#Victor should have been able to kill them SO easily but they sort of nerfed him for that

[eldradii]

February Tournament

So for this tournament I played the above army. It was a while ago, but I think I should go through it properly in the light of all the recent changes, it helps me understand my games. 

The list was a bit weird, somewhat due to inexperience. Ulthwe Battalion with Eldrad, Warlock, 20 Guardians with a single platform, 10 guardians, 5 avengers, 8 reapers (tempest launcher) and triple serpents with triple cannons. Then a Black Heart battalion with 2 archons, 3x5 warriors, 2 double cannon venoms, two razorwings. Finally an aux support 6 strong reaver squad with cult of red grief so they can advance and charge.

My thinking with the bikes is to be able to tie up anything on turn one with their amazing speed. I justified it as worth a command point because you’d spend a couple CPs to get to advance and charge with Eldar bikes anyway. 

I will try keep my thoughts under headings, first is Takeaways, which means what I think about it going forward and to adapt with; second is Updates - which means how I think about this game with the context of the new FaQ and Ynnari rules. 

Game 1

I played game 1 against Death guard with Mortarian, some terminators, cultists, some plague marines and a bunch of the flying flamer drones. 

I believe this was about midgame. I started off killing what I could, he killed a razorwing. To be honest I don’t remember the details of this game very much. I didn’t really understand what Mortarian did and he sniped my warlock and a couple other things. I believe he killed a plane as well. However midgame (so turn 2) I got to really turn it around as you can sort of see in this picture.

Fired millions of shuriken catapults with doom, planes, reapers, extra dire avengers and the guardians, to shoot him down. It came down to the last FNP roll that he tried to reroll and I just had to vect it. The rest of the game was a bunch of tying up and my usual recon, but finding all these daemon engines hard to shift in addition to the very tough infantry. We ended up pressed for time and finished on a 16-16 tie. 

Take aways: Guardians will kill or really help kill anything with the support of psychic and strategems, and wave serpents were very tough. Mortarian has a line attack. 

Updates: Doom not working cross faction means the razorwings legit take a hit, as they’re hard to keep in Writ of the Living Muse range as well. 

Game 2

Game 2 I played against a ton of big tyranids including a big blob of genestealers and the broodlord. I deployed to one corner with the bulk of my force, and so he deployed mostly opposite. My bikes did a great job getting into his hive guard and stopping them from shooting, plus forcing stuff to deal with them. I move blocked him with the flyers (sacrificing both in the process as they had to fly off the board once he blocked them) and it gained me an extra turn of shooting them before they hit my lines. After that I fed him venoms as my frontline so he couldn’t get into the dark reapers who at this point were comfortably picking off one every turn. A couple fortunate 6 up feel no pains gave me some units that survived; Then it came down to heroes to clean up as is a common trend for me!

Here is the whole gang charging into the swarmlord, only just killing him. I think the guy allocated his fight in death attacks to Eldrad who of course lived just fine. Later he had to deal with the wave serpent in the middle. The guardians clear out genestealers and do a screen job, tying up a couple beasts in combat when they charged in. By the time old one eye made it in I had killed the swarmlord so the characters went in for a second fight:

It’s quite interesting that the venoms survived just fine most of the game. I also believe my reapers stayed alive, but they became less relevant as the end game was just running around trying to clean up his forces to table him. I ended up using the guardian bomb to hide on the other side of the battlefield. It’s a bit after the fact but I do remember the game fondly. Some cool moments with characters. I believe this is when I fell in love with Eldrad!

I ended the game as a slight victor 20 points to 17. I think we got 4 turns in, just not sure why it was so close now I describe it, but I believe we matched kills and holds a lot probably so I was looking at 12 points for my secondaries and then 2 for each turn. 

Take aways: Eldrad is a beast! Really liked him. Archons did some good work too. Looking back, my good friend has pointed out to me that Wyches would suit my playstyle a lot more than warriors because I am often quite aggressive, and wyches are often a little more resilient than warriors (they’re all pretty flimsy outside of venoms) but have a ton more utility. Flyers move blocking was critical - if they’d have been craftworld flyers they would not have been sacrificed. It was good to tie up the hive guard with the bikes. If I had had more reapers I think this game would have been even easier. I don’t take that much away from this game because I anticipate that most tyranid lists like this (even those) would have flying hive tyrants and more genestealers. Guardian bomb is very versatile.

