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Hey guys, long time lurker first time poster. In the final stages of assembling my army and wondering if there are any alterations I should make before playing it out. We almost exclusively play 2k at our club.

-HQ-
Farseer (Jetbike, RoW, SS, Doom, Fortune) 175pt
9 Warlocks (Jetbike, 1 Embolden, 1 Enhance, 5 Destructor) 475pt

-TROOPS-
3 Jetbikes + Warlock (Shuri Cannon, Destructor) 131pt
3 Jetbikes + Warlock (Shuri Cannon, Destructor) 131pt
3 Jetbikes (Shuri Cannon) 76pt
3 Jetbikes (Shuri Cannon) 76pt
5 Dire Avengers 60pt - Sitting in the Falcon

-ELITE-
5 Fire Dragons in Wave Serpent (TL BL, Shuri Cannon) 225pt

-FAST ATTACK-
3 Vypers (EML, Shuri Cannons) 225pt - Not in a squadron, using all 3 FA choices

-HEAVY SUPPORT-
Falcon (Scatter Laser, Shuri Cannon, Holo-Fields) 175pt
Fire prism (Shuri Cannon) 125pt
Fire prism (Shuri Cannon) 125pt

Total 1999 points
EDITS: Split jetbikes from 2x6 into 4x3, fixed the missing prism from my list

Its pretty flexible on paper - depending on my enemy I can screen tanks with bikes or vice versa depending on how many lascannons I see. Not many people play mech armies so I have a real focus on horde stomping with a lot of Shuriken Cannons, even on the prisms where you'd normally forgo them. Am I right to assume they'll be useful or should I drop the Prism's and Falcon's cannons and grab an extra seer council?

On the topic of the council, 5 destructors seems like enough, with doom, to melt whatever I point at, so I'll have 3 powerless warlocks to allocate wounds to. Going into these games as an Eldar virgin and never played against a jetbike council before (though, neither have my opponents ) so any pointers or optimisations for this squad would be nice. Once fortune is up, is it best to use them to screen as you move forward, or keep them out of LoS the whole way up?

Vypers using EMLs for the Plasma Missile + Shuri Cannon while moving 12" trick, once again with the focus on horde stomping. They can pop a transport in turn 1 if needed too, since range won't be an issue.

5 Dragons in the BL WS are my only real dedicated anti-tank, I feel that I may be putting all my eggs in one basket here. But I do want to stress that nobody has evolved into mech play yet here, my opponents are primarily footslogging guard, footslogging striking scorpions, footslogging orks, footslogging marines with a LR + termies (but he's terrible, so whatever), and one tank-heavy guard player. The latter is my only concern with this list - it seems that even though he doesn't use transports for his 2 guardsmen squads, that his fire line with a few russes are gonna give me headaches, especially if he pops the WS before the dragons are close enough to turn an entire Russ squadron into goo. After that, all I have are S6 weapons coming out the wazoo, looking for rear armor.

Prisms sit on opposite flanks and, assuming it is more viable to link them for that given turn (MEQs or heavy armor) I'll be keeping one out of LoS completely while linking to the shooter. I'll advance them slowly if it seems I can get away with it, I want them both using their underslung cannons by turn 5 to get hordes off objectives and there is no reason not to move them this way. The falcon is my babysitter and probably won't move much beyond my starting objective, hiding my DAs and shooting away deepstrikers (especially that damn dreadnaught in a drop pod that my stupid SM friend insists on using in every list, because it has a cool model).

If my dragons go down, my only real anti tank is my jetbike council, and unless I can multi-assault a few tanks and also a squad to Destructor, then I feel they'll be a little wasted. I've got 650 points invested in that squad, so getting them to pay for themselves is going to be a challenge in any game where they can't get to CC before turn 3.

Ok, comments and criticism, go! I really want the mathhammers and the veterans to crush this list and tell me what I can do to improve it, because I'm pretty much happy with it as it stands and that's why I bought the models. I have some spares and enough time to get a few more things from GW and paint them up before our games.

