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ALEXisAWESOME wrote: I am sorry but that is an unfair representation of an Eldar vs dark Eldar match. In the later stages of a tournament it is unreasonable to assume the other player is an idiot or will make stupid mistakes. Before giving a suggestion, think if YOU were the eldar player would it work on you? I know if I played serpent spam I wouldn't let myself be caught under any circumstances by wyches, those venoms would be dead. That beast lack would either be tar pitted or psychicly controlled. And God help you if you make a WK a warlord vs Dark Eldar, you are not thinking straight. I don't want to win due to the opponent being an idiot, I want to be on an even footing against a fair opponent, but in WH40K that seems like an unrealistic idea.
I think everyone agrees that game clearly shows a better DE than Eldar player, although both make mistakes that can cost a game.
If I was the Eldar player, it would be unfair because the DE guy clearly doesn't have my understanding of movement and deployment.
Let's simply move on to your problem: you want to be able to win against an opponent that has about the same level as yourself.
1. That may not be possible, some units in some strategy games are just excellent in one skill bracket and balanced at the top for example (widow mines in SC2:HotS come to mind)
2. That may require improving your knowledge of the rules that can be played against the WS 3. It WILL absolutely require that you understand the WS, what it can and can't do, when it's making its points back, and when it's lackluster
1. Can't help you with that
2. The WS has a few rules that can make it weak:
a. Jink: If the Eldar player chooses to Jink, his WS goes down to 25% efficiency for one turn > maximize the jinks.
b. Movement: If you can force a WS to move 12", one of his weapons snap fires, more than 12" and that's just like a Jink. The WS is bulky, it's 7" x 4", or 9" x 6" if you count the 1" distance, so restricting it's movements is easy (12-9 = 3", 12-6 = 6" - any flat out move kills its DPS.
c. Serpent Shield: If he shoots his field, he becomes very vulnerable to pens > focus on those who dropped their shield
d. Shooting Phase: 55% of his firepower is "ignores cover", the rest is not, take your movement decisions based on that > keep cover to deny 45%, hide a skimmer behind another one, especially the important ones behind the meatshields.
e. Assault Phase: the WS is worthless, it will be taken down by any S4+ attack, this is your best bet to destroy it even though it seems impossible at first. Any trick in the book is good, Infiltrate / Outflank, Deep Strike, meatshields, LoS, ...
3. You may notice that your take on the subject clearly shows your knowledge of your own army, yet little of your enemy's.
a. Following proper deployment and movement, Assault cannot be avoided. It can be diminished, and sometimes delayed by killing all transports, but you basically cannot prevent it. It's going to happen, DE wants it early, Eldar wants it late
b. There is no unit in the Eldar codex - except a SeerStar - that could possibly handle a beast pack.
c. I don't play victory points and I would never give up a warlord trait for a VP, no matter the opponent
d. You will always win because you capitalized on your opponent's mistakes, outweighing his capitalization on your mistakes, in other words, winning because he's an "idiot"
e. Analyze the DE player's errors to see how he could've done better, then analyze the capitalized Eldar mistakes, and see how you could better capitalize or cause these mistakes.
I'm thinking webway spam might be the way to go.
Taking anything with a DE armor value of 10 or 11 and opened topped it just pissing points away.
It looks like 2 detachments is pretty common for list building for tournaments. If that's the case, the double escape hatch fortifications might be the way to go.
Opening 2 portals center field (or just past center field) ~24" apart puts most of the table within threat range.
At 1850, you get 2 haemonculi to deliver the webways, 2 bunkers with hatches, 3 tooled up archons, 6 units of wyches, 6 units of warriors, and 4 Talos.
The idea would be to reserve almost everything and flood the table with assault units, grab stuff, and wait for the Archons to come and finish crap off. You'd take horrible losses, but with lots of minimum sized units, the idea is to put more on the table than the opponent can target.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just another thought; DE get Combined Arms Detachments stupidly cheap. If detachments aren't limited, you could go with the Void-Wall.
Multiple bunkers and void shield generators, in over-lapping areas to give you a stupid number of AV12 replenishing void shields. Then park a fair bit of fire power inside (like Night Shielded ravagers, to force the enemy closer).
2 Wave Serpents firing at 24" is going to knock down ~4 shields. For the same cost, you get 9 shields.
It might just be possible to win the shoot out by taking ~4 wave shield generators (400 points for 12 shields), and be able to absorb the firepower, recover the shields and dish out a ton of damage of your own.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/19 16:04:12
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just another thought; DE get Combined Arms Detachments stupidly cheap. If detachments aren't limited, you could go with the Void-Wall.
Multiple bunkers and void shield generators, in over-lapping areas to give you a stupid number of AV12 replenishing void shields. Then park a fair bit of fire power inside (like Night Shielded ravagers, to force the enemy closer).
