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This is a list I've done a lot of testing with and am very happy with the results and I was just wondering what dakka had to say about it and what kind of changes you guys would personally make. Anything I'm missing? Please give reasons for any changes you'd make. Thanks!

HQ
-Eldrad - 210pts
-Avatar - 155

ELITES
-6 Striking Scorpions - Exarch w/ Scorpion Claw and Shadow Strike - 143
-5 Fire Dragons - 80
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones, Star Engines, Vectored Engines - 145

TROOPS
-10 Guardian Defenders - Bright Lance , Warlock w/ Destructor and Singing Spear- 153
-10 Guardian Defenders - Bright Lance , Warlock w/ Destructor and Singing Spear- 153
-10 Guardian Defenders - Bright Lance - 115
-5 Dire Avengers - 60
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones, Star Engines, Vectored Engines - 145

HEAVY SUPPORT
-3 War Walkers - 6 Scatter Lasers - 180
-3 War Walkers - 6 Eldar Missile Launchers - 210

1749pts

I used to run Council Mechdar and actually have found this list to do alot better in the varying tournament missions that I have come across where mechdar can be crippled by some.

Could we hear why this is better for you than Mechdar? I'm curious.

I assume Avatar hangs around Guardians for fearless gift.

Fearless guardians are a beautiful thing I'll give ya that. the main reason it prob does better in a lot of cases is the current meta has a lot of high power shots out there.

Changes I would make

Dragon serpent - Star Engines and Vectored don't seem worth the points here.

2 Guardian squad warlocks, give them conceal instead of destructor. This will cut down on the pie plate massacre of them.

Brightlances... never been a fan. Too pricey for what they do and EML give you the ability to switch it up to blasts if you hit a swarm army. Plus BS3 makes me cry when a pricy Bl misses every turn. I'm assumiong Eldrad will be casting guide on two of the guardian squads each turn.

Other then that, it looks solid.

If you really wanna squeeze points you could take the upgrades off the fire dragon serpent and star/vectored off the DA serpent. Doing that you could toss in a 100pt Swordlord that makes a vicious partner for the Avatar.

Well first off a lot of the tourneys I play here in AZ have objectives that give a point for every full turn that they are held so that makes maneuverability pointless in many ways. Also when 30 fearless and sometimes fortuned guardians castle up in cover, it's very hard to kill them all.

Mechdar lacks in fire power and is confined to a certain timing for each event. Commonly dire avengers in serpents are the main source of anti horde for the army. Usually on turn 2 or 3 they are out and take down 1 squad but this leaves them open to on coming fire and any unit that can assault a large distance such as, gaunts, eldar and assault marines. This almost has to happen because if mechdar isn't played aggressively it greatly will suffer in it's fire power.

My list can play defensively and offensively simultaneously with castling in a corner forcing the opponent to come to me if it wants to wreak havoc while I have lots of long range that can shoot almost anything down before it reaches me. Also my troops don't get hit by anti horde usually until turn 4 or 5 because transports are shot down and often units are forced to foot slog, or try and castle up themselves. Chances are, my castle has more long range fire power.

And lastly a HUGE buffer to my list is Eldrads Divination ability. I have won games just because of it. If I deploy first I get to choose which flank of the enemy I want to deal with first by deploying center and then redeploying to a flank usually leaving half of my opponents force useless for some time.

Drop the vectored engines.

Try scatterlasers in guardian squads

BlueDagger wrote:Fearless guardians are a beautiful thing I'll give ya that. the main reason it prob does better in a lot of cases is the current meta has a lot of high power shots out there.

Changes I would make

Dragon serpent - Star Engines and Vectored don't seem worth the points here.

2 Guardian squad warlocks, give them conceal instead of destructor. This will cut down on the pie plate massacre of them.

Brightlances... never been a fan. Too pricey for what they do and EML give you the ability to switch it up to blasts if you hit a swarm army. Plus BS3 makes me cry when a pricy Bl misses every turn. I'm assumiong Eldrad will be casting guide on two of the guardian squads each turn.

Other then that, it looks solid.

If you really wanna squeeze points you could take the upgrades off the fire dragon serpent and star/vectored off the DA serpent. Doing that you could toss in a 100pt Swordlord that makes a vicious partner for the Avatar.

Yep you've got your ideas right. The reason I take bright lances is for the the anti tank as well as the ap2. If something with a 2+ save gets into my castle, it's a very large problem. I need to take down assault termies, carnifexes, or anything that will go to town with my guardians while shrugging off their shuriken fire. Also brightlances scare people a little bit more than EML's .

