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I play white scars mostly when I play marines, and although no army has a good answer to everything, I don't even see a mediocre solution to serpent spam. And Im not talking 3, more like 6 with 3 fire prism spam. I tried a game with a guy where I fielded 2 stalkers, he simply shot them up first. Is my best option to spam as many bikes as I can, and run powerfists on my seargents? Grav guns can immobilize them, but even with 2 in a squad your not guaranteed a 6. Would 2 squads of grav centurions be my best bet? was gonna go with land raider and a squad inside, then I realized for the cost of the land raider, I could just get another squad. Its a shame we don't get autocannons, could use devastators to help thin em down. And I only have one stormtalon, maybe that's the answer to them, dunno never ran more than one before.

Bikes and Flyers are your best options. Anything that can quickly assault them should be considered.

I wouldn't use Centurians. The amount of rending and sheer number of saves they can force on you is frightening.

This very question is why lists are spamming Riptides and fielding unkillable units like Screamerstar and Seer council.

What about autocannon preds, since you cant pen em anyway? I am really at a loss other than subbing in more cheese, like tau allies for a buffmander and missilesides.

Actually Grav weapons should work, but I may be wrong. Since they don't actually roll for armor pen, they kinda get around them. Don't quote me on that.

Is there an official ruling on whether vehicles get cover saves against grav hits?

I've considered adding a Sicaran Battle Tank to help keep all those xenos skimmer tanks under control.

Is that FW?

I asked a similar question recently, although I wasn't facing spam to that degree, and got a couple of good responses from Eldar players. What they suggested was trying to get to that rear armour and placing a meltabomb up the exhaust pipe so to speak. Your bikes could help you do that, if your sergeant can take meltabombs. Otherwise...dare I say it? Assault marines with meltabombs?

If you have drop pods, dropping in a sternguard squad with combi-meltas could work, or perhaps a Dreadnought with multi-melta.

The Land Raiders is how I am going to go next time around--send up Terminators and try to have them smash them in assault, along with anything inside.

All of this was said with the caveat that you should try to hit them AFTER they fire their serpent shield--that way they're vulnearble. Otherwise, they are negating your penetrating hits very frequently. The other note here was that getting glancing hits does take off HP, so you can also just try to glance them to death--getting that high rate of fire is hard, though, unless you get behind them.

Not a lot of great answers here, but mobility is your friend--you need to take it to these Eldar or they will just shoot you to death.

It's not all hopeless. Think of it this way, if they shot their shield at you, you're going to get your pens. If their shield is up, a lot of their offense is being wasted. Plus pens aren't completely negated, you can pretty much count a pen as an automatic glance, and maybe even a lucky pen if they fail the roll.

I play eldar, and regularly take a serpent heavy list to tournaments. Against white scars, I have struggled. It's pretty common knowledge that serpents go down pretty quick in cc. Your bikes have scout, fast movement, s5 hammer of wrath, and krak grenades. There's your answer.

Storm talons rant that scary to me, but the bikers are.

I'm afraid that there just isn't a reliable counter to Serpent spam outside a Tau or indeed another Eldar list. Just 3 Serpents are giving me grey hair... I'd probably just pack up my minis if I faced a 6 WS + 3 FP list. Not what I'd consider a "fun game".

That said, if he doesn't deploy with rear armor against table edge, try drop podding combimeltas and get hits on their rear armor. Enough combi meltas turn one can glance them to death even if they have shields up since they cannot jink before moving. If you're going second you are screwed though. Meltabombs and krak grenades on bikers could work as well, if you survive their dakka.

Had a game that was heavy WS against my sisters force. Had a lot of luck with the melta spam glancing the things out of the sky. 3 went down on the first turn and the eldar player seemed to have a problem dealing with the loss of firepower. He hid the remaining 2 as best as he could for the rest of the game.

Clearly different codexes have different tools, but throwing medium to high strength shots at them works. Biker grav guns would probably be the way i'd go. Seems both fluffy and effective.

LotD. They hose wave serpants in my opionion. I give them MM, meltagun, and combi-melta. They deepstrike in, they can reroll there deepstrike scatter so the odds are you are going to be within the 6 in +d6 pen result. They ignore cover saves. Now they still might have their serpant shield, they might not. I play eldar myself, very rarely do I ever really still have the shield up after first turn. Most of the time I am shooting wtih it. You can also attempt to DS behind the wave serpant. This way you ignore the shield all together. I usually run 2 units of LotD. They havn't failed me yet. They are even good against seer-star units.

I beat a wave serpent list using deep-strike Raptors. I suspect Assault Marines could do the same: drop in, shoot with meltas, charge what's left. Can work against Riptides as well.

People will sometimes overlook units like these because they are considered too situational. They can be handy.

C:SM assault marines don't get meltas.

Three Stalkers is a start, supported by either Talons, Jump squads or Biker squads.
Fill in the rest with drop pod melta.

Well, there is no save way to destroy Serpents. This particularly holds for shooting. Deep strikers may have to overcome a bubble wrap. Grav weapons are too unreliable to strip off hull points. On the other hand, Serpents are very vulnerable in cc. But often the problem is to get there.

 Orock wrote:
I play white scars mostly when I play marines, and although no army has a good answer to everything, I don't even see a mediocre solution to serpent spam. And Im not talking 3, more like 6 with 3 fire prism spam. I tried a game with a guy where I fielded 2 stalkers, he simply shot them up first. Is my best option to spam as many bikes as I can, and run powerfists on my seargents? Grav guns can immobilize them, but even with 2 in a squad your not guaranteed a 6. Would 2 squads of grav centurions be my best bet? was gonna go with land raider and a squad inside, then I realized for the cost of the land raider, I could just get another squad. Its a shame we don't get autocannons, could use devastators to help thin em down. And I only have one stormtalon, maybe that's the answer to them, dunno never ran more than one before.

