Dark Angels vs. Eldar help!

[rcooper890]

Hi everyone,

 

I am in need of some serious help in dealing with Eldar. i play Dark Angels and i wont go into specifics but my list usually entails a lot of tacticals and a lot of devastators. The reasoning behind this is because my buddy plays edlar and his lists usually consits of 2-3 wave serpants, all wratih units (iyaden), wraith knight, prisms, and i forgot what there called but a unit of those models who ignore the jink cover save and are baiscally there version of devasators.

 

Ive tried deathwing lists, ive tried ravenwing lists, and i always manage to lose....by a lot. My deathwing lists usually have belial and two to three squads of termies in land raiders with one deep striking. and my raven wing list consits of sammeal and a whole lot of..you guessed it..bikes.

 

I have limited players here in Alaska and eldar are one of the main armies i face. I learned a thing or two about the Eldar player and his play style. He hates bikes...i can usually kiss them goodbye turn 2 (if not turn 1) and he hates terminators ( most Xenos players do anyways). I have learned to stick with Tacticals becuase there cheap and i can feild many of them and devastators seem to be the only viable option to kill his serpants and knight effectivally. Oh yeah, i usually stick a libraian with the devs for twin linking, and if i roll luckily, ignores cover as well.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Also, im new to this sight and if you reuire more information i will be more than happy to give it to you. Or if this is not the place to be asking for help i will re-post. thank you everyone. Help me cleanse these Xenos scum!!! FOR THE LION!!!

[Biggabertha]

In my group, Eldar players tend to have varying difficulties - probably because they fit the glass cannon image so well.

 

Since you've noticed that bikes and terminators strike some heavy fear in your opponent, I think you should capitalise on that!

 

What about making a mixed wing list? For instance, have a pair of Ravenwing (Black Knights, if you can afford them) units scout ahead on turn one - your opponent has to divert fire to one of them, just make sure that at least one of them survives. Use the teleport homer to Deathwing Assault, pack a Heavy Flamer or Assault Cannon to really bring in the pain then tear into their army!

 

Support this with your Devastators and if you have one or two, a Whirlwind. Whirlwinds are pretty much the winner against all Xenos armies'. Do try out a Whirlwind, hide it from everything and just drop that large blast marker (almost) anywhere you want!

 

With the way Blast damage is calculated, you can "snipe" special weapons or similar this way too! Just put the center of the marker directly on top of that unit you want dead - all hits are calculated from the center!

 

 

Tl;dr version: get a Whirlwind

[SvenONE]

Well how exactly are these games turning out?  Are you completely wiped out? even losses but he can secure an objective? Is the wraith knight the biggest problem? the Fire Prism?

 

I'm guessing the ignores cover guys you're talking about are wraith guard with d-side weapons? (template). The T6/3+ Fearless guys.  Without a doubt the best and really only way to deal with the Wraithknight is terminators beating it up, I've found that either DW Knights or TH/SS terminators are your best shot against the wraithguard/wraithknight/wraithlords.  Are you rolling with missile devs or lascannon?  Both are good, but I find that missiles are a tad better given that if Eldar run dires/banshees the missiles can put a lot of wounds on them, you just miss out on that chance to pop the transport on a 5+.

 

Wave Serpents are wave serpents, they're fast and they dish it out.  Are you running a banner? dumping all those shots into his troops is also pretty good.

 

A whirlwind also helps like others said, I'd also look into maybe a sniper scout squad that can just sit in cover with their 3+ dumping 4+ wounds on the tougher units.  For how cheap they are even if they miss it isn't the worst investment.

[Cactus]

The guys with the ignore jink saves rule are almost certainly a squad of dark reaper aspect warriors, and their missiles have the strength and AP to easily take down bike squads. Do not let them draw line of sight to any bikes if you can help it.

 

I'm wondering if deploying terminators in a land raider or two, with the bikes outflanking, could work. The only long-ranged anti-tank firepower comes from the fire prisms so Deathwing vehicles (with optional power field generator) have a chance to get the terminators in close without risking the more vulnerable bikes. Wraithguard (the ones with guns) can be deadly to tanks and terminators but only at close range and apart from T6 they're rubbish in an assault. Wraithblades (the ones with swords or axes) have no ranged attacks and only with the axes are they a serious threat to terminators.

 

A whirlwind won't be great against wraithguard and dark reapers as they all have 3+ saves.

