1750 DE vs IG

The last time I played against Guard I was able to win by using CC to stop them shooting on their turn while I could still fall back and shoot on mine. As long as I can stay away from meltas, I might use the Ravagers to charge each turn and prevent even more enemy shooting.

1750 point Aeldari Battalion
Farseer Skyrunner - 171
Warlock - 37

5 Kabalites w/ PGL - 38
Venom - 80
5 Kabalites w/ Blaster & PGL - 53
Venom - 80
10 Kabalites w/ Dark Lance - 90
Raider - 115

5 Trueborn w/ 4 Blasters - 115
Venom - 80

Ravager w/ 1 Dissie / 2 DL - 165
Ravager w/ 1 Dissie / 2 DL - 165
Ravager w/ 1 Dissie / 2 DL - 165

Razorwing Jetfighter w/ Dissies - 175
Hemlock Wraithfighter - 221

Can you spot any glaring holes or inefficiencies here? I plan to face 40-80 guardsmen/conscripts, 4 Leman Russes, a couple misc. tanks (Hellhound for sure) and a flyer or two. The mission will be Fate of Konor Week 4, and since neither of us are Chaos we'll be rolling off to see who is Attacker/Defender, so I need to be ready to defend points (should be easy to tie up his whole army in CC) or go after them (which I'm a bit worried about).

Just from what you're describing, I'd say the Vegas odds are against you. I admit I haven't got any firsthand experience with Guard, only theoretical understandings from Battle Reports or reading the indices. It seems, just from what you're anticipating, that you're at a disadvantage.

So what can I do to shore up the odds a bit? Should I drop a ravager for some more bodies like Hellions or something?

tonytastey wrote:

1750 point Aeldari Battalion
Farseer Skyrunner - 171
Warlock - 37

I will try not to allow my old man habits to whine about using Aeldari as your faction keyword
I don't actually get the point of either of your HQ choices here.
Where are they going and what are they doing?

It seems like all the Farseer will be good for is Smite and Doom (since the other psychic powers can't target DE)
The Warlock, meanwhile, is an assault HQ unit who will need to footslog around with a weak Smite power and no assault unit to combo with, meaning he'll assault in alone against IG blobs? Or tey to beat up tanks by himself? I don't get the point of him or what he's bringing to the army.

I would tend to suggest you at least drop the Warlock, as he's doing pretty much nothing for the list. I'd almost tend to suggest flipping in some Autarchs on bikes or something instead.

Honestly, if it was me, I'd reqork the entire army list to get some HQs that are helpful - but if you're insistent on Eldar psychic support I would suggest Autarchs or Warlocks on bikes and I don't think either is that good for the list but are at least better than what is currently being suggested.

tonytastey wrote:

5 Kabalites w/ PGL - 38
Venom - 80
5 Kabalites w/ Blaster & PGL - 53
Venom - 80
10 Kabalites w/ Dark Lance - 90
Raider - 115

If your opponent is running Commissars then the PGL is wasted points for the most part.
I do see that you have some mild leadership tech in your army, but would suggest you're not really using it to its full potential.

Is the purpose of the 10 man squad to start outside of the Raider so it can serve as an assault throwaway? Otherwise why not just run 5 men and a Blaster in the Raider? The extra points saved could get you a second s.cannon on your Venoms, which would be helpful to them in cutting through the conscript blobs.

tonytastey wrote:

5 Trueborn w/ 4 Blasters - 115
Venom - 80

I'm not the biggest fan of Trueborn, but this is a solid choice overall.

tonytastey wrote:

Ravager w/ 1 Dissie / 2 DL - 165
Ravager w/ 1 Dissie / 2 DL - 165
Ravager w/ 1 Dissie / 2 DL - 165

As a thought, you might wish to consolidate your Dissies on one platform. This does give the enemy one target to try to hurt a lot of your anti-infantry, but it also will free up your other Ravagers to more freely assault into mobs to lock them down, especially after the tanks are silenced, and you can always hide one Ravager pretty well.

tonytastey wrote:

Razorwing Jetfighter w/ Dissies - 175
Hemlock Wraithfighter - 221

I think you're burning a lot of points here. Yeah, the Hemlock is nice for gakking stuff up, but you could get another Razorwing for far less, and get a vehicle that has better range and more ability to doll out wounds (which is very important for working through blobs) It also has more ability to split fire and maximize target options.

I'm of a mix with putting dissies on the Razorwing, I get what you're doing, but would tend to suggest the dissies on Ravagers will be more useful, and a Razorwing always has splinter fire and missiles if you want to be slapping around infantry - of course it can't assault so....eh, I get what you're doing, it's just not how I'd play the game so my advice naturally wants to dismantle your entire build

I will suggest that shaving some points to toss in an actual fast assault/harraser unit might benefit you. Both beastpacks and Hellions have some noted uses against guard.

My thoughts,
Thor.

I appreciate the feedback, @Thor665! My overarching question/concern is, am I going to have trouble chewing up IG blobs and it seems like the answer is a resounding yes. I'm not attached to the Farseer Skyrunner, although Doom and Smite has been great for me in the past. The warlock is nothing more than a cheap HQ to get me to Battalion, but those 3 CP's might not even be that useful in this game. My rerolls are going to be used almost exclusively for DL penetrations and one per turn is only going to be about 5 total. The big squad of Kabs is to hold points and/or make use of Sustained Assault - but I can see cutting them for a better guard chewing unit.

