Advice on fighting Eldar

[Captain Cabble]

Hey all, looking to draw on your experiences again, this time with regards to facing Eldar.

 

I have my weekly game booked in at my local GW store this coming tuesday and will be facing an army that I'm told will be short on numbers but very specialised and hard hitting, I have no ideas what it will include and I have never faced eldar before so any advice will be appreciated and taken into consideration.

 

I will be using my marines and have access to the stores marine armies aswell so any and all units are available to select so anything goes as far as army selection.

 

While I have some knowledge of the various units available to eldar and what their roles on the battlefield are meant to be I really have no idea as to how effective each unit is or how to best counter them, and as this knowledge only comes with experience I hope to draw on yours to give me a little step up before writing my list.

 

Thanks in advance.

[greatcrusade08]

If hes short on nunmbers hes pretty much running an elite force so expect:

Fire dragons (these bad boys destroy armour in thier sleep)

Wraithlords

Farseer and warlocks (hmmm tough one)

Maybe dire avengers

Lots of vehicles

Harlies (if hes mean)

Dark reapers

 

Without knowing exactly what hes taking, all we can do is stab in the dark about the strong units he has available.

 

some quick tips:

If he takes a decent farseer and warlock unit, you will probably need a psyker with null zone to help kill them off (they have great inv saves)

Dark reapers have AP3 weapons and are great vs MEQ...he will probably play a unit of these

personally if you could run a pod army with sternguard and ironclads you could do ok, maybe throw in some scouts with sniper rifles.

 

GC08

[Mal]

Well if hes going specalist as opposed to numbers, then expect pathfinders as the troop choices, and expect to hate them the moment they fire.

 

Dark Reapers with exarch is more than likely, the exarch alone can tear throguh a 10 strong tac squad leaving few survivors... EVERY TURN!!! If there is an exarch, kill him very quickly.

 

The rest will likely be a mix of striking scorpions or howling banshees, both are very good CC units, but not unkillable if you can get a turn of shooting in ebfore they hit you.

 

If hes a typical eldar player, expect to see falcons/prisms with full upgrades making them as close to unkillable as anyone (save mabey necrons) can get, if its just falcons, ignore them in favour of shooting anything else that moves. If its fire prisms stay in cover at all times or be prepared to loose whole squads.

 

The other options he could take is wraithguard/wraitlords, both are pretty tough, but come in very very low numbers, so some concentrated heavy weapons fire will clear them.

 

The HQ is a tricky one to predict, most power gamers will take an autarch, for the points, hes the best HQ they can get. Farseers are defensive units, but do not get into combat with them unless you have a very solid CC unit, if you see an avatar, your opponent has just wasted points.... they are very nasty, but they are also very slow and once again heavy weapons will kill it off pretty quickly.

 

But as GC08 stated, without knowing what the guy has and usually takes, its really hard to give advice, there are lots of different builds for eldar, and each works differently.

 

Ohh one other thing I forgot to mention, shining spears.... gods how I hate these guys... very fast, very hard to kill, and they hit like a freight train... an assault squad getting the jump on them is probally the easiest way to kill them....

[Koremu]

The important thing about Eldar specialists is to remember that Tactical Squads will beat them at anything which isn't their speciality.

 

If you try to play the Eldar at their own game, you'll lose.

[greatcrusade08]

Excellent point from Koremu.

 

Without second guessing ourselves on what the eldar player will use, you will probably find a basic all rounder force will serve you well, a few tac squads, assault squads and preds/whirlies will probably do ok.

The main point i can give you is target priority, as i mentioned earlier and Mal detailed further the Dark reapers are marine killers and thier exarch is crazy powerful, you will want to get rid of those first.

Also Eldar CC units will probably have a higher Initiative than you, so either take units where this doesnt matter i.e assault termies with storm shiled and hammers, or shoot them to ribbons and/or deny them use of thier transports....

Whatever you decide CC is an inevitability so the odd fist/power weapon wont be wasted points.

 

GC08

[Mal]

i'd go for teh fist over regular power weapons, yes a power weapon will wound on a 3+ but teh fist can be used against transports and the wraithguard/lord to greater effect, either way, your going to hit last.

[Chimaera2000]

IMO, the most effective solution is to read over Codex: Eldar before the match to see for yourself what each unit is capable of. The Eldar have a huge range of units to choose from, each of which fulfills a very different army role. Toss in the fact that every Eldar unit has at least two special rules and it's easy to make poor moves simply because you don't know any better yet.

 

If that's not an option, here are some things that I can tell you from my experience playing Eldar:

 

1) Pay attention to what the player wants to do. The ideal battleplan for the Eldar is to use speed and misdirection isolate one of your units, then use one or more units that are specializing in killing that unit. They then want to attack with overwhelming force to wipe it out before it can counter-attack effectively, since they are very fragile. An example of this is a Farseer casting Doom on one unit to make it vulnerable, then shooting it a lot with Dire Avengers and finishing it off with a charge from power weapon-armed Howling Banshees. Koremu was right in saying you're going to lose if you try to beat the Eldar at their game. Focus instead on your game plan and make him react to your moves instead of the other way around.

