Lakedaimonioi's Craftworld Eldar

I've just skimmed through the rules and thrown together my first list. I'm yet to play my first game.

This is the list I'm intending to play my first game with. If anyone was up for checking it for rookie errors, that would be pretty cool.


Striking Scorpion Exarch (Scorpion's Claw) - 96
Striking Scorpion Aspect Warrior (Shuriken Pistol) - 81
2 x Fighter Aspirant (Shuriken Pistol) - 146
Warlock (Shuriken Pistol, Tarot Cards) - 106
Wraithguard (Spirit Stone, Wraithcannon) - 132
3 x Guardian (Shuriken Catapult) - 189

Howdy lakedaimonioi... Welcome to ! Feel free to stop by the Welcome Mat (LINK) and share an introduction about you, where you are, how you found us, what 40k armies you play and all those 'howdy guys' things you can share. We are a friendly bunch and we want to make this YOUR home too!

On your list... can you expand it to include mode details? Or that is all the gear you are using?

Hey Mordheimer, thanks for the welcome.

I've been meaning to pop over the Welcome Mat to make an introduction, but just have not yet got around to doing so (you will see that the above was my first post but I've been a member since 2009, so it's probably fair to not expect a huge post count from me). I guess I'm not sure what to say about myself.

What I've listed is all the gear I'm using other than the starting equipment the squad members come with. Those Combat Blades are going to get a bit of a work out until I can afford better. Sure, the squad looks pretty poorly kitted out, but I figured that was the nature of new squads, I didn't want to go below 9 members, and I didn't want to lose the wraithguard (who seems a pretty big cred-sink but hey). As I say I haven't played Death Squads yet, but my experience of Necromunda and Mordheim is that in a starting gang/warband it's almost never worth investing in expensive armour when instead you could get an extra guy for around the same cost and I'm gambling a bit on Death Squads being the same there. At least my Exarch comes with some armour, right?

Which leads to another question. Over in the Squads thread Dysturbed mentions that the Striking Scorpion Exarch was supposed to start with Exarch Heavy Armour, and that in the next update he will do so. Do people think it would be fair to use the list as written for now but to have my Exarch start with the Exarch Heavy Armour instead of the regular Exarch Armour and not start with the helmet Exarchs normally get?

Well... the Eldars will be revised. Dysturbed is in charge of that but he (along everyone else) is waiting for ME to finish to write major revisions to the Core Rules (lots of work there). So, unless everyone in your group knows/agrees with any 'future' revision we have posted (there are many), I would suggest you don't. It can get confusing.

Regarding your list... is DESIGNED in a way that all Squads start 'wanting'... I mean, your Squad will NEVER be 'perfect' the way you envision. Why? Because if it were, then the Campaigns would be boring.

Armor is NOT a luxury like in Mordheim or Necromunda. For us, Armor is much more 'practical' and is a line of protection of your investment (pun intended!) You don't have to get armor... but soon you will realize that getting Wounded can mean certain death; better to have Armor to minimize that auto-Injury Roll. When people start getting Armor, then other people start getting better weapons that ignore Armor (based on its AP)... the arm race begins! Is Armor worth it? Yes. To start with? Personal choice and risk tolerance.

The Exarch starts with Sacred Armor (Aspect Warrior Armor and Helmet, for a combined Armor Save of 4+) so he is very well protected. But what about the other Officers? You are willing to risk THAT amount of cash? A lucky shot/hit could destroy your investment. If you loose an Officer early on, you may NOT recover. The game mechanics considers that on average, a Squad looses (dead) 2.2 IG Infantrymen (or equivalents, roughly 105 credits) per game and on an average game, you can recover to at least the same point you were. You loose 2 Fighters, you need to have a very good Exploration Phase roll just to recover and an awesome roll to advance.

Eldars tend to start with powerful weaponry. Sure, it costs a bundle and reduces the amount of Fighter in the Squad, but it tends to bypass weak Armor... which is what noob Officers tend to have (if any). Now, look at your Squad. It has the range weaponry to support close combat (short range) but you have minimal Close Combat weapons. Based on your equipment, you get one or two Turns to shoot 4 Fighters at 24", then then one or two Turns to shoot at 12", then is Close Combat... to which you have no weapons. Wait... you have the Exarch's Scorpion Claw! That means that you will put HIM in harms way. Even with his 4+ Save, the risk is substantial.

Think of this scenario... you fighting me, with Orks. I have 1 Nob, 4 Officers, 1 Painboy, 1 Burnaboy, 2 Kommandoz, 6 Boyz and 1 Grot (I love the little guys!). Nob has 4+ Save, Officers have Helmets, everyone have Clubs. My strategy... run and crack your skull... then use it as my personal chamber pot!