2 Wave Serpents firing at 24" is going to knock down ~4 shields. For the same cost, you get 9 shields.
It might just be possible to win the shoot out by taking ~4 wave shield generators (400 points for 12 shields), and be able to absorb the firepower, recover the shields and dish out a ton of damage of your own.
This part would require either careful planning or expertise. Since the wave serpent might actually move in on one of the side shield zones and and get protection if your forces are not in the interlocking shield zone. And if you move in toe the same shield zone to fire then it is an even playing field. One needs to practice with this to not allow getting flat out serpents in the shields where you cant charge them.
Grey Templar wrote: The Riptide can't be a giant death robot, its completely lacking a sword or massive chainsaw. All giant death robots have swords or massive chainsaws.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just another thought; DE get Combined Arms Detachments stupidly cheap. If detachments aren't limited, you could go with the Void-Wall.
Multiple bunkers and void shield generators, in over-lapping areas to give you a stupid number of AV12 replenishing void shields. Then park a fair bit of fire power inside (like Night Shielded ravagers, to force the enemy closer).
2 Wave Serpents firing at 24" is going to knock down ~4 shields. For the same cost, you get 9 shields.
It might just be possible to win the shoot out by taking ~4 wave shield generators (400 points for 12 shields), and be able to absorb the firepower, recover the shields and dish out a ton of damage of your own.
This part would require either careful planning or expertise. Since the wave serpent might actually move in on one of the side shield zones and and get protection if your forces are not in the interlocking shield zone. And if you move in toe the same shield zone to fire then it is an even playing field. One needs to practice with this to not allow getting flat out serpents in the shields where you cant charge them.
A core of wyches with haywire would massacre serpents that came in too close. Seems like you can force the issue of a shoot out with you gaining void shields, or them coming in too close where you can assault with haywire.
I'm by no means an expert, but 100 points per 12" bubble of Three 12 regenerating shields seems to cover the major weakness of DE, the glasscannon effect.
2. The WS has a few rules that can make it weak:
a. Jink: If the Eldar player chooses to Jink, his WS goes down to 25% efficiency for one turn > maximize the jinks.
I would agree with you accept this isn't what it seems on at face value. A WS can choose not to jink early on forcing you to commit to it first. Say you fire 6 dark lances at one that =2HP.
Meaning it can literally absorb the fire from two ravagers or 6 raiders or one ravager and 3 raiders before deciding to jink on the last ones, meaning you haven't prevented it from firing at full effect until you have shot that 7th dark lances into it. In a serpent spam list the best you can expect is to force 1-2 to jink against any opponent with a brain. That leaves at least 3-5 ready to fire at full BS in return.
I am also finding it hard to fathom why every eldar advocate assumes their is no cover for their WS, even if the table were bare a smart eldar player will use two of his own WS to BLOS to the rest again meaning max two are jinking.
b. Movement: If you can force a WS to move 12", one of his weapons snap fires, more than 12" and that's just like a Jink. The WS is bulky, it's 7" x 4", or 9" x 6" if you count the 1" distance, so restricting it's movements is easy (12-9 = 3", 12-6 = 6" - any flat out move kills its DPS.
This is only valid if you choose to flat out turn one with a large portion of your fleet to close the required gap, now your forcing jinks are you.
d. Shooting Phase: 55% of his firepower is "ignores cover", the rest is not, take your movement decisions based on that > keep cover to deny 45%, hide a skimmer behind another one, especially the important ones behind the meatshields.
So now I have enough skimmers to impede his movement, force jinks AND use as meat shields for my other skimmers.... I think you need to look at the DE book finally, because are skimmers aren't actually that cheap.
e. Assault Phase: the WS is worthless, it will be taken down by any S4+ attack, this is your best bet to destroy it even though it seems impossible at first. Any trick in the book is good, Infiltrate / Outflank, Deep Strike, meatshields, LoS, ...
Again, where are all these s4 CC attacks comming from, you realize we have very few units with s4 right? You talking about basically only the beastpack here which is fast, exactly as fast as our vehicles and theirs. But also notice it cannot infiltrate, outflank or DS and btw even if it could you may want to brush up on the rules considering you cannot assault after any said actions, making it a worthless tactic as assault goes.
3. You may notice that your take on the subject clearly shows your knowledge of your own army, yet little of your enemy's.
a. Following proper deployment and movement, Assault cannot be avoided. It can be diminished, and sometimes delayed by killing all transports, but you basically cannot prevent it. It's going to happen, DE wants it early, Eldar wants it late
Assault with what again? A single beastpack? with out support characters the beast pack is midiocre, with them it often is also exaggerated. Their as good as any ws4 s4 volume attack unit, and if you play them right your taking up a massive footprint which generally means your first turn isn't that many attacks. Its a shame WS can't be locked in CC isn't it. It takes at least 27 attacks to hull one out. That's 7 dogs needing to be within range! not as easy as you'd think. I'll agree this is are best unit, however its not impacting the game until turn 2 the soonest. One WS turn 2 will help, but won't save the game either.
b. There is no unit in the Eldar codex - except a SeerStar - that could possibly handle a beast pack.