I've been seriously considering bringing a wraithlord just because of how much survivability they have. I want a one with a BL and EML for more anti tank and another fire magnet but the only way I can see fitting that is to drop the scorpions and that doesn't quite seem like a fair trade. I'm not quite sure, so I'll be testing that this week.

You're right about my dragon serp not needing the vectored engines or star engines I've just been running them recently because I've been on a streak of getting wrecked from being immobilized from on coming fire lately . Also I'm still addicted to the turn 5 grav tank contests and I needed at least 1 grav tank to survive til then because I recently dropped two prisms from the list and am still learning to compensate for the loss of speed. I'll probably drop them from the dragon serpent but the DA serpent definitely needs them.

Lastly, I have the guardian locks with destructor because I'm castled in area terrain or ruins with at least two of the squads 90% of the time.

Sounds good, I'm use to my opponents not liking much terrain, so i wouldn't be able to bank on getting cover on the guardians. Personally I'm not a fan of Gunner Wraithlords, they are too damn pricey. Also WL have a nasty habit of getting lascannoned into oblivion. Swordlords for 100 pts aren't a huge loss if 4 lascannon shots take it down and for that pt loss the lascannon won't be taking down your pricer stuff.

When there is no terrain for me to use for my guardians I usually set them up in 3 straight lines behind each other so the front line gives the rear ones cover. Also I just don't want to take a sword lord leaving him and my avatar pointless until something finally hits at least midfield. My avatar just sits and stares into space aimlessly when I go up against other gunline armies.

Well the swordlord has the benefit of being able to move forward in that case as it's not serving out fearless. Against a gunline army the wraithlord knocks on the door with dual flamers and asks to come in.

I'll test it out and see how it fairs. It would attract fire, that's for sure.

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:Drop the vectored engines.

Try scatterlasers in guardian squads

Taking just Scatter lasers on the guardians would really lower my amount of anti-tank. I need 3 sure BL shots per turn because people freak when they see my walkers shoot 6 EMLs in one go and 2 are shaken constantly and usually all of them are destroyed by turn 3 (which is fine they do their job by then), while my fire dragons are gone in turn 3 also. My bright lances are necessary to take out any reserve vehichles or anything that the walkers/dragons failed to take down. Also once again I love AP2

I will be dropping the dragon VE's and SE's they're just there to fill points atm and help me with my gravtank spam withdrawals

Alright I tested the wraith lord in two games. One with a shooty lord and another with the sword lord. Both games they were out of any action except for when the wraithlords flamers killed 8 gaunts. In the other game it was killed on turn two from las cannon fire. But after my experience I'll be taking scatter lasers on the guardians (I tried it out in one of the games and it did fine, Bright Lances miss to much even with guide...) and a sword lord.

HQ
-Eldrad - 210pts
-Avatar - 155

ELITES
-6 Striking Scorpions - Exarch w/ Scorpion Claw and Shadow Strike - 143
-5 Fire Dragons - 80
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones - 110

TROOPS
-10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser , Warlock w/ Destructor- 130
-10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser , Warlock w/ Destructor- 130
-10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser - 95
-5 Dire Avengers - 60
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones, Star Engines, Vectored Engines - 145

HEAVY SUPPORT
-3 War Walkers - 6 Scatter Lasers - 180
-3 War Walkers - 6 Eldar Missile Launchers - 210
-Wraithlord - Wraith Sword, 2 flamers - 100

1748pts

Good Job

Why you still have that vectored engine WS

can you have 2 warlocks because they are HQ?

I need to guarantee that I can grab objectives with that scoring serpent by moving 36". To many times have my games become draws due to being immobilized and wrecking.

Warlocks in guardian squads are troops choices. Warlocks alone have no roster type. They are whatever type of unit that they join.

The list has been doing great (I went on an 8 game winning streak with it) except for in a recent tourney with some weird missions I came across an issue.

The mission that gave me the most problems was almost unfair in how it was made but it was still fun because it gave a great challenge.

Game starts with a roll off. Winner of the roll is the attacker. Defender deploys everything in pitched battle deployment. Attacker deploys nothing.

Attacker goes first and moves everything onto the board with no reserves aloud; however outflankers outflank on this turn.

Objectives were, for the attacker, table the defender, or else, you lose. Good things were that everything (for the attackers side) in the army that can run now has fleet. Also all troops gain the tyranid ability without number (atkr only).

