Eldar Mechanized Tactics

[Thud]

I was going to post this in the Eldar Tactica thread, but to make it easier to find I figured it would be better to start a new thread instead.

Eldar Mechanized Tactica – Thud Style

Welcome, grasshopper, to this article on how to run your Mech army. Before we get properly started there are a few things I feel is important to get out of the way:

- This is the way I play Eldar mech, it’s not the only way. I make no claim to know the one and only way to run a successful Eldar mechanized army, I merely wish to add to the accumulating tactical wisdom of the Warseer Eldar community by adding my experiences. If you are a new Eldar player, do not use this as your sole basis for tactical development; use it in conjunction with the Eldar Bible (link in Irisado’s sig), Way of Saim Hann (google it), the Eldar tactica thread and even YTTH, if you can find some actual tactical advice amidst all the derogatory comments there.
- I don’t base my armies, or tactics, on fluff or what’s my favourite units. I do tend to add the occasional unit because I like the models, or whatever, but mainly this is not the case.
- I don’t believe there is such a thing as “cheese” or “unbeatable/unfair units” and I’m immediately suspicious of people who do. I don’t fear TH/SS Terminators, in fact I would want my Space Marine opponents to bring them against me, and hopefully after reading this article, so will you.
- DAVU is a term I expect will pop up a few times. For those of you who don’t know what it is; it refers to putting a 5 man squad of Dire Avengers in either a Falcon or a Wave Serpent, effectively making that vehicle scoring, without the intention of ever disembarking them (DAVU = Dire Avenger Vehicle Upgrade).
- I own not only one, but two pink shirts, and therefore I am twice as cool as you are.

Army building
As you’re building a fully mechanized Eldar army there are a few things you need. First of all you need your workhorses, the units that can lock down on, and take out, the enemy units that pose a significant threat to your skimmers. In the Eldar codex there is one unit which is perfect for this job; Fire Dragons. Personally I take three units of them, each in a Wave Serpent with Star Engines and twin Shuriken Cannons, one of them gets an Exarch with the super-flamer and crack shot. These guys are very efficient at what they do and they do it quickly. Not only that, but after they’ve completed their main mission for the game they are usually still a major threat (imaginary or real) to your opponent so the rest of your army tend to get a nice breathing space for at least one turn.

The second ting you need is scoring units. In 1,750 point games I recommend either three or four. Personally I usually go for two DAVU Falcons and one Wave Serpent with a full Dire Avenger Bladestorm squad. Even though the large DA squad usually dies every game it is still worth it, simply because of the damage it puts out and the attention it receives because of this combined with it being a scoring unit. So, at the end of the game this leaves me with two scoring units which, even in missions with 5 objectives, is enough thanks to empty Wave Serpents flying around contesting objectives.

The third, and last thing, you need in your army is killing power. This can quite easily be combined with the two former categories (the Fire Dragons and the full Dire Avenger squad), but you can also get it elsewhere. Yriel, for example, can do some serious damage do just about anything and Vypers are great for busting transports. Furthermore, your Wave Serpents, even with the humble Shuriken Cannon, can put a real dent in quite a lot when they combine their fire power.

Now that we have all these things in our plans, we need to synergize them in order to make an efficient and competitive army list. This usually comes down to what kind of weapons you are packing. Do you have enough anti-tank, anti-transport, anti-horde, anti-MEQ etc? Now, continuing with my example, I already have three unts of Fire Dragons in Serpents. This should take care of my anti-tank needs. So, how about anti-horde? Well, there’s the Bladestorm squad, and let’s add two Vypers with a Scatter Laser and a Shuriken Cannon each. Add to that the weapons on the Serpents and Falcons and we’re pretty good. Then anti-transport can borrow from the same guys; the Vypers, the Serpents and the Falcons can all deal with Rhinos, Trukks and Chimeras. And if the opponent is light on heavy tanks but heavy on transports, the Fire Dragons can always lend a helping hand. Now, how about anti-MEQ? Well, there’s always Yriel. But to be honest, you really don’t need to worry too much about getting special weapons to kill Marines, just have them roll save after save and they will fail enough of them eventually. Trust me. However, there is the problem of such units like Plague Marines etc, who are extremely hard to shake with just shuriken weapons, so someone like Yriel, or perhaps an Autarch with power weapon coupled with a Doomseer, or maybe even Banshees could definitely come in handy.

