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 gmaleron wrote:
Sweet, in your opinion how does this list compare to the IA8 book? And which book do you think is more competitive in your personal opinion?

Personally, I prefer this list far more. It's more "balanced" in the sense that there are "good" options all-round for the most part, and I feel that it has the capability to be competitive. Obviously some units like the Cyclops are still relegated to the "lulz" department, but for example Sentry Gun Batteries are now actually fairly useful with their 6th Ed artillery durability. Dropping them on the same turn you're shooting them (via Combat Drop) ensures that they don't die before completing their job. I can see a use for Lascannon SGs dropping backfield to shoot rear AV10 and for HB SGs to defeat ADL campers (since that's the most common counter to the flyers) as well as just sow havoc otherwise.

Even Veteran Heavy Weapon Teams are a pretty good pick now. Give them Forward Observer and you'll be able to get your Combat Drop Valks in so much more accurately. Long Range Ground Scanner going to part of the CCS is a nice buff too, since they aren't going to get shot off the board just as easily, and you can sit them inside the Valk and just fly it around as a mobile boost-mobile.

Vultures going to Fast Attack definitely hurt, especially since they compete with Tauros Venators in that same spot. That being said, I personally would prefer to take three Tauros Venators to get reliably T1 anti-tank onto the board, and they're somewhat more durable when parked in bolstered ruins with camo-netting (2+ cover), although this may be redundant with Tau stripping cover. That being said, this does free room in HS for not just SGs but the ability to take Avengers, which provide a combination of anti-tank and anti-infantry (they have two lascannons to boot, besides their Avenger Bolt Cannon). Lightnings and Thunderbolts are still fairly overcosted for their capabilities.

Obviously Combat Drop in itself is a game-changer, turning us into the only army that can have flyers on the board on T1 in 6th Ed. If you have a lot of Vets in Valks, that's a fair amount of firepower that you can dump onto the board with impunity (even if they go first, they can't shoot what hasn't arrived yet). Your Vets can still disembark if the Valks come down in Hover, and YMDC will have to confirm if you can grav-chute Vets if they Valks come down in Zooming. Sentinels, even though they're almost 50% more expensive now, can Combat Drop and take out a Land Raider before your opponent can even move it out of his Deployment Zone.

One (unexpected) advantage I've found to saturating the field with so many flyers - your opponent will find a very hard time bringing his own flyers on, both in terms of placement and the amount of other flyers that can shoot it down.

With regards to competition, Chaos triple Heldrakes pose essentially no big threat to you like they would to a static IG army. Laugh at them, in fact, as you shoot all of them down. Tau would need to seriously dedicate a lot of points to enough anti-air to make a difference (for both interceptor and skyfire upgrades), and I think most competitive Tau builds would be centered around taking down two, maybe three flyers (particularly Heldrakes). I'm unfamiliar with Eldar, so I can't comment much in that department, but let's be honest, guardsmen are so squishy anyway that D-weapons aren't going to have that much more utility shooting them versus shooting a Space Marine where their insta-death means something.

Overall, the list will take some getting used to, but I personally think it can be played competitively now. Take advantage of Combat Drop and break out of the mindset a lot of Elysian players have - an expanded 5th Ed Codex IG Vendetta/Democharge-based army. Elysians play a lot differently from that now and require some finesse to master as opposed to dropping as many squads of demo charge-equipped guardsmen you could. I personally think that you'll find them more fun to play, to boot.

Great review man and I agree that this list will require alot of practice to get good with but I think that with enough time that it could become very nasty and effective, especially since as you mentioned most players will not bring that much anti-air. Some tactics that I can already see forming:

-Odd number of Valks, drop sentinels and sentry guns. Like the drop pod list finding a good combination of these units and making them an odd numbers key. I am thinking something along the lines of x3 Valks, x2 squads of Drop Sentinels and a squad of sentry guns. This gives you 3 units to bring in which could easily be changed up between x2 valks and some drop sentinels or vice versa.

-Allies will be huge with this list I feel and the confirmed ability to take them with the Elysians (including the regular codex IG) is enourmous. Now we can take x4 Vendettas and bring an astropath as well if we wanted to, or even x2 officer of the fleets to really mess with opponents reserves.

-The Avenger fighter will have to take the place of the Vulture Gunship and to be honest, that is not entirely a bad thing. The Avenger has a decent amount of firepower and can bring the hurt in the form of some more potent weaponry.

