First "Real" Game Tonight

[theoutsyder83]

I finally have all of my eldar models assembled and primed, and about a third of them painted (rather poorly).

My opponent will be my brother, who will play Space Marines and use all of the units from the Black Reach box (10 marines, 5 terminators, a dreadnought, and a captain). Thus, it will be a 585 point game. I'll come in at 583 with these guys:

HQ
Farseer (Doom, Guide, Spirit Stones) 120

Troops
13 Guardians (ELM) + Warlock (Embolden, Spiritseer) 160
9 Dire Avengers (Exarch w/ 2 Shuriken Catapults) 125

Heavy Support
Wraithlord (ELM) 115

We'll have very little terrain and will be on a 6x3 foot table. It will be my first real game. Let's hope it goes well...

[bakemonoda]

Good luck

I am an eldar player and my bro plays space marines so I know the match up all to well

Ur gonna struggle with 2+ armour and wish the eldar had some

Ur gonna h8 that ur models cant regroup while the space marines can

and ur gonna h8 how puny eldar are in close combat against normal marines

ur gonna realise farseer is support and can never bring back the points in terms of attack power unless you ko his dreadnought

I prefer elderitch storm + doom as the 2 eldar spells, elderitch storm can spin tanks so you can hit them in the back, also its a template weapon so no scatter, eldertich storm hitting a doomed unit has 50% of hurting a space marine 5+ re rollable

Wraithlord is better with the scatter laser + shuriken cannon set up for 120pts as this gives you 7 str 6 shots, 1 eml is inaccuarate, make sure you give it double flamers too

[theoutsyder83]

Well, actually that game got cancelled. Instead of playing, he brought home a crapload of tau stuff and spent the evening assembling/priming his new army.

Now I'll be up against: a hammerhead, 2 full squads of fire warriors, and a crisis suit (his HQ is in the mail... store didn't have one in stock).

A few things:
1) I assumed that all of the weapons that use a blast template used scatter dice... I'll have to find this rule and show it to him in the book before we start playing it that way
2) If my guys are so puny, would I be better off going fortune/storm with the farseer? Fortune to help keep my guys alive and storm for the reasons you listed above.
3) Unfortunately, I don't have too many options for the wraithlord. He's an ebay scavenge and didn't come with all of the bits. I'm stuck with the 1 catapult/1 flamer combo at the moment and the only other weapon I have to choose from is a bright lance.

As far as the ELMs, I had planned on sitting back and shooting him from a distance with krak missiles (AP3, which should negate the good saves). My bro likes to keep his distance and shoot, so I was going to use the longer range of the ELMs to force him to be more aggressive than he's comfortable being.

Of course, now he's got Tau, so he's got better range than I do. I've heard that the best strategy vs. Tau is to throw striking scorpions in transports and try to dump them as close to his long range units as possible. Unfortunately, I don't have either one (although I have ordered a falcon). Any ideas in the meantime?

And again, I've never played... so all of my strategy is untested noob theory.

[theoutsyder83]

Well, none of what I said above went according to plan. First off, we ended up playing a 1 vs 1 vs 1 free-for-all battle with Tau, Eldar (mine), and Space Marines. We each had a 585 point limit and played on a 3x3 table. We also decided to play "last man standing wins", which I don't think is standard compared to the missions I read about in the back of the rulebook... but we wanted the battle to last longer so we'd have more time to get used to the rules.

I ended up fielding this army:

HQ
Farseer (Eldritch Storm) 75

Troops
17 Guardians (EML) + Warlock (Embolden, Singing Spear) 189
9 Dire Avengers (Exarch w/ 2 Shuriken Catapults) 125

Elites
5 Fire Dragons (no upgrades) 80

Heavy Support
Wraithlord (EML) 115

Total: 584

Stuff we screwed up on:
-Forgetting to subtract BS from blast template scatter rolls made them almost useless
-I was spinning tanks with Eldritch Storm even on misses... should have used scatter dice
-Constantly forgot to differentiate between the attacks of complex units (mainly space marines, but I was guilty a time or two as well)
-We all sort of deployed our stuff simultaneously, so there wasn't much strategy involved in deployment

The table was too crowded for the Tau. They ended up in too many assaults and got wiped out pretty quickly. The remaining Eldar and Space Marines nearly fought to a draw. In the end, it was his captain (1 wound) vs. my wraithlord (2 wounds) locked in an assault that was previously a complicated mess of wraithlord + farseer + some dire avengers vs. 2 terminators + captain. Then we realized that he couldn't wound the wraithlord, so we called the game on the spot.

Overall, it was a ton of fun. I did feel bad for my bro and his Tau though. They didn't really stand a chance.