List-building: 1500 AspectDar

When I first got into Eldar it was the synergy required of aspect warriors, each operating at maximum efficiency and in perfect harmony, that had me falling in love with the flavor of the army. My first taste of Eldar gameplay was in Dawn of War and I found immediately that depending on the match up, my units either slayed or were slain. The steep learning curve and fierce tactical demands were exhilarating. When I first tried it with models I had a little success, and then far less as my opponent got used to my army. I found that in the face of sheer optimization and efficiency, our masterful warriors were just too pricey and not quite good enough to justify it. Well now we have a new book and have seen a lot of improvements for certain aspects--luckily they were the ones I already own and enjoy, so I have gone back to enjoying the Eldar play style that I think most embodies the harmony and calibration that drew me to the army in the first place. This list focuses on synergy, board control, overlapping target priority, and deceptive deployment:

HQ

--Farseer - Singing Spear 105

Troops

--8 Dire Avengers 249

  Wave Serpent - TL Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holo-fields, Spirit stones

--10 Guardians with Bright Lance 110

--5 Rangers 60

--5 Rangers 60

  

Elites

--10 Striking Scorpions - Exarch w/ Scorpion's Claw and Crushing Blow 220

--9 Fire Dragons 343

  Wave Serpent - TL Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holo-fields, Spirit stones

Fast Attack

5 Warp Spiders - 95

5 Warp Spiders - 95

5 Shining Spears - Exarch w/ Hit & Run and Star Lance 160

12 Kill Points, 4 Scoring Units and 1497 Total Points

It's not what I'm used to these days. It isn't especially heavy on the long-ranged firepower and doesn't have any dedicated anti-air. In lists I make, I generally try to have a couple of ways to deal with every threat in the game while keeping my units' movement speed roughly the same. 

Well this list has a huge variety of weapon ranges and movement speeds. Playing it means deploying smart. You have to make good use of infiltration on the Rangers and Scorpions. Using reserves with Spiders deep striking and Spears outflanking can cripple crucial enemy units mid-late game. The slow/immobile units are best used to hold back-field objectives and depending on the enemy's ability to close in on them they should be supported accordingly. Objectives can be used to split up the enemy force and then you can apply pressure with the right units.

Being a hybrid force, this army could easily get separated into small battle groups that would be easily destroyed. The key to playing it is to evaluate the opponent's ability to do that and not to overextend your units. None of the units are meant to suicide into the enemy, least of all the Fire Dragons who have a reputation for that kind of thing. With their new armor and a Farseer backing them up, they should delay their attack until absolutely necessary and deliver a crucial blow at a vital moment. They're too pricey and have great survivability with their new armor; they are wasted when thrown away on a single target. The Spiders and Spears can easily find themselves outnumbered in the enemy backfield and that is something that must be avoided as well.

I think this list has a solid chance against many opposing forces. It's far from a power build, but I have had some success with it already and find it to be a lot more strategically demanding (and rewarding) than my mech lists.

What are your thoughts? What style of Eldar do you prefer? How do you feel about playing aspect-heavy with the new book?

Welcome to Wargaming 2013.9.21

The Welcome to Wargaming WiJ event was absolutely amazing. Everything from the hall to the tables to the players to the food to the prizes--just fantastic. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking this time, but even if each picture said 1,000 words they would fall short of telling what a great event it was.

Happened on this beauty while we were stuck in traffic.

Here are many of the tables just before we started rolling dice. We showed up late because the gate house was full of people and the guards were apparently not in much of a hurry (it's a military base, so everyone has to be signed in). I didn't finish getting pictures because games got started as I was snapping off shots. Had to rush to get my army out.

I thought Necromunda was going to be played on this table, but maybe it was Judge Dredd that got some time on it. Maybe someone from the group can correct me if I'm wrong.

Here's a huge and beautiful table for a game whose name I forget. In my blog list you can find a link to these fellas' blog. Their painting is just gorgeous, but my photos are taken from too far away to do them any justice.

 In the following two pics you can get the gist of how my first game went. I ran a list where I just crammed in all my aspect warriors, rangers and guardians. Well not all my Rangers. I have 29 of them now, but only 10 are painted. Anyway, it was an experimental list with much less long-ranged firepower than I'm used to bringing. My opponent was playing an experimental GK list with a very low body count, however, and my numbers and offensive power proved too much for his force. I didn't really have an MVP unit, but my Dragons, Scorpions, Rangers, Spiders and Spears all performed admirably. His MVP was easily Draigo. He ate a lot of shooting and broke my Dragon unit's Morale. His contending MVP unit was probably the Storm Raven. It wiped a 5 man Spider squad and seemed like it planned on bringing even more pain elsewhere on his next turn.

His GKs were beautifully painted. Traditional silver and Inquisition red, but you could tell he put the time in to do it up right.

Notice the conspicuous lack of Warp Spiders. Yeah, Dakka Ravens hurt.

Second game was against Tyranids. My opponent chose my competitive list rather than my experimental one and I got out my Forgedar. It's a mech list with a lot of S6 and S8AP2 shooting. In hindsight it was a worse match-up than even my first game, but again my opponent was an awesome guy and we had a good game of it nonetheless. He actually almost won anyway despite how tough a fast, shooty, mech army is to fight with a Nid list like his. When it came time for the dice to stop rolling he had his objective and I didn't have any. I won just barely through secondary objectives, but not through any forethought of my own. I wish I had close-ups of his Nids. They looked fabulous.

There are some things in reserves, but this is it for the most part.

