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I mentioned in another thread that I'm really struggling against my friends' SWs and heard back that pretty much anyone would have problems against his build. That is extremely relieving because it can be frustrating to fight such a powerful army. His standard framework is 6 units of 10 basic Grey Hunters. He doesn't care about upgrades much and usually goes with just a melta and flamer. Then 3 units of ML Long Fangs. They shoot my skimmers out of the skies and eventually I drown under an ocean of Marines and bolter fire.

I play Eldar and my three main builds are bike council with prisms and davu serpent and falcon. Mech with banshees, DAs, Prisms and Scatter Walkers or maybe a Falcon. Footdar with scatter guardians, DA for tarpits, Scorpion counter assault, Warp Spider harassment, ranged WLs and Scatter Walkers.

What do you do to be successful against a list like this? How do you stop the Long Fangs from tearing you apart? And how do you bring enough firepower to thin out or slow the oncoming mass of bodies?

Stay mech, don't take any assault units (including tarpits). By staying mobile you can basically ignore the Grey Hunters on foot (slow and struggle to kill vehicles anyway, grenades hitting on 6's and 1-2 power fist attacks hitting on 6's isn't much of a problem), the only threat is the Missiles. Bike Council won't be able to cut their way through that many Marines (and cries when he brings a Rune Priest) and Footdar is going to get overrun and completely smashed.

Removing Long Fangs is an obvious priority for any Mechdar list, irrespective of the makeup of the rest of the SW list. Just to clarify Mechdar is this case means Serpents with Avengers/Flamer Guardians/Dragons, Falcons (with Avengers), Vypers and Prisms. War Walkers are too slow and assault units aren't going to work from closed top transports. The best (and really only) way to do this is by taking plenty of S6 shooting, you should aim to remove 1-2 units of Long Fangs in a single round of shooting (so by the end of turn 2 you should have removed them completely). Obviously this means taking Scatter Lasers rather than Shuriken Cannons on Serpents otherwise you won't have the range. Once the Long Fangs are dead shuffle around removing infantry, 2 Prisms will really help you remove them quickly but you should do fine with S6 shooting. Also remember that Grey Hunters are only Ld8, so if you tank shock them with 3-4 Serpents in a single turn you have a very good chance of them failing morale and falling back.

I was asked the questiong recently, the reply can be found here,
http://dayve220-40k.blogspot.com/2011/03/e-mail-reply-1.html
and may be useful.

Powerguy is pretty spot on though.

That was me that asked you, Dayve! Haha I didn't know you had written a response. I just finished reading it and it was really helpful! I wrote a comment but my phone doesn't like your blog and I lost it all. I'll try to rewrite it on my PC this weekend.

Basically though if I want to run my Council, I like some of the changes you made but I sold my Reapers so I might have to sub in some Scatter Walkers instead. I also wrote a different list that I'll propose below. I only have 2 Serpents and 2 Prisms for skimmers so I'm trying to balance out a decent list with somewhat limited options.

HQ
90 Farseer - Doom, RoWard
115 Autarch - WJG, PW, Fusion Gun

Troops
152 - 10 DAs - Exarch w/ Dual Cats, BS
--125 - Wave Serpent - TL Scatter Laser, SS

152 - 10 DAs - Exarch w/ Dual Cats, BS
--125 - Wave Serpent - TL Scatter Laser, SS

Fast Attack
240 - 9 Warp Spiders - Exarch w/ WD, Dual Spinners, PWs

Heavy Support
180 - 3 Scatter Walkers
160 - Fire Prism - Stones and Holos
160 - Fire Prism - Stones and Holos

Again since I don't have a ton of tanks I'm kind of shoe-horned into using council bikes and Warp Spiders because that's what I've got. In this list I was thinking to deep strike by his long fangs and take out a squad. If possible I'll try to keep it up for a turn or two more. The Autarch is to help get them and my outflankin War Walkers out as soon as possible. I'll be trying to kill the fangs asap as you two have already explained and then I'll play keep away until I can wipe isolated units with Bladestorm.