Legion of the Damned with Melta. The Melta ignores cover. Grav cannons can do the trick, Keep in mind that the new SM tanks, the hunter and stalker can both shoot at skimmers with BS4 and both are good against the new Eldar tanks (except the Fire Prism, which can kill the heck out of tanks).

How about 3 or 4 land raiders? Wave serpents can fire their scatter lasers at you all day and it won't scratch your av14.

You'll have a massive issue causing enough damage to your opponent with 3-4 LRs. They have far too little dakka for their points. Plus, you have to get out sometime.

 augustus5 wrote:
How about 3 or 4 land raiders? Wave serpents can fire their scatter lasers at you all day and it won't scratch your av14.

Well, my Eldar list usually contains 2 units of 5 Fire Warriors mounted in Serpents. Others use Wraithguard or Wraithknights. Moreover, Landraiders can be ignored to a certain point.

As others have said, no Eldar player really keeps their shield up. If it's first turn and they haven't had a chance to shoot the shield, well then they still get the shield but no jink. Glance those sonuvaguns to death. The other option is to charge them. Rear armor 10 is easy to beat up; once you catch the Serpent it's going to die.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, my Eldar list usually contains 2 units of 5 Fire Warriors mounted in Serpents. Others use Wraithguard or Wraithknights. Moreover, Landraiders can be ignored to a certain point.

Land Raiders are like Twinkies, it's what's inside that counts. Ignore them and you get assaulted by something with the tools to take down the Serpent.

 Homeskillet wrote:
As others have said, no Eldar player really keeps their shield up. If it's first turn and they haven't had a chance to shoot the shield, well then they still get the shield but no jink. Glance those sonuvaguns to death. The other option is to charge them. Rear armor 10 is easy to beat up; once you catch the Serpent it's going to die.

Well, I generally keep the shields down if the Serpents are in range. At 24'' the full weaponry (tl scatterlaser, underslung shuricannon, shield) can be shot unless the tank moved more than 6''. This can be a devastating number of 11 hits or so.

That's not my experience. I've seen Eldar players keep their shields up until most of my MM and lascannons were dead. Remember that the Eldar have other marine-scrubbing options like Warp Spiders running around. They *very* frequently don't really need to risk shooting the shield. Now, many players might get greedy, but that's human error.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, my Eldar list usually contains 2 units of 5 Fire Warriors mounted in Serpents. Others use Wraithguard or Wraithknights. Moreover, Landraiders can be ignored to a certain point.

Land Raiders are like Twinkies, it's what's inside that counts. Ignore them and you get assaulted by something with the tools to take down the Serpent.

If you look at LR+ contents cost vs WS + contents, you'll see that you are outnumbered and outmaneuvered. You are paying way too many points to get to assault a dedicated transport. Plus, lists like the DE still exist that will absolutely destroy your LR. I guess you can always just hope to not draw DE.

Martel732 wrote:
That's not my experience. I've seen Eldar players keep their shields up until most of my MM and lascannons were dead. Remember that the Eldar have other marine-scrubbing options like Warp Spiders running around. They *very* frequently don't really need to risk shooting the shield. Now, many players might get greedy, but that's human error.

Well, if the Serpents in range and you have enough Serpents, then shooting all weapons is a viable option. I did this in two RTTs vs. Tau after their Pathfinders died in round 1. The result was devastating. Tau got almost wiped out.

Don't hesitate if you can go for the enemy's throat!

 wuestenfux wrote:

 augustus5 wrote:
How about 3 or 4 land raiders? Wave serpents can fire their scatter lasers at you all day and it won't scratch your av14.

Well, my Eldar list usually contains 2 units of 5 Fire Warriors mounted in Serpents. Others use Wraithguard or Wraithknights. Moreover, Landraiders can be ignored to a certain point.

I'm guessing you meant fire dragons.

 augustus5 wrote:
How about 3 or 4 land raiders? Wave serpents can fire their scatter lasers at you all day and it won't scratch your av14.

He also mentioned 3 fire prisms. 3 st 9 lances WILL scratch your av14!

Serps are the most under costed unit in the game! Although they evaporate in assault as cover saves and shields don't count and you are hitting av10. On paper the issue is that they are impossible to assault: they have a 24" move (if going flat out) and 60" range (on the shields if not going flat out). If you charge headlong towards them, and all they have is serps, by the time you are near them, they can just boost to the other side of the board and get another 2 turns shooting at you! And keep doing that all day. Obviously this isnt normally the case as objectives and the rest of the eldar army composition prevents them doing this. But it does highlight how stupidly broken they are!

 Punisher Gatling Cannon wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 augustus5 wrote:
How about 3 or 4 land raiders? Wave serpents can fire their scatter lasers at you all day and it won't scratch your av14.

Well, my Eldar list usually contains 2 units of 5 Fire Warriors mounted in Serpents. Others use Wraithguard or Wraithknights. Moreover, Landraiders can be ignored to a certain point.

I'm guessing you meant fire dragons.

Sorry, right, Fire Dragons.

Serps are the most under costed unit in the game! Although they evaporate in assault as cover saves and shields don't count and you are hitting av10. On paper the issue is that they are impossible to assault: they have a 24" move (if going flat out) and 60" range (on the shields if not going flat out). If you charge headlong towards them, and all they have is serps, by the time you are near them, they can just boost to the other side of the board and get another 2 turns shooting at you! And keep doing that all day. Obviously this isnt normally the case as objectives and the rest of the eldar army composition prevents them doing this. But it does highlight how stupidly broken they are!

Don't forget the units inside the Serpents. If necessary, I let my Guardians disembark for support in the shooting phase. Pseudo rending is a threat for approaching units.