By now, the most observant of you will have a pretty clear idea of what my army looks like, and I’m sure you will have noticed one unit that stands out from the AV12 gang; the Vypers. Won’t they just be easy pickings for Heavy Bolters, Multi-Lasers and other anti-infantry weapons with nothing better t shoot at? Actually, no. Not if you use them right, but I’ll get more into that later on.

[Thud]

Wargear, Units and Battle Formations
In this section I’ll mainly concentrate on my army list, how it works, what I’m thinking with the different units and why I’m doing what I’m doing. Towards the end I’ll explain what I mean by ‘battle formations’ and a short rundown of a couple of alternatives.

Starting at the top; the HQ selections, I’m running double Autarchs. More specifically Yriel and a regular Autarch with fusion gun and power weapon.

The first reason for this is the reserves denial. It’s great against a variety of armies and with two Autarchs it’s also very dependable.

The second reason is that these two guys are my only close combat units in the entire army. Instead, you could of course run some Banshees backed up by a Doomseer, a Seer Council, or you could even opt to go without any close combat support whatsoever.

The third reason is how nicely they fit in with the rest of my army. The regular Autarch runs with one of the Fire Dragon squads (5 man + DBF Exarch) and allows them to make a nuisance of themselves even after they’ve blown up whatever they were gunning for. Yriel goes with the large Dire Avenger squad and combined with the Exarch’s Defend power these guys put out some serious fire power and won’t bend over as soon as they are assaulted. Or, alternatively, Yriel can split off and blow up some guys with his explosive sunglasses.

Why am I not running a Farseer you may be asking. Well, it’s not that a Farseer is a bad choice, but I find that the combination of much more anti-psyker gear being toted around and the relatively light effects he gives to a mech army makes dual Autarchs a better choice for me.

Moving on, to Elites, I have three squads of Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents. All the squads are five models, with one of them having an Exarch with Dragon’s Breath Flamer and crack shot (as well as being joined by the Autarch). All the Serpents are identical and have twin-linked Shuriken Cannons, Spirit Stones and Star Engines. Some of you may like larger squads, but I find that five is enough to do their job and once they’ve done it they’ll die quickly against a good opponent no matter how many there are of them. But what about those new six-wound Tyranid monsters, you ask. Don’t worry. First of all, tooling your army too much against one potential opponent is never a good idea in a tournament/all-comers environment. Secondly, you can either send two squads after one monster, or you can provide supporting fire with all the S6 weapons you have floating around. 3+ saves are failed more often than you’d think, just ask your local Marine player. And if you’re worried about all those Gaunts running around, deploy some Dire Avengers right next to the Dragons to provide some support.

The equipment given to the Serpents is all pretty basic. The Shuriken Cannons are cheap and the short range doesn’t really matter as they’ll be up in the grill of my opponent soon enough, the Star Engines are there to get to the enemy battle tanks faster as well as providing some serious speed later on for redeployment and objective contesting shenanigans and the Spirit Stones because I really can’t afford being stunned. Seriously, I can’t stress that last part enough. Getting stunned is not very healthy.

Before I’m moving on to Troops, I’ll just stop quickly by Fast Attack where I have a squadron of two Vypers with Scatter Lasers and Shuriken Cannons. These guys hang back at range and take out transports, artillery units etc. Later on in the game they can also move up to 24” and blast away at damaged units knocking about on their own. Alternatively they can support my main attack wave by adding some extra fire power to whatever my Dire Avengers are firing at.

Troops, now, I have three units of Dire Avengers. One is in a Wave Serpent identical to the ones my Dragons fly around in, and nine Aspect Warriors including the Exarch with dual Shuriken Catapults and both Exarch powers. Along with Yriel they make a pretty decent offensive unit.

The other two Dire Avenger units are small squads of five, each riding in a Falcon with a turret-mounted Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones and Holo-Fields. The main role of these two units is to secure objectives and provide some supporting fire to my main assault.

Now, these battle formations. Basically, what I mean by the term is how several units together work in concert to acheive a specific goal (e.g., take an objective, take down a flank etc.). When putting together a battle formation one must make sure it can deal with anything and that it does not have one unit that sticks out from the others making it easy to tear apart.

