Planetstrike escalation league: eldar @ 750

[Huge_eldar]

Hello all, first post-hopefully I do well lol

My FLGS is running an escalation league that increases by 250 every week. I played the first 500 today, next week I play vs a chaos Deamons army, that at 500 has a thirster, a 10 man and a 5 man letter squad. Now I went into this knowing zero about planetstrike, and now having a grasp on the major aspects, I could use a little advice.

Original list:
Farseer-fortune/guide

5x dire avengers
5x dire avengers

Falcon-scatter laser/ spirit stones
Nightspinner

Ran seer/dire avengers in the falcon, casting fortune/guide on it..

Thinking of adding..

Wraithlord-scatter laser/shruiken cannon/dual flamers
Wave serpent-spirit stones/TL missle/cannon

Going to place the other DA in the serpent..

Any thoughts on better choices given the planet strike rule set? Or just better ideas in general?
Thanks !

[thecactusman17]

Daemons have to abide by their normal deepstrike rules, which means that all of your offensive strategems are going to be useless. I believe that one of the defensive strats is a godsend against Deamons, the one that does a ridiculous number of hits to the first unit to deepstrike. If you are on offense, you have two serious options: one of your strats allows Eldar players to choose which models are brought in AFTER rolling for reserves, a huge boon for selecting those critical units that must get there NOW dammit.

The other is a fun yet expensive (and potentially friendship ending) trick: take the rock that destroys anything it lands on. Grab a huge paving slab, the largest that you think anyone who works at the store or otherwise preps the tables will allow. drop it out in the middle of the prime deepstirke zone for his army. The second they hit the now-impassible terrain, they have suffered a deepstrike mishap! Oh, and your skimmers can land on it no problem aside from a dangerous terrain check, giving you a free fire platform to place the Serpent, falcon, and Nightspinner on.

[Huge_eldar]

Thank you for the advice, I was not aware of the second stratagem, that's brutal!!

This was the first experience I've had with planet strike.. Man it's crazy.

Another option I have is..

Serpent-spirit stones/TL missle/cannon
5x fire dragons

And I'll spend the rest on beefing up the DA squad on foot.. Less str 6, but 5 melta could be excellent to wipe something off the board at this points level

[Sully ad Bellum]

When I first saw your plan to bring fire dragons, my thought was, "but they're daemons; all you really need is a lot of shuricannons or scatter lasers." My thought was that daemons are [well, used to be] fairly low toughness, generally, with a rather poor invul save.

Then I got to thinking, well - they're probably better now, and they probably have some vehicle-equivalents, and they probably have some nasty daemonic ICs...

So, having a passel of melta guns able to move quickly across the board and unload some hurt on a greater daemon would be very nice. Your choice of serpent is nice, too: you can fire your shuricannon and fire your eldar frag missile for the win. I never thought I'd say this, but - yes, go with the fire dragons.

The big frigging rock idea actually doesn't sound half bad. It's a lot of stratagem points, and you're probably not going to be able to use a rock much bigger than 12X12, but that's a big, nasty pile of Difficult-and-Dangerous to drop wherever you choose. There are other options for the attacker that can be played when it's convenient for you, so don't fret if the daemons start off the board.

A couple of questions for you: do you know if you're going to be the attacker or the defender? How many stratagem points do you have to play with? Do you know what scenario this will be?

~ Sully

P.S. - this was my first BOLS post, too. Your little intro made me chuckle, because I was also nervous about getting it right.

[thecactusman17]

Again: Daemons ALWAYS start off-board. Planetstrike included. Even in the Battle Missions Daemons stuff where they get special deployment options, they have to reserve in.

[Huge_eldar]

Well two days before my game vs the demons player my league moderator informed me my list was illegal, no other choices but 2 troops and 1 hq are allowed, with dedicated transports also being allowed.

So needless to say I was a little upset/flustered. So I went back to the drawing board for my original 500, and how to make it as similar as I can without being un-ethical..

New list:
Farseer-ROW/spirit stones/fortune/guide
5xdire avengers
8dire avengers-exarch/2x catapults/bladestorm
Waveserpent-TL scatter laser/cannon/spirit stones

Additional 250(plus a few from last week)
Falcon-scatter laser/cannon/spirit stones
5x fire dragons
Vyper bike-2x cannon

I massacred him both games, unfortunately for him he misshaped on bastions 2x, both resulting in death for the squad. It was over half his points. The next game, I just had too many shots and my stratagems were brutal..

So next week I'm playing another deamons player, lol. It's just a shooter version, with a grinder, a hq on a chariot, the guys who shoot assualt 3 bolters and fiends.. So keeping in the theme of the army, this week I'm adding:

Autarch-melta
Nightspinner-spirit stones
Warwalker-scatter laser/cannon

The reason I'm adding a "naked" autarch is the mission were playing has -2 to reserves if your defender, and attacker gets to place half your army in reserve. Also in the last mission, I'll put him on a bike, the mission requires you move a marker to a high spot of terrain.

We have as many stratagems as objectives, objectives are bastions, D3+1 bastions. I believe the missions are house missions he got on-line. We play 2 games, roll first game to see who picks first for att./defender, then flip.

[Huge_eldar]

Alright, so vs the other demons player I massacred him both times. Now I get to add another 250 points. The mission is to blow up all bastions if you are attackers. The bastions have to be within 12" of each other, joined by defence lines. Now, all infantry on attackers gets melta bombs for free, can come in from any table edge and All defenders are fearless and I'm playing orks.

So with what I have, I'm adding swooping hawks, both for haywires and the large blast I can drop on the orks. (yes I have an exarch and skyleap) now I'm having issues with what to add in the other 120 points.

Possibilities Are:
5x warp spiders
Upgrading to bright lances on various things, remember the mission :)
5x harlequins w/4x kisses & melta pistol
Wraithlord w/brightlance

If anyone has any C&C I'd appreciate it. I'm thinking spiders at this point, very mobile, will have melta bombs, and although thy won't take out nobz, it will tear everything else he has. Not sure what he's adding at this week, but he has nob bikers, 30 boyz, 12 boys in a truck and def kopters

Thanks!

[Bda_Gamer]

I'd say Warp Spiders for the volume of shots, and 3+ save. a 5 man squad will net you 10 shots, hitting on 3s wounding on 2s. Use their assualt "jump" to keep up of range of the Orc, as eldar suffer badly in the initial charge of an Orc due to our low toughness, though we do hit first :)

[thecactusman17]

Wraithsword w/ brightlance is too expenseive at 120 points. Unless you drop something.

Swooping hawks are going to be kind of underwhelming for this mission. Yeah, they glance on a 2+ but S8 meltabombs for free means you can take better shooting and close combat units. For jump infantry, the better option would be warp spiders with their stronger gun (Really important! Swooping hawks are going to only wound on a 5+ w/ their strength 3 guns!) and ability to scoot back out of charge range in the assault.



Also, don't underestimate the power of 2 wraithlords running amok--you can kit each out with a shuriken cannon and scatter laser to hold the Ork tide at bay, and your S10 monstrous creature will make very quick work of any bastions it attacks. Just don't get involved with any of those nasty Ork Nobs. I recommend taking the free flamers on each arm if you are going after bastions, you can shoot into the doorway and do some harm to any units holed up inside before assaulting.