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Hi, guys!

I'll be facing a 2000p Eldar list with my marines next saturday, and would like your ideas on how to explore it's weakenesses. I haven't figured out my list yet, but am considering using my 2 sotrmtalons, 2 thunderfire cannons protected on boosted ruins, with troops also protected in ruins. I'd use 8 grey knights paladins with Coteaz as allies, probably in a Land Raider, but his list has so much S9 guns that it is making me have second thoughts...

Here is his list:

HQ
Farseer - Singing Spear, Jetbike, Fortune
7 Warlocks on Jetbikes - 2x Singing Spear and Embolden, 2x Enhance, 3 standard
Autarch - Warp Jump Generator, Power Weapon, Fusion Gun, Mandiblasters

Elite
5 Fire Dragons // Wave Serpent with TL Shuriken Cannon and TL Shuriken Catapult

Troops
9 Dire Avengers - Exarch with Dual Shurikens e Bladestorm // Wave Serpent with TL Scatter Laser and Shuriken Cannon
9 Dire Avengers - Exarch with Dual Shurikens e Bladestorm // Wave Serpent with TL Scatter Laser and Shuriken Cannon

Fast
5 Warp Spiders - Exarch with dual Spinners and Powerblades
5 Swooping Hawks - Exarch with Intercept and Skyleap

Heavy
4 Dark Reapers - Exarch with Tempest Launcher and Crack Shot
Fire Prism
Fire Prism

How should I approach this xenos foe?

err only his prisms are Str 9 or 1 str 10 if he links them, quite honestly you should take this without much issue grey knights pump out a lot of str7/8 where eldar have mostly str6

Scatter laser/sh cannons/fire dragons/spiders all str 6

that said there is also not a lot of AP 3+ weapons in his list. Only 1 squad of D Reapers to worry about.

Focus of taking out the heavy choices first with your rifledreads (stick them behind a ADL for a 4+ cover) Tech marine if you like to repair your stuff but it's not needed.

Dreadknight with jump to chase down and chop up his skimmers = win.

You just have to feed his council junkfood for a couple turns - something cheap that are unlikely to break. They are good but lack attacks to chew into blobs effectively.

Happy gaming

He's got a lot of Singing Spears, which are S9 against vehicles (!) That's what worries me.

thats why you have to tie them down with junk. They are also only short range. And theres only 3. They aren't all that unless you let them be. 1 attack only is a serious issue when locked down. He has little in the list that can help them out of a tar pit. Swooping hawks and spiders exrachs are ok but against T4 they will struggle like anything else. And remember Singing spears etc do not effect armour rolls. He has no eldrad. You dont need to kill them, just deal with them effectively by removing their mobility.

Well, the major threads are the Jetbike Council, the Fire Dragons, the Dark Reapers, and the two Fire Prisms.

Against a Jetbike Council, which will be in your face in no time, you need a Librarian. If the Farseer once fails to cast fortune, you will have chance to beat it. A Termie squad could tie it up ad infinitum.

I'd consider a 10 men Termie squad with 2 cyclones. They could take on the fast skimmers. Silencing Prisms is a must.

A Landraider is a gamble. Fire Dragons can take it down with ease, Fire Prisms will also work. I'd drop this thought.

Tacticals should be the backbone of your army, with missile launcher, melta/plasma gun, and meltabombs, they should be able to hold their position.

Sniper Scouts could take on Dark Reapers.

I play eldar and I can tell you that the dark reapers are going to be causing havoc, the exarch alone is worth something like 77 points and he will ignore cover and your power armour saves. Last time I played a marine army my exarch wiped out a 10 man squad in two turns so my advice to you would be to drop that squad asap, it's not overly difficult to kill, 3+ saves and only 5 wounds but it'll chew up marines in the open with ease.

Fire prisms are only AV12 and AV10 on the rear so you can glance them to death easily, drop podding a squad with some melta next to them can pop them pretty quickly or just long range missile fire to glance them down can be effective. I've found dire avengers to be fairly uneffective in 6th but they can put out a lot of shots with their bladestorm so be aware of that.

