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So wich is best composition of Dire Avanger squads?
We assume that you take wave serpent for them...
Tell me why and what are good and bad sides of this composition in your opinion!

5 man without exarch, no WS, instead throw them in a falcon. 60 point upgrade for falcon to make it scoring. Yes please.

Well, I generally go for one of two compositions: 5 men or 10 men, both without Exarch.

Depends on the points of the game. I love 10 with exarch and bladestorm just because of the feel when it wipes out a whole horde in one turn.

I would like to know who voted for the 5 with an Exarch option. That's pants on head idiocy lol, 5 guys has terrible damage output to start with (the whole point of the minimum sized unit is to keep them safe inside a vehicle) and if getting some damage output out of the squad is so important to you then you would be better off just increasing the squad size.

Anyway 5 with no upgrades is easily the best configuration for Avengers. It lets you maximise the number of Serpents you have, which lets you take more heavy weapons (particularly Scatters) which are what do the damage in Eldar lists. 5 can also fit in a Falcon, which makes it by far your most survivable scoring unit. Its still incredibly frustrating the number of people who run 10 man Bladestorm units when Tri Flamer Guardians beat them for damage output (which is the only reason you are running them, anti infantry burst damage) and for less points.

It's pricey but for 177 you get 10 with an Exarch w/ power weapon and shimmer shield, defend and bladestorm. It's a nice all-purpose unit. They shoot hordes very well and with fortune I've had them tarpit scary CC units and win over the course of several turns. If they don't win they often last long enough for me to bring real CC to do the job.

But lately I just take DAVU Falcons hehe

Out of those, the 10-man with Exarch, 2 SC, and Bladestorm.

As mentioned before, you could just do a DAVU Falcon, but I don't like that style.

I'd always take an exarch. DA's without one are just expensive guardians. DA's with bladestorm are an effective anti-infantry weapon of all types (hey, terminators, apply the armor saves!).

I've also gone up against DA's with the 5++ unit-wide invul save and the -1A. They take forever to break out of close combat making them eldar's only real tarpit unit option.

Depends on how many units of DA you are running.
I ran eldar with 3 units of DA, each with exarch, blade storm, pistol and dire sword.
What good did the swords do? They'd actually get a kill every now and then. With 3 squads, I was often able to do a combined charge and finish off weakened opponents.

The exarchs aren't cheap, but the flexibiilty was worth it.

-Matt

If your in a serpent, go with 5 man to make it scoring.

On the other hand, if you don't mind not as competitive, a 10 man squad with shimmershield and defend can make a decent tarpit unit. Ive had them last quite a few turns vs termies and other units as it just taks a while to kill them.

5 man DA with no Exarch. This keeps the entire unit with a Serpent extremely cheap. It really all depends on your play style and what your trying to do. I typically keep all of my Serpents together so when I go after a target, ALL of my DA troops are going after the same thing. So your talking 4-6 5 man DA squads shooting into the same thing. Create an armor wall to keep them safe then rinse and repeat.

5xDAs for sure. 175 pts for an AV 12/12/10 skimmer with force field and 4 TL str 6 shots with an effective range of 48".

Eldars own nice little razor spam build is still competitive.

^I seccond that

10 man squad no exarch. I do that mostly because i like havign them able to shoot every turn if they have to (in which case bladestorm would be a 15 point waste. Also keeps em cheap. and you can still guide and doom for them if you really want to make the most out of those 20 shots you do get. However it was a bit of a toss up for me cause the other thing i like to do for another 17 points is take an exarch with dual shurikens and no bladestorm still. that gives you 4 very reliable to hit shots. kinda nice and that addition stat line in close combat should you get into a tight spot. (chaos marines vs avengers exarch consistently killed one chaos marine a turn XD ) but yeah generally i dont run them with upgrades unless its a non-standard points level.

Dire avengers are either all or nothing. You take 'um with an exarch with bladestorm and twin cats, and shred face, or you take a vanilla five man squad and put it in a falcon for scoring, mentioned above.

