How to Beat Eldar: Three Theories

           My friend recently had the pleasure of watching an Eldar player destroy a Dark Angel Dethwing themed army, a Chaos Space Marine Death Guard themed army, and his own Necron army. All the games were played at 2,000 points and had one thing in common; the Eldar won resounding victories against each player. This worries me because normally a new codex has a period of growing pains when a player has a hard time figuring out what will work and what wont and when they do when it is by the skin of their teeth. This is clearly not the case so my tactical team put their thinking caps on and we came up with three theories on how to beat the Eldar.

           Theory 1 by Tactician Delta: Pinning is the most important factor in limiting the Eldar’s rapidly moving soldiers. Tactician Delta believes sniper weapons are the best tool for this task because of their multiple special rules. When snipers cause an unsaved wound it makes the unit that got shot take a pinning test, they also gain precision shots on a hit roll of 6 and are rending on the wound roll of 6. If you can remove the squad leader most units will be taking that pinning check on a 7 which gives a pretty decent chance to pin the target, and remember they also have to pass another leadership to stand back up since a pinned unit automatically goes to ground. He also believes that snipers will do well against the high toughness units such as those with “Wraith” in their name since they always wounds on a 4+ and hopes that there will be enough rending wounds to get past their good armor save. Tactician Delta plays Imperial Guard and the synergy that would go well with the snipers is a fast hard hitting force in the form of Valkyries and Vendettas. The lascannons provide high strength shots to turn a target to dust and missile racks will hit anything else left standing. He also likes plasma veterans, what kind of guard player doesn’t, and he keeps them in his anti-Eldar build but does get rid of his transports because of their access to many high strength weapons and gets more bodies on the field.

            

           While the main purpose of this post is to look at just facing Eldar I understand that it’s probably not worth adopting these tactics if they can’t be used against other opponents. The tactic of pinning entire squads and getting some lucky rolling to kill sergeants or special characters is still a viable one across the board. Against armies with 3+ armor saves this is probably not the best use of this tactic but should work quite well against anybody else and should serve a purpose in a tournament against a wider spectrum of opponents. 

            Theory 2 by Tactician Butcher: Bodies, bodies, and MORE BODIES!  In this tacticians Chaos rattled mind throwing more bodies into the fray is the answer to this problem. He may be right in thinking this way. Really what is the best way to slow down a fast hard hitting opponent but swamping them in bodies? I have a lot of experience having this tactic used against me where my 30 blood Angels would be mired down in a grinding grueling fight with 60+ Kriegsmen. It’s a damn good tactic to nullify those high strength weapons of the elder. Who cares when you lose a 7 point model compared to a 16 point marine? This is a pretty simple but effective tactic.

         

           In tournaments this will still serve you well against any number of opponents, especially against armies that rely on close combat to break their opponent. You may run into trouble when someone brings out the flamers or large blast templates but if you can get into combat first with a blob of stubborn/fearless guys they will probably be there at the end of the game still holding up a unit worth twice their points.

           Theory 3 by Avenging Angel: As an assault oriented Space Marine player I am rightly terrified by Eldar. Having an opponent that is faster than me in all phases of the game and has enough weapons to wreck me before my chainswords can taste flesh is just a miserable thought, and now that army has come into existence. I came up with a little acronym for my theory, BDSM: Bolter Damage Spamming Missiles. I like 1500 point games so I will share with you what I believe is a solid anti-Eldar list.

HQ: This is the flexible choice. I chose a Librarian and upgraded him to an Epistolary so he could use two psychic abilities per turn. Any HQ choice that has an attack that can kill anything in one hit will fit in here because it will be worth it when you kill your opponents Wraithknight with the power of your psykers mind! If the force weapon idea doesn’t turn you on then just stick him in any other squad in my list and hope he rolls those abilities that allow re-rolls when shooting.

Troops: 40 Tactical Marines (4 squads) with flamer and missile launcher. Sergeant has a combi-plasma upgrade. Your sergeant is going to do more damage firing his bolter then he will in close combat with the Eldar who will challenge him with their squad leader who will kill him before you get to strike so let him try and shoot em down first. Take the flamer because you won’t be doing any charges and d3 hits when your opponent charges is nice. Take the missile launcher because it is a str 8 day ender or a well placed frag missile can also do a lot of damage. This also gives you 4, or 8 scoring units if you combat squad them, that can go claim objectives.

Fast Attack: Two 5man assault squads. If anything breaches your line you throw these men into the fray like the bad asses assault marines are supposed to be, and then watch them get cut down, but they saved you for a turn which is their job.

Heavy Support: Three 5man devastator squads with 4x missiles. What can’t 12, 16 if you add in the tactical squads, missile shots kill in a turn? You can also put Thunderfire cannons here instead and slow the Eldar down with the shot that puts them in difficult terrain giving the tactical squads more time to shoot them down, or drop the str 6 round and watch the Eldar disintegrate under the barrage.

            

           This list will serve you well against any opponent because it is very flexible and turns out a lot of shots per turn and is pretty survivable. On a side note making this list killed me because it doesn’t seem fun at all to play because all you do is scoot around the board blasting away with two weapons. If I wanted to do that I would play Tau.

If you have any comments about the ideas in this post please feel free to comment. Criticism is always welcome.

Cover if for the weak!