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Imperial Guard is the hardest matchup I have ever played. They are as squishy as me, but much more numerous. Their tanks can take much more punishment, and have superior firepower. And the worst: Lasguns are actually scary when you're Eldar. I usually field (a generalization) stuff like Dire Avenger and Fire Dragon squads in Wave Serpents, Scatter Laser Walkers, Eldrad, dual Fire Prisms and Guardians.

How do you beat the Imperial Guard as Eldar? Units? Tactics? General mentality when playing against them?

Warp Spiders tear shreds through Imperial Guard, particularly ones guarding objectives. You have to place them fairly securely though obviously, so they don't get swamped the turn after.
Shrieking Scorpions in transports as well, they will make mincemeat of blobs.
Also avatars or wraithlords are capable of walking across an IG field of fire unscathed.

Well, you have all the units available for beating IG. I'd reserve the army and include an Autarch. Serpents are quite durable and Warwalkers should outflank. It's just a match where target priority plays a crucial role.

Alright, the problem with outflanking is that he has an Officer of the Fleet, meaning I get a -1 to my reserve rolls. And even if I manage to get them in, he can make me reroll the outflank die. I'll try to field a Wraithlord against him. I hate my Wraithlord, the pose is so incredibly bland and ugly. I'm gonna sell him and get two new ones soon... That is entirely unrelated however.

Marzillius wrote:Their tanks can take much more punishment, and have superior firepower. And the worst: Lasguns are actually scary when you're Eldar. I usually field (a generalization) stuff like Dire Avenger and Fire Dragon squads in Wave Serpents, Scatter Laser Walkers, Eldrad, dual Fire Prisms and Guardians.

If your facing a mechanized IG force as a foot Eldar force, you will be crushed. They can put down enough lasguns and templates to give you a really bad day.

However, your tanks are much more durable, faster and have good firepower.
Chimera's are AV 10 on the side, so line up side shots to wreck them.
Use fire dragons to crunch heavy armor, or you can use a small warlock squad to the same effect.

A mobile Eldar army has little to fear from an IG player.
Your serpents can carry the tools to destroy his tanks. Nightspinners will crush anything outside a tank.
This is an example of my eldar list vs. and IG player. Notice how I rushed his tanks and then either tank shocked or destroyed his units.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/416763.page

IG can wreck Eldar MC.

Melta vets and quad melta CCS can TL their guns against wraithlords. Vendettas also do a good job of wounding them.

IG is loaded on multilasers and AC, both of which will dump wounds on an avatar.

Avoid shooting scatter lasers into AV12. The sides of Chimera is AV10.

Serpents are your best bet since they are quite resilient vs. IG heavy weapons. I'd build an army around them.

You will have a tough time going against IG for many reasons. IG has so much long range weapons to take you out at a distance. At 750 points in a tournament, I fielded a hydra, two armor sentinels with auto cannons, two platoons that had 3 auto cannons, 1 lascannon, 2 missle launcers between them. If you get close enough, FRFSRF will score enough hits to do some damage. Your best bet, get in close combat, where your higher innitiative will give you the advantage.

Yes, your transports and tanks can get the cover from all out movement, but, hydras just take that away from you.

martin74 wrote:You will have a tough time going against IG for many reasons. IG has so much long range weapons to take you out at a distance. At 750 points in a tournament, I fielded a hydra, two armor sentinels with auto cannons, two platoons that had 3 auto cannons, 1 lascannon, 2 missle launcers between them. If you get close enough, FRFSRF will score enough hits to do some damage. Your best bet, get in close combat, where your higher innitiative will give you the advantage.

Yes, your transports and tanks can get the cover from all out movement, but, hydras just take that away from you.

STR 7 is not all that awesome for stopping serpents. Each hydra has a ~10% chance of killing a serpent.

labmouse42 wrote:

martin74 wrote:You will have a tough time going against IG for many reasons. IG has so much long range weapons to take you out at a distance. At 750 points in a tournament, I fielded a hydra, two armor sentinels with auto cannons, two platoons that had 3 auto cannons, 1 lascannon, 2 missle launcers between them. If you get close enough, FRFSRF will score enough hits to do some damage. Your best bet, get in close combat, where your higher innitiative will give you the advantage.

Yes, your transports and tanks can get the cover from all out movement, but, hydras just take that away from you.

STR 7 is not all that awesome for stopping serpents. Each hydra has a ~10% chance of killing a serpent.

on average a hydra will penetrate or glance with every volley. So that's a bit misleading.
They will also ignore flat out cover saves.
And there'll probably be at least two shooting at it.

Marzillius wrote:Alright, the problem with outflanking is that he has an Officer of the Fleet, meaning I get a -1 to my reserve rolls.

Use that to your advantage. I've played against 2x autarchs lists before. Turn 2 they leave their autarchs off, and only like 1/3 of their stuff comes in. Then, turn 3 they turn on their autarchs and the rest of their army shows up in force.

