Game 1 is officially in the
books. Hornblower came over for a game
bringing his blood angels. I played with
my eldar. I tried out a bunch of
"new" things. My list consisted
of something along the lines of Eldrad, farseer, avatar, 19 guardians with
warlock, 3 bikes with cannon, 3 bikes with warlock, 10 dire avengers with full
kit, nightwing interceptor, war walkers, wraithlord, warp spiders with kit,
plain old swooping hawks, a unit of rangers and a unit of pathfinders. I'm not going to do a full battle report as
the game was largely decided turn when I shot his zooming storm raven full of
death company out of the sky turn 1.
The option of a
third HQ is something I really wanted to try out as both two farseer and
farseer/avatar builds are interesting. The
one area of the Eldar book that got consistently buffed by 6th are the
HQ's. Farseers, Avatars, phoenix lords
are all viable now. Even the autarch is
potentially useful as he makes reserves come in on a 2+. Taking advantage of the option of taking two
force orgs I took two farseers and an avatar.
I still think the elder need to keep their book powers on at least 1
farseer for fortune but a 115 point secondary two power farseer can choose from
the book powers for some interesting options.
I think that divination is the stronger of the two choices because of
the better default power but telepathy has some great powers to. A
series of mistake for both of us allowed my secondary farseer to live and cast
the new guide and the ignore cover on my injured war walkers turn 1 which got
two of three hull points off the zooming storm raven. Unfortunately, even with this great result
for the two farseer option, no answer was reached on what to take if you are
limited to two HQ's as the avatar was also very good. Fearless is no longer a bad thing for elder as
the "no retreat" wounds are gone.
He did get krak grenade's which wasn't cool but at least they still need
5's to hit with the grenades and 4's to wound with a 3+ save. We also determined that mind war is a sad now
as you would get a look out sir roll if targeting a character.
In terms of
troops, I was impressed with the dire avengers, their ability to syphon off
wounds from independent characters. Even
though witchblade are really bad vs. things like dreadnoughts, eldrad was able
to go toe to toe with a furiso because the hits back would go on dire avenger
who still got a shimmer shield save (with reroll). Frankly anything with a mixed armour save
will be better. Jetbikes with a cannon
are now closer to acceptable but they still tend to have only one purpose, win
the game, which is what they did getting a secondary objective by being in the
enemy dz and holding the relic. Guardians
are still probably best left on the display shelf although fearless with an
avatar does make them a viable tarpit, however we have better tarpits. The warlock giving them a 5+ deny the witch
is useful but again we have better. The
rangers didn't do much but they didn't do poorly either.
Random charges,
suck! I don't actually mind this element
but my wraith lord failed a 5 inch assault and a 6 inch assault before finally
coming in and rescuing the avatar with a
7 inch assault.
Reserves on a
three plus is great, if you can roll a three plus. I couldn't so the nightwing didn't come in
until the mop up stage, at which point it mopped up a squad that had dodged a
wraithlord assault.
Overall I liked the game. I'm still worried about the state of Eldar in
6th until they get a new book (even fighting with a ~600 point advantage for most of the games a
few bad rolls and I would have had trouble real. At the same time, this is good as it means
the game isn't static and having multiple turning points keeps things exciting.
