Crafty Craftworlders

Hi fellow Craftworlders, I was out for a long run the other day and I was contemplating things, as you do.. No it wasn’t along the protruding docking ports of Saim Hann or the dark mystical corridors of The Black Library, but along the beach of my town, Bray in Ireland.

Originally when starting out with Eldar, I decided to go down the fluffy route, hence an all Jetbike Saim Hann army (thanks Fritz!). Luckily this army transcended very well into 6th edition and got an even bigger boost with the new Codex. It’s a good army but it’s not going to win tournaments. It seems like Wave Serpent Spam is the new black at the moment but it’s not a road I want to go down just yet. With a lot on my plate in RL at the moment (applying for mortgage etc), I didn’t want to invest too much time and expense into adding that little bit of cheese to my already decent army. I just felt I needed a little bit of a power boost tournament style.

Enter allies

So there are just a few allies I would take since I’m a bit fussy. Everyone and their pet dog are taking Tau as allies these days or Eldar if they don’t already play them. I like Tau I do, the models are nice and they have awesome rules that would surely augmentate my army. But with their sit back and shoot nature I don’t think they would slot into my play-style which is a very fluid and fast moving army.

So I thought of Dark Eldar then, an army which in my opinion has some of the best model sculpts ever produced by GW and the codex itself is just stuffed cover to cover with great fluff and rules. I needed to extract an allied contingent from this codex that would really boost my army.

Baron Sathonyx

So I plan on running my Seer Council again but this time everyone in the squad has a Singing Spear including the Farseer so that’s 6 mobile Lascannons, yippy! Add in Baron and the unit get’s hit and run universal special rule, Grenades to help with charging and hitting on that nice high Eldar initiative which will minimize loses. They get stealth which adds +2 to cover and being on a Jetbike and with a Conceal casting Warlock, means there is a potential 2+ cover save when you move which is awesome.

His last contribution to the army is to add +1 to who goes first. This can be handy because I am possibly going to play three flyers at NWG and being AV10 I don’t really want to be going first. I want to go second so my flyers will come in and blow up my opponent’s flyers. So winning the dice roll I can decide to go second. I have the Autarch in there to manipulate my reserve rolls if needs be and also the Shard of Anaris to give him a good chance in a challenge situation. Although Eldar initiative is high, the Banshee Mask is there to ensure the council hits first. It’s a bit of a gamble since I know there will be a game or two when I don’t get Fortune on my Farseer but that’s life. I think with 505pts invested in fliers I want to control the air engagements as much as possible so I think he Autarch was a better buy for this particular list.

The next addition will be some scoring units or in other words, troops. In order to keep up with my army I decided to go for two Venoms with an upgraded Splinter Cannon. These spit out 12 Poison 4+ shots a turn. These will be transporting 5 Kabalite Warriors each with an upgraded Blaster. Two cheap and fairly effective troop’s choices.

So my potential list for NWG is:

HQ

Farseer on Jetbike
Baron Sathonyx
Autarch on Jetbike, Laser Lance, Shard of Anaris, Banshee Mask
Warlock Council (5) on Jetbikes and Singing Spears

Troops
 
Kabalite Warriors (5) with a Blaster
Kabalite Warriors (5) with a Blaster
Guardian Jebikes (6) with two Shuriken Cannons
Guardian Jebikes (6) with two Shuriken Cannons
Guardian Jebikes (3) with one Shuriken Cannon

Fast Attack

Nightwing Interceptor
Crimson Hunter
Crimson Hunter

Dedicated Transports

Venom with Upgraded Splinter Cannon
Venom with Upgraded Splinter Cannon

Is it going to win the tournament? More than likely not as there will be very strong lists there and better players than I but it sure will be great fun to play and for me that’s reason enough!

John.