anti-eldar tactics

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

how do you deal with the mechanized eldar army as IG?

[Warmaster Stabwhiskers]

There's mechanized eldar???

[dethklok]

you mean wave serpent heavy. hmm well i guess auto cannons should do it because you cant get crtical hits on them anyway. and plenty of grenade launchers would help as well. and some flamers. dont go very tank heavy at all unless you want to see what a bright lance does. infantry infantry infantry will win the battle for you. remember the vehicals are weak but fast so just get them ina firing lane useing decoys and such.

Cheers Dethklok

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

my buddy uses serpents and falcons and loves to fly his falcons up to the clusters of trees where I'm hiding (move 36") then I can't kill his falcon (glances only, 2 dice pick the lowest on the glance chart, immobilized just makes it land - I literally need double 6s when I glance to kill his serpent, yeah right) then dump out his seer council with the psychic flame template weapons and make me pack a whole platoon up in one volley.

once he finds a mass of troops that will take a while to kill, he goes and tank shocks 36" across my army with all his speeders making me take at least a half dozen Ld checks every round or flee the board edge. and why would I death or glory vs a falcon?

I typically get one round of shooting then everything in his army is on me in assault. (he uses jetbikes for troops)

[majorjav]

My dear Turtle, what you say is rather annoying!!
How can we deal with these very fast xenos??? Like Psycho said before, use autocanons and missile launchers.
The problem is that he is very, very fast and thus very difficult to counter...Maybe some hidden sentinels could do some job here...or become a drop troop company with some improved comms and valkyries to be fastest than he is....
well, what do you think??

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

I just made a new autocannon so that should help a bit. I went against him in a 1500pt battle yesterday, and I killed 2 of his 4 skimmers and a little over half his infantry, it was a pretty bloody battle but in the end, I had nothing left. he was pretty amazed I did so much damage though so I wasn't too sad about it

I really actually kinda like MLs for the AT thing, my plasma and krak grenades (from the grenade launchers) were doing a whole lotta nothing till he started doing stupid 36" tank shocks across my back board edge at which point a full auto plasma gun into the back of one of his wave serpents finally paid off.

[Deleted]

What u must do is pretty simple:
a)use 2-3 meltagunning squads with infiltrate, like stormies and spec weapon squads/light infantry
b)use 10-12 long-range anti-tank weapons and place them across the board
U must do both for the plan to work.
Then u say this:hey mate, what if i play first? Your vehicles haven't moved yet, so I CAN PENETRATE (no 7''+ skimmer move done yet right?lol), and I have 4-9 meltaguns to move-shoot at u plus some of my spread ant-tank will have line of sight. OH, and have I mentioned it yet?NO GLANCE ONLY RULE SINCE U HAVENT MOVED YET, LOOL!!!Say good-bye to most of your army first turn!
So u play first?90%your win. I play first? as i said, 100% win. so overall 55% chance of me winning mate.

One can easilly do this at 1500 points:
In my list I have 4 rocket launchers, 4 lascannons, 2 Vehicle-mounted lascannons, a deep-striking stormies squad I can change to infiltrating points-wise, and well vs. that kind of eldar i can also drop 20 conscripts for another stormies squad. The list is posted here but it is not so anti-eldar, u could devise an evenbetteranti-eldar list using this tactic.

[Deleted]

When I play Eldar i try to make an army with multiple "headache for your opponent" units.
Like 1 Fire Prism, 1 Wraithlord, 2 Vypers w brightlance, 1 Avatar, 1 waveserpent w Firedragons, 1 dark reaper squad and so on. Try to keep the army versatile and make my opponent having to decide what of these upper choices to waste ammo on, if one dies so what I still have a army with the teeth left to bite his ass.