They don't need to handle it. A Beastpack works best when it can hide in assault early, then hit and run for extra movement. You can't do either against a vehicle list.
The best shot DE have currently, is with multiple CAD so they can spam 3 man wrack units in raiders and venoms. I am talking the 24 MSU scoring unit range. Problem is most events wont allow it, and even if they did multiple CAD opens up better lists against it, like 36 scoring marine units anyone. sort of a catch 22. Not sure spamming 24 units that do nothing but saturate targets is a list I even want to try to field anyway.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just another thought; DE get Combined Arms Detachments stupidly cheap. If detachments aren't limited, you could go with the Void-Wall.
Multiple bunkers and void shield generators, in over-lapping areas to give you a stupid number of AV12 replenishing void shields. Then park a fair bit of fire power inside (like Night Shielded ravagers, to force the enemy closer).
2 Wave Serpents firing at 24" is going to knock down ~4 shields. For the same cost, you get 9 shields.
It might just be possible to win the shoot out by taking ~4 wave shield generators (400 points for 12 shields), and be able to absorb the firepower, recover the shields and dish out a ton of damage of your own.
This part would require either careful planning or expertise. Since the wave serpent might actually move in on one of the side shield zones and and get protection if your forces are not in the interlocking shield zone. And if you move in toe the same shield zone to fire then it is an even playing field. One needs to practice with this to not allow getting flat out serpents in the shields where you cant charge them.
A core of wyches with haywire would massacre serpents that came in too close. Seems like you can force the issue of a shoot out with you gaining void shields, or them coming in too close where you can assault with haywire.
I'm by no means an expert, but 100 points per 12" bubble of Three 12 regenerating shields seems to cover the major weakness of DE, the glasscannon effect.
-Matt
This is the sort of planning i am talking about.
Void shield would indeed help at least with negating the alpha strike, if not actually provide game length protection.
Grey Templar wrote: The Riptide can't be a giant death robot, its completely lacking a sword or massive chainsaw. All giant death robots have swords or massive chainsaws.
2. a.This is just a reminder of the rules that can play against the WS.
b. WTF ? what ? I just tell you about a rule that can play against the WS and you imagine a scenario that is unlikely to be attempted - although very ballsy I like it. Much more logical than shooting with your crap weapons for sure
c. AV12 for 145 points is weak, in other words, once the field is shot, the WS is not very resilient in comparison to other tanks
d. Again, just a reminder of the rules, telling you that you can keep all your skimmer perpendicular to hide each other, and probably only ever have a front of one skimmer that he can shoot.
e. I'm currently updating my knowledge to 7th and making a summary of those rules, I was searching for such a limitation but did not find it @ infiltrate / outflank. You still don't get it though, there is zero need to assault the turn you outflank, you only need to restrict the WS movement options and then charge it next turn.
3. a. You can run more than one beastpack can't you ? it's not mediocre without support characters, especially not against WS. Any WS4S4 volume attack unit is godly vs a Serpent. You may not understand this, but as his volume of fire diminishes, your life expectancy increases dramatically, you're not trying to kill him, you're trying to diminish his firepower enough that he can't kill more than 10% of your army per turn while you seek contact.
b. Nobody cares how a beastpack works best as long as it makes the difference. Scoring range is for wussies, real man table their opponent and take objectives as a secondary goal.
If you are not prepared to even try to make an anti-WS list to test their weaknesses and then merge it into your TAC list, then you don't stand any chance of success.
When faced with an enemy you cannot beat with your current list/tactic, you need to formulate a new list/tactic to beat that enemy, and then merge that into your TAC.
Otherwise it's not a TAC, it's an old rotting list.
When I hear that your transports can move 30" and you're having trouble reaching assault, I wonder just how you manage having that trouble.
What do you care if you lose one turn of shooting or even all your transports when that shooting and transport is worthless ? What if you manage to force him to flat out ? Isn't that infinitely better than any of your current scenarios ? Doesn't that leave your multiple beast packs untouched and not even requiring any 2++ rerollable because they're out of sight and not a priority ?
I'd love to play test this and I'm not even playing DE.
Apparently you didn't even try it. well.. that may be why you're losing your games against WS.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/20 06:53:44
Jink: If the Eldar player chooses to Jink, his WS goes down to 25% efficiency for one turn > maximize the jinks.
