# eldar vehicle weapons



## Silb (Jan 28, 2008)

I just started an eldar army and I got the battleforce. I've modelled the dire avengers and I am starting to model the guardians. My question is, what weapons should I give the weapon platform, the wave serpent, and the war walker? I want a decent amount of anti-vehicle weapons to take out enemy vehicles, enough anti-infantry weapons to take down at least a decent amount of models from large squads (orks, termagants, guardsmen, etc), and i would prefer it if the weapons were long range. Also, what units should I get next? I was thinking rangers, swooping hawks, fire dragons, and possibly a close combat squad (striking scorpions, harlequins, etc.) to defend my troops in close combat.


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## Desolatemm (Feb 2, 2008)

War walkers are very effective if you give them full scatter lasers and have a farseer nearby. Thats a massive amount of S6 shots. 

For the weapons platform, I usually bring a star cannon or a missile launcher. It depends on what you need, more troop killers, or another anti-tank shot. I like the Missile launcher because I can shoot at tanks until I get into range with the short range shuriken catapults. Once I begin attacking a troop unit I use the plasma blast capability.

The wave serpent depends on if you want to use your star engines or not AND what kind of troops your carrying. If you are carrying your DA I woulds suggest equiping scatter lasers or star cannons. If you are carrying fire dragons or another tank busting squad, I would bring the bright lance or starcannon to help them out.

For future squads I would stay away from the swooping hawks and move toward warp spiders. The spiders have a lot more fire-power and can easily take down armour 10 vehicles and fair pretty well against 12. Against 12, you would need 3's to hit from about 18 shots, then 6's to glance (they glance no matter what because they have no AP). On average I get 2-5 glancing hits per role. If your going up agains a mech dark angels army with a lot of land speeders, these guys KILL. The Harlies are very dangerous in CC (dont try to bust tanks with fusion guns, they should ALWAYS be in CC) I like the Scorpions better then the banshees because I can deep strike them and because they get 4 attacks per modle on the charge (with fleet of foot, this is almost always the case). Im begining to see that the eldar are fast little guys and they can hold their own in almost all CC situations. I really want to try banshees in the Serpent to see how they do. (correct that: If I move second at the begining of the game and use fleet of foot, I can probly charge first round)

Ive noticed that my guardians never last long enough to really do any damage (even with conceal) Im testing the use of pathfinders and DA in a wave serpent to help my troops last longer. But, I can see using guardians as meat shields so your elites can get where they need to be without getting shot at as much.


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## Sleedon (Jan 22, 2008)

Dire Avengers and Fire Dragons work so well in wave serpents. Also, if you go against Tau use your warp spiders to take out all elite battle suits. It works so well. For your next model I suggest Fire Dragons. They can kill anything that<s tough. from terminators to Hammerheads.


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## Silb (Jan 28, 2008)

hmm, what about putting guardians in a wave serpent? I know they're not tough, but using a wave serpent to transport them to a close enough range for their guns to do damage to weak armor save armies (nids, orks, IG, etc.) seems like a good idea to me. I don't enjoy using meatshields, since it seems to me like a waste of points.


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## Culler (Dec 27, 2007)

Personally, I like guardians in a somewhat defensive role. Either start them in cover or quickly fleet them into some nice 4+ cover and then I like to have them sit and snipe with a missile launcher. The flexibility and range of the missile launcher lets them take pretty effective potshots at most anything. Their shuriken catapults can deal with infantry that want to come assault them pretty well. I generally use them to babysit my vibrocannons and act as fire support and to defend the vibrocannons from assault troops or deepstrikers. I typically give them embolden as it's cheap and nice to keep the guardians standing as an obstacle between foes and whatever they're defending.


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## Silb (Jan 28, 2008)

Culler said:


> Personally, I like guardians in a somewhat defensive role. Either start them in cover or quickly fleet them into some nice 4+ cover and then I like to have them sit and snipe with a missile launcher. The flexibility and range of the missile launcher lets them take pretty effective potshots at most anything. Their shuriken catapults can deal with infantry that want to come assault them pretty well. I generally use them to babysit my vibrocannons and act as fire support and to defend the vibrocannons from assault troops or deepstrikers. I typically give them embolden as it's cheap and nice to keep the guardians standing as an obstacle between foes and whatever they're defending.


but couldn't a squad of 10 marines or fire warriors or basically ANY unit with 13" or higher range just sit and shoot at the guardians? I mean it's like paying 100 points for one missile launcher. Of course, a squad like that seems like it would be effective against nids or orks, but that's it. I don't think they would be effective against IG, marines, tau, or any army with strong long range units. I usually play on a 48" by 48" table, so it would be pretty easy to get my guardians close up to my opponent's troops in an offensive role, although their effectiveness would be questionable.


