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Took a break in 6th, coming back to play with some activity in 7th. Reading the Codex & Rulebook over the past couple weeks this is what I came up with. Pretty Cookie Cutter , I want to play it safe until I get a very strong understanding at which point I can spice it up with harder to play comps. Dont want to play a hard list when Im not at a good understanding of the current meta.

This list is for a 1750 Tournament. Army plays itself, Reserve Hawks, Deploy everything else unless theres a reason not to. Send Fire Dragons after 2 Biggest Threats and use Jink+Forcefield to make sure they get there. WraithKnights + DAVU Serpents Shoot what they need to. Hawks come in and large blast troops, then go back into reserve, and come back later in the game on objectives.

Any thoughts to make the list better? I think the troops / elites / Fast Attack are solid. Heavy Support you have alot of different options, I have all the models in the codex at max FOC so I can bring whatever. HQ could be changed as well. Troops you could drop a DAVU Squad, have a bike squad instead, and use the extra points for a Fast Attack, Better HQ, or another Heavy. You could also take a DAVU squad and put it in a falcon as opposed to a Wave Serpent, just depends if you need more strength 8 which I dont think you do.

Any thoughts/Theory crafting much appreciated.




HQ (70)

Autarch (Naked)

Elites (450)

Wave Serpent with 1 Standard Shuriken Cannon
-5 Fire Dragons

Wave Serpent with 1 Standard Shuriken Cannon
-5 Fire Dragons

Troops (555)

Wave Serpent with Scatter Laser
-5 Dire Avengers

Wave Serpent with Scatter Laser
-5 Dire Avengers

Wave Serpent with Scatter Laser (120)
-5 Dire Avengers (65)

Fast Attack (192)

Swooping Hawks
-X6

Swooping Hawks
-X6

Heavy Support (480)

WraithKnight

WraithKnight

Total = 1747

Looking for some comments for this list, even if they are brief. Any opinions?

and people are asking whats wrong with 40k...

RedNoak wrote:
and people are asking whats wrong with 40k...

Meaning what.

well i consider myself apretty good (ork) player, been around for a long time and won my fair share of games.

but i honestly wouldnt know how to beat this list


maybe if i could tailor a list specifically to counter the knight and serpent spam...


but all those S6/7 hits... most of em TL... and OS serpents... not to mention the two übermechs... phew... pretty hard

RedNoak wrote:
well i consider myself apretty good (ork) player, been around for a long time and won my fair share of games.

but i honestly wouldnt know how to beat this list


maybe if i could tailor a list specifically to counter the knight and serpent spam...


but all those S6/7 hits... most of em TL... and OS serpents... not to mention the two übermechs... phew... pretty hard

Blob units could hold up the wraithknight for the whole game, if you catch any of the wave serpents in CC that would deal with them.

thanks for the feedback.

I haven't played competitively in about two years....does anyone have any comments.

Good List, Bad List, could be improved X?

Maybe even some tactics, target priority, anything?

I always like to compare my logic to others peoples logic in the likely instance my logic is wrong.

It's pretty close to as cheesy as Eldar can get.

If you're going to the tournament to win, you built the right list.

If you're going to the tournament to have fun (and your opponent as well), you didn't build the right list.

Serpent Spam + Wraithknight Spam = auto win in most games. The only thing that will kill you is an all flyer list.

Also you have no anti-air.

Armies like this is why I bring 3+ flyers to tournaments.

 danjbrierton wrote:

Armies like this is why I bring 3+ flyers to tournaments.

if you math that out, you will bring flyers all the time

anyway, anti-air isnt exactly a problem with this list, due to all the ignore cover D6+1 S7 shots that also have a good chance of being TL...


and since i dont like Camembert de Normandy so much, i'm a bit reluctant of giving advice

Oh boy, well. Welcome back to 40k! You've returned to a world where Eldar are now really good. The list you've built is pretty straight forward and utilizes one of the best models in the new Eldar codex... the Wave Serpent. Here's a few tips that you may already know or that may be obvious but since you asked...

- Don't be too suicidal with your Fire Dragons. You have the upper hand in mobility and ranged firepower while your Wave Serpents are up and running. Play to the objectives and only deploy your troops if you absolutely need something dead.

- Don't be afraid to Jink. Remember that you must declare you are Jinking before your opponent rolls to hit. So make sure he declares his targets and gives you a chance to decide to Jink or not. You'll lose some offensive firepower by Jinking but it's better than a dead Serpent.

- Remember what your shield is capable of and use it a lot. The number 1 complaint people have of the wave serpent is that it has a S7, ignore cover, d6 +1 shot weapon at 60" range that can be twin-linked if your Scatter Laser hits first. This thing is stupidly good as a weapon, especially the ignore-cover aspect of it. Use it.

- Vehicles in 7th can score now and your Dire Avenger ones are super scoring. Grats on the best objective grabber in the game.

