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One of my friends just bought some Eldar, I know he is going with a footdar strategy which will include wraithlords, war walkers and a bunch of scatter lasers (or whatever they are called). Does anyone have any specific advice as to anything special I should use to counter with my Blood Angels? Or just the typical deep strike/assault style play? Thanks in advance for any tips!

My friend's BA assault cannon spam sure does make life hard for my Mechdar army.

I'm not sure why that is? Assault Cannons are terrible against Eldar because they can only glance Serpents.

They key thing to remember is that Eldar sacrifice armour for speed, so if you can catch up to them you will cause them problems. Eldar have almost no way to reliably deal with massed Assault Marines with FNP, its simply too many wounds for them to torrent away and 2 x Melta + assault is usually enough to destroy or at least immobilise a Serpent (which is good enough). If he isn't meched up like he should be then it should be pretty easy for you, just get in close and beat him to death asap. Wraithlords drop to meltaguns and can't take your Assault squads on in combat if they have a Fist/TH. War Walkers and any infantry can be dealt with with basic Assault Marines pretty easily as well.

Powerguy wrote:I'm not sure why that is? Assault Cannons are terrible against Eldar because they can only glance Serpents.
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My friend's a dirty SoB. That's why!

Againt Footdar, especially Footdar that is scatter laser heavy... Take preds, baals, vindis. S6 spam will not work against mass AV13 and a footdar list does not have the mobility for side AV shots.
If however hes taking BL and EML it might be another story!

The massed FNP assault marines is also a good idea, you'd be able to get in with minimal casualties and simply start hacking away. Most footdar will however be running seers and an avatar so you may want to at least kill the avatar before charging in so i'd advise some shooting!

I'd go with a no for mass DS'ing. Entering play piecemeal is exactly what every Eldar player wants! If you drop in scattered and in waves he will simply doom a unit and procede to bring it down with mass shurican fire (Guide will also help here) Failing that he quite easily take out a semi-depleted unit with fortuned up warlocks.

I believe he plans on bringing a couple brightlances as well as the eldar missile launchers, so that may make it more difficult for my vehicles. FNP seems to be a common strategy people have reccomended against them, I will probably expand the size of my death company unit (since I do not have any priests at this point in time). As for my other assault squads, I just need to tuck a PF and some meltaguns in there with them? If I am not going to deep strike, I can probably bring a LR and a rhino to hide some stuff behind until I am close enough to assault.

Footdar is a poorer build than Mechdar. It does ok against some armies, but I imagine it's going to be rather poor against Blood Angels.

FNP is going to be very rough for him to handle, so spam that as much as possible.

I assume he's got a Farseer (or Eldrad) that's going to be hiding in some guardian unit. Use assault marines to charge that unit and wipe it out. The Farseer (or Eldrad) will take a ton of No Retreat wounds (or simply run away) and you'll kill him. That makes the Eldar suddenly loose a lot of their punch.

Personally I would drop a Few Furioso Dreadnought in Drop pods on their front lines with a drop pod, that front armour 13 will give them hell and you can clean them up with Blood talons.

Yea, I am pretty sure he has a farseer on his list. The furioso is tempting...Would you rather bring a furioso or death company dred?

I bet he tables you. I suggest taking mass ASM's, ripping off their jetpacks, and running across the board. Turn your vehicles around so they're facing your board edge and drive them in reverse towards his lines.
Khorne or Nurgle will taint your lines soon enough. Not sure why you're worried about those silly elves..

know the alien, kill the alien

I know that you're looking for more specific advice, but the best advice that I really can offer is "play a game, alter your list if necessary if it has weaknesses.... but against foot Eldar, you probably won't have to."

I say that because as a brand-new 5th edition Codex, Blood Angels have one of the strongest Codices in the current metagame. Blood Angels have a number of efficient army builds (DoA, AV 13 spam, ASM spam w/ FnP). Being a regular player of both Blood Angels and Eldar, I can confidently say that a Footdar player will have problems against the latter two builds. Mechdar builds can make up for the 4th edition Codex's lack of firepower with maneuverability; S6 shots might not do anything against AV 13 front armor, but with Fast skimmer movement you can certainly do something against AV 11 side or AV 10 rear. Footdar isn't typically maneuverable enough to consistently hit side armor with mass S6 fire or quick enough to close the distance and deal with enemy vehicles in close combat. Without a Jetlock council or at least some Wave Serpents, Footdar will have difficult going head-to-head. Likewise, without Banshees, Harlequins or mass Monstrous Creatures, the Footdar player will have trouble against ASM w/ FnP.

