Testing the new Eldar Codex

A friend and I played an Eldar-on-Eldar battle last night at 1,850 points. We were playing to kill, but we were also helpfully reminding each other of the new stats and rule (him reminding me more than I had to in return). I didn't take any pictures because it was more of a test game to see how things worked, however, we did learn some interesting things:



A quick rundown of my list. I wont list every wargear upgrade or exarch power:

• Farseer, Spirtseer, and 1 Warlock
• 2 x 5 man Wraithguard each with a Wave Serpent
• 10 man Dire Avengers with a Wave Serpent
• 10 Guardian Defenders
• 5 Striking Scorpions
• 5 Howling Banshees
• 8 Swooping Hawks
• 4 Dark Reapers (exarch with Tempest launcher)

He ran an interesting list with a lot of firepower in select spots.

• Maugan Ra
• Jain Zar
• Lilith (Dark Eldar Allies)
• 10 Firedragons in Wave Serpent
• 10 Dark Reapers
• 5 or 10 Howling Banshees in Wave Serpent
• 5 Wyches in a Raider with Lilith
• 10 man Guardian with scatter laser
• 5 man Dire Avengers

 Neither list was particularly optimized. We just played with a combination of what we had and what we wanted to test. So here are the points of interest that I found.

1. Wave Serpents are awesome! With a twin-linked scatter laser providing laser lock to the Serpent Shield, they were blasting stuff left and right. One wave serpent doing this wasn't overwhelming, but doing it with two against a single target was nice, even against other light vehicles . . . like other wave serpents! Defensively, using the serpent shield to ignore penetrating hits on a 2+ was also nice.
2. Dark Reapers are devastating, but everyone targets them as soon as possible! I threw most of my army against his 10 man squad in cover and wiped out half of them or more in 1 round. We both agreed that they could use a wave serpent to hide in until they were ready to come out and blast things.
3. Wraithguard are still nasty. Hard to kill and killing infantry and vehicles alike. One note, though, they don't have enough shots! I want to try the with the D-sythes to get some template action.
4. Guardians suck in melee, BUT they have damn good shooting defense. Once something comes within 12" inches they can really open up. At BS 4, 2 shots a piece, with Str 4 weapons, they can dish out some damage. With Guide or Prescience on them, they are hitting a lot. I was charged by a unit of Wyches and Lilith and just in overwatch I inflicted 6 wounds on his squad . . . that's needing 6's to hit and 3's to wound. Which brings me to . . . 
5. Psychic powers are force multipliers. Having Guide and Prescience on different squads, combined with twin-linked wave serpents, and it felt like I was re-rolling a lot of misses. I was. It was great, and frustrating for my opponent.
6. My opponent made one comment at the end: that he'd spent too many points on characters. Having 2 Phoenix Lords plus Lilith in the army was just too many points. He could have had two more units in the army, and the characters didn't really do alot because they took a long time to get into place. Turn three charges are great, but that was two turns of me having more firepower and taking out his units.

All in all it was a great game . . . to test things. It would go differently with different unit selection, and neither of us had enough anti-tank in our armies to take on a mech heavy army.  Probably the greatest thing I learned last night was that I love the Eldar army. It was just fun and alien enough to catch my interest. Today, I'll be painting. Murphy Out.