6th Edition: What it means for the Eldar

Hello everybody.  So 6th had been out for a little while now.  I don't even have the book yet, but I've read/watched/listened to enough to get the general rules and big changes to the game.  What I've seen I believe gives Eldar some boosts I haven't heard talked about anywhere as of yet that I thought might be interesting to spread.  Here's just a few until I can get the book mid month:

The changes to vehicle damage I believe help the Eldar out.  Previously, getting enough weapons to penetrate armor was tough and expensive.  Now it's not so much an issue with what looks like a trend away from vehicles, and the massive amount of cheap mid-strength shooting Eldar can put out.  In 5th ed, glancing a vehicle to death was pretty tough and took quite a few hits.  Now though, with the hull points system, you only need to get 3 glances in most cases to wreck a vehicle.  Lists at 1750 I've made recently have 75 to 90 strength 6 shots.  Anything armor 12 or less would be incredibly easy to glance a few times, which in 5th would have annoyed someone but now would wreck face on all of your opponents vehicles.  The super cheap shuriken cannon and scatter laser are now excellent weapons, and a unit or two of fire dragons can hunt anything armor 13 or 14.  Not to mention a few units that can dish out tons of glances at once, I.E. wraithguard and assaulting swooping hawks.  The combo of less vehicles, easier to tackle vehicles, and the excellent anti-infantry fire and Eldar army can lay down will be neat to see unfold.

Conversely, Eldar vehicles aren't that worse off.  They might not be able to weather tons of glances, but with the combo of maneuverability, decent armor, and a free save that can be fortuned, Eldar might just have the best vehicles in the game again.  Holo fields did take a hit in its usefulness, as your vehicle has to take damage for it to matter.  It'll keep you from losing weapons or exploding, but gone are the days of holo fields making a falcon live forever.  They'll really only come into play a maximum of twice, which makes their value for the points debatable.

I heard a lot of grumping about the new psychic disciplines and mastery levels for farseers.  Eldar have never been the type for super killy powers, they manipulate the enemy and boon your own units.  Mastery level one allows one power a turn and spirit stones allow a second, or essentially mastery level two.  So really, nothing has changed for the Eldar psychically except access to more powers.  I see no reason to complain.  I'm not familiar with the new options, but I'm sure some of them are pretty cool and hey, options are options.
Also of note is the reduction of what psychic hoods do.  We are free to use powers that help out own units without interruption again, which is awesome.

Some other things like morale, reduced feel no pain to have to shoot through, and some enhancements to monstrous creatures and jump troops help cancel out things that used to be pretty annoying and breathe life into units people have been neglecting.

A few units I see coming back in enhanced roles because of the above:

wraithguard
wraithlords
warp spiders
swooping hawks
dark reapers
jet bike seer councils
striking scorpions

Don't get me wrong, some of those units were never really bad but the new edition (and possible new meta) makes them bounds better.

I hope some of this might be useful insight for someone, and I personally cannot wait to get the book and try these theories out.  Any other thoughts?  Are Eldar going to be kind of a surprise comeback kid?

Thanks.

A tournament!

Hey guys!  Or whoever reads this at all.  So recently I played in a local tourney at Your Hobby Place in Martinsburg, WV.  Great store!  Go see Dave there if you're ever in the area.

We had about 18 people show up, which is alright.  It was 1750 points, and 3 rounds.  Here's my quick re-cap of the event.
 
I played my Eldar, easily my favorite and go-to army.  My army consisted of the following:

HQ-

Farseer-Doom, Guide, Spirit Stone, Runes of Witnessing, Runes of Warding

Farseer-Doom, Guide, Spirit Stone, Runes of Witnessing

ELITES-

5 Fire Dragons

                Wave Serpent- Twin Linked Shuriken Cannons, Hull Mounted Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones

TROOPS-

3 Guardian Jetbikes-Shuriken Cannon

10 Dire Avengers-Exarch, Bladestorm, Dual Catapults

                Wave Serpent-Twin Linked Bright Lances, Spirit Stone

10 Dire Avengers-Exarch, Bladestorm, Dual Catapults

                Wave Serpent-Twin Linked Bright Lances, Spirit Stone

FAST ATTACK-

2 Vypers-2 Shuriken Cannons, 2 Scatter Lasers

HEAVY SUPPORT

Night Spinner-Spirit Stone

Fire Prism-Spirit Stone, Holo Fields, Hull Mounted Shuriken Cannon

Fire Prism-Spirit Stone, Holo Fields, Hull Mounted Shuriken Cannon

-1750

Game 1 was capture and control, pitched battle.  The board was arranged with a huge, stepped hill covering most of one quarter, a fairly large tower blocking LOS in the middle, some rocks and craters scattered around and a landing pad opposite the hill.  I played against a Tau player with a list something like this:

Commander with 3 Battle Suits and 4 Drones

Commander with 3 Battle Suits and 4 Drones

12 Fire Warriors in a Devilfish w/Smart Missiles


12 Fire Warriors in a Devilfish w/Smart Missiles


20 Kroot, 8ish of which were Hounds

3 Broadsides and 2 Shield Drones

Hammerhead

Hammerhead


I ended up going second, which was fine with me, and put everything out but the 3 bikes.  He held back the Kroot to outflank, and both groups of suits to drop in.  I set up fairly poorly opposite my opponent who, being Tau, wisely took the side with the huge hill to give his broadsides excellent sight.  He had LOS to several of my vehicles and turn one popped open the Dragons Wave Serpent and took off one Prism Cannon.  Could have been worse.  From there on out I rolled kinda crappy, not managing to do much of anything to his army.  The Dragons took over one of the Avengers rides, heading up the hill towards things they'd like to blow up leaving the Avengers to sit in cover on an objective.

He made the mistake of splitting his army up, leaving the Broadsides, one Hammerhead, and one group of Fire Warriors at the peak of the hill, and the rest in the field below.  This is what lost him the game, as I sent my whole army up the hill and fairly soundly beat up his forces there, despite my terrible rolling throughout.

The game ended up coming down to a tank shock into his objective contesting it, and him not making it to mine for an Eldar victory.  I walked away with 17 out of a possible 20 points (14 for a win, bonuses were earned throughout the tourney for things like having an HQ at the boards center or killing your opponents most pricey unit).  I have to say Tau in the right hands are still a dang scary army no matter what the internet says.

Game 2 was annihilation and spearhead.  Out table had a smattering of rocks around, a few of which were big enough to hide a vehicle.  I played against the guy who won the last tournament with his Chaos Marines. he had something like this:

Lord with lightning claw and combi melta

Great Deamon

5 Lesser Deamons

10 Marines on Foot

5 Havoks with 2 lascannons and a Rhino with havok launcher

5 Marines in a Rhino with a melta and fist

5 Marines in a Rhino with a plasma

3 Terminators with fists and a flamer

3 Terminators with combi meltas

3 Bikers with 2 meltas

3 Bikers with 2 meltas

1 Lonely, lonely obliterator

He went first and turbo boosted his bikes to either side to try and flank me, and managed to stun a prism.  I responded by dooming both bike units and guiding both avenger squads, moving 12, disembarking, and doing roughly 20 wounds to each bike unit.  2 Kill Points.  I then fired a Bright Lance into the lone Obliterator, vaporizing his face.  3 Kill Points.  Some fire from the dragons serpent and the vypers exploded a rhino in his center and killed 4 out of the 5 Marines (!!!!!) inside.  4 Kill Points.  With the only real threat to my vehicles being the 2 lascannons which I fairly quickly dispatched, turn 1 left me pretty much able to run the board and pick off what I wanted when I wanted to.  Things got ugly fast.

My opponent quickly became discouraged but battled on, his dice abandoning him slight more with each step.  I saw some of the most horrendous rolling ever from this poor man.  By the end of the game he had his lord, 2 marines, and the havok rhino left compared to my...most of my army.  Is was a sound thrashing.  Supreme kudos to my opponent for laughing off his dice and riding through the game as a gentleman.  Eldar victory, I believe I got 18 or 19 points out of 20.

Game 3 was a seize ground mission with dawn of war deployment-pretty good for my list.  I was faced up against Black Templars with:

the Champ

3 Groups of Crusaders in Rhinos

8 Assault Terminators in a Land Raider Crusader

2 Individual Tyhpoon Speeders

Vindicator with PotMS

Our table wasn't very balanced, with big rock formations on one side and little cover on the other.  My opponent went first, which I wanted.  He selected the side with the rocks and drove all his vehicles on.  On my turn one, I got lucky through the night fighting and wrecked the closest rhino that happened to be the one with the Champion in it.  These guys would spend the game slogging to an objective and getting Night Spinner'ed every turn, which slowed them and nearly wiped them out.  I got my Dragons in position to shoot up his Land Raider the next turn.

