Wednesday night was a 1500pt Eldar vs Dark Eldar showdown. We rolled Relic on Hammer and Anvil, I castled up behind some ruins while my opponent struck out towards the centre.

I got really lucky when he failed a couple of charges turn 2 against my tanks, allowing me to catch his Wyches in the open with Guardians and gun them down. Although I made a good push and forced him off the Relic some smart play by him kept me from claiming it for long, and an unlucky stunned result in turn 7 kept me from moving far enough to take Linebreaker with my lone surviving Guardian.

End result was a 2vp-2vp draw where I had First Blood and Slay the Warlord while my opponent got Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker.

I may have got carried away with upgrades, but after the fun I had parking my vehicles anywhere  I like I can’t imagine I’ll ever go without the Ghostwalk Matrix any time soon! Holofields are, as we all know, tremendous and Wave Serpents are almost impossible to kill.

I really like my Fire Prisms, but they weren’t a huge lot of use against Dark Eldar. They forced a lot of units to go to ground, but given the cost I’m not sure they justified it. Still, always worth taking to deal with Spehss Mehreens.

Got 3 turns of a game in Tuesday night, playing Purge the Alien. My Ulthwe were allied with Salamanders against Chaos, Ultramarines and Eldar. Final score was close, something along the lines of 10-8, and some good skimmer jink saves on their side protected a bunch of skimmers in the last turn. Pretty good game, very brutal, just a shame we only get long enough for a few turns down at Games Workshop.

Death Worlds

Got a game in last night with the new Death Worlds missions from White Dwarf 388, which was a nice change from the standard 40k scenarios. We rolled for the Breakthrough mission, which had each side trying to break through the opponent's line in a doubles game where my Ulthwe allied with Chaos against Black Templar and Necrons.

The random tables for environmental effects were cool, though lack of familiarity slowed things down a bit as we searched the tables and tried to figure out how to use our shiny new effects, but I think with a few more games of practice we'd be able to fire through quick enough. 

Looking at some of the tables I'm pretty keen to fire down my Necrons with this at some time, since several of the rolls will provide good synergy with my Writhing Worldscape C'tan, but even with my Eldar we had some good results, mostly damage to enemy units coming across the field.

And in true Eldar style I managed to grab us a last minute win with a quick turbo-boost into the enemy deployment zone for a win of 14-11. Hurrah for fast skimmers and jetbikes!

The main thing I took from that game was just that it's nice to be playing something other than the standard 3 missions. Anything to shake up the game in these dying days of 5th Edition is good in my books, and I look forward to seeing what GW offer us in the way of missions for 6th.

Further Reading

Blood of Kittens: I bought a White Dwarf and I like it

Way of Saim Hann: Mission Burnout

Path of the Seer: Combat Patrol

Combat Patrol, now that's what I call Ulthwe Strike Force!

Yeah, Combat Patrol. Now there's a game type I hadn't played in a long time.

I was round visiting a friend the other day and he suggested we play a game of Combat Patrol. After giving us a refresher on the rules we set about it, a three-player game where my Eldar took on Space Marines and Orks.

As a game type it's a lot of fun taking such a small force, you're severely restricted when it come to choosing your list (only 400 pts, limits on multi-wound models and models with armour values, etc) which means you're not just on a scaled down version of your full size list. I was glad I'd brought my Eldar along, as this was the perfect opportunity to put down something themed on the Ulthwe Strike Force from the old Eye of Terror codex.

11 Guardians - Scatter Laser
Warlock - Singing Spear, Conceal

3 Jetbikes - Shuriken Cannon
Warlock - Singing Spear, Destructor

1 Vyper - Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holo-Field, Spirit Stones

The Vyper was definitely a good choice for this game. It started the game by obliterating the Space Marine Razorback and ended the game by blowing up the Ork Trukk, and that's not even mentioning the number of infantry it helped mow down in the intervening turns. Guardians were reasonable, though I think if I were rewriting this list I'd look at replacing them with my Swooping Hawks, sticking with the mobility the rest of my army offered. Jetbikes also performed well, the Warlock only got to use Destructor once before dieing to wound allocation late in the game, but used it to kill off the majority of a unit of Ork Boyz.

Lists aside, I enjoyed having to consider every model I was using; in most games losing a handful of Guardians in a turn is no bother, but in this case I was then forced to hold them further back than I would have liked the rest of the game after taking casualties to Space Marine shooting in turn 1.

I'm definitely hoping to get in some more Combat Patrol in future as a welcome break from the same old 40k missions. 

Scorpion Seer

So this is something I tried out once or twice in 4th Ed and totally forgot about until after seeing a poll on Awaking Ynnead.

