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I need a list of CSM or C:SM that can beat a very competitive eldar list, not sure quite what he will bring. halp please, this guy only likes to get crushing victories. (he is a good guy though).

You might be out of luck. How many wave serpents are we talking here?

maybe an average of 5? it varies a bit

what point level? (i'm guessing 1500-1850?) what do you have to work with. With serpent spam you can counter it with Whitescars Grav gun spam.

Khan + moonbike
with a command squad with 4 grav guns and an apoth
Generic HQ on bike
With a command squad with 4 grav guns and an apoth

Troops
Bikes combi-grav + 2 grav guns +5 other bikes and attack bike
Bikes combi-grav + 2 grav guns +5 other bikes and attack bike

Fill in with other stuff you need vs his list

Gravguns are great vs skimmers/Mcs

You need to find out how your play group is rolling with grav. Are you giving vehicles cover saves or no?

An issue with grav is range, just like with melta guns.

One thing to remember is that Skyfire works against skimmers.
I haven't look at them yet, but the new SM AA tanks might be of some use here.

Also, there's a lot of discussion on here about Sternguard load-outs. Drop-pod a few of them at the rear of the Wave Serpents, and the shields cannot help them from behind. If you go first, the WS don't get a jink save, either. A pair of combi-meltas in both halves of a combat-squaded pod-load, and that's probably 2 skimmers down before they get to act.
Once the transports are down, you've still got special ammo bolters to take out the squishy troops in the next turn.
Add a melta bomb, and you've got more options, if you survive that first turn.

Eldars effective range is less than yours with either of those armies. Theres not too much eldar firepower above 36". So either hang back and force the wave serpents to try to do ALL the work of his army or drop pod assault the living bejeesus out of him.

If you can assault wave serpents do so - all hits are on the rear armour, so again, no holo field or cover save. All marines have krak grenades, so that'll hurt.

Weirdly, ASM's can be quite good - mobile troops with krak grenades can do a good job of forcing wave serpents to turbo boost and stop shooting you - if you catch them, they're dead.

Anything that ignores cover and is s7 or better will help strip hull points. WS have to move to get cover.

Spam Tactical Marines with Lascannons inside rhinos. Lascannon Devastators and Calgar using the UltraMarines Doctrine. Beat him in the alpha strike. I got about 75 marines and 12 lascannons on the board. Wave Serpent spam has a hard time killing that many marines.

Well, you could go all or nothing with a fast moving army. Serpents are very vulnerable in cc. So I'd take 3 Maulerfiends, Nurge Bikers, 2 winged DPs or just 1 and 1 Biker HQ. Fill with cheap units which can give fire support or hold objectives.

Consider a couple of hunters. They have armorbane,skyfire and a range of 60" !!

Good Eldar players can bubble wrap the behinds of their Serpents. You won't be able to drop them.

The biker army is a very good counter to eldar players. 150 points buys you 5 bikes, 2 grav-guns, and a combi-grav. First turn you either move up and immobilize 50% of the waveserpents or he goes first in which case you may even get to charge the serpents/contents with your krak grenades.

DS melta can be very good. Just don't get crazy with spending all you points on them. What DS melta does is force the eldar player to either play from the back board edge and keep his shields up or have a serpent per melta squad die leaving the contents likely pinned and half killed.

@Martel732
You probably mean parks his serpent back to back. Almost no eldar player will ever "bubble wrap" their serpents as their units are all expensive and fragile. If you see a player who brought enough guardians to do so then thank them profusely for not bringing more serpents. If the eldar player does so then they are not truly utilizing the serpent as a gun boat. This is good in a way as you will not be taking the casualties you would have letting you quite possibly do something with your other units.

Back to back or puts a Wraith knight back there or whatever. Or even just terrain will cause a pod likely fall out of the rear arc. Or jet bike guardians, which are also good.

Hard counter to serpent spam.

6 tank hunter imperial fist dev centurians with a tau commander to provide tl and ignore cover deployed in a bastion.

Each lc has a 79% chance of stripping a hp and each ml has a 66% chance. Split fire 3 of each on 2 wave serpents should average 4.39 hp stripped from each serpent.

The Eldar will target this unit and eliminate it. They have several ways to do this. So much S6 makes a mockery of meqs.

For a CSM option vs Wave Serpents I have had good luck with Obliterators, Helbrutes (yes, they can be useful!) w Las or Plas n Missiles, and Defiler on top of a Skyshield. Havocs with Flakk Missiles could be good too.

A Heldrake actually can be good too from the rear, and they do a nice job against those pesky Jetbikers too...usually. The Daemon Princes for Vector Striking and Blessing/Maledicting can work, but tons of dakka is their bane.