With all of these things come to light and with the Elysians that I have already purchased I am thinking of an army list roughly looking like this hopefully (dont have the book yet) around 1850-2000pts.:

-CCS: *w/ Plasma or Melta, Scanner, Valk

-x2 Drop Sentinels: *w/ Multi Melta, Deep Strike
-x2 Drop Sentinels *w/ Multi Melta, Deep Strike

-Veteran Squad: *w/ Plasma, Valk
-Veteran Squad: *w/ Plasma, Valk
-Veteran Squad: *w/ Plasma, Forward Observers
-Veteran Squad: *w/ Plasma, Forward Observers
-Veteran Squad: *w/ Plasma, Deepstrike
-Veteran Squad: *w/ Plasma, Deepstrike

-Vendetta: *w/ Door Gunners
-Vendetta: *w/ Door Gunners
-Vendetta: *w/ Door Gunners

-Avenger
-Avenger
-Sentry Gun Battery: *w/ Deep Strike (*If Points Allow*)

Nice review. Thanks for posting.

 Enigwolf wrote:
Even Veteran Heavy Weapon Teams are a pretty good pick now. Give them Forward Observer and you'll be able to get your Combat Drop Valks in so much more accurately.

The thing that concerns me about this is that, unlike codex vets, you can't get Harker or camo cloaks. It's a good plan if you have first turn, but if you're going second those vets are going to be taking a lot of shooting they can't handle. I'm not sure the small chance of keeping a homing beacon alive long enough to use it is really worth the risk compared to just keeping the vets in a transport and accepting the deep strike scatter.

 Peregrine wrote:


Doesn't matter. IA3 is the only one you can use, IA8 is obsolete and no longer legal.

Just found out that the IA8 Version of the Elysian Drop Troops list is still legal as they are two seperate books meaning that technically they are seperate lists (was talking to a guy at Forgeworld when I broached the topic). Just figured I should let yall know in case some other Elysian players would still want to use the Vulture in the Heavy Support slot

 gmaleron wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


Doesn't matter. IA3 is the only one you can use, IA8 is obsolete and no longer legal.

Just found out that the IA8 Version of the Elysian Drop Troops list is still legal as they are two seperate books meaning that technically they are seperate lists (was talking to a guy at Forgeworld when I broached the topic). Just figured I should let yall know in case some other Elysian players would still want to use the Vulture in the Heavy Support slot

I don't know why you'd want to do this though. You can't take advantage of Combat Drop anymore, which is a huge plus.

 Enigwolf wrote:
I don't know why you'd want to do this though. You can't take advantage of Combat Drop anymore, which is a huge plus.

And command squads with decent weapons. I can maybe understand trying to argue for using the IA8 list to take demo charge spam (but good luck getting anyone to agree to your technicality if you're doing it just to spam a single powerful upgrade), but not really for Vultures. Avengers can do most of the things Vultures do, and 2x Vendetta/1x Vulture/1-3x Avenger (plus any dedicated transport Valkyries) is a pretty good mix of aircraft.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
I don't know why you'd want to do this though. You can't take advantage of Combat Drop anymore, which is a huge plus.

And command squads with decent weapons. I can maybe understand trying to argue for using the IA8 list to take demo charge spam (but good luck getting anyone to agree to your technicality if you're doing it just to spam a single powerful upgrade), but not really for Vultures. Avengers can do most of the things Vultures do, and 2x Vendetta/1x Vulture/1-3x Avenger (plus any dedicated transport Valkyries) is a pretty good mix of aircraft.

Not that democharges were even that reliable what with scatter and all... lol. The ability to have flyers on the board Turn 1 is just too damn powerful to not have. The best part is that you still can have troops disembark from them and alpha-strike basically every vehicle and most TEQs and GEQs to death once you bring in Combat Dropping Drop Sentinels too.

It could be fun to run an allied list between the two lists. This way you can field so many aircraft you can no longer maneuver them.

The extra vendetta and vulture slots could be useful but it is tough to tell if it is worth the HQ tax.

 ansacs wrote:
It could be fun to run an allied list between the two lists. This way you can field so many aircraft you can no longer maneuver them.

The extra vendetta and vulture slots could be useful but it is tough to tell if it is worth the HQ tax.

You'd be paying the HQ/Troops tax (that can't Combat Drop or count towards it) for 1 more HS and 1 more FA slot... That's two more flyers. Worth it? I don't think so. The bulk of your flyers should already be coming from Valkyries, which I might add are actually scarier than people think, which are your Dedicated Transports.

I got the reason. The unlimited sky talons from IA8.

You can take your valks etc. in the IA3 list then add as many sky talons as you want in an IA8 allies detachment. Not that it would be competitive or anything but it is the only way to get 22 IG flyers on the table under 2000 pts that I know of.

Now the real question is how would you even play with that many flyers on the table?

