Instead of making a new thread and since it's still relating to the Pale Courts and ITC, I'll throw it in here.
I've learned a few things in relation to 40k this week:
a) I *hate* losing repeatedly, my record for this year so far is 2/0/8.
b) I dislike playing jetbikes and warp spiders as much as I do losing, I know it's a powerful combination and it can win games due to it's extreme mobility and high strength shooting.
So with that in mind and after a small "I quit this stupid game" crisis, something had to change in my approach to the game.
My craftworld of choice as always been Biel-Tan, as I love aspect warriors and they tend to field a lot more of them than other craftworlds. In the tournament last weekend, I found an aspect warrior heavy list to be a lot more fun to play. So much fun in fact that I suspect my jetbikes won't be leaving their shelf for a very long time, outside one of the guys in my club specifically asking me to bring them to get some practise against them.
Where is this going? Well I need to learn how to use my army a lot better, as my 2016 record shows, admittedly one of the losses was due to me completely messing up deployment and having a brainfart against a skyhammer annihilation force... But I digress, what I aim to do is create a core Pale Courts Battlehost that the rest of my army is built around.
My problem is what aspect to use with the Aspect Lord-shrine craftworld trait. I'm thinking to use Dark Reapers as they can function perfectly fine in small units and add a lot of threat to quite a few things. They'll keep battle companies and other eldar armies honest unless they love to lose lots of stuff to multiple units of reapers doing what they do best. On top of that is the Wraithknight, the melee version of it, and a farseer for warlord and some buffs where needed.
So the core would look like this:
Farseer, jetbike, singing spear (120 pts)
5 Dark Reapers, starshot missiles (165 pts)
4 Dark Reapersm, starshot missiles (132 pts)
4 Dark Reapersm, starshot missiles (132 pts)
Wraithknight, Ghostglaive & Scattershield (295 pts)
A core of 844 points in total, we usually play 1850 points, so just over 1000 points left to spend.
What I'm thinking of adding for the first game testing this is this:
Avatar (195 pts)
Aspect Host:
7 Swooping Hawks, Exarch (122 pts)
7 Swooping Hawks, Exarch (122 pts)
7 Warp Spiders, Exarch (143 pts)
Aspect Host:
8 Howling Banshees, Exarch with Executioner (124 pts)
8 Howling Banshees, Exarch with Executioner (124 pts)
8 Striking Scorpions, Exarch with Scorpion Claw (176 pts)
Bringing the total to 1850 exactly. Now for the reasoning behind those units and the avatar.
The Farseer will roll for invis a couple of times, if I get it on the first roll, I'll switch to Divination for Prescience or Perfect Timing or Runes of Fate for Fortune and possibly Doom. Swapping things I don't want or need out for guide. It really comes down to what I'm playing against for the later rolls, but Telepathy is the number 1 target as I got a few things that needs protection badly.
Which brings me to the Avatar, the presence of one of those walking bundles of sunshine and rainbows will boost the melee aspect host and the Wraithknight to frankly obscene levels of efficiency in combat. But only if it actually survives turn 1, hences the need for invis and other protection powers. Of course I'll get exactly one chance to use him against a single player, because as soon as they see what he adds to the army, he becomes the priority target for sure. A bit pricey for a fire magnet, but I'l trying to threat overload so they either have to focus everything on one target or attempt to take out multiple targets.
Enter the sword wielding mad construct. Those towering monstrosities attract fire like moths to a candle, but at least he can take some with the invul save and FnP or whatever cover save he might have. At any rate he'll follow the Banshees and Avatar across the table at the highest possible speed and together they'll hopefully slam into the other army on turn 2, 3 at the latest. Which leaves the Scorpions, depending on what I'll be facing they got a few options; Infiltrate them right up in the face of the opponent or let them hang back and protect the back field from any funny business. I'm leaning towards having them infiltrate into some nice cover so they can take advantage of stealth/shrouded. Unless I'm facing a decent amount of high ap, ignoring cover shooting, I'm looking at you Tau.
That leaves the Hawks and Spiders, they can start on the table and get across easily due to their high mobility. I'd prefer to deep strike the hawks though and take advantage of the grenade pack for added damage and then drown the target in laser fire. The Spiders can make short work of nearly everything that has an initiative value but they really excel at hunting monstrous creatures with high toughness values. Leave it to the eldar to have a near perfect counter to Wraithknights, outside grav weapons anyway.
But really the Spiders can roam and destroy any target that present itself to them and get safely out of there in most cases. Even though ITC limits their Flickerjumps to once per turn they're still one of the, if not the most, mobile units in the game and next to impossible to lock down outside just killing them.
It'll be a longer proces to learn how to play this aspect heavy footslogging style, but I'm cautiously optimistic in my ability to get the hang of it as I really do enjoy it. Something I can't say about the Jetbikes/Warp Spiders combo, which definitely shows in my games with them.
Thoughts, comments or namecalling for wasting your time with so many words? Comments can both be on the list itself or the reasoning behind it or both or neither really.