Theorycrafting some 9th Ed. Eldar lists

Drafting up some lists again.

With 9th Ed. hot on our heels and with a good amount of information out there already, I figured I'd get down and dirty with some list building and theorycrafting. As most of you already know, I'm a huge fan of Mechdar and that's pretty much all I play when it comes to my Eldar armies. Every single one of my armies is filled to the rim with vehicles and flyers and I've become increasingly proficient with this playstyle over the years. With the return of Obscuring terrain that block LoS, this means that good positioning and focus fire will indeed bring the pain again. The only thing that truly sucks is that now if you Fall Back, you can no longer shoot anything.

Great, so with that said, let's talk about some lists. Out of curiosity, I've started building lists with -250 points from my 2K lists to prepare for that eventual points hike. That means every list I'm going to show you here is 1750 points, mainly because I'm taking a guess that we're going to see ~12.5% increase on average. Like I said before, points are the biggest unknown out of this entire thing. I have no idea exactly where they're going to bump the points, but I don't think they're going to alter CWE or DE too badly. GW has a tendency to target over-performing units that utterly shake up the meta, but they already took a stab at that pre-9th in the last CA. With both Crimson Hunter Exarchs and Ravagers nerfed with points, I don't expect GW to go after them again. If they do, well, then I get sad and we'll have to adjust the list some.

Either way, here's the first of the two lists I've been working on. You'll see a very familiar sight in the form of my mechanized Dark Eldar list.

A closer look at Raiding Force and aircraft engagement

Let the list building begin!

Dark Eldar got previewed today and there's some good stuff here. Raiding Force rules got shown and this is pretty good because it allows us to mix detachments without taking a hit in CP. You get a +4 CP bonus when taking 3 Patrols in the army, so if each Patrol costs 2 and you get a +2 CP bonus from having your Warlord in one of the Patrols, this means you'll still get 12 CP if you're playing a 2K game. Sure, you have to take 3 HQs in total, but look at how much flexibility you get in terms of unit choices. I can for sure see an army with 2 Kabal:1 Coven Patrol ratio.

Our first look at Patrol.

In my article yesterday, I talked about how the DE book is actually 3 armies in one. When it comes to the 9th Ed. meta, I seriously think that DE armies with Meat Mountains will be really impactful for the metagame. There's not a lot of things in the game that can deal with tons of Grots and Talos, both of which are expected to be really good in the new edition. If you can easily take a large unit of Grots, some Talos with Haywires and fill the rest with vehicles/Ravagers. The Meat Mountain can act as your mid-field control and literal meat-shield for your Ravagers in the back.

Get ready for shenanigans.

Another good rule for us is confirmation that you'll be able to disrupt enemy movement with your flyers still. The line to pay attention to is: ".. but it cannot end the move on top of another model (or its base), and it cannot end the movement within Engagement Range (1") of any enemy aircraft." Imagine this for a second: Let's say that you're fighting against Genestealers who can Advance and Charge and moves 8" on average. This is an average of 12" of move, so you measure 12" out from the lead gene and then plop your plane down sideways in front of them. Check out this awful Paint drawing, but you will get the point easily.

Check. Your move.

In this diagram, you plop your plane down around where the opponent's units' max distance will be. The larger the unit, the more you can disrupt them because they are forced to go around the base since they cannot end their movement on top of your base. This means that the larger the unit, the less chances they have to go directly through your base with all their models and end up completely clearing the 1" engagement bubble around the aircraft. Congrats, you basically extended your opponent's charge range substantially. This will make them auto-fail most, if not all of their charges as long as you execute correctly. Needless to say, Eldar aircraft with Wings of Khaine makes this much easier.

Cool, today was a good day overall. Raiding Parties increases our list building capabilities and makes splashing Meat with vehicles quite easy. The aircraft shenanigans means that with good execution, you can make charges a nightmare for the opponent, thus making all-vehicle lists all the more powerful. GG.

9th Ed. 40K and how it affects all Eldar

Bring on 9th Edition.

It's about that time folks. If you guys have been following 40K news in the last couple of weeks, you'll know that 9th Ed. is right around the corner. For a quick recap of everything that's been going on, I suggest you go to Auspex Tactics and catch up. Yes, I'm plugging that dude's channel because he's insanely active and posts updates literally minutes after articles themselves get released. I'd rank him among the top dudes I watch on YouTube.

Without too much mumbo-jumbo, let's get right into it. I'll lay it out the best I can in the only way I know how: As real as it gets. I will warn you ahead of time though, I think Eldar (all races) are not going to do too hot come 9th. There's a lot of rules here that'll take away from the Eldar identity and give it to the other races and are generally harmful to the playstyle of the army. Now, before you get super triggered and go off on me saying that the book's not out yet and we don't see all the rules, I promise you: I don't need to see all the rules to see where this is going. We have a lot of information in front of us already and I've been playing this game for over 20 years now. While the Eldar will get some noticeable benefits, they will be challenged heavily with some pretty stark negatives. Just a head's up, I don't plan on covering Ynnari as I don't consider them a full army yet with just WD rules.

First post in a long time

Can't wait for Eldar to come to AI!

Well, what can I say? I've been gone a long time. The last time I posted on the blog was over a year ago, covering ASOIAF. Since then, a lot has changed: Work got busy, got a kid on the way, COVID, and the craziness that is 2020 keeps on coming.

I'm not even sure who even follows the blog anymore so I'll try and keep this brief, just to test the waters. To keep everyone honest, there's a lot of content out there that talks about 40K these days. I stopped writing and started listening more to podcasts, watching others play games on YouTube and reading other blogs out there that are really informative and interesting. While I still play the game, I just haven't been writing as much because well, there's not that much need to.

The games I still play are:

• Warhammer 40K (yup, still playing.. since 3rd lol)
• All Eldar - DE primary, then E, then Harlequins
• Age of Sigmar (fairly recent)
• Hedonites of Slaanesh
• Aeronautical Imperialis (just built my Tau, waiting on Eldar, still haven't played a game)
• Tau, until Eldar come

Games that I have currently retired:

• X-Wing (sold all of it after FFG rebooted/destroyed it)
• Armada (packed up and sitting in the garage, just got boring with no new content)
• ASOIAF (packed up as well, just couldn't find any interest nearby or in my immediate playgroup)

Since I promised to keep this brief, I'm just going to leave it at that. If anyone is still following, let me know if you want to see some content on 40K, AoS or AI. I know with 9th Ed. coming up, there's going to be plenty for me to write about. I also don't see a lot of content out there for Aeronautica for some reason, maybe that can be something I can get into.

Stay safe everyone :)