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Hi,

There is another league coming in the LGS. My first battle is against Dark Eldar Venom spam. I can't honestly think of a way to play for draw with such opponent. therefore I would appreciate any tactics advice of how to cope with him.

battle - Dawn of War but you can start only with 1 HQ and 2 Troops on a board, rest is coming from your table edge on turn 1 (apart from reserves), there are 6 marked objectives with hidden value ranging from 1 to 4, slay the warlord, fist blood and linebreaker are on,

My Army list

HQ 1: Eldrad 210
HQ 2: Avatar 155

Troops 1: 10 Guardians with Scatter Laser 95
Troops 2: 3 Eldar Jet Bikes with Shuriken Cannon 76
Troops 3: 5 Rangers 95
Troops 4: 10 Wraithguards with Spiritseer , conceal & spear 399

Fast 1: 10 Warp Spiders, Exarch, Withdraw, Power Blades 257

Heavy 1: 3 War Walkers with Scatter Lasers 180
Heavy 2: 5 Dark Reapers; Exarch, Fast Shot 227
Heavy 3: Wraithlord, EML, Bright Lance 155


DE army list

HQ1: Homonuculus [liqufire gun] 60

Elite1: 3 Trueborn [2x spl. cannon] 56, TRANSPORT1
Elite2: 3 Trueborn [2x spl. cannon] 56, TRANSPORT2
Elite3: 8 iNCUBI [Klaivex, demiklaves] 211 TRANSPORT3

Troops1: 10 Warriors [dark lance, blaster, sybarite] 140
Troops2: 5 Warriors [blaster] 60, TRANSPORT4
Troops3: 5 Warriors [blaster] 60, TRANSPORT5
Troops4: 5 wyches [haywire grenades] 60, TRANSPORT6

Fast Attack: 6 Reaver jetbikes [2xcluster caltrops] 172

Heavy Support3: Razorwing Jetfighter [FF] 155
Heavy Support2: Voidraven Bomber [FF] 155
Heavy Support3:Ravager [NS, 3x DL] 115

Fortyfication: Aegis def. line [quad gun] 100

TRANSPORT1: Venom [2x spl. cannon, Night Shield] 75
TRANSPORT2: Venom [2x spl. cannon, Night Shield] 75
TRANSPORT3: Raider [retrofire jets, Night Shield] 75
TRANSPORT4: Venom [2x spl. cannon, Night Shield] 75
TRANSPORT5: Venom [2x spl. cannon, Night Shield] 75
TRANSPORT6: Venom [2x spl. cannon, Night Shield] 75

All those splinter cannons will go through my Wraithguards, Avatar, WW like gak through a goose so to say.... and then those flyers on top...

any advice much appreciated

I'm not an expert but I'll share my opinion with you.

Is isn't worth taking Wraithlord against that many posion attacks. Especially with EML & BL. Your enemy has mostly armour 10 and 11 so it's a waste of points. It's probably better to take more S6 shots.
Avatar when Fortuned would need most of your enemies army firepower to bring him down in one turn. That is less shots against the rest of your army for one turn.
But if your enemy is experienced enough he will just ignore Avatar and use his movement speed.

If I were you I'd take more shooting against his army.

thx but I can't change my list now, it's for a league and is fixed throughout it.

I will have to utilize all cover that will be provided, especially LOS blocking ones

Well, against a Venom spam list, I'd suggest a mech Eldar army based on Serpents w/ scatter laser, underslung shuricannon and Warwalkers w/ scatter lasers. Nothing else.

thx but I can't change the list, too late for that, on top of that there are 4 games coming so no list tailoring

I was kind of hoping for some tactical advices like target priorities, taking some units into reserves, refused flank and such...

Torch his trueborn first! Those two delicate boats are going to put out 48 shots! ignore his fliers and incubi and focus on his troops, again especially the venoms. You can't efficiently deal with his fliers so use cover and spacing wisely! I wouldn't even shoot the ravager until all venoms are down. Deep strike the spiders behind his ADL to drop his warriors easily and force a reactionary measure from his ravager. Gona be a tough one, if its NF turn one I don't see you living past T3 but if you can get first turn and alpha him you have a shot because with eldrads redeploy you may be able to trick him and cheat your WW and WL into threat range of those blasted TB venoms. He out paces you and out ranges you bro :/


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh yea and fortune the WG and the WL not the avatar as his lack of ranged shooting makes him less important to the WL, guide the WW.

GL mate!

thx

unless it's a massacre turn 3 I will try to post batrep.

I was thinking about WW outflanking if there is viable cover to the sides close to his deployment zone, what do you think?

