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1850 Pts - Eldar Roster - Saim Hann Council

HQ: Autarch (1#, 140 Pts)
1 Autarch @ 140 Pts Mandiblaster; Eldar Jetbike; Laser Lance; Fusion Gun;

HQ: Farseer (1#, 175 Pts)
1 Farseer @ 175 Pts Doom ; Fortune ; Runes of Warding; Spirit Stones; Eldar Jetbike;

HQ: Warlock Unit (5#, 260 Pts)
1 Warlock Unit @ 260 Pts
3 Warlock @ [55] Pts Destructor; Eldar Jetbike
1 Warlock @ [45] Pts Eldar Jetbike
1 Warlock @ [50] Pts Embolden; Eldar Jetbike;

Troops: Dire Avengers (6#, 205 Pts) x3
5 Dire Avengers @ 205 Pts
1 Wave Serpent @ [145] Pts Spirit Stones; Shuriken Cannon; TL Starcannons

Elite: Fire Dragons (6#, 220 Pts) x3
5 Fire Dragons @ 220 Pts
1 Wave Serpent @ [140] Pts Spirit Stones; Shuriken Cannon; TL Missile Launchers

Total Roster Cost: 1850

I love it,no reason, I just love it

Seems like a pretty simple and solid Tourny list. Takes advantage of the two cookie cutter unit types used by Eldar currently, Jetseer and heavily Mechanized Dragons and Dire Avengers.

High armor ranged armies, or even Land Raider heavy lists might give you issues, as you have little to hit AV 14 at range. A smart opponent would just bring down the Fire Dragons first and then divide up the remaining anti-armor you'd have left(basically the Bikers).

I'd say it's a good all-comers list though.

That's my only worry is that it might be too cookie cutter, and will not make anyone second guess.

It has redundancy which is good. The council is a big threat as long as it doesn't get shut down by hoods and the like. The autarch as a little bit of extra punch for potential tarpit situations. I may drop the fusion gun on the autarch though for one more destructor. One because I would have to convert my model, and two it adds a bit more unit killiness.

Whats cookie cutter?

Starcannons are horribly overpriced. Your 600pts council is the only thing that can be hurt by str 6 (if you discount glancing a serpent to death) Which means that every weapon of that kind will be comming thier way.

Small arms fire is the bane of Seer councils and since your council is rather small already thier usefulness will decrese rapidly.

Enhance is need in your council aswell since I5 >>I4

Farseer MUST have RoWit

I'll agree with tedurur on most points there.

Starcannons are overpriced, and should be replaced.

I agree with the importance of having enhance on the council.

The farseer doesn't NEED RoWit, but if you put Twin Scatter Lasers instead of starcannons (same str) you should be able to afford the runes.

Other than that it seems very solid.

Valid points. Only fear is where I play I run up against a lot of marine players and it's all about denying armor saves. Thus the star cannons. They maybe overpriced, but I'm willing to pay it because it denies FNP and 2+ armor saves. And that is a big win in my book. Since I see lots of 2+ saves where I play, and having the extra 2 shots from scatter lasers just isn't going to cut it.

RoWit is not a must and I will never play with it, in fact I think it is a waste of 10 points. The farseer is Ld 10 doesn't fail very often, and I have an embolden warlock, so I get a reroll anyway, because a psychic test is a leadership test.

Enhance is something I would like to add if I can squeeze the points somewhere, so if I were going to do that I could drop the fusion gun and upgrade the embolden, but like I said I might just get Destructor on the other warlock.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tony the guardsman wrote:Whats cookie cutter?

Just figured it was typical mech eldar. And spam out all the "good" units. If I had fire prisms I would be adding those, but I'm saving up for the new ones, but this is my list until I get funds.

Well, your farseer does indeed NEED RoWit if you want it to be an take all commers list. If you want it to be a anti marine list then he can do without them, but if you were to go up against another eldar player or a Nid player you run a high risk of turning that council into a 600pts MEQ unit.

On the other hand, if you are playing against marines I would not recomend the council either since you will most likely be facing a hood and 50% of the time the libby will Null Zone your council and then they die.

Well, you'll get into trouble if you face horde armies.
Small DA unit do achieve nothing.
I'd consider blade storming DA squads for this reason.

Yes, RoWit is mandatory vs Nids.
Otherwise, the precious Jetseer squadron falls apart.