He proceeded to, as predicted, drive at me and shoot stuff.  One unit of Crusaders disembarked and attempted to fire a melta at one of my Wave Serpents.  I then proceeded to double-doomed-guided bladestorm them into mush.  The speeders were a nuisance, but they only got to shoot once.  It took me 3 turns of rolling damage results multiple times on both of them before they finally died.  The Dragons made their move aaaaaand...Imobilized and Weapon Destroyed his Land Raider.  5 Melta Guns....sheesh.  This left a gap between the nearest rock formation and the raider not quite wide enough for his Vindicator, effectively trapping it unless it spent 2 turns driving around things to maybe shoot once.  I proceeded to ignore it for the remainder of the game, and it never shot its cannon.  Unbelievably one  Dragon survived his return fire, and still even after assault with melta bombs and another meltagun shot, didn't manage to destroy the Land Raider.  Turns out this was ok though, as it was far enough away from the action.

As we aproached the late game I positioned my Prisms to make last turn tank shocks into his objectives and sat my scoring units on mine, juuuust out of Vindicator range.  With a solid 24 inch move, the game ended in and Eldar victory.  I believe I got 18 or 19 points again.

I ended up placing second overall which was great!  Got a little swag out of it.

The only thing about the event that rubbed me the wrong way a little was the inclusion of a new sportsmanship system that Dave was trying out.  Essentially each player picked the one person they played that they enjoyed the most, and gave them a point.  This gave everyone a sportsmanship score somewhere between 0 and 3.  I got a 0.  I consider myself a fairly nice and mild mannered guy who is knowledgeable about the rules.  I was a little surprised to get a fat 0... especially after the first game.  You see, with 1:15 on the clock we had one turn left to play.  This is not enough time for a turn.  And I was winning.  Buuut my opponent was adamant and wanted to enact his plan, so I said "sure but hurry".  So he moved his transport towards the objective and started shooting.  A moment later he says "oh shoot I forgot to disembark my troops that will need to run if they have any chance of scoring can I do that now?"  Against my own best interest, as I was still winning, I said "go ahead".  So he did.  15 minutes after we weren't supposed to be playing anymore, he didn't make it to the objective, I move 2 units and win the game in about 30 seconds.

Now maybe I'm biased, maybe I'm being silly.  But...he played a game against a more forgiving opponent than that?  Maybe he did; I didn't watch all his games or anything.  Or maybe he was just mad because he lost.  And then there's the second round against the Chaos player when we had plenty of time for a final turn which could have gotten me a few more bonus points and a tabling when I said we could end the game there (without calling it a concession).

Look don't get me wrong, I'm not being a nice guy to get prizes.  I had a great day at the event and I still placed.  But when the TO tells you that the deciding factor between first and second was the sportsmanship and the above mentioned is taken into account...something seems weird.  I'm all for encorporating sportsmanship somehow, but this system seems like it needs a little work.  Anyone agree?

So that's my recap.  Hope ya'll enjoyed the read.  And again, if you're ever in the area check out Your Hobby Place in Martinsburg WV.

I've got some projects in the pipe so hopefully I'll get those on here as well.  Workin' on a weird janky Eldar list.

Thanks!

Back from the dead! In a few ways...

Hey! I haven't posted on here in ages. What started as kind of a group blog fell off rather fast...but the wonders of the internet have kept this blog waiting for tender care to return to it.

I've decided to come back to it to discuss my current project, which is oddly fitting to resurrecting this blog. I'm going to toy with the ancient Black Templars codex and all it's 2 editions of the game oldness! There's a lot of neat bargains and shenanagains to be found in there. I'm going to have fun with it while it lasts! I've got a marine army in the colors and emblems of my fraternity (the wonderful Phi Mu Alpha) and have yet to find a codex that lets them play how I want...until now. I've looked to Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Vanilla, heck even the Chaos codex. But Templars lets me pretty much do what I want.

Here's the list I'm messing with now. I'm going for fun, a little different than what is common these days, and taking advantage of some of the hidden gems in the codex. I'll give a unit by unit breakdown after.

Emperor's Champion-Accept any challenge no matter the odds

Marshal-Power Weapon, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Iron Halo, Artificer Armor, Terminator Honors

10 Initiates, 10 Neophytes-Meltagun, Powerfist, Frag Grenades

5 Initiates-Lascannon, Plasmagun

5 Initiates-Lascannon, Plasmagun

5 Terminators-2 Assault Cannons, Tank Hunters

5 Terminators-2 Assault Cannons, Tank Hunters

Dreadnought-Venerable, Tank Hunters, Twin Linked Lascannon, Fist, Extra Armor

Predator Annihilator-Heavy Bolter Sponsons

Predator Annihilator-Heavy Bolter Sponsons

-1749

So yeah there she is. Let's break it down with my thoughts.