Nope. One hit from a scatterlaser and you lose about 40% of your efficiency.
The truth is the way to take out serpents is cc and/or haywire. We can easily spam haywire and add a few beastpacks to our lists to give us a fighting chance. The trick is to get into combat with most of our damage units intact. The best approach is multiple CAD
I'm not really sure about your list, it looks rather ... I don't know... I don't get the HQ choices, I'm not sure you need the Eldar units either, even though their haywire jump off the table may be ... just awesome.
About the damage reduction from Normal WS to Jink WS, we both got it wrong:
Everyone has their preference for a beastpack. I like a phoenix lord but go with a shard seer if you prefer.
Of course you want swooping hawks. They are amazing taking out any skimmer.
As to the reduction in firepower ... likely you will not be able to effectively make four skimmers snapshot (assuming they are spammed).Some will have cover without jinking, some will be out of range, etc. That said TLD6 +1 snapshots from each serpent will still do damage. But that is not your only problem. They can still claim objectives and are objective secured troops.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/20 15:08:22
Everyone has their preference for a beastpack. I like a phoenix lord but go with a shard seer if you prefer.
Of course you want swooping hawks. They are amazing taking out any skimmer
Everyone has their preference for a beastpack. I like a phoenix lord but go with a shard seer if you prefer.
Of course you want swooping hawks. They are amazing taking out any skimmer
Any vehicle in the game you mean ?
They must be AV14 murderers.
What's the awesomeness of swooping hawks? A shot with a haywire grenade hitting on a 3+ for 80 points, or a 2+ for 90 points. Sure you don't scatter, but you've got a 6" range. I'd expect to see a glance, followed by the death of the squad. If they were troops, I could see it, but as FA, i'm not impressed.
I'd much rather have scourages (slightly better armor) who are tossing at 2 haywire blasts at 24" at BS4. More likely to hit, and not as quite point-blank (65 points a shot).
Or are you using hawks to assault with haywire?
You'd still have to survive at least a round of shooting, and that's not something that T3 4+ save models do exceptionally well, especially at point blank.
You most certainly assault with the Hawks. They have a no scatter DS so should be able to get cover or LoS blockers to mitigate the drop and there are THREE squads. So what you spend all your dakka on them and let the Wyches assault? In every game that I have used Hawks they have outdone Warp Spiders for AT.
morgoth wrote: .
b. Nobody cares how a beastpack works best as long as it makes the difference. Scoring range is for wussies, real man table their opponent and take objectives as a secondary goal.
This one section demonstrably proves your utter failure to understand the situation at hand, and I'd even further it indicates a lack of understanding of how the game is fundamentally played.
morgoth wrote: .
b. Nobody cares how a beastpack works best as long as it makes the difference. Scoring range is for wussies, real man table their opponent and take objectives as a secondary goal.
This one section demonstrably proves your utter failure to understand the situation at hand, and I'd even further it indicates a lack of understanding of how the game is fundamentally played.
Actually, I'd argue that in the shadow of the Tactical Objective Cards, ignoring scoring in favor of tabling your opponent is not only a viable strategy, it may become a vital one. Focusing on that goal may in fact help some players bring some focus to their tactics.
morgoth wrote: .
b. Nobody cares how a beastpack works best as long as it makes the difference. Scoring range is for wussies, real man table their opponent and take objectives as a secondary goal.
This one section demonstrably proves your utter failure to understand the situation at hand, and I'd even further it indicates a lack of understanding of how the game is fundamentally played.
Actually, I'd argue that in the shadow of the Tactical Objective Cards, ignoring scoring in favor of tabling your opponent is not only a viable strategy, it may become a vital one. Focusing on that goal may in fact help some players bring some focus to their tactics.
By no means do I agree with "real men table their opponents...blah blah blah" - I must say I have been in the position where I have gotten a crap draw on my tactical objectives for a couple turns and I have to turn to more direct tactics, like inflicting as much damage as possible with hopes of tabling, in order to survive and win those games. So, in essence I agree with Jimsolo... there is a time and place for it.
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morgoth wrote: .
b. Nobody cares how a beastpack works best as long as it makes the difference. Scoring range is for wussies, real man table their opponent and take objectives as a secondary goal.
This one section demonstrably proves your utter failure to understand the situation at hand, and I'd even further it indicates a lack of understanding of how the game is fundamentally played.
Actually, I'd argue that in the shadow of the Tactical Objective Cards, ignoring scoring in favor of tabling your opponent is not only a viable strategy, it may become a vital one. Focusing on that goal may in fact help some players bring some focus to their tactics.
Good luck trying to table eldar with DE. In maelstrom they literally can ignore us and win handily. It's also nearly impossible to table a solid Eldar list unless your clubbing seals.
morgoth wrote: .
b. Nobody cares how a beastpack works best as long as it makes the difference. Scoring range is for wussies, real man table their opponent and take objectives as a secondary goal.
