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If you're looking to bring new Eldar to a GT, and expect to see a good percentage of AL, what should be essential parts of your force?

Fire Dragons being dropped in by an Allied Webway Portal toting Archon. They do practically the same thing as Wraith Guard in the fact what they shoot at will explode horribly, but are cheaper and less prone to House Rules nerfing them to hard. They also have battle focus base, meaning they can run around whichever side doesn't have Ion Shield up by dropping down on a corner then running either side.

Is Adamantium Lance still a thing? I thought the new Knight codex got rid of it.

Not sure.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
They also have battle focus base, meaning they can run around whichever side doesn't have Ion Shield up by dropping down on a corner then running either side.

Doesn't work, as the Archon doesn't have battle focus.

The list I'm running has two groups of hawks that bypass ion shields with haywire melee attacks, and the Crimson Death formation which knights have no way to deal with, also 17 str 8 ap 3 missile shots coming in from BS 5 reapers, and yet my list is being told it will fold to AL. Destroyer table only negates the 4++ rerollable on a 6, so the wraithknights two shots are not going to reliably bypass it. Using webway to land d-scythes next to them is good, but they will still get the 4++ because you cant spike 6's on scythes, normal wraithguard are good cause you can get that 6, but its one shot each on what will be a low unit count. I'm just saying I don't think the codex is offering massively better options that I'm just ignoring. I know knights are fast at 12", but eldar are faster, and honestly there shooting output is not impressive, unless they get lucky with there pie plates it's not all that scary, and eldar can stay out of melee with them.

peteralmo wrote:
The list I'm running has two groups of hawks that bypass ion shields with haywire melee attacks, and the Crimson Death formation which knights have no way to deal with, also 17 str 8 ap 3 missile shots coming in from BS 5 reapers, and yet my list is being told it will fold to AL. Destroyer table only negates the 4++ rerollable on a 6, so the wraithknights two shots are not going to reliably bypass it. Using webway to land d-scythes next to them is good, but they will still get the 4++ because you cant spike 6's on scythes, normal wraithguard are good cause you can get that 6, but its one shot each on what will be a low unit count. I'm just saying I don't think the codex is offering massively better options that I'm just ignoring. I know knights are fast at 12", but eldar are faster, and honestly there shooting output is not impressive, unless they get lucky with there pie plates it's not all that scary, and eldar can stay out of melee with them.

Well, there's always the Hemlock. Two D-plates from a unit they can barely hit seems decent enough. Maybe there's a useful psychic power somewhere too?

CC versions of the Wraithknight could reliably deal with it, thanks to I5 Strength D.

Also only one grenade can be thrown per unit in each phase and IK now have access to a Skyfire + Interceptor weapon so I wouldn't count on Hawks and Crimson Death to pull a decent shift (unless your opponent packs no AA at all).

Aspect Battle Host - 3x Fire Dragons (1 Exarch, 4-5 Dragons). Put each squad in a Falcon (with all three taken as a squadron).

Expensive? Yes. Effective? No idea.

Hehe, the dragons in any kind of a transport are just so expensive, but yes, I think it would be affective. @Frozocrone, one grenade per unit in the shooting phase, but each model can attack with them in assault, so it would be 2 thrown and BS 6 (exarch), 12 on charge at WS 4, this is both units of 6 hawks with exarchs going after one knight. Hemlock is an interesting thought though, D3 hull points per hit if you can get passed ion shield.

You are going to get a lot of people recommending units and a lot of those recommendations will help. However I am going to recommend something different.

Use your mobility. This is a two part strategy.
While the adlance is cohesive it gets all it's benefits. During this time you should skirt around the adlance scoring objectives and target a corner knight only if you can do serious damage from multiple facings. So if you have a unit of 5 scatbikes on an AV12 facing, a doom farseer, and a wraithknight on another facing this would be a good opportunity to kill a knight. Alternatively a unit of 5 fire dragons who can get the charge off on a knight can also kill it despite being in formation of an adlance.

If those opportunities don't present themselves then just play to the mission and kill any support units until the adlance has to split the knight up to claim objectives (usually turn 2-3). This is when you can pounce on the knights now lacking rerolls and kill them with half the previous efforts. Again though remember that getting multiple facings is a huge boon to killing imperial knights.

