[Aun]

I've been playing my Eldar army for a few weeks without switching to chaos, and I have been thinking hard about the way I want my over all army to turn out. So far I have played an almost exclusively shooting army with a core made from Dire Avengers both mounted and unmounted with support from some other mobile shooting units.

However, when I total up my experiences from my past battles with Eldar, assaults have always proved infective, and even when I use dedicated assault units such as Striking Scorpions they only seem to have a slight advantage against the average Space Marine squad. I have also tried to attack weaker units that would not be able to combat them, but the results could be achieved by ranged units as well, without the chance of the unit fighting back. So, I have gradually fazed out assault units from my list in favor of more firepower based units. It just seems to me that the Eldar lend themselves more to fire power than assault.

So my question to you is, why do you take Close Combat units? Is this just because I have bad luck in assaults?

[DELPHEUS]

I read that striking scorpions weren't good for MEQs. I just got the Eldar codex today so I don't really know what to tell you cept that.

[crazedmongoose2003]

Well first of all, Eldar is about options, a typical attack will see short ranged firepower used to weaken large squads of infantry, medium range support fire used against light vehicles and small squads, before assault takes weaker units in order to silence enemy guns and block lines of sight and such.


Assault the enemy if they're better than you in shooting, shoot the enemy if they're better than you in assault.

It's difficult to explain this without writing volumes on the most basic concepts of tactically flexible armies. And unfortunately for 40k there are so very few genuinely tactically flexible armies.

I'll use this post I wrote up in another forum on the use of Warp Spiders as an example. Now warp spiders, I don't think they're considered good in assault by any means, and they're not even CC specialists, but there's still a use for them in assault.

You're correct about how hit and run works, this is why I said with warp spiders you have the luxury of choice.

So you've just set off a volley, now you have the choices:

* Stay your ground

* Assault the enemy and hit and run at the end of your assault phase

* Assault the enemy and hit and run at the end of his assault phase

* Retreat straight away using your warp pack move


Now obviously, you shouldn't IN MOST CIRCUMSTANCES stay your ground, that means that if you're enemy is good at shooting he'll shred you at close range, or if he's good at assault he'll charge you, or most likely, do both.

The idea of you charging him is from the "charge rather than be charged" philosophy. If you have an autarch and an exarch with powerblades, you should finish off two or three standard marine enemies, this means there won't be a lot in their immediate kill zone to strike back with. This means he won't be striking back as hard immediately, and more importantly, next turn he won't shred you in shooting and then charge you. However, there's obviously a few situations where you probably shouldn't charge him.

* When he's a CC specialist unit capable of shredding you

* When he's a decent unit (when I say a decent CC unit I mean like a normal tactical squad with a vet sgt. with a powersword or something) in cover and thereby will attack first.

* When he's a large unit (ie. 30 orks) that will mob you with the pile up move no matter how many you kill

So in the case he's none of that and you charge him, what happens then? When do you break off combat? Well, if you break off combat in your turn, he will shoot and charge you next turn most likely. Hardly ideal but it's still better than holding your ground because you killed some more of his units. So the ideal choice here is to break off at the end of his turn. Now remeber that if you obeyed my three pre-requisites then you shouldn't lose too many men to his unit just through two rounds of close combat. Then after you break off you'll be able to move, fire and assault again or whatever, no time wasted.




Then comes the most appealing choice, run. This way means you'll cause less damage than the charge option, but there's several times when this is the only sane option. These are the same three situations I outlined above.

* When he's a large mob

* When he's in cover

* When he's a CC specialist unit

Basically any time in which he has the advantage over you in combat. But remember that running has some cons as well.


1. Most obviously, if you run, unless you have some smart cover nearby, he'll be able to shoot you next turn. So when you're facing units who fare better in shooting than in assault (ie. fire warriors, special weapon or heavy weapon teams) you should DEFINITELY use option 2 and charge them. Remember the benefit there is two-folds. Firstly you increase your warp spiders' chances of survival, secondly you silence their nasty guns during their shooting phase so you're protecting the rest of your army too.