[rcooper890]

Thanks for the advice guys. @SevenOne, the games are usually close but i have been wiped off the board a time or two. If he knows he is playing me, he almost always brings the EXACT same list. 2-3 wave serpants with wraithblades carrying the axes. Each squad has a farseer (or spiritseer, whichever one is Ld 10) to buffer them futher. He always hides the seer in the middle of the pack to protect him. Usually a fire prism that sits back and shoots, a wraithknight, and then a squad of dark reapers on the talles piece of terrain on his side ( to give them best line of sight).

I have found, in my own personal experience, that if i run the most models i can, the games usually go a little smoother. It's the games where i go all teriminators that i will get tabled. I mean, with those wave serpants and all those dice rolls, you will eventually roll 1's. And as i said before, he seems to have some personal vendetta against bikes of any kind. He never even runs his own eldar jetbikes. If he even sees 1 squad of bikes on my side, it doesnt matter what else is on my side, the bikes get wiped off the board first.

So, the best way i find to counter his style of play is to bring 3 devastator squads all with lascannons. Usually 12 lascannons can take down at least one thing ( if i get turn 1) if not then im lucky to glance a wave serpant even once. I swear sometimes his dice have to be loaded. We are actually batteling tomorrow, 2000 points in a planatery empires battle. My list includes 4 tactical squads in a razorback each, all have the twin-linked lascannons. One jetfighter, and then devastators....lots of them. 5 squads i believe, each with 4 lascannons. I have attatched a libraian to two squads of devastators and geven them mastery level 2. Hopefully i roll nicely and get *ignores cover* and then prescience on at least one squad.

Also, for those of you who haven't played planatery empires, you get bonuses for what kind and how many tiles you own. (45 tiles) And becuase he has 1 more tile than i do i get 50 points added to my army and 1 chance on a 4+ to give a single unit one special rule out of the rule book...so giving a dev squad ignores cover or insta-death would be in my favor.

[Biggabertha]

Wow, that's a LOT of Lascannons! But that's also seriously expensive... Five man all Lascannon costs 150pts minimum and having three... That's almost a quarter of your points allowance! Then again, they're some serious threat to large targets (Wraithknight especially...) but I hope you're using the Sergeant's Signum to boost one marine's BS to 5!

 

Another sneaky thing you could do is grabbing a squad of Company Veterans (or a Command Squad if you want...) deck them out with Flamers as a serious surgical tool to be Drop Podded into the heart of the enemy. You'll probably lose First Blood because of this but you'll also divert a lot of his attention away from your other units.

 

 

Good luck!! And please keep us updated!

[rcooper890]

Yeah, with the razorbacks and the devs its a total of 24 lascannon shots. Along with presciance on two squads that should garuntee a dead tank or wraithknight (unless i role terribly). I'll post a battle report tomorrow night after the battles. We also have a smaller battle at 1250 points.

[march10k]

That's an extremely hard core tournament list that's probably posted all over the internet. I played against basically the same list with a mixed black and white list, and I was tabled in four turns...The only reason it took four turns is that one of the two wraithknights charged my (empty) crusader and failed to kill it, allowing my dark talon to come on in turn four. Granted, I had some pretty horrid luck in that game, but there was no chance of winning. Wave serpents with holofields are not worth shooting at unless you get behind them*. Wraithknights are really only susceptible to lascannons and krak missiles. Hell, even thundernators only wound them on 4+. And wraithguard just blow terminators off the board, hitting on 3s, wounding on 2s, and allowing no armor save. It's brutal. Now, I had horrid luck, to boot. He seized the initiative. His wraithguard snap-shot Belial to death (The SoS is a fantastic counter to this list, if you can get stuck in with it...wraith lists don't like fleshbane, and they like I5 even less). And my DT got to unload everything against the fire prism's rear armor...for no result, right before a wave serpent managed to hit it with 9 out of 11 snap shots!

 

I'm going to try again...with three crusaderloads of thundernators, and my PFG/bike libby.

 

What not to do against this eldar list: Don't take dismounted terminators, mounted wraithguard love to eat them for breakfast. Don't take bikes, they'll be torrented off the board by the flying vulcan megabolters (wave serpents).