So all in all, stick with your army list and don't worry about it so much. The Eldar player is already playing at a handicap because of an older, less points-efficient Codex in a gaming environment that best supports at least partial mechanization of the Eldar army. You should be just fine.

Blood angel gun terminators with sanguinary priests included (or just chilling out in a vehicle close enough to give a FNP bubble to them) will wreak havoc with footdar. Assault cannons are good (and unless Im wrong, a rending S6 weapon will never glance an AV12, it skips straight over to pen with the additional D3?) and they also double out the majority of the Eldar troopers.

Slick wrote:Blood angel gun terminators with sanguinary priests included (or just chilling out in a vehicle close enough to give a FNP bubble to them) will wreak havoc with footdar. Assault cannons are good (and unless Im wrong, a rending S6 weapon will never glance an AV12, it skips straight over to pen with the additional D3?) and they also double out the majority of the Eldar troopers.

Against Wave serpents... the assault cannon can only EVER glance (unless you get a rear shot) as the energy fields prevent anything other than the initial S+D6 for penatration rolls.

Lots of Dreadnoughts, Stormravens, and Furious Charge+ FNP. Mephiston will be a real pain especially with his hood. Probably some Termies as well to help Dreads deal with Wraithlords, or just wound on 2's and ID them with Meph.

Seriously I don't think this is particularly complicated at all. Take 4 basic units of Assault Marines with Jump Packs, add a couple of Priests and a Librarian and run at him. Eldar simply do not have the firepower to drop that many Marines quickly enough and if he isn't mech he can't run away from you and pretty much everything he has will crumple the second you hit assault. 3 turns of Guided, Doomed Scatter Laser War Walkers won't even kill off a single unit of Assault Marines with FNP and with a Librarian he is unlikely to get all of that anyway.

IGCommander wrote:One of my friends just bought some Eldar, I know he is going with a footdar strategy which will include wraithlords, war walkers and a bunch of scatter lasers (or whatever they are called). Does anyone have any specific advice as to anything special I should use to counter with my Blood Angels? Or just the typical deep strike/assault style play? Thanks in advance for any tips!

Depends if you're going mech BA or DOA

Mech may have some problems. Scatter lasers will tear AV11 Rhinos and Razorbacks to pieces. He'll probably have some bright lances mixed in with the scatter lasers, but he probably won't have enough to deal with an AV13 wall.

DOA can do very well against footdar, just don't deploy by DOA. Even if you go 2nd don't deploy by DOA. The long ranged firepower from footdar's massed scatterlasers is nothing for DOA to fear. Even war walkers with 24 scatter laser shots will have problems against DOA because it takes 6 scatter laser wounds to kill a single FNP assault marine. The worse shenanigans a footdar player can pull on turn 1 is guide on war walkers resulting in 18 hits, 15 wounds, and 2.5 dead FNP assault marines, and by turn 2 your librarian will be within psychic hood range of the farseer.

Wraithlords are also easy to deal with. 2 assault squads will tear down a wraithlord with 4 melta gun shots, 6 S9 power fist attacks, and a boatload of S5 hits, just be certain to land the priest well over 6" away from the wraithlord when it's time to assault. If the wraithlord is not isolated multi assault regular eldar and the wraithlord. Base the wraithlord with the power fists and use the boatload of S5 hits against T3 eldar to generate combat resolution against the wraithlord.

I like to deepstrike versus mechdar. That way if they don't deploy carefully you can get rear shots into their skimmers with your meltas. You can pretty much overwhelm them since you can reroll failed reserves - 75% of your army should arrive on turn 2... Shake and bake.

Have a look into the game report of FlaviusInfernus, he faced a BA army at a GT with his mech Eldar.
The mech BA army moved up into the center while the Eldar army was in reserve.
Some tanks were launching smoke and the remaining (obsured) tanks shot the enemy.
Then the BA tanks moved forward repeating smoking and shooting.
At the end, the Serpents were caught in one corner unable to escape.
Then meltas and furious charge took them down.
Disclaimer: This eventually works with BA tanks but not with the slower variants of other chapters.

That's fine for BA razorspam - I was talking about DoA armies.

