Wednesday 12 June 2013

Playing actual games...

So i've actually managed to squeeze in 3 games in a week with the new eldar book. I thought i'd follow up my original post with some fresh thoughts after seeing the units in action on the table.




Played against Toms space wolves on Thursday, took a fairly hefty drubbing (any game where youre having to use kabalite warriors to assault marines in cover must be going bad. needless to say, they got munted) but learned a few things (and confirmed a fear or two)

Wraithblades are indeed slow and have no delivery system, and when (and if) they make it to combat, they do have a nasty habit of sticking around, but they arent pulling up any trees in terms of damage output. Thats a lot of points for a tarpit, quickly decided the gun guard are going to be the sensible choice.
Wraithlords are tough, but they dont like long fang squads, so dont put them in the open in front of one, even if you were attempting an 8" charge on a land raider full of dudes.
I quickly poo-pooed the list i posted up last time as its just got too many similar things, the wraith blades, wraith guard and grotesques are all tough foot slogging dudes trying to trudge across the table to get within threat range. It needed more variety.

Didnt stop me trying it again with a slight tweak against Will and his khorne daemons however.
I made swapped the primary detachments around so Eldar were the main force, had to drop the ravager and took a farseer as warlord instead.
Again, lost pretty heavily, but i did manage to kill the bloodhthirster and hold out till the end, which at one point didnt look possible. Things could have been very different if that damn chariot hadnt invun saved around 4 penetrating hits and numerous glances.
The wraithblades did their thing again, held up a unit for quite a while before eventually croaking.
Actually managed to get a volley of fire off of the wraithguard this time and it was devastating, ripped the big unit of hounds to shreds.
Also, i've never been much of a fan of straight up damage dealing psychic powers, but the farseer rolled up eldritch storm and proceeded to kill what must have been about 8 or 9 blood letters over the course of 2 turns, very nice.

Tweaked the list heavily for game 3, farseer and spirit seer with 6 wraithguard on foot, 6 d-scythe guard in a wave serpent, wraithlord, archon and 2 squads of warriors in raiders and a ravager. Looks quite small but it packs a punch.
Played against ants orks and took a pretty comfortable win, he made a major error during set up, id split my forces to try and make him spread out so i can use my mobile elements against him, and i think he assumed his kans and deff dredd contingent would be a good counter for my wraith units. They were not.
Rolled up some pretty nifty powers, the spirit seer got the +1 to his units saving throw power. which was pretty immense, ant really struggled to down the wraithguard, even with full vollies from lootas.
The farseer got doom, guide and misfortune, very tricksy, though i guess misfortune not so much against an army with barely any saves.
The wave serpent was excellent, i kitted it out with a twin scatter laser and it spent the whole game scoring hits with the lasers tracer fire then blasting its twin linked serpent shield at stuff. The serpent alone accounted for probably 80% of the lootas, and it got to offload the d-scythe guard where they could murder a whole squad of boys in cover in one volley before walking on to the objective they were holding the following turn.
I'll definitely be looking to squeeze in a second one.
And the wraithlord finally had a good game, ants army seems to excel at weight of fire shooting but doesnt have much low AP stuff other than in combat which gave the T8 lord license to roam around picking his battles. The realisation he was needing fives to hit then fives to wound it even with his lootas was quite a shock.

Im still liking the book, its fun to play with and im enjoying brewing. Heres the list ive settled on to test out next:

Spirit seer, singing spear.

6 Wraith guard with d-scythes in a serpent with twin scatter lasers and holo field

5 normal wraith guard in an identical serpent

Fire prism with holo field

Wraith lord with bright lances

archon with a blaster

9 warriors with a blaster in a splinter rack/night shield raider

10 warriors with a splinter cannon in an identical raider


5 comments:

  1. Looks nice as there isn't a unit in the game that you can't take out in quick order. So long as you don't have an opponent who can sink your Serpents in the first term you should be pretty good to carve a chunk out of most armies. I look forward to playing against it.

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    1. Might struggle against flyers, but hopefully I can ignore them. Or if needs be the wave serpents can have a pop.

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    2. I call that the 'Jones approach' to flyers! I think that they are slowly becoming a more balanced part of the game as the designers consider more specific uses for them rather than the 'kill everything' approach to the chaos flyer. My Nurgle army only has one Grinder to deal with flyers and he always dies by turn 2 (though I haven't tried him out with the new rules yet as he isn't finished).

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    3. Yeah, all of the since dark angels seem like solid options rather than must haves. Which is what everything should be. Maybe they'll un-FAQ the hell drake one day and make that less ridiculous.

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    4. Doubt it as it's one of the only reasons people have flocked to buy it. I am thinking of creating one which is a giant plague drone-esque model but that is a long way off (how would I make a mecha-fly?).

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