This one section demonstrably proves your utter failure to understand the situation at hand, and I'd even further it indicates a lack of understanding of how the game is fundamentally played.
Actually, I'd argue that in the shadow of the Tactical Objective Cards, ignoring scoring in favor of tabling your opponent is not only a viable strategy, it may become a vital one. Focusing on that goal may in fact help some players bring some focus to their tactics.
Good luck trying to table eldar with DE. In maelstrom they literally can ignore us and win handily. It's also nearly impossible to table a solid Eldar list unless your clubbing seals.
Can I ask an honest question Red? Why do you participate in these threads? I'm not trying to troll you, I'd legitimately like to know.
Your advice seems to boil down to "Can't win. Don't try. Quit now." in the various DE threads. Seems like that'd be a one-and-done proposition.
Do you have any suggestions for how DE can handle Wave Serpents?
Good luck trying to table eldar with DE. In maelstrom they literally can ignore us and win handily. It's also nearly impossible to table a solid Eldar list unless your clubbing seals.
Can I ask an honest question Red? Why do you participate in these threads? I'm not trying to troll you, I'd legitimately like to know.
Your advice seems to boil down to "Can't win. Don't try. Quit now." in the various DE threads. Seems like that'd be a one-and-done proposition.
Do you have any suggestions for how DE can handle Wave Serpents?
He didn't say they can't be beat, only that they can't be tabled.
How would I deal with eldar? MSU. Nobody does it like DE.
We get 30 point troop units, 36 points elite units, 12 point fast attack units, and 50 point HQ's.
At 1850 points, you could plop down 64 units.
Compare that to the typical eldar list of 10-12 units + a few characters, and you've got them really struggling to kill enough.
morgoth wrote: .
b. Nobody cares how a beastpack works best as long as it makes the difference. Scoring range is for wussies, real man table their opponent and take objectives as a secondary goal.
This one section demonstrably proves your utter failure to understand the situation at hand, and I'd even further it indicates a lack of understanding of how the game is fundamentally played.
I'm not the one losing and whining because I don't know why I lost.
Good luck trying to table eldar with DE. In maelstrom they literally can ignore us and win handily. It's also nearly impossible to table a solid Eldar list unless your clubbing seals.
Can I ask an honest question Red? Why do you participate in these threads? I'm not trying to troll you, I'd legitimately like to know.
Your advice seems to boil down to "Can't win. Don't try. Quit now." in the various DE threads. Seems like that'd be a one-and-done proposition.
Do you have any suggestions for how DE can handle Wave Serpents?
He didn't say they can't be beat, only that they can't be tabled.
How would I deal with eldar? MSU. Nobody does it like DE.
We get 30 point troop units, 36 points elite units, 12 point fast attack units, and 50 point HQ's.
At 1850 points, you could plop down 64 units.
Compare that to the typical eldar list of 10-12 units + a few characters, and you've got them really struggling to kill enough.
Why would you defend a troll I don't know.
And you can easily table Eldar with DE, you have the exact same mobility, better assault, worse shooting.
MSU is not going to be a thing for long, it doesn't fit the standard FoC, and it's a kind of cheese in itself (lol you can't kill 10 of my guys because I only have two in this unit trollolololo)
I will respond to this thread just once and then I will be done here. This is in regards to a videorep between Justin's mechdar and Rob's beaststar DE. Videorep can be found here:
I will analyze Justin's play as Eldar in that battle. You can then decide for yourself whether he was a competent Eldar player or not. More importantly, you can decide whether you might have learned anything about Eldar tactics from the perspective of a high-level, tournament player.
So Why Reserve?
Spoiler:
Seems to me that the number #1 complaint about his play was why didn't he just deploy everything and then shoot the bejesus out of the DE? Why did he leave the majority of his army in reserves? I'll tell you why.
The Trap: Justin didn't wanted to get boxed in by the beaststar. An army such as the beaststar works very similar to my Necrons in that it employs the strategy of Positional Dominance. Basically, that is to control the Movement of the opponent with fast, high-pressure unit(s) whereas the rest of the army puts themselves in advantageous positions (i.e. encamp themselves onto the objectives). Once trapped, Eldar will have a harder time to play against the beaststar as they will be more ripe for the multi-assault as well as out of position with regards to the objectives. They will then need to waste 1 turn to break out of the beaststar's threat range, which means moving flat-out and not firing anyways. So why let your opponent dictate how you play the game? By starting off mainly in reserves, mechdar can dictate the pace of the game on their own terms.
Denial: Justin is going 2nd against an army with 13+ dark lances. Not that those dark lances are all that effective, but reserving his army can serve to minimize the damage from enemy shooting. But mainly, the strategy of Denial through Reserves was to set up the next phase of his strategy, which was....