Powerguy wrote:Its still incredibly frustrating the number of people who run 10 man Bladestorm units when Tri Flamer Guardians beat them for damage output (which is the only reason you are running them, anti infantry burst damage) and for less points.

QFT. Storm Guardians are the unsung heroes of the Eldar codex. Cheaper than Dire Avengers, more dakka then Dire Avengers (albiet at closer range), and choppier than Dire Avengers. The only things Dire Avengers do better than Storm Guardians is killing Monsterous Creatures and Terminators. But are you really taking Dire Avengers to shoot at those targets?

whoa whoa whoa.... Did you just say that storm guardians have more DAKKA then dire avengers? What? Pass me that culumbia gold you got there, i want some too!

loota boy wrote:whoa whoa whoa.... Did you just say that storm guardians have more DAKKA then dire avengers? What? Pass me that culumbia gold you got there, i want some too!

Assuming you get 5 hits per template (which is pretty conservative when you are mobile and can tank shock to group people up) on average the Storm Guardians get almost exactly the same number of wounds as a full sized unit of Bladestorming Avengers against MEQ. With 6 hits per template you jump in front, and you can frequently get 8+ against MEQ with 1 just one tank shock (which obviously puts them miles in front). The main thing is that the advantage is even more pronounced against more lightly armoured enemies, against 4+ saves the Guardians are noticeably better (thanks to Destructor). The only place the Avengers are slightly in front is against 5+ save (or worse) infantry in the open, but the problem is that in practice this basically never happens, they get 4+ cover 90% of the time, so the Guardians end up being almost twice as good as the Avengers against light infantry. Again this is assuming you are only getting 5 hits per template, and with horde units its pretty easy to push this above 10 (I think my record is about 15 hits after 2 tank shocks). I've ignored Doom, since that effects both unit equally, and even with Guide (which pushes the cost of the unit up even higher and requires the Farseer to be riding around with the Avengers) the Avengers still have a worse damage output against light infantry (which is the main reason you bring them). All this for a unit which is a good 30pts cheaper, is also better in assault and has at least some way of dealing with vehicles.

Seriously, the only place the Avenger are better is their cost as a minimum sized unit. 60pts to make a vehicle scoring is a very good deal, a good mix of them + Guardians gets you a reasonable number of scoring units and some damage output from your troops without eating into the points you need for real damage dealers like Fire Dragons.

If you use the speed advantage of the serpeant, you can't get out to flame.
If the flaming goes poorly, you're standing point blank on the enemy, which isn't where you want to be.

Dire averagers are not the one hit wonders that guardians are. Point for point, damage delt over the course of the game favored DA for me.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:If you use the speed advantage of the serpeant, you can't get out to flame.
If the flaming goes poorly, you're standing point blank on the enemy, which isn't where you want to be.

Dire averagers are not the one hit wonders that guardians are. Point for point, damage dealt over the course of the game favored DA for me.

-Matt

I'm not really sure what you are talking about? If you tank shock 12 inches, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from getting out with your Storm Guardians and flaming away.

Your second point doesn't make any sense either, since they only reason you should ever consider big Dire Avenger squads is anti infantry burst damage. With either squad you are only going to get 1 or two blasts off. With Storm Gu you can at least lose everybody but the Warlock and 2 flamers and still fire at full damage. See what happens to Dire Avengers when they lose 5 out of 10 guys...
The other problem is that 18 inch range isn't really as much breathing room as you want, hell its not even out of rapid fire range or storm bolter range.

If its point for point damage, dealt over the course of the game, you should be taking as many Wave Serpents as possible, Scatter Lasers have that range, and good strength to make up the reliable backbone of Eldar fire power.

Either 5 man w/o exarch or 10 man with SS/PW and Defend exarch. This is a great poor man's seer council and can be used to stuff an opponents CC unit for a turn or two. But it all depends on your playstyle.

If you want to do it with vehicles, definitely the 5-man squads. If you want to pour out the troops for the coup de grace, the 10 man has the firepower to do it - especially with a doom from a farseer.

