Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Army List: Eldar Wasp Assault Walker


Dangit... I couldn't stop myself. I went into complete army list building mode with the lovely Wasp as my target. Since I want to capitalize on those sexy legs we need to look at what the Wasp brings to the table once again.

1. Multitudes of accurate high strength shots.
Since quantity has a quality all of its own, Shuriken Cannons or Scatter Lasers doubled up on the Wasps, combined with their BS 4, will torrent down infantry and give us a good chance to affect light vehicles as well. Heavier weapons could go here, but like it's papa the War Walker the frame is simply too fragile to spend more points on. Plus, 8 Str 6 shots at 36" range is just awesome.

2. Sneaky Deployment Strategies
With Deep Strike and Jump Jets it's very easy for the Wasp to get into position for side or rear armor shots on enemy vehicles, particularly if they're going for the midfield. This plays in with our Shuriken Cannon/Scatter Laser strategy from above which I like.

3. Free up Heavy Support Slots
The biggest thing going against War Walkers was their use of a HS slot. With Wasps in Troops we can now have our cake and eat it too... and I LIKE cake.

4. Objective Contestor Extraordinaire
If these babies survive till late game a 30" assault is a GREAT way to contest troops off of an objective. Sure, they might not last terribly long against anything but GEQ but you can always hope for the Fritz classic 5th turn win if necessary, so sticking around more than a turn won't be needed.

So, given the above let's see what we can do. I have a bit of experience with Eldar as they were the army I played before I started buying my own units but definitely take the following with a hefty grain of salt as I'm no Space Elf master.

We'll start with 3 groups of 2 Wasps armed with dual Scatter Lasers, giving us 48 BS 4 Str 6 shots right from the get go.

We'll expand from there by looking at our vacant Heavy Support slots. Eldar LOVE their HS and we have four ways to go here- Wraithlords, Falcons, Fire Prisms and Nightspinners. I want to say here that I love the look of Wraithlords and love that they are immune to anything below strength 5. But the missile spam going around these days will make mincemeat of one lickety split, leaving these overcosted giants on the shelf. Maybe next codex...

Falcons are pretty cool but have consistently failed to impress me. DAVU (Dire Avenger Upgraded, i.e. small 5 man scoring unit) Falcons have their uses but I want something that will bring out the pain in our Heavy Support slot. Falcons do have quite a few shots but we could easily replace them with twice their number in Wasps and still maintain equivalent firepower.

Fire Prisms and Nightspinners both conveniently come in the same kit, but I think the Prism is going to win out here for me as we have enough high AP high strength shots from the Wasps already. The Prisms will give us pretty good anti-tank and great anti-infantry, particularly if we link the blasts for some Str 10 AP 1 or Str 6 AP 3 twin linked goodness. Having duality in a tank is always a good thing, and Lord knows we need something to take out those GK Terminators that are going to start showing up soon... We'll also throw Holo Fields and Shuriken Cannons on these babies to help us deal with One Gun Syndrome. The Holo-Fields might not be a good upgrade but I have a strange habit of trying to make sure my expensive tanks survive...

Next let's look at scoring. We may have taken up 3 Troops slots but we have nothing to score with yet. Enter the Storm Guardian. I've always like the aesthetic of Guardians and these boys seem to me to be the only Eldar troop choice worth taking, except perhaps for min sized Dire Avenger squads. Storm Guardians can at least theoretically do something given the correct support, plus they can take meltaguns fusion guns! Crappy BS 3 fusion guns, but fusion guns nonetheless. Flamers might be the better option here, but since they cost the same for some reason we'll stick with the fusion for now. Squads of 11 with a Warlock (either Enhance or Destructor, take your pick) plus a Wave Serpent with Shuriken Cannon and TWL Bright Lance sound nice, so let's fill out the other 3 troops slots with these boys.

Finally we need an HQ. Since Farseers are great we'll take one of those with Runes of Warding for psychic defense and Fortune and Doom to help our guys stay alive and our enemies become dead. We don't really need Guide because the majority of our force is BS 4 or twin linked. We'll have to take out a Storm Guardian so that he can ride in style.

