Beating the Craft World Eldar.

I firmly believe that the saying "If you cant beat them join them." Has no place in the 40k universe so i am looking for some tips and tricks to kicking Craft World Eldar butt. I am yet to play against Eldar, But i know there are some formidable Eldar players in my local area and i would love to be prepared and possibley even counter there shenanigans when i come up against them.

Fire away guys, tell me how to make them hurt and how to avoid being hurt all advice is much appreciated!

In all honesty it's an uphill battle against our Craftworld kin. They probably have the strongest codex at the moment and ours is one of the weakest. I hate to say it but against a competent Eldar player you're going to have to be incredibly lucky to pull out a win.

Any idea what sort of lists you are likely to be facing? You can expect to face tons of S6 firepower which is sufficient to negate our FNP and ID almost any of our models (outside of Coven units) and can also quite easily destroy our vehicles. By contrast, our basic weaponry is poison, which against units that are generally T3, is actually a hindrance rather than a help compared to the 'standard' S4 weapons that most infantry carry. Plus vehicles are completely immune to it. CWE can also bring obscene amounts of D weapons if they choose, although that's less effective against us than most other armies. And then there's the Wraithknight, which is all but invulnerable to us as poison needs a 6 to wound (with 3+ save and FNP after that) and even darklight needs 4+ to wound, although it does negate armour saves and it's now much harder for GMC's to claim cover.

Hmmm, I've thought that a passable strategy for Wraithknights is to run as many small squads of Khymaerae as possible and just tarpit them with 10pt models. Not there to do any damage, but fast enough to possibly catch it and the 5++ offers more survivability than most other tarpits. Bigger bases help with stomp attacks too.

Problem with that is that all the units need to take a break test if they lose the combat (which they will). Even if you include a Beastmaster in each unit you're still going on 7's at best. One decent round of combat could send all your Khymerae heading for the hills

Ah, didn't explain that well. Take RSR and have 12 individual Khymaerae so there's only ever one model per unit.

Not too much of a downside to that either, as the 'tax' units to do that are solid takes anyway (Kabs in Venoms and a lone Lhamaean).

If you want to be as irritating as you possibly can, simply repeat that until you reach your points limit in an 1850 list you can get 30 individual Khymaerae, 10x Blaster Kabs in dual S/C Venoms, 4 Lhamaeans in Venoms (just the single S/C for two of them though) and a single footslogging Lhamaean.

No obsec though...

Actually Ynnead, I believe in a combat scenario where there are multiple units in combat, they STILL all have to take a break test if their "side" loses the combat, regardless of number of units involved.

I might be wrong. I've been away from the rules game for a few months, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

The CWE like to use larger squads to maximize their psykic buffs. This generally means 6-9 scattbikes in a squad. The only way we can really counter this is with MSU (as everyone else has said). Luckily we have one of the best gunships in the game (Venom with dual SC). We also have cheap S4 AP3 flamers that negate the scattbike armour and cover save.

Using MSU tactics, you would want a lot of warrior/venoms (keeping ObSec so that you can actually take objectives to win the game). I would also recomend taking at least 2 dual medusae in raiders to sit in reserve. This will force him to spread out or risk getting flamed turn 2 (remember you get to DS with a large raider, then walk out of the raider 6", then flame a squad).

No idea how to deal with the WK unfortunately. All I can tell you is DL Ravagers are NOT the way to go.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Actually Ynnead, I believe in a combat scenario where there are multiple units in combat, they STILL all have to take a break test if their "side" loses the combat, regardless of number of units involved.

Correct. That's why I said "all the units" in my earlier post. After the melee attacks and stomps the surviving units each have to take a Ld test at -(however many models the WK killed). With a base Ld of 5, if the WK kills more than a couple of Khymerae, the chances are fairly high that the remaining units will flee. If they all flee then the WK gets to Sweep each unit (although Khymearae do have I6 compared to the WK I4).

I really dont think that the beasts are the best way to deal with the WK. I have yet to face one, but how much shooting can it possibly have?

If we cant kill the thing for less points than its worth, our tactic must be to ignore it and focus on the mission. And we all know that there is nothing in our codex that can reliably kill it for under 500 pts.

Random question, would Lhameans still wound it on 2+, or only on 6's due to GMC?

Lhameans are still poison so they need 6's. Taloi with Ichor Injectors are our best bet but they'd need to kill it quickly as they won't last very long if it survives.

Actually, now that it's more difficult for a WK to get a cover save, massed lance fire is probably our best bet against them. The "toe in cover" rule was what stopped our lances from being successful before.

So against anything but scattershield/Sword wraithknights, you can kill them with about 18 lance shots if I recall correctly off the top of my head. Against scattershield wraithknights, I'd just try to avoid getting into melee with them, and shoot other things.

I think it's 27, due to FNP. 27 shots, 18 hits, 9 wounds, 6 unsaved after FNP.

Of course, that's 3 rounds of shooting from 3 Ravagers who somehow survive that long without moving more than 6" or jinking. Oh, and they cost 375 points, or 80 points more than the Wraithknight!

Right, well we're not going to beat a wraithknight in point efficiency. That's why so many tournaments still limit them to 1.

Anyhow, I seem to recall doing the simulation on a corpsthief claw with 5 ichor injectors, and the corpsethief COULD win, but it wasn't exactly guaranteed, and if they DID win, in almost all circumstances they lost more points in Talos than the wraithknight was worth.

Basically, we stopped spamming dark lances because things like wraithknights could get a cover save with just a toe in a ruin, so the AP of the dark lances wasn't effective for their cost against 4+ cover wraithknights. With those cover saves now being a thing of the past, a return of dark lance spam may be imminent.

