Completed Wave Serpent

Month 2 Expansion

Right, my army needed hitting power in cc. Unable to resist the keening wail of the Banshee, and having already planned to incorporate them into the the army from the start, a box of Isha's finest: Howling Banshees.

You get 6 in the box, including an Exarch, which makes a nice squad size. The Banshee Exarch powers War Shout and Acrobatic seemed way too cheap to pass up, so in they went. They needed transport so I bought a second Wave Serpent with the same loadout as the first. With points still spare I swapped my Farseer's singing spear for the Crackshot power for my Fire Dragon Exarch.

The new list:

HQ: Farseer (55) Doom (25)= 80

Troops: 6 Dire Avengers (72) Exarch (12) Diresword and S. Pistol (10) = 94

Troops: 5 Rangers (95) = 95

Elites: 6 Fire Dragons (96) Exarch (12) Crack Shot (5) = 113

Transport: Wave Serpent (90) Eldar Missile Launcher (30) = 120

Elites: 6 Howling Banshees (96) Exarch (12) Mirror Swords (10) War Shout (5) Acrobatic (5) = 128

Transport: Wave Serpent (90) Eldar Missile Launcher (30) = 120

Total: 750

Feugan makes Toast.

So, how did I get on last month?

Dreadfully. Between barely any time to paint, a new colour scheme, unfamiliar models and white, I failed spectacularly to meet the deadline. I pleaded with Mat. Begged for forgiveness. Tried to bribe him with bottled water. He slapped me round the head and sent me to detention to do lines on the blackboard.

My game performance wasn't spectacular, either. Eldar take a bit of practice to get right, especially from an army like Orks. I had a few victories against Mat's Sons of Orar and Wigg's Space Sharks, but with Fire Dragons in my initial list, this wasn't too suprising. Daemons gave me a run for my money, scoring one loss and one draw (iirc), as did Ben's drop-pod Space Wolf army. Didn't get to play Orks unfortunately! Let's have a look at each unit's strengths and weaknesses and see what's what:

Farseer

No picture, since i'm scratchbuilding a female versionand it's nowhere near ready. Possibly the most awesome HQ choice in the game. I armed her with Doom, which is a psychic power that allows all friendly units to reroll to wound vs a target enemy unit until my following turn. In tandem with massed shooting from lots of units, this power overcomes the high damage mitigation of other races by heavily increasing the number of successful wounds inflicted. As an Ork player, I know that most things will die if you throw enough dice at it!

The Farseer also provides LD10, which is fantastic for psychic tests and ensures that her accompanying squad will (usually) fight to the last elf. She also wields a Witch Blade, which when combined with a Shuriken Pistol gives her 3 ws5 str 9 attacks when assaulting a vehicle, or 2's to wound all others - handy defence against walkers!

Dire Avengers

Another excellent Troop choice at the Eldar's disposal. They have the firepower of a Space Marine, and can hold their own in close quarters with the support of the Exarch. Even so, they still die to most kinds of shooting, taking the brunt of most of the enemy firepower. A very very good all rounder infantry option.


Bloody Plasma Cannons...

Rangers

My biggest regret, which in 500pts have a tough time justifying their 95pts sink. As a troops choice they can hold their objectives, but don't support the army well enough to be any more worthwhile than Guardians or Dire Avengers. They seem to work well with Doom, but I often have a better target to use this power with. I think if I upgraded them to pathfinders they will pay off more often in larger games. We will see.

Fire Dragons

Beautiful, beautiful. These guys can kill anything, and always seem to do significant damage before being mowed down. The first few games saw their best performance, and the Exarch in particular proved his worth by defeating a wounded Lord of Change in Close Combat - Initiative 6 is nothing to sniff at! Mounted inside the safety of a Wave Serpent allows them to reach their ideal target with ease, which more than compensates for their short range fusion guns.

Wave Serpent

Initially, rubbish. I armed it with a Shuriken Cannon and quickly realised I had no proper ranged AT whatsoever until I committed the fire dragons inside. This often meant that I would disembark, blow up a Rhino (woo.) and be shot to pieces by a squad of 10 or 11 angry space marines in the following turn. Crap, I thought. Waste of 100pts.

I then gave it a Missile launcher, increasing the pts cost to 120. While I was forced to drop a couple of dire avengers, I realised the benefit immediately, knocking out transports and wounding greater daemons, all while protecting it's precious cargo from melta weapons and str 10 psychic nastyness until the time was right.

So, while overall the army wasn't as bad as I thought it was, I didn't use it to it's full potential until later in the month. But this is all part of learning to use a new army!

Here is the army list at the end of month 1:

Farseer (55) Doom (25) Singing Spear (3) = 83

Wave Serpent, EML (120) = 120

6 Fire Dragons (96) Exarch (12) = 108

6 Dire Avengers (72) Exarch (12) Diresword and S. Pistol (10) = 94

5 Rangers (95) = 95

I'll interweave some pictures of each squad in it's current state later on this evening...

**EDIT** Pictures added.