One last thing - we're having a big 4v4 Apocalypse 12,000 point battle and I've put this 2k list up. Given the usual 6 objective game, and that we're playing on a 10' table with 4+ superheavies per side, am I right to sit on the flank and make a smash'n'grab to capture or contest in about turn 5/6/7? If anyone has any experience with Saim Hann in an Apocalypse setting, and has any "if you do this, you'll be amazed at how well it works" kinda hints, then fire away!

First changes I'd make:
- Another Prism is essential, otherwise swap that out for a Nightspinner. Single prisms just miss too much.
- Vypers, downgrade these to Scatter Lasers, and MAYBE the underslug cannon. Keep Vypers cheap. (Check my blog link in sig, just did a writeup on holos)
- Upderslug cannon for the Dragons is not really needed. Do you plan to move at a 6" pace 24" away for your opponent?
- Switch the Destructor for embolden on the jetbikes. Ldr 8 is notorious for running away after a few shots and jetbikes move so fast you can pretty much kiss them goodbye if they fail a test.
- Add a 2nd Enhance/Embolden to the seer council. You will get swarm fired over and over so you have no control over which one will die. Losing enhance or embolden will make that unit a sad panda.

Overall, for 2k pts you are really low on troops and that will probably be you most glaring weakness.

Answers:
- As weird as this may sounds, seer council really isn't good for horde. They can be easily tarpitted by a large blob of bodies because they don't have power weapons. If you are facing lots of horde I would drop the Prisms and replace it with a Nightspinner, but the falcon you need to keep around unless you have a Serpent to toss the DA in. Golden rule of thumb for eldar: If you didn't use all your heavies... something is wrong.
- Seercoucil maneuver 101 - Cast fortune, drive up 12", assault move 6", give your opponent the finger in their shooting phase. The part when things get tactical is avoiding assaults with large blob units, 2+ army units, and getting anywhere near things with psychic hoods.
- Vypers see above
- You are feeling right on the dragons threat level and eggs in a basket, they will get LOTS of anti-tank love.
- Fire Prisms? is there supposed to be two in the list?

Looks really well thought out and pretty scary.

You are going the bike route for troops, which has its own ups and downs... i prefer to be wave serpented on my troops... but thats just a preference. Since you don't have embolden on the troops, there isn't really that much of a bonus to running them 6 strong. If you ran them 4x3, then you'd still have two troops choices with the warlocks leadership, but you'd be less vulnerable to a fast assault unit, or a flubbed leadership roll costing you 200 points of bikes, and you'd also be able to split those shuriken cannons on 4 targets rather than just two.

TehScat wrote:5 Dragons in the BL WS are my only real dedicated anti-tank, I feel that I may be putting all my eggs in one basket here.

Don't underestimate the amount of damage your warlock unit can do to mech. Its more accurate to say that you only have a single dedicated anti-land raider unit in the list. Nothing gives my IG army more waking nightmares than the thought of an 11 witchblade bike unit stretching a multi-assault across 3+ chimeras. they might not be 'dedicated anti-tank' but they'll be available to you pretty much all game long, and they can put serious hurt on vehicles, two or three at a time even.

With your fire prism, falcon, wve serpent, warlocks, vypers and fire dragons, I would very confidently say that you have all the anti-transport and ant-tank you'd need to win. I'd probably even knock that bright lance on the serpent down to a scatter laser.

BlueDagger wrote:- Fire Prisms? is there supposed to be two in the list?

Yes, there are two, I missed the copy-paste. Amending the list now. I'm not a fan of Nightspinners, although their pinning would be godly against my footslogging opponents. I'll look into getting bits for extra turrets and swap between nightspinners or prisms depending on which ones I need.

I'll check your post on Vypers. Although I know keeping them cheap is nice, I can't help but feel that they dish out a lot of hurt for 75 points a pop, and I can keep them screened pretty much the whole game. Saim Hann seems to be a lot about keeping range on half your opponents army and taking bites out of it with your whole force, so I'm using more of a tactical method of defending my investment in expensive vypers rather than dropping their cost and giving them holos. I love the concept of the unit though, and lets face it, Eldar Fast Attack is a little lacking, especially for a list like this.

Good point on splitting the jetbike squads again - I will put that in the list as well. As for embolden, I'd rather just keep the jetbikes safe with cover, and if I can get one destructor off then he'll be worth it. If the choice was embolden or no warlock, I'd just go with 3-man squads without warlocks at all.