 

What might work? Drop pods might let you pop open his transports. He can hug the board edge to mitigate that, though. Typhoons would be great, they come in so randomly that he can't really do much to deny them the up-the-kilt shot if he wants to go about executing his own battle plan. A lascannon dev squad would be threatening to the wraithknights, but you'll need prescience to make them effective and a PFG to protect them. That's prolly what I would do...dual prescience librarians with PFGs babysitting two ten man lascannon dev squads, plus six multimelta typhoons. Comes to 1140 points, leaving 710 to spend on troops. Three ten man tactical squads with missile launchers, plasma guns, and rhinos will leave you with 95 points...exactly the cost of a five man scout squad with camo cloaks and a missile launcher. The tactical squads stay in the rhinos with the devastator squads, "shaping" LOS so that the devs can see their target, but not much else can see them (especially not wave serpents!). They'll eventually be wrecked, but that's ok, they will have served the purpose of drawing fire away from stuff that matters. Shoot the wraithknights till they fall, by then the typhoons will have come in and rear-shot some wave serpents, then you shoot the wraithguard. It doesn't take much to beat this kind of cheese, you just have to build a specific anti-wraith list.

 

*or have enough shots to glance them out in one go.

[march10k]

Wow, that's a LOT of Lascannons! But that's also seriously expensive... Five man all Lascannon costs 150pts minimum and having three... That's almost a quarter of your points allowance! Then again, they're some serious threat to large targets (Wraithknight especially...) but I hope you're using the Sergeant's Signum to boost one marine's BS to 5!

 

 

You're kidding, right?  Five man devastators don't have any spare wounds, really.  They start losing 35 point models instead of 15 point models right away, that's not worth 150 points at all!!!  On the other hand, 220 points for a ten man lascannon devastator squad is cheap!  A ten man tactical squad, kitted out, is nearly 200...  That 220 point squad used to cost like 310!  And with a prescience/PFG librarian, it's 315...for four twinlinked BS4 lascannons with a 4++ and six meat shields...cheap at the price!

[Biggabertha]

I stand corrected..!!

I never really looked at things that way - but I suppose you'd really have to take quite a few "meat shields" to weather all the incoming fire

 

 

Man... counter-lists are nice and all but sheesh, it'd be really nice if games didn't seem so unbalanced... just seems very... unfriendly.

[march10k]

It depends on your metagame.  some are focused on tournament win-at-all-costs play (and cheating), and some are like "let's have a beer and throw some dice."  I have quite a lot of models that are fine for the latter, but woefully underpowered for the former (like a unit of IG rough riders mounted on the sabertusks from a WFB Ogre Kingdoms special character, without the stupid AP3 "lances" [dynamite on the end of a loooong pole]), but I just moved to an area where it's pure WAAC, where my tactics with a fun lists demolish new players, but the contents of my fun lists aren't up to facing an ard boyz-style list.  So...I'm adapting.  I'm learning who's an experienced tournament WAAC player, and who's more casual and/or new to the game, and I bring two lists with me...

 

As for counter lists...well, the one I just threw up could be modified to be an all-comers list...simply substitute missiles in one dev squad (for access to frag missiles in addition to slightly less effective antitank) and heavy bolters on the typhoons (same theory, balance between hordes and elites)...maybe spend the freed points to put plasma cannons into the tactical squads for combatting MEQs...

[rcooper890]

Well, a quick batrep for you all. He wasn't expecting my list at all and got instantly angry when he realized what he was up against. I rolled two 4's for each of my librarians getting ignores cover on two squads of devs and then each taking prescience. Then I rolled a 5 for my warlord trait making his reserves come in on 4's.

 

His list was as expected except no wraithknight! Three serpants, two with wraith blades, one with wraith guard. A fire prism, five man squad of fire dragons, two spirit seers and a farseer with the squads of wraith units. Two of the eldar flyers and a squad of warp spiders in reserve. The mission was the relic and it was placed dead center of the board.

 

So turn 1, I went first and he had placed most of his terrain to block my LOS but he placed poorly and I knocked down a wave serpant and his fire prism right off the bat. The prism exploded and killed three of his 5 fire dragons. They failed their leadership test and ran off the board. My razorbacks just shuffled forward hugging cover. So his turn he was extremely upset (putting it lightly) and threw his two remaing serpants in the face of my devs.

 

Turn 2, I took down the remaining serpants with two devastator squads, and the remainder of my army picked away at his wraith units. My Jetfighter succeeded in coming in and out some hurt on the wraith guard unit. Unfortunately he was right next to the relic and on his turn he picked it up and ran into a building. His idea was that my tac squads would give chace and be not match for the wraith units. None if his reserves came in and he threw his entire army into retreat.

 

Turn 3, I fired all the twin linked lascannons from my razorbacks at the building where all his units were and made it collapse, so we removed it and once again, my entire army opened fire on the retreating wraith units, managing to wipe one off the board. So at this point, he had one wraithblade with a spirit seer holding the relic, three wraith guard providing meat shield cover, and he managed for both of his flyers to come on. He took out two rhinos with his flyers. The rest of his army was still in full retreat.