5 man without exarch, no WS, instead throw them in a falcon. 60 point upgrade for falcon to make it scoring. Yes please.

This!!

A friend of mine used 2 sets of the above, with Eldrad joining one of them, then cast Guide to both of Falcons..super efficient !!

You know, there are times when even your 5 man DA squads can be useful.
I played in a tourney over the weekend, and there were two instances where I dropped DA out of the serpents to shoot at a squad.

The first time I dropped two DA squads and eldrad out to kill 4 chaos termies. That, combined with a serpents SL and underslung killed 3 of them, allowing Eldrad to go seal the deal.
The other time was when 5 necron warriors were found near and object with no nearby support. I shot them up with the avegers in the serpent as well as the serpent itself. I knew I had the firepower to remove the squad in one turn with the extra shots.

So while 90% of the time, the 5 man DA squads will stay hidden there are times to pull them out and make them earn their keep.

Five guys per template? Good luck with that. Your kidding yourself if you think you can grab 5 guys per template everytime.

A 10-man unit with an Exarch with a Shimmershield and Defend, led by Asurmen (the Phoenix Lord), is damn-near unkillable in assault. Especially if you can cast Fortune on it.

I like the larger units because they have a bit more flexibility in terms of what they can accomplish on the battlefield, but taking a bunch of smaller units to take objectives is certainly a viable strategy, so long as you have enough other units in your army to do the actual killing.

Why sink so many points into a unit so that it can survive in assault when that's not its job? It seems like a waste of a lot of points and an important hq slot to sink into a glorified tarpit.

loota boy wrote:Five guys per template? Good luck with that. Your kidding yourself if you think you can grab 5 guys per template everytime.

Yet I've rarely had hit any less than that assuming the squad is 10+ strong. Storm Guardians are the real infantry killers of the Eldar, but I do like to play both the bladestorming DA and tri-flamer SG. I wouldn't want to have just close-range firepower at my disposal, especially when facing hordes. Besides, 33 shots into a 5-man tactical combat squad is almost guaranteed to wipe them clean off an objective and that's from 18" range, so sometimes, it can be a game changer. I also love how DA and SG together limit my opponent's movement, especially with horde lists. Either he bunches up in cover to lessen DA effectiveness or he spreads out in the open and he gets shot from 18" away. It always helps when you force your opponent to rethink his strategies, cause that's where he's more likely to make mistakes.

loota boy wrote:Why sink so many points into a unit so that it can survive in assault when that's not its job? It seems like a waste of a lot of points and an important hq slot to sink into a glorified tarpit.

Time. If you can tarpit a unit for 1 turn, you have a chance to move a unit into contact to take care of the problem.
Eldar are a firepower army so you don't want to go crazy with this concept but it can be effective...

Do a little mathhammer:

10 DA with Exarch with SS & PW bladestorm and defend.
10 SS with Exarch with PF
10 HB with Exarch with Executioner.

Situationally, you will find that SS or HB can do better but DA with a fire phase beforehand will do the equivalent but due to SS and defend the DA will come out of it less hurt. And cost less.
The issue here is what should you take and the problem is rating 60 pts per unit versus virtually 3 times the cost. That make it very simple. Take the serpent + 5 as that should convert to a firepower of near 5 serpents verus 3 serpents with 10-man squads.

Well, i was talkiing about adding asurman to the unit. If you want to give your da shimmershield and defend, thats fine, if a bit of a role swap, brut why add asurman and waste an hq slot?

It's not as cut and dry as people would like to believe. Dire Avengers have 18" range folks, so that means a player who is apt at spotting distances can effectively kite other units.

They have to either:
a) Run in order to catch up hoping to assault you next turn. In which case you should be back inside your wave serpent and further away.
or b) Settle for less impressive return fire.

Dire Avengers have longevity in the right hands. I'm not saying the DAVU upgrade isn't viable, obviously it is since it is considered the metagame for Eldar. But I've used fully kitted out Dire Avenger units to great success.

Storm Guardians are awesome, too. I like to run both in my lists, they support each other quite well.