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`m trying to put together a Mech Eldar list, but I'm not sure how to fill my three heavy support slots.

I know 3 x Fire Prisms is the classical choice. But from what I've seen in various threads, battle reports, blogs, etc. Eldar players seem to move away from that. The reason given is that it's all about killing vehicles these days and Fire Prisms can't do that reliably.
Do you agree with that? And if so, what are you using in your three slots?

Bonus question: Is it possible to give a squad of three War Walkers a cover save by putting them behind a Falcon or Wave Serpent (with the Walkers still being able to shoot)? I don't have the models yet, so I can't check myself...

I use 1 night spinner and 2 prisms

Code wrote:I`m trying to put together a Mech Eldar list, but I'm not sure how to fill my three heavy support slots.

I know 3 x Fire Prisms is the classical choice. But from what I've seen in various threads, battle reports, blogs, etc. Eldar players seem to move away from that. The reason given is that it's all about killing vehicles these days and Fire Prisms can't do that reliably.
Do you agree with that? And if so, what are you using in your three slots?

Where I play, we have many eldar players pulling out multple flavors...

I think the trend is that fireprism just aren't as effective to cracking vehicles... they're primarily anti-infantry.

The most effective list I've seen recently is 1 nightspinner + 2 squads of WW with EML. Then, WS out the rest of the army with EML as well (except for FD squads... give WS the shuriken cannon). Have firseer/Eldrad with WW to Guide them....

Bonus question: Is it possible to give a squad of three War Walkers a cover save by putting them behind a Falcon or Wave Serpent (with the Walkers still being able to shoot)? I don't have the models yet, so I can't check myself...

Yup... common tactic.

Some players like to load up on Falcons too. They usually give the Falcon an Eldar missile launcher, which gives it three long range str 8 shots and then load them down with 5 man dire avenger squads.

Since you're going mech eldar, the idea would be to take something that can keep up with the rest of the mech in your army. Falcons do this rather well, War Walkers don't, as once they are on the board they are as fast as a troop walking.

Personally I feel I have enough anti tank in my mech armies with Fire Dragons and strength 6 shooting everywhere that I don't need to take fire prisms. So I usually go for two night spinners to decrease my opponents speed, and one Falcon.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
Personally I feel I have enough anti tank in my mech armies with Fire Dragons and strength 6 shooting everywhere that I don't need to take fire prisms. So I usually go for two night spinners to decrease my opponents speed, and one Falcon.

Well, the new Necrons with their quantum shields will eventually cause trouble to S6 spam. Okay, you have Fragons but they need to get close and personal, and they are one-hit wonders. Fire Prisms and Falcons with eml's will be the way to go vs Necrons.

I either go :
2x Prism, 1X Davu Falcon
or...
2x Prism, 1x Night Spinner

3 Falcons with Holo-Fields and Spirit Stones, carrying two 6 man harlequin units, plus a 4 man Warlock unit joined by both a Fortune Farseer and Eldrad Ulthran.

The guns on the Falcons are fairly unimportant, as they won't be firing them. They'll be going at least 13" inches a turn for pretty much the first 3-4 turns, and unload their cargo for assaults on turn 4-5 once the enemy has spread out and become easier to isolate. They've got the resilience to huge amounts of firepower, so shots at them are pretty much wasted.

Hefty chunk of points, but it translates into 3 nigh-unkillable tanks delivering death into the middle of the enemy army. Really takes the pressure off of your Scoring Wave Serpents.

That's one of the most backward statements I have seen regarding Eldar vehicles. Falcons are a pain to kill with Holos certainly, but if you push them forward they get killed just as fast as Serpents as they get eaten by melta (can't avoid 2D6 pen and AP1 really hurts Holos). In this role they cost at least 40pts more than an equivalent Serpent without a meaningful increase in survivability. As an assault transport it isn't using most the Falcons main advantages, they are far better off staying back, firing all their weapons (they are much better gunboats than Serpents) and protecting your scoring units (since they are more important anyway).

If you really want to use assault based units (Harlies are a decent quasi melta unit and Foot Councils can be good horde control units with Destructors but as assault units they aren't great due to the limitations of the Serpent/Falcon) then take a 5 man squad of Avengers, buy them a Serpent, then put them in a Falcon and have the Harlies jump in first turn.

Anyway I've found that most how people use their heavy slots is largely dictated by how highly they rate Falcons (and in turn how many Falcons they take). If you don't rate them at all then 3 Prisms tends to be the standard (assuming a mech list here of course, otherwise Walkers and Wraithlords get used). 1 Falcon + 2 Prisms is pretty common if you like having 1 very hard to kill scoring unit. 2 Falcons is rarer as it limits you to a single Prism, although the Night Spinner makes this option more attractive as its fine by itself and War Walkers are solid if you don't mind the loss of mobility. 3 Falcons is very unusual, mostly as its such a massive chunk of points.

