Beat This 500 Point Tau List With Eldar

 

Fritz,
 
So I'm sure you get a million of these based on how easy it is to find   your videos and the insightful manner in which you break down eldar   strategy. I've watched most of them and first off I would really like   to thank you for the insight that you offer into each unit. GW should   have a PR department with such a dedicated Rep and Tactician for each   army, though really it might be tough to get behind some of them in   their current state.
 
Anyway my question stems from some frustration that I have had trying   to build my Eldar list. I come from a Tau background, which obviously   plays a little differently, especially when it comes to troop choices.   I was trying to refine some eldar strategies that I had been kicking   it around by play testing it against a small 500pt tau army.
 
The tau army was basically a XV-8 commander with missile pods, 2 (12)   man Fire Warrior teams and 2 (10) man Kroot teams. I'm curious how you   would go about deploying against such a list. I don't want to build a   list specifically to counter tau or any one list, but I've really   struggled recently trying to run a eldar CC heavy list. Especially   against the small point tau list I can't seem to not be shot off the   board, fortune or not.
 
At any rate I'm curious if you have ever run a CC centric list in 6th   edition. I know that you love you harlequins, and I watched your 6th  edition harlequin and foot-dar videos. I'm curious if you have any   thoughts or even broad tactical consideration for drawing units like  noise marines, or tau Fire warriors out or surviving to make it into  close combat.
 

Thanks for you time. Hope to hear from you soon.
 
Bryce

 

Bryce, quite a curious list at 500 for assault Eldar to beat. Lots of firepower, and worse range over the Eldar which makes it doubly hard. I’ve been playing with some lists based on two guardian groups with shuriken cannons for the weapons platform and then scorpions as the close combat element with farseer fortune support, but the wall I’m hitting against for 500 points is that I’d like some template suppression to drop on the Tau as I approach- swooping hawks with grenade packs are my first choice, but I’d also take a support weapon or two, but I can’t seem to fit that PLUS the ten scorpions so I have enough hitting power to take losses on the way in.

With Harlequins this is my stock list:

 HQ: Farseer W/ Spirit Stones, Runes Warding + Witnessing, Singing Spear, Doom, Fortune
Elite: 5 Harlequins W/ Kisses, Shadowseer, Deathjester, 1 Fusion Gun
Troops: 5 Rangers
Troops: 5 Rangers

 

I’d take against all comers, and do OK against power armor, but against cheap troops with shooting and range still the same problems.

With either list I wouldn’t say never, but the matchup would depend heavily on elements I can’t control or really count on like terrain and the mission. If there was a big hunk of LOS blocking terrain in the center of the table, or if the table was scaled down to 4 X 4 for a 500 point game, maybe.

But who wan’t to count on that?

Sadly, the close combat elements in the Eldar codex are expensive, only T3, and often a 4+ save and require other elements to work like a farseer or transport, which is the Eldar way of things, scales up in higher point games, but not down…

Not that I’d build a list to try and beat any one army- I build my lists both themed and generic to take on all armies, and then do my best on the table, so at 500 points of generic Eldar it would kind of look like this…

Farseer + Eldritch Storm, Runes of Witnessing, Spear

10 Guardians + Scatter Laser Platform

10 Guardians + Scatter Laser Platform

5 Swooping Hawks + Exarch, Skyleap

1 Support Weapon- Shadow Weaver

1 Support Weapon- Shadow Weaver

1 Support Weapon- Shadow Weaver

 Three long range S6 templates, one no range ‘hawk template, one up close and personal template on the farseer (or swap for psychic card fun/randomness, 2 S6 long range shots, and when it’s time to close in some “ok” shuriken catapult fire.  The list looks to gang up on units with the templates at range, and then close with the guardians and farseer. In the standard rulebook missions the hawks also give you linebreaker and can become scoring, along with the support weapons becoming scoring based on the mission, so only having two troop choices ins’t THAT bad, well not bad for Eldar at 500 points.

 -Fritz