Ah kk two prisms you are solid there then.

Owning 31 jetbikes myself I have played with just about every combination you can think of lol. The formations I have personally found the most useful are:
- 2 GJB, 1 GJB w/ Cannon, 1 Jetlock w/ Spear and Embolden
- 4 GJB, 2 GJB w/ Cannon, 1 Jetlock w/ Spear and Embolden
- 4 GJB, 2 GJB w/ Cannon, 1 Jetlock w/ Spear and Destructor + Jetseer w/ Doom, Fortune

Formations I can say that do not work, or don't work well:
- 3 GJB: Cheap as hell, but a serious liability in killpoint matches. A single missile launch will cough up a KP more often then you think.
- 3 GJB + non embolden lock: Same issue here as the previous. A single missile shot will force you to risk your lock or risk a Ldr test.
- 8 GJB + 4 cannon + lock + seer (fortune, doom): While a giggle to play to freak out your opponent, this suffers from the large profile of the pack. It's very easy to run out of room and get yourself assaulted.

Hope that bit helps a lil bit.

If doing an 11 man seer council a good breakdown is 3 spears (one on farseer), 2 embolden, 2 enhance, 5 destructor.

As stated in my blog, holos on vypers is a really bad investment because even with them your looking at a minimum of stunned and if AP1 weapon destroyed. There is nothing holos can do to protect against that unfortunely.

I agree with Blue Dagger's post whole heartedly on the importance of brining Jetlocks to the table

the advent of true line of sight in 5th edition was not kind to JSJ units like Eldar Jetbikes, its very difficult nowadays to perfectly hide things out of line of sight and still contribute to the fight. You inevitably will take casualties every now and then. The warlock and his ability to re roll leadership tests helps make sure your jetbikes aren't falling 3d6 back and off the board. The warlock also increases the number of jetbikes which need to be felled before you cannot regroup. If you just took a squad of 3, and you lose 2 you cannot regroup, if you take an embolden warlock with a spear, not only are you re rolling all your leadership checks, but you need to lose all but 1 jetbike before you cannot regroup. Awesome.

I've noticed in my games with GJB, that the warlock is far superior to the scum he rides with. This is why I personally always roll a squad of 3 w/ 1 cannon and a jetlock with a spear. When I take more squads, I always include a jetlock. More jetlocks is better.

As for destructor v embolden. I generally will not change the size of my bike squads, but the role the Warlock plays changes depending on the size of the game being played. I've noticed that in 500 or 750 point games, having destructor is more useful than embolden. This is because there are so few units (on both sides) on the table, and it is crucial to bring as much fire power as possible. In a low point game, a jetbike squad with 3 s6 shots, 4 tl s4 shots, a heavy flamer, and an s9 anti tank shot, is insanely fast and versatile.

Once you start getting into larger point games however, the value of destructor starts to diminish. The enemy begins to have more guns, and your jetbikes begin to take more enemy fire power. At this point, its almost always better to have embolden, it really sucks having one of your scoring units fall off the board because they took a single casualty and have a middling leader ship of 8- that re roll is clutch. You still have your s6 cannon and singing spear to deal with tanks, and don't forget that your warlock does have a tl bs4 shuri catapult- which can be more useful against things like orks then a single spear toss. In larger point games your bikes should be more focused on objectives, and the extra staying power from embolden is crucial for that purpose.

BlueDagger wrote:As stated in my blog, holos on vypers is a really bad investment because even with them your looking at a minimum of stunned and if AP1 weapon destroyed. There is nothing holos can do to protect against that unfortunely.

Read your post on it, and commented. I do have to point out that only my Falcon has Holo Fields in the whole army, there may be some confusion about just how expensive my Vypers are. The EML + Shuriken Cannon combo means you can move 12" and still shoot both weapons (since the EML's plasma missile is S4, so defenseive) into a nicely packed horde with pinning, while still using the S8 goodness at 48" range to pop transports when needed or early game.

Also, with regards to your Destructor Jetlock + Jetseer combo, ever since Dverning did the mathhammer on Embolden with Psychic Tests, I'd never go without. You can read the interesting article here.

