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.

Hello all,
I played my first game in 7th (against Tau no less) and, needless to say, my 6th edition list did not do as well as I have hoped. Since 7th saw a huge buff to vehicles, I was wondering if I should start investing into more heavy support. My current list has plenty of Dire Avengers, Wave Serpents, Fire Dragons, and a Wraithknight. I think I need more hard hitting units due to Tau's abundance of 2+ saves and cheap vehicles. Here is what I was considering:

-Take another Wraithknight. Heavy Wraithcannons tend to do well against vehicles.
-Use the Ghostglaive and Shattershield loadout on the Wraithknight and rush him into the fray.
-Consider Fire Prisms

For my fellow Eldar players or those that have played against Eldar, do those seem to be viable counters to the Tau?

Heavy Support is Eldar's best unit slot, IMO. I always try to max my heavy slots.
- Guided Scatter Laser War Walkers are good against broadsides and riptides. They force a lot of saves to kill off the drones and whittle down their wounds.
- Bright Lance Walkers will wreck a vehicle a turn, almost guaranteed.
- Suncannon/Scatter laser wraithknights are also very good against riptides and broadsides and you should still rush them towards enemy vehicles.
- Crimson Hunters are okay against Tau. Take out their Skyfire before your hunter arrives for maximum effect. Otherwise utilize vector dancer to keep your flyer along your table edge and away from the bulk of enemy fire.
- Fire Prisms are hit and miss. They are very good overall due to their multiple firing modes, but without guide/prescience they've got a 33% chance to do absolutely nothing in the shooting phase. This combined with improved jink makes them a tad unreliable. This edition favors quantity over quality.
- Fire dragons are okay, but treat them as a suicide squad. Once they show their faces the tau player will most assuredly blast them to smithereens. This effectively means you're spending 110 points to kill whatever their target is, plus transport.
- If you have access to wraithlords, you could run two of them with bright lances. They will take some dedicated fire to kill individually, and can very easily hold your backfield objectives against most enemies while targeting vehicles with their lances.

I have no idea where to put Farseers anymore. Every option seems terrible unless you're spending a jillion points on worthless Warlocks.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
I have no idea where to put Farseers anymore. Every option seems terrible unless you're spending a jillion points on worthless Warlocks.

My sentiments exactly.

My thoughts on 7e Eldar:
-Swooping Hawks were awesome in 6e but IMHO they are even better now. Haywire doesn't care about the vehicle dmg chart since it was a vehicle HP stripper anyways. Now with more people wanting to bring vehicles because of their slight improvement to durability, they will almost always have a good use.
-Hornets are awesome. 4x S8 AP2 shots for 70 pts, harder to explode, AV11 over the Venoms and can sit at and fire at 48" away.
-Farseers..I'm not sure what to do with them right now. It feels like if I don't take a bunch of Psykers I'm not going to be worth keeping up anyways. If I take 1, I won't be powerful enough in the Psychic phase to make a difference and my spell I want to get off, the opponent will just throw all his dice at it to attempt to deny it. If I take a bunch of locks, I'm gimping the rest of my army. I honestly might go Autarch + Jetbike + Laughing god + Fusion Gun + Shard. Expensive but can help my reserves come in faster too.
-Wave Serpent + DA/Guardians will be all my troop slots. Maybe 1 slot will be a jetbiker squad for late game contesting...
-WarWalkers are pretty durable so I'm planning to run more of those. Higher point games will probably see a squad of 2x with dual Scatters + 2x Wraightknights. (1x dual wraithcannon and 1x scatter+suncannon). Lower point games will probably see 1x Wraight knight (scatter+suncannon) and 2x squads of 1x WW with dual scatterlasers.

That's how I'm planning on building Eldar for 7e to fully utilize vehicles and stay balanced to take on the variety of armies that can be made now. I've always been a vehicle junkie so this seems the right way to go for me.

Biggest gripe would be I wish we had an Elite slot vehicle I would like max out on. Everything I want is in Fast and Heavy >_<

 Havok210 wrote:
Hello all,
I played my first game in 7th (against Tau no less) and, needless to say, my 6th edition list did not do as well as I have hoped. Since 7th saw a huge buff to vehicles, I was wondering if I should start investing into more heavy support. My current list has plenty of Dire Avengers, Wave Serpents, Fire Dragons, and a Wraithknight. I think I need more hard hitting units due to Tau's abundance of 2+ saves and cheap vehicles. Here is what I was considering:

-Take another Wraithknight. Heavy Wraithcannons tend to do well against vehicles.
-Use the Ghostglaive and Shattershield loadout on the Wraithknight and rush him into the fray.
-Consider Fire Prisms

For my fellow Eldar players or those that have played against Eldar, do those seem to be viable counters to the Tau?