In most lists I see involving Wraithknights, a lot of the rest of the list supports that expensive unit. Seems like we have a choice of trying to eliminate the Wraithknight, or just take everything else out. Doing both is like fetch, it's not going to happen.

I'd propose ignoring the Wraithknight and ganging up on the rest of the army, targeting specifically units with high firepower and those that directly support the Wraithknight (Farseer with psychic powers and whatnot). If you do it right, you've got too many targets late-game for the Wraithknight to take down. Play the MSU ObSec game in turns 4-6 and win through points.

This is what I usually do against CWE:

WK
Spending multiple rounds shooting something that will reduce its effectivenes only after these several rounds or your entire army strength is not a good idea. Hes not objsec either so meh... There are almost always better targets. And if you really need to deal with him, take Heroes' Path and charge him with Solitaire. Or just turn every gun you have at him. 90 poison + 14 lances should take care of him (if I counted right), which is roughly a standard list loadout I think. But if he does not take the FW 16.5'' S7 AP4 templates, I dont see him as the biggest problem.

Bike spam
If you go first, deploy everything, preferrably out of vehicles and position vehicles behind infantry to draw them to your poison range. Try to force jinks with Dissies and Lances on them. For our poison they are just expensive marines. They are not exactly efficient in killing our infantry too, so if you go second, leave transports in reserves and present only bodies in cover, close to your edge and use their 24'' range to your advantage. Assuming they have 6 bikes per squad, it will take 2 of those squads on average to kill 10 warriors... thats 324 pts of shooting against 80 points of damage. Anyway between jinking and poison you should neuter great majority of their shooting.

Serpents
Same thing regarding their shooting. Present bodies, not ideal targets. Actually pray that they will shoot your warriors in cover with their scatter and serpent shield. You will lose like 7 warriors per serpent and they will lose the shield or 3 warriors without shield... lol...

Generally, I find it preferrable to start just with cheap infantry on the table and lure him closer to you if I go second. If you go first - think. Reserve what can have a big impact later. Be mindful of what gives him best chance of winning the game. Dont focus just on biggest threat, models or whatever internet says. Dissies and Lances can easily force jinks on stuff. HWG and HWB can force jinks on Serpents. If you force a jink or snapshots, shoot another target.

Focus on damage. Get your mind off defence. Hurt him. Mitigate damage through presenting wrong targets, through terrain not through buying upgrades that do not add to your ability to hurt him.

Use a flyer or two and missile the crap out of him.

66% of your reserves come on T2 so you may really be able to afford it.

Use melee to block shooting. You can catch his bikes and aspects and they are no tougher than marines in CC, in fact mostly weaker. You get stronger with higher turns in CC.

I like using champs with HWG and occasional Agoni or PwrSword. Its fun to charge these into a 3+ unit and watch them die under your FC, Fearless and possibly Rage Kabalites.

Need contesting units? Kabalite warriors or wyches can contest bikes and aspects just fine. Just lock them in CC. You should be Fearless when the grabbing starts. :-)

The worst CWE matchup I can imagine is aspect spam of the fast (or long-range) and shooty units like spiders, spectres, reapers, etc. which will use the +1 BS to full AND do not need spend points on nonsense like Serpents.

Lastly - dont let anyone tell you that any unit in the dex is bad. Try them all. Really think about what are they best at and try them out and try hard to make most of them, you will be surprised how great some of them are given good timing and good target...

50 warp-spiders works really well against most eldar lists. Just sub your warriors for them.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Actually Ynnead, I believe in a combat scenario where there are multiple units in combat, they STILL all have to take a break test if their "side" loses the combat, regardless of number of units involved.

I might be wrong. I've been away from the rules game for a few months, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Drat.

So, would need to charge the WK with 1 Khymaera per turn (or maybe 2 or 3 to mitigate overwatch).

Then, just trail the other 27 around in a big circle around it. If it kills the 3 Khymaerae and consolidates into the bubblewrap, congrats, you just charged another 30pts. Spread out far enough you could probably make it so that it couldn't even jump over your horde. Stomps would be worrisome, but given the base size of Khymaerae they'd be spread out enough.

Of course, they could use the rest of their army to clear the way, but they're still expending a lot of effort to get rid of your 300pts of beasts...

No idea if that sort of tactic would work IRL, but it seems like it would in my head!

Ynnead - no overwatch to worry about from Gargantuan Monstrous Creatures, but they do have a 12" move, and a Wraithknight can use its jump pack in the movement phase to hop over your Khymerae. I see one charging Khymerae getting killed by the Wraithknight and then the rest hopped past without any effective slowing down.

It can't consolidate into the Khymaera it has to stop before hitting them, it also cannot multi charge under any circumstances.

The biggest problem with your plan is that no amount of Khymaera squads that you can actually get into B2B will survive a single round of combat, so they will simply rush in and die on your turn then the WK can jump over and do what it wants on it's turn.

Ignoring it is probably the best strategy, or use allies that have weapons that actually hurt it.

The idea would be to charge a single Khymaera into combat with the Wraithknight, and then you arrange the other 29 Khymaerae in a big matrix surrounding the Wraithknight, so that it can't land anywhere within its 12" movement without being in contact with another Khymaera.

Given the base size of a Khymaera, and the base size of a Wraithknight, you could probably get away with a lot fewer than 30 of them to pull it off (making it points-efficient).

Probably a hell of a lot simpler just to ignore it, but would certainly be fun to pull on someone who's running multiple knights, scatbikes and warp spiders

Seshiru wrote:

Ignoring it is probably the best strategy, or use allies that have weapons that actually hurt it.

I tend to agree. CWE want us to shoot the WK. I dont like doing what they want. :-)

As others have said...

Run MSU.
Ignore the cheeseknight.
Slaughter the rest of his army.
Win on objs.