The fire dragons are dangerous with their st8 meltas but if you kill their ride they won't be a problem anymore. The biggest threat is obviously coming from that bike council but as someone said earlier you just need to tie them up, they can't use their destructor on overwatch and they don't have very many attacks in close combat so if you can keep them tied up you should be fine - their save is only 4++, even with fortune that should only take 4 hits to kill each warlock.

The warp spiders will almost certainly be looking to drop behind a rear armour 10 vehicle and glance it to death, that's pretty much what spiders do best now, the autarch has a fusion gun which obviously means they'll be targetting vehicles. He will also be there to add some close combat punch to the squad. Autarchs and the exarch can be dangerous in close combat but the other warp spiders are absolutely awful.

Hawks are only dangerous really if they can assault a vehicle. Their guns are awful and they can only throw one haywire grenade in the shooting phase so he's probably planning to use them to skyleap every turn in order to give himself the grenade pack and then he'll use them on the last turn to deny an objective. They're very fragile so just don't get too annoyed about the grenade packs - there's nothing you can do about them unless he keeps the squad on the field and I doubt he'll do that unless there's a vehicle to assault. DO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN. They WILL destroy any vehicle they assault, they're massively overpriced though at 21 points a model so just put some shots into them if they stay on the board and ignore them otherwise - don't get distracted last turn and kill them when there's a higher priority target because the packs are annoying you, that's probably what he wants.

So in conclusion - the dark reapers are a major threat to any ground forces you have, the fire prisms and the reapers have to be your main focus. Fire prisms combining their shots can provide and AP3 large blast which can really ruin a marine's day or a ST10 small blast for wrecking vehicles. Try and kill the prisms and the reapers as a priority and keep the fire dragons away from any high value targets. Tie up the seer council and don't let spiders drop behind any rear AV10 vehicles and you should be fine.

OhNoitsNot,

The Dark Reapers and Fire Prism were indeed what I saw as top priority targets. I definitely NEED to kill the exarch, last it will keep chewing my scoring tacticals all the day on. The Fire Prisms are going to knock out at least 1 tank a turn if they combine (S10 AP1 is hard to survive...)

He built this list as he is expecting me to bring loads of vehicles, as I usually do. My plan is to either bring a lot (like, 8 plus 2 flyers) or none at all (just the flyers).

No vehicles would mean I'd resort on thunderfire cannons to kill their scoring units and 2 or 3 devastator units to grant me heavy support against his vehicles, with everybody in cover in ruins.

He also expects me to use my Spartan Assault Tank, and is looking forward to glancing it to death, I'm sure... Maybe I should surprise him with an all-foot army (?!)

Well, in the former edition it was easier to keep the Prisma away from making damage. You simply needed to glance them once per turn. But now you have to penetrate them.

The Thundercannons should work against Dark Reapers, as do Sniper Scouts.

In terms of your Tacticals, you need to keep them in Rhinos and the Rhinos in cover during the first one to three turns. The missile launcher can shoot out from the top hatch.

matgc wrote:
He's got a lot of Singing Spears, which are S9 against vehicles (!) That's what worries me.

Not anymore, they got changed to S: User with Armourbane (2D6 to Pen) and Fleshbane (2+ to wound). Its a marginal drop in effectiveness against most vehicles with AV10 rear, but its a major hit against AV14.

In all honesty its a pretty average Eldar list, it only has two scoring units, has no redundancy and uses Hawks. If you drop the Dragons Serpent early then you are pretty much guaranteed to get your Land Raider + assault dudes where they want to be safely. Place all your objectives in cover and then as long as you can avoid having half your army getting tied up by the JetCouncil you should be able to win comfortably on objectives.

Well, Powerguy is right, its a very average Eldar army. Mech Eldar will struggle in the 6th ed. Nevertheless, Eldar can be quite efficient in lower pt games, but it will not scale up very well. I've shelved my Eldar until the new codex will come out.

Powerguy wrote:

matgc wrote:
He's got a lot of Singing Spears, which are S9 against vehicles (!) That's what worries me.

