Hey all,
I've been playing a couple of practice games recently, and while I've been able to get the Guardians to pull their weight, I'm struggling to get the best use out of the Aspects. They tend to win their engagements and make their points back, but I'm so concerned with their vulnerability that I've tended to throw them straight at the enemy; which means that they get flanked and destroyed in turns two or three.

The obvious solution would be to move them to a flank, but I'm a bit concerned that a fairly expensive formation would then be a bit stranded if it's unmounted.

What's the balance I should look to strike regarding transports? All Wave Serpents? A mix of Serpents and Falcons?

I've been putting my Autarch in with the formation, and getting him killed is a big problem! Essentially, I'd like some advice on making an effective formation that can win their fights and survive.

My current set-up:
Three Dire Avenger stands, including one exarch and one autarch
Four Warp Spider stands
One Striking Scorpions stand.
No vehicles.

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Industrious, red-robe wearing member of the PCRC

In my experience, Aspects don't get stranded very often on the flanks. With a full 15cm consolidation move they can generally position quite effectively. Deploy them in a position where they can drive towards the main body of the enemy force and/or objectives and you will likely have good targets to choose from.

Even if you miss a turn of assault because you have to reposition, they threaten a large area and restrict enemy movement . Usually if you miss it's because they moved away and as long as you have objectives to claim, that's fine.

If you're going to mount them, I would suggest all Wave Serpents. It's already an expensive formation and trying to use Falcons will just run the points up to unmanageable levels. Besides, the Serpents have better saves, which is important for a transport, especially with Eldar where you'll end up loaded if you take advantage of the vehicle speed for consolidation moves.
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Edit: I'd also suggest moving your characters to the Warp Spider stands. Their First Strike works with all the added attacks from the characters and the better armor save means they are more likely to survive (unless I'm misremembering about them having better saves than DAs).

The WS do have a better save (4+ compared to 5+).

Perhaps a Dark Reaper stand might be useful. Couple more ranged shots for turns you don't engage and with the Exarch in a DR stand his EA is FF (DA exarchs have the EA as CC).

Edit: IMO there are three ways the Aspect Hosts "tend" to be used.
1. With Wave Serpent transports. Mainly because the Autarch will be in this formation, so you want to start on the board, and therefore you need the speed that transports provide.
2. In a Vampire. CC specialist aspects are probably best used here, as the aircraft can deliver them direct into btb contact. But its equally possible to use a FF specialist host or a mix.
3. In the webway. Often the more mobile aspects use this method (i.e. Warp Spiders, Shining Spears and maybe Swooping Hawks, but they can of course teleport if on their own). While it's true that any aspects could use this method with a Storm Serpent, the risk of lossing the SS before the aspects deploy means that you may have to depend on the Wraithgate, and thus its safer to use the more mobile aspects this way.

ditto both of the above.

I play Ulthwe however, so I tend to use my Aspects as harassment formations, eg. a single fm of warpspiders+exarch in a vampire or a swooping hawk fm. Either can take on weak/ prepped (BM, support, etc)/ broken fms, especially the warp spiders, though they'll fold and run like girlies if you try and tackle something bigger. I tend to go FF strong with my Eldar, though there are occasions (assaulting Leman Russ co.s for eg) were CC specialists would be more useful. THen again, I'd just use my Falcons to nullify the Russes instead

I also feel that Wave Serpent mounted Aspect formations are the best way to go, as reinforced armour is a very handy bonus, and the Wave Serpents can also be used to pick up Aspects after an engagement, so that you can consolidate even further away, making mechanised Aspect formations very effective for hit and run attacks.

It is, however, important to support your Aspect formations properly. One of my most successful attacks involved combining two Wave Serpent mounted Aspect formations and a Warlock Titan in a flank assault against Space Marines. Being able to make use of the titan for support fire during the engagements was key in allowing me to punch through the opposing battle line, and the titan also helped to draw fire away from the infantry.

I'm not as much of a fan of the Wraithgate, as I can never seem to get my units in the right place when deploying from there, so I would recommend using this for other units, and using transports for your Aspects.

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Aspects should be delivered to the best spot by a transport of some description, especially if you're using any CC units.

I can't really remember playing many mixed aspect hosts that walk. Pure Swooping hawk or shining spear's have the speed but the rest need a method of getting them up close and personal.

Personally, I find it rare that FF aspects can't be very useful coming out of a wraithgate. Even if the Aspects can't attack out of it effectively, a 30cm double move/15cm support range is a big chunk of area control. That's a lot of space, so both T&H objectives have to be WAY off to the sides before it's an issue.