I have never played Eldar with my IG army but i have slaughtered many IG armies, usually the IG armour is the least worry. And regular IG infantry are usually killed of by my 5 dire avenger squads made fearless by the Avatar prescence. How weird as it may sound I think that vehicles arn't needed against eldar, just massed firepower from infantry with many specialists like ratlings, grenadiers/stormtroopers, hardened veterans and such. By using cover and smart deployment with infiltrating infantry catching the eldar advance in a crossfire should to the trick , just beware of infiltrating to close to the eldar line since 90% of their troops are assault firing and fleet of footing soldiers!

You cant really rely on going first to win and it must be a thoughtless Eldar player who deploys all his skimmers in plain sight and within range. When choosing heavy weapons to counter Eldar dont waste pts on lascannons and the likes since you get fewer shots and wave serpents have a force field that degrades any S8+ impacts on fron/side armour to S8. Then its better to have MANY heavy bolters (AP4 like most eldar armour save) or Autocannons S7, since eldar "armour" only have 12 at most you have a fair chance of shooting them down but you also have a higher possibility to his some annoying hecker with the AP2 shot.

[Deleted]

anatoli, your advice would be great against a normal eldar force, but not the specific one. I have faced this kind of army before. Imagine an army that once it moves, you cannot shoot down its vehicles(you are not allowed to penetrate, only glance) and the army actually DOES NOT USE ANY INFANTRY, abusing the fact that the new holo-field rule is really unfair and unbalanced in a fast skimmer, making falcons overpowered. SERIOUSLY needs errata (glance or not, only 1 per 36 hits can destroy them and thats only if u constantly hit lol)So the guy never, ever gets his troops out of the falcons knowing you can't shoot them down. but if you infiltrate some melta teams too close to them, spread your anti-tank too thin so at least some will have Line of Sight, you basically force him to a stalemate: if u play first, you win, if he plays first, he wins(he would win anyway with other tactics since I'm telling u this is glance-only-holo-field is an UNBEATABLE(no one is unbeatable?well, this is) Eldar combo, that seriously, seriously needs errata.

[Deleted]

Well if he uses a lot of waveserpents and falcons I agree that would be tough, though he wont have to many scoring units if you play missions. I dont think the rules are unfair, the skimmers have paper thin armour and they need something to keep them flying. Plus, all skimmers beside Fire Prism have BS3.

If he uses vypers they are open topped and vulnerable to blast taking 2 hits for every template weapon.

I only have one wave serpent and one falcon and keep them as low cost as possible and spend points on a good backbone of troops/elites.

But just concentrate your fire on one skimmer at a time or two / turn. If you get one imobilized and it makes a forced landing its screwed in the next turn. Just focus on shooting them down, you can still get armament destroyed doing glancing hits, and then its quite useless to fly around with something that cannont score/shoot. I cant really see how he can pull it off without infantry to be honest but if you say it works i guess thats annoying for any non eldar player. Maybe you should switch army to necrons that is an army an Eldar player dont want to face hehe (i know for sure).

Every army is beatable if your army is custom made to face your opponents army. If you face his "armoured fist eldar" every time then you should learn how to exploit his weaknes after some games. But I guess the general tip is infiltrating units and Special/heavy weapons to the maximum limit in each squad - focus on 1-2 skimmers per turn and you should win.

[Deleted]

What i did to a friend and well i guess can be done here is when i deepstriked my grey knights #2 squads# they fired their flamers into the rear armour of two tau hammerheads. can you say boom.

[Deleted]

Should I take carapace against elder? I don't think you get a save otherwse, and a save is always nice.

[Deleted]

I play both Eldar and IG, carapace armour is a must have. Because a full ten man dire avenger squad can get 23 shots with bladestorm. Also most other standard weapons like scatter lazers and shruiken weapons can all penetrate Guards armour save. Best buy carapace, its highly usefull.