If I drop the Farseer, the Warlock, the 10 man Kab squad, downgrade the other two Kab squads to bare bones and downgrade the RWJ's dissies to DLs, I can get a squad of Incubi with a Succubus for the now-empty Raider, plus 10 Hellions. Good start?

Certainly not an inherently bad one - Incubi hitting into a Guardsmen blob are likely going to mincemeat it. The only catch will be surviving afterwards when they fall back/are gone and you get shot up. But, end of the day, that mostly comes down to saturation of threats.

Hellions are also very good against Guard in my experience, as they can cause a lot of damage both on the way in with shooting, and on the assault. I have been favoring squads around 12-15 myself, which will certainly help if your opponent has the sit and squat side of the battle as you'll likely have to risk at least one turn of shooting.

In either case I'll note that tossing in a boat first to absorb overwatch is always a good idea.

Here's a crazy idea ... sorry for the straight text dump, I'm on mobile:


++ Spearhead Detachment +1CP (Aeldari - Drukhari) [87 PL, 1750pts] ++

+ HQ +

Haemonculus [5 PL, 76pts]: Haemonculus tools, Splinter Pistol

+ Troops +

Wracks [6 PL, 99pts]
. Acothyst: Haemonculus tools
. 8x Wracks: 8x Haemonculus Tools

Wracks [3 PL, 55pts]
. Acothyst: Haemonculus tools
. 4x Wracks: 4x Haemonculus Tools

Wyches [3 PL, 45pts]
. Hekatrix: Hekatarii blade, Splinter pistol
. 4x Wych

+ Elites +

Incubi [5 PL, 90pts]
. 4x Incubi
. Klaivex: Klaive

+ Fast Attack +

Hellions [9 PL, 170pts]
. Helliarch: Hellglaive
. 9x Hellion

Scourges [6 PL, 130pts]
. Scourge with Special / Heavy weapon: Blaster
. Scourge with Special / Heavy weapon: Blaster
. Scourge with Special / Heavy weapon: Blaster
. Scourge with Special / Heavy weapon: Blaster
. Solarite: Shardcarbine

+ Heavy Support +

Ravager [8 PL, 185pts]: Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon

Ravager [8 PL, 185pts]: Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon

Ravager [8 PL, 185pts]: Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon

+ Flyer +

Razorwing Jetfighter [8 PL, 175pts]: 2 Disintegrator Cannons, Twin splinter rifle

+ Dedicated Transport +

Raider [6 PL, 115pts]: Dark Lance

Venom [4 PL, 80pts]: Splinter Cannon, Twin splinter rifle

Venom [4 PL, 80pts]: Splinter Cannon, Twin splinter rifle

Venom [4 PL, 80pts]: Splinter Cannon, Twin splinter rifle

++ Total: [87 PL, 1750pts] ++

Lots of resilience here vs str3 weapons for max tarpitting, and with all Dissies I can clean up guardsmen/conscripts when I'm done with the tanks. Scourge unit can hunt down anything I don't expect. Thoughts?

There are so many things here I haven't seen used this edition that I couldn't really say. On paper it looks solid, though. There's a lot of target saturation, and still some decent hitters.

Looks like I'm running this list FOR SCIENCE then!

Welp, I came away with the win, but I had a LOT of things go my way:

1. He won the roll-off for the mission (Konor week 4) and chose to be the attacker, which was huge for me because I felt I had a muchbetter chance keeping him off objectives for 5 turns than I would have had trying to capture them against his gun line.

2. I was able to seize the initiative! I was willing to spend a CP to reroll it no matter what, but I got a 6 on the first try so I was able go first and tie up like 75% of his army in CC on T1.

3. The game ended on turn 5. Since I went first I got to roll for the random game length and I had saved a CP to reroll it just in case, but got the natural 2 and ended the game while I had all 3 objectives secured.

As for the funky units I used to combat potential guard spam, it ended up being a complete non-issue because he didn't bring any! He had a total of 30 guardsmen, 3 squads of 10 each in a Chimera plus a 10 man Scions squad in a Taurox. The rest was tanks! I think 4 Leman Russes, a hellhound and a wyvern. So my AT list would have been way better, but in the end it didn't matter.

Hellions: I basically threw these guys away T1. I wanted to get the T1 charge off with them, but the only thing in range was the Hellhound which melted 4/10 Hellions before they even mad it in. They didn't really do much from there and folded to just about everything.

Wyches: My 5 man wych squad got out of their Venom T2 and ended up making a charge or two against Leman Russes to tie them up, then they charged his company commander and ended up dying to him (there were only 3 left after a couple overwatch casualties)

Wracks: These guys were tarpit extraordinaires. The 9-man squad surrounded a Chimera T2 and kept it in CC the whole game. The 5 man squad was deployed outside the Venom behind a building to keep hold of an objective so they didn't contribute the whole game.

Incubi: They popped a Wyvern and a Chimera since they are >8 toughness, but were pretty underwhelming against a Leman Russ. Still, they did their job.

So that's it. Still not a huge fan of coven and will probably put them back on the shelf until the codex comes out. Hellions could have been good if I didn't just throw them away. Wyches were meh but fine. Incubi performed as expected.