I Need Help Beating Wave Serpent Spam with new dex :(

And u still have OS on troops, because u can take 2 normal detachment

HERO wrote:

I don't know how I keep losing you.  A unit of 3 Reavers is easier to kill than a unit of 12.  That's literally all I'm saying and it's not even a remotely difficult concept to understand.

Where you're losing me is - no one is arguing that 12 is easy to kill than 3.
What Mush is saying is that 4 of 3 are harder to kill than 1 of 12 - are you disagreeing with that?

Thor665 wrote:

HERO wrote:

I don't know how I keep losing you.  A unit of 3 Reavers is easier to kill than a unit of 12.  That's literally all I'm saying and it's not even a remotely difficult concept to understand.

Where you're losing me is - no one is arguing that 12 is easy to kill than 3.
What Mush is saying is that 4 of 3 are harder to kill than 1 of 12 - are you disagreeing with that?

You really like to argue about pointless crap don't you?

I'm saying that smaller units of Reavers are easier to kill than bigger units. I also agreed with Mush saying that MSU will split the attention of my WS if I overkill. At the same time, I said I don't care if I overkill because the unit is still dead and the threat has been removed. I have not once disagreed with the fact that 4 units of 3 are harder to kill than 1 unit of 12, by normal standards. If you add in psychic buffs, then 1 unit of 12 will be harder to kill.

Me saying that a unit of 3 Reavers is easier to kill than 12 is exactly what it sounds like. Not 4 units of 3, but a unit of 3. One unit of 3 is easier to kill than one unit of 12. One. Unit. Of. Three.

frak.

El_Jairo wrote:

Nice point Mush, I was thinking Reavers in small squads too but I'm not sold on RsR detachment yet. This might tip it over though.
The target saturation is huge by this build. If you combine in some ranged shooting, real assault threats the Serpents don't have enough shooting power to handle all incoming units.
It would be a great sight: Dark Eldar swamping the opponent in bad choices

You only need to pray that you don't have to play Killpoints as then your royally screwed anyway.

Ran a Double RsR detachment last night against a heavy mech imperial guard. While I know this is a Wave serpent spam forum the two have a great deal in common.

1500 points
HQ
Lhameans

Elites
Mandrakes (just for fun)

Troops
5 Kabalite Warriors w/ raider w/ dark lance
5 Kabalite Warriors w/ raider w/ dark lance

Fast Attack
5 Scourges w/ haywire blasters
5 Scourges w/ haywire blasters
5 Scourges w/ haywire blasters
5 Scourges w/ haywire blasters
5 Scourges w/ haywire blasters

Realspace Raiders Deatchment
HQ
1 Lhamean

Troops
5 Kabalite Warriors /w venom
5 Kabalite Warriors /w venom
Fast Attack
Reaver Jetbikes w/ blaster and cluster calatrops
Reaver Jetbikes w/ blaster and cluster calatrops
Reaver Jetbikes w/ blaster and cluster calatrops
Reaver Jetbikes w/ blaster and cluster calatrops
Reaver Jetbikes w/ blaster and cluster calatrops
Reaver Jetbikes w/ blaster and cluster calatrops

I can happily report that first of all this tactic took my weekly opponent completely by surprise. As stated above multiple bad choices went a long way in adding both chaos to the battle field and survivability. First turn was pretty weak on my part (I believe because of poor rolls for haywires and not quite having the hang of jetbikes) but by the end of turn 3 all he had was valkyrie a taurox and 10 vets left before time caused us to call it quits.

Im not saying that this will guarantee success against a WS spam but I think it s a very good start.
A barebones Realspace Raider Detachment with a Lhamean HQ x2 5 man kabalite and 6 of the above reaver jetbike load outs costs only 528 points! You could take 2 such detachments and another maxing out the Fast attack with haywire scourges for 1746. That is a lot of target saturation for anyone to deal with.

So a unit of 3 reavers is easier to kill than a larger unit. Established. How does that change the fact that there are more reavers than serpents? It doesn't. The reaver player doesn't care that you've expended 145 pts to kill less than half that. Meanwhile the damage output of the reavers is identical regardless of unit size.

MSU is how you defeat larger stronger units. Its accepted. The only debate is what to apply the concept to.

On reaver durability there are plenty of ways to increase the pfp clock. Plus against anything that doesn't ignore cover reavers are very close to 2+ saves.