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## asianavatar (Aug 20, 2007)

Not sure about new units cause don't know a lot about Eldar. But for weapons, if you can get hold of some small magnets you could easily make your weapons on your walkers and platforms swappable thus allowing you to have different weapons for different army configurations. Saves you money on having to buy different models in the long run.


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## Culler (Dec 27, 2007)

Silb said:


> but couldn't a squad of 10 marines or fire warriors or basically ANY unit with 13" or higher range just sit and shoot at the guardians? I mean it's like paying 100 points for one missile launcher. Of course, a squad like that seems like it would be effective against nids or orks, but that's it. I don't think they would be effective against IG, marines, tau, or any army with strong long range units. I usually play on a 48" by 48" table, so it would be pretty easy to get my guardians close up to my opponent's troops in an offensive role, although their effectiveness would be questionable.


That's why the guardians need to be between your enemy and something they want to kill or take and in good cover. If they sit back to try to shoot your guardians out, it's going to take them a long long time with your good cover and an embolden warlock, and this means that they will hold up the enemy even if they're not killing much of anything, which is a worthwhile investment. I was fighting witch hunters the other day and they managed to hold a loot token against several sisters squads (with some help, but if they weren't there the sisters wouldn't have stopped). My opponent couldn't afford to wait until he slowly boltered them to death and so had to get in rapid fire range.

So, like I said, they're not that great in an offensive role, though they can provide decent fire support while in a defensive role if you place them correctly. DA are much superior offensive troops if you don't need the anti-tank support.


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## Mad King George (Jan 15, 2008)

i would try make them interchangeable


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## Desolatemm (Feb 2, 2008)

Silb said:


> hmm, what about putting guardians in a wave serpent? I know they're not tough, but using a wave serpent to transport them to a close enough range for their guns to do damage to weak armor save armies (nids, orks, IG, etc.) seems like a good idea to me. I don't enjoy using meatshields, since it seems to me like a waste of points.


Why use guardians? You can only have 2 more modles in the serpent and really only one if you include a warlock. 11 guardians + 1 warlock or 10 DA + 1 farseer. DA with blade storm would have a LOT more attacks. With this set up DA get 18 normal shots +9 with blade storm and the exarch can get 5 shots total compared to the 22 shots you would get with the guardians. AND the DA hit on 3+ instead of 4+, so not only do you get more shots, you will hit more. They also get a better save and they have a better WS. If you give them a Farseer, they can gain re-roles to hit and re-roles to wound. THATS A LOT OF SAVES!!! The only thing I can see in using guardians is for sniping with the missile launcher and to act as meat shields for the rest of your VIP squads, like Culler had said. But if you want an aggressive troop squad that is fast in a wave serpent, DA are teh only way to go. Guardians are much better on the ground in full squads (fleet of foot still makes them fast)


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## Tithanlir (Jan 24, 2007)

Units that in my opinion are useless and I don't recommend you to buy are Swooping Hawks, Wave serpents cause they are not a scoring unit and Falcons are always a better choice, War Walker ( too fragile ) and Dark reapers.

Anything else is fine and obviously it depends on what style are you going to play.


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## Silb (Jan 28, 2008)

Tithanlir said:


> Units that in my opinion are useless and I don't recommend you to buy are Swooping Hawks, Wave serpents cause they are not a scoring unit and Falcons are always a better choice, War Walker ( too fragile ) and Dark reapers.
> 
> Anything else is fine and obviously it depends on what style are you going to play.


I disagree with all of that. First of all, swooping hawks are good in certain situations; at the very least they're better than guardians. As for the wave serpents, let me use a space marine analogy; wave serpent is to falcon tank as rhino is to razorback. One has slightly more power and a higher points cost while the other has a better transport capability. Third, war walkers may be fragile, but since they're scouts, they can do some damage before the first turn; with a lucky roll for who goes first, you basically get two turns of firing with it before your enemy can react. As for the dark reapers, I just looked them up in the codex and they seem AWESOME!!!!!! When you're playing a high point cost game where their high points cost doesn't matter so much, they seem like a very effective long range unit (and I always want at least 1 or 2 squads of powerful long range units in any army I have).