2. This is rarer, but remeber that some enemies are really god damn fast. A mob of hormagaunts have a potential 24" range. No matter how far you'll run he's gonna catch you. In situations like this, adopt a charge rather than be charged.



Now I know these options sounds fairly difficult to you because you'll come up in situations like your warp spiders suddenly facing 30 hormagaunts who can fleet of claw and if you charge them next turn you'll be horrendously mobbed before you can withdraw, but if you try to run for it they might catch up and then you won't even get the benefit of the charge bonus (which he now gets). Sometimes it will seem like both options are tactical suicide, but hey, that's the fun of it. And you should feel good, because you're Eldar, and at least you HAVE the luxury of choice.

Sorry the post is ridiculously long, but it illustrates the importance of options on a tactical level.

[Guitardian]

The board size is restrictive and makes assault inevitable. In my old days as a Guard player this was a constant frustration. Even if you play a shooty Eldar army, sooner or later some winged demon or teleporting terminators or speed freaks in trukks will jump your line without you having any power to stop it.

Having an effective assault unit back by your firing line, like shiney spears, banshees, or harlies, or even just an autarch, makes you able to counter that threat. If it isn't infiltrated scorpions, a wraithlord stomping up the middle, or Harlies jumping off a falcon, our assault troops are more reactive and defensive for our shooty game.

Even DireAvengers can become a simple assault squad with their initiative, exarch powers, diresword or shimmershield, numbers, decent save, and assault shots before charging (bladestorm then charge! yay!) if anything, you get locked in CC to prevent worse damage further down your line.

Even if you can't kill something, if you tie it up with a wad of guardians or avengers, it buys time to reposition your 'counter-assault' troops to charge in and kill off the threat.

[crazedmongoose2003]

Also there's the basic ethos of "charge rather than be charged"

[limpchickeninabizkit]

if you take an exarch cover isn't a problem (plasma grenades).

the main army i run has few cc squads. i use them mostly to tie up, but also because i don't have that much ap2/1 weaponry. so power weapons make up for lack of low ap weaponry. Eldar are specialists, so pick the targets you are assaulting. ive had a squad of 6 harlies go through 2 combat fexes. my wraithlords have a great time. they are probably a great option for combat, because they can work both shooting and combat.

[kirbyrocks]

Because there's something refined to be said about 20 ordinary day-labourers taking out Grey Knights and Guardsmen...

[Pisces_808]

You don't seem to be playing against assault armies. I've seen my share of assault armies (Dark Eldar and Chaos) when I was playing Tau and not once was I able to avoid assault completly. Maybe I was just incompitent but try outrunning DE's in raiders or jump-pack (or jetpack, not sure) chaos marines. They will get to your lines and you'd better be prepaired or your death. This happened to me mostly because Tau have no CC-units (no Kroot do not count, IT'S I3).

With Eldar it's pretty much the same, you can keep some CC-aspect behind your lines to counter-charge or drop them near the enemy to charge yourself.

Greetz

[throwdown323]

ok, think of this, unit of 10 harles......41 rending attacks on the charge.... pretty nasty. i dont care who you are you take 41 dice shake them up and throw them on a table a few have to be 6's.

[Guitardian]

The problem with that is that you dont actually want to wipe out a squad with harlies, because then they wont be IC and will become a very obvious shootable target. If there's something else they can follow up into then it's good, but if you wipe a squad with nothing else to follow up into you will learn really fast how easily your harlies can be chewed up by simple dakka fire. I did. Nowadays I don't attack anything that I could kill outright unless there's an obvious corner to duck around or other squad to follow into. There's an article in 'wraithsight' compilation that discusses this. I think it is referred to as 'chipping'. Its a good read.

I use my Harlies in my current list as a fire support unit. Jester does the damage, seer makes them immune to being hit back, and 3 or 4 are just kiss wearing meat that can double up as attack troops, but mostly i try to hang them back around 24'' and just use the jester. It's expensive and doesnt damage much but its also untouchable and nobody wants to actually get close to them because 'what if?' i decide to just move fleet, charge? Keeps a large section of table clear of enemy advance. Its a very mean trick to pull but it has become a standard for me.