Am I completely off base? Haha =)

Yes, use a fully mech list and take as many scatterlasers as you can get.
Stay in reserve (boosting reserve rolls by an Autarch) and when the units
arrive target the LFs first.
They will crumble no matter what as they (almost) no ablative wounds.
If the LFs are dead your army will rule the sky and pick GH packs at leisure.

Another thing to experiment with is a Dark Reaper with Exarch with Tempest Launcher. Dropping two G36" templates on Long Fangs that ignore cover just sounds like the perfect counter to stationary firepower units. S4 AP3 rerolling hits just sounds like murder. One unit like that for about 150 should nullify the long fangs pretty well.

DAaddict wrote:Another thing to experiment with is a Dark Reaper with Exarch with Tempest Launcher. Dropping two G36" templates on Long Fangs that ignore cover just sounds like the perfect counter to stationary firepower units. S4 AP3 rerolling hits just sounds like murder. One unit like that for about 150 should nullify the long fangs pretty well.

Dark Reaper units have no ablative wounds in principle. If the LF are able to target them first, they will be gone.

Stay mechanized and load up on S6 shots via WW with Scatterlasers sounds like a good bet. You could also try to DS near the LF with Warpspiders and take 'em out that way.

wuestenfux wrote:

DAaddict wrote:Another thing to experiment with is a Dark Reaper with Exarch with Tempest Launcher. Dropping two G36" templates on Long Fangs that ignore cover just sounds like the perfect counter to stationary firepower units. S4 AP3 rerolling hits just sounds like murder. One unit like that for about 150 should nullify the long fangs pretty well.

Dark Reaper units have no ablative wounds in principle. If the LF are able to target them first, they will be gone.

Agreed, that is one reason why I am only suggesting adding 1 unit of reapers. There should be one place on any given board that you can plant the reapers within 36" and without LOS to the Long Fangs.
This is the same weakness of the LF as they have 1 character that gives them the ability to splitfire and 5 armed with ML. Nothing is ablative for the LF. I think the 150 points or so spent on 3 Reapers is well spent as this is not the primary threat to LF but it gives the LF something different to worry about other than the excellent direct fire weapons that the Eldar are known for.

Night Spinners with destroy foot slogging anything, slow them down, make it dangerous for them to move and can cause pinning, all TL, from 72 inches away and while on the move at 7-12 inches.

Do it man. If they get out of rhinos or drop pods they are bunched up and they die.

Yeah, Mastermelta is right about the night spinner. It's good against units hoofing around the board.

Let me second or is it third that advice. Night Spinners will cause nothing but headaches for your opponent. And given that it is a guess weapon, if you can find cover for it it is also not Long Fang bait.

No it's not a long fang bait. But it helps against the footslogging grey hunters.

This thread has got me really pumped to take a shot at fight my buddy's SWs but it looks like i might have to wait a while because I live in Tokyo and things are kinda crazy this weekend after the earthquakes. I may post something about our game though, after we get around to playing.

As is I'm looking at using the list I posted in this thread. If we can get 2 games in, I'll try one with about a 6man bike council instead of the spiders. Some DAs and some war walkers. The rest of the list would be about the same. Night Spinners would be very fun for his Grey Hunters but I really struggle to bring enough fire power to kill the Long Fangs. I feel like I would really miss my Prisms on turns 1 and 2.

Save the Night Spinners for the SW moving on foot.

If he is running a squad of long fangs and you outflank with the war walkers and fire 24 shots you should do about 10 wounds minimum on average.

If he has just a small unit with diversified guns you should do quite well.

I played a game against vanilla marines thursday and my walkers came in as far away from the fight as they could but were still in range. I lit a squad of 10 with them and killed 6. Bad armor saves helped but I laid down 12 wounds. In two turns of that there was 1 broken goon left.

The game before I took a 10 man squad down to 5 in one volley.

Cover doesn't matter since they are AP 6 so fire away.