It's difficult for the enemy to place objectives such that a wraithgate is seriously hindered. If they are close, they are close. If an opponent spreads his T&H objectives so far out that it's impossible to get aspects into position, that causes strategic problems for the opponent. It puts the opponent in a position where they must split their forces or move the bulk of their forces off to one side, leaving the Eldar a lot of flexibility in movement and choice of battle.

How? The gate goes on the Blitz and the Aspects are monster Blitz guards (off-board so they are invulnerable and any capturing formation must be in assault range). The entire Eldar army then only needs to contest one enemy T&H objective to prevent both T&H and Blitz, so if they focus on one objective the Eldar just take the other and if they split forces, the Eldar concentrates and destroys them in detail. It also leaves the Eldar in good position for "Defend the Flag" with a Blitz guard and most of the army available for an "objective run" to capture. Thus, the enemy has to surrender DTF or commit a big chunk of forces to one of the T&H. The end result is the opponent is highly unlike to get T&H or Blitz, but still has to commit forces to an "out of the way" T&H objective to prevent an Eldar goal.

Leaving 350 points of Aspects off the table for that strategic advantage isn't a bad trade.

Does that not make the Aspect formation too defensive though Neal?

I only ask because I find, albeit in my somewhat limited experience of the current rules, that Aspect Warriors work much better on the attack in conjunction with Guardian formations and/or Titans, taking the attack to the opposition. Whenever I've tried to use them as a defensive rapid reaction force, they just seem to get destroyed too easily by long range fire support, or by not being quite fast enough to execute engagements.

I'm sure deploying from a Wraithgate can work, but I just think that it's somewhat less forgiving than using them in transports. I do need, however, to improve my positioning of the Wraithgate, as I have not made best use of it so far in the game which I have played.

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Actually, that's a good point of discussion too – how do you use the Wraithgate effectively? It's restricted to the backline in the tournament scenario.

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Industrious, red-robe wearing member of the PCRC

No it can replace any objective in your own half

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www.epic-uk.co.uk
NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

*Facepalm*
That would have come in very useful!
Cheers for the heads-up – I thought it had to replace your first objective placed (the one on the table edge).

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Industrious, red-robe wearing member of the PCRC

you can choose to, but you don't have to. Good placement of the wraithgate depends on your opponent's placing of their TnH objectives (which, as Neal has stated above, is a tactic in it's own right), but a useful offensive tactic (ie. for attacking your opponent, not offending him) is to place it so that an attacking fm coming out of the gate can both grab one of your TnH and also be in range to contest one of your opponents.

If you do want to use a gate like that though, it's often worth garrisoning a ranger fm on the gate, especially if you're playing sneaky buggers called Dave with 4 land speeder fms. That in turn is a fun tactic as your opponent will often spend a disproportionate amount of effort trying to get rid of them (8 fms, 6 dead landspeeders and bikes, last game ).

You would have to commit a substantial amount of support for an attack like that to work though in my opinion, as I've tried small attacks from Wraithgates, and they simply have not worked for me at all, so I remain sceptical about using the Wraithgate for Aspect Warriors, unless they are fast moving, in which case they can act as a spearhead attacking unit, or a mobile reserve.

I quite like the sound of using Rangers as fire support, especially with their enhanced zone of control. Mixing War Walkers in with them could also work quite well, and give any units exiting the Wraithgate more back up, but even in this case, I think that fast moving units are best selected to deploy via the Wraithgate, which rules out most Aspect formations.

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depends on how you play it and what else you have available - I usually play 2 beefed up Guardian fms (1 with wraithguard, 1 with wraithguard and wraithlords) with a wraithgate and a storm serpent. If you deploy your storm serpent within doubling range of your gate, your opponent would have to be supremely foolish to come anywhere near that wraithgate. I've often (where my opponents let me that is) done a triple tap using that set up - either assault out of the gate, consolidate to within support range of another target, retain with storm serpent then 2nd guardian fm, or vice versa.

Even if that's not your plan, your opponent doesn't know that and the sheer threat of it happening is usually enough to force them to avoid that area. With aspects you arguably have more options - use a warp spider host and a shooty aspect host (dark reapers and fire dragons for example), double with shooty into support range, fire, retain with warp spiders and engage = 1 very dead target. Don't forget that warp spiders have an effective-from-gate assault range of 45cm as they're infiltrators.