While I typically use my Farseer to boost shooting power there's no reason they can't up combat ability too. As long as you're not running into squads full of power weapons a quick roll of Fortune before the combat is going to turn Striking Scorpions into some pretty resiliant dudes. If my math-hammer is correct somewhere near 90% chance to pass saves, which even on the toughness of an Eldar is going to make a solid unit. Add into that Doom and they'll be cutting a pretty clean path through for little damage in return.

So though I previously said I was going to drop the Scorpions from my list I may rethink that. Besides which, Scorpions are obviously the coolest Aspect out there!

A new role for the Reapers

Thinking things out after reading a post about Dark Reapers by Fritz40k. Now I've always put in my 5-man reaper unit to wipe out any squads of Marines who are daft enough to show their faces, but I may have to try doing things differently next game.

See, for under 150pts I can have two BS5 Krak Missiles a turn. That's some pretty heavy anti-tank fire right there. And anti-tank is something I have to admit that I'm lacking right now. Light vehicles shouldn't be too much of a problem with the Scatter Lasers and Shuriken Cannons, but when it comes to anything tougher I would have to rely on shots from my Prisms. With a Reaper Exarch hanging around I've got another chance to pop tanks, and once that's dealt with I'll still have my Eldar Missile Launcher and two Reaper Launchers to shred some Marines.

Are there better ways to get some more anti-tank into my army? Probably. But I've already got my Reapers, and it's an Aspect I really like. And by running a smaller squad I've freed up some points for something else, possibly another Vyper or some extra Warlocks in my Council. Of course talk is cheap, so the real test will be after I've tried it out on the battlefield.

Cleaning up the list (1500)

I managed to get back around to some painting this weekend, so I've finally got those Jetbikes and Vyper table ready. I've also pulled out a handful more Guardians to paint up and bulk up my squads of them. After that I'm not sure what will get painted. Before I get too into anything else I want to finish my list.

If I'm playing Ulthwe I want to do it properly, so to start with I'm cutting some of my Aspects. In my 1500 list I had been tempted to run small squads of Dire Avengers, Swooping Hawks, Striking Scorpions and Dark Reapers. However I'm now looking at cutting the Avengers and Scorpions, which not only brings my list back within 1500, it also gives me some spare points to play with.

I get the impression from what I've read online that Hawks aren't a very popular choice, but I think they'll fill a nice role in my list. I've not got a lot of anti-tank, so the ability to deep strike a flying squad with haywire grenades will mean I can threaten tanks anywhere on the battlefield. Their weapons are weak, but good range means a couple of rounds of shooting I might otherwise have missed out on. This will hopefully give enough extra ranged ability to augment the Vyper and Jetbikes for my rapid-strike component, and if opponents get distracted picking off the boys in blue then it means less shots on my objective-scoring Jetbikes.

As well as fitting the Ulthwe fluff, Dark Reapers are making up some much-needed anti-Space-Marine power. This will mean I can rely on something more than a silly number of soup-tin-lids from the Guardians. The only doubts I'm having with the Reapers is that they're likely to be stuck off on their own on a rooftop while the rest of my army advances, but again the speed of Jetbikes, Vyper and Hawks should mean I can pull some forces back to defend them if needed.

I've had a few ideas for changes to make to the list that I can now look at with the points I've saved. I've dropped the idea of taking a Wave Serpent, since it would mean pulling more bodies away from the bulk of my force and into the rapid strike section, something I'd like to avoid. A squad of Pathfinders hiding near the Dark Reapers or going to ground on objectives is also tempting. However I'm currently leaning towards a few Warlocks to support my Farseer. This should improve the power and resilience of my HQ, providing a better anchor for my force. It also fits with the Ulthwe theme, which is something I'm keen to emphasise. But the most important part is that I enjoy painting them. So chances are that that's the direction I'm going to go with this.

Where we stand

Just a quick warm-up post on what position I'm in with my 40k gear.

My Ulthwe Eldar are probably closing on half-painted, currently finishing up a Fire Prism, working on a squad of Jetbikes and getting ready to start a Vyper.

My Terminators (Slaanesh Renegades using a Space Puppies Wolfguard list) are built and (mostly) converted up, but I've only started painting one squad.

The Termies are a pain to paint, so they're staying on the back burner while I do my Eldar, so at least I'll have something to put down on the table.

This blog's a bit of an experiment, don't think I've blogged on 40k stuff before, but been reading plenty of them so that makes me an expert, right? >_> I'm mostly hoping that having a blog will keep me focussed getting some painting done... and maybe even get me playing a few games!