For the future, there's a few possible changes you can make to the list. First, holo-fields on the Wave Serpents is very helpful. You might even want to try and fit them into the current list. Secondly, your HQ is kind of useless. Many people run an Autarch or Farseer on a Jetbike with Laughing God relic. This will give you a super-resilient HQ that can buff or surgically strike small units/characters. Another future addition to consider is a Crimson Hunter for air support. They're not very resilient but their agility makes them harder to hit since they can skim the board edge and still fire towards the center of the board.

Hope that helps! Don't expect to make many friends with serpent spam this edition. People hate it.

Zimko wrote:
Oh boy, well. Welcome back to 40k! You've returned to a world where Eldar are now really good. The list you've built is pretty straight forward and utilizes one of the best models in the new Eldar codex... the Wave Serpent. Here's a few tips that you may already know or that may be obvious but since you asked...

- Don't be too suicidal with your Fire Dragons. You have the upper hand in mobility and ranged firepower while your Wave Serpents are up and running. Play to the objectives and only deploy your troops if you absolutely need something dead.

- Don't be afraid to Jink. Remember that you must declare you are Jinking before your opponent rolls to hit. So make sure he declares his targets and gives you a chance to decide to Jink or not. You'll lose some offensive firepower by Jinking but it's better than a dead Serpent.

- Remember what your shield is capable of and use it a lot. The number 1 complaint people have of the wave serpent is that it has a S7, ignore cover, d6 +1 shot weapon at 60" range that can be twin-linked if your Scatter Laser hits first. This thing is stupidly good as a weapon, especially the ignore-cover aspect of it. Use it.

- Vehicles in 7th can score now and your Dire Avenger ones are super scoring. Grats on the best objective grabber in the game.

For the future, there's a few possible changes you can make to the list. First, holo-fields on the Wave Serpents is very helpful. You might even want to try and fit them into the current list. Secondly, your HQ is kind of useless. Many people run an Autarch or Farseer on a Jetbike with Laughing God relic. This will give you a super-resilient HQ that can buff or surgically strike small units/characters. Another future addition to consider is a Crimson Hunter for air support. They're not very resilient but their agility makes them harder to hit since they can skim the board edge and still fire towards the center of the board.

Hope that helps! Don't expect to make many friends with serpent spam this edition. People hate it.

Thanks for the post....all valid points im going to look into.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 danjbrierton wrote:
It's pretty close to as cheesy as Eldar can get.

If you're going to the tournament to win, you built the right list.

If you're going to the tournament to have fun (and your opponent as well), you didn't build the right list.

Serpent Spam + Wraithknight Spam = auto win in most games. The only thing that will kill you is an all flyer list.

Also you have no anti-air.

Armies like this is why I bring 3+ flyers to tournaments.

Thanks for the comment.

Yea fliers are probably the most glaring thing that this list doesnt cover.

It looks to me like its most effective to either 1) Dont go air at all, or 2) Go air all the way. Like its Either Or and its hard to do a middle ground very well. For instance if you play an all flier list with 1 or 2 fliers, your going to be so outnumbered your fliers could likely die without doing any damage. I also think its hard to build an Anti Flier Eldar list without sacrificing too much elsewhere. Its almost like if you encounter an all Flier list the best thing is to weather the storm best you can, and hope your opponent traded too many important things for having fliers.

What are your thoughts on the above? Do you think an Eldar tournament list needs to have more anti flying capacity such as a Gun Emplacement or a Crimson Fighter?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Zimko wrote:
Oh boy, well. Welcome back to 40k! You've returned to a world where Eldar are now really good. The list you've built is pretty straight forward and utilizes one of the best models in the new Eldar codex... the Wave Serpent. Here's a few tips that you may already know or that may be obvious but since you asked...

- Don't be too suicidal with your Fire Dragons. You have the upper hand in mobility and ranged firepower while your Wave Serpents are up and running. Play to the objectives and only deploy your troops if you absolutely need something dead.

- Don't be afraid to Jink. Remember that you must declare you are Jinking before your opponent rolls to hit. So make sure he declares his targets and gives you a chance to decide to Jink or not. You'll lose some offensive firepower by Jinking but it's better than a dead Serpent.

- Remember what your shield is capable of and use it a lot. The number 1 complaint people have of the wave serpent is that it has a S7, ignore cover, d6 +1 shot weapon at 60" range that can be twin-linked if your Scatter Laser hits first. This thing is stupidly good as a weapon, especially the ignore-cover aspect of it. Use it.

- Vehicles in 7th can score now and your Dire Avenger ones are super scoring. Grats on the best objective grabber in the game.

For the future, there's a few possible changes you can make to the list. First, holo-fields on the Wave Serpents is very helpful. You might even want to try and fit them into the current list. Secondly, your HQ is kind of useless. Many people run an Autarch or Farseer on a Jetbike with Laughing God relic. This will give you a super-resilient HQ that can buff or surgically strike small units/characters. Another future addition to consider is a Crimson Hunter for air support. They're not very resilient but their agility makes them harder to hit since they can skim the board edge and still fire towards the center of the board.

Hope that helps! Don't expect to make many friends with serpent spam this edition. People hate it.

Thanks for the comment, all really good points.