But why would you want Sky Talons? They have one heavy bolter. Why would you even want to buy so many Sky Talon models?

As I mentioned before, there's already an issue with more than 8 flyers on the board. You end up flying into your own things (and crashing if Velocity Locked) or off the board.

 Enigwolf wrote:
But why would you want Sky Talons? They have one heavy bolter. Why would you even want to buy so many Sky Talon models?

HB + rocket pods for another 30 points. But really it's one of those things that's only good on paper. You have to convince your opponent let you use the old rules for the Sky Talon, you have to convince your opponent to let you ally your army with an old version of itself (which I really doubt is what they had in mind when they said you could keep using IA8 if you have it), and all you get is a slightly cheaper version of the Valkyries you can already take an (effectively) unlimited number of anyway. Plus you can already take as many Sky Talons as you'd want in IA3 as dedicated transports. It's just not worth giving yourself eternal status as a rules lawyer.

Trust me I understand that he new IA3 is a much better list, however I love the vulture and honestly when competing with the Vendetta there is even then no real trouble deciding, the Vendetta is just to good to leave at home. Other then that I am all on board with the IA3 book .

I have run into a snag of sorts though, when trying to point up a list I am running into the same issues that I ran into when trying to create a drop pod army, basically getting an odd number of items to increase what I can bring in on turn one. Also through some play testing I have found this out about the Combat Drop and what units to take:

-Drop Sentinels: Expensive with the Multi-Melta and with only x1 or x2 shots (I run my units in squads of x2) I usually only hit once and then hope I can destroy the vehicle I am shooting at. When they work they are awesome but in the long run I feel your points would be better spent on other things.

-Skytalon: Why would you take one?

-Sentry Guns: Tested out the theory of a section of x3 Heavy Bolter Sentry Guns landing behind my opponents Aegis Defense Line and good things happened for me! I shredded the squad of Dire Avengers manning the Quad Gun after it had taken a hull point off one of my Valks. They survived the rest of the game picking off the odd infantry model.

-Valks with Squads: Easily the best choice to take and the one I would recommend. You get some flyers on the board and potentially have some nasty Plasma Vets hop out and hose something as well which is great to do against a Tau Army if I don't say so myself.

This is the list I am leaning towards going so let me know what you think, it is exactly 1850pts. A potential list for the upcoming Open Tourney for Feast of Blades:

HQ:

-Company Command Squad
*w/ Officer of the Fleet, Plasma Pistol (for Company Commander), (*In Vendetta*)

TROOPS:

-x3 Veteran Squads
*w/ x3 Plasma
-Valkyrie Transport
*w/ Rocket Pods

-x2 Veteran Squads
*w/ x3 Plasma (*in Vendetta*)

FAST ATTACK:

-x3 Vendettas
*w/ Door Gunners

HEAVY SUPPORT:

-x2 Avenger Fighters

TOTAL ARMY: 1850 POINTS

Thanks to the Elysian "combat drop" rule I will have x2 Valkyries Deep Striking and "zooming" so I have a good chance at survivng for the first turn (I also plan on going 2nd in most games to limit the amount of incoming fire). This list also hinders my opponents air force and has a great balance of anti-armor and infantry weaponry and with a total of 8 flyers I think this list will do really well in a tournament setting. I have found that by turn two (when most of my flyers, hopefully the rest come in) that putting some units into "hover" mode really does help with the issue of flyers running into each other. A risk, yes but there are so many flyers on the board that target priority has been a problem for my opponents.

Yes. With so many flyers on the board it's actually a viable option to Hover mode some Valks and use them as gunships. This typically draws fire away from your more fragile Avenger fighters, I've realized, as the temptation of shooting something that is now vulnerable is higher.

 Enigwolf wrote:
Yes. With so many flyers on the board it's actually a viable option to Hover mode some Valks and use them as gunships. This typically draws fire away from your more fragile Avenger fighters, I've realized, as the temptation of shooting something that is now vulnerable is higher.

It worked really well against the Tau player I played against, he targetted my Valks when they went into hover and I lost 1 out of the 3 with the other two being damaged but it allowed me to light him up with my Vendettas and Avengers.

In regards to the above list I posted (not to go to far off topic mind you) think it will be competitive with only x2 flyers zooming around on the board? Or should I cheapen some things up to try and get some sentinels and/or sentry gun batteries in there?

IA3 really ticked me off.