In my army list, on such formation is represent by the Dire Avengers in the Serpent, one of the Fire Dragon squads, the Vypers and one of the DAVU Falcons. Together these guys can achieve pretty much anything and, as long as I’m careful with how I place my Vypers, they are all immune/vulnerable to the same weapons. This does not mean, though, that they always operate in concert. If the situation allows I won’t hesitate a second to send one of the Serpents off alone to do something destructive.

Other examples could be a squad of Howling Banshees instead of the Dire Avengers, or perhaps two Fire Prisms instead of the Fire Dragons, or maybe even a Seer Council on jetbikes backed up by some Warp Spiders and Guardian Jetbikes.

Finally, one important note; these formations are not, and will not work as, completely independent sections of your army. If you’re going after some Leman Russes in the backfield and the IG player takes out your Fire Dragon Serpent you’re boned. You have to remember redundancy and keep the equalient units from the rest of your army close enough to pick up the slack if one part of your battle formation is taken out. Fortunately, thanks to the speed of Eldar vehicles (especially with Star Engines) the playing room becomes rather large.

[Thud]

Missions and Deployment – Reacting to Your Opponent and Making Your Opponent React to You

The strategies and tactics laid out in this section are not limited to be used by solely by my army list, any mechanized Eldar army will do (or mechanized Dark Eldar for that matter), but I will continue using my army list as the example.

This section is made up by three parts;

1. Strategy
2. Tactics
3. The X-factor – “Anything but a 1!”

Strategy – The Master Plan.
Strategy is something that a surprising number of players seem to completely ignore. Playing completely by the fluff and with that being a mother hen to your units is fine if that’s your cup of tea, but you shouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself losing a lot of games. And it’s not just fluffy gamers who disregard this aspect of the game. I don’t know how many times an opponent has uttered his or her surprise at losing to me after “such a close-fought game.” Especially in Seize Ground missions where I took out all my opponent’s scoring units in turn two and then just fed him Fire Dragons, Wave Serpents, Vypers and Autarchs until the end of the game and I held two objectives and he none.

40k, in this edition, is about taking one more objective than your enemy or one more kill point than your enemy. Don’t ever forget that. Who cares if you lost Yriel and every single one of your Fire Dragons if that sacrifice won you the game?

So, before the game starts, make sure you have at least a basic idea of where you’re units are going to be in round one, two, three and four. And by round three you should be starting to plan which objective you’re going to hold, which ones you’re going to contest, which you can ignore or how you can maintain your lead in kill points.

In one of his blog posts, not too long ago, Fritz from Way of Saim Hann said wrote this:

Just stepping up to the table with such an idea gives you a huge advantage- it transforms you from a reactive player to an active player. Knowing exactly what you are going to do puts your opponent in the position of having to play catch up to your tactics and allows you to set the pace of the game. It also takes a lot of self induced stress out of the game since you are going to do the same thing regardless of the opposing army that you face on the table- no more “OMG What am I going to do?” So just what is the plan? The plan is how you are going to play your army to win the mission as opposed to playing it to counter your opponent’s army. By knowing what you are going to do ahead of time you also cut down on mistakes and save time on the table- critical for tournaments. Get away form the trap of playing your opponent’s army and not your own.

(Used with permission.)

Tactics – Enacting the Humiliating Downfall of Your Opponent
Tactics is, in some ways, the exact opposite of strategy. While those Lootas mean nothing to your strategy, they can’t hold objectives and there are bound to be easier kill points in an Ork army, they become important tactically. Tactics, then, would be the implementation of your strategy. Despite the Lootas not playing a part in the direct outcome of the game, they can stop you from taking objectives or they can take kill points for your opponent. Therefore you must have counters to your opponent’s counters. You have to identify and neutralize the threats. Remember that neutralize does not necessarily mean kill. If you’re playing an Ork horde, for example, your Fire Dragons, who do not have anything worthwile to shoot at, can detain the Lootas in close combat making sure they don’t shoot down your skimmers, giving you movement superiority.

The most basic tenet of tactics is to remember that everything is expendable except your last scoring unit. If you have three scoring units there’s nothing wrong with sacrificing two of them as long as the third one can hold an objective and you can either take out all your opponent’s scoring units or you can contest his objectives.

So, summing up, the target priority becomes as follows:
1. Units that can threaten your tanks.
2. Enemy scoring units.
3. Pie and/or beer.

