7th edition was glorious and then....GW - thoughts on the Eldar Codex

So the Eldar codex is out and things don't look good. At the end of 6th edition I was starting to consider moving to another game. My club is fast transitioning to Infinity and as much as I hate the pewter models and don't really dig the fluff, I love skirmish games and game balance, so I was this close to moving over. 7th edition stopped me. Formation, detachments, unbound and infinite CAD are heaps lame, but the 7th edition codexes all seem to be written with an eye to powering down the game. The nastiest codexes - Eldar, Marines, Necrons and Tau (though they aren't so nasty since Ob-sec became a thing) were primed for fixes this year. The new Necron dex is very strong, especially with Decurion, but at least Decurion forces people to play a variety of models, and the absence of ob-sec and few ways to ignore cover makes hard counter armies like lictor-shame and scout-shame quite easy to produce. Eldar serpent spam lists on the other hand...ugh, especially at the club level. So I was really excited about the re-doing of the Eldar dex. Unfortunately, it seems the design studio just couldn't resist.

Azrael-wing

I've played a few games with that Ravenwing list. It's great for Maelstrom and Eternal War. Shocking at kill points. Indeed, I rarely kill more than 3 or 4 of my opponent's units in a whole game, and my tactical squads and Rhinos die pretty easily as the game goes on. Book Maelstrom doesn't have kill points so you're sweet in that format. One other thing I wanted to note: first turn stealth on Rhinos thanks to chapter tactics combines really nicely with smoke launchers - you can 4+ cover with you wherever you go. I had a battle against a combined Eldar/Deldar list recently that I will write up a report for in a little bit. In the meantime I want to talk about my game from last night against Tau using my 1850 points Azrael wing list:

Finally playing some games with Raven Guard

Sup y'all

I've been travelling for about three months and so only played my first two games with the Ravenguard over the past fortnight. Here are some quick thoughts. Short story: it's a great list!

Do you like my car-park?

7th Edition and the evolution of 40K

Warhammer 40000 has changed a lot in the last two editions, and some people are very pissed about it. I'm not so sure. I want to discuss a few things: allies, game balance (Ward codexes and TauDar etc) and the new detachments/formations rules.

Raven Guard MSU spam

In my last article on MSU spam I noted that it was a little weak at 1500 point Maelstrom because of the Khan tax. You need scout (and outflank) on all the Rhinos for this army to work. That becomes difficult if you've already paid 200+ for a chapter master and 60+ for a librarian in order to make your Maelstrom list capable of scoring the easy cards. With Khan, your HQ allotment is now 450 odd points, which doesn't leave you much to work with. One solution is to use Raven Guard instead, as their Rhinos come with Scout for free! Now obviously this isn't the most powerful Chapter tactic, but that's great if your scene uses comp score. A sample list:

Space Marine list building for Maelstrom

A quick one today, just compiling some thoughts on list building for Space Marines. I've been reflecting for a while on the fact that the guy who won our tournament scored a 3.0 for comp, which is basically as high as you can get without making an army that is deliberately bad. Yet his list is pretty well optimised for Maelstrom. Let me first explain how to build a Maelstrom army for Space Marines, and then you'll see what I mean.

Note: I'm glad he won the tournament with that particular list. Nobody could be upset at having to face down that army and he played it extremely well. But the guy who came second (with Eldar) was fielding a genuinely shit army featuring a bunker just so his opponent had a building to destroy. His score was 2.75 from memory, basically just because it was from the Eldar codex. He had no wave serpents, no Wraithknights and only one squad of warp spiders. He was using Shining Speers and doom weavers! If the comp scores were reversed the placings would have been reversed, and I think that was the true result, but nobody cares we just play to have fun and the winner was very gracious.

Space marines in 7th edition part 3: MSU spam with Rhinos

Last part in this series. So far we've covered drop pods and bike lists. Today we're looking at armies with lots of tactical squads in combat squads in Rhinos. A version of this list placed 5th at the Bay Area Open, the first tournament to use 7th edition rules.

Something like this...