HQ

The Champion is required and that oath is the no brainer its always been. Re-rolling to hit in close combat across the board is a winner, and he's not bad himself with his 2+ 4++ and s6 Power Weapon attacks.

The Marshal is also really just there to fill a spot, but I feel I've kitted him out to be pretty effective. His 2+ and 4++ matches the Champion and he gets a pretty impressive 6 Power Weapon attacks on the charge.

These guys both will hang out with the big 20 man squad of troops. The power fist in there isn't great, getting only one attack, but it's cheap and re-rolls to hit so it could still be effective. I'm not sure yet weather to keep the meltagun or make it another power weapon...I guess we'll see after some playing. This unit is fairly straight forward though. Lots of bodies and attacks with two fairly nasty characters to help out.

Next up is the little las plas squads. Kickin' it old school. Templars are the only codex that can still do this without a full 10 man squad, and it's stupid cheap with each squad coming in at a mere 101 points. They'll be great for sitting on objectives and sniping away all game.

The things you can do with Terminators in this codex are pretty silly. I'm not even going to touch Assault Terminators with all that nonsense. 2 Assault Cannons is nasty enough, but with Tank Hunters they're effectively s7 against vehicles. Yuck! This unit will damage armor 14 on average at least once every time they fire, and will blow lesser armor to pieces. The Cyclone launchers might be better in some cases (4 s9 missile shots!) but I'm going with these for the utility. Not only can they blast open tanks, but this is some serious horde control potential. If they get into assault, hey they're Terminators...that re-roll to hit. And have s9 Power Fists against armor. Fun fun! I'll take 2!

The Dreadnought is mostly for fun as he's a bit pricey for what he does, but he's still pretty cool. He can snipe tanks while he advances with a Tank Hunters twin linked Lascannon (so really s10), effectively has s11 against armor in hand to hand, and will be fairly survivable due to venerable. He may get dropped down to a standard dread without the venerable and tank hunters, but for now he's kitted out.

The Predators are fairly standard. I stuck them in because I wanted some heavy armor to back up the army, and because I have the models. I'd like to use some Landspeeder Typhoons, which are only 70 points each in this codex, and a pair come in at only 5 more points than one of the Preds. But alas, I don't have the models. Maybe I'll switch one out eventually.

So that's the list. I'll play it with the Terminators flanking the Dread out front, the blob behind them to collect cover and counter charge, and the shooty units in cover shooting things. Genius, right? The army has a decent 5 Lascannons (3 twin linked) and some other nasty shooting that should be able to handle many things, and can kick a fair amount of butt in close combat. I hope to play it soon and will be sure to let all my readers know how that goes. I'll also hopefully get some pictures up too!

Thanks for reading, and please drop me a comment!

First few Nids and some small points thoughts.

Hey guys. I got my first few bugs painted up, namely 12 gaunts with devourers, 10 stock gaunts, and a warrior prime. I said first few... I know people might question the devourer gaunts. 10 points a gaunt, what are you thinking! I'm thinking these guys kick out 36 shots at 18 in. range. That's pretty good. In cover or used carefully, they can be fun and a nice fire support squad. I plan on adding some warriors (I know they might not be the best unit in the book but hey I like 'em), zoanthropes and converting up a tervigon soon, which should bring me up to a 750 ish points mark. It'll look something like this:

Warrior Prime- Bonesword, lashwhip, Adrenal Glands

10 Termagants

12 Termagants- Devourers

3 Warriors- 3 Bonesword Pairs, Adrenal Glands, 2 Deathspitters, Venom Cannon

Tervigon- Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, Catalyst

2 Zoanthropes



What do you think? Hopefully I'll get some pics up soon so you guys can see the progress.

I like comments!

-Bangley

Something stirs.....

Sitting at my desk the other day, I felt a sting in my ankle, only to look down and see a small six limbed critter scurrying back under my bed. Try as I might, I couldn't find he sucker! But the slight glimpse of him I got looked like a mix between an insect, a horse, and a tiny dinosaur. For the past few nights, I've been waking in cold sweats and hearing voices. I haven't been able to astropathically communicate for a while, and it's awfully cloudy outside.... and raining spores....

If you can't get it, I've caught the bug bug. After a while with the codex and a few test games, they are just too fun. The new book is probably one of the most balanced and well put together things GW has done in a while, with a few goofy things here and there. I've been toying with some lists and came up with something kind of gross that must be tried. I dub it- THE DOOM BOMB!