As an example; SS/TH Terminators are never a priority (unless they have fleet or outflank or something ridiculous like that). Their Land Raider, however, is. With a Land Raider they are mobile enough to reach your skimmers with a charge, and trust me, Eldar tanks fall like flies to massed thunder hammers. Especially if there’s some git making them all count as master-crafted. How do I deal with this? Send in a Fire Dragon squad in a Serpent to take out their Land Raider. Now they’re footslogging and have no ranged weapons whatsoever. Sure the Dragons are dead, but sacrificing 80 points to take 500 points out of the game for your opponent? Yes please!

A squad of Nob Bikers, on the other hand, is very much a priority target. They’re fast, they’re more than capable of ripping your tanks to pieces, they’re scoring and they’re so tough that taking them out late in the game after you’ve suffered some casualties often just isn’t doable.

Before every game, take a minute, and think about what’s going to cause you problems, both in the sense of killing your guys as well as holding objectives, and think about how you are going to neutralize those units.

The X-factor – “Anything but a 1!”
This is where the pink shirts mentioned at the beginning of this article come into play. It’s a well known fact in Western Norway as well as parts of Belgium, Northern England and Spain that I can’t lose a game of 40k if I’m wearing a pink shirt. It just can’t happen.

Obviously, everyone can’t be cool enough to pull off wearing a pink shirt, and even I have laundry days, so sometimes you just have to make your own luck.

So, how does this play then? Well, let’s take an example from a tournament Annihilation game I recently played against Orks recently. On one of the Ork player’s flanks he had a rather large Loota squad and some Grots hiding in cover. I sent one Wave Serpent with five Fire Dragons including an exarch with DBF/crack short and an Autarch with fusion blaster and power weapon to deal with them. The entire rest of my army was on the opposite side of the table. How do you think it went? What if I told you that the Orks were backed up by an outflanking Deffkopta?

Looking bad for the Eldar yet? Well, I took out the Lootas, the Grots and the Deffkopta and lost only the Autarch. How? Read on.

Step one was to move up 36 inches with the Serpent so I’d be close enough to assault out of it next round. At the same time I presented two other Serpents and my Vypers to the Lootas from the other side of the table as bait. As it happened the Ork player didn’t buy it and shot at my fast moving Serpent anyway. He failed to destroy it, but even if he did, it wouldn’t have mattered much. I’d still be within flame and charge range.

Next turn I disembarked and separated the Autarch from the squad. The squad then flamed the crap out of the unfortunate Grots. The Autarch? She charged the Lootas. Again, I was lucky and killed two Lootas (including a no retreat casualty) and survived the retaliation. But what if I weren’t? What if the Autarch died on the charge? Then the Lootas would either move so they wouldn’t be so bunched up from the assault, consolidation moves only gives you so much when you have a large squad in combat with one enemy model, and present a choice target for the nearby flamer. Good for me. Or they would shoot at one of my Serpents. Good for me, they’d be dead by next turn. Or they’d shoot at my Fire Dragons in cover. Good for me, my Serpents would be safe (remember the ones I’d set up exposed on the other side of the table).

Anyway. In the Ork player’s turn he kills the Autarch and his Deffkopta comes on and fails to hurt the Wave Serpent who’s been hanging around. In my turn I then kill off the Lootas with the Fire Dragons and my Wave Serpent tank shocks the Deffkopta to death.

The end result of my right flank maneuver: three kill points for me, one for the Orks. Now, even if I had been extremely unlucky and I’d ballsed it up with the kill points I would still be successful in keeping the Lootas occupied and thus allowing me to completely dominate my left flank. Obviously, in any win-win situation, not all wins are equal. Some wins are more equal than others, but they’re all wins, and you should take any win you get.

This is just one example of tilting the odds in your favour by creating win-win situations, but most others, from the perspective of an Eldar mech army, are fairly similar. It’s all about dividing your opponent’s forces and creating no-win situations for the stragglers. In objective missions this becomes even more effective as you’ll try to spread out the objectives as much as possible and thereby leave your opponent with two choices: spread out and go for as many objectives as possible or castle up and effectively concede one or two objectives. Regardless of what he or she chooses, you can exploit it.

[Thud]

Concluding notes – a bit more specific.
In this concluding section of this article I’ll try to offer some more specific advice on a few aspects of running a mech army. First up is Capture and Control. There seems to be rather a lot of people calling this the “draw mission.” I’m sure you’ve heard or read it somewhere. Me, I call this the “I win mission.” It actually is my favourite mission.

