I think you rely too much on that knight and fortune, if you don't get first turn an army with a bunch of lascannons or equivalent will kill that knight before you can cast fortune.
I can answer to this not just in one but in two ways - more abstract and more specific
More abstract answer would be this:
So, you're effectively saying that if I run into an opponent who has a ton of heavy long-range firepower AND gets the first turn against me then I'll be in trouble, right? Tell me then, who wouldn't?
I can't think of any single CWE list that would be safe and happy in a situation like that.
More specific answer would be:
At the same time, a bunch of lascannons is certainly not enough to kill a knight in 1 turn. Assuming 3+ to hit, it takes over 10 lascannons to just reduce it to 12 wounds. And even when it's down to 12 wounds, with Fortune up it will still keep going for 2 more turns unless dice totally hate me.
Fortune also cannot be cast on the Avatar of khaine explicitly.
Of course, Fortune is for WK explicitly.
Shooting those Reapers as priority one, then thin out your guardians is another strategy to deal with your army.
That's the more favourable course of action, I already tabled 3 opponents who tried to do just that (those were 2k games, but the core of my list was the same). You seem to underestimate the combined power of Knight and Avatar, once they get to the enemy's firebase and start assaulting things it's basically game over.
I think your army is a bit too predictable.
And again, I have to disagree. In fact, your reaction to this list shows that it's not that predictable at all
Or rather, maybe it is predictable in terms of what it does, but that sort of predictability still doesn't make it obvious how to deal with it.
Maybe you should go for storm guardians instead of defenders, so they can take full adantage of the Avatar of Khaine?
Avatar helps to charge, but doesn't help to fight (which I find strange and weird, but whatever). So his help is invaluable for the WK. As for stormies, I strongly doubt that they are any good in a fight, so Avatar's help is kind of questionable here.
That said, I'd love to field this list with 20 Defenders and 2x10 stormies - but alas, 1.5k format is too tight on points. And there's one more issue with stormies: in order to make a good use of them you need to equip them all with chainswords - and I'm not sure there's enough of those in the box... or is there?
Another thing you could do is to take one more reaper and add a warlock to fill up a spearhead detachment, by dropping the weapon platforms.
Like this:
Heavy Support 1: 3 Dark Reapers (Exarch, shuriken cannon) - [89]
Heavy Support 2: 3 Dark Reapers (Exarch) - [108]
Heavy Support 3: 3 Dark Reapers (Exarch, tempest launcher) - [115]
HQ Warlock (Witchblade) [37]
This is a really good idea - thank you for pointing this out! In fact, I can drop a scatter laser from WK and give the third exarch AEML instead of shuricannon, which is definitely much more useful.
Here's the updated list:
Batallion Detachment (Asuryani)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
HQ 1: Avatar of Khaine - [250]
HQ 2: Farseer (Witchblade) - [113]
Troops 1: 10 Guardian Defenders - [80]
Troops 2: 10 Guardian Defenders - [80]
Troops 3: 10 Guardian Defenders - [80]
Spearhead Detachment (Asuryani)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
HQ 1: Warlock (Witchblade) - [37]
Heavy Support 1: 3 Dark Reapers (Exarch w/AEML) - [102]
Heavy Support 2: 3 Dark Reapers (Exarch) - [108]
Heavy Support 3: 3 Dark Reapers (Exarch) - [108]
Super-heavy Auxiliary (Aeldari)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Wraithknight (Suncannon&scattershield) - [540]
Total: 1498