What does cookie cutter mean?Thats what I want to know!

Exaplanation: Do you know what a cookie cutter is? It takes a flat, otherwise unassuming piece of cake/cookie and cuts a shape out of it. Doing this many times gives you a series of cookies/cakes that look exactly the same. A cookie cutter list works under the same principle, where every army of that ilk starts to look exactly the same. Eg, Guard with Chimera spam, Dark Eldar with their Raiders, so on and so forth.

Hope that helps!

I'm not sure if this is legal but could you stop taking a serpent as a dedicated transport, put both squads in it and save 140 points and buy something else like a small reaper squad or something.

@TRISKELION7. I almost don't know where to start with that comment its so bad. I suggest reading the rules on transports for a start. In any case Reapers are pretty average and considering this is a mech list are a terrible choice, particularly considering he already has Starcannons everywhere.

Anyway, this is a pretty solid list, obviously pretty spammy/cookie cutter whatever you want to call it but Eldar don't have much to work with to make competitive armies so what can you do (I'm finding it tougher and tougher to stay competitive with each new codex release). The Council is still easy to counter with psychic defense and won't singlehandedly win the game for you configured as it is, but its a usable unit and at least its not a foot council.

I would consider dropping an Fire Dragon unit + Serpent to put more bodies in the Council. You lose the ability to instagib just about any tank in the game but with extra bodies the Council can do the job against tanks if they need to (+ other changes below should help make up for it as well). Even if they are one of the toughest units in the game to kill you still have to expect to lose some during the game which can quickly drop them low enough in number that they don't put out much damage. The other thing I would be particularly wary about with such a small unit is that it becomes much easier for enemy shooting to force allocation to the Seer (and the Autarch I guess but he is less important), all it take is a single S6+ wound getting through and the unit falls over with the loss of Fortune.

If you aren't going to increase the size of the council you need to try and fit some more firepower into the list, probably a pair of Prisms (which is 1 FD squad + Serpent + 10 pts from somewhere). Lots of skimmers is great but you actually need to be able to kill things as well.

Strangely enough I think both ends of the army spectrum will give you issues, you might struggle to deal with horde lists due to a lack of firepower (not enough shots basically) and only have the Fire Dragons to deal with heavy armour reliably (Council is a backup I guess).

The first thing to do is to put the better heavy weapons (EML at the moment) on the DAVU Serpents and the cheaper weapons on the Fire Dragon Serpents (Scatters at the moment). I would do this no matter what other changes you make to the list. It spreads out your anti-tank firepower, at the moment there is almost no reason to shoot your Avenger Serpents at all.

Next thing to do with this list is to swap all the Starcannons to Scatter Lasers. This both boosts you light anti tank abilities (4 S6 shots are much better than 2 obviously), boosts you ability to deal with hordes and keeps your ability to kill MEQ much the same. The only place the Starcannon is better is against Marines out of cover (and you are lucky to catch them against alert opponents) or standard Terminators (but not against TH/SS Terminators which more people tend to run now). Considering the added points cost its probably not worth it, certainly not on every Serpent at least. Remember that there isn't a hell of a lot of stuff with 2+ armour/FNP which can actually catch you if you keep moving, Terminators certainly shouldn't (unless they are coming out of a Land Raider but thats more an issue with the transport and Starcannons aren't going to help much there either) the biggest issue you will have is against Blood Angels JP hordes and I don't think Eldar have any good reliable answers to that (assuming its still an all comers list here) even Prisms are a long shot. You can also probably drop the Spirit Stones off the Avenger Serpents if you are a few points short, they shouldn't be getting too close in very often so can get away with it. For me the next thing to do would be use these points to upgrade all the EML to Bright Lances. This gets you some usable anti tank firepower outside of the Fire Dragons. Importantly you can use them from range as well and being S8/AP2 means you can use them against your FNP/2+ problems if there are no tanks to shoot. If you have spare points you could consider bumping the Scatter Lasers back up to EML though I guess.