So, what’s my secret? It’s not that complicated, actually. What’s the mission objective? Take one more objective than your opponent. Not both, just one more than your opponent.

How does one go about doing this, then? Well, first off let’s separate potential opponents into categories:

1. Slow armies with few scoring units.
1a. Slow armies with many scoring units.
2. Fast armies.
3. Unusal deployment armies (i.e., Daemons, outflanking-heavy armies, Deathwing assault etc.)

Starting at the top, with no. 1, this would be your typical vanilla-flavoured Space Marine army with somewhere around 20-30 scoring models. Against these sorts of armies I will sacrifice absolutely everything in my army (except two scoring units, one of them as insurance) to take out all the scoring SM units and whatever Land Speeders etc there might be that could contest my objective. I won’t be just throwing my units off a cliff, though. I will try to tie the Space Marines to their own objective, thus allowing me to safely hold my own and deny the Marines the ability to hold theirs.

1a would be a massive Guard army with so many scoring units that it just isn’t possible to kill them all, especially as you will have to also take out some of their heavy hitters to remain in the air. The main plan here is pretty simple in concept; stop them from advancing on your objective and contest theirs. You might say that’s easier said than done, but think of it this way; you’re fighting for a win, the Guard player is fighting for a draw. Advantage yours. Don’t waste it.

Fast armies, however, are a bit of a pickle. They’re also quite diverse, so specific advice here tends to get too specific to be of any real use. What you need to do, though, is identify your opposing force’s weakness(es) and exploit it(/them). Against an Ork Speed Freaks army consisting largely of Trukks, for instance, you can block them from ever reaching your objective with your Wave Serpents, or you could just shoot the crap out of them with S6 spam. Take a minute before the game starts and figure out how you can best utilize what you have against what’s facing you from the other side of the table.

And then there’s the weirdos. Mobile in the sense that they can deploy almost anywhere, but stationary in the sense that they’re usually fairly stuck once they land. In my experience there’s two ways to go about this. First one is to basically just wait in reserve and gang up on one section at the time once you get on. Second is to take down mobile threats once they come on, and redeploy the rest of your forces to again divide and conquer. That Bloodthirster in the first wave of the Daemon deployment? Kill that first, then redeploy and take the Daemons out piece by piece.

Obviously, there are very few armies that fit perfectly into any of these categories, so it will often be necessary to modify one’s plans here and there. Perhaps the SM army from no.1 has a Dreadnought in a Drop Pod landing near your objective. Divert a Fire Dragon squad to take it out and afterwards send them as a second wave to your main assault on the Marine positions. Perhaps the slow IG army has a unit or two outflanking, so you should keep the Bladestorm squad (or an equalient) hanging back as your scoring unit to hold your own objective rather than a DAVU Falcon, so you can deal with the outflankers effectively.

As you will surely have noticed, this all would appear to conflict somewhat with the final part of what I quoted from Fritz earlier (“The plan is how you are going to play your army to win the mission as opposed to playing it to counter your opponent’s army. By knowing what you are going to do ahead of time you also cut down on mistakes and save time on the table- critical for tournaments. Get away form the trap of playing your opponent’s army and not your own.”). Perhaps it does. Perhaps not. After all, the main plan is the same; hold your objective, contest or make sure the opponent can’t hold his/hers (or possibly the other way around against category 3 armies). The only thing that changes is how you do it, and even that doesn’t change much.


Next up is Seize Ground. Not much is different from the principles of Capture and Control. Get one objective more than your opponent. Of course, in Seize Ground there will be more objectives to think about. As a mech Eldar player you do have a big thing going for you, though, and that is your tanks. They’re fast, relatively hard to take down and thus good to use to contest objectives. In addition to this you could also use a tactic I’m quite fond of; objective denial. It basically means you attack the midfield in force and section off at least one of the objectives behind your lines, making sure your opponent can’t get to it. In round five, though, you can use your superiour speed to claim it with one of your scoring units.

Seize Ground is not only more complicated than Capture and Control, it can be simpler as well. With more objectives you can use the tactic referred to earlier by taking out opposing scoring units, making it so that there are significantly fewer objectives you need to contest with your fast skimmers. Couple this with concentrating on taking out your opponent’s fast moving units capable of contesting the denied objective in your backfield and you’re already well on your way to success.