Updates: With the flyer block nerf this kind of tactic would be hard. Furthermore, not being able to use Doom + Poison is a hit. Ynnari guardian bomb in addition to the other bomb is quite interesting as this game I mainly used them to secure a corner of the battlefield by clearing out a cheap unit that was holding an objective, then keeping them there to score me my points. Having two would be nice.

Game 3

This was a game agains the usual Guard + Castellan list. I believe I just ignored the castellan all game. Instead I targeted the Hellhounds and tried to clear out as much infantry as possible. My planes flew around picking off squads and his castellan really struggled to have a major impact. I believe my guardian bomb deep struck on the flank of his deployment closest to the camera in the above picture. I don’t remember losing any critical units, and I was able to easily tie up the carpark of wyverns and basalisks just with the reavers and then seal the tie up with venoms. 

It’s actually quite nice to see how easily this matchup went. Castellan is untouched but really struggles to efficiently deal with a bunch of 6 up feel no pain -1/-2 to hit models. He was splitting fire and it was going poorly which is what happens sometimes with the -1 or -2 with invulnerable saves. 

He was just on the back foot and my reapers were completely safe. The game ended with an 18 points to 13 win for me. A low point win mainly because the game finished around turn 3 or 4 I believe. I still believe I would have won with turn 5 too, but it would have been closer. 

Take aways: No point going after Castellans really, with this army he has to devote a lot from it just to kill a venom or something, can’t really shoot at two things reliably. Meanwhile you just shred the infantry, fly around and score the easy points. 

Updates: Honestly in this matchup since you’re not shooting the castellan the loss of Doom isn’t that big of a deal. I don’t think I got in range to jinx the castellan anyway either. However now the Castellan is at best a 5++ versus jinx (since they cannot rotate to counter the jinx)

So going into day 2 I am coming 6th which is pretty cool! I am exhausted. I find out that I am playing against pure knights + loyal 32. So Castellan, Crusader, two gallants, a loyal 32 with some mortar teams.

Game 4

This photo about sums it up; I did my job and killed as much infantry as I could. My opponent blew my mind by just staying out of doom range and staying in his corner all game. I’ve had it pointed out to me since that if he doesn’t do that I pick off a knight every turn, which also blows my mind, because I was trying potshots with the reapers into non-debuffed knights and barely getting anything done. I did the right thing with feeding gallants venoms and kabalites while scoring as much as I could. I made a mistake trying to hide my reapers with their fire and fade from the various knights and realise on this table there wasn’t really anything I could do to keep them out of LOS. So I just cast protect on them and then lightning fast reactions to try keep them alive. I got caught out by a couple rules involving charging people behind walls with knights, so lost Eldrad and it all went downhill from there. To be honest I went in with the mindset that I probably wouldn’t win, made several mistakes, and my opponent played the better game and won because of it.

Takeaways: Other than the rule interactions, I’m much more partial to having a backup quicken for Eldrad or perhaps a Skyrunner farseer. I’m now of the thinking that you really want two farseers in Eldar lists. Simply because Doom and Executioner are powerful close range spells, and Guide and Forewarned are very good reasons to sit next to your dark reapers. You can’t really do both of these things. I’m also now a bit more optimistic about what I can do against knights - Two razorwings, 7 reaper launchers and 9 shuriken cannons can actually bring down a knight with Doom and perhaps Jinx. 

Updates: Obviously the lack of Doom to team up with the dissie cannons on the razorwing is a big hit. With the flyer nerf it will be harder to get that one turn of blocking the drukhari flyers can do. With Ynnari changes losing the ability to possibly double shoot with reapers is a blow. Positive wise, if I ever decided to go for killing knights, Jinx became a lot better against them. Showing up with a hemlock, doom, and a bunch of reaper launchers seems very strong now. This way I could sit back and kill the gallants in the first couple of turns, then work on the crusaders another time. Feed them venoms to keep them off the reapers. 

