Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I really like a bike seer council, they are good fortuned and can take out dreads and vehicles very well VS units they usually get tarpitted unless you have an autarch with power weapon in the squad too. I have used warlocks with GJB squad to take out dreads, however I try to hit them in the back where the Shuri Cannon has a chance at taking out the Armor 10 in the back too. Just my 2 cents.

Warlocks are highly effective against vehicles and dreads -- provided you have one with enhance.
Going at I5, you will hit the dreads before they can hit you. Each 'lock will have 3 attacks hitting on 3+ and pinning on a 4+. I've seen this cleave many dreads in two before they can swing.

On vehicles, it depends on how fast they moved.
If your going after ones that were stationary, you will have them demolish whatever they hit. Each warlock will be doing ~3 pinning hits vs nearly every vehicle, so they will clear the parking lot pretty quickly.
If the vehicles moved, your going to have less luck. If they moved up to 6", you still bring enough attacks to clear out the parking lots. If they moved more than 6" the effectiveness drops dramatically.

If you have the points to spare and want to add 2-3 destructors to the warlock squad they can also be used for anti-horde in an all-comers list.

I am also not saying that warlocks are the end-all be-all unit. I am saying that they are an intresting solution to a problem Eldar have -- which is a lack of slots that can destroy tanks reliably.

A Few points on tank shocking.

1. For Leadership 9 it takes about 4 attempts before the unit has a 50% chance of failing (Technically speaking everytime the unit has only a 16% chance of failing) but I think you understand my point. For leadership 10 you need 8 attemps to get the same 50%.

Sorry but I don't really see this as a "tactic". Something that can happen if the dice line up?Sure. But I would never base my movement around it.

2. Unless I am wrong, any model in the unit can perform a DoG. Not just models physically moved over. So if there is a Melta or Powerfist in the unit and they pass the leadership test, they can perform the DoG and possibly destroy your tank.

1. Its pretty easy for a Mechdar list to have more than 4 tanks, and the point was that you can do it every turn without too much fear of losing a vehicle (unless its a massive unit the chance of you dying are probably less than the chance of him failing morale in the first place).

2. In short, your wrong lol. The rule for DoG clearly state that only models in the path of the tank can attempt to stop it, so with smart positioning you can pretty easily avoid damage except against really heavy hitters (i.e the entire unit can hit you).

OK, I will yield to point 2. Like I said, "unless I'm wrong", but if you want to spend half of your forces just so one of my units has a 50% chance of running away, then I will take those odds all day long. Because that means you are not doing anything to the rest of my army.

This tactis is more luck than strategy. Don't get me wrong, I am all for tank shocking when I have nothing else to do, but to base my whole game around it, is foolish at best.

Your missing the main point, its not a 50% chance of running away, its a 50% chance of running away PER TURN and after that you can easily walk them off the board. Certainly its not something you are going to use against every army/any unit, but against Paladins and other deathstar type units which aren't heavy on S8 its actually a very reliable tactic which is massively underused. Once you get up close and you won't be avoiding being shot/assaulted its often worth it against small units as well. Its also nowhere near half an army, 4 Serpents is 500pts (a bit more if you include the units inside) which isn't an unreasonably large Deathstar, and 4 Serpents is far less than you will see in most decent Mechdar lists.

I tank shock a good deal but I think looking at a Draigowing and assuming that is my go-to for dealing with that unit is like giving up and saying to myself that Eldar are incapable of actually killing them. That's just not true. Most lists pack 1-3 units of mounted Dragons and many have 2 Prisms. They can deal a lot of death and do it especially efficiently with only 5-8 enemy KPs on the board.

I like labmouse42's advice because it gets to the heart of target priorities and damage dealing against the main threats of GK armies. And to the general Eldar mindset of casualty conservation vs. necessary loss--doing efficiently the jobs that need done and avoiding those that don't.

I don't understand all the hate for tank shock.

How about sharing a little of the hating for players who bring 800+ point Draigo deathstar units?

What "rest of the army" are you not dealing with? Once the Draigo unit is paid for, there's really only enough points for a strike squad and a couple of psyflemen. Ram the dreads with your falcons, tank shock the paladins with your wave serpents, game over in about 3 turns.

Flavius Infernus wrote:I don't understand all the hate for tank shock.

How about sharing a little of the hating for players who bring 800+ point Draigo deathstar units?