If the table has minimalistic terrain, there is NO way you can win. I send the Gretchin and Boyz in front... you HAVE to shot at them. Gretchin and few Boyz are down... you still have at least 9 Orks to fight (for not saying around 12). When the Orks get in CC, that Eldar WILL die. Because your Guardians only have a Combat Knife, you need 4+ To-Hit and 6+ To-Wound... all my Orks get +1 Armor Saves. Meanwhile I need 4+ To-Hit and 3+ To-Wound. You send the Exarch to save the day... he gets assaulted by my Nob (I got 2 Wounds... you are SCREWED!) and some backup (Officers). You will do damage... but mathematically speaking you will die. The Wraithguard will be something to fear indeed... but we be Orks. We go fer da' squishy wones furst! The end result... your Guardians and some Officers will die. Good luck on the Post-Battle Sequence.

If the table has good terrain (packed and convoluted), then your boys can climb up... but my Boyz can avoid LoS all together. Your advantage is gone. If you divide your forces, then I can send all my mob against the weakest and pick them one by one... as they are trapped on a building. Unless they jump out, in which case the idiotic Orks still on the ground will kill them.

When you make a list, you need to think what you are going to do. If you want to be a Close Combat specialist Squad... then equip them for that. In my case, my Orks specialize in NUMBERS. Equipment is irrelevant... it can be gained later. I use my Toughness to shrug shots and use cheap Close Combat weapons (Clubs, which I always say are guns without ammo!). Then, after few games I add Armor to my Officers. Then Weapons to my Officers. Recruits? They be damned... naked with clubs and they are lucky!

Eldar are NOT a specialist force. Their different Aspects must be combined to reach that completeness that is the war-god Khaine. You need to reach this balance, in order to survive. For example, if the Exarch is Scorpion (Close Combat), then you KNOW he will get close... you need to give him some support; others to join his melee. You have access to SUPERB long range weaponry... some Officers should be equipped with them (along some others) so you can upgrade their efficiency with Wargear.

Once you finish... make a fake battle in your head. Can you counter most strategies? Some will be dice dependent... others (like the scenario above) will be very obvious that you get the lower end of the stick.


Well... I hope to read your revised list AFTER I read about you on the Welcome Mat. It will take you less than 5 mins.

I don't have the rules in front of me atm but the only thing I see is
starting squads i don't believe at least last time I looked
can't start with the rarity items to get Shuriken Catapults
i think you have to start with las rifles and move up when you get the points.

But like i say i don't have the rules in front of me so i can't say that for sure.

Ah, I missed the cap on rarity 5 for starting squads on my first read-through (I was bound to miss something [which is exactly why I wanted to get some expert feedback on my list before turning up to my first game with an illegal list]). Happily the Shuriken Catapult is rarity 5 exactly, so I think that means I'm okay to equip my guardians with them. Less happily, it looks like my Exarch's Scorpion's Claw and my Warlock's Tarot cards will have to go (both rarity 8 ). Is that right?

Mordheimer, I'm not too worried if my squad isn't super-optimised - as long as I haven't accidentally broken any rules (like starting with rarer than allowed gear) and can put up a pretty decent fight against another new player with their first squad while we learn the rules, I'm happy. If my squad is mercilessly crushed by the squad of a key developer, I'm not going to take that as a sign of my failure as a gamer.

A few things you point out do worry me though; You comment on my lack of close combat weapons, but I have equipped all my officers with shuriken pistols rather than shuriken catapults specifically to make them good in close combat. Do pistols work out being a lot worse in close combat than they do in other GW-based games? I would think my officers with shuriken pistols would stand at least as good a chance against your orks as the officers from most starting squads would.

Yes; you can have ANY equipment, as long as it has Rarity 5 or less... no Claw or Cards.

I didn't mean that you would be dissapointed... I mean that your Squad seems to 'lean' towards Close Combat due to the lack of long range weaponry, yet you have no Close Combat weapons (other than the miserable knives!)

Pistols (in your case, Shuriken Pistols) allow you to use them in Close Combat. You get ONE shot per combat turn, you use your WS instead of your BS. The Pistol will be used as a Secondary Weapon (i.e. left hand)... you ALWAYS have one attack with your 2nd hand, so you GAIN power when you use a Pistol. Your Attack Attribute reflects the amounts of attacks you can do with your Primary Weapon (i.e. right hand). For this weapon, you want something that is NOT restricted to one attack (i.e. Pistol) especially is you have more than 1 on your Attack Attribute. At this point, it matters little as all your Officers have 1 Attack... but it may affect you later.