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## Mad King George (Jan 15, 2008)

i use my swooping hawks to jump over cover to assault vehicle's


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## Silb (Jan 28, 2008)

Ok, today I went against an eldar army with my marine army in a 1700 pt battle. My marines did pretty good but his rangers, vehicles, farseer (w/ warlocks), and swooping hawks ripped through my troops. Now I disagree with Tithanlir even more. My opponent's swooping hawks' grenade pack did amazing, his war walker (along with the rest of his vehicles) survived remarkably well (he even said he was going to model some extra armor on it due to how well it worked in his battle against me). I concentrated tons of fire onto his two squads of 3 dark reapers until they finally died (partly because they were in cover). After that battle, I'm even more excited about starting an eldar army. As soon as I'm finished with the battleforce, I'm immediately going to get swooping hawks, rangers, and some warlocks for my farseer. His rangers were able to get a cover save equal to the armor save of a terminator because they're pathfinders. In fact, the only really great amazing thing I had was my predator, which managed to survive a large amount of shots from his war walker, vyper, and falcon tank (each of which had 1 bright lance along with some other weaponry); becoming immobolized, stunned multiple times, shaken multiple times, and having 1 weapon destroyed, but not destroyed (I think I'll model some extra armor on it and give it extra armor as wargear)


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## Fenris (Mar 7, 2008)

Guardians have worse armour than the avengers, bolters slice right through it, and so takes greater advantage of a transport, use storm guardians with an enhance warlock and they will have same WS and I as avengers but have 2 weapons to wield in CC.
They can take out a full tactical marine squad in CC when charging.
If needs be they can shoot twice with their pistols, add a pair of fusion guns and a spear if you want them do deal with tanks aswell.


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## neilbatte (Jan 2, 2008)

the thing i find with eldar is there are no good or bad units as each has a specific role to play and excell within that role but out of it are fragile and weak. there are a few units that can multi task but in the long run its all or nothing


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## Silb (Jan 28, 2008)

neilbatte said:


> the thing i find with eldar is there are no good or bad units as each has a specific role to play and excell within that role but out of it are fragile and weak. there are a few units that can multi task but in the long run its all or nothing


I completely agree with that. In my battle against the Eldar army that I was talking about a couple posts ago, my opponent's swooping hawks did incredible jumping around and blowing stuff up until they were about 18" away from my terminator squad during my turn. Obviously, they were ripped to shreds by assault cannon and storm bolter shots.


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## Sleedon (Jan 22, 2008)

Tithanlir said:


> Units that in my opinion are useless and I don't recommend you to buy are Swooping Hawks, Wave serpents cause they are not a scoring unit and Falcons are always a better choice, War Walker ( too fragile ) and Dark reapers.
> 
> Ok. Do you know of one vehicle besides wave serpent and monolith that can survive a Tau railgun barrage. To get to the point it is very hard to kill a wave serpent and they have twinlinked heavy weapons.
> What better way to transport your precious fire dragons?


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## moc065 (Oct 31, 2007)

*@ Tithanlir *
I will say this proudly and openly.

Every Eldar unit is usable and viable in Forth Ed. And I can prove it to anyone, if you don't think a unit is worth while then I suggest that you are lacking in skill, imagination, playstyle, diversity, or experience. In fact if you name a unit, and I cannot teach you a way to use them that actually works, then I will gladly build, paint and mail you the unit for free.

PS, so far even since 3rd Ed, no-one has named such a unit.

And to get things started I will simply mention a few tactics for one of the units you mentioned.

Swooping Hawks 
Capable of turn 1+ vehicle assaults that work (even on a Monolith),
Mobile Sniping,
Pie Plates with impunity,
Specific unit holding, etc.
I think four uses that work on several races certain qualifies them as usable, viable, and at (150-175pts) per unit, they are certainly now expensive.

Would you like me to continue or expand anything thus far ?

**** Now on to the topic at hand - Vehicle Weapons**** 

I suggest that you use Pins or Magnets on your vehilce weapons so that you can swap them at will.

Also feel free to check out this post as it covers several units including how their weapons can be used. My Website will do the same for you; but its not all in one place as this is.


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## blaablaa (May 23, 2008)

if ur taking guardians you should look at what you oponent has if he has lots of vehicle then take bright lances if he has tough 2-3+ armor save stuff then take star connons and etc 

IMO warwalkers would be best if they all have the same gun i would take 3 warwalkers all with 6 Eldar missile launchers (EML) cuz u can use the mini blasts for infantry or crack shot on vehicles or tough units


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