You need to take Runes of Witnessing on the Farseer because you HAVE to get Fortune up or the unit falls like a (very expensive) house of cards. Sure this isn't going to happen much with Ld10 and Embolden, but if you come up against another Eldar player (who should also have Runes of Warding) or Shadows and/or a DeathLeaper then you will struggle to get Fortune off. With most Eldar lists you can get away with not passing every turn, as while failing to cast Doom/Guide can be annoying, it doesn't mean that half your army is probably dead in the next turn. I would also consider taking Mind War rather than Doom, the only thing which really needs it in this list are the Destructor templates. The Council is all 2+ to wound in combat and all your shooting (excluding the DAVU units which shouldn't really be shooting) is S6+ so shouldn't need it too often. Mind War gets overlooked most of the time for the support powers, but can be very useful to take out pesky power fists/other nasty stuff to prevent your Seer getting squashed in combat. Alternatively drop the second power entirely (including the now redundant Spirit Stones) to free up some points. You also really need Enhance in the Council, preferably 2 to ensure you don't lose the bonus too easily. Considering they are primarily a combat unit Enhance should be the first upgrade they get, WS5 means you are hitting on 3+ most of the time and I5 means you are going first most of the time. Certainly don't drop/upgrade the Embolden guy to do it though, imo Embolden is probably the second most important upgrade for the unit. Nothing is worse than failing a morale check at Ld10 and watching half your army walk (or get escorted) off the board. As a side note adding the Autarch to the squad doesn't really help prevent them getting tarpitted, if they get charged or the combat lasts more than a single round (remember that ideally you actually WANT the combat to last 2 rounds) he is the same if not worse than a Warlock (just with a couple of extra wounds).

Long essay...
And thanks for the cookie cutter reply!

Pretty much agree with Powerguy on all accounts. Mostly I think the 3 5man DA squads are weak. They accomplish nothing really outside of being scoring... and that's not all it's cracked up to be.

Didn't read the wall of text but just wanted to give two cents.

You have all your eggs in one basket.

The seer council is your only unit with any real killing power and as soon as you opponent sees it they will dump everything they have into it. A single psy hood will turn that 600pt deathstar into marines hiding in cover. T4 with a 4+ save is nothing.

The fire dragons in that config will only be good for getting out to pop a vehicle then die a pitiful death. They have no other killing power.
5 DA can obviously do nothing but score.
This leaves you with 6 Serpents to do your killing with 3 ML which will hurt some rhinos and scratch the pain on some marines, 6 underslug cannons forcing you to move at 6" to get 3 shots at BS 3 that still grant a 3+ armor, and 3 Star Cannons that turn a 3+ armor save into a 4+ cover save.

I like the thoughts that everyone has proposed. What about this? If I don't have anything that is AP3 or better what will your opponent do? if I'm always going to get an armor save against an opponent, then I'm going to run right toward them. If they have weapons that can deny armor saves, then I have to hug cover, which slows them down from getting to objectives, as they will be left out in the open. Objective placement in open is what I want to do, so if they want it then they expose themselves to my AP3 and AP2 shots. Sure a smart opponent would just ignore that objective, but that means I get to grab those objectives with relative ease with a flat out move on turn 5 for a cover save. If I place more objectives then it's almost a guaranteed win, as all my objectives will be out in the open for me to pounce on. And all I have to do is contest theirs. Thoughts?

Aside from the fact that Starcannons are only better against 2+ or 3+ (i.e they are a huge waste against Guard/Orks etc leaving you at a clear disadvantage against those armies), while in theory they might force Marines to huge cover it isn't as helpful as it seems. For starters pretty much every Marine unit will be in a transport or have the numbers to shrug off a couple of casualties (a single Starcannon gets maybe 1 kill per turn so won't worry a Devestator or Tactical squad with bolters to burn). So unless you can open up the transports in the first place you won't be shooting them much. Even when you do drop the transport or they get out deliberately, they are still going to be in cover most of the time, hiding behind the wreck or in a crater. This doesn't even factor in potential problems with tanks (with the number of tanks on the table you can run out of space) and other terrain partially blocking line of sight and giving a cover save. Basically cover is just so easy to get that in practice getting saves from AP2/3 weapons isn't a huge issue.

Also your plan to put objectives in the open, while probably the best option (you don't want to drive Serpents into terrain either), isn't going to work every time as Starcannons don't put out enough shots. A smart opponent won't move his Marines out of cover until he has to (and they should still be in a vehicle if possible), and you don't have enough firepower with the Starcannons to shoot a squad (even a combat squad) off an objective in a single turn, even given 2 turns you are a bit lucky to kill them all. Its a good start but to make this plan work you really need Prisms imo, assuming you can keep them alive late in the game, they are a unit which can actually squash a Marine squad that is out of cover in a single shot.