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Heya!

Im curious if anyone has tried building and most importantly played with or against an eldar army focused around an Avatar with lots of assault units(scorpions, banshees) to benefit from his abilities? I dont have nearly enough models or even an Avatar, so i havent gotten to try it out. On paper i love the idea and i think there was a method of getting him a 6" run aswell from the formations, making him fast(er)
I havent found any batrep or articles where he has been put to use yet, so i thought i would ask if you have any experience with him?

People choose the Wraith Knight for the LoW slot because it can beat 2-3 Imperial Knight Titans in combat at i5 with the Ghost Glaive Str D melee weapon super OP IMBA for just 295pts vs 375x3=1125pts

Can the avatar of Khaine do that in melee?

I know there used to be a build called Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, and King Ghidora, which was composed of the Avatar and 2 Wraithlords, i forget the rest of the list, but it used to be good. It is do able and its probably pretty decent, just not competitive.

I know the wraithknight wins the spot 99% of the time, and is alot better, no argument from me there

Im merely interested to hear how the Avatar fares when on the table and if anyone uses it in their list to boost other assault units. This really is not a WK vs avatar comparison thread

The avatar is a beast! Yes he can pop the knights, he has 5 attacks on the charge at initiative 10 str 9(6 standard, furious charge, and +2 for the melee weapon) ap1 armorbane. At ws10.

I use it to keep heavy walkers away from my storm guardians, scorpions, and the light skimmers that back them up. A couple blobs of storm guardians with a farseer and warlock in each will actually get some work done too. If the warlocks happen to roll the healing power, you avatar becomes quite survivable. And don't forget that wraithlord get the bonus for furious charge and rage as well. Sword wielding wraithlord with 5 attacks master crafted at str 10 is no joke for a little over 100 points

I would say the avatar beats the WK in CC at initiative 10 lol

I find he is just too slow to do much.

He may be slow normally, but in an eldar warhost he has guaranteed 12" movement and can still fire his weapon. Turn two he is 18" into the table and threatening everything within about 9".

If your meta has drop pod marines, the avatar will spend all game deleting units. Don't forget that melta and flamer weapons can't hurt him, and he is as survivable to grav as the stock wraithknight.

The avatar is just barely worth it's massive price tag in very specific circumstances. Ironically this is NOT in support of a melee based army or as a melee monster. The reason for this is very simple. The avatar is slow and has low durability. People keep talking about charging a wraithknight but if you actually think how a 6" movement MC ever gets a charge on a jump GMC which moves 12", ignores intervening terrain, and likely gets to reroll it's charge distance. You quickly realize that the avatar only gets to charge when a mistake happens and usually takes 2-3 turns to get even the chance to charge.

Why do I say that it not good in support of a melee army? This is again low mobility and the low durability. The CWE melee units are good work not by slowly trudging up the board while shrugging off enemy firepower but by getting into combat before the enemy can shoot them much. Consider what melee units are any good in the CWE army; Banshees, Scorpions, Jet Seer Council, Wraithknight. All of these will not benefit from the avatar's aura during the turns they actually need it. This is because they are all significantly faster than the avatar and so either begin the game outside the aura (infiltrate) or

The not so good "melee" units are wraithblades which are not good because they are slow (and also benefit little to none from an avatar). The units which are misunderstood as being melee units are not considered good because of such are; foot seer council and storm guardians. These units are actually close in special weapons/psyker units which can are not bad at melee. They also work best when they have a delivery method or are kept cheap so they can run around scoring objectives...which is directly contradictory to taking an expensive avatar to support.

What the avatar can do well is in the situation of an ADL and bastion supporting a units of ranged damage dealers which GtG behind the bastion then pop back up when the avatar moves into range. D cannon units work extremely well for this purpose as they can be deployed forward in range and the avatar can help to protect them. BTW the bastion is used for the avatar to hide behind to stay out of LoS.

BTW for those saying an avatar kills a wraithknight in melee. You are not taking the FnP into account nor even running the mathhammer. An avatar on the charge averages less than 1/3 the wounds a wraithknight has even against the D wratihknight (ie no shield). The wraithknight actually has a significant chance to stomp the avatar to death before the avatar can kill it. In reality though the avatar will get killed in range by the D wraithknight and looses combat badly against the sword wraithknight. The avatar is just not very durable.