6 star cannon war warlkers
1 falcon with farseer council in it

3x dark reaper squads, exarchs w/ tempest launcher, fast & crack shot.... completely serious

chaos0xomega wrote:3x dark reaper squads, exarchs w/ tempest launcher, fast & crack shot.... completely serious

Ooh i changed my mind, i like ^ more. more durable!

chaos0xomega wrote:3x dark reaper squads, exarchs w/ tempest launcher, fast & crack shot.... completely serious

Please, tell me you are joking. The OP asked for heavies in a Mech list, so your suggestion has many problems.
1. Reapers are not Mech, unless they are in a WS, and then they are not shooting.
2. In a Mech list, three small foot squads will simply be anihilated by all of the opponents anti-infantry weapons, as they will be the only viable targets.
3. Reapers are just plain overcosted and ill suited for the 5th ed environment. Reliably, they can only be used against infantry; however, WWs w/SLs do that job better, in addition to their ability to pop light vehicles.

3x War Walkers with scatter laser and 1x DAVU Falcon or a Night Spinner

Powerguy wrote:That's one of the most backward statements I have seen regarding Eldar vehicles. Falcons are a pain to kill with Holos certainly, but if you push them forward they get killed just as fast as Serpents as they get eaten by melta (can't avoid 2D6 pen and AP1 really hurts Holos). In this role they cost at least 40pts more than an equivalent Serpent without a meaningful increase in survivability. As an assault transport it isn't using most the Falcons main advantages, they are far better off staying back, firing all their weapons (they are much better gunboats than Serpents) and protecting your scoring units (since they are more important anyway).

Is a re-rollable 4+ cover save stacked on top of a holofield not more protection than a Wave Serpent offers? With their mobility, they should easily be able to avoid getting meltaed, especially if you tack on Star Engines.

It's roll is not that of an assault transport. Those want to get to grips with the enemy as quickly as possible. That IS a horrible way to use Falcons. No, these fly around the table oozing potential threat, and generally don't drop their cargo until at least the fourth turn, and often not until the 5th or 6th, trusting in their ability to weather enemy fire with ease and take their time picking their fights.

I've had a scary amount of success with a trio of such falcons jetting around the table for 4 turns, never suffering worse than a weapon destroyed result, and deploying their assault troops late in the game after the enemy has spread out to claim objectives and can't bring numbers to bare easily on the deployed assault units. Shadowseers on the Harle units keep long range fire off their backs, while the re-rollable 4+ Inv of the seer council make them a hard target for heavy weapons. If the enemy ignores them? Good, they've probably left themselves open to an opportunistic deployment of the assault troops inside (Flip Belts are wonderful at giving Harles a consistent threat range anywhere on the table). If they focus the firepower of their entire army upon them? Even better, the re-rollable cover save and holo-field back up generally ensures that little to nothing is accomplished by it.

It lets you pick and stack fights massively in your favor, something Eldar kinda need to be able to do to win.

I personally don't understand stacking wave serpents and fire prisms into a list and getting in a slug-fest with Imperial armor and mech lists. They do it better with better guns at better range for less points.

Negation, denial, mobility, and isolating enemy units is what Eldar excel at, so why fight like Imperials?

Panzerboy26, I agree with you. Too much do I see Eldar players trying to go punch for punch, trading a unit for a unit. Eldar cannot do this and expect to come out ontop of the exchange! As for my two cents on filling your heavy support slots, I've become partial to playing Footdar for the simple reason I grew tired of paying for tanks that were increasingly outclassed by what my opponent could bring to the table for less points. Wraithlords are super durable if you can get them a cover save, and practically impossible to take down if you fortune one.

My 2 cents. I really have not found the Nightspinners to be all that and a bag of chips, now the forgeworld ones and their original rules are a different story. I tend to take 3 fire prisms in a mech list or more common, because I love harlequins sooo much, I tend to take a falcon, so I can stick 6 avengers in there, buy a serpent for them and run a squad of 10 harlies with kisses, Shadow seer and troope master and power sword. I then tend fill out the rest with dragons, dire avengers or maybe a squad of Storm guardians with 2 flamers and Warlock with Destructor... Just my 2 cents, I just have not had my nightspinner do enough to make up its point values. With the fire prisms - I tend to twin link their shots which gives the gun a S10 AP1 twice as much of a chance to hit. I usually try to take at least 2 fire prisms. If I am going after troops, I usually do not twin link them. Sometimes if I want to run 3 fire prisms, I will run banshees instead of harlies, but I do not like them as much. Though I really do like Jain Zar for her point costs, she is a great PL. Just my opinion.