What "rest of the army" are you not dealing with? Once the Draigo unit is paid for, there's really only enough points for a strike squad and a couple of psyflemen. Ram the dreads with your falcons, tank shock the paladins with your wave serpents, game over in about 3 turns.

Respectfully, I don't think there is hate for tank shocking. Noone here has said that its useless. The only critique is that it is not a guaranteed thing.

I like tank shocking. I just don't plan my game around a coin flip.

When someone ask me what's the Best way of doing something, I normally don't give them a 50-50 option.

Well, that's kind of my point. If you're trying to kill a unit of paladins with an Eldar army, you're not going to do much better than 50-50.

Or were you going to try to shoot them to death with dragons and prisms? Let's look at that realistically.

5 fire dragons shoot at a unit of paladins in cover (of course the GK player will always keep his expensive deathstar unit in cover).
They score 2 or 3 wounds.

Draigo always takes the first ID wound--he's got a storm shield and eternal warrior, so he saves it 2/3 of the time, the other third he takes a single wound (he has 4).

So if you shoot all 3 of your 5-elf FD units at the paladin deathstar, you can expect to come off with a single wound on Draigo, and about 2 or 3 dead paladins.

So if you can persuade your GK opponent to let all your fire dragons shoot at his deathstar unit without interruption for four or five turns, you can nearly wipe out the unit. Draigo will probably still be standing there with a single wound.

Let's consider the fire prism. Using the small blast (for ID) two prisms shoot, one will scatter off and the other hits a single model. Probably gets a wound. GK player puts the wound on Draigo (remember eternal warrior) and takes his 3+ save against it. So two prisms firing for six turns can put a wound or two on Draigo. They might get lucky and nail a paladin at some point if big D gets down to a single wound and the GK player allocates it to the banner guy or whatever.

If the paladin unit has an apothecary--and it should--then they can shrug off scatterlasers, shuriken cannons, bladestorms, witchblades, prism big blasts--all the whole Eldar arsenal they can take those hits all day long without losing more than a model or two.

(I'm using mathhammer mostly here, but it's based on my actual experience of playing paladin armies. You can shoot your entire army at them for multiple turns and not even kill a model.)

They'll bounce banshees or harlequins. Remember each paladin model has a 5++ or 4++ save and 2 wounds, and the wargear allows allocation. They get a 2+ and FNP against any harlequin wounds that don't rend. They can take banshee or harlequin charges on the nose and then grind up the unit in a turn or two without losing more than a few models.

...and the whole time they're lighting up your grav tanks with 16 str7 rending shots every turn. That's pretty much a dead grav tank each turn that you can't get outside the 30" effective range.

So where's the tactic that gives you better odds than tank shocking?

Flavius Infernus wrote:Well, that's kind of my point. If you're trying to kill a unit of paladins with an Eldar army, you're not going to do much better than 50-50.

Calm there there solider. No one is going to disagree with you on the general principal that the best way to get rid of paladins. As a tactic it works well in that case. As an overall army strategy, people don't build their armies around it. Your a smart guy, you know there is a difference between tactics and strategy.

Its been my experience that the psyriflemen are bigger threats than the paladins. In every game I've played vs paladins (which has only been 3, I admit) the paladins sat on one objective the entire game. In every case that objective was close to their table edge (within 12") and I just avoided them with my tanks when possible. If they are in cover, they need to make a difficult terrain check before moving that extra 6" to shoot. I just focused on the other units in the army and won each game.

Psyriflemen are the big hassle for the eldar (and arguably everyone in the game). That is something the OP should be aware of, as I discussed in detail in that Tolken-long ass post earlier.

labmouse42 wrote:

Flavius Infernus wrote:Well, that's kind of my point. If you're trying to kill a unit of paladins with an Eldar army, you're not going to do much better than 50-50.

Calm there there solider. No one is going to disagree with you on the general principal that the best way to get rid of paladins.

Then I must have misunderstood jbunny and dna noodle as disagreeing with me on the general principle when they wrote "When someone ask me what's the Best way of doing something, I normally don't give them a 50-50 option," and "assuming that is my go-to for dealing with that unit is like giving up and saying to myself that Eldar are incapable of actually killing them. That's just not true," respectively.

Unless I'm misreading, they appear to me to be claiming the existence of a better tactical option for killing paladins?

