Hey everyone, Reecius here with more thoughts on my Aeldari army after Adepticon!
While I got my butt kicked in the champs at Adepticon, it was a very valuable learning experience. Often we learn more from defeat than we do victory!
Here’s my list which again, I was really limited by the models I had painted as I had been super sick prior to the event and didn’t have the chance to paint what I wanted.
- Aeldari: Seer Council
- Farseer with Lucid Eye
- Guardian Defenders: Bright Lance
- Warlock Conclave x 4
- War walker: Bright Lance, Missile Launcher
- War walker: Bright Lance, Missile Launcher
- Warp Spiders x 5
- Warp Spiders x 5
- Swooping Hawks x 5
- Dire Avengers x 5
- Dire Avengers x 5
- Fire Dragons x 5
- Fire Dragons x 5
- Fire Dragons x 5
- Rangers x 5
- Shadow Weaver
- Shadow Weaver
- Wraithlord: Bright Lance x 2, Flamer x 2, Ghostglaive
- Wraithlord: Bright Lance x 2, Flamer x 2, Ghostglaive
- Wraithlord: Bright Lance x 2, Flamer x 2, Ghostglaive
- Vyper: Bright Lance
- Warlock Skyrunner
What Worked
The list, despite being unoptimized, had a lot that worked. The Fire Dragons were consistently my best units and the ability to teleport them up with Seer Council was really strong. Likewise, the Warp Spiders were fantastic. Mobility and surprising hitting power being only strength 4 made them some of my best units. The Swooping Hawks were also great for taking weakly held objectives and their crazy mobility was extremely useful. I had games where they would take the backfield by themselves against any light infantry holding it.
The Wraithlords were also really strong for me. With Guide from the Farseer you could get them to hitting on 2’s with re-rolls of 1 to hit and wound against their chosen unit type. Not being able to go through walls was a bit annoying as it made getting them into position a challenge at times, particularly with having to move around the War Walkers who had similar limitations. But they were essentially my only melee of note. They’re just tough enough to be able to be able to hang for a turn in the open and gave me reliable ranged anti-tank.
The Warlock Conclave attached to the Guardians with a Farseer and a Warlock on bike were really strong when they were able to do their thing. The Destructors at max power were very strong but I found it just didn’t come up that often, many games they maybe shot once or twice. For the points I wasn’t convinced they were worth it, but my inexperience probably held me back more than the unit itself. The Farseer’s ability to make the unit’s Bright Lance super reliable was good when it came up but again, I often didn’t want to expose the unit to too much firepower so I didn’t get to use it as much as I hoped. I didn’t want them too far from the Fire Dragons either so I could keep teleporting them up the table. Trying to keep the units close to so many units to use the Seer Council abilities really limited their board position options.
The solo Warlock Skyweaver was great for actions, keeping the Wraithlords in the psyker buff aura, etc. The super mobility and ease of hiding them made them very reliable in that role and I can see why so many Aeldari lists have 1-2 of them.
What Didn’t Work
The Vyper was pretty dang good to jump around on objectives, particularly with Star Engines from Battle Focus, but this then limited the amount of shooting you could count on from the unit. The -1 to hit debuff was really good so I was torn trying to decide what to do with the unit.
The little Dire Avenger units were not bad at all, quick and being able to advance and shoot made them solid for running around to get on objectives but they lacked staying power. I often found myself not wanting to just have them die jumping onto an objective and would wait for a go turn to move everything out to attack but by then I was often way behind on the primary.
The Shadow Weavers were far less useful than I thought they would be. They just don’t hit hard enough to really be a threat and their special ability to cause mortal wounds on a unit they hit didn’t do much, even against Orks. Hitting on 4’s with indirect is really limiting and I can see why you don’t see much indirect this edition.
The Rangers never really did much for me. Using them to just move block with Infiltrate and their reactive move is quite useful but I just didn’t seem to get a lot of use out of them.
I struggled a bit with melee as well. I played several armies that had fast, hard hitting melee units and I didn’t have a lot of options to counter them, I just had to throw Wraithlords into them which worked pretty well but the random damage on their big hit was not super reliable in fighting really tough units where their sweep attack wasn’t very scary.
A lack of characters meant I just didn’t have that many options for combos and buffs, and my melee was pretty lacking due to not having that extra punch.