Alerian wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:3x dark reaper squads, exarchs w/ tempest launcher, fast & crack shot.... completely serious

Please, tell me you are joking. The OP asked for heavies in a Mech list, so your suggestion has many problems.
1. Reapers are not Mech, unless they are in a WS, and then they are not shooting.
2. In a Mech list, three small foot squads will simply be anihilated by all of the opponents anti-infantry weapons, as they will be the only viable targets.
3. Reapers are just plain overcosted and ill suited for the 5th ed environment. Reliably, they can only be used against infantry; however, WWs w/SLs do that job better, in addition to their ability to pop light vehicles.

1. Mech list does not necessarily mean everything is 100% mobile.
2. What anti-infantry weapons? Everyone is too busy fielding meltaguns to bother
3. Please get a clue... I use dark reapers all the time, as do some other eldar players in my area, and we face a rather aggressive meched up meta. They are only a "poor choice" because people dont want to put the effort into using them.

Interesting discussion. I like the thought of aggressive falcon use, which is a new idea to me.

It's something that confuses me time and time again that no one seems to think that aggressive Falcon use is even something that can be done, let alone a good idea.

"... but they're not firing their guns."

"And by doing so, in combination with psychic powers, they are ensuring that the enemy's guns are also doing nothing, barring simply outrageous dice."

"... but nothing is dying."

"Exactly. Not until turn 5 or 6. When you can alpha-strike out of your Falcons into parts of the battlefield where you aren't likely to suffer counter-attacks."

Is often how the conversation goes. Granted, you'll likely only get your kill points late in the game, but if the enemy also has none at that point, well, then you still win. Combine this with a refused flank when deploying second, or Eldrad's redeployment jank when deploying first for even better results. Point denial, negation, mobility. It works in TCGs, and it sure as hell works in 40k.

And as an aside, I also like Dark Reapers. Crack Shot with the Tempest Launcher is one of the best Marine-Brooms there is, while a simple EML and Fast Shot really beefs the unit's ability to crack open the Rhinos and Razorbacks the marines are hiding from the Reaper Launchers in. As far as I'm concerned their only 'fault' is that they are in the Heavy slot, and thus don't allow me to take my awesome Falcons.

Panzerboy26 wrote:It's something that confuses me time and time again that no one seems to think that aggressive Falcon use is even something that can be done, let alone a good idea.

"... but they're not firing their guns."

"And by doing so, in combination with psychic powers, they are ensuring that the enemy's guns are also doing nothing, barring simply outrageous dice."

"... but nothing is dying."

If your local tourney settings allows you to ram with your star engines (this is ambiguous in the rules), charging falcons forwards is even more fun


My question would be...


instead of using falcons, why not use wave serpents? Granted that Harlequins can't take WS as a dedicated transport, aren't you burning valuable Heavy FOC slots on a pulse laser that you are not shooting?

severedblue wrote:

Panzerboy26 wrote:It's something that confuses me time and time again that no one seems to think that aggressive Falcon use is even something that can be done, let alone a good idea.

"... but they're not firing their guns."

"And by doing so, in combination with psychic powers, they are ensuring that the enemy's guns are also doing nothing, barring simply outrageous dice."

"... but nothing is dying."

If your local tourney settings allows you to ram with your star engines (this is ambiguous in the rules), charging falcons forwards is even more fun


My question would be...


instead of using falcons, why not use wave serpents? Granted that Harlequins can't take WS as a dedicated transport, aren't you burning valuable Heavy FOC slots on a pulse laser that you are not shooting?

Mine does .

As for why not use Wave Serpents, two reasons.

Firstly, Harlequin units can't start in their Wave Serpents, nor can they fly on the table inside of them in case of a Dawn of War deployment. Some games it won't matter, thanks to the Shadowseers keeping most 1st turn shooting off their backs, but it matters in enough games for it to be a disadvantage.

Secondly, and this is the important one, Wave Serpents can't take Holo-Fields. A re-rollable 4+ cover save stops a bunch of shots, but not quite enough to where you can safely assume that just about all shots at the tank will result in something less than immobilization or wrecked/destroyed. It's the combination of the re-rollable 4+ with the Holo-Field that makes this work.

Inspired by this thread, I just tried out aggressive falcons today against a friend who was playing vanilla space marines. I enjoyed myself quite a bit! Psychic Hoods are problematic but with three possible Fortunes it can't shut you down all of the time... or even half of the time.