I've played the game where an inexperienced GK player camps out his GKs in a place that doesn't matter strategically, and in terms of winning games, the best choice in that case is to just avoid them. I'm assuming we all understand that. But a skilled GK player (and, yes, Daigonwing players who are also skilled are also rare, but they are out there), the paladins are going to be in a place where you cannot ignore or avoid them.

Not trying to step on anybody here. I'm genuinely interested if somebody has a tactic that works.

Looking at your math Flavius, I agree with you. I love to run Harlies and I have taken down many termies on the charge (with 5-7 termies) and killed them off that assault or the next, but I have NEVER been that lucky against Paladins, with the 2 wounds, they can absorb enouph damage and when the hurt comes back, they get wiped out... I agree other than avoiding them, there is no easy way to deal with them. I have even tried tarpitting them with a jet seer council and usually in 2-4 turns they wipe them out as well. I am very excited to try this tank shocking and see how it works. Thanks for everyones posts, they have been educating and enlightening. Cheers all

What intresting is I was just listening to the 11th compay podcast (excellent show) on Pat's Corner. Pat was interviewing Goatboy (a GK player) who did extremely well at Feast of Blades.

The list that Goatboy discussed utilized a paladin deathstar, 4 warrior squads in razorbacks, and 2 psyriflemen dreads. A list like that would have a hard time vs a Mech'Dar army. You would just fortune up 2 dragon serpents to take down his psydreads. You would then pluck apart his razorbacks from range, then tank shock his paladins off the board.

I am saying that it is not the best tactic. It is a coin flip. I have a hard time believing that the best tactic of beating a unit is 50-50.

In a all-comers list maybe, but if you are building a list to beat this army, 50-50 is not your best bet. in fact 3 full squads of Dragons in range should drop the squad in one round of shooting (less Draigo). Add in 3 Prism's and that is a dead squad in one turn. Is it worth it pouring your whole army into one unit? More than likely not, but it is better than pouring your whole army into it for a 50-50 chance of it working.

Labmouse: I agree, and your post also brings up the point that--because all GK armies have 2-3 psyflemen who need to die if your grav tanks are going to survive--Eldar armies are always split between needing the FDs to handle the dreads, and also needing them to handle the paladins. So tank-shocking paladins actually frees up your fire dragons to go after the psybolt dreads.

jbunny: Yeah, if you can tool your list, then 30 guided fire dragons on a doomed unit is definitely the way to go.

The strength of the Draigo deathstar is that Draigo takes one ID wound off the top of every volley. Since most str8+ and low AP guns come in single shot--or very few shot--form, that means only massed paladin-killing guns firing all together can get past him to cause significant casualties.

But you wouldn't want to be playing that army against anybody else. And your tooled list would still have an easier time killing paladins if you at least tank-shock them out of cover first (and then, if they happen to break, you don't need to shoot them anymore).

The multi-tank shock strategy seems unrealistically risky against a paladin army. First, the 25% Chance of losing your tank to a hammer DOG, then the idea that all of your tanks will be in range of a paladin multi-assault if you fail to push them back.

In the (common) case of a paladin army jumping out of a stormraven or a land raider, you have to deal with paladins in your face rather than sitting somewhere in the middle of the board where all your tanks can get in on them.

Also, A paladin squad is going to either be attached to draigo or a Librarian in most cases, which means generally a LD10. All the Draigowing lists I've seen either run 2x5 Paladins with 1 IC in each squad and jump them out of vehicles, or Foot Slog a 10x Deathstar with both Libby and Draigo supported by a gaggle of psyflenoughts.

Fire Dragons seem like a much more reliable option.

Flavius Infernus wrote:Labmouse: I agree, and your post also brings up the point that--because all GK armies have 2-3 psyflemen who need to die if your grav tanks are going to survive--Eldar armies are always split between needing the FDs to handle the dreads, and also needing them to handle the paladins. So tank-shocking paladins actually frees up your fire dragons to go after the psybolt dreads.

What this conversation has made me consider is bringing one or two squads of dragons as 10 instead of 5. Its an extra 80 points for a lot more killyness.

junk wrote:The multi-tank shock strategy seems unrealistically risky against a paladin army. First, the 25% Chance of losing your tank to a hammer DOG, then the idea that all of your tanks will be in range of a paladin multi-assault if you fail to push them back.