The Doom Bomb is essentially going to be the Doom of Mal-antai (or whatever) in a nifty snot pod with two Primes attached to him. With the Doom being a unit of 1 infantry model, and Primes being independent characters, I see no reason this wouldn't work. The way I'd run them, it comes out to exactly 300 points, leaving enough to form up a potent force to be the main army. The plan is, quite obviously, to drop the pod as close as possible to as many enemy troops (or transports full of troops if you swing that way on that argument) and begin to eat them through their own moral checks. I estimate that if I get a decent spot, I can get the Doom up to 10 wounds and S10 blasts in one turn. That's nasty. The Primes will give him CC support and take any wayward S8 shots that could double him out. While by no means super tough, this combo seems to me to be quite the thorn in the side, and I hope will really make people have to choose their targets. You can't just let the Doom and two Primes run around and do what they please, but you also have to watch out for the rest of the army, which should be substantial due to the fairly low cost of this mob.

What do you guys think of the bomb? I'll whip up a full list sometime soon. Any other 'Nid experiences? Hate 'em? Love 'em? Let's hear it.

-Bangley

Blood Angels on the horizon!

So there's this leaked codex beta. And I may have found it and playtested it. It was a 1750 games of new Blood Angles VS a Salamanders marine army. I played around with the Landers, Dante, and some Predators. I have to say, this army looks really fun! And not as over the top as some elements might make it look. The only big thing is the apearance of another fast skimmer tansport that might make Eldar players cry (myself included).

The Lander is fun, and despite it's ridiculous main gun isn't that crazy. Dante is a hoot as he used to be, with some fun new stuff and lacking some of his old stuff. I think one of the coolest, if not the biggest thing, is the new Baal Predator stuff. It has a Plasma Cannon option for the turret, and a zillion cool sponson choices. And you can make it a fast vehicle and relive the old mobile fire base that Predators used to be! My favorite setup so far is a Plasma turret, Multi Melta sponsons, and over charged engines. It comes out priced about like a Leman Russ Vanquisher base cost. I'll probably run two of these just because I think they're cool!

So has anyone else peeked at this leak? I suggest giving it a try, it's a hoot! We'll see when the book officially comes out, but from this experience I think my fledgling Space Sharks army might be using this book....


-Bangley, out.

Buuuuugs!

Hey guys, Bangley here. So JD and I managed to get a copy of the new 'Nids book a little early and took it for a test run. We played a little 1250 game; he ran the bugs and I ran my Eldar. My list was a pretty typical meched-up Eldar deal, with Eldrad, some Avengers in Serpents, Fire Dragons in a Falcon, and some Warp Spiders. JD tried out the Tervigon spam we've been reading about so much from BoLS running three of them, with some Hive Guard and Genestealers as backup.
I won't go into too much detail, but my take on the new Tyranids is as follows: play against them like you used to and you'll pretty much be fine. It's always been about target priority, and it still is. I want to talk about the overall changes and a few specific things we tried.
Let's get to the big changes first. For me, bugs used to be kind of a cake walk. They had no real ability to shoot down my tanks, so I could basically run circles and pick off what I wanted when I wanted. This new book makes a few big changes, namely more big bugs, more little bugs, and a few units that can actually shoot worth a damn. For example, in this game, I knew only the Hive Guard presented a real shooting threat to me so they were my first targets. I managed to take one unit down early and avoid the other for the most part. So I had one tank get immobilized, and one lose a gun. Everything else was fine. Being an objective mission, this was good. So while the new bugs can shoot some now, it's not over the top. It's not like you're suddenly facing a Guard gun line with claws. While there are more big bugs available, you can only fit so many in a list. I mean there's at least one for every force org slot, so Nid Zilla players will be happy. But it's not as bad as the rumors made it sound. As for more little bugs, c'mon. They're Termagants. I don't really care how many you have.
As far as specific units go, I both hate and love the Tervigon. I think spamming them is a mistake since you have a monster that really does nothing on its own, and makes little guys that do even less. BUT! It generates scoring units, and gives your piddly little Gants limitless numbers. Which is nice. I think one or two of these should be a staple, but any more is a mistake. Hive Guard are nice, and I think they're a good choice, but comparing them to Zoanthropes.... I'm not sure. I'm leaning towards a mixed bag, like one unit of each or two units of Guard and one of Thropes. Termagants.... are Termagants. Enough said.

So if you're dreading the clawed doom headed your way, just keep your head straight and play smart and you'll be fine. Anyone else had some experience with the new Tyranids? Let's hear it- I like comments...

-Bangley, out.