Most of the solutions that can outright kill an adlance while still in formation will also be extreme builds and thus weaken you against other opponents. Though one of the most devastatingly effective anti imperial knight units in the CWE codex is actually the vaul's wrath D cannon artillery. Barrage usually bypasses a knights shield and has an almost 90% chance to kit the knight with each blast marker. Combine this with Str D and you get an average damage of ~5.5 HP, very nearly a dead imperial knight no matter ion shield rerolls or not. The range is an issue but if the adlance doesn't move into a 24" radius circle in the middle of the board then you will win anyways.

*Fire dragons are also a great threat. Both in shooting and melee.
*Wraithguard are very good at killing an imperial knight without the adlance rerolling shields but if you don't kill it the knight will almost make it's pts by eating the wraithguard unit.
*Scatbikes can make for an excellent secondary threat. Especially with a doom farseer. Without reroll's to pen they can still effectively whittle away at it and completely outscore it. However be aware that the rapid fire battle cannon will also do a number on windrider units.
*Wraithknights of sword and board variety can kill an imperial knight in close combat but be careful that the opponent doesn't get you with a concussive shot or you are likely to die instead.
*Wraithknights of the D cannon variety can chip away at an adlance and possibly one shot one if they roll a 6. Just be aware that unless you roll a 6 killing the adlance will usually have to wait until they split up.

There are a lot more options for CWE. CWE codex gives a tremendous number of options for anything.

peteralmo wrote:
Hehe, the dragons in any kind of a transport are just so expensive, but yes, I think it would be affective. @Frozocrone, one grenade per unit in the shooting phase, but each model can attack with them in assault, so it would be 2 thrown and BS 6 (exarch), 12 on charge at WS 4, this is both units of 6 hawks with exarchs going after one knight. Hemlock is an interesting thought though, D3 hull points per hit if you can get passed ion shield.

My bad, I skipped over the Melee grenades part. Looking at it though, it's only one attack if you throw grenades in CC.

Nice analysis ansacs. I like the idea of vauls batteries the most as they are a cheaper form of D that doesn't completely pideon hole your list. I also planned on utilizing eldar mobility to outscore objectives and force them to split. The beautiful thing about AL is that at 1850 the rest of there force is small. I almost wonder if it's tactically better to ignore the Knights at first, table the rest of there models, and force the Knights into a strategically untenable position, and eldar clearly have the firepower to pull that off fairly quickly.

peteralmo wrote:
Nice analysis ansacs. I like the idea of vauls batteries the most as they are a cheaper form of D that doesn't completely pideon hole your list. I also planned on utilizing eldar mobility to outscore objectives and force them to split. The beautiful thing about AL is that at 1850 the rest of there force is small. I almost wonder if it's tactically better to ignore the Knights at first, table the rest of there models, and force the Knights into a strategically untenable position, and eldar clearly have the firepower to pull that off fairly quickly.

You have the right idea. Adlance is a strictly mid tables army entirely due to the fact that you spend so much of your army on it at 1850 pts you just get completely outscored on objectives. IMO adlance is not a big deal under 2000 pts. I would try to get some practice games in against an adlance so you can get used to it. Fighting an adlance is entirely about lining up your fire angles and maneuvering around the adlance until either you win the mission or are ready to give a knock out punch.

It is usually preferable to concentrate on the support elements of the adlance force for turns 1-2 when the adlance can advance together without limiting their ability to assault and score too much. By turn 2-3 the adlance will have to break up to assault units and score objectives or they will loose despite anything else. Just be careful you don't put stuff to assault in positions where you re-concentrate the adlance into formation (whoops).

Now this is much less true if you have the ability to eliminate the adlance in assault or with barrage weapons. In this case it is just 3 imperial knights and you have a good shot at tabling the adlance player. It is somewhat rare but it happens (I have done it with my elysian, 3x drop pod grav cents, 2x knight lancers, renegades of vraks, and artillery line IG armies but those are firepower heavy armies).

The 3x D cannon vaul's wrath unit can make a very brutal center field unit. You really need a nasty melee threat against most armies to help keep the unit alive but it combos well with an ADL, comms relay, and warlock (for conceal/fearless power). This combo gives some serious flexibility and a T7 2+ cover save unit to anchor the middle.

ADL would be nice for the reapers as well, as far as melee goes, how to protect them, maybe an avatar =), same points as a kitted out scorpion squad.