I tabled two Eldar out of the last two. They had all the speed in the world but chose to effectively gunline me and by turn two i was Disorganized Charging their entire fleet of ships into the turf, with drop pods raining in everywhere they would have wanted to go and daring them to come that way. Krak Grenades and assaulting Thunderwolf Cavalry paws are all they saw before darkness blanketed them forever.

Battle speed with speed!

Well, against Tau you need to remove the marker lights asap.
This can generally be achieved with Serpent shields as they ignore cover. You need to get this job done in first turn.
Then Eldar will rule the battle field. I'll bring my Warwalkers into the game using outflank. There is a good chance that this will happen in turn two. Playing aggressively, Tau should start crumbling. I did it in two RTTs. It worked.
Fire Dragons are no longer a suicide squad with their improved armor save. The enemy has to deal with them, even with 5 men. With battle focus they can get into position to destroy what is needed.

Bojazz wrote:
- Suncannon/Scatter laser wraithknights are also very good against riptides and broadsides and you should still rush them towards enemy vehicles.
- Crimson Hunters are okay against Tau. Take out their Skyfire before your hunter arrives for maximum effect. Otherwise utilize vector dancer to keep your flyer along your table edge and away from the bulk of enemy fire.

I strongly disagree with these two statements.

Aside from Seeker missiles, A Wraithknight has little to fear against Tau. Don't bother with the 5++ save, take the two cannons. They are golden against Riptides, and much better than the suncannon. Str10 is a very rare thing, and Eldar are lucky to have easy access to it. Take it! Espeically with superheavies around nowadays.

Avoid Crimson Hunters like the plague, especially against Tau. All they need is a single unit with interceptor, and you don't even get to Jink. Av10 is terrible against Tau.

Two Wraithknights is definitely the way to go against Tau. They typically lack high strength shooting, with most of it capping at Str8. Needing a 4+ to wound, they may have some monster hutners there to get a reroll. Even then, most of the Str7 is Ap4 (broadsides) meaning you still get your armour save. They will really struggle to take out both knights before you make it into combat. 12 T8 wounds is a whole lot, and Tau lack anyway to ID them. All you have to do, is get one of them into combat with a Riptide or his broadsides. You're golden after that

Are there no good use cases for a Farseer with Psychic Power: Force in a Banshee unit ? I'm thinking it would make for a very nice dedicated monster hunting unit.

But then I'm just reading the rules, and I haven't had a chance to try that yet.

EDIT: I confused Force and Power weapons.

The force spell only makes FORCE weapons instant kill - also farseers don't get it.

Im going to try out running the avatar next - he seems like a pretty sweet support HQ with the fearless bubble protecting my guys from running off the table.

Maybe I'm a weird one, but I don't use wave serpents at all. I prefer taking 10 units at once with battle focus for mobility, plus some bikes for fast scoring units.

 Kaime wrote:
The force spell only makes FORCE weapons instant kill - also farseers don't get it.

Im going to try out running the avatar next - he seems like a pretty sweet support HQ with the fearless bubble protecting my guys from running off the table.

Maybe I'm a weird one, but I don't use wave serpents at all. I prefer taking 10 units at once with battle focus for mobility, plus some bikes for fast scoring units.

Foot slogging is a slow way to die.

There are weapons out there that can punch large holes in your foot slogging army.

Yes I know, thats why I run MSU. Its hard to kill much with the big evil deathstars when you have alot of small units supporting eachother.

Battle focus also lets me move up, shoot stuff, then run behind terrain so they cant shoot back. I used to (successfully) run footslogging back in 5th, the new codex is just a huge upgrade because of battle focus, now all of your units can sneak around.

A friend of mine is somewhat newish to the game and wants to run a Wraith list. Right now he's looking at Eldrad, a spiritseer, 2 wraithguard and 1 wraithblade unit in wave serpants, a knight and some artillery to deal with mass inantry.

Does that sound alright or is there something else he should run?

 CrownAxe wrote:
A friend of mine is somewhat newish to the game and wants to run a Wraith list. Right now he's looking at Eldrad, a spiritseer, 2 wraithguard and 1 wraithblade unit in wave serpants, a knight and some artillery to deal with mass inantry.

Does that sound alright or is there something else he should run?

It sounds okay.

There are some players here who have actually promoted Iyanden lists in the 6th ed.

Now that everyone can be scoring, the list is a big light on models so that it might be hard to deal with horde armies, even a bunch of Tactical Marines.

Dark Reapers also tend to do well against Tau. Good range, equip them with Starshot missiles and you have 5-6 S8 AP3 shots that ignore jinks and night fighting with a slight upgrade. Once the vehicules have been opened the Reapers will mow Tau infantry with 10-12 S5 AP3 shots/turn.

Avoid the War Walkers if you can. Use Hornets instead. More mobile, a bit tougher and are not a heavy slot.