Serpent Spam

I would call Serpent Spam our worst matchup now

Zanais wrote:

I would call Serpent Spam our worst matchup now

abit off topic, but nah.
I have yet to loose to that one. OK, I have also to start second. So if going second I can understand the bad matchup, but if I go first I see no worries at all, my beast group will force them to move than shoot.

Yeah if you get first turn wave serpent spam isn't a hard match up at all.

Darklight I dont know what kind of Serpent Spam you faced than, maybe you can show me his list? Cause 6 Serpents with TL weapons are enough to kill any beast squad, and AV12 with 4+ cover save means you need far too many lances to wreck it. And Im talking about Pure DE, with allies yes, you can fight with Serpents.

About IG you just have to use our mobility to atack side armour. Guards is not very mobile, and except Vendetta everything dies to mass lances spam.

Zanais wrote:

Darklight I dont know what kind of Serpent Spam you faced than, maybe you can show me his list? Cause 6 Serpents with TL weapons are enough to kill any beast squad, and AV12 with 4+ cover save means you need far too many lances to wreck it.

Your going to have a hard time making a balanced list with 6 serpents that under 2000 points. At 1500, 1750 and 1850 you will be sacrificing too much. Serpents are flexible sure but there are a lot of things they struggle to deal with AV13-14 being one of them, FMCs being another.

Also any half decent DE list going first will take out two serpents before they can move. So if you get first turn serpent spam really isn't a problem.

1750

5x5 DA in Serpents with Holo, SC, Scatter
2x3 WW with Scatter/BL
Night Spinner
Spiritseer
still got 95 points left and 6 lances from outflank to deal with av14, yes, av 13/14 is problematic (although av13 can be glanced to death). About FMC true, but FMC are hard for many armies, thats why Demons are so good. If grounded however with Bladestorm its quite easy to take them down.

Im not saying its impossible to beat serpent spam, just its hard for DE to beat good serpent spam as they are perfectly suited to negate our defenses. Ignore cover with s7, 60" range and twin linked means enemy has to have very bad rolls not to kill vehicle per turn.

We have problem with rate of fire, while other armies can spam s7 shots we are stuck with lances who are not expensive but also heavy 1. No way to get tank hunters, ignore cover or twin linked, means that from 12 Dark Lance shots, around 8 hits, 4 glances/pens, 2 are saved - basicly its about 1 Serpent dead after 10+ lances. Shooting game with eldar is bad idea imho.

Assault seems far better option - haywire wyches, beasts and jetbikes. Of course its rather impossible for those venoms to survive 1 turn against shooting but they might be able to deliver wyches. Beasts will usually die to rate of fire (4+ for khymera is good but its still only 4+), Flocks will be IDed, Jetbikes will have to rely on their 5+ save if hit by serpent shield (someone explain me why eldar jetbikes have 3+, and we have 5+? ) but with ability to take power axes, get drug rolls for fnP and +1S, heat lances, they might be able to destroy Serpents easily. Of course Heat lances are almost useless against common Serpent tactic to hug board edge with its rear armor.

Tailoring list means we can stand against Serpents, but when going to tournament with TAC list, we will have a lot of useless units and too few tools to deal with it.

Zanais wrote:

someone explain me why eldar jetbikes have 3+, and we have 5+?

Because we cut holes in ours to make scary noises

Obyiscus, that is the best answer I have heard. That cracks me up and seems quasi viable.

Mushkilla wrote:

Also any half decent DE list going first will take out two serpents before they can move. So if you get first turn serpent spam really isn't a problem.

Even assuming they have no cover save at all that's still 18 darklight shots on the first turn and that would almost all have to be from Lances as Blasters are unlikely to even be in range (deply 12", move 6", shoot 18" = 36"). 18 lances seems a lot even at higher point levels and would come at the expense of AI as you would have few, if any Venoms.

Zanais wrote:

1750

5x5 DA in Serpents with Holo, SC, Scatter
2x3 WW with Scatter/BL
Night Spinner
Spiritseer

I count 5 serpents in that list not 6. How does that list deal with assault? How does it clear things like marines out of cover? How does it deal with FMCs? etc. Sure it's strong against us, but it's not a balanced list, and will crumble to a lot of things out there.

Your whole post really comes across as if the sky is falling!

