Magnum Danger

A few pictures from my first game with the new Eldar codex. It was an odd game, as there was a new player in the store who had just assembled a couple Tyranid models so he took 500 points of Tyranids and I took 1500 Eldar and we fought a Dark Angels player with 2000 points.  My list was just made to try a couple different things and isn’t really optimized in any way:

Eldar 1500
HQ: Farseer with spirit stone
Troop: 10 Guardians w/ scatter lasers
Troop: 10 Guardians w/ scatter lasers
Troop: 5 Rangers
Troop: 4 Jetbikes
Elite: 5 Fire Dragons in Wave Serpent w/ scatter lasers
Heavy: Wraithknight with suncannon and scatter laser
Heavy: 3 War Walkers with scatter lasers
Heavy: 1 Fire Prism

Tyranids:
1x Tervigon w/ some upgrades
10x termagaunts
1x Trigon Prime

Dark Angels Double Wing:
2x 10 man Terminator Squads
2x Full Bikes with Attack Bikes
3 Whirlwinds

Things were looking pretty terrible after first turn.  I’ve never played Dark Angels before and didn’t realize what deepstriking Terminators could do, not scouting bikes.  Everything was right in our face turn 1 and he obliterated most of our troops and my Farseer turn 1.  The whirlwinds all ignored cover and each hit deleted my crappy troops that were needing cover.  By the end of the turn the only troops we had alive were about 3 guardians and the Tervigon.

We decided to at least play a turn or two to see if we could do anything, and it turned out we could!  The Wraithknight showed his value when he obliterated 6 of the Terminators with his 3 TL plasma cannon blasts on terminators which were bunched up from deepstriking.  The War Walkers, Fire Prism, Wave Serpent and Fire Dragons then unloaded into Belials terminators and brought them down by half.  Everything that could assault at that point did assault to try and be locked in combat to take cover from the Whirlwinds.  The Trigon and Wraithknight charged the remained 4 Terminators at wiped them out and only taking a single wound back.  It’s pretty awesome for Terminators to need 4’s to wound.

Turn 2 was very little shooting for the Dark Angels as most everything was hidden or locked in combat.  The bikes did manage to shoot and then assault the Tervigon to death and put a wound or two on the Trigon.  On the Eldar turn, the suncannon obliterated the other bike unit, while the Trigon and Fire prism whittled down Belials terminators.  The Crimson Hunter came on and killed a whirlwind, but just barely.  The Exarch upgrade saved it as he rolled 1,2,2,4 to hit and managed to strip the hull points off.  The Trigon charged in and killed Belial, but the last two terminators managed to take his last two wounds.  We ended up calling the game at that point as we were both pretty much out of troops and the new guy had to run.  It was fun, and the parts that did survive the beginning were really fun and effective.  Sadly I didn’t get to try a bunch of things as they all died early on.

A few observations.  I think we are going to see a return of mechanized Eldar.  Wave Serpents are really good, and the troops are just to squishy to be out.  The Wraithknight is amazing, and while there are some bad match-ups (poison) it is just extremely hard to kill.  Plasma guns need 5’s to wound!  I like the suncannon upgrade, but it runs 300 points to kit it like that.  I can see a place for the stock models though at 240 and it seems a fair price for the incredible toughness.  Guardians were pretty lackluster.  There is too much cover ignoring weapons and I wouldn’t count on them as my soul troops choice.  I think a unit or two of Wraithguard might be needed to provide some survivability along with Jetbikes for mobility.  The crimson hunter is pretty nice, but I really think it needs to exarch upgrade to make sure it can fill it’s roll.  Finally the Heavy slot is just amazing.  Pretty much everything in the slot will be effective.

To close, the game was a blast to play, and it really seems like the codex will have a lot of different builds that will be fun to play.  I can’t wait to explore it more as I get more games in.