 

Turn 4, he managed to run out of range of two devastator squads and ran behind a bunker blocking Los of another one. So I gave chase with the two remaining rhinos and tac squads. My flyer shot down one of his flyers and I took out one wraith guard. His turn, his warp spiders came in and managed to wipe out the nearest squad of marines and then warped jumped near the rest of his retreating army. His remaining flyer was unable to get to a firing position so he flew off the bored.

 

Turn 5, I threw every devastator shot into that pesky bunker blocking Los and didn't to anything to it. I uncounted every marine I had and rapid fired into his army with some surprising results, two well placed flamer templates killed off every single warp spider. Then two squads rapid fired into the remaing wraith guard and farseer and killed all of them. Then the reaming tac squad fired into thenwraith blade and spirit seer holding the relic...killing his warlord!!!! But the wraithblade survived still holding the relic. My flyer fired into the other squad of wraithblades running along the board edge wiping them out completly. His turn his flyer came back in and fired at a tactical squad and missed with everything.

 

The game ended at turn 5 unfortunately causing a draw...he held the relic and I had first blood, line breaker, and a warlord kill. He had only one wraith blade and his flyer left on the board. So that list proved to fair well against eldar. Though I think it would have went differently had he brought the wraithknight. His style of play is WAAC and he was not very happy the entire game and though it was a draw, he took it as a loss. I have always been a "fun gamer" just enjoying the great looking models and picturing the battle in my mind as it plays out, but this player is not interested in fun battles when he brings Eldar, he only wants to win....and I brought it to him. Thoughts?

[rcooper890]

Correction, fire dragons were actually dark reapers.

[march10k]

I just love it when a WAAC player faces unexpected adversity...If he'd fielded the wraithknight, you would have tabled him, but at least you took the smirk off his face!

[rcooper890]

Our games used to be "beer and pretzel" where we all had some laughs and really talked about what was happening on the table. When he received his wraithknight, his lists were no longer "fun" lists and became too competitive. He'd table anyone of my local players I'm two to three turns. I'm not saying anything is wrong with that, but don't get upset when someone turns the table on you.

[Garath]

Good job!

 

 

  Your list please.

[marvmoogy]

My regular opponent is an Eldar player and a good one at that.  When I last played him, I used C:SM to try out a few new things....and, well, let's just say, Eldar HATE grav weapons!

 

It may not go down too well with the die-hard DA fans here, but I see nothing wrong with an allied detachment of:

 

Libby

Tacticals (maybe in a Razorback?)

Centurion Devs w/ omni-scope (gives split-fire) MLs and Grav Cannon/Amps.

LR (delivery for the above) 

 Ok, it's 700-ish points (no dex to hand) but, you'd take a libby anyway, same with the tacticals and the Raider so the only thing you are doing is buying the Centurions and boy are they worth the cost against Eldar!

[rcooper890]

I have some centurions, so far I haven't fielded them because they seem over-costed. I'll give them a try one day and let you know how it goes. Grav weapons do sound nasty though

[Garath]

My regular opponent is an Eldar player and a good one at that.  When I last played him, I used C:SM to try out a few new things....and, well, let's just say, Eldar HATE grav weapons!

 

It may not go down too well with the die-hard DA fans here, but I see nothing wrong with an allied detachment of:

 

Libby

Tacticals (maybe in a Razorback?)

Centurion Devs w/ omni-scope (gives split-fire) MLs and Grav Cannon/Amps.

LR (delivery for the above) 

 Ok, it's 700-ish points (no dex to hand) but, you'd take a libby anyway, same with the tacticals and the Raider so the only thing you are doing is buying the Centurions and boy are they worth the cost against Eldar!

 Thanks

 

 Centurions are a thing , that much is true.  Have you tried attaching a PFG Libby to them?   The poetry of getting them "ignore cover " is just to alluring to pass out.

[marvmoogy]

can't say I have tried that yet, but ignores cover against eldar would be awesome!

[rcooper890]

I can attest to the ignores cover against eldar. As you can see in the battle report, ignores cover allowed me to destroy three wave serpants and a fire prism in two turns. A librarian with ignores cover attached to some grav-centurions would probably cause a few laughs I can imagine.

[MadMek83]

I can tell anything that ignores cover, Eldar players (including me ) hate it. Grav weapons are nasty. Iyanden lists are based on high toughness low model count, which makes grav weapons even nastier. Therefor each model lost hurts alot. Grav weapons, plasma are your friends. Black knights are wonderful. Rad grenade unit then plasma-talon their behinds.