"On a 6, I win.", or The problem with ranged D

[DarkLink]

No worries.

Obviously I don't think for a minute that anyone was not taking their best list. But I've seen a lot of posts saying were doomed because of the D weapons. Not a lot of people are putting forward counters to the new Dar threat. And there are those fiendish geniuses (?) out there that could win with a Grot army.

That's presumptive that there is a solution. Thing is, new Eldar are pretty much the same as old eldar, just... better. Wave Serpents are still very good, Wraithknights are crazy, Jetbikes got buffed more than enough to make up for any nerf to Wave Serpent firepower, and basically every unit got significant buffs even when the unit was already very good (e.g. Warp Spiders).

So the same tactics and counters still apply, just that those tactics and counters are significantly less effective.

Since I mainly play Grey Knights, I'll use them as an example. To kill Eldar, GKs have to get into combat. Eldar will outshoot you, every single time. Psycannons are a lot less impressive than most people seem to think. However, Eldar are very fast, which means you need fast units to keep up. That means Dreadknights.

Take max Dreadknights, Shunt straight into the Eldar lines, and hope you survive their shooting. Activate Force, and you'll kill Wraithknights easily, as the Wraithknight will only normally put one or two wounds on you, and you'll do a couple or so that all inflict Instant Death, killing the Knight. Even if they block Force, you take Daemonhammers for Concussive, so you'll hit first in the second round of combat, and you have solid odds of killing the WK. Then you just have to chase down the Wave Serpents.

That said, it isn't a fair fight. Everything has to go right for you to win that. If your opponent rolls a few 6's to ID your Dreadknights, you'd better hope you make your invulnerable saves, because once you lose a couple Dreadknights it's pretty much game over unless the Eldar player is incompetent. It's possible, but definitely not fair.


With new Eldar, it pretty much works exactly the same, except for a few minor things. Namely, before, you had decent odds of surviving a round of shooting. Now, though, when you run up with your Dreadknights, he jumps out his Wraithguard and hits you with a bunch of Str D. Game over, man. Game over. Str D wrecks Grey Knights. There is absolutely no recourse for you to survive getting shot with any significant amount of Str D. Fail an invuln or two? Dead Dreadknight. Opponent rolls a 6? Dead Dreadknight. It's not like you can hang back, because at range, as I mentioned earlier, Eldar will still just straight up shoot you off the table.

So your tactics and lists are pretty much the same, the only difference is that now you have to hope your opponent is incompetent, rolls poorly, and that your dice are on fire. If you don't get some combination thereof, you lose. And really if your Eldar opponent is rolling hot vs your GKs, odds are you're getting tabled no matter what you do. I've played that game before. It's not pretty.

There is no magic easy button GKs can press to counter the buffed Eldar. The figurative path didn't change, other than to get steeper.

Actually I was thinking of Broadsides as I thought they were Jet Pack units, my mistake. However, the Crisis Suites are Jet Pack infantry and can move at the same rate as the bikes, more importantly they can deep strike, (As opposed to turbo). Marker lights missile pods and fusion guns still apply. (I might be having a chat with the bloke that fielded the XV88's though. He was using them as Jet Infantry)

Broadsides are very, very static. Crisis Suits are mobile, but only have a fraction of the firepower of Broadsides. There's a huge difference between the two. The Eldar player can just sit outside the Broadside's range until they choose to engage. Trust me, I play Eldar as well. I couldn't care less about Broadsides. You avoid them until you're ready to deal with them, then you jump forward and shoot them off the table.

Deepstriking Crisis Suits, as I mentioned, have significantly less firepower. They can fit in lots of plasma (which Eldar don't care about as Str 6 shooting is terrible at hurting Wraithknights and Wave Serpents) and fusion guns (which is ok, but not great, due to the Serpent Shield and Jink and the Wraithknight's general toughness). Since you won't be shooting your Serpent Shield constantly anymore, fusion guns will bounce off of you. Suits with missile pods are very meh, they don't get a fraction of the shots per point as Broadsides and aren't scary in the way that plasma or fusion is. They can drop in and focus fire to kill a few units, but I've played enough games vs Tau with my Eldar against very good tournament players to know I can reliably win that shooting match. With the new buffs to Eldar, it only gets easier. I have more firepower and I'm more durable than I was before, the odds are just that much more in my favor. Just like with Grey Knights, the Tau player needs to try and do the same thing, it's just much harder for him to do so*.


*Ninja Tau is best Tau. Take a unit of Broadsides in a bunker with comms array, and a pair of Riptides. Nothing's killing all that T1. Reserve the rest of your army. T2, your whole army comes in thanks to the Comms array. Take like 9 Tetras, outflank them. They basically allow you to outflank/deepstrike exactly where you want without scattering. Fill up the rest of your list with Crisis Suits. Tetras throw out a ton of Markerlights, you get lots of powerful shooting that will basically always hit and ignore cover, and you can drop almost your whole army in exactly where you want it T2 with basically no risk. It's very powerful. The guy who kind of invented it won the ITC last year, he's a cool guy and a very good player. I've played against it twice, it's nasty. My Eldar tabled him T6, my Grey Knights pretty much got shot to pieces as soon as he came on the board.