Okapi wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
They also have battle focus base, meaning they can run around whichever side doesn't have Ion Shield up by dropping down on a corner then running either side.

Doesn't work, as the Archon doesn't have battle focus.

5 to 9 fire dragons, with webway archon, in a raider. After deep striking, you disembark leaving the archon in the transport, and battle focus to the side that lacks the shield.

peteralmo wrote:
ADL would be nice for the reapers as well, as far as melee goes, how to protect them, maybe an avatar =), same points as a kitted out scorpion squad.

The wraithknight is probably the most brutally effective. However a seer council formation either on bike or foot is also extremely effective.

The avatar is actually a great addition to an ADL based army. You put all your infantry behind the ADL and GtG freely turn 1. Then walk the avatar up to get within aura range to all the units that had just GtG. All the units within the aura become fearless and can act normally now. You can even battle focus the avatar back away from the units that will stay behind the ADL so they can GtG again later.

You can also leave whatever shooting unit you use in the raider, and make your shots come from whatever facing the shield is not on. Then the knights have to shoot your vehicle, then shoot the dragons cause charging a unit with melta bombs is suicide for those guys. If you take the 2++ relic on the archon they're even more survivable in melee.
Other good options are hornets, Crimson hunters, battle-focusing fire dragons, vaul's wrath batteries, Wraithknights in melee or with twin d-canons, hemlock wrathfighters, or even a mass of scatterlaser bikes. As elder, you have the most and best options for dealing with Imperial Knights. The key is outmaneuver them and shoot their unshielded side, and you have plenty of units to do that with.

EDIT: said dark reapers when I meant fire dragons

Well that's refreshing to hear, some people in the army lists page didn't see it that way, I did of course. I actually love hornets also, but loving the crimson death formation so much atm, and they are filling that slot currently.

Could also bring a squadron of night spinners. 3 of these puppies is 300pts, can be kept out of sight and drop 48" range 3-shot Large Blast Barrage with S9.
Throw in the Vaul's battery for middle control and you're going to have some Str D barrage shooting.

1850:
Farseer w/Singing Spear
Vaul's Support battery w/3x D-Cannon
3x Guardian with Bright Lance
1x Squadron of 3 Night Spinners
1x Squadron of 3 War Walkers with 2x Bright Lances
1x Vyper
1x Squadron of 3 Falcons
1x Aspect Host w/3 units of Fire Dragons
1x Hemlock Wraithfighter

You can out flank with the Warwalkers and they are pretty speedy with 12" movement a turn and long range AT
The Hemlock can put some damage on the knights from a different angle, or seriously jack up infantry
The support battery can be area denial or a pain to shoot up if they want to try and put out serious hurt
More bright lances from guardians just stuck around to put additional shots in different angles.
You can drop in the Falcons with the Fire Dragons and they can get out and cook some knights.
And still plenty of firepower to also deal with infantry from other folks with lots of shuriken cannons, artillery, and you name it.

 greyknight12 wrote:

Other good options are... battle-focusing dark reapers,

Reapers don't have battle focus. Even if they did, they wouldn't be able to use it thanks to having slow and purposeful.

-Matt

I run two units of hornets and 7 fire dragons in a raider with an autarch with fusion gun and an archon with Webway and blaster. Ad Lance is probably my favourite match up. Don't forget you can disembark on arrival. And if you only disembark the dragons, you can fire the autarch and the archon at a different target. But contrary to what was said above, apparently the UK GT is ruling that you have to declare the firing point from an open topped transport at the start of the phase, before ion shields.

I'm considering going with an anti knight build of 3 units of 6 dragons in a falcon squad coming in via cloudstrike, I've ran the numbers and it's almost statistically impossible for them to not explode a knight if they get an open facing. @Lendys unfortunately you can't do this with the bonus of aspect host, as they can't take falcons as a dedicated transport.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The question is, can you start a formation inside a transport in reserve that isn't there dedicated transport, if so this is rediculously more deadly lol.

peteralmo wrote:
I'm considering going with an anti knight build of 3 units of 6 dragons in a falcon squad coming in via cloudstrike, I've ran the numbers and it's almost statistically impossible for them to not explode a knight if they get an open facing. @Lendys unfortunately you can't do this with the bonus of aspect host, as they can't take falcons as a dedicated transport.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The question is, can you start a formation inside a transport in reserve that isn't there dedicated transport, if so this is rediculously more deadly lol.