And remember; you don’t always need to kill transports to keep them from racing up to contest the objectives you hold. If they don’t have much in the tank-killing field, box them in with your Serpents and Vypers. They can’t ram their way out as the range will be too short to build up enough strength. Sure, this is very situational, and won’t often come up but it actually has won me a couple of games. So, when you’re playing a game that’s nearing its end, try to look for these kinds of opportunities to mess with your opponent. Not only is it effective in itself when you pull it off, but the psychologial effect it will have on an already stressed out opponent is just too hilarious to pass up.

[Thud]

Finally we have Annihilation. This mission can be a bit of a pain, and it certainly used to be for me. But it doesn’t have to be. Remember what I wrote earlier about sacrificing units left right and centre to win the game? Doesn’t apply quite as much here. Remember how nice it was when the Fire Dragons sacrificed themselves to take 500 points out of the game? Well, now you take one KP and give one up. Still not a bad idea, but no longer quite that effective. In fact, it could backfire a bit if the Terminators dual charge both the Serpent and the Dragons. Ouch. So, what to do then?

Well, as always; think of the mission. One KP more than your opponent. That’s what will win you the game. But how? Well, target soft KPs and deny your opponent the same. Use your Vypers, Fire Prisms and Falcons to target Rhinos, Drop Pods, Trukks and Platoon Command Squads. And hide. Hide behind terrain, and hide inside your transports. Unless survival is more or less guaranteed, or the trade-off is worth it, never disembark. Zip around in your tanks, get cover saves, shoot from the back with your longer ranged units and use star engines on the ones that moved to give those units a cover save as well. Concentrate on easy KPs to rack up a lead, and move onto threats afterwards, and if the two correlate; be happy.

A short note on Vypers vs. War Walkers in Annihilation missions: Vypers and War Walkers do pretty much the same. They shower your opponent with S6. But what happens when they get shot back (and they will get shot back!)? Unless your opponent is extremely determined and/or lucky you won’t lose the entire squadron (remember to stay at long range, hug cover and read up on the squadron rules relating to the latter). And here’s where the Vyper gets a whole lot better than the War Walker. A lone surviving, damaged Vyper can just move flat out, get outta dodge and hide for the rest of the game. A War Walker can’t. It’s pretty much boned and a KP waiting to happen next turn. Think about it.


Well, that pretty much sums it up for this article on Eldar mechanized armies. I hope it’s been helpful. If you have any questions, comments, ideas or whatever, send me a PM or post a reply in this thread.

I’d like to direct my thanks for inspiration and wisdom provided by the following (in alphabetical order):
-Danny Internets (Bald and Screaming).
-Dweomer/Dverning (Warseer & Maunderings of a 40k Gamer).
-Fritz (Way of Saim-Hann & BoLS).
-Irisado and the rest of the Warseer Eldar community.

I would also advise any of you reading this article to check out these blogs for more ideas on how to run your army more effectively.

[VonManstein]

Great read man.

[Niraco]

Good read. I would love to add some things:

One of many great mistakes Eldar player make, and ussualy many of our enemies make is that destruction of a serpent is necessary in order to kill what is inside. If they get out that serpent is ussualy left alone to shoot unit he does something that put on it a hot red target. Our main horse in mech Eldar is the Serpent (and my esteemed OP say the falcon even i really believe the Falcon is way overpriced atm). Do not mistake, Wave Serpent is a tank and i make my strategies around it.

Unfortunetely 5`th edition dent our mobility a lot. So we need to adapt on this matter. DAVU units are one of the solutions. This way of play can make us compete in number of troops units, can ask the enemy to divide it`s firepower and when they disembarked and supprt eachother, 4x5 dire avengers can dish same firepower as 2x 10 avengers (without the bladestorm of course).

5`th edition proved also that more shots are better than fewer more powerful shots. Due to this the scatter lasers and shuriken cannons are more usefull than starcannon and lances. Add to this the cost effectivness modification due to rule changes and overall cheaper new codexes and you will find forced to use cheaper upgrades in order to field more bodies/vehicles. And while Eldar bodies die easily, this is not the same with the Eldar tanks, either Serpents or holofielded Prisms or Falcons.

My own Tactics now involve the posibility of mobility, great firepower with unexpected survivability from an Eldar. My serpents use Shuriken cannon twin linked or scatter laser TL and the shuriken cannon upgrade. Spririt stones remain a must as Eldars need to move or die.

