Return of the Foot Eldar for a 1750 RTT

So as you can tell by the post below, I was thinking about taking my foot Eldar for a spin again, and that is what I did at an RTT last Saturday. A lot of people don’t know this because they only know me as a Draigowing player, but back in the day, I did well at GTs using foot Eldar. I have not played them in over a year since Da Boyz in Nov. 2010.

So I drove the 40 minutes to the game store called Crusaders Retreat in Phoenix. It was a new store with just a few tables so there were like 9 players.

My 1750 point list was:

HQ

Avatar

Eldrad

Elites

5 Harlequins w/Kisses

Shadowseer/Kiss

Troupe Master/Power Weapon

  Troops

10 Guardians w/Scatter Laser

10 Guardians w/Scatter Laser

10 Guardians w/Scatter Laser

3 Jetbikes w/Cannon

Warlock w/spear, destructor

3 Jetbikes w/Cannon

Warlock w/spear, destructor

8 Dire Avengers

Exarch w/2 Catapults, Bladestorm

Heavy Support

Wraithlord w/Brightlance, Missile Launcher, 2 Flamers

Wraithlord w/Brightlance, Missile Launcher, 2 Flamers

3 War Walkers w/Dual Scatter Lasers

So my normal list that I have always played but I have not gotten out in a year, so this will be a good experiment to see how it does against the new codexes (if I play any).

Game #1 against Ryan C’s Blood Angels

I have played Ryan a couple of times before at 5 round GTs here in Arizona. He remarked that he is 8-0 at them playing anyone other than me. Funny thing is that David Fay and Jon G. can say the exact same things. ;)

Ryan normally plays a dual stormraven list and he switched this time to a DOA list that he is trying out for the Bay Area Open. I was a bit worried because I have massed firepower and he has a lot of Feel no Pain, so it will be tough getting threw that and a 3+ save.

So he charged forward, got tangled up with Guardians (he did not have any ranged shooting to clear the Guardian bubble wrap) and then I counter assaulted with the Clowns, Avatar, and Wraithlords. He did not go gently but I ended up with a 14-6 win.

Game #2 against Tyranids

This was a younger player (early teens) that was very new to the game with a very bad Tyranid list. So how did he end up at the top tables against me? Well, they had an odd number of players so they had a bye in the first round so he ended up with a win and facing me. Well, most good players these days have no idea what Eldar do, and I am not here in a timed event to explain everything so I had a feeling that he had no idea what was going on. He not only did not have any idea about my army, but he did not know his own rules and his own army as well. I kind of felt bad for him afterwards because he must not have had much fun, and it is one thing that my foot eldar excel at doing is kill tyranids. He basically picked up handfuls of models from my war walkers, and then get hit by the destructor warlocks and it was game over.  

Game #3 against Dan and my Nova Open Draigowing

Dan is a new player (I need to stop calling him a new player because he has been playing my old list for a while now) and has copied my Draigowing list that I used at the Nova Open. He is getting better with it, and slowly learning what I learned from playing it for the last 8 months. I have played him once before with my Chaos Space Marines and I won the game when I just drove away from him. This game he is just going to walk forward and blow me off of the table. 

Well I started off good when a Wraithlord took down a Dreadnaught, but his paladins made 12 out of 12 saves from my war walkers. He shot up my Avatar with a 5-man Paladin squad and I failed 5 out of 6 saves, lucky for me I was fortuned but I still took 2 wounds. This is not starting well. My Wraithlords continued to shake his dreadnaughts and I kept blocking fortitude with Runes of Warding. When his Dreadnaughts did get a shot off they wiped out my War Walkers.  It was nice shutting down his psychic powers because he was afraid to cast anything with his librarian. Still, he kept getting closer to me with his paladins and the turn I wanted to go after them he blocked 2 out of my 3 powers, which meant that I did not have the firepower to take them down. So what I did was I shifted my whole army to the right to be close to only one of his combat squaded Paladins. Then I circled them with a unit of Jetbikes. Here is a weakness of Paladins (so don’t go around telling anyone this) but they have to assault what they shoot at, so if you put a squad of jetbikes or any other expendable units in front of them, they either have to move around them, which they really can’t do, or shoot at them and assault them wasting a turn of shooting and assault. So he shot and killed them, but that kept him out of my lines, before I was ready to deal with them,  and he made the mistake of using the consolidation move to get closer. The other combat squad of Paladins that had the librarian and Draigo in it my other squad of Jetbikes where behind him and constantly flamed him, and then backed up 6”. So he could not really counter them either unless he wanted to waste a turn of shooting, or assault them and that would move them back away from me as well (I might have sent Draigo after them and crushed them for a turn since I did not have any strength 8 shooting of note). 

So after the 5-Paladin squad killed my Jetbikes I was able to get off my psychic powers and after being Doomed, my Dire Avengers and Guardians unloaded on them and there was only one left by the time they were done. I was set up to charge the last guy with my Avatar and my clowns, but I only needed to send in the Avatar to take him out. Then on the next turn my shooting was starting to pay dividends, and it took out 3 paladins (after he failed 3 out of 4 saves restoring the law of averages from the first round where he made all of his saves) and he rolled an 11 for his morale roll and fled back. 

The funny thing is that he thought he had gotten back away from my units and could regroup, but after my 6” eldar jetbike move in the assault phase, he was back to being with 6” of a unit. That is one thing that I like about Eldar is they have units that move in the assault phase and can keep units fleeing. At this point it was all over but the shouting, and the game was over with me winning.

A few things that surprised me is how gimped the Grey Knights are when they are afraid to cast any powers, and the ability to keep the Dreadnaughts stunned. They also had no answer for the Wraithlords at range. The dreads hit well, but they had trouble wounding, and with a 3+ save they could not hurt them. I also thought that they would kill a ton of guardians, but even with all of their shooting and cover saves they were only killing 5 guardians from each squad a round (sounds like a lot, but they are cannon fodder).

So I had some fun and won the tournament. It was good playing my Foot Eldar again. I might bring them out of semi-retirement and play them some more.