The problem I see are NOT your Pistols... but the lack of a true Close Combat weapon. A Combat Knife is a 'better than a fist, which is slightly better than nothing' kind of weapon. A Combat Knife has the following Special Rule:

Quote :

• Weak Against Armor: Attacks made with this weapon have a hard time penetrating armor. Victims with an Armor Save gain a +1 bonus to their roll. They do not get better Saves (from Save 4+ to 3+, for example) but +1 to their dice rolls (thus not increasing their Armor’s AP Value.) Note that if the weapon removed the ability to roll an Armor Save, there is no roll for the bonus to be given to. This penalty is not stackable with any other benefits.

It gives increase survivability to those that wear Armor. At first, it maybe negligible as not many wear armor. Officers tend to start with Armor, so your best Fighters (Officers) go ill equipped to battle from the get go.

My advice, get them some Clubs or Chains. You can disguise them a electro-batons or particle-whips... how they look is irrelevant to game mechanics. The point is, have your Aspirants with Shuriken Pistol & electro-maul (Club) or Shuriken Pistol & particle-whip (Chain), which is much more effective than Shuriken Pistol & Combat Knife... costs only 5 or 13 credits more. You CAN justify these weapons... remember this is a SMALL elite unit, in which many of the army-size weapons would not fit (and vice-versa).

Okay, version 2.

Definitely less effective than the first list, but should be legal now. Pretty much didn't effectively address any of Mordheimer's recommendations in the end - they were really solid recommendations and I can see exactly why they were made, I just couldn't find anywhere to get the extra credits from. All my officers with shuriken pistols and combat knives _could_ pick up clubs by dropping their shuriken pistols down to laspistols, and I thought long about that but I don't think it would be worth it (weaker shooting is just going to mean that when they _do_ get swarmed, there will be more enemies in the swarm). I could also split my Exarch's sword into 3 clubs so thrice as many officers would have a close combat weapon as currently do - but a club really is just a combat knife without the weak against armour rule and it feels like my Exarch is likely to use parry more often than an officer is going to try to wound an enemy with armour. I might be wrong, but that's the thought that went behind the decision anyway (also clubs and chains are such ugly, finesse-less weapons that don't seem to suit the Eldar at all - I'd be happy to see clubs replaced with mono-knives in a future Eldar list).

The only way I could really get the extra points to equip the squad properly would be to drop a guardian, or get rid of the Wraithguard. Wanting to see how the Wraithguard performs is one of the main reason I decided to start with an Eldar list, so I wouldn't want to give up on that, and having even less squad members on a team that is already probably going to be outnumbered by every enemy squad they face just feels like a really dangerous thing to do.

Anyway, this is what I'm now looking at:

Striking Scorpion Exarch (Shuriken Catapult, Sword) - 113
Striking Scorpion Aspect Warrior (Shuriken Pistol) - 81
2 x Fighter Aspirant (Shuriken Pistol) - 146
Warlock (Shuriken Pistol) - 89
Wraithguard (Spirit Stone, Wraithcannon) - 132
3 x Guardian (Shuriken Catapult) - 189

my personal opinion is the wraitguard and warlock isn't worth it in a starting squad.

Im the one that made it so you can do it, but knowing now what I do, I think the rangers or more guardians would be more effective and the warlock would have less of a target painted on his head without the wraithguard (though less effective without it)

Here's a question, If my Warlock gets killed and I can't afford to replace it, does my Wraithguard count towards my squad rating while I'm unable to field it?

You are right... the list is pretty tight right now. Hard to make substitutions. The Warlock is a buffer... he will increase the efficiency of some of your Fighters. The Wraithguard is a brute (with a COOL weapon). The Problem that I see (as Dysturbed mentioned) is that since your Squad is so small, they become prime-targets for the enemy. The Wraithguard because he IS an immediate thread (becomes a fire magnet!!!) and the Warlock to reduce your Squad's momentary (or permanent) tactical flexibility.

For a couple of "let's learn and have some fun" this is definitely a fluffy and fun list. Paired against some IG with an Ogryn would make for lots of fun games. For a 'serious' Campaign (if there is such a thing... I don't think so, but others may differ) the list is a 'risky' one. If you survive the first 3 games, it will be HARD to stop your momentum.

lakedaimonioi wrote:

Here's a question, If my Warlock gets killed and I can't afford to replace it, does my Wraithguard count towards my squad rating while I'm unable to field it?

The two rules in question...

Quote :

• Spirit Stone: May only be Recruited if the Squad is in possession of a Spirit Stone that has been filled with the soul of a dead comrade. In the case of initial Squad setup (at the beginning of a Campaign), it is assume that the acquired Spirit Stone has a soul suitable for animation.

• Wraithsight: Wraithguard do not see the world as mortals do and relay on the Warlock to as their guide in the material world. A Wraithguard suffers from Stupidity when he is 6” or more away from a Warlock. At the start of the Eldar Turn, determine if the Wraithguard if within 6” of the Warlock; if he is, then he may act normally.