Quote :

MSU is how you defeat larger stronger units. Its accepted. The only debate is what to apply the concept to.

No way, that's definitely not accepted. There are tons of deathstars that exists now and in the past that can crap on an unlimited number of Reavers. Let's not get carried away.

Let's look at the meta that's outside of just Mechdar for a second. How does MSU Reavers fair in that environment? Or are you tailoring just to beat Mechdar?

Yes because thats what this thread is about. And my comment on MSU was as a general strategy vs deathstars but here applied to reavers. If you can't go bigger you go more. That said deathstars are a moot point because of 7ths changes and they are on their way out with each new release.

As for reavers in the current competitive meta.. idk yet but I feel they are probably the strongest build DE can produce. Nothing significant has changed for our skimmers to say they are now more viable, other than spamming more of them then before. Certainly the rules haven't changed to make explosions more friendly or warriors/wyches more viable.

@uilijajuru: how can u choose lhameans for HQ choice? They aren't HQ choice

Cerve wrote:

@uilijajuru: how can u choose lhameans for HQ choice? They aren't HQ choice

yes they are, the Court is COUNT as an HQ, if you take an Archon then they dont count as taking a HQ.

Not quite sure why people keep on saying that. Granted the sentence bad but the intent and any translation is pretty clear that you only may have a court if you have an Archon.
Have fun while it lasts, FAQ will shut it down pretty sure.

Quote :

Let's look at the meta that's outside of just Mechdar for a second. How does MSU Reavers fair in that environment? Or are you tailoring just to beat Mechdar?

I think this would be a good exercise. The meta outside of eldar being largely IKs, daemons, crons, marines, tau.. and considering people are tooling up to deal mainly with serpents, IKs and MCs. Plenty of other stuff but these are by far the main offenders.

This then means cover ignoring of which the serpent is the worst offender but also divination powered. Massed melta, grav spam including the few remaining deathstars like cent stars, hounds, mini screamerstars off the top of my head.

So what does MSU reavers do well here? Pretty much the same elements that all the stronger armies have access to and spam..

Equal or greater mobility.
Fast melta platforms.
3++ jink saves.
Hit and run (if you want to attempt larger units.. say + jetseers)
They also bring their own form of massed cover ignoring in the form of rending HoW.

Really don't have the gumption to go into much detail today but I'd like to here more on this topic.

Edit- and just for the sake of analyzing heres a quick DE/Eldar shell that I could see doing well in the current meta:

wwp hq + unit/urien + escort
jetseer- telepathy, ssoa
jetseer- telepathy

12 reavers full caltrops/blasters
12 reavers full caltrops/blasters
3 reavers caltrop/heatlance
3 reavers caltrop/heatlance
3 reavers caltrop/heatlance
3 reavers caltrop/heatlance
3 windriders, sc
3 windriders, sc
6 swooping hawks
6 swooping hawks
6 swooping hawks
5 warriors
5 warriors

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

Not quite sure why people keep on saying that.

Because that's what the rule says. It may or may not get FAQd but given GWs complete indifference to the FAQs over the past few years I wouldn't hold your breath. Codex Eldar was released 2 years ago and is still waiting for a real FAQ.

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

Not quite sure why people keep on saying that. Granted the sentence bad but the intent and any translation is pretty clear that you only may have a court if you have an Archon.
Have fun while it lasts, FAQ will shut it down pretty sure.

The rules says the Court IS AN HQ, UNLESS you have an archon then its not. I dont think the sentence is bad at all, its clear to me. Thing change ever ed.

its not rules as you want them to be (RAI) its RAW, How do we know what GW wants, they mgiht want court to be an hq/warlord.

amishprn86 wrote:

Cerve wrote:

@uilijajuru: how can u choose lhameans for HQ choice? They aren't HQ choice

yes they are, the Court is COUNT as an HQ, if you take an Archon then they dont count as taking a HQ.

^^^This. Also note the HQ symbol at the top of the page. If they were meant to only be apart of the archon data they would have left that symbol off or wrote in "no force org." Rules as written are pretty clear.  

Count Adhemar wrote:

Because that's what the rule says. It may or may not get FAQd but given GWs complete indifference to the FAQs over the past few years I wouldn't hold your breath. Codex Eldar was released 2 years ago and is still waiting for a real FAQ.

Was going to cite the fact that AM codex was 6 months ago and still hasn't seen an FAQ of any kind nor has the BRB but i guess this is better.

