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Greeting all you fellow competitive eldar players out there that enjoy playing tournament type lists. I'd like to share my new strategy to you all. I know I'd be better keeping this to myself and surprising people at tournaments, but if you'd like to run this then go ahead. All I really want is a little credit, but I know it's near impossible prove it was your idea on the internet. I'll start by saying it fits perfectly in the current meta and if you are facing a lot of thunderfire cannons, eldar/daemon/ nid monstrous creatures, and of course riptides you'll want to read on. So here it is... Illic Nightspear warlord + Tau buff commander + some dark reapers = a winning combo... let me explain. while the dark reapers do their thing with their ap3 ignore cover, twin linked shots that are boosted by the puretide engram chip that has the desired monster hunter rule. Illic does his thing and that is one shots models including monstrous creatures. All you do is... 1. declare monster hunter against a list with a nid Monstrous Creature or Tau riptde 2. split fire illic off into a dangerous monstrous creature 3. roll for a shot that after hitting has a 25 percent chance to instant death a MC. That means you have a very high chance to one shot a riptide at 48 inch range and still fire the rest of your dark reapers in a desired target. You also get to move with Illic as normal (minus battle focus) as slow and purposeful from the dark reapers is conferred to him. Now lets look at thunderfire cannons. All you do is hit and then put your awesome ap2 ignore cover precision shot on the tech marine and if you roll the 4+ you instantly kill the 2+ armor save tech marine and the whole units is down for the count. Well gl my fellow Eldar brothers and if you one shot a riptide before the Tau player has his turn 1 then you are welcome

Turn 1 dead unit from 3 ignores cover str7/8 shots, gg

While I'm not one to say Reapers are the be all end all, I really like them personally, my main issue is with the reply.

 Formosa wrote:
Turn 1 dead unit from 3 ignores cover str7/8 shots, gg

This is remarkably flippant *and* inaccurate. I assume these shots are from the fabled markerlighted Riptides the internet is so obsessed with, given 3 shots are killing that many models. Lets ignore that 1/6 of them fail to fire at all due to overheating and some will miss due to scatter.

One of two things has more than likely happened before this:

The Eldar player went first and thus has the opportunity to put a full volley of fire into those cover ignoring markerlights and certainly wiped off the ones in range of his unit and quite likely then some, realistically killing a Riptide or 2 as well before NOVA reactors can be fired up.

The Tau player went first in which case why did the Eldar deploy his unit in markerlight range given it is less than the Reapers own fire range after movement which they can do effectively and pathfinders cannot?

Now Tau can get more mobile markerlights but once again either the Eldar can deploy to minimize their effect on the unit or gets to shoot them first barring getting seized on, then there's LOS blocking terrain... it's a complicated issue. Plus of course not everyone in the world plays triple Riptide Tau, despite what the internet may say.

As for the unit itself, it's a nice combo that will certainly put out some serious damage however it's more vulnerable than classic hammer units with the same price tag that will make it struggle at a really cut throat level. Investing that many points in a unit is usually done because the unit is durable enough that even if your opponent goes after it they will stand up. The Farsight bomb, Screamerstar or Jet Council are handy examples of this.

Even with the Crisis Commander tanking the wounds the unit really isn't *that* tough, not as weak as Formosa makes out but if your opponent wants it bad enough they will go down and your 5-600pt linchpin is gone.

Edit: Spelling

This is a nice little unit. It is very similar to mortetvie's GT winning Dark Reaper deathstar. You have used Illic in place of his psyker support elements so as to increase your chance to get an ID shot off. I would recommend checking his list out as the farseer + spiritseers + buffmander are what made his deathstar really incredible. Adding some spiritseers or a farseer to this could considerably toughen the unit and not make it an easy choice to sink firepower into.

In its current form you are talking about a very expensive unit that is not really that tough. You also loose almost all usefulness from Illic once the buffmander goes...which will be faster than you want considering without him tanking this unit is very fragile.

I would say that Dark Reapers ignore jink, but not cover completely, but maybe it's the TAU commander who confers them the ability

mortetvie's dark reaper list is nice and i've thought about using a spiritseer, but I have to fit illic and the farseer in the hq slots in single foc. oneof the best features of his list is a tough wraithguard unit that is scoring, but as for powers getting protect is hard to do with 2 rolls and illic comes stock with shrouded that you won't have to test for. the tau commander is what ignores the cover and as for turn 1 if you keep them in a wave serpent they'll be safe

Where do you stick the Tau commander when you are in a serpent? He cannot embark.

 Dunklezahn wrote:

The Eldar player went first and thus has the opportunity to put a full volley of fire into those cover ignoring markerlights and certainly wiped off the ones in range of his unit and quite likely then some, realistically killing a Riptide or 2 as well before NOVA reactors can be fired up.

Nitpick: Short of a lucky shot with Illic, its not exactly realistic to expect them to kill a Riptide. The Dark Reapers are AP3 vs the Riptides 2+.
If all of them hits and all of them wounds, its still only ~ 2 wounds. Illic's Voidbringer is AP2 but a Riptide got 5++.


You'd much better off shooting at something else.

i only split fire illic and try for the 6 on the riptide or other MCs. I'd never fire dark reapers into armor 2 unless they were misfortuned because there is usually a much better shot on the table. i might roll lucky in general (everyone n my shop always says i'm very lucky... something i consider them to have a skewed opinion on since i normally play into my opponents weaknesses and only expose higher risk shots for them to make), but you'd be surprised how often i get a 6 on a rerollable dice. i usually just keep my commander in a 20 man squad of guardians at start or some other solid squad that can be in range of the serpeant. i know a lot of people are going to look at the rerollable 6 as a low chance shot, but so far it has been a good gambit for my army.

Not exactly going to change the meta in any concievable form, nor is it remotely competitive, but I'm sure its fun to do in casuals.