Did you read the thread junk? I'll quote for you:

"Just don't run over the melta or powerfist guy (only models you actually run over can use Death or Glory) until after they break. Once they're falling back, they can't DoG on subsequent shocks."

So don't run over the hammer guy. Run over a sword or halberd guy.

"Even a big unit of paladins multi-charging a unit of wave serpents that has moved over 6" (thus hitting on 6's) is not going to score a lot of kills. Some shaken/stunned, and maybe one tank down from the daemonhammer guy. Then you shock him again the following turn. Infantry models can't be locked in HtH with vehicles--you can still shoot them (or tank shock them) again in your own turn."

If you're shooting at a unit of disembarked paladins with fire dragons, then the tank they got out of is in range for assault regardless.

"...if I understand probability distributions correctly, you can expect on average that a Ld9 unit will have failed at least once about 50% of the time after 3 tank shocks. A Ld10 unit can be expected to have failed about 50% of the time after 6 tank shocks."

So the odds aren't terrible. I run 7-9 grav tanks in 1500+ point lists.

And on top of all that, tank-shocking doesn't preclude the use of fire dragons. Just move 6-12", do your tank shock, and if it doesn't work then the FDs can still disembark and shoot--and the tanks can also still shoot one non-defensive weapon each.

Then the GK player can lose like a paladin or two from your fire dragon shots, wipe out your FDs in his turn, and you wind up tank-shocking anyway

As for them being in transports, that obviously precludes tank shock. But any method of killing them is going to require that they be disembarked first, so tank-shocking is not inferior for that reason.

Flavius Infernus wrote:
jbunny: Yeah, if you can tool your list, then 30 guided fire dragons on a doomed unit is definitely the way to go.
But you wouldn't want to be playing that army against anybody else. And your tooled list would still have an easier time killing paladins if you at least tank-shock them out of cover first (and then, if they happen to break, you don't need to shoot them anymore).

This is a use of Tnank Shock I agree 100% with. It does not require the unit to fail the leadership test to be effective.

Eldar have plenty to face Grey Knights. Rune of Warding cripples Psychic Powers, Fast Skimmers can keep the Grey Knights out of Storm Bolter/Psycannon range as well as combat, mass S6 fire takes down transports and troops on foot alike, Bright Lances break any Land Raiders that show up and ID Paladins, Fire Dragons kill everything.

Godless-Mimicry wrote:Eldar have plenty to face Grey Knights. Rune of Warding cripples Psychic Powers, Fast Skimmers can keep the Grey Knights out of Storm Bolter/Psycannon range as well as combat, mass S6 fire takes down transports and troops on foot alike, Bright Lances break any Land Raiders that show up and ID Paladins, Fire Dragons kill everything.

1. GK don't really need their psychic powers in order to function against Eldar. Guys in terminator armor with Str4 power weapons are more than sufficient. Reducing the success of fortitude by 50% doesn't really make much difference.

2. Grey knights don't need to shoot skimmers with psycannons because they have dreadnaughts with 4 twinlinked Str8 BS4 shots apiece that go 48".

3. Str 6 fire doesn't take down paladins (which is what this thread is about). With 2+ armor, wound allocation and FNP, a 10-paladin deathstar can expect to take--on average--about 120 str6 wounds before needing to remove a single model. How many BS3 shots do you have to throw at them to score 120 wounds? About 200 if they're twinlinked/guided, over 250 if they're not. And that's just for one model.

4. A bright lance is a single-shot weapon. If it hits and wounds, the GK player just allocates it to Draigo for a 3+ save. If he fails, he takes one wound because of eternal warrior.

5. I sketched out the fire dragon odds against paladins like three posts ago. Did you read the thread?

You don't actually choose what model I designate for the Death or Glory. Might want to brush up on that a bit.

And why are you so defensive about any alternative strategies to suicide ramming a unit? Since you picked fire dragons for the example, at least use a full sized group when you're trying to make a point.

Shooty & Stompy wrote:You don't actually choose what model I designate for the Death or Glory. Might want to brush up on that a bit.

He can if he doesn't run over a hammer guy.

Shooty & Stompy wrote:You don't actually choose what model I designate for the Death or Glory. Might want to brush up on that a bit.

Already covered this on page one, and again on page two.