Wine, beer and food all day with the entry fee. I don't eat while I play because I worry about my figs, but I did indulge a little in the drinks =)

We had a surprise special guest at our event! Through a fairly roundabout way, one of our gamers/organizers found out that Steve Parker, BL author of titles such as Gunheads and Deathwatch, lives in Japan. Well he was kind enough to come to our event, sign some books and sort of just hang out and chat. He's a really cool guy and an excellent conversationalist. It certainly helped kick off the Wargamers in Japan events.

As a side note, we raffled of that chainsword he's holding and I'm incredibly jealous of the guy who got it. He's one of fellas from Giant Hobby in Tokyo. Head on out to their shop if you want to see it. Or you know, I think you can order one from the internet.

And that was the first event we've held! Definitely a huge success and a start to something really great. There are going to be a lot of other awesome game days in the future and I hope to see even more of the Japan gamers at the next one. Thanks to everyone who put so much into making this event fantastic.

Welcome to Wargaming Weekend - Back at Craftworld My'house

Well I'm back home after an astonishing and astonishingly tiring weekend. The Wargamers in Japan event, Welcome to Wargaming, was a huge success with a lot of attendees. We had people playing napoleonic games, Space Hulk, Magic: The Gathering, Necromunda, Warmachine and some other stuff I'd never seen besides 40k. We had people representing from the US, Japan, France, Scotland and Italy if I recall, and maybe even more. We had a raffle with some cool figures and a really good-looking chainsword prop by a company whose name I forget. My friend (and gracious driver) also won the first place prize for the tournament. It was judged on the most fun opponent and I couldn't think of a more deserving individual. Steve Parker gave him a signed copy of his new book Deathwatch as a prize. What personal message did he request, you ask? "You look sexy in power armor!" Hahahah

There were a lot of great figures on the tables and even greater people playing them. I'll be blogging (read, bragging) about it this week. I got some pictures, but I'll borrow better ones from some of the guys in the group and share them. Luckily this is just the first of many events there will be. I'll be posting about others to come, so if you know anyone in Japan who wants to game and just doesn't know where to go for it, it is far from too late to get in on some really awesome events. Let them know and let's keep building on the great momentum we've got going.

Publishing Weekend Followed by Welcome to Wargaming Weekend

This weekend I finally published my children's book to Smashwords. It took a while to write, draw, paint and compile the thing. Still, it might have taken even longer to register for the international book numbers I needed to publish it how I wanted to. I'll post some details on my other blog, but for now I thought I'd share over here since my other audience has heard plenty through the facebook page. The kids that have read Bear with Me and those that have had it read to them have all loved it and asked it to be read a number of times in a row. The parents who have read it liked it too. I put a lot into making it appeal to both, because having become a dad this year I know what it's like to read kids' books that make me roll my eyes. Or that get boring to me quickly. Or that just kind of suck. It's pretty cheap at 3.99 and the first half is available as a free sample if you want to get a feel for the art. Really though, the story comes together at the end (as any story should). For now it is only available through Smashwords, but once it clears their vetter review it will be available through Apple, Sony, Kobo and Barnes & Noble. I'll be uploading to Amazon myself later this week. The Japanese version will be coming this week as well. Smashwords is best if you just want to show your support as the royalties rate is much better, but you do also get access to every available file format, so it's a win/win for us both.

On the 40k front, next weekend is the Welcome to Wargaming event! God I can't wait for it. There are going to be a lot of tables set up for a lot of different games. There will be representatives from a lot of the hobby shops in Japan and I heard that Steve Parker of Black Library fame will be around too! I'd love to get a chance to talk to him. I had no idea any of the BL authors live in Japan.

For gaming, I opted to play a little demo game of Necromunda and 3 games of 40k at 1500 points. I haven't played 40k in a while. The last games I did get in were with Seer Council/Dark Eldar mech list variants. I picked up a few new lessons with my favorite unit in the game. Allying in Dark Eldar and using Wave Serpents, War Walkers and GJBs lets me shoot pretty darn hard in addition to having a truly obscene beat stick.

Good lessons, but I'm not sure if they're one's I'll be leaning on next Saturday. I have three different lists in mind: two competitive ones and one that is experimental. The experimental one has lots of aspect warriors and a mix of vehicles. One competitive one is my Council DEldar list and the other is a mech list that is tough as nails. I forget how well I can pack everything up. I'm pretty sure I can bring all three and then play each once since there are three games (it's not a tourney).

I haven't been up to date on all the Space Marine rules, but from what I've heard they sound in line with the newer books. I'll have a look before the event, but I can't imagine a solid TAC Eldar list suddenly can't hang just because SMs got some price adjustments and new toys. It should be a great time!

Wargamers in Japan and Details on our First Event

Here is the official logo for Wargamers in Japan. It's hard to call it a group as that would defeat the purpose of the thing. Really it's more like a confederation lol. It's a group of all the 40k groups in Japan that we can get involved. So far we have groups in Zama, Atsugi, Yokosuka, Yokohama, Chima, Saitama, and Tokyo. I'm trying to get the Nagoya guys involved as well and hope to get them in on the meetings soon.

It's an open group and our basic philosophy is the more people, the more gaming, the more fun we'll all have. We have lots of people already involved who are all into a lot of different kinds of gaming.

The first event is scheduled for September 27th, 2013. We're definitely going to have tables for 40k, Fantasy, Bolt Action, Space Hulk, Necromunda and some historical war games that I know nothing about personally. There are details and Facebook contacts in the group. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you are in Japan and want to game or if you even know anyone who is moving out here and could use some community support for gaming or even getting adjusted to the country and lifestyle.