[Deleted]

I second that advise.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

isn't a 10 elf dire avenger squads bladestorm an assault 30 volley? which gets me to the whole mechanized sledge hammer point - imagine the effectiveness of zipping in 36" with 2 falcons and 2 serpents, heck lets even say I down a serpent, and it's the scorpions with a farseer even. the next turn, the eldar player dismounts with a farseer council who are all armed with the psychic flamer template powers that are able to instakill and negate armor saves from even carapace armor, they move and clear a whole terrain feature in one combined shot. oh darn, no one left to assault. then the dire avengers jump out of a serpent, move, bladestorm for an assault 30 volley and proceed to charge if there's anything left alive. serpent #2 is a bunch of scorpions climbing out of the wreckage cuz I got lucky, but so far I've cleared a whole terrain feature, and wiped a complete squad with my dire avengers. then out pops our friendly neighborhood harlequin troop from falcon #2 that proceed to move, fleet (ignoring terrain) and charge in to either a) back up the dire avengers and ensure wipage, or b ) take out anything left posing a threat to the farseer council. all this doesn't sound like too much but the thing is that with the mech eldar mobility, I can hit the weakest point in your lines and completely wipe an entire firebase in one shot. as guard we rely on terrain and don't leave our guys out in the open (because if we do, then those 3 surviving skimmers now just tank shocked every squad in the open along our battle line for 36" on down the line - enjoy 3x leaderships for any squad using a hill or non-area terrain as cover). next turn arrives and the skimmers tank shock back (3 more leadership tests per squad) and pick up all the eldar who've vaporized a whole firebase (and typically more). then they rinse and repeat till you're just hosed. it's sad.

at any rate, the light infantry idea really sounds good, but I'm afraid I'm fairly inflexible about my doctrine choices, though my eldar friend likes playing smaller games (1500ish) so I could probably make a list using custom doctrines to incorporate light infantry into things - I just don't like tailoring my list to beat a specific opponent, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do eh?

[majorjav]

I understand that fighting a mech eldar army is painfull...What can we do??
Maybe take some chimeras and ST in it as troops choice. Hide sents in woods and every cover you have and then use their long range (autocanon) to shoot these damn skimmers down...Maybe a little mech IG army can do a good job: Grenadiers in chimeras as troops, HQ in a chimera and lots of sents (12??)....
Just a thought...Tell me what you think.
Cheers

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

the most deadly thing for a mech eldar army, suprisingly, according to my mech eldar playing friend, is the light infantry doctrine. when a guard army infiltrates high strength weapons into a forward position, the eldar either have to a) assault the forward positions or b ) take rear shots as they fly by and assault the main line, which means losing far more skimmers to nasty rear shots vs weak armor.

if the eldar hop out to deal with the advanced forces, then typically our main line gets a turn to shoot at them before they remount (if things go well, which if they're doing this vs multiple advanced units), chances are good that we'll get to shoot up some of their troops. typically this is their more elite troops that end up getting shot up because they fly up turn 1, dismount and assault turn 2 vs the advanced forces then WE GO then turn 3 they remount and advance on our main lines. the whole 'WE GO' part is where they die. the whole gun line unloads in their faces and they go splat. when they arrive at our main lines the limited quantity of eldar troops has already been diminished and is more handle-able. that's the theory at least.

[Deleted]

tsoalr.com/view.php?date=2007-07-18

Yeah the unkillable eldar vehicle thing needs to be fixed.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

I discovered how to, with marines at least, totally ruin a mech eldar players day. when he star engines his skimmers in so he can dismount/move/shoot/assault next turn (which we all know works fantastically cuz of how hard to kill eldar skimmers are), just park a landspeeder behind his prime melee units falcon/serpent. in his turn he'll have to move to get room to dismount which means, even if he just pivots, then no move/assault for his best melee squad. got multiple speeders? park em behind multiple serpent/falcons! it's awesome to watch a mech eldar player try to come to terms with the fact that his melee units are now forced to either abandon the assault their transports have committed to taking shots to get them into or dismount and take a round of being shot up - something eldar reallyREALLY don't do well with.

oh man this is the awesomest use of a 50pt landspeeder ever!