I lost because for one, there was a 2 hour time limit and I had a slow opponent and I played a little to slowly; the game only went to turn 4 before it was called. I was up against shooty orks and could have possibly pulled off a win if it went to turn 5 or definitely on 6.

The issue was that I didn't have enough long range shooting power and had to foot slog my guardians and avatar towards him while he was able to shoot them down. My war walkers did fantastic and so did my fire dragons and even the 5 DA's did well. My wraithlord was almost pointless.

So the solution I have come up with for the odd mission like this and all other missions because it seems more like a buff than a boon, is to take 3 more scatter laser walkers. I'll be dropping my scorpions and my wraithlord to do this. Also I'll put Bright Lances onto the Wave serpents. I'd like to know what your opinions are on doing this.

First of all, do you consider 9 war walkers cheesey, and will I get marked down for taking them? Second of all do you think this is a bad idea all together?

New List:
HQ
-Eldrad - 210pts
-Avatar - 155

ELITES
-5 Fire Dragons - 80
-Wave Serpent - TL Bright Lance, Spirit Stones - 145

TROOPS
-10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser , Warlock w/ Destructor- 130
-10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser , Warlock w/ Destructor- 130
-10 Guardian Defenders - Shuriken Cannon - 85
-5 Dire Avengers - 60
-Wave Serpent - TL Bright Lance, Spirit Stones, Star Engines, Vectored Engines - 180

HEAVY SUPPORT
-3 War Walkers - 6 Scatter Lasers - 180
-3 War Walkers - 6 Eldar Missile Launchers - 210
-3 War Walkers - 6 Scatter Lasers - 180

1745pts

Nah...9 walkers won't get comp hit, sure it's actually pretty cheesy (infiltrate them and kill 1 transport each on first turn LOL), but no one should complain because they're so fragile.

I would drop 10 guardians (with cannons) for some jetbikes, you put them on reserve for as long as possible, if they come on just have them turbo boosting on your table edge. When the time comes to capture objectives, you turbo boost towards those far objectives that would otherwise take ages for guardians on foot (not to mention dangerous)

It's debatable that you could drop ALL the bright lances and perhaps clean the list for another Fire Dragon squad in Wave Serpent. You're mass STR6 will dominate any AV10-12 even in cover. So to deal with those AV12+, fire dragons are MUCH MUCH more effective than BL.

Otherwise this list is pretty awesome already lol

Thanks for the input.

From my experience jetbikes, with this list, are far to fragile and don't fit in well because in 90% of the games I play I'm castling up and jetbikes zooming around give the enemy something to focus on. My guardians are almost always in 4+ cover anyway with the ability to be fortuned so they are pleanty survivable.

In regards to the fire dragons, I'd love to take another squad but I can't afford the transport and I need that scoring serpent for grabbing far objectives because my guardians out in the open are as good as dead.

Good to hear that it's working well.

Considering the 3rd unit of War Walkers, I assumed the Scorpions in your original version would sometimes be needed to help the guardians stay clear of assaulty stuff from the opponent? Or is the Avatar + shooting transports, with the occasional destructor enough to stop them?

I'm also wondering how often that Warlock with Destructor is useful in games?

The scorpions were actually used to take out things like devastator squads unless I was going up against a mainly assault based army such as tyranids or orks where then they would be objective clearers or somtimes, but rarely, as an assault shield. Against mechanized armies however they couldn't do much from out flanking because unless something is on the edge they have to run for a turn or two and if they go up the center, they get shot down to 2 or 3 guys and become useless. They would do better if they were a unit of 10 or so.

My main assault shield though, is my unit of guardians that doesn't have a warlock. I place them in front so they get shot first and lose a few members then back off until something gets near then they move up again in a line and prevent any multi-assaults so that they die and on my turn 18 shuriken catapults get to unload on whatever is in front of them.

Also you're right against things besides mechanized meq's or wing princes my fire usually can take down most things before they reach my line.

The destructors were used at first a lot until I learned to "control" my opponents movement with my own force. Then the warlocks became bench warmers for the most part. Imo, 18-27 shuriken catapults can take down pretty much any non AV unit that storms up to my lines, especially with Eldrad's doom and double guide. Destructors as I see it aren't necessary. (Just make sure you shoot something before it reaches the cover your guardians are in)

Anyways. I'm making some more changes to the list that I'm going to proxy test this week. The more I thought about azelexx's idea of bringing another dragon serpent, the more I liked it. In doing so I'll have to drop some of my special trickery upgrades, but it may be worth it.

