stones

10 Dire Avengers [upgrade Exarch w/ bladestorm]
Serpent w/ shuricannon, stones

10 Storm Guardians w/ flamer(x2) [upgrade Warlock w/ destructor]
Serpent w/ shuricannon, stones

Fire Prism w/ stones

Fire Prism w/ stones

3 War Walkers w/ scatter laser (x2)

* Don't try and out-assault orks. Scorpions are nice, but your playing against an opponents strength.
* Flamers and destructor are great, just be ready to enter assault that turn. On a seer squad, those templates can really give you an edge.
* Don't underestimate the shooting power of orks. A good ork player will shoot down your seer squad with shootas/sluggas/big shootas.
* Hide in skimming tanks. Most ork players rely on PKs to crack tanks, which have a hard time hitting flying vehicles.
* Use template weapons. Fire prisms are your best option, being hard to kill, long range, and capable of producing large templates.
* Tank shock the hell out of any units below 10 in size.
* Remember the game is about VPs or Objectives. It does not matter how many models you kill, if you don't get any VPs or claim objectives.

Take Swooping Hawks and an Autarch for dealing with Lootas and Big Guns. S3 sucks until you Doom a unit, or cast Guide on the Swooping Hawks.

Lay a large blast on a unit of Lootas, land and pepper the survivors with las-fire.

Haywire Grenades are also a good way of dealing with masses of Battlewagons, no matter how fast they're moving.

Ok everyone, thanks for all the useful tips.
Remember though, that I don't gear my lists towards a certain enemy while I'm playing in my campaign and in this campaign are also Tau, Space Wolves, Space Marines, Daemons and (the aforementioned) orks.

But maybe I can tweek my army list a little to keep it more balanced. Some of the mentioned units are also semi-useful against more elite foes I suppose.

I had very good experience with doom against orks, that's true.

Greets and thanks again
Schepp himself

Mech Eldar are good against everything.

Orks are a PITA for Eldar for sure, probably the toughest match up in my experience.

I have found that Harlies work great as they shred so many Orks, but a full strength mob would be suicide.

A fortuned Avatar is great too so long as he charges and doesn't take a charge (but that i always true of Orks) he is so hard to hurt for them and he is good to kill 3 orks a turn. more of a tarpit than a means to wipe out a mob, though.

Warwalkers with guide will light them up, but the best thing I have found is to stop or redirect the the tough Ork charge. I use a big squad of 20 defenders to take the charge form the orks. They line up in a screen and just take it on the chin. They get eaten, then I light up the orks with all I've got.

That may not work with your list dynamic, but for me it has been the best solution.

Reecius wrote:I use a big squad of 20 defenders to take the charge form the orks. They line up in a screen and just take it on the chin. They get eaten, then I light up the orks with all I've got.

That is the reason the eldar are a dying race. They keep using their troops as meatshields.

labmouse42 wrote:

Reecius wrote:I use a big squad of 20 defenders to take the charge form the orks. They line up in a screen and just take it on the chin. They get eaten, then I light up the orks with all I've got.

That is the reason the eldar are a dying race. They keep using their troops as meatshields.

Oh I dont know about orks being the toughest match up for eldar, I have had plenty of success against them more so than some of the other armies out there, I think bringing a good amount of quality melee is accually a very effective way of taking them out, beat them at there own game and deny there furious charge, for instance striking scorpions do wonders against ork mobs, yuriel is just amazing when he solo charges a huge mob of orks to drop his template down, fire dragons against the nobs, swooping hawks to drop a template and unload there guns, I also find warp spiders extremely efficiant at taking out the light vehilcles and ork mobs withe equil ease then teleporting out of charge range. I like to prioritise my units on there main roll on the battlefield and do not put to many points in the mech but bring very cheap transports like wave searpants with low upgrades to drop off melee units and then use them as gun plat forms and charge blockers after that. denying the ork charge is probably the biggest factor I have found iether bye blowing them to pieces with fire power, killing them in hand to hand or a combonation of the two. The beauty of charging them is they dont get to shoot you before they charge and lose furious charge, I have had a few units get shot to peices bye alot of sluggas before they charge in, striking scorpions who charge them will hang on for quite a few rounds if not completly anhiliate them. I find harlequins to be to expensive and dont have the wave searpant option to bring a full squad not a very good option against orks. Good luck.

I'd like to back up those that say scorps do a number on boys mobs.

I've played games before where a 10 man unit (without exarch) with a farseer dooming ork mobs and fortuning the scorps ran through 3 -4 boys mobs in as many turns whilst only losing 2 - 3 scorps in the process.

It didn't feel fair. But then again if war is then you planned it wrong.

Eldar have abundant S6 shooting which is a sweet spot against orks. Unless they have nob bikers. leave your banshees, rangers, fire dragons and shining spears home.

Harlies and scorpions do well due to their high number of attacks in CC. Don't be afraid to charge orks and get into melee. Just because they have good CC units does not mean you cannot win. You can attrit their mobs to manageable chunks with shooting and then assault them before they hit your firebase.

I'm a fan of these items when dealing with Orcs:

Scorpions, Scatter Lasers, ShurikenSpam, Prisms, Warp Spiders, and Vibrocannons.

Overall though, Orks haven't given me too many problems.

I play Orks and when I face Eldar I have the Hardest time against Dire Advengers with Guide and doom backing them up.

Ideally you should be avoiding assaults by being out of range, use you transports and be patient... Have the Ork player chase you with half of his army, then move again...

You have to be careful as you could run out of space if the Ork player is smart and spreads out his guys but that will slow them down to chunks that you can deal with.

Firstly do not assume that you can simply shoot them.

It takes an obscene amount of firepower to deal with a full strength ork mob through shooting, especialy with a KFF or cover in the mix and your opponent probably has 3 or 4 such squads.

Having said that just assaulting them isn't the answer either as he has the numbers both models and units to simply overwhelm an eldar assault force.

What you need to do is to keep away from him for as long as possible and use shooting to whittle down his big mobs to a more manageable size. You might not be able to kill all 30 boyz but get them to about 15-20 models and it becomes possible to break them. Then use a decent assault unit (storm guardian with flamers and destructor, scorps, harlies, seer council) and you should be able to break the orks on the charge.

The key is bad ork LD. In shooting they will at worst have to take a test on ld6 with a re-roll and that is if the mob is 7 models or less. Most of the time they are fearless.

However in assault if you can drop them below 11 then they suddenly have to take ld checks at a 1 or 2. They run and with your superior init you cut them down. The trick is to use firepower to whittle them down first then use the charge to wipe them out utterly.

This requires lots of units working in sync though so you need to prioritise which mobz are crucial to win you the game and turn 4/5 wipe them out and sit on your objectives.

Tank shocking is an awesome trick too. Forcing ld checks on bikes, lootaz, grotz, etc and using the wave serpent to shepherd them off the board is one of the nastiest tricks you can pull against an ork player.