• Dead: The Wraithguard is dead and cannot earn experience or suffer from after action wounds. If a Wraithguard is taken Out Of Action roll a D6 at the end of the battle. On a 1 it is irreparable and it is removed from the Squad. On a roll of 2, it must miss D3 battles (games) to be repaired. Any other result it was unharmed and may be used normally.

This means that if you already has a Wraithguard when the Warlock dies, then you can still use him. If he dies (unrepairable) and you do NOT have a Warlock, then you can't Recruit one until you get a Warlock and a Spirit Stone.

If the Warlock is dead, the Wraithguard will be Stupid all the time. At the beginning of the Turn you need to check if he is within 6" of the Warlock or be Stupid. Since you have no Warlock... well, good luck.

Last, if the Wraithguard (or ANY other Fighter on ANY Squad) must miss a game, he still counts towards the Squad's Size, Rating, etc. If he is part of your Squad, he counts... regardless if you use him or not.

lakedaimonioi wrote:

... Mordheimer's recommendations in the end - they were really solid recommendations and I can see exactly why they were made...

HA! Take THAT skavenslayer!!!! Someone thinks I have good recommendations! Wait until he asks for rules and I screw up... hehehe

It would be a pretty low down trick for someone to assasinate your warlock just to make the wraithguard stupid all the time. But it could happen easily well as easy as it is to kill a warlock who constantly has a Wraithguard bodyguard 6" from him all the time...He might be ok.

Mordheimer wrote:

HA! Take THAT skavenslayer!!!! Someone thinks I have good recommendations! Wait until he asks for rules and I screw up... hehehe

Well this looks like a invitation... I was just looking i silence but....

I like the second list the most, personaly I would not get a Wraithgaurd, but if you want it, starting with it is best.
Normaly I would prefereto start with clubs, but in a expencive, specalist squard like this, I think its better to have more men.

Having said that, there are still a few things I would change, this is my version of yours squad:
Comments in red

Striking Scorpion Exarch (Shuriken Pistol, Sword) - 113 -Changede the catapult for a pistol, I think this guy should be CC
Striking Scorpion Aspect Warrior (Shuriken Pistol) - 81
2 x Fighter Aspirant (Shuriken Catapults) - 146 -I gave them catapults and would use them as shooters, going for Dire Avengers, but they can be CC as well, if you want
Warlock - 57 -Drop the pistol, try to keep him out of LOS and close to the Wraithguard, depending on how much terrain you use, it should be possibal
Wraithguard (Spirit Stone, Wraithcannon) - 132
2 x Guardian (Shuriken Catapult) - 126
2 x Guardian (Club) 74 -Dropping the warlocks pistol and one catapult, gave enough money for 2 guys with clubs, now you got CC recruts to back-up your heroes

I think the total is now 737, so still a little to play with.

-Skavenslayer

Skavenslayer's exact recommendations make sense to me. What do you think?

Skavenslayer: Of course it was an invitation! Your observations are always welcomed. Let's but it this way. When it comes to knowing the rules that I write, I'm like Bambi. Everyone knows me and knows what I can do. You on the other hand are a little more like Godzilla. Hard to explain. Just watch...


THANKS for always being here to crush help me! Without people like you, would not be anywhere near this good!

Yes! An extra guy is exactly what I wanted, and there's enough left over for an extra sword and an extra club.

Looking like this now,

Striking Scorpion Exarch (Shuriken Pistol, Sword) - 113
Striking Scorpion Aspect Warrior (Shuriken Pistol, Sword) - 99
Fighter Aspirant (Shuriken Pistol, Club) -88
Fighter Aspirant (Shuriken Catapult) - 83
Warlock - 57
Wraithguard (Spirit Stone, Wraithcannon) - 132
2 x Guardians (Shuriken Catapult) - 126
2 x Guardians (Club) - 72

I'll sleep on this for a few hours, but it's definitely feeling a lot better than my previous iteration, Thanks! Instead of the extra sword and club, my other considerations of what to do with the leftover credit was either Aspect Armour for the Aspect Warrior, Mesh for the Warlock, or to turn the two new guardians with clubs into Rangers with clubs. Melee weapons for all melee guys seems like a good idea though.

usually armor won't play a huge role in early games also.
Not till your opponents start getting higher powered weapons.
Though it is tempting being that the eldar are a little more squishy than the rest of the squads. Rightly so since we are so fast:)

Fortunately I own lots of terrain.

Everyone who helped me put this squad together, they're now ready to deploy and are marshalling over in the painting and modelling thread.

http://www.deathsquadsgame.com/t2610-kaela-fain-shelwe

Hopefully I'll soon have some stories about how they performed in their first game.