Melta abundance and armour abundance on fields raised in elite choices the Fire dragons. They are the knife teams we need in the current environment. The close combat choices are good but you need to really think your army synergies before you decide to take banshees or scorpions instead of another dragon unit.

In heavy support department we have falcons/Fire prisms as workhorses with the prism as a better cost unit and the cheap walkers as our unexpected huge firepower units.
Due to fragility and beeing mostly an alpha unit, i almost always outflank my walkers and ussualy take them in squadron even i have slots (unlikely but...). Their role is even more suicidal than the dragons as they enter shoot the back or the side of enemy priority target armour and then if they survive cause as much mayhem they can. Outflanking them give first versatility as they can really hurt armour from a flank. I killed from valkiries, chimeras to leman russes and predators with our 40 point war walkers. But if you take them keep them cheap and use them where you need to devastate and press a local superiority or in order to seek and destroy some units that can put in following turns a lot of pain in your troops.

As a HQ i tend to remain on farseer side, mostly because not of the powers, but because the anty psyker rune of doom and darkness (do not leave home in a competitive list without rune of warding unless you field a 2 autarch reserve list) that can shut zoonthropes and rune priests like no other. I take autarchs when i build a list that will reserve a lot. On autarchs the only mandatory things i take is the fusion gun (more meltas never hurts) and the power swords/mandiblaster combo.

And always remember the goal of the mission. If you play objective type, contest all enemy objectives, capture one for you. In anihilation, get more killpoints than your enemy not destroy the enemy army. Sometimes you do that by hiding, reserving everything or other "tricks".

[Sildani]

Outstanding work here.

[Tourniquet]

This was a great read to wake up to Thud.
We run our armies very similar.

Though when i play Mech Eldar i generally run with:

3 x 10 DA, Exarch, Blade Storm, Serpents, Spirit Stones, EML
2 x 5 Dragons, Serpents, Spirit Stones, EML
Eldrad

I know spamming Eldrad is seen as a "bit off" to most players. But i find his ability to re-deploy my whole army is potentially amazing.
Most my opponents ask what is in each transport. So They put their bigger vehicles away from the dragons. Eldrad allows me to re-deploy the Dragons to be closest to what will hurt my opponent the most.
Also being able to Guide two of my Blade Storm Avengers, coupled with Dooming priority targets can be amazing.

But i will be the first to admit i haven;t tried Yriel, mainly because he does not fit into the theme of my army.

As to the EML's.
I know most people seemt o take Shuriken Cannons on their serpents. But i have found agianst some list (Any Think Mech) that the EML's tend to bring me more kills over the game then the Dragons. Simple because as you mentioned, any player with half a brain whomps on the dragons as soon as they leave a serpent.
The EMl is a great weapon for punching through transports, and can be affective against hoard and mech armies.

But here is where i raise a question. Would it be better for me to swap to scatter lasers? I lose 2 Str to gain 3 Shots.

And another question, more pertaining to rules. Do assault weapons fire the same way as Heavy weapons do when moving at combat/full speed? or can they always fire?
because i wonder why i see a lot of people take Double Shuri cannons (underslung and turret)

[the-skylord]

A great read, cheers for taking the time to write it. Now I just need to find a pink shirt!

[monkiman]

And another question, more pertaining to rules. Do assault weapons fire the same way as Heavy weapons do when moving at combat/full speed? or can they always fire?
because i wonder why i see a lot of people take Double Shuri cannons (underslung and turret)

Weapon type (assault, heavy) has nothing to do with whether it can fire. Having two either doubles your fire and protects against a single weapon destroyed result rendering a vehicle useless.


Nice work Thud! The most important lesson I had to learn for 5th was to play to win the mission. Once I learned that, it stared turning those ties and losses into easy wins

[Tethylis]

Great read, thanks for sharing your knowledge and tactics. I may even try some Vypers instead of Warwalkers next time

One question I have though. Can someone explain to me what is ment by the term "reserves denial", I understand that Autarchs allow you to add +1 to your reserve rolls but dont see how this "denies" anything? They are not like the Imperial Guard advisors that subtract from opponents rolls and force outflankers to re-roll

[Kirby]

It allows you to deny the enemy an alpha strike and let's you dictate play more reliably from reserve (i.e. against a Daemon or DPod army which relies on it's DS to attack "weak links" in an opponents defenses)

[Thud]

This was a great read to wake up to Thud.
We run our armies very similar.