Serpents are good, but like I said before they are too expensive to spam without leaving weaknesses in your list. Is it hard to destroy all the serpents, yes it is, but they don't stop you winning the objectives game, the eldar player is only going to go for objectives on turn 5 because his troops are so fragile, he also doesn't want you to close on him, and if he doesn't want you to split your army and go after his rear armour then he sacrifices even more of the board to you. Meaning you control the board, which will win you the game. If he shoots his shields he is vulnerable to our lances so why is our rate of fire a problem if he is shooting his shields all the time? People make it sound like serpents can be immune to penetrating hits and fire 1+D6 S7 shots, they can only do one at a time.

No sky is not falling.

Sure that list will crumble to some lists, tell me which of those list are TAC lists for tournament. Flying Circus? Yes, can win. Khorne dogs spam too. Maybe soemthing else I dont know. Now tell em what TAC dark eldar list will kill it.

You say about objective game, than how you want to stay with those objectives with our infantry?
VS Wyche wound 2+, save 6+
VS Warrior wound 2+, save 5+
VS Wracks wound 2+, save 6+, fnp 5+

Why would Eldar player even shoot at your troops for first 3 turns? First he kills Ravagers and than how many lances you have? How many of those will miss, how many will roll 4+ on pen and how many will bypass 4+ cover save? You sound like 1 lance shot is enough to kill AV12 with 4+ cover. Well if you have insane luck with dice maybe it is, but on avarage you need around9 lance shots to inflict a single pen to AV12 with 4+ save.

About board control. Have you seen tournament boards? Usually they are not dense, and even if they are, you wont hide all your Raiders/Venoms.

If you think Eldar troops are weak than I will disagree. They are better than ours cause of battle Focus, Assault 2 weapons, Bladestrom. I played with Eldar vs Tyranids and my 10 Guardians killed Tervigon in one volley.

Even if not shooting with Shield, Serpent has 7 twin linked shots with 6S. Enough to have great chance to kill our skimmers, while being much safer behind his shield.

There is a reason why Eldar/Tau is not most common tournament build. Such list have worse matchups but at least they are durable and have insane amount of fire. I wont even start about Eldar psychic powers twin linking everything.

If you managed to beat good serpent spam as DE, and have report for it, I will gladly read it. You are better player than I am, and its always good to see some nice tactics. But in game you played with Shadows his list was not optimal (first of all, very big mistake not giving scatter lasers on Serpents, they are crucial).

I believe a wave serpent shooting its TL SL and its Shields has an average of 8-9 hits? And all of those wound on 2s against marines. And the Shield causes Pinning. I'd say thats pretty good anti-marine firepower compared to our poison spam.

Mass S6-7 is just really cost effective, especially against our lightly armored army.

I definitely agree pure DE vs Eldar WS spam is our hardest matchup. If we don't get a decent alpha strike in, we're going to be hurting.

If you go first it's not to bad a match up, as you an take out a serpent (or two depending on your number of lances), and move your assault elements into a more threatening position.

Going second however without night fight to reduce the range of the shields and on a board with next to no LoS blocking terrain then it's a real nightmare.

But barren boards have always been a problem for DE, if your playing on boards with inadequate terrain then the problem is not with the army but the board. There's a reason all the big american tournaments play with lots of terrain and lots of line of sight blockers. It's what the game was designed around (look at any page in the rule book and the boards are choke full of good terrain).

The game just doesn't work on planet bowling ball.

Spot on. I think this is one reason I tend to struggle with DE in my group. We have very little LOS blocking terrain and we also tend to cluster the terrain around the edges of the board leaving a massive no mans land in the middle where my fragile units simply get destroyed.

A few months ago I managed to convince my gaming club to always play with a central LoS blocking terrain piece, and it has really made the game a lot more fun for everyone. It makes going second a lot less punishing against Codex Tau and Codex Serpent Spam. Even the players with shooting heavy armies have taken to it, as it gives them a central obstacle to slow down assault based armies. On the other hand for assault based armies it gives you more cover as you advance up the board. It makes for far more dynamic games and tends to mean most games go the full 5-6 turns.

We either play symmetric tournament style board set ups or place your own terrain board set ups, however in both cases the board always starts with a central LoS blocking terrain piece. I would highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't already use this kind of set up. It really makes for far more tactical game play, and reduces the rock/paper/scissor element considerably.