If you want some Daemonic advice, Skull Cannons have been surprisingly useful for anti-Wave Serpent action. The large blast can deepstrike pretty far away and of course ignores their Jinking completely, BS5 to help not scatter too much, and the large blast can hit 2 with relative ease if they're not super spread out. Plus those are only 125 points.
In my next Daemons game I'm using 2, plus a Soul Grinder. Daemons wanna shoot stuff next time!

I actually disagree with the above poster. I think screamers are the best option against them. The ability to get a 4+ rerolling ones with several small squads is neat. Obliterators drakes and suicide termie squads have worked for me in the past. The defiler can only snapshot after firing the big gun.

^^^^ you mean Screamers with a rerollable 2++ right?
The Flickering Fire with Perfect Timing will take out a Wave Serpent a turn. Screamer Star can be nasty against Eldar.

CSM can take Khorne Hounds as an ally. That's a lot of STR 5 CC attacks on rear armor. Sinces its CC, it negates shields and jink. They are fast, with fleet and MTC, plus a scout move.

C:SM: Grav should do you well too, bikes are a nice choice for it, they are basically as tough as centurions against eldar, and cheaper, and scoring.

Martel is also right, don't expect to drop his rear armor. Dropping meltas and doing it the hard way can be effective. Also, Plasma guns. Enough strength to threaten a serpent, 2x the shots of melta. Your drop units are gonna die, so the risk of Gets Hot is probably acceptable.

Suprisingly i would reccomend a land raider filled with something scary, make sure you target any fire dragons if he has them of course but i play eldar and find land raiders are very tough to kill. All of our s6-7 does nothing. Drive it right up the middle and get those power fists/thunder hammers smashing the rear of those serpents.

I also find that drop pods are a good way to deal with us if you can get within rear arcs but he may get wise to this and not expose the rears.

If hes the type to fire the sheild every round then just use the standard las cannons to pop them.

 Julnlecs wrote:
Spam Tactical Marines with Lascannons inside rhinos. Lascannon Devastators and Calgar using the UltraMarines Doctrine. Beat him in the alpha strike. I got about 75 marines and 12 lascannons on the board. Wave Serpent spam has a hard time killing that many marines.

pshhh your kidding right?

1st off, you would do nada vs serpents with 12 lascanons. maybe one a wreck per turn.
say you go 1st. kill a serpent, and the guys inside. congrats
his 1st turn..... all rhinos gone, at least 2 marine squads gone.
your secnodn turn, get lucky kill another serpent.
his 2nd turn, half of survivng marines dead.
rest of game, you do nothing.
serpent spam wins

my advise, grav spam semas to work, but dont know. mass 2+ actually does well vs serpens (unless theres d scythe wraith gaurd which is what i run )
maybe alot of termies + centurions?

First look at what he's doing and what it's killing in your army. Then change your composition and tactics somewhat. That's all you need to do to win. Don't fight a shooting fight against a superior shooting force.

Pdogg614 wrote:
Suprisingly i would reccomend a land raider filled with something scary, make sure you target any fire dragons if he has them of course but i play eldar and find land raiders are very tough to kill. All of our s6-7 does nothing. Drive it right up the middle and get those power fists/thunder hammers smashing the rear of those serpents.

I also find that drop pods are a good way to deal with us if you can get within rear arcs but he may get wise to this and not expose the rears.

If hes the type to fire the sheild every round then just use the standard las cannons to pop them.

You don't use bright lances do you?

Unfortunately ANY list you take against competitive Eldar will be a VERY uphill battle for you.
If you win, it will be by the skin of your teeth.
It will have to come down to you outplaying your opponent, while obviously bringing the best list possible.
I would vote for Obliterators. I might even go as far to say this is the only case where I would go without the 6 pt MoN. Eldar focus on S6/7, and then jump up to S10, where your T5 doesn't make a difference.

I would MAX out oblits as your wave serpent-killing core.

If possible, ally with Black Legion for an extra squad of oblits.

I usually love Havocs, but they get torn apart by Wave Serpents.

CSM needs helldrakes to take on eldar, as eldar doesn't have a very good answer to flyers, kill his warp spiders and he is going to have a hell of a time taking down your drakes.

SM use the grav gun to its full potential, it will make a mockery of what most people deem a "competative" eldar list.

It does matter what kind of eldar list your facing though, Iyanden, mechdar, balanced, seer council ect as they all need different units if your try to min max against them

tiber55 wrote:

SM use the grav gun to its full potential, it will make a mockery of what most people deem a "competative" eldar list.

Martel732 wrote:
You need to find out how your play group is rolling with grav. Are you giving vehicles cover saves or no?

My group in particular has houserulled that Grav Guns do not ignore cover/vehicle saves.