 

2) Pay attention to what they player wants you to do. Often Eldar will have some tough units (like Wraithlords, the Avatar, Wraithguard, sometimes even their transports) that they'll present to your army that they want you to shoot at instead of their more fragile units. That's what I meant by "misdirection" earlier. When they do this, ask yourself, "Do I really need to target this unit first?" If not, concentrate on their weaker units first. An example of this would be them marching a big, scary Avatar down the field while long-range, expensive Dark Reapers hide in the back. The Eldar player wants you to shoot the Avatar with your heavy weapons because it's tougher than the Reapers. If the Avatar isn't in danger of getting into an assault, though, you'll want to ignore the Avatar and kill those Reapers! Their AP 3 guns should be dealt with first before you worry about the Avatar.

 

On a related note: Eldar transports are tough, their infantry are not. Wipe out of those elves as soon as their dainty feet hit soil.

[RandomGuy]

Eldar are pretty good at what they do and bad at what they don't do. If they are an elitist force, then kill the units dependent on what they do...

 

Fire Dragons- Tank killers, they all have melta guns and bombs.

Striking Scorpions- Horde killers, 3 attacks each with strength 4

Howling Banshees- Elite infantry killers, they all have power weapons and high initiative

Dire Avengers- 1 shot wonders, that kill units by making them make tons of saves after which they tend to be pretty useless. They will turn into tar pits if they are given shimmershields and defend.

Shining Spears- Shock Troops, If they don't kill you charging they will hit and run

Swooping Hawks- Never really found a use for these

Warp Spiders- Light Vehicle killers, fast moving

Dark Reapers- Meq Killers

 

I've focused on the aspect units because you said he was running an elitist list.

 

If you run your list so that the units are mismatched then they will struggle. Also most of the power from an eldar list comes from it's exarchs with their powers. If you have one get a vindacare assassin and snipe out those exarchs. If you can give us more specific details then I'll try to help further since I have an eldar army (along with everything else nearly).

 

Random Guy

[greatcrusade08]

If you have one get a vindacare assassin and snipe out those exarchs.

 

Telion and some snipers would do well against eldar IMO

 

GC08

[Captain Cabble]

Hey guys, just wanted to say thanks for all of your advice and figured I should let you all know how I got on.

 

Okay, we ended up playing capture & control with the dawn of war deployment.

We both placed our objectives in ruined buildings in opposite quarters of the board, with mine protected by a combat squad and my opponents by a unit of pathfinders with a Farseer and it looked from the begining like it would be very hard to shift either unit from cover.

So the game finally ended in a stalemate with us both holding our own objectives and contesting neither, but I later realised that having been forced to take the second turn that I could have zoomed my landspeeder across the board to contest his objective in the last turn, but having not played this mission before it didn't occur to me until it was to late as I was otherwise occupied trying to get some last revenge on that Dark Reaper Exarch for wiping out my assault squad and leaving my chaplain alone to face of against the remaining harlequins, but I always learn from my mistakes and know I'll remember this lesson in the future.

 

What else did I learn?

1. Drop podding units near the opponents arriving table edge in the hope that they survive the reserve arrivals is a waste - when you don't know what/when/where you'll be fighting, keep everything massed together and hit them hard a unit at a time rather that spread yourself thin. I wasted a tactical squad and a Dreadnought dropping them right in the enemies ground and they were all dead at the end of the second turn, leaving me feeling the pressure for the rest of the game.

2.Harlequins are not as scary as I remember them being in 2nd edition 40k and don't warrant the concern they ilicited - they won't turn the game alone unless you leave units isolated for them pick off without support.

3.The Dark Reaper Exarch is horrorfying! Be sure to make wiping him and his unit out top priority, I've never know a single guy cause so many dice rolls, he single handedly tore apart my assault section without them doing any damage.

4.Don't concern yourself with Pathfinders/Rangers in cover unless there is a flamer nearby or a whirlwind on the board, as they will be be to hard to dig out of cover and don't do much killing anyway despite the rending, target them with weapons that don't ignore cover is a waste of firepower that will kill other units - I look forward to having my sternguard painted by the end of the weekend to take next time I play purely for this reason!

 

 

I'm sure I picked up other things during the game but those are the ones that stand out, so again, thanks for taking the time to give me your advice, it helped alot and is always appreciated.

 

Oh, I'm playing Tyranids for the first time this coming Tuesday, and would love to hear your thoughts on how to best go about it but I'll start another thread for that discussion - hope you all check it out!

 

CapCab