Why? Two units with Las Cannon Missile launcher combo's will cause damage to a WK as he has to rely on a 5++ inv' to save.

Do you know when the last time I saw a tournament player who was actually trying to win play devestators? I actually don't know, I can't remember if I've ever seen a good tournament player run them. Ever. They're static, expensive, with mediocre firepower. That's not to say people don't run them, or even that tournament players don't run them. I've seen some very good players running Devestators for fun. They just don't run them when they're serious.

Let's say you play them against Eldar. A unit with 4 lascannons shoots at a Wraithknight. It gets a 5+ cover/invuln, then it gets FNP. After rolling to hit, rolling to wound, rolling saves, and rolling FNP, your unit does 0.79 wounds.

5 Devestators are about 140pts with lascannons. You get two per Wraithknight, but only 3 max. For your 3 units, the Eldar player gets a Wraithknights and about 5 jetbikes. Assuming you shoot first, you do 2.4 wounds to the Wraithknight. The Eldar player shoots back, and kills about one full unit of Devestators. You shoot him with your other two units, bringing it up to 4 wounds. He shoots another Dev squad to death. You shoot, bringing it up to 4.8 wounds, then he kills the last unit of devestators. Point for point, you lose that matchup. Try and shoot the jetbikes instead, well, you're static and he isn't, so he can jump them in and out of LOS, so even if you kill the WK, the jetbikes kill you.

There really isn't any magic to devastators. They're completely static. They're restricted to straight up gunfights. You can't move them, or you won't shoot, which means about the only tactical though you put into the unit is where you deploy them. They're not the answer, especially not when there are other things in the codex that is actually good against Wraithknights, namely grav weapons.




Now, grav kills Wraithknights pretty well, just like it always has. Drop pod Marines get to alpha strike, which is fairly rare and extremely important. If you don't alpha strike Eldar, you're probably screwed, which leaves a lot of armies out in the cold. Not everyone plays drop pod Marines. But you can drop in, grav the WKs to death, and hope to soak up the rest of the Eldar player's firepower.

He'll probably have some jetbikes, some Serpents filled with Wraithguard, maybe some Warp Spiders or miscellaneous. They'll open up on you, and do pretty massive damage. You'll just have to hope your next wave comes in T2 and does enough damage that you can win. That's exactly how SMs currently beat Eldar, and just like with Tau and GKs, that's how you can beat Eldar with the new book. The only difference is that it just got harder. You have to dedicate more firepower to killing the WKs, and he retaliates with even more firepower than before. SMs were much better off than GKs, but it's still an uphill battle that only got steeper.




The message is not that Eldar are unbeatable. This is a dice game. It's simply that Eldar were a powerful codex that did not need to get more powerful. Instead, they got significant buffs. You can still beat them, and since they play very similarly to how they played before, you can beat them with your same army. It's just that now you have to roll that much better, while your opponent has to roll that much worse, and you have to out play your opponent that much more.

[Venomlust]

I wish we could exalt or give rep, because that was a very good post.

[Erik Setzer]

That said, it isn't a fair fight. Everything has to go right for you to win that. If your opponent rolls a few 6's to ID your Dreadknights, you'd better hope you make your invulnerable saves, because once you lose a couple Dreadknights it's pretty much game over unless the Eldar player is incompetent. It's possible, but definitely not fair.

If the 6 you're referring to is with a D weapon, you don't get to roll an invulnerable save. While they "nerfed" D to give inv. saves on a 2-5 results (so you'll at least get them against scythes, for example), a 6 still gives absolutely zero save. Ditto for a 6 on a Stomp.

[Haighus]

At that point he was talking about the old Distort rule, he mentions new Eldar using D weapons in the next paragraph.

[Erik Setzer]

At that point he was talking about the old Distort rule, he mentions new Eldar using D weapons in the next paragraph.

Ah. It's hard to keep up. I thought it was a commentary on how useful Dreadknights are charging across the table at Wraithknights.

I'll just sit back and watch more of the discussion of pain on the battlefield.

[Defenestratus]

and basically every unit got significant buffs even when the unit was already very good (e.g. Warp Spiders).

I've said it a million times before and I guess I'll have to keep saying it.

The old Eldar book was terrible. It has clear winners and losers in each of the CAD slots. The internal balance was abysmal with transports that encouraged minmaxing troops choices just to get a damn tank.

I still find it hilarious that people claim that this is a terrible book because every unit in it is good. I figure that would be the hallmark of well-written and playtested codex.