Not anymore, they got changed to S: User with Armourbane (2D6 to Pen) and Fleshbane (2+ to wound). Its a marginal drop in effectiveness against most vehicles with AV10 rear, but its a major hit against AV14.

In all honesty its a pretty average Eldar list, it only has two scoring units, has no redundancy and uses Hawks. If you drop the Dragons Serpent early then you are pretty much guaranteed to get your Land Raider + assault dudes where they want to be safely. Place all your objectives in cover and then as long as you can avoid having half your army getting tied up by the JetCouncil you should be able to win comfortably on objectives.

Singing spears keep the str 9 due to technicality. They have a written rule in the Eldar codex where wraithblade refers back to the 40k codex. It's a blatant over sight but it's there until FAQed.

You'll want to neutralize the vehicles first; get psycannons close as fast as possible, then focus fire on any surviving infantry.

I agree it's not a strong list. Eldar vehicles are seriously vulnerable now since all of their upgrades are a waste of points, they can be glanced to death far too easily, although this keeps their cost down it also keeps their impact on the game down :/. I've run my falcon every game I've played in 6th because I love the falcon but I think it's only survived past turn 3 once.

Honestly both of your ideas could work, fire prisms will kill some vehicles in the early stages of the game but they're very easy to take down because of glancing hits so a large number of vehicles could leave him with nothing that can fight them beyond turn 2-3, but at the same time he is running warp spiders with a tank popping autarch and swooping hawks, who are excellent AV so bringing no vehicles at all could really throw him off his game. If you can bring a list that can deal with the fire prisms quickly and effectively your vehicles should be fine - the spiders and the hawks just don't have enough wounds to survive sustained fire after they land and fire dragons are a suicide unit that shouldn't be able to drop more than one vehicles before you deal with them.

Lot's of good ideas here, guys, thanks.

Regarding his jetbike council, what would be the best unit to tar pit it? The grey knight terminators? Keep in mind that this is the only GK unit I have so far, the rest of my army is SM.

If I bring the Spartan, he is probably going to concentrate his high strenth fire power on it until he finishes it. This may make things easier for me to plan my defence. I can deploy the terminators behind the Spartan to begin the game out of sight from the enemy, and then rearrange them in position to intercept whoever aproaches the tank.

Coteaz ability would allow me to open fire on his Swooping Hawks in case they deep strike near the Spartan to use their haywire grenades.

With the terminators close in, his low range Singing Spears would have a hard time getting in range to shoot without exposing the bikes to an assault on my subsequent turn. I mean, eldar bikes can move 2D6 on the assault phase and put a distance from the Spartan after they fire, but my termies would walk 6" on my turn and then roll 2D6 for assault distance. Odds are on my side I would catch the jet concil, right?!

Any eldar tricks I'm losing here?

Three best ways in the game to deal with jetbike councils:
1: a successful null zone, negating fortune

2: interrupting fortune cast

3: 2+ saves with lots of AP3 attacks.


Remember, jetbike councils have no power weapons at all (how i miss 3rd dex).
Per turn damage with 10 man squads:
10 2x LC terminators: 30A, 15H, 12W, 3 fail
17A (w farseer), 9.5W, 1.5 fail.

You are doing twice the damage of councils. Even with regular fist terminators (2 squads, CML each) you are doing more damage and can ID the farseer.

Librarian Terminator armor w SS and force axe, Might of the Ancients and null zone 140

5 Tactical Terminators CML 230
5 Tactical Terminators CML 230
Dred, assault cannon autocannon

Tac squad flamer combi plasma razorback TL Assault 175
Tac squad flamer combi plasma razorback TL Assault 175
Tac squad flamer combi plasma razorback TL Assault 175
Scouts, Hbolter, cloaks

Stormtalon 130
Stormtalon 130
scout bikes, power axe, cluster 95 (scout, move, assault DR and should kill in 2 rounds)

TFC 100
TFC 100
Pred w las sponsons 120

I ripped him off the table!

It really helped having all those advices from you guys. I went to the game knowing exactly what I should do.

This victory is no small feat,as that guy is THE pro player on our gaming group, haven't lost a game in months (altough playing almost every saturday) and never lost to me until saturday (!)