Foodhammer

I didn't get to go last year, but those who did had a great time and for a good cause.

Mantis Warrior update

The last couple of months have seen significant progress on the Mantis Warriors as well.  I suspect I will end up running them as codex marines and not take the special Librarian but that is to be determined.  I'm up from 2 marines to about 1250 points.  They all need shoulder-pad decals (plus chipping on the decal) and other symbols still.  I'm going to try the self-printed decals available from Bolter and Chainsword.  After that they will be clear coated and some dust effects added to their feet. 

Eldar Defense Line

The last couple months have not been kind to this blog.  Mostly because I am lazy and didn’t write much up.  I have however been working, first up are my Eldar defense line and quad gun.  The quad gun is just a bunch of Eldar guns mounted on an old support platform with a couple of random bits from various vehicles.  The defense line is something I really like.  It has the gun covers from the war walkers covering an old cutup Mountain Dew bottle and some plasticard support beams.  Ideally I’ll find someone with the Wasp walker upgrades to sell/trade enough gun covers to make all them into the blue shields.  Here are a couple more pictures of it including a WIP.

Choices

So it has been a while since my last post.  I've gotten a few more games of 6th in, including my first tournament which the eldar actually won thanks to 2+ rerollable saves.  I meant to post a recap her but apparently only posted it on the fightclub.  I still think Eldar are weak, especially with just base codex, but they do have some tricks.  The edition of Forgeworld and fortifications however help mitigate this a lot.  The two FW flyers are both pretty solid, gaining a 3+ save thanks to shrouded when evading.  I haven't played with the phoenix yet but BS5 vs. ground targets is probably a fair trade for not being able to shoot all the weapons anymore.

However the purpose of this post is to hopefully figure out a problem I am having.  AFK games is hosting an 1850 tournament on September 1st.  This would be really cool except they aren't allowing any fortifications or forgeworld, so the eldar have 0 anti-aircraft options.  I'm not cool with this as my main goal when building an army is to ensure that I have a tool for every problem.  If the tool is good enough and whether or not I get to use the tool is the point of the game.  Going into a battle knowing I can't deal with something is just not good.  For example in my last game vs. Cvinton he had 4 flyers,  He wisely took out the fire dragons manning the AA gun turn 1 leaving me with just a nightwing (aka not enough) to deal with 4 flyers.  He won the battle for the air but at least he had to fight for it.  If I go to this tournament, flyers would have total freedom which isn't cool.

Fortunately I have another option, Evolution Games is also hosting a tournament on September 1st.  This is a 2000 point affair that does allow fortifications and FW, however it also opens the door to 2 force org charts.  This isn't bad in and of itself, although players that are willing to spam units certainly have an advantage.  A quick 2000 point list I could play would be 18 war walkers, 3 broad sides, defense line with quad gun, defense line with lascannon, 4 units of 5 dire avengers, 1 unit of tau warriors, deep striking tau commander and 2 farseers with improved guide.  (Please note I don't advocate playing this type of list at all).  I'm sure other armies can come up with nastier lists.  I don't know the Evolution Games crowd well enough to know if this type of list is something I have to deal with or not.  My guess is not but who knows.  The other factor causing me to lean towards going to the AFK tournament is that I have an 1850 list that I think could be interesting.

It goes something like this

Barroth

Eldrad

5 harlequins with seer and jester

10 Wraithguard with warlock

2 units of rangers

3 units of bikers

3 war walkers

2 wraithlords

This list plays off one key rule change in 6th.  In order for a unit to leave combat with hit and run, only 1 model needs the rule.  Guess what Barroth has the rule.  So those slow non-fleeting wraithguard can jump out of combat, shoot with their big guns and charge right back in to avoid being shot at again.  In combat they are still fairly bad at hurting this (Barraoth isn't a combat monster) but with majority toughness 6 they still tarpit effectively (at least until they jump out and shoot you down).  If fortification were allowed I would drop a wraithlord for a defense line for at least token anti-air.  The thing that makes me giggle about this list is it is possible for the wraithguard to touch both long board edges in a given turn and be on the opposing board edge turn 1.  Not likely or meaningful in a game but funny.

Game 1 - Done

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.

Eldar in 6th

Obviously this is jumping the gun, but I'm tired of forcing Excel to do something it doesn't want to.  So figured I'd take a shot at looking at Eldar based off the rumors I've seen.  As an eldar player I can't say I'm particular happy.  Eldar getting hit with some significant nerfs and only gaining a couple items.  That being said I expect to see a lot more eldar on the table or more specifically, Eldrad and a unit of rangers in other armies. 

Pros:

•   Rangers get to choose the targets for their AP1 shots
•   Hull points make killing Armour 12 vehicles fairly easy.  We have a plethora of S6 weapons that can glance them easily alot.  A unit of guided walkers will kill a a12 vehicle in 1 round
•   Some rumors seem to imply you can snapfire while turboboosting vehicles, depending on timing this could be useful.
•   Allies (sort of).  A couple units of Grey hunters could really improve our durability, hydras could help with enemy plans, a rerolling showfield archon could provide a solid punch.  However I think eldar will tend to be called upon as allies more than being the main force.
•   Warp spiders improve.  They now get 3 attacks on the charge thanks to the impact hits.
•   Howling Banshees can be S4 if you can find enough of the old models with axes.  Their mask ignores the unwieldy rule in round 1.
•   You can shoot and gain the extra movement from fleet.
•   Jink save for vehicles (and bikes?)  
•   Wraithlords gan give up 1 attack to have a S20 smash attack  (guessing capped at 10 so really only affects the avatar)
•   Meltaguns get +2 AP (do fire dragons need it?)

Cons:

•   Hull points make holofields worthless.
•   Everyone (almost) can get runes of warding
•   We lose our speed advantage, fleet goes from D6 extra to rerolling a D6.  Not sure the math but this an inch or two difference.
•   Everyone gets 6+ save vs doom
•   Jink save not as good as turbosave
•   3+ to hit vehicles in combat regardless of speed moved
•   Everyone else can throw grenedes (ok we can to but few units have grenedes)
•   Everyone gains move and fire rapid fire full distance
•   Cover saves reduced to 5+
•   Overwatch hurts our assaulting units as they are only T3
•   Everyone else gets access to a bunch of new psychic powers
•   Flyers, unless you play with Forgeworld we have no anti-aircraft weapons
•   Power weapons are AP 3, so the only things that punch threw termintor armour are fire dragons and scorpion claws

Clearly this mostly speculation at this point but what do see in the Eldar's future?

Drop pod

Apparently cutting two tendons and a nerve in your hand makes painting a little harder (typing too).  Who knew?  That being said I've been able to make some progress on my mantis warriors.  The drop pod shows my current limitations fairly well.  I'm able to paint the rough details but adding stylized elements such as army/unit markings is nearly impossible when you can't hold the model.  At some point I'll go back and add that but for now this is about as far as I can take it.  I'm fairly happy with the results.  I didn't have access to wife's camera last night so no WIP pictures but my first tactical squad is nearing "completion" as well.  Here is a link to the closed drop pod.