We talked out the rest of the game and he ended on talked out 37 points to my 19. Realistically I also picked bad secondaries - should have picked stuff like behind enemy lines and deep struck behind terrain to just get my guaranteed points. 

Out of contention for a placing I believe, I was happy to play against a regular opponent from other tournaments I played. 

This game was pretty fun. The list is pretty much all on the table there - Mars Battalion with rangers, 6 Robot unit, two dunecrawlers with icarus; then a Stygies battalion with the new Manipulus who gives +1 advance/charge I believe, and has a nasty flamer type weapon, 10 + 9 priests, and two drills. 

The bikes did their job of charging the robots, however their scenic bases meant that my opponent got to intervene with cawl into them and pick them up. His bots killed one thing a turn usually. I kept trying to silence them with venoms and other nonsense but it didn’t really work. I did however get good board control and my razorwings annoyingly were staying alive really well. His turn one drill charge I believe forced the reapers to stick out of the transport and end up dying. Eldrad had his hands full mopping up electropriests - I also unfortunately lost my Archon to mortal wounds from the electropriests! 

The guardian bomb went for that L building at the top of the picture to secure me Behind Enemy Lines and that objective, clawing me back a lot of points over the game. I found the kabalites pretty useless this game to be honest. I’ll touch on this later.

The game was a super close 22 to 21 win his way! I don’t often talk about my opponent but it was a pleasure as always to play him. A pretty fun game to close out the weekend with.

Takeaways: Bikes tied up the bots, but suffered due to their big base size, and also losing a bunch to overwatch. I should have pretty much ignored the bots as much as I could and just stayed out of sight against this kind of army. In the future I might have been excited to take Haywire against the robots, but without Doom or double tap it’s much more of a mission, so I think the better thing would be to tie them up with bikes if possible, venoms, etc. This is where wyches would come in - charge the screen, don’t kill many, tie them up on a 3+ with a cp-reroll via the shardnet! Then on their turn I get to kill the unit then consolidate even further, and they’re much more resilient against stuff like random support characters from killing them, just due to the 4+ invulnerable saves. Eldrad was a boss as usual. 

Updates: Nothing really because I don’t feel like Dooming and shooting away at the bots is a particularly good choice for the Razorwings to get into. I never got in range to Doom or Jinx them anyway and I didn’t feel like that was bad for me either. With the Ynnari rules I’d get 2 cp advance and charge from reaver jetbikes, which is very nice, and the wyches being able to get melee doom off would come in pretty handy as countercharges to the electropriests or something. 

Overall thoughts:

When I finished the tournament I was pretty sure the bikes really could have been either smaller in squad size or another venom - not many matchups have many targets that are critical to tie up on turn 1, especially with such a low drop  count to make me go first, and also such a deceptively resilient army. 

I walked away with a huge respect for Eldrad, and a bit less respect for Jinx as I found it hard to connect with an opposing threat. I instead really enjoyed casting Protect on Eldrad! I enjoyed the resilience of the wave serpents and what they meant for my matchups - it was going to be hard for opponents to get serious kills as all my stuff is either chaff or wave serpents, venoms and razorwings, all of which are quite annoying to kill. 

Ulthwe performed just fine, I like it for exactly Guardian bombs, but for everything else it’s a bit of a meh proposition. The way I look at it now, compared to Ulthwe, you can pay 10 points to make your wave serpent both Alaitoc and Ulthwe which seems like a good deal to me, or to just keep them as Alaitoc. Multiple Alaitoc wave serpents is very powerful in playing the mission and their mortal wounds are quite well positioned in the meta.

I felt like Razorwings were always better than craftworld flyers just for their invulnerable save and how cheap they were but, they also aren’t as killy or useful and still are less tanky than craftworld planes. So if I am taking flyers in the future, I believe strongly, as well as because of the Doom nerf, craftworld flyers are better. They’re also better for your mental energy as you can pivot at the end and very rarely will you get in trouble with their positioning. While you’d prefer to play perfectly, not having to worry as much is a load off you during the game, and over a tournament, it’s important to keep your mental energy up.

