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Just looking for some tips and personal experiences regarding fighting Eldar as CSM.
Will probably be 1500pts. Should I focus on firepower or a close combat list, or combine the two. Any fast and effective ways of dispatching those wraithlords, or keeping them tied up.

I hate to say this, but my attempt at figuring out how to crack mech lists with CSM drew very little by means of useful ideas.

If your opponent isn't running skimmer spam, then you're better off. Wraithlords, for example, can be handled reasonably easily by deepstriking plasma. They're also not immune to instant death, which makes them sorcerer bait, especially if you can get rerolls from a challenge. Heck, even mutilators or maulerfiends, or even hellbrutes aren't that bad against them, and you can always just shoot them with havocs or preds.

What's much more likely to be a problem for you, though, is rending shurikens and wave serpents (or, more likely, a combination of the two). So far, I don't see CSM as having a good answer to that.

Yeah, that's my main concern, the Rending. Contemplating running some blobs of cultists just in front of standard CSM, move the CSM through the cultists, shoot with the marines and then run the cultists back in front of them if that's allowed (dice permitting)? Plenty of Autocannon Havocs and tanks then.

I'll get the Sorcerer out and jump pack him up to get that Wraithlord asap then.

Thanks for the help, any other advice will be appreciated!

Get into assault with the space elf nancy boys. I play Eldar, and you will not be able to outgun a good Eldar army with Chaos Marines. However, if you can get those Raptors, or a Daemon Prince, or, ANYTHING into cc with almost any Eldar unit they will fold. They might get away if they fail morale thanks to their high initiative, but just keep hitting them and they'll go down. Aside from special characters, the only unit that has done decent for me in cc are Striking Scorpions, particularly when they get the charge.

With Wraithlords, no invul saves hurt big time. I run them a lot, and I love them, but I know I have to put it in the way of a unit that doesn't have rending or power weapons, otherwise he will lose. He only has a few attacks, and only WS4. He is no cc beast, but he IS a great tarpit to units that aren't kitted out to beat him down. That being said, a Daemon Prince will probably kill him immediately in cc before the WL even strikes back.

I am more interested in how to deal with their serpent spam as csm

Well, the problem is that you've got to make it into CC with as much force concentration as an entire skimmer army. Put another way, your entire army needs to hit their entire army simultaneously. Which skimmer armies can basically guarantee you won't be able to do.

Otherwise, if not all of your units are fast advancers, or not all of them make it there at the same time, or you take some casualties, or whatever, you're going to be showing up with fewer points of stuff against a big wad of your opponent's everything. And you're going to lose.

Assuming that your opponent doesn't just pick you apart piecemeal first.

You used to be able to beat mobility with durability, but with eldar, that's sort of just not the case anymore. Which leaves armies like CSM either grasping to get ANYTHING into close combat, much less "fold up" the eldar opponent, or being forced to play a gunline of some sort themselves, which their codex really isn't set up to do.

Serpents are still rear armor 10. Assault with some power fists or thunder hammers, and pop goes the weasel. The standard loadout for Serpents in serpent spam is scatter-laser/shuriken cannons; those are S6 guns, and the shield is S7. If you can take some AV13+, those serpents aren't reliably doing jack to them until it's too late. I'm not super positive on all the options available to CSM, but Land Raiders come to mind to deliver a nice assaulty unit. Daemon Princes can fly up and assault one to death as well. Just a few off the top of my head.

Heldrakes. Fly over, Vector Strike (ignores cover), Flame in the rear armour.

 Happyjew wrote:
Heldrakes. Fly over, Vector Strike (ignores cover), Flame in the rear armour.

And that. That would suck...a lot. (stupid Heldrakes)

I'm not sure about Deep Strike with PF/TH. You can't assault the turn You arrive so the Wave Serpent can escape , turn around and shoot you dead.

Depends on the Eldar army.

Iyanden lists are popular over the internet right now. Wraithguards in serpents with a wraithknight as centerpiece.
Hard to take out as we (eldars) got healing skills these days (atleast for the wraithknight.

Flting chicken is a given. It kills both the serpents and the wraithguard. Take two and you'll have no problems against Crimson Hunters.

Deepstriking is good against eldar but must be done with mulitiple units with longer range weapons.
Dark reapers are popular with starfire missiles. Instagibbing marines and taking down the chickens. But they die easy to deepstrikers.

As said it all depends on the list you'll meet.

i play both CSM and eldar and i would say the most effective way to deal with the serpent spam is weight of shots that are high enough to hurt it, ie. auto cannon havoks.

you could take the combat approach and use some raptors with a melta gun to take a few shots the charge in and krack nade the tanks.

against infantry i would recommend nurgle marks marines and heldrakes with bale flamers, hell drakes can effectively deal with wraith guard and combined with a las pattern pred can make short work of tougher wraiths.

gausus wrote:
I'm not sure about Deep Strike with PF/TH. You can't assault the turn You arrive so the Wave Serpent can escape , turn around and shoot you dead.

In order to truly escape, the serpent will have to go flat out away from the Marines. They will effectively have an 18" threat range the following turn, and the serpent can only move 12" away and still shoot. If the Serpent gets away, then you've nullified some shooting and forced it out of position.

Yeah, assaulting wave serpents aren't going to work. The eldar player is going to focus down the assaulters, and even if they manage to wreck a serpent or two, then they've got to deal with fortuned rending shuriken weapons, or fire dragons, or whatever.

And the helldrake won't work either. The absolute earliest he can possibly vector strike is going to be turn 3. And then you bounce a couple of S7 shots off of AV12, and go fishing for a rear armor shot (which is somewhat unlikely if your opponent keeps his rear armor near the back of the board). Then you have the option of flying off, or causing maybe another glance or two to another wave serpent. Then the game ends.

To handle transports like this, timing is crucial. You need to kill those wave serpents all the way, and by turn 3, or else the guys inside are going to be on objectives at the end of the game.