Mushkilla wrote:

A few months ago I managed to convince my gaming club to always play with a central LoS blocking terrain piece, and it has really made the game a lot more fun for everyone. It makes going second a lot less punishing against Codex Tau and Codex Serpent Spam. Even the players with shooting heavy armies have taken to it, as it gives them a central obstacle to slow down assault based armies. On the other hand for assault based armies it gives you more cover as you advance up the board. It makes for far more dynamic games and tends to mean most games go the full 5-6 turns.

We either play symmetric tournament style board set ups or place your own terrain board set ups, however in both cases the board always starts with a central LoS blocking terrain piece. I would highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't already use this kind of set up. It really makes for far more tactical game play, and reduces the rock/paper/scissor element considerably.

i tried doing this, especially in 5th as i use to make all the 40k terrain. Unfortunately i didn't end up having the supplies for nice, chunky LoS blocking pieces which meant more area terrain. That kinda backfired as it got to the point where people playing static shooty armies were like "what ever, you're going to get a cover save no matter what i do so i'm just going to sit here, let you have cover, and unload loads of shots on you." I'm sure tau would be honey badger about it.


.....anyway. I havne't really broken down eldar codex enough to tease the idea of a serpent spam list, but i think you can make a rather balanced one at 1850. Assault armies would be its only issue, but thats and issue for tau also. Ands assault armies don't typically like venom spam lists. So as we can see they'res a very rock/paper/scissors ness thats kinda of the theme of 6th, which reminds us if they're really is such thing as a truely "balanced" 6th ed list that isn't going to have one or two problem match ups.

Also, I don't think FMC are that much of an issue for tau/eldar due to volume of fire. You just need it to drop then all those shots are going to chew threw them. I know when guys at frontlinegaming were discussing tau&daemons meta of west coast vs east coast daemons going FMC route had terrible times against foot tau (this is on east coast) because of sheer volume of fire, where west coast tau were having issues with daemons because of balanced, assaulty lists (ie: dogs, seekers). I think you could insert eldar into that tau role and see same thing. They'd chew up monsterous creatures, but struggle with more balanced assaulty lists.

Darklight wrote:

Zanais wrote:

I would call Serpent Spam our worst matchup now

abit off topic, but nah.

I was just rereading this thread and laughed at this. I'm not sure if you're saying the OP is off topic with the first post in the thread or if you're saying you're off topic for disagreeing but I just thought it was funny.

Anyway, there needs to be better rules about terrain. Different armies benefit from, or are punished by, different types of terrain and it's best to have a good mix of terrain and 25% board coverage. If you have this, then you're in good shape. If your local scene doesn't have this then you need to petition to get better terrain on the board or make your own and bring it to the store. Honestly nothing kills this game more than having poor terrain.

There are rules about terrain very clearly printed in the rulebook, with narrative and alternate terrain set-ups described in detail. Either of these methods , done properly, will result in having good terrain on the board conducive to a fun game. The problem, as usual, is with tournaments. This is yet another example of why 40k is meant to be a fun, thematic game between two people who want to invest in the rich tapestry of the grim dark far future and enjoy themselves whilst doing so. This is also why they introduced the mysterious terrain, objectives and all the other fun elements of scenery which 99% of people ignore entirely. Personally I think if people are going to play a game completely unsuited to competetive play and then moan about how unsuited it is, I find it very hard to feel any sympathy for their plight.

I'd more concerned about 4 serpents loaded with dangerous troops and alot of support (Flyer, Warp Spiders, War walkers, Artillery and so on). Also, one time i took 2 Wave Serpents as allies (one was loaded with Guardians, other with WG, HQ is obviously The Jetseer). They pummeled four scythes out of the sky during the game. Who needs quad guns anymore?

Hijallo wrote:

Also, one time i took 2 Wave Serpents as allies (one was loaded with Guardians, other with WG, HQ is obviously The Jetseer). They pummeled four scythes out of the sky during the game. Who needs quad guns anymore?

I had the opposite experience a couple of weeks back. I fired 2 wave serpents, a squad of Dark Reapers including Exarch with Flakk, and an actual guadgun (at BS5) at a single Helldrake for 2 turns and did a grand total of 1 HP which he then regenerated with IWND.   

Did he passed any Invulnerable saves? All hail Flickerfields, and Heldrakes have their better equivalent.

He passed pretty much every invulnerable he needed to take but that wasn't many as I failed to hit or glance/penetrate most of the time.