As a foot guard commander I've had some problems with wraithlord (smart eldar players can neutralize the best of your firepower quickly, and give you other, more important targets to shoot at), but really the biggest problems I've had have been with 10x bot squads of wraithguard with conceal and fortune, and with scorpions. That and mind war, which is the utter death of blobs.

Also, I'd like to note that basic eldar infantry ARE better than regular guard infantry. Even guardians, who may not get special weapons, but get small arms that are assault weapons (that ignore armor saves), combined with fleet and a higher initiative mean that eldar units get to put down a lot of close range damage before the guard player even gets a swing in. Avengers get this except with better armor and some neat exarch abilities.

As for handling guard mech lists, you need to break out of the paradigm that you should bring only S6 spam and dragons, as that's not going to be enough strength or numbers (respectively) to handle the wall of AV12. Start more seriously considering getting into close combats (practically everything has rear armor of 10) and using those lesser-used options like EMLs and even the occasional bright lance.

If you want a single unit that's going to be good, consider a jetlock council. Witchblades hitting rear armor with S9, rerollable 3+/3++ and wound wrapping help against shooting, and the ability to pick out commissars with mind war all lead to a squad that, though expensive, can handle pretty well anything in the guard codex.

Joey wrote:on average a hydra will penetrate or glance with every volley. So that's a bit misleading.
They will also ignore flat out cover saves.
And there'll probably be at least two shooting at it.

Joey, respectfully, that's bad math. Just because you can expect 3 hits per hydra, and 1/3 of the hits will be an effect, it does not mean that every hydra will have 1 effect on every serpent. What if the hydra has 2 effects? What if none hit? The actual math on it is extremely cumbersome, and so I wrote a simulator last year to do the work for me. It runs 100,000 shots at a target and gives you the averages.

This is what an autocannon (same weapon) does vs AV 12.
Per autocannon effect
Total Misses.....................24.79%
Total Plinks on armor.......50.08%
Total Glances..................12.56%
Total Penetrates..............12.56%
Total Effects on Target.....25.12%

Total Effects on Target
Shaken Hits...............................16.47%
Stunned Hits...............................8.29%
Weapon Destroyed....................8.23%
Immobilized................................7.98%
Destroyed..................................4.16%
Exploded....................................4.06%
Destroyed or Exploded...............8.22%
http://www.uma-musado.com/cgi-bin/mathHammer.cgi

Now lets talk about the effects.
Shaken : Who cares. Your serpent can still deliver its dragons.
Stunned : Who cares, you bought extra armor
Weapon Destroyed : Who cares, the dragons are the threat, and you can still ram.
Immobilized: Counts as destroyed if you moved flat out. This effectively destroys the skimmer.
Destroyed : Skimmer is no longer effective
Exploded : Skimmer is no longer effective.

So out of the effects above, you only really are worried about the bottom 3. This means only 1/6 of the glances will even be a concern, and 1/2 of the penetrates will be a concern.
Every pair of hydra flak tanks has about a 52% of destroying one serpent. (Remember, you cannot just add 16% + 16% with 2 shots). There are going to be 3 of these tanks barreling down on the hyrdras.
To make matters worse, even if the tank is destroyed, the dragons are still a major threat to the IG tanks, and they have already been delivered to the point of effectiveness.
This is also assuming that there is no cover the serpents can take advantage of (ie, behind a building, etc). If there is, the chances of serpent destruction halve.

Summary
In summary, hyrdra's are dangerous to serpents, and a pair of them is a big threat to a serpent, but it is not an -auto win- for the IG player.
They should be high on Eldar target priority, and full advantage should be taken to stun/shake them with other fire. Scatter lasers work wonders on side shots on hydras, and side shots are easy to get when you can move 12" and fire.

Swooping Hawk Grenade Packs work wonders on a gunline of IG.

Well, I'd take a Serpent spam enhanced with Warwalkers. Add an Autarch and two third of your force should arrive in turn 2. Outflanking Warwalkers and Serpents with eml's or scatterlasers should be able to take out Hydras at first sight.

IG are a mean matchup, especially Mech. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The good news is that in tourneys you're either capturing objectives which Eldar are good at or doing for kill points, of which IG should have more.

Many good points are made already so I won't repeat.

I've used jetbikes to win tourney before. 5 of them turboing onto an objective as the game ends is really tough to counter. Granted, there's a chance the game doesn't end, but that what 3++ is for (fortuned if you're really serious and brought Eldrad)

Wraithlords drop pretty quick agains 3 Valks-worth of Lascannons unfortunately.

One thing I found to work well in objective games is moving Serpents in such a way as to create a speed-bump if they're downed. Dragons in cover can give pause to advancing chimeras and Avengers can actually rush forward if they survive the next turn.

That's all I got though, I've only ever eaked out minor victories against IG with gutsy objective grabs and MANY lives lost.

I've used jetbikes to win tourney before. 5 of them turboing onto an objective as the game ends is really tough to counter. Granted, there's a chance the game doesn't end, but that what 3++ is for (fortuned if you're really serious and brought Eldrad)

Well, you never know when the game ends. Its rather likely that fortuned GJB's will go down within one round of shooting.