Since your list is such a mixed bag you will struggle no matter what tbh. The fact that you are running not one but three big expensive and very situational units (Wraithguard, Spiders and Reapers) means you are very thin on support units which you would normally expect to be forced to do more work when your core units get hard countered. You really don't have the volume of shooting you need to drop the Venoms.

Obviously if you can go first you should, while you don't have much shooting you can at least try and drop a couple of Venoms first turn with the Walkers (basically a given they will drop any one skimmer per shooting phase), Wraithlord (decent shot at getting a Venom) and the Reapers, Rangers and Guardians might get you to three. If you can do this early you will have a chance, tbh the Wraithguard are more likely to get chopped up by the Incubi than torrented down (you have to do heaps of wounds to get passed Fortune) and its really only the Avatar (who should probably get Fortuned as well) and the Wraithlord who will have targets painted on their heads. Not having Allies with Night Vision/Searchlights makes this harder thou, as going first is basically a waste of you if Night Fight is on.

Going second is much harder. Terrain will be very important, as will deploying off to one side to try and refuse flank him. Jetbikes obviously reserve, and the Guardians should consider it (just keep your scoring units alive). Avatar, Wraithlord and Wraithguard with Eldrad get priority for positions behind LOS blocking terrain. Walkers should deploy if at all possible, he only has a couple of Dark Lances and they offer you single best chance of winning this game so you want them firing every turn. Only Reserve them if you have absolutely nowhere to place them where they won't get severely crippled turn 1 (which realistically only happens if there is no terrain at all which blocks LOS on your side of the board). Spiders should probably Deep Strike in, he has very few templates and like the Walkers every turn that you can keep them alive you should drop another vehicle.

Aside from the Trueborn Venoms (which present obvious targets since they are effective two Venoms in one) I would probably target his scoring units next. You should be happy for the Incubi to come at you, since then you can lock the Avatar, the Wraithlord and as many of your infantry units as possible in combat. That just leaves his fliers (which you should really just ignore), so drop his scoring stuff and their transports and make him work for the win.

I'd be tempted to go for telepathy on Eldrad. Having four powers and a warp charge of three gives a decent chance of getting (2/3)and using invisibilty - this gives the wraithguard a 2+ cover save.
Then I'd keep them in the open and see if he tries to take them down. Every shot they take keeps something else alive.

Puppet Master, Psychic Shriek, Invisibility and Hallucination are all useful.

It would cost you your book powers though...

another usefull piece of advice!

I will consider it

Yeah, I think going for invisabilaty is not so dumb.

Keep the jetbikes in reserve so you can grab some objectives. Try to make him come to to you. Bring down those trueborn venoms, and then the other venoms. Keep shooting them.

Near the end of the game destroy his weak infantery.

BTW: Check if invisabilaty helps against the voidraven bomb? I think not.

With that list it is very hard to win much of anything since you give such easy target priority to your opponent. However, i will give a bit of advice.


The scenario here hurts you a lot and him almost none since he is forcing quantity of wounds where you have to punch through quality to knock out he venoms. Depending on the quality of opponent you have to judge how you will deploy. Eldrad's divination could also be clutch here. If going first, start with nothing on the board then use Divination to deploy your wraithguard,eldrad and rangers as close to the enemy as possible. If 2nd, it gets tricky. Personally i would gamble on a player who is not familiar with 6th. Deploy your wraithguard in one corner of the table, let him deploy, then shift everything to the other corner of the board.

You want to make him chose a side. Either he will be agressive and bring his reserves on the side your wraithguard are now on, or he will be very defensive and bring them on the other side. Either way, you have probably now denied him shooting of the venoms he deployed on the other side of the board.

If he plays defensive, bring everything else on as close as possible to him and run everything except the war walkers (night fighting+skimmers means you wont hit anything even with your WL). Eldrad and company will be the anvil here, stopping any flanking and marching up strait towards them, denying the center of the table.

If he plays aggressive, bringing his stuff on the same side as eldrad and tries to get his incubi in melee with your WG, bring everything with eldrad and try to do as much damage to the incubi transport as possible. If they do get the charge on you, you may swing first (no grenades) but he will quite possibly beat you. Eldrad must deny all challenges and take all the wounds for the squad as you will have no saves otherwise. Let the WG do the wounding on 2s.

The Trueborn are going to be a lot of his firepower. Knock those venoms out, dump them on the ground, and kill them asap. After that you should be able to weather the fire from the venoms.