I wanted an Elysian list that would mirror the Airborne company that I served in, not an Air Cav list full of Valkyries. So I cooked this up:

HQ

1 CCS with Vox.

1 ground scanner

TROOPS

3 identical platoons, each with:

1 PCS
- Plasma Pistol, Vox

1 Infantry squad
-1 Plasmagun, Vox, Demo Charge

1 Infantry squad
-1 Meltagun, Vox, Demo Charge

1 HWS
-2 Mortars, 1 Missile team

1 Drop Sentinel w/ MMelta

FAST ATTACK

3 Tauros Venators, each with a Homing Beacon.

HEAVY SUPPORT

2 Vultures

1850 Points

The plan was simple: The CCS and the Venators would start on the table. They would drive out to where I wanted them, and then with the Homing beacons, I could drop an entire platoon on them for holding objectives, or wreaking havoc in my opponent's backfield, etc. I didn't want some super competitive, WAAC list. I wanted something fluffy. Generic, even. A group that you could realistically imagine being sent to handle a wide variety of situations. Just like real Airborne troops. Every battle would be hard fought, and victory would only come if I, as a commander, used the force efficiently and aggressively.

So I bought this list, just as you read it, straight from FW. It was really expensive (The other reason I didn't want a list that needed 6 or more Valkyries). I got them, and was 2/3 done building them when IA3 was released, which has totally screwed my plan.

Now Vultures are competing with the Tauros for FA slots, which doesn't matter anyway because the Tauros can't carry homing beacons any more! I'm left with trusting entire platoons to the scatter Gods. (Who HATE me, by the way.)

So no doubt I'll have to drop even more money to fix this, but in the meantime, I'm left with a stack of models that are too specifically built to work any way other than they were designed. (8 Vox Casters, only 3 Plasmaguns, only 3 Meltaguns, etc.)

Actually if you look above it appears that you can still use the IA8 list.

It should also be noted that veterans can get forward sentries which now gives infiltrate and a homing beacon. So your list may actually have gotten better as you can start some ground recon elements on the table having spotted the enemy and then drop the platoons (2x) down on their positions choosing between ~3 different beacons to use.

 gmaleron wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
Yes. With so many flyers on the board it's actually a viable option to Hover mode some Valks and use them as gunships. This typically draws fire away from your more fragile Avenger fighters, I've realized, as the temptation of shooting something that is now vulnerable is higher.

It worked really well against the Tau player I played against, he targetted my Valks when they went into hover and I lost 1 out of the 3 with the other two being damaged but it allowed me to light him up with my Vendettas and Avengers.

In regards to the above list I posted (not to go to far off topic mind you) think it will be competitive with only x2 flyers zooming around on the board? Or should I cheapen some things up to try and get some sentinels and/or sentry gun batteries in there?

If you aren't taking Elysians for the ability to take a crap ton of flyers, then you're wasting the points cost of the units. Even if you choose to deepstrike your infantry units, half of them still need to deploy on the table, which wastes the tax you pay to give them Deepstrike. IMHO Combat Drop should have applied to all the Infantry units too, but the way it is now Flyers are the most points-efficient way to go.

SpaceNinjaJetPilot wrote:
IA3 really ticked me off.

I wanted an Elysian list that would mirror the Airborne company that I served in, not an Air Cav list full of Valkyries. So I cooked this up:

HQ

1 CCS with Vox.

1 ground scanner

TROOPS

3 identical platoons, each with:

1 PCS
- Plasma Pistol, Vox

1 Infantry squad
-1 Plasmagun, Vox, Demo Charge

1 Infantry squad
-1 Meltagun, Vox, Demo Charge

1 HWS
-2 Mortars, 1 Missile team

1 Drop Sentinel w/ MMelta

FAST ATTACK

3 Tauros Venators, each with a Homing Beacon.

HEAVY SUPPORT

2 Vultures

1850 Points

The plan was simple: The CCS and the Venators would start on the table. They would drive out to where I wanted them, and then with the Homing beacons, I could drop an entire platoon on them for holding objectives, or wreaking havoc in my opponent's backfield, etc. I didn't want some super competitive, WAAC list. I wanted something fluffy. Generic, even. A group that you could realistically imagine being sent to handle a wide variety of situations. Just like real Airborne troops. Every battle would be hard fought, and victory would only come if I, as a commander, used the force efficiently and aggressively.

So I bought this list, just as you read it, straight from FW. It was really expensive (The other reason I didn't want a list that needed 6 or more Valkyries). I got them, and was 2/3 done building them when IA3 was released, which has totally screwed my plan.

Now Vultures are competing with the Tauros for FA slots, which doesn't matter anyway because the Tauros can't carry homing beacons any more! I'm left with trusting entire platoons to the scatter Gods. (Who HATE me, by the way.)

So no doubt I'll have to drop even more money to fix this, but in the meantime, I'm left with a stack of models that are too specifically built to work any way other than they were designed. (8 Vox Casters, only 3 Plasmaguns, only 3 Meltaguns, etc.)

