| Purestrain |
 |
 |
Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2003 10:43 pm
Posts: 7925
Location: New Zealand
|
Two more eldar playtests, not full reports due to time constraints.
All of * for 1.6 eldar used, (Plus pulse and SoV proposals).
In addition, Marines iused the following changes (from thread on SG):
1) Cost changes (+/-25 points)
- Vindicator det, 275 (-25)
- Predator det, 275 (-25)
- Land Raider det 375 (-25)
- Terminator det 350 (+25)
- Landing Craft 375 (+25)
2) Speed upgrades (+5cm)
- Vindicator, 25cm
- Attack Bike, 35cm
3) FF upgrades (1 better)
- Land Raiders, FF4+
- Predator Destructor, FF4+
4) Armours get Hunters
- Vindicator det, hunter upgrade allowed
- Predator det, hunter upgrade allowed
- Land Raider det, hunter upgrade allowed
5) "And They Shall Know No Fear"
- Number of BMs in assault resolution is halved (round down)
- Leaders remove 2BMs instead of 1
5 foot square table with standard tournament rules.
Marines used both games:
Reaver Titan
Tacs with Librarian, 6 razorbacks (heavy bolter)
Whirlwinds with Hunter
Scouts
Termis with Chaplain
Landing Craft carrying:
-Tacs with Captain, 3 Rhinos
-Tacs with Chaplain, 3 Rhinos
First game I used:
Guardians with 3 HW, SW.
Banshees with Autarch, Exarch, Wave Serpents
Swooping Hawks with 2 Exarchs
5 rangers
4 Falcons
6 Falcons
3 Scorpions
Jetbikes
3 Nightwings
Game 1, Turn 1:
I rushed up the table with scorpions, falcons, and banshees in serpents. Marines on the ground took heavy losses.
Game 1, Turn 2:
Down comes the marine lander - I intercept it with nightwings, which ignore the hunter and do 2 points of damage to the lander. ?One roll is ?a 6 - boom! As this would effectively be game over for the marines we decide to keep going as though this didn't happen... (playtest and all that...)
The Lander and Tacticals assault my banshees and scorpions, breaking both Eldar formations which flee back towards their blitz.
The Falcons hit and run trying to take out the lander but failing.
Game 1, Turn 3:
The termis teleport next to the eldar blitz and broken scorpions (marine 'break their spirit' objective) and my swooping hawks teleport near them (stupid on my part because if the marines had won ?the strategy roll they would be able to assault and massacre the hawks - doh! Anyway I ended up winning the SR and break the termis with the jetbikes supported by Swooping Hawks.
The falcons (6 strong) then fail their action test twice (reroll), trying to double to get away from the Reaver. they pay the price and are destroyed by the Reavers turbolasers...
The 4 strong falcon unit doubles and shoots the whirlwinds (but miss with everything ? ) and are destroyed in return.
Then the Lander flys over and destroys the broken eldar scorpion SHT's (achieving BTS).
Game 1, Turn 4:
Some ineffective exchanges and objective contesting takes place and the marines win on points.
Game 2, Turn 1:
I randomly changed a few units this time around.
Guardians with 3 HW, SW.
Guardians
Banshees with Autarch, Exarch, Wave Serpents
Dark Reapers with 2 Exarchs
4 Rangers
4 Fire Prisms
2 Cobras
Jetbikes
Vampire (carrying Guardians)
Vampire (carrying Reapers)
Cobras and Banshees push up the left flank supported by Prisms. ? Some ineffective fire is exchanged.
Game 2, Turn 2:
The marines teleport termis near my cobras, and shoot doing 1 point of damage and suppressing one.
Then the lander arrives and assault the banshees.... 5 banshees die for the loss of 3 marines, and the banshees retreat back towards their blitz for the second game in a row.
My Dark Reapers air assault and wipe out the marine whirlwinds. However they take fire from the Reaver and tactical marines and break - retreating to the corner of the table.
My fire prisms kill two termis which together with a BM placed by the Cobras breaks the formation. They retreat towards one of their take and hold objectives.
Game 2, Turn 3:
The reaver and 3 marine tactical formations converge on the eldar positions. ?The vampires and prisms hammer the reaver knocking down shields and doing some damage.
Guardians gate in near the reaver and tacticals.
Game 2, Turn 4:
Avatar is summoned by guardians near the reaver and tacticals. ?Marines win SR, the Reaver blasts the Avatar but does no damage! The tacticals then engage the Avatar and Guardians in a FF supported by the Reaver - but they lose and retreat!
The Prisms sustain fire at the reaver doing another point of damage, and then a vampire ground attacks it doing no damage.
The other marine tacticals engage the fire prisms (just in range enough to really hurt - damn) and wipe them out. ?
The cobra moves and fires at the reaver doing nothing. The lander shoots up the broken Dark reapers.
The jetbikes race up to the reaver, and then the Avatar and guardians engage it. Despite the numbers the eldar lose and are thrown back. The Reaver is on 1 hit point and has taken critical damage to its reactor though.
The marines move their scouts to hold their objectives, but I air assault with guardians to take the marine blitz and one other objective. The termis try to move back to contest - but fail their action test!!
The reavers damaged reactor causes another point of damage destroying the titan.
End of game and eldar have blitz, take and hold due to guardians, plus BTS. Marines have no objectives.
Conclusions etc.
Well those games were tougher than I expected they would be for the eldar... landers have a way of doing that... ? ?Also a number of subtle factors with Sotecs 1.6 * changes were evident I think (see below).
Marine Changes ? all the characters removing 2BM each meant the marines rarely had any blast markers at the start of the turn. ?More effective in engages, despite us forgoting the 'halve BM number for assault resolution' rule proposal.
My friend commented he is still not any more likely to take Landraiders at 375 points (not that he would take them against eldar anyway no doubt).
I commented that their seems to be an awful lot of changes for the marines... ?  ?Is it not possible to simplify this list??
Eldar Changes
Once again the * changes seemed to work well.
-Spirit Stones: Yes necessary change.
-Jetibkes save: Made a slight difference in the first game - they took extra casualty in last turn FF against marines, no diffence in the first FF against Termis... they got lucky and saved 2 out of 3 hits.
In the second game the Jetbikes started off table, failed a test to gate on, and then only supported an engage in turn 4 so no difference.
-Ignore cover loss by Cobras: I don't think this made a difference the game the cobras were used. Once again I found Cobras didn't do much at all - just placing a BM on the termis and Reaver. I'm going to use a pair of Cobras again tomorrow to try and get some better use out of them.
-Wraithguard: The fact that the marines were not having to face the obligatory bunch of ablative RA ?MW additions to hordelike guardian formations was a very nice redress in the balance between the two armies I think. A positive move I didn't really think about until later.
-Pulse: Most noticeably for the Scorpions - a similar effect to that mentioned in the Wraithguard comments, ie a nice reduction in MW death faced by the marines and helpful in redressing the skew between eldar and marines.
-SoV. Um...not sure. 6 Falcons was nice, ?until it failed an action test and reroll and was blasted to smithereens by the Reaver. 4 falcons was also good... very flexible cheap activation with a lot of powerful AT for 200 points (and hit and run). Is this a problem?
Also the 4 strong Fire Prism Troop... not as effective as I thought it would be, (but then it missed the Lander - (note still using current stats)). Lots of points for these too. Need to use more SoV to form more of an opinion about how these variable size units affect balance issues etc.
Overall:
Reduction to Wraithguard and Scorpions by WG rule and Pulse change is a definite step in the right direction towards balancing the eldar/marine interaction. A nice effect.
|
|