The Beta-Strike: When his reserves come in, Justin will essentially get the 2nd strike with minimal losses to his offensive output from DE's alpha-strike, or 1st strike. Now what about the chance for bad reserves (i.e. getting less than average reserves coming in)? That's fine. That just means he will have more serpents surviving until Turn 5 to grab/contest objectives. As long as he kills the DE troops, his serpents (most of them anyways) can make it to the objectives and can't be contested.
The Position Game
Spoiler:
While most people will think of the game as a game of shooting or assault, the really experienced gamers know that positioning, or the Movement phase, is just as important. You set yourself up for the win in the Movement phases through strategic positioning and the movement of your units. So how did Justin try to use the Movement phase to his advantage?
The Bait: He started on the table 2 wave serpents. Those serpents were actually just bait for the beaststar to try to take them out of position. Had they gone after the serpents, Justin could have refused flank deployed on the opposite side of the table with his units coming in from reserves. Basically, this could have bought him time kill the rest of Rob's army before the beaststar could react. Had the beaststar gone after the 2 serpents, it would have most likely taken them at least 2 turns to reverse direction to go after the rest of Justin's army. 2 turns of unmolested shooting is enough to gimp the rest of the DE army.
Spreading Out: Against a build like the beaststar, you need to spread out. The last thing you would want to do is to castle up in a protective formation and then let them box you in. By deploying your entire army, you would have had more initial firepower. However, you would have also more likely to stay boxed in. By reserving his army, it made it easier for Justin to spread out his army. Justin did try to spread out his army on the 2 opposite flanks. However, one of his mistakes was that he could have done better spreading out, but I will go more into this later.
Playing Against Deathstars
Spoiler:
Someone here mentioned that Justin should have had his entire army on the table to deal with the beaststar. I'll say this now - WRONG! When playing against a deathstar army, in most cases, you almost always go after the supporting units. DO NOT go after the beaststar. That is what the DE player wants. Waste your firepower on them and in the end, the DE troops/skimmers will be sitting pretty on the objectives. Instead, you need to take out all the supporting units, starting with the Objective Secured troops. Feed 1 or 2 units a turn to the beaststar and while he is "distracted" with your bait, kill off his most important units - his troops. This was exactly what Justin had planned to do, and despite a few mistakes that he made, he almost won it because of good target priority.
Justin's Mistakes
Spoiler:
Although Justin is a great player, his relative inexperience playing mechdar did lead him into making a few mistakes.
Tank Shocking: Tank shocking the beaststar would have been a brilliant strategy, but Justin forgot about 1 very important thing - Grisly Trophies. This changed his tactic from a brilliant play to a hail-mary play. It also somewhat messed up the positioning of his wave serpents. Actually, I'd say this mistake was more due to him probably not being knowledgeable enough about Dark Eldar than it is about his Eldar tactics.
Didn't Spread Out Enough: This was a rather large mistake and ended up with him costing Justin 2 wave serpents and 1 of the troops inside (though I have to give credit to Rob for his ingenuous strategy as well). Yes, Justin spread out with his army. He just didn't spread out far enough and as a result, lost an extra wave serpent along with the troops inside.
Giving Up Warlord: This is a mistake that could have been prevented had Justin just reversed the positions of his 2 wraithknights.
Why would you defend a troll I don't know.
And you can easily table Eldar with DE, you have the exact same mobility, better assault, worse shooting.
MSU is not going to be a thing for long, it doesn't fit the standard FoC, and it's a kind of cheese in itself (lol you can't kill 10 of my guys because I only have two in this unit trollolololo)
Trolling aside, the point of trying to table Eldar with DE is pretty futile. ~half of the shooting of a DE army does nothing at all to mechdar. Massed Poison on a 4+ is a pretty poor trade for massed S6 shooting.
It's pretty basic really. One army ignores poison, and the other is hosed by S6 firepower. Poison really isn't a good rule for the basis of an army. All too often it is totally useless.
As far as MSU goes, it isn't as one sided as it looks. Even with 64 units; it's 64 fairly slow units and you can expect to lose ~10 a round. While you won't get tabled, it is very likely that victory will be based on the draw of the mission cards. The eldar can gun down waves of wracks as they go to ground on objectives, but can't really cross the table. Even if it did work against mech-eldar, it would really struggle against combat squad marines.
Learned nothing, and wasted forever reading what seems like nothing more than a long ass justification of your decision to tell us all to learn from someone playing his first or second game of Eldar.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/21 21:27:13
P.S.A. I won't read your posts if you break it into a million separate quotes and make an eyesore of it.
