Anti-eldar tactica

[Deleted]

I need some help fighting eldars. Firstly, how shall I react to 60" range fire prisms with damn holo fields, since my main anti tank weaponry - lascannons - are 48" range only. I tried basilisk and Leman Russ ordnance fire, but they scatter badly. Suicide drop stormtroopers are not in my style, though.
Secondly, how can I handle falcon unloading striking scorpion death right into my ranks? Massed fire does not seem to help, since most of the time I am being attacked by wave serpents full of whatever on my flanks(though I manage to destroy the serpents.)
My army list can be found here - commissar.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=armylist&action=display&thread=1178116272

[skizoman333]

try tooling up ur grenadier sqauds with the chimeras with meltaguns, and charging towards the flacon/waveserpant. your pretty much garenteed a penetrating hit within 6", and for the occupants, prepare a warm welcom with lots of anti troop weapons when theyre out in the open.

seeing as how your always being assualted, spread out ur troops so the skinnies reli have to walk through hell to get to the next squad. theyre only low T, so taking squads of banshees and scorpians isnt too hard wen u got 20 rapid firing lasguns.

[Deleted]

That holofield nullifies the 2d6 penetration effect of the melta weapons, and since wave serpents and falcons are both fast scimmers I find it really imposible to prevent them from deploying with standard anti-tank weapons.

[knight (M.I.A)]

The game is called taking moving and taking cover. Move your lascannons along with the rest of your army into good cover in the middle of the field and he won't be able to run away forever. You have to force him to come to you. Sitting in the back leads you only to dying and that not even in glory. so get movin' and force them to accept your battle conditions. If you're only standing still your enemies will dictate you the rules.

(Yes I'm a very offensive commander and I prefer moving around a lot)

[Deleted]

Thats a good tactic Knight.You should always make your oponent play by your rules if you can.General Patton said, and i'm paraphrasing here but it went something like this, " a static army is a dead army".One of the reasons the Maginout( sp) the french put up before WW II didn't work and the blitz did.Old tactics still work.

[Deleted]

One against eldar skimmers the lascannon doesnt do much. The best anti tank against eldar is the autocannon. The strength of the lascannon is enough to destroy any of their armor and the multiple shots help with guards balistic skill. Like knight said deploy these in the middle of the field. With the standard board size being 6' by 4' the only way for him to hide these tanks is behind size 3 terrain.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

oh man, looks like you're battling mech eldar. this is the mother of all worlds of hurt for the IG in my experience.

sounds like you've already experienced the falcon and fire prism of death (holofields, immobilized doesn't destroy, etc). the falcon that scares me most is the one with the seer council in it where every elf in the boat has a psychic flamer of death that kills on 2+ and ignores cover (it's ap4 too if I remember correct). a falcon load of those can just clear an entire terrain feature that you're using as a firebase.

in all honesty, I recommend asking if his falcons/fire prisms have holofields. if he says no for any of them, then kill it dead. if he says yes to all, then ignore them permanently. I know this is a painful thing to say, but the guard is one of the few armies that can bleed and survive.

vs. mech eldar, his star engines allow him to move forward 36" in one turn, so expect his entire force of falcons and wave serpents infront of you in one shot.

in preparation for this, to best deal with the fire prisms, try and actually hide critical units behind terrain - don't worry about shooting with them. if they survive the first few rounds then you should have some interesting lines of fire which typically find all the eldar skimmers you want to shoot running rampant in your lines, tank shocking 36" across your table edge every turn. it's easy to get shots on them at this point (make absolutely sure you've got platoon command squads or better near all your heavy weapon squads, or else they won't be able to take the tank shocking. ideally you want your company standard in a strong heavy weapon concentration with a heroic senior officer or equivalent for the rerollable Ld9 - this firebase will be the focus of the eldar tank shock effort and you'll need to be able to withstand the continual Ld checks).