Though when i play Mech Eldar i generally run with:

3 x 10 DA, Exarch, Blade Storm, Serpents, Spirit Stones, EML
2 x 5 Dragons, Serpents, Spirit Stones, EML
Eldrad

I know spamming Eldrad is seen as a "bit off" to most players. But i find his ability to re-deploy my whole army is potentially amazing.
Most my opponents ask what is in each transport. So They put their bigger vehicles away from the dragons. Eldrad allows me to re-deploy the Dragons to be closest to what will hurt my opponent the most.
Also being able to Guide two of my Blade Storm Avengers, coupled with Dooming priority targets can be amazing.

But i will be the first to admit i haven;t tried Yriel, mainly because he does not fit into the theme of my army.

As to the EML's.
I know most people seemt o take Shuriken Cannons on their serpents. But i have found agianst some list (Any Think Mech) that the EML's tend to bring me more kills over the game then the Dragons. Simple because as you mentioned, any player with half a brain whomps on the dragons as soon as they leave a serpent.
The EMl is a great weapon for punching through transports, and can be affective against hoard and mech armies.

But here is where i raise a question. Would it be better for me to swap to scatter lasers? I lose 2 Str to gain 3 Shots.

As for Eldrad, the reason I don't even consider him is that he doesn't bring enough to the table for me. Not for his point cost anyway. In your army, though, with loads of Dire Avengers that's a little different. And as for Divination; I don't usually deploy anyway.

EMLs: In short; if you want them, add a chin shuricannon. As I have three Fire Dragon squads and two Pulse Lasers, I don't think it's necessary to spend the points, but you need to put them into the context of your own army.

Now I just need to find a pink shirt!

Good man!

Great read, thanks for sharing your knowledge and tactics. I may even try some Vypers instead of Warwalkers next time

One question I have though. Can someone explain to me what is ment by the term "reserves denial", I understand that Autarchs allow you to add +1 to your reserve rolls but dont see how this "denies" anything? They are not like the Imperial Guard advisors that subtract from opponents rolls and force outflankers to re-roll

Reserves Denial isn't about denying your opponent his reserves, it's about reserving your entire army and thus denying him an alpha strike, and also forcing him to spend one or maybe even two (always go for second turn) turns of milling about in uncertainty. And then, in your turn 2, you get your stuff on with a 2+ roll, and you can rock on from there.

[Karhedron]

One question I have though. Can someone explain to me what is ment by the term "reserves denial", I understand that Autarchs allow you to add +1 to your reserve rolls but dont see how this "denies" anything? They are not like the Imperial Guard advisors that subtract from opponents rolls and force outflankers to re-roll

If you reserve your entire army you are "denying" your opponent at least one turn of shooting. In order to make this reliable you really need 2 Autarchs as the +1 reserve rolls stack. This means all your units will arrive on a 2+ on turn 2 and any stragglers will arrive automatically on turn 3. If you are lucky and get the choice of going 1st or 2nd, choose second. This means that for his first 2 turns your opponent will have nothing to shoot at and no idea where your army will turn up. This also really messes with things like Drop Pods and other alpha-strike units as they are forced to deploy. You can then either ignore them or overwhelm them depending on the situation.

EDIT - Ninja'd by Thud of course.

[Shamana]

I may be completely wrong, but I think the idea is that they are off the table, thus can't be targeted (correct me if I'm wrong). A 3-man (space elf?) jetbike team can't be ripped to pieces when in reserve, and can move quite a bit when it comes on the board.

Oooh, mega-ninja'd.

[Kirby]

*flex*

go kirby? lol

[DaveV]

Thud, thanks for the great article.

I'm in the midst of re-jiggering my 1500 point Swordwind army. It's now:
Jetseer with RoWarding
Bike Autarch w/ Lance
2 x 5-man Dragon squads in Serpents
2 x 8-man Avenger squads in Serpents
5-man Spider squad w/ 2-gun Autarch
Squadron of 3 2xShuricannon Vypers
Prism

Final details of additional powers, wargear, weapons and upgrades are being decided upon. Your article has provided a lot of food for thought.

Cheers!

[Pete_x]

while I can agree an Farseer isn't necessary, how do you feel about not having a rune of warding??? I'm lazy with the math right now but aren't only 5 Fire Dragons a little unreliable?

And it was a great read thanks man I'll most certainly try some of the things you mentionned.

[[SD] Bob Plisskin]

thanks for the great article