Everyone was polite at first but you still trying to push this dead horse about how we can all learn from one of your many "pro-level" opponents, who struggled to win a match in which his army just short of hard counters his opponents, is pretentious and quite frankly a little insulting. Believe it or not we do know the game, and no we don't need to pay any heed to such a blatantly low skill match up full of decisions so unrealistic that it's one step away from being anecdotal, just because you have the belief that anyone to ever beat you at 40k must be a godtier player whose games the rest of us should endeavour to learn from.
I guarantee when I play this match up it is at a much higher level of play, and I strongly suspect the same is true for Red Corsair, Hawaii Matt, and well practically anyone who shares with their opponent the virtue of having a solid grasp on the game and more importantly the match-up.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/06/22 03:24:37
P.S.A. I won't read your posts if you break it into a million separate quotes and make an eyesore of it.
SHUPPET wrote: Everyone was polite at first but you still trying to push this dead horse about how we can all learn from one of your many "pro-level" opponents, who struggled to win a match in which his army just short of hard counters his opponents, is pretentious and quite frankly a little insulting. Believe it or not we do know the game, and no we don't need to pay any heed to such a blatantly low skill match up full of decisions so unrealistic that it's one step away from being anecdotal, just because you have the belief that anyone to ever beat you at 40k must be a godtier player whose games the rest of us should endeavour to learn from.
I guarantee when I play this match up it is at a much higher level of play, and I strongly suspect the same is true for Red Corsair, Hawaii Matt, and well practically anyone who shares with their opponent the virtue of having a solid grasp on the game and more importantly the match-up.
I'm not sure if you're misusing the word anecdotal here intentionally or not...
It was deliberately used as an exaggeration "one step away from being anecdotal", however this is not a misuse of the word, so I guess the answer to your question is "neither", and "spend a little more time reading or working on your comprehension before attempting to point out English mistakes", which are by and large irrelevant anyway.
P.S.A. I won't read your posts if you break it into a million separate quotes and make an eyesore of it.
jy2 wrote: I will respond to this thread just once and then I will be done here. This is in regards to a videorep between Justin's mechdar and Rob's beaststar DE. Videorep can be found here:
Thank you for your insights and explanation of Justin's thoughts on that game.
1. about boxing: losing two turns of shooting to avoid boxing ? not worth it, since it usually costs 1 turn.
2. denial is great when you know you can't win a straight fight. I don't believe that was the case.
3. his beta strike was really awesome... definitely worth it, pretty sure the DE player shat his pants on that one.
4. the most important phase of 40K is deployment, second is movement.
5. he lost one serpent without a good excuse for it. he could've had those two turns from the start.
6. clearly, it's always clear all then clear deathstar or ignore. No reason to feed it because it cannot be tarpitted, you can make it move 3" pile in in the wrong direction with every feed, but it's not that awesome.
7. grisly trophies have nothing to do with his very bad use of tank shocks. In that turn, I could have killed 14 beasts and the Baron, using only tank shocks. I assume I'm not the only one. The very minimum for that turn would have been 7 coherency kills and a fragon charge to delay the beastpack 3" to the right - if you wanted to take as many casualties as he did.
8. Rob could've spread more. Justin really underestimated the beast pack.
9. No warlord traits and picking a WK as warlord against DE ? big mistake.
Why would you defend a troll I don't know.
And you can easily table Eldar with DE, you have the exact same mobility, better assault, worse shooting.
MSU is not going to be a thing for long, it doesn't fit the standard FoC, and it's a kind of cheese in itself (lol you can't kill 10 of my guys because I only have two in this unit trollolololo)
Trolling aside, the point of trying to table Eldar with DE is pretty futile. ~half of the shooting of a DE army does nothing at all to mechdar. Massed Poison on a 4+ is a pretty poor trade for massed S6 shooting.
It's pretty basic really. One army ignores poison, and the other is hosed by S6 firepower. Poison really isn't a good rule for the basis of an army. All too often it is totally useless.
As far as MSU goes, it isn't as one sided as it looks. Even with 64 units; it's 64 fairly slow units and you can expect to lose ~10 a round. While you won't get tabled, it is very likely that victory will be based on the draw of the mission cards. The eldar can gun down waves of wracks as they go to ground on objectives, but can't really cross the table. Even if it did work against mech-eldar, it would really struggle against combat squad marines.
Who told you to use the poison on vehicles ? who forced you really ?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/22 08:07:21
I will analyze Justin's play as Eldar in that battle. You can then decide for yourself whether he was a competent Eldar player or not. More importantly, you can decide whether you might have learned anything about Eldar tactics from the perspective of a high-level, tournament player.
So Why Reserve? Seems to me that the number #1 complaint about his play was why didn't he just deploy everything and then shoot the bejesus out of the DE? Why did he leave the majority of his army in reserves? I'll tell you why.