Is it possible, if you roll up Annihilaton, to merge the 3 jetbike groups into 6's to make kill points hurt less? Or is it illegal to do that after missions are rolled? I'm not savvy with 5th ed yet, and despise the kill points rule, concept and execution, but if we're forced to play by it then I better find out now if playing 4 minimum sized squads of jetbikes is gonna be more of a detriment than a benefit.

Once a list is created for a match it is set in stone. Barring special rules, the only thing that can join or leave units is Independant characters. So no, you can't join jetbike units together.


For Vypers think about it this way:
- Vypers are really not easy to hide and still be useful in 5th Edition
- BS3 means you are only hitting with that single EML shot 50% of the time
- A single successful ML shot has a 66% chance to pen, 17% to glance.
- On a pen, with holos, you have a 25% chance of destruction, 20% of immobilized, 25% of weapon destroyed, 30% of stunned.
- On a pen, without holos, you have 50% chance of destruction, 17% immobilized, 17% weapon destroyed, 17% stunned.
- If hit by AP1 even holos give you a 45% chance of destruction.

So for holos you are almost doubling the base cost of the model for a generally -25% in destruction and +8% chance of main weapon destruction. This doesn't even take into account volume S4, 5, 6 fire.

100pts for those odds doesn't put the odds in your favor well.

Now for a 60 pts investment you get a 36" range distraction with 4 shots to make up for that BS3. 60pts is a little easier to swallow for me then 100pts.

Ok, so shuffled things around. Lost a few bikes overall, but got jetlocks in each with the recommended roll out. This isn't final guys, so keep the comments coming.

-HQ-
Farseer (Jetbike, RoW, SS, Doom, Fortune) 175pt
9 Warlocks (Jetbike, 2 Embolden, 2 Enhance, 5 Destructor) 495pt

-TROOPS-
3 Jetbikes + Warlock (Shuri Cannon, Embolden, Spear) 129pt
3 Jetbikes + Warlock (Shuri Cannon, Embolden, Spear) 129pt
3 Jetbikes + Warlock (Shuri Cannon, Embolden, Spear) 129pt
5 Dire Avengers 60pt - Sitting in the Falcon

-ELITE-
5 Fire Dragons in Wave Serpent (TL BL, Shuri Cannon) 225pt

-FAST ATTACK-
3 Vypers (EML, Shuri Cannons) 225pt - Not in a squadron, using all 3 FA choices

-HEAVY SUPPORT-
Falcon (Scatter Laser, Shuri Cannon, Holo-Fields) 175pt
Fire prism (Shuri Cannon) 125pt
Fire prism (Shuri Cannon) 125pt

Total 1992 points

My options here seem to be, merging 2 bike squads and putting the extra warlock into the council to max it out (as its only 9/10 + seer now), or dropping something to get more bikes in general. If I drop the 3 jetlocks in the squads, I can get an extra squad of 3 bikes and max the council, with some points left for perhaps a holo field or 2 on the prisms.

Thanks for your help so far guys, improved the list without needing me to buy more gak so far!

EDIT: You still seem hung up on these non-existant Vyper holo fields. They have EMLs and Cannons, let it go! I'd never get 35 point upgrade on a 75 point model unless it was as good as old-school invinci-falcon holo fields. I do take into account your words on the BS3, but with a cannon and a EML I still get 4 shots, all while moving, and for 15 points more than the Cannon + TL Catapult version you get the pinning + anti-transport. I like that investment.

TehScat wrote: You still seem hung up on these non-existant Vyper holo fields. They have EMLs and Cannons, let it go! I'd never get 35 point upgrade on a 75 point model unless it was as good as old-school invinci-falcon holo fields. I do take into account your words on the BS3, but with a cannon and a EML I still get 4 shots, all while moving, and for 15 points more than the Cannon + TL Catapult version you get the pinning + anti-transport. I like that investment.

Wow, you know you have been surfing forums bored at work too much when you start truely believing you saw upgrades in a list LOL. My apologizes lol.