as for dealing with the ground assault, this is the way I always experience it, and this is what I do to try and counter it. first turn, eldar skimmers jump 36" at me. I shoot at them and typically maybe immobilize one which lands or something non-critical like that. turn 2, eldar dismounts, move shoots or fleet of foots (dire avengers swordwind or whatever their 3 shot business is) and then they assault. they wipe whatever they hit and the unit is either killed stone cold dead or is swept. that is their attack. it's your job to have a ton of counterattack units stationed nearby. if you have a conscript platoon, then it's big enough to jump in there and tie the enemy up for long enough that you can close in with a couple more units and pile them right in too. yes, kill them in hand to hand. it's the only way. it's gruesome and messy, but it has to occur like this. why? because if you don't keep them pinned down, they'll mount back up and rinse and repeat on you. they have enough mobility to strike, and turn around and redeploy all the way across the battlefield and hit a unit on the other side of the table like a turn or two later if you don't force them to stay. conscripts are gold.

problem units: scorpions with a fortuning seer. these guys are rediculous, once they get on the ground they go god-mode. the only way to stop them is to negate their save which involves finding a way to hit them with a frickin tank round or something. side note: keep your tanks backs against the board edge - give the eldar NO rear shots on your armor. this will be good on two levels: first, no rear shots, and second, you'll have an infantry buffer keeping enemy infantry from detonating it in melee assault type attacks. having an infantry screen also can be a deterrant to the nasty falcon full of fire dragons who're just looking for a spot to fly in and dismount within fusion gun range.

hope this helps - so far I'm like 1 win, 3,288 losses vs. eldar the win was the first game when I hit him with 100% infantry heh. he wasn't expecting that but it was still a tooth and nail bloodbath.

[Deleted]

best way to deal with fire prisms: give all your vehicles seeker-killers and get the first turn with that special guy. then let loose. you'll kill one or two with 5 (personal exp) also, basilisks help

xenofighters is good too, but you'd need to specialize a squad or platoon for just that.

good news on that front: after the new eldar codex is out, many don't know what to do, rules aren't as forgiving (my friend played really gay with eldar)

[shockwave]

Versus Wave Serpents since they an't have holo-fields Auto-cannon them to destruction. However Versus holo-fielded Falcons and Fire Prisms, shoot at them till you've stopped them shooting next turn, then ignore them.

The final "upgrade" to scorpions in a falcon is Harliquins in a falcon. They will move into your deployment in one move, clear an area of your troops big enough so that they can deploy them safely next turn. If this happens then get ONE squad to move back up into a blocking position. You'll lose this squad but it will keep the harliquins in there transport for another turn. If he deploys them, then you all know what rapid firing las guns can do right? just try to be within 102 or less to negate the Veil of tears.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

I don't have much time to post so I didn't read the thread - here's your best chance:

infiltrate using light infantry, put enough troops forward-deployed so that the eldar can't bypass them and fly straight for your main line and risk rear shots into his skimmers from the forward deployed units.

when he stops to deal with the infiltrated units, GUN THE ELDAR TROOPS DOWN. this is basically your only hope - thin those numbers of assault troops that your main force will be hit with before they fully arrive.

ignore falcons and prisms with holofields competely (yes this is painful, but play guard long enough and you'll get used to fighting on while being shelled continually). they are completely unkillable (sad but true, unless you're good at hitting on 4+, glancing on 5+, then rolling boxcars on the glancing dice, just like that - it looks alot easier on paper than it is; I recommend grabbing your dice and trying to do it for a half hour or so ).

hope it helps!

(if I stated this above then forgive me; like I said I don't have much time to post so couldn't read the thread again)

[Deleted]

Great Advice guys. I fight Eldar regularly, my opponents seem to love deploying Swooping Hawks and Warp Spiders. Warp Spiders are just too jammy - S6 gun, 3+ save and 18" move with FoF. Grrrr - how do I kill 'em dead?

[Deleted]

I find a brick to the head works . Seriously, Mobility. Get a few fast movers (chims, Sentinels) and box in those spiders. Keep troops in cover while the armor roves around and throws a ton of firepower on them. The armor saves dont last long when the full power of the guard armor rains down on them...aka, get more str5+ shots on them.

Just my two bits.

[Deleted]

Good advice Khaki, would hellhounds be the ideal hound to their hare?

[Deleted]

Exactly. Hellhounds are worth their wight in gold..or failing that, in points. Give them more than one target to deal with as well.

[Deleted]

When you say "more than one target" do you mean 2-3 Hellhounds, or give the Hellhounds multiple targets? I think you probably mean the prior.

[Deleted]

Ooops. Right Give the Eldar player more than one target to shoot at. At most field two hellhounds (i field one at any given time) and support it with chimeras, sentienls, rpaid mobs of troops You get the idea.