- 1750 Capture & Control -
I started in front of the space marines then turbo boosted everything to his right flank, and even baited most of his lascannon fire towards my wave serpents. He turned to face me along the long edge of the board, and suddenly he was over extended. His tanks were in such a disarray trying to get good firing angles on me I was able to pop his razorbacks and wipe out his combat squads inside. Totally preoccupied with this distraction, I was able to turbo boost everything that mattered in position on turn 4. His turn 5 had another round of shooting that didn't matter, and I looked around the board and saw I had an answer for everything. My falcons dropped their payloads, my harlequins and storm guardians took his objective, the seer council destroyed his contesting land raider, and my falcons each emptied their guns into rear and side armor of his tanks.

The game ended and I won after having only lost my fire dragons and a single falcon.

The problem I have with the Falcons, they are nice gun boats, but at BS 3, if you can't guide them, they are going to miss, a lot. Which is very frustrating. I do like them for carrying small squads and giving my harlies a chance to hop in a serpent. It is a tough call. As for Holo-fields vs (sorry can't remember the force field serpents get). They both have their good vs bad. I would not say one is over the other. I tend to have my serpents survive more. Both fortuned and turbo boosted are tough to kill. I have had people roll double 6's or a 5 and 6 which with ap1 is the same result anyway. So sometimes the lowest of 2 d6 is not enough to save you and sometimes it is a god send. Cheers.

Double 5's and 6's on non-AP1 weaponry are outliers statistically. Double 5's and 6's on the few hits that manage to snake through a re-rollable 4+ cover save are extreme outliers.

I suppose I can halfway understand wanting to shoot with the Falcon's guns, as it has so many, but I really just view them as 3 weapon destroyed results my transport can soak before defaulting over to immobilized, as opposed to the 1-2 of most other transports.

I see your point with the rerollable cover saves, but not everyone in the list can have the rerollable one 2-3 at max per turn, but the serpents can have this too. I think it is a matter of opinion, I think they are about equal. I have had times where a Broadside/hammerhead/Leman Russ Demolisher hit my serpeants and was glad that they only were S8, have had plenty of times where reducing the melta to 1d6 has saved them. On the flip I have had the 2d6 for damage results save my Falcons where they would have been destroyed..... It is a tough call. I do frequently give my fire prisma or Nighspinners both spirit stones and holo-fields. I know some will argue well if it can't shoot what good is it, but there have been times where getting away from an enemy or contesting an objective or tank shocking was needed and I liked having the ability to move ecen if I could not shoot. The holo-fields have saved my prisms numerous times from getting destroyed, so I think worth the points... just my opinion.... Cheers

Just a quick question. I see some talk of a falcon with a farseer going flat-out and getting a re-roll on their cover save.

Arent farseers prohibited from using psychic powers when a vehicle flat-outs, or rather isn't it prohibited for a vehicle to flat-out if the farseer inside uses a psychic power?

Nope. Unlike Turbo-Boosting, which specifically disallows models that do it from performing in voluntary actions if they are going to TB, moving Flat-Out has no affect on psychic powers cast by models inside the vehicle that are not shooting attacks.

Yes I believe that you still can use your psychic powers and go flat out.

You can. Running Eldrad in a skimmer alongside a JBCouncil is a neat way to get them Turbo-boosting for re-rollable 3+ cover saves. Then you can have your JetSeer take over the fortune once they get where they need to be. Or just Keep Eldrad close and run an Autarch to lend killiness/reserve options.

This can be dirty in Apoc if you want to run the Council Apoc formation as you can get 5 fortunes out of it. I ran that with 1 on themselves, 1 on their Serpent, 1 on the JBCouncil, 1 on a unit of Shining Spears and 1 on a Fire Dragon Serpent. Makes for a pretty ugly Mech hammer.

To the OP, I like double Falcons and a squadron of 3 Scatter Walkers in some lists. Or maybe 2 Prisms and a Falcon in others. In my foot lists I used to run WLs and WWs, but playing against Long Fang ML spam really burned me out on WLs.

Panzerboy26 wrote:3 Falcons with Holo-Fields and Spirit Stones, carrying two 6 man harlequin units, plus a 4 man Warlock unit joined by both a Fortune Farseer and Eldrad Ulthran.

The guns on the Falcons are fairly unimportant, as they won't be firing them. They'll be going at least 13" inches a turn for pretty much the first 3-4 turns, and unload their cargo for assaults on turn 4-5 once the enemy has spread out and become easier to isolate. They've got the resilience to huge amounts of firepower, so shots at them are pretty much wasted.

Hefty chunk of points, but it translates into 3 nigh-unkillable tanks delivering death into the middle of the enemy army. Really takes the pressure off of your Scoring Wave Serpents.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/12/27 04:59:59?

I have never actually thought of this before. Gonna try this the soonest!
Gentlemen, this is how you play Eldar.