The Trap: Justin didn't wanted to get boxed in by the beaststar. An army such as the beaststar works very similar to my Necrons in that it employs the strategy of Positional Dominance. Basically, that is to control the Movement of the opponent with fast, high-pressure unit(s) whereas the rest of the army puts themselves in advantageous positions (i.e. encamp themselves onto the objectives). Once trapped, Eldar will have a harder time to play against the beaststar as they will be more ripe for the multi-assault as well as out of position with regards to the objectives. They will then need to waste 1 turn to break out of the beaststar's threat range, which means moving flat-out and not firing anyways. So why let your opponent dictate how you play the game? By starting off mainly in reserves, mechdar can dictate the pace of the game on their own terms.
Denial: Justin is going 2nd against an army with 13+ dark lances. Not that those dark lances are all that effective, but reserving his army can serve to minimize the damage from enemy shooting. But mainly, the strategy of Denial through Reserves was to set up the next phase of his strategy, which was....
The Beta-Strike: When his reserves come in, Justin will essentially get the 2nd strike with minimal losses to his offensive output from DE's alpha-strike, or 1st strike. Now what about the chance for bad reserves (i.e. getting less than average reserves coming in)? That's fine. That just means he will have more serpents surviving until Turn 5 to grab/contest objectives. As long as he kills the DE troops, his serpents (most of them anyways) can make it to the objectives and can't be contested.
The Position Game While most people will think of the game as a game of shooting or assault, the really experienced gamers know that positioning, or the Movement phase, is just as important. You set yourself up for the win in the Movement phases through strategic positioning and the movement of your units. So how did Justin try to use the Movement phase to his advantage?
This just illustrates how Justin (and yourself) understand nothing about a DE vs. Eldar matchup. On average, it will take around 56 wounds (from S6/7 weapons) to kill that beast pack. The six wave serpents alone should deliver 50 wounds per turn. As fast skimmers with twin-linked weapons, the serpents can move 12” and still fire with 80% effectiveness. By starting with all his serpents on the board, Justin would have eliminated the entire pack before it did anything. Not only would this eliminate the only serious threat to his army, it would have simultaneously granted him positional dominance for the rest of the game.
On average, it takes 27 lances to down a wave serpent with cover/jink and a holofield. Assuming Rob did exceptionally well with his 13 lances, this would leave Justin with “merely” five serpents at the center of the board to deal with the remainder of Rob’s army. I’ll leave the math to you on how easy it is for a serpent to down AV 10/11 vehicles (hint - it’s around one per serpent).
Now, do I really need to continue with how quickly the remainder of Rob’s force would disappear after turn 2; assuming he had faced anything resembling a competent opponent?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/22 08:38:10
This just illustrates how Justin (and yourself) understand nothing about a DE vs. Eldar matchup. On average, it will take around 56 wounds (from S6/7 weapons) to kill that beast pack. The six wave serpents alone should deliver 50 wounds per turn. As fast skimmers with twin-linked weapons, the serpents can move 12” and still fire with 80% effectiveness. By starting with all his serpents on the board, Justin would have eliminated the entire pack before it did anything. Not only would this eliminate the only serious threat to his army, it would have simultaneously granted him positional dominance for the rest of the game.
On average, it takes 27 lances to down a wave serpent with cover/jink and a holofield. Assuming Rob did exceptionally well with his 13 lances, this would leave Justin with “merely” five serpents at the center of the board to deal with the remainder of Rob’s army. I’ll leave the math to you on how easy it is for a serpent to down AV 10/11 vehicles (hint - it’s around one per serpent).
Now, do I really need to continue with how quickly the remainder of Rob’s force would disappear after turn 2; assuming he had faced anything resembling a competent opponent?
1. Incorrect, the Beast Pack there has Eldrad, the Haemonculus and the Baron in it, totalling 42 wounds at mostly T3, some T4, or 50.4 S6/7 hits without saves, half of which will get the 4++ from the Khymeras, which, once fortuned (assumed), is equivalent to at least 60 hits on the Khymeras before even hitting anything else. With the rerolls and BS4 of the WS that do not have Shuriken Cannons in this setup, it's 8 full Wave Serpents or two turns of shooting just to get the Khymeras, not counting the Baron, Haemonculus, Eldrad, Beastmasters and Razorwing Flocks, most of those wounds can be hurt by ID though. Let's not forget possible invisibility or shrouding which do make it much better.
2. You're not counting the Wraith Knights
3. You're underestimating the Beast Star too. If Justin had deployed all, they would've mostly moved through Cover and would've had a 2+/3+ rerollable cover save against most attacks with a 4++ rerollable against the Serpent Shields.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/22 12:03:15
- any flat out move kills its 
Seems like that'd be a one-and-done proposition.
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