This is the list I wanted to play as well. Airborne not air cav. So, the question comes down to whether it is still viable. Would you play it with IA8 (as it is apparently still legal) or mod it for IA3. And, if modded, how so?

Unlike you, I am actually in the process of writing up an order for some Drop troops, but want that airborne approach rather than the air cav.

Is it viable? No. If you want to play Airborne Infantry, play a Codex IG army with allied Elysian Droptroops. Have your Codex IG army be the one deployed on the table and your Elysians in Reserve for Deepstriking.

This way you're not forced to pay the Deepstrike Tax for models to start on the board.

I would still use IA3E2 because they're considered to be the most "up to date" in terms of points costs, etc. I believe it's stated in the book that all entries replace their prior ones, but I'm not sure if that was only for Tau or what.

Cool. thanks enigwolf. I think that is the approach I am going to take in the end.

raensleyar wrote:
Cool. thanks enigwolf. I think that is the approach I am going to take in the end.

Take a couple of tanks while you're at it. AV14 is neat in the new meta. It'll also help you survive their alphastrikes. Just remember that you also cannot do democharge shenanigans in IA3E2.

Don't forget your lord commissar with a beacon to attach to your IG codex ground troops. That way you can no scatter DS.

Also the forward observers-vets from IA3ed2 can be highly useful if you know how to place infiltrators as they give you additional forward beacons to DS onto.

 ansacs wrote:
Don't forget your lord commissar with a beacon to attach to your IG codex ground troops. That way you can no scatter DS.

Also the forward observers-vets from IA3ed2 can be highly useful if you know how to place infiltrators as they give you additional forward beacons to DS onto.

I've found good utility with infiltrating FO Vets. My Combat Drops typically tend to come in around them, so giving the FO Vets special weapons is a decent idea because they become less tempting a target when there's so much other stuff down next to it.

 ansacs wrote:
Actually if you look above it appears that you can still use the IA8 list.

It should also be noted that veterans can get forward sentries which now gives infiltrate and a homing beacon. So your list may actually have gotten better as you can start some ground recon elements on the table having spotted the enemy and then drop the platoons (2x) down on their positions choosing between ~3 different beacons to use.

Still using IA8 might be a tough sell to a lot of TO's now that there's an official 6th ed. rule set. Too bad, because D-99 from IA4 looks fun, too.

Infiltrating Sentries is a good idea, and that's probably the way I'll go. (I just don't have the models yet.) I can't just stop now and go build an IG list. I'm financially committed.

Well you actually have the models to do the forward observers list. You will have to drop a few models infantry models though. When I get home I will try to make a list for you using your models.

Sky Talons are nice because they've got the same firepower as a Valkyrie for 30 points less.

I take my Drop Sentinels in my Platoon for this purpose - the presence of models in dedicated flyers pull the whole platoon into Enforced Reserves, so they don't count towards the limit.

Peregine, opinion - if a Sky Talon of Valkyrie is in a Platoon, does Combat Dropping that ST or Valk drag the rest of the platoon out of Reserves with it, since you would normally roll for the whole platoon as a single Reserves check? Or would it mean you can't Combat Drop the ST or Valk unless the whole Platoon was mounted in them?

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Sky Talons are nice because they've got the same firepower as a Valkyrie for 30 points less.

No they don't. They lack the multi-laser and have a heavy bolter less. They also cannot carry troops. I'd pay the 30 points more for a Valkyrie.

I take my Drop Sentinels in my Platoon for this purpose - the presence of models in dedicated flyers pull the whole platoon into Enforced Reserves, so they don't count towards the limit.

Erm, no, this does not happen. As per typical IG codex, you get to choose which squads start in reserve and which don't, this was confirmed in YMDC. Therefore you can't just stick one squad into reserve and have it all count as enforced reserves since you can deploy the other units onto the board. It is only treated as one unit for the purposes of reserves rolls, check your IG codex.

Peregine, opinion - if a Sky Talon of Valkyrie is in a Platoon, does Combat Dropping that ST or Valk drag the rest of the platoon out of Reserves with it, since you would normally roll for the whole platoon as a single Reserves check? Or would it mean you can't Combat Drop the ST or Valk unless the whole Platoon was mounted in them?

See above. That being said, if you have an entire Platoon in Valks, you roll once for that reserve.

It is the IG FAQ that has the clarification for this as I remember.

However that is correct the valk does not make the entire platoon go into reserves.

The single reserve roll could be interesting if you drop one platoon first turn and then drop the second platoon with a single roll thereafter.