What does your group say about this, OP?

 ninjafiredragon wrote:

 Julnlecs wrote:
Spam Tactical Marines with Lascannons inside rhinos. Lascannon Devastators and Calgar using the UltraMarines Doctrine. Beat him in the alpha strike. I got about 75 marines and 12 lascannons on the board. Wave Serpent spam has a hard time killing that many marines.

pshhh your kidding right?

1st off, you would do nada vs serpents with 12 lascanons. maybe one a wreck per turn.
say you go 1st. kill a serpent, and the guys inside. congrats
his 1st turn..... all rhinos gone, at least 2 marine squads gone.
your secnodn turn, get lucky kill another serpent.
his 2nd turn, half of survivng marines dead.
rest of game, you do nothing.
serpent spam wins

my advise, grav spam semas to work, but dont know. mass 2+ actually does well vs serpens (unless theres d scythe wraith gaurd which is what i run )
maybe alot of termies + centurions?

1st off I wasnt kidding. Thats 9 Rhinos on the table with 3 hull points each. How many Serpents does he have to kill t
them all in one turn, 9? And to kill a couple squads too? Being Space Marines, either you go first using the Tac Doctrine and lets say I do kill one serpent. Ok if he goes first. I only see 4 ws max. He kills a few Rhinos, Once hes done killing 9 Rhinos he still has to kill 75 marines, 60 that are scoring. Even Eldar doesnt have that many shots. Be realistic.

Dessorag wrote:
Martel is also right, don't expect to drop his rear armor. Dropping meltas and doing it the hard way can be effective. Also, Plasma guns. Enough strength to threaten a serpent, 2x the shots of melta. Your drop units are gonna die, so the risk of Gets Hot is probably acceptable.

Actually I see this business of pasma being better at stripping HP than a melta (on a drop unit). In fact the melta if in melta range averages 150% the HP of double tap plasma. This is not to discount plasma as the extra range gives you more flexibility for safe DS but even out of melta range they both average 0.2 HP on a holo field serpent.

I would say grav bikers are the nastiest unit in the SM dex against serpents as they glance and immobilize. They also have the mobility to threaten the entire board. Another decent unit is IF LC devs or ML/LC cent devs as with tank hunters they can very reliably get glances and if the shield is shot then a serpent dies.

The best Chaos units against serpents are the FMC in the chaos daemons dex. With Either flickering flames or lash + vector strike a FMC (Fatey being one of the best) can do some serious damage to a serpent even from front or side armour. If you can overfly the serpent to it's rear armour you can almost gaurantee a dead serpent. Another great unit is pink horrors+herald as even a minimum unit with a ML3 herald will do 3HP to AV12 on average. Khorne dogs are great as well but require some decent luck to go second.

DS to the rear is not an end of serpents in and of itself. What they are is a take all comers unit that can act as part of the equation in eliminating serpent. They need a credible threat to close at the same time (DS GUO, closing plague marines, etc.). With a closing midboard threat and oblits DS next to the serpents and killing those annoying warwalkers the turn they come in. The eldar player has to either turbo boost away closer the the midboard (if you have done it right) or try to kill the 9 oblits in their midst which is fairly difficult as even against the oblits as they will average only a single dead oblit with 1 serpent and 5 dire avengers. This also lets you move the mid board presence into assault on turn 3 without it being harassed. DS units also help to keep the alpha strike of a serpent list to a minimum as they cannot close and they cannot fire the shield without risking dead serpents. BTW oblits are great for this due to the multi meltas a getting within 12" of seeing even a sliver rear armour is fairly easy and if the shields are shot the vehicle is dead.

 Wilytank wrote:

tiber55 wrote:

SM use the grav gun to its full potential, it will make a mockery of what most people deem a "competative" eldar list.

Martel732 wrote:
You need to find out how your play group is rolling with grav. Are you giving vehicles cover saves or no?

My group in particular has houserulled that Grav Guns do not ignore cover/vehicle saves.

What does your group say about this, OP?

By strict RAW, that ruling is not correct. However, your group may be ahead of the FAQ curve

Martel732 wrote:

 Wilytank wrote:

tiber55 wrote:

SM use the grav gun to its full potential, it will make a mockery of what most people deem a "competative" eldar list.

Martel732 wrote:
You need to find out how your play group is rolling with grav. Are you giving vehicles cover saves or no?

My group in particular has houserulled that Grav Guns do not ignore cover/vehicle saves.

What does your group say about this, OP?

By strict RAW, that ruling is not correct. However, your group may be ahead of the FAQ curve

We all concluded that since the gun does not explicitly say it ignores cover, it doesn't ignore cover. The local White Scars player is less than impressed with them on first glance anyway. You need a six to do anything after all while you can get better results with meltaguns.