The Eldar are what we thought they were! - New Eldar Vs Chaos Battle Report

So this past weekend I played my first game against the new Eldar codex.  My friend Seti came over and we played a 2,000 point game.

I used Imperial Guard allies and he played straight Eldar.

We played Dawn of War deployment and the Relic.

Here is a look at the deployment (I deployed first also thinking I would go first):

But he seized the Initiative on me.  I believe this was the third time in the last 4 games that has happened to me.

But anywho you can see here my deployment.  I used a 30man blob squad with a comissar and had an attached Primaris Psyker who got the spell Endurance, giving my squad feel no pain and relentless along with the useless ability of it will not die.

I had two Dreadnoughts, two Basilisks, two Obliterators a squad of 10 chaos marines in a rhino as well as a squad of plague marines in a rhino with a sorceror of Nurgle.  In the middle was my new Chaos Lord of Khorne joined to a 25 man squad of cultists.  This squad is the first squad of my new Dark Mechanicus Army.

On the other side was the new Eldar.  He had a Wave Serpent loaded with Dire Avengers, next to them was a Guardian Squad with an attached Warlock, next to them was another Wave Serpent with a Farseer attached to a Squad of Dire Avengers.  Also pictured is his Wraithlord.

In the ruins to the Wraithlord's left was a squad of Guardians with an attached Farseer.  Behind the ruins was  a Fire Prism.  In the forest he infiltrated a squad of Rangers and in the back corner was a Falcon Grav tank with a squad of Fire Dragons inside.

He kept a squad of Warp Spiders in reserve, declaring he would deep strike them.

You can also see the relic in the center of the board.

His first turn of shooting blew up one of the Basilisks and one of the Dreadnoughts(Helbrute).



That was about all he did so I felt fairly good going into the bottom of turn 1.  I had lost a good amount of firepower but not enough for me to feel worried.

I began my bottom of turn 1 by moving forward.  Probably a bad idea in hindsight but at the time I figured that is what I should do.

My shooting was fairly insignificant with a lot of templates scattering off of what they were shooting at.

His turn two things started hitting the fan for me.

Looking down the road my chaos lord feels good about himself.

Then the squad of Guardians moves out of the ruins and opens fire.

After killing my lord and about half the squad of cultists, his Dire Avengers attempt to mop up the rest of them.

They almost succeed leaving only 3 left.  But he is not done and the Farseer casts a psychic power that can kill up to three models.  And 3 models he did kill, wiping the unit from the board in fell swoop.

The Falcon moves up and the Fire Dragons emerge.  They move forward and the Falcon blows up the rhino.     The Plague Marines emerge from the far side of the rhino staying out of line of sight of the Fire Dragons.  The Exarch fires his pike at the other Basilisk and does nothing.

The Plague Marines are pissed now and move out of cover and the Sorceror casts Plague wind on the Fire Dragons killing several of them.

They then charge into combat my Sorceror challenges the Exarch and niether of them do anything but the Plague Marines make short work of the rest of the squad.  The Exarch makes his leadership and we are stuck in combat.

Elsewhere, my army moves forward.  The Dreanought was stunned in the last turn and had to run at the enemy forgoing shooting because of the crazed table.

The Obliterators move forward and take some potshots at the Wraithlord doing not much.

On my other flank the blob squad moves forward trying to avoid the Wraithlord.

In his turn he begins to maneuver around and begins dismantling the blob squad.

One squad of Dire Avengers after another fires into the blob killing swathes of them with ease.

The Wraithlord advances ready to charge the Dreadnought.

One last volley from a Dire Avenger squad....

....kills all but one of the remaining guardsmen and my sorceror.

The Falcon moves around the ruins and blows up my last Basilisk.

The Guardian squad fires on and kills the veteran squad with the plasma guns that was moving up the road.

My Plague marines make short work of the Exarch in hand to hand and in my turn they move up and assault the Guardians killing most of them and they break into the ruins.

The Wraithlord had killed my Dreadnought and moved back.  The Obliterators shoot the Wraithlord again and again don't do much.

My Primaris Psyker and his lone guard buddy move up into the ruins hoping to hide from the Eldar.

His next turn the Warp Spiders deepstrike in right next to my Plague Marines.  Between them, the Fire Prism and the snipers they wipe them out.

The Dire Avengers line up to shoot down the Primaris Psyker and kill him and his buddy.

The Falcon had moved around the building ready to fire.

I had not much left just an Obliterator a 5 man platoon command squad and the squad of marines in the rhino.

In his assault phase the Wraithlord assaults the Rhino and the marines pile out the back.

At this point its my turn the bottom of four and we decide to call it.

There was no way I could hold out against almost the entirety of his army which remained.

They were who we thought they were!

The Eldar played pretty much as they had before the new codex.  Seti has been a long time Eldar player and really knows how to play them.

This new codex doesn't change the way he plays, its always been lots of skimmers and lots of fire power.  What the new codex has done however, is improve his mobility and the quality of the guns army-wide.  

The new codex is quite good and not a huge departure from what it was but thats a good thing.

The ability to run then shoot or shoot then run combined with the new bladestorm rules which all shuriken weapons have really improves the basic Eldar troops (both guardians and dire avengers).  The vehicles are more survivable and also more mobile being able to move farther and still keep their firepower.

I look forward to our next match and I was spurred on to make new army lists because of what I saw.

The new Eldar change the 'meta' as the internet pundits call it because alot of lists in 6th had liked to use large blobs and I was kind of curious to see just how potent the new Eldar firepower was.  It is definitely good enough to blow blobs off the table in one round of shooting.

I am excited for more games against the new codex.  Soon I should be able to play them again.

Until then.....