You can take an aspect host and stick any, all, or some of the units in any transports that their faction could normally enter (ie battle brothers or their own faction) and in or out of reserves as you will. The formation essentially has no bearing on what you can do with them after list building and their stat gains.

Cloudstrike is kind of a neat way to deliver a fire dragon 1-2 combo but it is also very limiting. If you are going to do this try to land the falcons so the dragons can disembark all into different facings and then battle focus into another facing. If you do this right you have a very good chance to kill the entire adlance in a single round of shooting. The best chance an adlance has against something like this is to use terrain to force bad placement on your part and to split the knights up to keep you from being able to hit them all in a single turn (thus completely negating the adlance's advantages). Just make sure you bring reserves manipulation as it would not be fun for all those pts to stay in reserves until turn 4. You should also note this army is an extreme build and will struggle seriously against a lot of common popular army lists. I would try to balance it a bit with shadow weaver vaul batteries, either an autarch or comms relay or both, 4 units of 3 scatbikes, and a wraithknight. AA could actually be handled by fire dragons as long as you also take a farseer to guide them.

Thanks for the feedback, I've already put up a first draft of a list in the army list forum which surprisingly has pretty much all your recommendations save the farseer lol, great minds think alike!

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

Okapi wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
They also have battle focus base, meaning they can run around whichever side doesn't have Ion Shield up by dropping down on a corner then running either side.

Doesn't work, as the Archon doesn't have battle focus.

5 to 9 fire dragons, with webway archon, in a raider. After deep striking, you disembark leaving the archon in the transport, and battle focus to the side that lacks the shield.

Better yet, Raider is open topped, so position the raider in a way that allows you to choose two different facings to fire at then nuke the side that isn't shielded.

 Frozocrone wrote:

My bad, I skipped over the Melee grenades part. Looking at it though, it's only one attack if you throw grenades in CC.

Luckily, you don't throw grenades in CC. Instead, the book describes using them by clamping them to the fuel tanks of vehicles, shoving them in portals, exhaust vents, etc. That's why you can't use grenades in CC against anything except vehicles, gun emplacements, and MCs. They're the only things slow and lumbering enough to conceivably strap high explosives to in combat. If you were just throwing them in CC, there wouldn't be any reason you couldn't use them vs. other infantry.

Correct, though I feel it very illogical that a unit all equipped with say haywire or krak grenades can only throw one grenade in the shooting phase. And the BRB doesn't even attempt to give a kitschy lore-based explanation, just you got a bunch of guys with haywire grenades that could totally demolish that vehicle thats within 8" of you, but instead no, the whole squad is going to pick there noses while one guy throws a single grenade. I'd love to see this rule changed, not just for my hawks, it would literally make SM tac squads a billion times better lol, heck, maybe they're why the rule exists in the first place...

peteralmo wrote:
Correct, though I feel it very illogical that a unit all equipped with say haywire or krak grenades can only throw one grenade in the shooting phase. And the BRB doesn't even attempt to give a kitschy lore-based explanation, just you got a bunch of guys with haywire grenades that could totally demolish that vehicle thats within 8" of you, but instead no, the whole squad is going to pick there noses while one guy throws a single grenade. I'd love to see this rule changed, not just for my hawks, it would literally make SM tac squads a billion times better lol, heck, maybe they're why the rule exists in the first place...

The entire reasoning is that grenades are better than guns. If everyone could throw grenades, you might as well put your lasguns in the trash. Entire squads of IG lobbing S6 AP4 shooting would be pretty ugly.
Or think of how slow it would be to resolves 30 guys throwing frag grenades. It was done for a balance reason, fluff has nothing to do with it.
What might make more sense is to designate 1 or 2 guys per squad as grenadiers, and let them shoot.
How grenades work in general doesn't make much sense in 40K. It's a really bad idea to stand in an open field and lob a frag grenade.

-Matt

Yes, its a fair point, but fluff wise there is zero justification, when trying to imagine the scenario nothing even remotely plausible comes to mind lol. That said, I think certain grenades that have a clear unique affect, like haywire or rad or what have you, should have a grenadier clause where maybe two guys instead of one can throw.