Shooty & Stompy wrote:
And why are you so defensive about any alternative strategies to suicide ramming a unit? Since you picked fire dragons for the example, at least use a full sized group when you're trying to make a point.

Covered this like three posts ago, where I used three units of ten fire dragons as an example.

Now I know you didn't read the thread.

labmouse42 wrote:

Flavius Infernus wrote:Labmouse: I agree, and your post also brings up the point that--because all GK armies have 2-3 psyflemen who need to die if your grav tanks are going to survive--Eldar armies are always split between needing the FDs to handle the dreads, and also needing them to handle the paladins. So tank-shocking paladins actually frees up your fire dragons to go after the psybolt dreads.

What this conversation has made me consider is bringing one or two squads of dragons as 10 instead of 5. Its an extra 80 points for a lot more killyness.

I am so sorry for not bringing this up earlier. I've been thinking in terms of larger units of Dragons this whole time. Even bumping each unit to 7-8 would make them much more effective as it adds wounds that wrap past Draigo. Most people run Paladins combat squaded so even if you only kill a few guys you've done severe damage to the squad. That also means there's a squad without Draigo to block shots and that the Librarian is probably in that unit and can be IDed the same as the Paladins. I think medium to large FF units look a lot more attractive than they used to.

Tank-shocking them out of cover is beautiful too. They don't need to fail the ld test and they lose their cover save. Then two units of 7 Dragons would wreck them.

Flavius Infernus
I did also say that I tank shock quite a bit. I didn't mean to come off as if I think tank shocking is bad, but I don't want to make it a priority. I make my lists to kill enough to survive and capture objectives. That luckily means I have tanks I can shock with if I need or want to. I was very interested in the numbers you presented to support its success rate. But the point had been made fully by page one and I hoped we had some other solutions on actually killing them. If Mat Ward had been just a little crazier he could have made them fearless. What would I do then? Then there's the issue of how I like to play with my friends and I don't think either of us would have fun if I just push his whole army off the board. I'm not criticizing your gaming environment, but I want you to see why I wanted to get people's impressions on ways to shoot them down.

On another note, I was also thinking that if you use Shining Spears (which I know most people hate) the Exarch can ID up to 3 Paladins at I6 with a Star Lance. Shooting could ID one more if you have a Melta Autarh too. Draigo could be tied up so he can't block in combat. Not ideal but I sometimes run Spears for kicks and this just occurred to me.

I think you might be on to something with larger FD units

I went ahead and wrote out ID options in our codex. They're not in any special order.

1) Fire Dragons - With a good chance to play against Paladin I'd consider using 7-10 in a Serpent instead of my usual 5. They wrap tons of wounds and if Draigo is elsewhere, a combat squad of Paladins is going to be hurting bad.
2) Fire Prisms - While the small blast may be unreliable and might not hit enough Paladins (unless they DS and shoot instead of run), I think many people use them anyway and they should help support taking out the target.
3) Shining Spears Exarch with Star Lance - At his initiative he will hit at the same time as GK Halberds but each wound is a good chance to do meaningful damage. Then every member of our Spears dies to return hits. Maybe best used as clean up.
4) War Walkers/Vypers with Bright Lances - I think this option is too expensive to be worth it but its got the firepower to do the job so I thought I'd list it. For the points you might as well bring a GuideSeer too.
5) Wraithguard - Rends cause ID. Nice but I don't think they give enough shots or likelihood to ID to make it worth it.
6) Wraithlord in CC - The worst option in my opinion because he will be IDed by Halberds before he swings but for completeness' sake Im including him.

Are there others that I missed? Are there any other than Dragons and Prisms that are worth taking in TAC lists?

Flavius Infernus wrote:And I wasn't kidding about ramming the tanks. The best way for Eldar to kill a psyfleman dread is to ram a wave serpent or falcon into it at full speed. If you can nail it in the back that's bonus, but it only has str6 so its DoG attack will do nothing, and if you can get the 21" draw on it, you're guaranteed a str10 hit with no rolling against the crappy Eldar BS3. You might lose a tank or two, but if you've taken out his paladins and psyflemen, he's probably not got much left.

And then it shoots you with an autocannon buffed to S8 thanks to psybolt ammunition. I'm not debating that tank shocking can be an awesome way to kill stuff, but ramming head-first into a psyfleman that can shoot you is kinda dangerous.