Second and Third Eldar Battles

On Sunday,I faced up against Chris A and the Imperial Lancers. This was the first time he'd played with the new Space Marine Codex and not running as Blood Angels. Like me, he found love for Vulkan Hestan and his magical twin linking of Flamers and Meltas. He ran 2 tactical squads, 2 speeders with dual meltas and Vulkan. I put together a similar list (because I still have the few painted Eldar) but padded it out to 750 points. It wasn't the most efficient use of points, but I learned a few things by loading up with options.

This was a 750 point game, and my list came in right around 747.

First of all, Elrond was loaded up with Runes of Warding, Runes of Witnessing and Spirit Stones. this makes him nasty against other Psychers (which I didn't face) but also makes him a more powerful Psycher. He can avoid Perils of the Warp by rolling 3 dice for his psychic test and discarding the highest and fire off 2 psychic powers per turn. Furthermore, I gave him Doom, Eldritch Storm, Fortune and Guide. I only used the last 2 during the battle. Guide is wonderful to help hit the opponent harder. Alternatively, Fortune didn't play out quite as well, but I think it'd work well in the long term.

Again, I attached him to the Fire Dragons mounted in the Wave Serpent. Note that the Wave Serpent wasn't remotely tricked out like it could be. Personally, I think that if you do that, it makes the Eldar tanks too powerful (because the three upgrades on the tanks are what give Eldar a bad name).

That being said, if I was building a harder core list, I would have dropped Eldritch Storm and Doom from Elrond and gave the Spirit Stones, Star Engins and Vectored Engines to the thing. This would not have altered the total points for the army. Holofields are not an option for Wave Serpents which is the MAIN nastiness for Eldar Tanks, especially when stuck on Falcons which can carry troops. Of course, considering my performance on Sunday, perhaps tricking out the Wave Serpent would be a good choice.

Again, I'm not going to do a battle report, but just a few highlights.

1. In the first game, I had ended up placing the troops all near the Wave Serpent. This took a penetrating shot from the Space Marine Speeder. One roll of a 6 later, and not only did I no longer have a Wave Serpent, but half of my army was dead from the fireball. I had to stop for a minute because I was laughing so hard.

2. Chris's brother had given him a bunch of resin cast Terrain pieces. So, we used these for terrain. Interestingly, the shape lends itself nicely to 5th ed. They are tall enough in placed to block line of sight to a few figs, but a whole squad can't necessarily hide.

3. This reminds me, being a fan of International Coffee's Suisse Mocha, I end up going through about 1 can a week. Instead of throwing them away, I'm setting them aside to use as terrain. I'm going to paint them up to look like Imperial cargo containers.

4. Because we were running with a smaller force, we decided not to use the big 4x8 table, but just played on a small area of the dinner table since it was for fun and we are both rusty on the rules.

Anyway, I lost both games and I think that was due to poor generalship on my part. However, as always, we had a fun afternoon and THAT is why I play 40k.

Today I'm in Portland....