The Crimson Hunter with armor 10 looks incredibly easy to kill and at 160 points I worry that it would die alot of games without doing anything. I would basically take the Crimson Hunter as opposed to the Swooping Hawks, and have a few extra points to spare on Vehicle Upgrades or my HQ. What are your thoughts on the models effectiveness?

 Smitty0305 wrote:

The Crimson Hunter with armor 10 looks incredibly easy to kill and at 160 points I worry that it would die alot of games without doing anything. I would basically take the Crimson Hunter as opposed to the Swooping Hawks, and have a few extra points to spare on Vehicle Upgrades or my HQ. What are your thoughts on the models effectiveness?

I don't own a Crimson Hunter so I haven't used one but I've been against them. They have a very annoying ability that allows the Crimson Hunter to skirt the edge of the board, just outside of range of key units, and still shoot at a desired target due to being able to turn the hunter after moving. That is the only saving grace of the hunter. Flier battles also have a lot of luck involved. Going second gives you a huge advantage because your opponent's fliers who will hopefully arrive before yours, giving you the ability to shoot first and position your hunter so that they can't retaliate. Vs ground targets it's easy to get side armor on vehicles and still stay a safe distance away. Some people love them, some hate them.

I personally prefer to use Warp Spiders for fast attack and rely on volume of fire to take down fliers if I need to. Warp Spiders are great against vehicles since they have S7 shots against anything without an initiative value (tanks and fliers). They're also extremely mobile and have 3+ armor saves. And against infantry they're just as deadly. There's really nothing Warp Spiders can't take on except armor 14 targets but that's why you have Fire Dragons and Wraithknights.

I like it, it's similar to a list I ran awhile ago when I was /learning/ Eldar, so it is possible to lose.

I am a big fan of Holo-fields on my Wave Serpents, when I can I try to add them in.

I don't really like Swooping Hawks that much, they might be good though. As a personal change I would take out those two squads of Hawks, add a Squad of 6 Warp Spiders and put Holo-Fields on all of the Serpents.

Spiders are amazing, you deep strike, battle-focus into range, shoot 12 S6-7 AP-/1 shots at infantry (or a tanks rear end) and then Jet Pack away, or if you didn't use it before, Battle Focus+Jet pack away!
The Monofilament guns are great because vs Vehicles you always get the +1 strength since they don't have an initiative value, makes it very easy to glance out vehicles on Rear and Side armor.

Another option to put on top of that^ (and you'll have to test this to see which build is better) but you can drop one DA+WS group and give that Autarch a Fusion gun and Jetbike for only 25pts! Throw on a Mantle and we have your list at 1609. Add a Shuriken Cannon to all Serpents and we're at 1649 now. We can add a second group of Warp Spiders and bump up to 1744. You can put a Banshee Mask onto the Autarch in case he ever gets into combat (he shouldn't but with a Fusion Gun and a 2+ Cover save, he might get charged eventually), then we're at 1749 and done!

As for people saying this is what's wrong with 40k, too bad. This is a tournament list, he asked for advice on a tournament list. I wouldn't bring more than 2 Serpents to a casual game, but believe you in me, i'm gonna pull them all out for a tournament because if I'm not, I know I'll play against it instead.

Good luck friend! I realize you may not have every model I suggested in change but this is pretty close to what I run

I believe Tyranid spam with poisoned will work against the Big guys as for all the shots well that can put any army down. I guess the little guys will have to just somehow avoid it.

 Deafbeats wrote:
I like it, it's similar to a list I ran awhile ago when I was /learning/ Eldar, so it is possible to lose.

I am a big fan of Holo-fields on my Wave Serpents, when I can I try to add them in.

I don't really like Swooping Hawks that much, they might be good though. As a personal change I would take out those two squads of Hawks, add a Squad of 6 Warp Spiders and put Holo-Fields on all of the Serpents.

Spiders are amazing, you deep strike, battle-focus into range, shoot 12 S6-7 AP-/1 shots at infantry (or a tanks rear end) and then Jet Pack away, or if you didn't use it before, Battle Focus+Jet pack away!
The Monofilament guns are great because vs Vehicles you always get the +1 strength since they don't have an initiative value, makes it very easy to glance out vehicles on Rear and Side armor.

Another option to put on top of that^ (and you'll have to test this to see which build is better) but you can drop one DA+WS group and give that Autarch a Fusion gun and Jetbike for only 25pts! Throw on a Mantle and we have your list at 1609. Add a Shuriken Cannon to all Serpents and we're at 1649 now. We can add a second group of Warp Spiders and bump up to 1744. You can put a Banshee Mask onto the Autarch in case he ever gets into combat (he shouldn't but with a Fusion Gun and a 2+ Cover save, he might get charged eventually), then we're at 1749 and done!

As for people saying this is what's wrong with 40k, too bad. This is a tournament list, he asked for advice on a tournament list. I wouldn't bring more than 2 Serpents to a casual game, but believe you in me, i'm gonna pull them all out for a tournament because if I'm not, I know I'll play against it instead.

Good luck friend! I realize you may not have every model I suggested in change but this is pretty close to what I run

Thanks for the post,

I actually have a pretty large Eldar army and can run whatever I want so Im going to take these things into account and see what works out best.