Well, I played in an RTT with my DoA army vs. a semi-mech Eldar army and Eldar absolutely suffered.
Meltas will eventually open Serpents quickly and then Eldar lose there advantage of speed.

Exactly!

As was mentioned earlier, FNP is tough for eldar to deal with.

wuestenfux wrote:Have a look into the game report of FlaviusInfernus, he faced a BA army at a GT with his mech Eldar.
The mech BA army moved up into the center while the Eldar army was in reserve.
Some tanks were launching smoke and the remaining (obsured) tanks shot the enemy.
Then the BA tanks moved forward repeating smoking and shooting.
At the end, the Serpents were caught in one corner unable to escape.
Then meltas and furious charge took them down.
Disclaimer: This eventually works with BA tanks but not with the slower variants of other chapters.

I think you can do something similar with DoA blood angels.

If you (the BA player) get second turn, then the drop will work, although a mech player with a clue will have cover saves on everything.

But if you get stuck with first turn, the eldar player will be able to get both range and first shot. So your best bet in that case is to deploy and move to the center in a big overlapping FNP castle, then herd the grav tanks into a corner. Just like with the fast vehicles, the 12" jump range of melta-equipped assault troops is very hard for Eldar to escape while still maintaining some ability to shoot.

BA of any kind shouldn't have any trouble at all with Footdar. Just fly across the table and assault them. Use combination charges and "no retreat" wounds to kill wraithlords and the avatar if present. Bring a librarian--or Mephiston--for the psychic hood.

Flavius Infernus wrote:

wuestenfux wrote:Have a look into the game report of FlaviusInfernus, he faced a BA army at a GT with his mech Eldar.
The mech BA army moved up into the center while the Eldar army was in reserve.
Some tanks were launching smoke and the remaining (obsured) tanks shot the enemy.
Then the BA tanks moved forward repeating smoking and shooting.
At the end, the Serpents were caught in one corner unable to escape.
Then meltas and furious charge took them down.
Disclaimer: This eventually works with BA tanks but not with the slower variants of other chapters.

I think you can do something similar with DoA blood angels.

If you (the BA player) get second turn, then the drop will work, although a mech player with a clue will have cover saves on everything.

But if you get stuck with first turn, the eldar player will be able to get both range and first shot. So your best bet in that case is to deploy and move to the center in a big overlapping FNP castle, then herd the grav tanks into a corner. Just like with the fast vehicles, the 12" jump range of melta-equipped assault troops is very hard for Eldar to escape while still maintaining some ability to shoot.

BA of any kind shouldn't have any trouble at all with Footdar. Just fly across the table and assault them. Use combination charges and "no retreat" wounds to kill wraithlords and the avatar if present. Bring a librarian--or Mephiston--for the psychic hood.

Well, I think you're right, this tactics also works for a DoA army.

Dreadnaughts with heavy flamers, Baal Predators outflanking with flamers: Eldar are cooked (pun intended). I made mention of using flamers on Eldar the other day and somebody questioned the strength of their armor save (mostly 4+) but a heavy flamer will deal with that effectively. If you have dreadnaughts in drop pods from your elite and heavy slots, throw in a couple baal predators and some assault marines and you can pretty much incinerate all of your opponents troops. The dreadnaughts also have melta guns, so those should work well against the transports too.

Something that only moves 6" and is armed with a meltagun will never get a shot at an Eldar skimmer, except on the initial drop if it's coming down in a pod. After that, the skimmer can just run away forever.

A multimelta on a speeder, bike or fast vehicle or jump troops with meltaguns can get shots--probably not half range shots, but it doesn't matter against wave serpents anyway.

Against foot Eldar, meltaguns are a lot less useful.

Flavius Infernus wrote:Something that only moves 6" and is armed with a meltagun will never get a shot at an Eldar skimmer, except on the initial drop if it's coming down in a pod. After that, the skimmer can just run away forever.

A multimelta on a speeder, bike or fast vehicle or jump troops with meltaguns can get shots--probably not half range shots, but it doesn't matter against wave serpents anyway.

Against foot Eldar, meltaguns are a lot less useful.

Well, mech Eldar seems to be more competitive than footslogging Eldar these days.
Mech Eldar eventually uses shuricannons and scatterlasers in abundance.
FnP is key here to keep the Marines alive.

I'm not familiar with the BA codex. What gives them FnP?

Sanguinary priests grant anything within 6" FnP and furious charge. Honor guard units have a guy in them that also conveys the same effect.