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.