Fortune is your friend. On 3+ saves it takes 27 shots from venoms to do a single wound. Thats a bit more than 2 venoms. Fortune the WL and WG as they will be your best bet to deal with venoms. When the Wap Spiders come on, switch fortune targets to them if you can. They will provide a lot of fast firepower and will be the determining factor in this game.


Finally, play the mission. Reserve your jetbikes, guardians, and possibly rangers depending on how much terrain is on the board. He has to get out to grab objectives and your jetbikes can actually assault his 5 man warrior squads to knock them off if the G2g. Kill as many troops as you can and simply hide your jetbikes in terrain. Dont be afraid to have your guardians G2g all game, he has only 1 assault unit. Same with rangers.

Powerguy,
I agree with your comments. Issue with shooting him in 1st turn are twofold:
1. scenario rules means I can deploy only 2 troops choice, rest will come from my table edge - that means Reapers will be shooting on 6es :(
2. with these Night Shield I will be out of range

that's why I consider WW outflanking....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
zephoid
excellent advice on corner redeploying due to Eldrad ability as well as all other suggestions! I will try to protect the objectives on my half, I think also having luck and getting 4 point objective may help me , and also force him to come

Im affraid for the table lack of terrain, LGS where the League is held is known for having not too much LOS blocking terrain

Thank you all for constructive insights! that's exaclty what I've been counting on!

p.s. personally I think we speak here more about Army list tactic than a battle tactics....

Sorry, but this will become an uphill battle for you. The Venoms can easily kill your infantry, the Avatar and the Wraithlord. The only thing you could do is to castle up in cover moving slowly forward. The only template the enemy has is the blast from the Voidraven.

Target priority will be key. Units that come close need to be dealt with first.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Sorry, but this will become an uphill battle for you. The Venoms can easily kill your infantry, the Avatar and the Wraithlord. The only thing you could do is to castle up in cover moving slowly forward.

I don't think it's a viable strategy unless there is much cover. With the Night Shields on he has the range advantage as well I think Night Shields are broken by the way...

Night shields are broken? Are you kidding me?

Night shields are broken!? HA! Maybe if you could put them on a land raider or a LRBT.... those paper planes explode if you look at them funny. All dark eldar guns are 3', so anything that is greater than that range(lascannons, missiles) has no trouble. Does beat the bright lance, and scatter lasers in a duel...

As far as what to do, shoot every venom dead, in order of how many poison shots it can throw. Fire anything that can hurt a venom at a venom. Fortuned WG and the avatar should hold up okay, good fire magnet for early game.

Does your dark reaper exarch have an EML? The reapers can damage anything he can field.

War walkers are going to be your MVP's, but they can only take out one threat at a time. If you can deploy them first and get an alpha strike, they can pop a transport a turn. Other than a ravager and a couple dark lances, not much to really hurt them from range. Maybe even put them in cover and fortune/guide them.

Ignore his incubi. They have no way to assault into cover without being I1, so a decent overwatch+going first in combat should eat them. Shoot down their raider only out of convince.

Use the spiders to take out the warriors on the quad(if not earlier) and then use the quad themselves if you can.

Jetbikes can get up close to a venom and pop it, leaving the occupants stranded. Good to use on the haywitches.

How does this DE list play? Does he just dance out of range of anything you've got that can hurt him and pump shots into 1 or 2 units a turn?

He's kind of got a mixed bag list as well with Haywire wyches and incubi. I'd make sure I moved my vehicles every turn just to hurt the wych venom's grenade throwing. But he could use them as a late game objective grabber or home base objective grabber against your list. Everything else I'd suggest has already been suggested by Dr. Serling.

You reap what you sow.

You thought spending half your army on a unit that is easily silver-bulleted by one of the most common armies in the game. This is what happens.

 Wingeds wrote:
How does this DE list play? Does he just dance out of range of anything you've got that can hurt him and pump shots into 1 or 2 units a turn?
.

I have no idea as I've never played him before


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
You reap what you sow.

You thought spending half your army on a unit that is easily silver-bulleted by one of the most common armies in the game. This is what happens.