(a.k.a. not a Phil freakin Kelly book)

[Charon]

People do not claim it is terrible because every unit is good but because every unit is superior to other codices.
And no. The internal balance is still terrible. It has clear winners and clear losers. You will figure that out when every other codex also gets a big power push.
You only consider the options as eual because it really doesn't matter what you pick at the moment as every other codex (except necrons and SM maybe) is strictly under that power level.
I had 6 games with my Eldar that weekend and I still try to get that dirty feeling off of me.

[40kGamer]

I've said it a million times before and I guess I'll have to keep saying it.

The old Eldar book was terrible. It has clear winners and losers in each of the CAD slots. The internal balance was abysmal with transports that encouraged minmaxing troops choices just to get a damn tank.

I still find it hilarious that people claim that this is a terrible book because every unit in it is good. I figure that would be the hallmark of well-written and playtested codex.

(a.k.a. not a Phil freakin Kelly book)

Well ~80% of the current units are equally good... which is a huge improvement over the last abysmally balanced book!

After playing around with the rules the only unit I truly dislike is the jetbikes. If the weapons were still 1 in 3 they would still be an excellent troops unit without the potential for massive abuse. 1:1 lets those who can only wrap their mind around playing a mathematically optimized list put the scatters and cannons on a platform that is much better than Vypers and War Walkers making the latter redundant. It's a shame that with so many other great choices in the book we're most likely going to see bike spam replace serpent spam as the new normal.

- - - Updated - - -

People do not claim it is terrible because every unit is good but because every unit is superior to other codices.
And no. The internal balance is still terrible. It has clear winners and clear losers. You will figure that out when every other codex also gets a big power push.
You only consider the options as eual because it really doesn't matter what you pick at the moment as every other codex (except necrons and SM maybe) is strictly under that power level.
I had 6 games with my Eldar that weekend and I still try to get that dirty feeling off of me.

Did you get the feeling you had one of these?

[Defenestratus]

People do not claim it is terrible because every unit is good but because every unit is superior to other codices.
And no. The internal balance is still terrible. It has clear winners and clear losers. You will figure that out when every other codex also gets a big power push.
You only consider the options as eual because it really doesn't matter what you pick at the moment as every other codex (except necrons and SM maybe) is strictly under that power level.
I had 6 games with my Eldar that weekend and I still try to get that dirty feeling off of me.

Funny,

I've played one game with my Eldar against BA, and one game with my BA against Eldar.

Both games I won and didn't feel dirty. Both were hard fought, exciting games.

[Da Gargoyle]

Aaah DarkLink, the beauty of the game is the variation in opinion. I read your post and we are not a million miles apart on most things. For instance, we both believe that the new codex does not make Eldar invincible. But we do differ on an effective means.

In regards to GK I bow to your overall experience, but I used to game against a bloke that used the opposite tactics to you. He had a set up that sniped at long range to goad me into attacking him. He also used Deep Strike with a couple of DK’s and a Dread’ in a Storm Raven and had a scary HQ with Psyker options. Not sure how he would deal with the new Dar load outs.

I think you nailed it with the “Ninja Tau”, except to say that XV8’s can take fusion guns, S8 AP1.

I do disagree entirely over the effectiveness of Devastator squads. As I said before, 4 hvy weapons guys and 4 additional troops, one of which would traditionally be the Sgt. Yes they are static, but the only way the Dar WK has a clear advantage is the capacity to get into combat. ML’s and LC’s are not mediocre and both force the Inv & FNP saves which are low percentage. In shooting the WK can only kill two marines unless he fires a template weapon rather than his D guns. Why? Because regardless of the number of wounds inflicted he can only get two hits and the D rule states that spare wounds are lost and cannot be reallocated to the other models in the unit. So with two Dev squads in a shooting contest with a WK they have a better than even chance over 3 turns. I costed the Dev squads at 202 points for 8 marines, 2 Las, 2 ML with Flakk.

By comparison, say two Land Raiders or other heavies, which have multiple heavy weapons would be toast in the WK shooting phase, possibly going out in one turn. Whereas the extra marines in the Dev squad are either ablative armour for the heavies or extra firepower against assaulting troops. And I built them that way to deal with other battlefield threats. For instance, jet bikes can’t get out of range of them because the JB heavy weapons have a 36” range and a max 12” move in the assault phase. A squad of 5 JB is just too big to hide from LOS. And Dar are one of the few armies still susceptible to moral tests after shooting. So kill 2 in a sqd of 5 and they could run, possibly off the board if they are trying to maintain maximum ranges for shooting.

Having said all that, I do believe that you guys do have a huge problem with Eldar now. I just put together a 1500 force to take on Imperial Knights and IG/AM. My force includes a Farseer and Warlock Conclave on bikes. I have chosen Telepathy for my powers and if I roll Invisibility and or Shrouded the other guy will be in trouble. I also have Serpents & Falcons & bike squads with a SC & Warlock. So I am not so sure the Dar are beatable in the hands of the good players, but that aint me.