This leaves us with the following:

Farseer, runes of warding, fortune, doom: 125
11 Storm Guardians, 2 fusion, warlock (125), wave serpent, TWL bright lance (135)
11 Storm Guardians, 2 fusion, warlock (125), wave serpent, TWL bright lance, shuriken cannon (145)
10 Storm Guardians, 2 fusion, warlock (117), wave serpent, TWL bright lance, shuriken cannon (145)
2 Wasp Assault Walkers, each with 2 scatter lasers (150)
2 Wasp Assault Walkers, each with 2 scatter lasers (150)
2 Wasp Assault Walkers, each with 2 scatter lasers (150)
Fire Prism, shuriken cannon, holofields (160)
Fire Prism, shuriken cannon, holofields (160)
Fire Prism, shuriken cannon, holofields (160)
Total: 1847

Having the ability to have 3 Fire Prisms alongside 6 war walkers is an impressive amount of firepower to say the least. And in this list we have every kind of firepower taken care of- big blasts and tons of high strength for hordes, anti-tank Lance and blast shots, and we even have 6 janky assault elements for late game objective grabbing/contesting and horde control. Again I'm not sure what powers to give the Warlocks, or if the fusion guns are the right buy for the Storm Guardians given their low BS. Flamers + Destructor might be better to help them succeed at their chosen mission.

Tactics are shoot, shoot, then late game objective grab/contest. You have the option of deep striking the Wasps to get the side/rear shots or you can start them on the board and Jump Jet into position.

Alternatively we can replace the Storm Guardians with min sized Dire Avengers, cutting the price of our Troops in half and freeing up 187 pts. Taking the Holo fields off of our Fire Prisms will save an additional 105 pts giving us 292 to play around with. We can put in a squad of Dragons with a Shuriken Cannon Wave Serpent for 190. We can also save another 120 pts by downgrading our Wasps' Scatter Lasers to Shuriken Cannons, giving us another 222 to play with. That's enough for another Dragon squad and to give both Dragon squads an exarch with a heavy flamer for some more duality.

This gives us the following list:

Farseer, runes of warding, fortune, doom: 125
5 Fire Dragons (80), exarch with Dragon's Breath Flamer (12), wave serpent, TWL shuriken cannon, shuriken cannon (110)
5 Fire Dragons (80), exarch with Dragon's Breath Flamer (12), wave serpent, TWL shuriken cannon, shuriken cannon (110)
5 Dire Avengers (60), wave serpent, TWL bright lance, shuriken cannon (145)
5 Dire Avengers (60), wave serpent, TWL bright lance, shuriken cannon (145)
5 Dire Avengers (60), wave serpent, TWL bright lance, shuriken cannon (145)
2 Wasp Assault Walkers, each with 2 shuriken cannons (110)
2 Wasp Assault Walkers, each with 2 shuriken cannons (110)
2 Wasp Assault Walkers, each with 2 shuriken cannons (110)
Fire Prism, shuriken cannon (125)
Fire Prism, shuriken cannon (125)
Fire Prism, shuriken cannon (125)
Total: 1849

2 more tanks than before and two much better Land Raider hunters. The Wasps should still have plenty of range to reach out and touch things at 24" and our overall Str 6 firepower hasn't decreased at all. I'm not sure which of the lists I like more- Storm Guardians just sound cooler than DAVU Wave Serpents, but I can't argue with the increased weight of tanks in the second list.

So what are your thoughts? How would you build around the elegant Wasp?

*Image property of Forge World

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Great looking list. I like the last one at 1850. I have always loved the warwalker, and may have to proxy some as the wasps, if they are super effective, maybe I'll have to order a couple.

Max said...

Thanks! I probably agree that the second list is better simply because it has more stuff on the board and includes the Fire Dragons. The Wasps don't look crazy ridiculous but are instead a subtle kind of good simply because of their location in the FoC.

Thanks for reading!

Anonymous said...

I think only one wasp squadron may be taken as troops for codex eldar, in the exp rules it says a single troops choice. There is hint that in a corsairs army they will be more common but i wouldnt be building an entrie army on them just yet, i am an eldar player and it can be annoying when you use something with exp rules and then the actual rules come out and all your opponenets say: you would not have won that if we were using the actual rules