I don't understand you;

if you mean Wraithguard with Eldar it's more like 27%

How does the DE list play? This is pretty straightforward. First, the army stays back to shoot your infantry (Venoms) and tanks (HS units) and then it goes in for the kill (Incubi).

 wuestenfux wrote:
How does the DE list play? This is pretty straightforward. First, the army stays back to shoot your infantry (Venoms) and tanks (HS units) and then it goes in for the kill (Incubi).

that's what I think also, he will put quadgun with his 10 troopers and warlord close to the one of his objectives, then he will wait and kill me from far away,

LOS blocking terrain will be crucial

Hmmm,

for the sake of my future games could you suggest what list would you bring against the Venom spam my opponent is using?

thx in advance

Fikol wrote:
Hmmm,

for the sake of my future games could you suggest what list would you bring against the Venom spam my opponent is using?

thx in advance

As said before, bring a Mech Eldar list with lots of S6 shooting. All his poison attacks are worthless against you vehicles but your S6 shots will decimate his. In such a game you have a decent chance of killing 1/2 vehicles per turn with average shooting. The priority does shift to whatever is using S8 shots cause that will be the biggest threat to your vehicles.

lockdar wrote:

Fikol wrote:
Hmmm,

for the sake of my future games could you suggest what list would you bring against the Venom spam my opponent is using?

thx in advance

As said before, bring a Mech Eldar list with lots of S6 shooting. All his poison attacks are worthless against you vehicles but your S6 shots will decimate his. In such a game you have a decent chance of killing 1/2 vehicles per turn with average shooting. The priority does shift to whatever is using S8 shots cause that will be the biggest threat to your vehicles.

He is in a league. He cannot change his list. This has been established.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
You reap what you sow.

You thought spending half your army on a unit that is easily silver-bulleted by one of the most common armies in the game. This is what happens.

"Silver-bulleted" by what? Poison does work against high T but the rerollable armor saves with fortune can deal with that so I don't get what you're saying. Which "most common armies"? Dark Eldar aren't exactly the most common race.

I recommend running the Wraithlord behind the Wraithguard. You can give it a 5+ cover save that way, it'll be able to charge in to help cut the wraithguard out of combat (or hide in combat), and it should be within spell range that way. That thing is going to need your second fortune if possible in order to pump out those shots for a while.

Keep the Avatar out of LOS and wait for the opportunity to charge. Thats about all I can recommend. It is definitely a weak unit against this setup.

warpspider89 wrote:

lockdar wrote:

Fikol wrote:
I recommend running the Wraithlord behind the Wraithguard. You can give it a 5+ cover save that way, it'll be able to charge in to help cut the wraithguard out of combat (or hide in combat), and it should be within spell range that way. That thing is going to need your second fortune if possible in order to pump out those shots for a while.

Keep the Avatar out of LOS and wait for the opportunity to charge. Thats about all I can recommend. It is definitely a weak unit against this setup.

thx!, that's what I was considering, basically fortuning WL and not Avatar, and if possible hide Avatar. Initially I wanted to go with both fortunes on Avatar and WG but I've changed my approach thanks to everybody's advice

I hope Avatar wil be of more use vs other oppponents.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I made something wrong with quoting...

Be lucky your know what your facing this far in advance. But I will point out your already cutting your own throat tactically by trying to play his game instead of playing /your/ game. You made a list that should be, in your opinion by making it, a all comers list. You had no idea what you were going to face. With that in mind, you had tactics already in place for how you were going to play it. Well then, play your list!

Let him worry about how he will deal with your list, and if anything look long and hard at the psychic powers and determined for yourself if it is worthwhile to lose Fortunex2 a turn for a dice roll to get a power that is far from a 100 percent guaranteed. What if you don't get it? You better have a back-up plan if you go that route.

If anything, learn from this tourney. You have to play the army, you have to place the units. You have to choose how to play them, you have your own gameplan in place for how you envisioned this list working. You learn by losing, you learn by not repeating mistakes. Yeah, shoot his troops to keep him from scoring and keep your troops alive so you can score... that is basic 101 40k tactics. Focus fire till the unit is dead. We can tell you this till we are blue in the face, but your the guy placing the units and making the shots. End of the day, nothing here will give you a 'win' button.

You knew going into the tourney these guys were light on LoS terrain, so I question why you made the list you did that is foot slogging with short ranged weapons. I question why you have nothing for anti-air. I mean, Darkness was being harsh, but you do usually see at least 1 DE list in any given tourney, just like GK and Crons... you have to make a list that goes, 'I have ways to deal with this', and more than 1 way to boot.

There is really no good way around this. You have to play the objectives, try to survive massed shooting and ensure the Incubi dont reach your Wraithguard. The Avatar will be important ensuring even a lone Guardian can sit on an objective, although the fearless models wont be able to go to ground. There will be also a bit of luck based on objective values.

Outflanking the War Walkers may work out as he has a Quad Gun and night vision. Same with the Jetbikes. Eldrad can be quite resilient with fortune contesting an objective and sometimes the best option you have against superior shooting is getting into assault, which is why I recommend killing the Incubi first.