Quote :

Retainers: For each Archon included in a Detachment, the Detachment can include a Court of the Archon that does not take up a slot on the Force Organisation chart.

As written. No Archon, no Court. Its not "if an Archon is included it doesn't take up a Slot".
Also "Retainers" could be a strong indication.
But yeah. If you are "that guy" you might argue it that way.

If "retainers" were a strong indication, it would pretty surely require you to field them in a unit together.

1) the court is listed under HQ, not "no FOC" or anything
2) the obvious train of thought here would be:
Do i have an archon? Yes. Court doesn't take an FOC slot.
No. Court takes an FOC slot.

Believe it or not, there are people out there who have no clue whatsoever about things like taking double CAD or double RSR to increase the number of HQs one can take who might find this indeed handy.

Quote :

1) the court is listed under HQ, not "no FOC" or anything
2) the obvious train of thought here would be:
Do i have an archon? Yes. Court doesn't take an FOC slot.
No. Court takes an FOC slot.

Do i have an archon? Yes. I may take a Court that doesn't take an FOC slot.
No. I may take no Court.

You are wrong, Chardonyr. The datasheet of the Court clearly states that they are a HQ choice. Retainers "rule" (and for the record it clearly is not a rule name per-se as those are shown differently) says that they CAN be taken without taking up a FOC slot but does NOT say that they cannot be taken at all if Archon is not present. If they are not, their datasheet specification as HQ is used. There is exactly nothing saying that I cannot take court without Archon and there is a datasheet headline saying that I can take court as an HQ.

And please stop suggesting that people are "that guy" just because they dont agree with your line of reasoning.

Quote :

No. I may take no Court.

I would really like to know where this conclusion comes from.
By that exact reasoning, my tyranid army cannot take a Tervigon as HQ because the rule (the name escapes me, don't have the Codex at hand) which is presented in the exact same way as the retainers rule, allows me to take one as Troops choice if i also have 30 Termagants in my list.
And that is 100000% not the case, so where's the difference here?

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

Quote :

1) the court is listed under HQ, not "no FOC" or anything
2) the obvious train of thought here would be:
Do i have an archon? Yes. Court doesn't take an FOC slot.
No. Court takes an FOC slot.

Do i have an archon? Yes. I may take a Court that doesn't take an FOC slot.
No. I may take no Court.

Please explain where it says you may not take a Court without an Archon. It's certainly not in the Retainers section that has been quoted previously.

I was think about last Codex. Yeah my fault, now the Court can be chosed as a QG choice.

Cool!

HQ sorry, QG is Italian, Quartier Generale

Comparing it to the tau xv8 crisis bodyguard team's wording also makes it sound like they intend for the court of the archon to count as an independent hq choice. "For each commander in your army, you may include one xv8 crisis bodyguard team. This unit does not take up a force organization slot"

Please allow me to redirect the HQ conversation HERE. Soooooo... back to wave serpents... yeah.

(Hope the eldar book is the first hardcover book replaced after necrons and blood angels get theirs. Stupid tank could probably have another 100 points tacked on and it would still be good.)

Back to tactics: HQ choice aside is a 12+ 3 man reaver squad a viable answer to the wave serpent spam? If not why? And what could do it better?

I found the best success running minimum warrior squads with blasters in a mix of venoms and raiders.

I found that when I set up 4 or 5 blasters in range of a wave serpent and made it clear to my opponent that I could continue to fire them one at a time at a serpent until I got a good damage result, it made him just jink on the first shot. As long as you set up your shots so they can threaten multiple serpents (which isn't hard since they'd have to be over 36" apart from each other to outrange your blasters) you can get a few blasters to force several serpents to jink.

Furthermore, by using this strategy, I prevented my opponent from firing serpent shields unless he absolutely needed to which kept his return fire significantly reduced against me. When they tried to fire serpent shields, it just made it easier to get good pen results in that destroyed vehicles, destroyed weapons, or forced snapshots anyway.

This has worked well against me for 2 different eldar players, but I'm sure other opponents may react differently to such a tactic. My last game doing this against them only had 4 serpents, but that's because it was a smaller 1250ish game as I recall and the ratio of blasters and warriors you can get to serpents is solid whether it's a 1250 or an 1850. Even though he seized the initiative on me and knocked out two vehicles outright, I was still able to climb back up and force him on the defensive.