I didn’t really like the mismatched random troops I had sitting around. I didn’t come up against stuff like 9 mortars and all that, and even then, I found the troops besides the guardian bomb quite useless. Kabalites I can forgive this, because they are 30 points. However I have never felt more resolved that even as wave serpent cargo random craftworld squads are borderline useless. As such, I believe unless it’s very tight for points, I’ll be playing either the full 20 man guardian bomb, or 5-8 rangers, per slot. The reason for this is that while rangers don’t accomplish anything in terms of damage, they can deep strike onto objectives, reinforce your screen, etc; and they do this while being quite resilient at -2 to hit and 3+ saves. If you are coming up to the endgame too, you can make them only be hit on 6s, which is like a second lightning fast reflexes, to blank two big units your opponent tries to kill something with. 

In ITC missions, having a unit of 8 rangers can do really well if you have the spare points, because 5 is not that unlilkely to die to a serious threat, but 8 will often survive on maybe 1 or 2 members most of the time. Then, you can auto-pass them, or perhaps have a fearless source, and then your opponent doesn’t score a kill point. As opposed to 5 dire avengers who will simply die to Mortars, or an Avenger Gatling Cannon. This means the list gives up far less points as the game goes on - what usually happens with the games is you can initially score a lot of points but once their hitters start to hit back, you start giving up more and more points now that you can’t hide in transports or behind buildings. 

I really like Venoms, cheap, mobile. I wanted more of them. It’s a bit hard to manage reducing the kill points you give up to the opponent with them, but if you park them next to buildings or out of sight for the first few turns, you can pile out of them out of LOS, to avoid giving them follow up shooting.   

FaQ and Ynnari in the context of this tournament:

Realistically not much would have changed. The Razorwings take a big hit not being able to do useful things against imperial knights, but they’re still quite good at killing infantry and doing light damage to medium tanks with their shatterfield missiles. That said, I don’t like the disintigrators on the platform that is forced to fly around with no buffs - I like the Crimson hunter exarch much more now, simply because it has its own buffs, and only needs a doom to be able to pitch in against Knights. 

Jinx nerf, not sure about this because I don’t think I ever got to jinx a big target. But it was nice to jinx something close to me and doom it, then kill it with poison shots. With this in mind I am quite firmly ready to at least try the switch to wyches for this kind of list. They shoot less which is fine (ironically they can output similar shooting with their plasma grenade against t3 poor save stuff, which actually makes up for the 5 less splinter shots) but have a lot of utility and also can get Doom from Ynnari, which means they could team up fine to take on threats that break my lines. 

Ynnari changes killed the main way this list would have moved forward, what with Yvraine and a bigger squad of dark reapers. It’s kinda a shame but I’m also hopeful, since just normal Dark Reapers without double tap were very good at shooting. I’m happy to invest a bit more psychic into them and make them Alaitoc too so they are basically invulnerable to mortars and if they’re forced to be shot at, they can be very hard to shift even if you got LOS to them.

The new ynnari rules mean that I’d probably take Yvraine instead of the second Archon, just because she can do some decent mortal wound output, and I’m tempted to just flat run the drukhari as Ynnari anyway, just with the wyches, the archon giving them rerolls easier, and the melee doom coming in useful.

Moving Forward:

I’ve already tried a lot of different lists since, but I thought to revisit the ideas and what worked well for me. So I’d start off by moving the reapers and company to an alaitoc detachment. I think now I drop the razorwings, and I will play an Alaitoc Hemlock instead. The main reason for this is because I like the idea of mobile Jinx, and while CHE is very good, I feel like the hemlock brings a lot to the table with auto-hit guns and I am not discounting the mindshock pod. I think to restructure the list to also include Eldrad and an Alaitoc Farseer, then move into more aggressive screening with guardians and wave serpent/venom with an Eldrad up in their face when the situation calls for it. 

Anyway, this has been good for me to go over. Hope you enjoyed reading!