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.

Pew Pew noises.

1750 Black Heart // 12 CP (TEMP)

BATTALION:

HQ:
Archon, Blaster, PGL = 77
Archon, Blaster, PGL = 77

TROOP:
10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, Lance = 189
Raider, Dissies

10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, Lance = 189
Raider, Dissies

5x Warriors, Blaster = 127
Raider, Dissies

5x Warriors, Blaster = 127
Raider, Dissies

5x Warriors, Blaster = 127
Raider, Dissies

5x Warriors, Blaster = 127
Raider, Dissies

FLYER:
Razorwing, Dissies = 145
Razorwing, Dissies = 145

HEAVY:
Ravager, 3x Dissies = 140
Ravager, 3x Dissies = 140
Ravager, 3x Dissies = 140

+++

Honestly, this thing here is a thing of beauty. You see me making the same lists that I made 2 years ago from the beginning of 8th to now. Needless to say, I've had countless games with these list variants and I don't think I'm going to change much considering where the meta is going.

If we were to break down what this army packs in terms of firepower; it's currently holding 19 Disintegrators, 10 Lance-type attacks in the form of Blasters and Dark Lances (from the 2x10 Warrior squads), and a decent amount of Poison shots as well. This list right here might be something that's going to be really effective against the predicted meta of bulky MSU and monsters. If you think about it, Dark Eldar has all the tools to deal with a vehicle/monster/Primaris meta when you look at their firepower spread. They got the Dissies/Lances to chew through Primaris and vehicles alike, monsters outright fear the Poison shots and all the concentrated firepower combined with the speed of their vehicles take real advantage of the new terrain rules. An army like this played really well should be very good. We just need to watch out about those melee attacks that'll prevent the gunboats from shooting. One puzzle that's currently missing is exactly how open-top vehicles will behave. Hopefully, it won't be to our detriment too much.

It's also important to note that 10-man Warrior squads might have a use now, not only to carry the extra heavy weaponry, but also to act as effective screens when the need calls for it. You still want to keep these guys alive and just have them shooting, but the option exists if you need to be creative with how you place them. A fun alteration you can make to the list would be to take Drazhar if you feel the need that you need more of a melee presence in the army. I would start by cutting out some of the 10-man units and just using the points for Drazhar instead.

What's up with all the infantry?

1661 Custom // 10 CP (TEMP)
Expert Crafters, Masters of Concealment

PATROL:

HQ:
Farseer Skyrunner = 132

TROOP:
5 Dire Avengers, Bladestorm = 225
Wave Serpent, Twin Missiles, Stones

5 Dire Avengers, Bladestorm = 225
Wave Serpent, Twin Missiles, Stones

5 Dire Avengers, Bladestorm = 225
Wave Serpent, Twin Missiles, Stones

FLYER:
Crimson Hunter Ex, 2x SC = 176
Crimson Hunter Ex, 2x SC = 176

+++

PATROL:

HQ:
Warlock Skyrunner = 62

TROOP:
5 Dire Avengers, Bladestorm = 58
5 Dire Avengers, Bladestorm = 58
5 Dire Avengers, Bladestorm = 58

FLYER:
Nightwing = 133
Nightwing = 133

+++

!Fluff Warning! Instead of Masters of Concealment, I want my Expert Crafters CWE to be even more.. technologically advanced. How about Reactive Wraithbone? It'll still have the same effect, but I like the idea of the Wraithbone becoming more durable because it's sentient and can react to incoming fire by psychically hardening. Now that sounds much more bad ass!

I've been playing Custom CWE for a while now because at the end of the day, I'm still a huge fan of Craftworld flyers specifically. While I like the Razorwing and Voidraven for different reasons, I still think the CWE dominate the skies. When Alaitoic ran the show for Eldar with their -2 To Hit shenanigans, that was great and all, but not the most effective when dealing with all the positive hit mods + re-rolls that Space Marines were putting out. What I found to be more effective towards the end of 8th was Masters of Concealment on Nightwings and Crimson Hunter Exarchs with Evade (paying the additional CP) being much more durable vs. Marine firepower. Effectively, as long as you're 12" away, all of your planes are flying Terminators sporting 2+/5++. This became absolutely infuriating for a lot of players trying to shoot down the flyers with heavy weapons. Against autocannons, you were saving on 4s, against AP-4 Lascannons, you still had your 5++ to save them. Call this sick tech if you want to, but you really needed it if you wanted to play any kind of planes in a meta where Marines were the new "Leafblower".

So yeah, enter 9th Ed. and I'm still spamming planes to the point where I'm spending 2 CP on them to take Patrols. Both the Nightwing and Crimson Hunters got improvements going into 9th. The most obvious one is that both are vehicles and ignore Heavy on their weapons. This means that Crimson Hunters hit on 2s and Nightwings now hit on 3s with their Bright Lances. You now no longer need to spend the CP on the Crimson Hunters either since you received free Hawkeye, so you can just comfortably shift over and take Evade for that beautiful 5++. With Wings of Khaine, you can now do all the movement block shenanigans that I showed you in my last article and continue dominating from the board edge while your Wave Serpents with Twin Missile Launchers do some work. Since you can now move and shoot with them with no penalty either, you can config them to deal anti-infantry damage at range or switch over for anti-vehicle roles as well. With 30 Dire Avengers arranged in 6x5, each with their own Exarch with Dual Shurikens and Bladestorm for the squads, you'll be doing a lot of infantry-shredding.

Alterations to this list can see Jain Zar join the mix for some melee support. You can also take out some of the Dire Avengers for a big ol' fat squad of Guardians with their standard weapon platforms to be used as ablative wounds and 3+ save barriers. If that's the case, consider taking Guide on the Farseer for some extra punching power. Webway Assault for 1 CP will still probably be the most effective way to deploy them.