As some of you know from my editorials, Eldar have always been my dream army. Through some trading and other misc stuff, I was able to get an Eldar Army, and last night I finally got a large enough battle in with them to get a good feel for them.
Granted this was a 2500pt game, and I was fielding a lot of different units to see how I would like to play these guys, hopefully with my Dark Eldar. The one thing I am going to say about Eldar, is that their units are expensive. Above in the pic is what I fielded.
My opponent was fielding an army that I have been helping with his list, to find his playstyle within the Chaos Space Marine army. I think we were very close with his list, and it was a doosy. 6 Havoc Squads, 4 Heldrakes, and a host of standard space marines flooding the field with a couple of sorcerors to back it up from the rear. The Chaos Marines fielded were two 10 man squads with 2 meltas in a rhino, with 5 5man squads with a single plasma (the plasmas need to come out of those units). Of course the 10 man squads were fearless with upgrades, and all the troops came with an extra close combat weapon.
So I am going to start off, by saying that I got beaten very badly. However, him seizing the initiative did not help. I am more interested in how the eldar units performed out there, so here is a quick rundown of my thoughts on some of these units.
Prism Cannons.
Nice when you can link them up for some long range firepower, but overall only moderately effective for me. I can see these being extremely effective in 2000+pt games where you can link up 2 in sets of 2, so that you can get more than one S6 AP3 large blasts at a nice range.
Falcons.
I kept these bare bones. They do not cost much more than Waveserpent, and can transport small squads, and the pulse cannons are nice. I paired them up with Eldar Missile Launchers. both were destroyed quickly in the game, due to just overwhelming incoming firepower. Once again in the hull point enviroment, I did not upgrade these vehicles.
Pathfinders
Loved them during the game. I had some extremely bad rolls with them, but they killed quite a few marines during that game, and were a bitch for my opponent to take out with their increased cover saves.
Guardians
Its all about the short range shuriken catapults, and how bad they are. I took scatter lasers with my two squads to see if the S6 4 shots would help them matter during the game. I added a Warlock, and stuck him on the Quad Gun for added shots and anti-air.
Guardian Jetbikes
I fielded 3 units of 3. They did what they could, but in the end died horribly to a hail of firepower. I can see though how these could be used to great effectiveness, and used right, might be one of the big strengths of the current eldar codex. Jetbike troops are very cool.
Fire Dragons
Fire Dragons with their exarchs of course are amazing. 5 of them shooting at flyers flying by, is all it takes to take one down. They were a lot of fun, and might of done more if I would of been able to get them off the starting line.
Dark Reapers
These scared my opponent the most. I fielded two squads of 3. These needed to be bigger, and also I think having a missile launcher or even a tempest launcher in the them is a good idea.
Striking Scorpions
I really did not get a chance to field these guys well. They were way caught out in the middle of the battlefield, after my opponent seized the initiative, all hope was lost to see how they would fare.
In the end, I am wanting to combine some of these elements into a Dark Eldar list, but the one obstacle before me, is like always, the extremely high point costs of eldar units. Now that I've gotten bloody, its time to get down to business.