Yet another new list... (I should rename this to Lynch's List Blog ):

HQ
-Eldrad - 210pts
-Avatar - 155

ELITES
-5 Fire Dragons - 80
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones - 110
-5 Fire Dragons - 80
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones - 110

TROOPS
-10 Guardian Defenders - Shuriken Cannon - 85
-10 Guardian Defenders - Shuriken Cannon - 85
-10 Guardian Defenders - Shuriken Cannon - 85
-5 Dire Avengers - 60
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones - 110

HEAVY SUPPORT
-3 War Walkers - 6 Scatter Lasers - 180
-3 War Walkers - 6 Eldar Missile Launchers - 210
-3 War Walkers - 6 Scatter Lasers - 180

1740pts

Cool, thanks for the extensive reply, much appreciated. Good luck with going to 24 inch range in your new list!

Shuriken Cannons can be a tad dangerous @24" ...for my Mechdar list I like to stay 36" and shoot more scatter lasers

I agree that it is dangerous but everything is at it's base cost without upgrades so there's no way to fit scatter lasers in. I'm just going to see how the second dragon unit fairs to see if it's worth being in bolter range constantly or not. If it doesn't go well I'm going to try dropping them and their serpent and going back to bright lances and scatter lasers but I don't think I'll be taking the warlocks back as of yet.

i think i like the list with scatter laser and BLs more than the list with 2 squads of dragons. SL can handle any AV10-12 from 36" away, and the BLs help with AV14. Having two suicide squads doesnt seem like a great idea to me, especailly if there isnt a ton of heavy armor, atleast that SL cant handle.

I think your list has style lol I've never tried Avatar with THREE squads of guardians but heck that's about as many bodies as Eldar can get.

Definitely take 2 squads of dragons for the insurance... I been play testing heaps and 2 squads is the optimal number in my opinion.

BLs WILL NEVER HELP WITH ANYTHING LOL. Unless you have 3 walkers with 6 bright lances then that'll be crack-up.

Eldar's win by mass peow peow and contesthammer (thus the skimmers), nothing else.

After two games, one with the double dragon list and one with the list before that I've decided to go with the first list. Two units of dragons is just to many points to throw away. Also the 36" range is very necessary. But the 9 war walkers is a definite yes. The amount of fire power that they can produce when guided is down right stupid....

Soooo, I should buy 3 more walkers then eh? Good to hear that it's working :-D

Okay once again making a possible list change. In the past two tourneys and a bunch of pick up games I've been finding that my list really suffers from not being able to move my troops. I only have the dire avenger serpent that can move which if that isn't kept behind my castle for the entire game it gets shot down. And my guardians can't move out of cover or they go poof... So, onto my new proposed list.

I'm dropping the 3rd set of walkers (I only borrowed them so it's no loss ) they were good but to slow and needed to stay back to hug cover. Also I'm dropping the DA serpent it just costs to many points... I will miss it though. Other than that just upgrades are being dropped.

Newer-er list:
HQ
Eldrad - 210pts
Avatar - 155

Elites
5 Fire Dragons - 80
-Wave Serpent - TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones - 110

Troops
10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser - 95
10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser - 95
10 Guardian Defenders - Scatter Laser - 95
5 Rangers - Pathfinders - 120
3(4) Jetbikes - Shuriken Cannon - 76
-Warlock Jetbike - Destructor, Singing Spear - 58

Fast Attack
7 Warp Spiders - 154

Heavy Support
3 War Walkers - 6 Scatter Lasers - 180
3 War Walkers - 6 EMLs - 210
Wraithlord - 2 flamers, EML, Wraithsword - 120

Total - 1748

Also I'm thinking about dropping the FD serpent and the Wraithlord for a beefed out falcon for the survivability on my contesting tank... Anyways, new plan is to, like before castle with walkers, avatar, eldrad and guardians, while the dragons and spiders go out and do damage. Spiders will probably deepstrike most of the time. The pathfinders will infiltrate to grab an objective... Or maybe they'll hold the castle objective and be fortuned with eldrad... I dunno yet, I need a test run . And lastly the jetbikes will go in reserve then do the usual turbo boost to survive then go clear/grab an objective on turn 5.

So what would you change? Would you prefer the beefed up falcon over the serpent and lord? Any units not worth taking? Thanks

Your plan is to turboboost the GJBs and grab objectives, but your load out is quite different. Isn't it smarter to have Embolden on that Warlock so you will not be tempted to go kamikaze and have a chance to actually make it till turn 5?

Most of the time they will be turbo boosting inside of the fearless bubble.

And having them in reserves as long as possible.

Oh you said that.