Changes for the Future
I think for the next event I will pivot to Aspect Host. I was going back and forth between that and Warhost for the increased mobility and defensive capability. My main issue was struggling to score the primary mission. I really didn’t have too much problem killing stuff, even with the lack of character force multiplication. So I was thinking Warhost might be the best option as the increased speed and focus on defensive abilities such as Skyborne Sancutary, Fire and Fade, etc. via their stratagems seemed like a good way to mitigate that weakness. Having transports move onto objectives, the unit pop out, kill something, then jump back in seems like just what I needed. That plus Wave Serpents being pretty dang resilient felt like a good choice.
But after a lot of reading and thinking, I am leaning towards Aspect Host. Aspect Host in comparison to Warhost is pretty much all out offense. They have Skyborne Sanctuary as well which helps a lot but the amount of combos they can pull out is really impressive and looks like a lot of fun. I always loved the Aspect Warriors in Eldar lore, plus the models are amazing so I decided to go this route for my next outing. If you can kill your opponent you don’t have to hide from them!
The list I am leaning towards now is the following:
- Aeldari: Aspect Host
- Asurman
- Dire Avengers x 10
- Wave Serpent
- Fuegan
- Dragons x 10
- Wave Serpent
- Lhykhis
- Warp Spiders x 5
- Warp Spiders x 5
- Autrach with Aspect of Murder
- Striking Scorpions x 10
- Swooping Hawks x 5
- Dark Reapers x 5
- Dark Reapers x 5
- Storm Guardians x 10
- War Walker: Bright Lance, Missile Launcher
- Warlock Skyweaver
- Warlock Skyweaver
My thought is this list hits very hard, is very mobile and with the ability to get in and out of the transport for the Dires and Dragons helps keep them around a bit longer. The potential damage output with them, their Phoenix Lord plus Preternatural Precision is pretty wild. When you combo it with Lhykhis’ ability to make a unit get Critical Hits on a 5+ means a unit like the Dire Avengers can do amazing amounts of damage. In my one practice game pre-Adepticon both Asurman and Fuegan with the Shrine Tokens from their units were incredibly deadly at both range and in melee. I think they fill a lot of gaps in my list. The mobility of the Serpents helps get them where you need them and are resilient enough to count on playing for objectives as well.
Lhykhis plus a unit of Spiders can also hit hard at very long distances in melee to snag weakly held objectives. They and the other units of Spiders and the Hawks will focus on this task to make my opponent have to think about how they will protect objectives.
The Warlocks are there to just focus on performing actions, getting points, are super fast and easy to hide.
The Reapers will sit on objectives or move into lanes to provide reliable long range DPS. I thought about taking a full unit of 10 with an Autrach to take advantage of Preternatural Precision but in the end to save points I opted for 5 min units instead. I also found in practice, you don’t really shoot super long range due to the way terrain works this edition. I think having more board coverage will be better than a big unit of 10 hitting harder.
I think the Storm Guardians will be ultra useful for sticky objectives and being the sacrificial unit in the instance I have Angron or something similar bearing down on me. They have a ton of flexibility with their speed, weapon options and decent durability via their 5++. I have a unit built as well, just need to get some paint on them.
The big unit of Scorpions is the wild card. Doing the math, with the Autrach in there with Aspect of Murder giving him a really nasty melee weapon, they can get into position early to really pack a wallop in melee. A unit of 10 is 20 points cheaper than two units of 5 and while you get less versatility and board coverage, you get a lot more mileage out of any strats you use on them. They can make good use of Sudden Strike and To Their Final Breath, Heroic Intervention, etc. The downside obviously being if you do infiltrate and go second you are entirely relying on their Scout move to get out of trouble, and there will be games where you have to just screen with them which is a big investment of points to lose. Again though, To Their Final Breath means you at least get to swing as you go, but it is a concern. The flip side though is if you do take the risk and do go first you can cause a ton of disruption and damage on turn 1. Mostly though I just LOVE the models and plan to use my old Karandras as the Autarch so want to try and make it work but am willing to pivot if it does not.
In all I think this list will most importantly be super fun to play with such hard hitting and mobile units, and help to shore up some of the weaknesses I had with my Seer Council list. I really love the different detachments Eldar have and want to try more of them as I think there are some interesting and fun builds to be found, but this gives me a good starting point to continue to re-learn the game.
Let me know if you see any obvious weaknesses in the list! I am hoping to make another GT soon when I am not feeling a bit under the weather and have some more experience under my belt.