I like this list a lot better, though you may want to swap the BL to the Falcon and the Scatter laser to the Serpent. This will allow the Falcon to focus it's goal on S8 ap2 anti-tank while downplaying the threat of the Serpent a bit more. If you take the cannons off the Prisms, Falcon, and Serpent you can at least get one Holo in there for the prisms ;D

If your Prism is within 24" and move only 6" something is going terribly wrong. Your Dragon Serpent will likely as well not see 6" speed within range. Your falcon it makes a bit of sense to have them since it needs to move 6" to fire both it's main guns, but at the same time, you have 36" for those 3 S8 shots, why force yourself into 24".

Ditch the lance on the dragon wagon. It just makes them even more of a target then they already are, if you ditch all of the upgrades on your dragon serpent, and just took one with a shuri cannon and stones you could buy another lock!

For the TL BL on the Serpent, I followed Raptor1313's logic on the matter:

It's the most accurate place for a Bright Lance in your army; twin-linked BS3 hits 75% of the time. BS4 bright lances hit 66% of the time, and I suppose you COULD give a Wraithlord a twin-linked bright lance (and he'd also cost 170 points...) but I wouldn't do it. Still, Wraithlords can mount BS4 heavy weapons, but they're another matter in building.

You can read the full deal here. He does say that its more for shooty troops, and that for a suicide serpent you'd just go with shuriken cannons, but I do like the idea of having a turn shooting the BL before turbo-boosting so far ahead of everything that you're the only target. The army is designed to move 12-18" a turn and still have a lot of firepower, and having the serpent with the BL adds to it. Not to say I refuse to move on the matter, but that was my justification. If in execution its better to surge forward on turn 1 and deploy the dragons without ever shooting, then I'll grab another serpent and get it done quickly.

I do like the scatter laser on the falcon. BS3 shots only hit 50% of the time so 30 points on a one-shot wonder doesn't seem good maths. The scatter laser and shuriken cannon mean I can boost somewhere early and spend 4+ turns unloading at least 6 shots, and 9 if within 24", while still moving 6" to maintain distance on anything with melta and keep cover. Plus, if he's sitting on an objective and a deep strike squad comes up, I want more than a BL to take them out. I'll only put the weapon on temporarily on the falcon and see what works in this army, given the Falcon may or may not find itself alone at the back, or hard on a flank with the vypers.

At least if I get into a game with some mech (read: the 2nd guard player) and my serpent dies before it gets to shoot, while my falcon sits at 40" away and never shoots the laser or cannon, I'll have some ideas on how to improve the list then. I don't intend to ever suicide the Fire Dragons and their Serpent on anything less than a Land Raider full of Termies, and even then I'd rather support them right up to the line with bikes. If losing the serpent is a real threat, I can just screen it with bikes or vypers while keeping the turret in clear LoS of its target, or keep it out of sight completely. Also remember that most of my opponents have very little mech, so a BL serpent full of dragons isn't the must-kill target for most of my opponents as it is for a WAAC player in a mech list.

I think the list is pretty solid right now. I'll look into getting a second serpent and dragon squad for when I need to push the list up to 3k, and load the second one up with a shuri cannon and spirit stones. If I like the difference, I'll get a third, do that the same, and use those for my dragons and the original BL one for DA's or something. For now though I need to get busy assembling and priming another tank. Thanks guys!

Remember mathhammer doesn't take into account tactical reasoning.

BL is a smarter choice for a Wave Serpent, but unfortunately you are only taking one wave serpent and with dragons inside at that. This means this vehicle is already a huge threat and will be up close making the chances of it getting multiple BL shots off rather unlikely. Once your opponents get use to mech or you play vets your prisms and fire dragon WS will start getting pounded hard, and with no other prime choices they will get a lot of love.

Your Falcon on the other hand should be staying at the maximum distance possible. If you are firing with mixed use weapons they you get into a situation where your roles get mixed up. Firing at infantry you have 4 S6 shots, but the 2 S8 AP2 shots are going to waste since they should be going at medium to heavy vehicles, terminators, or FNP units. Conversely if you firing at the heavy targets with your S8 shots the S6 shots are going to waste.

Before you glue anything, start magnetizing those vehicles. You will find that weapons for eldar are very balanced and you'll want to swap out weapons quite often as your list evolves.