Managed to get a game in against Mick Fair with him using the Biel Tan and me the Cadians. The goal is to test out some of the features and balance of the Cadian developmental list.

Mick was running (From memory!)

AVATAR [0]

ASPECT WARRIOR WARHOST [400]
8 Shining Spear, Autarch, Exarch

ASPECT WARRIOR WARHOST [350]
8 Shining Spear, 2 Exarchs

GUARDIAN WARHOST [150]
Farseer, 6 Guardians, Heavy Weapon Platform

RANGER TROUPE [100]
4 Ranger

RANGER TROUPE [100]
4 Ranger

SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [300]
4 Falcon, 2 Fire Storm

SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [250]
3 Falcon, 2 Fire Storm

NIGHT SPINNER TROUPE [175]
3 Night Spinners

ENGINE OF VAUL TROUPE [250]
Scorpion

VOID SPINNER [275]
Void Spinner

REVENANT TITANS [650]
2 Revenant Titans

And my Cadians looked like this.


Incompertus, 3000 POINTS
Cadian Shock Troopers (NetEA v1.5 *DEVELOPMENT*)
==================================================

CADIAN REGIMENTAL HEADQUARTERS [600]
1 Imperial Guard Supreme Commander unit, 7 Kasrkin units and 1 Leviathan Mobile Command Centre, Sanctioned Psykers (2 Sanctioned Psyker units)

KASRKIN INFANTRY COMPANY [225]
1 Imperial Guard Commander unit and 7 Kasrkin units, Sanctioned Psykers (2 Sanctioned Psyker units)

KASRKIN INFANTRY COMPANY [225]
1 Imperial Guard Commander unit and 7 Kasrkin units, Sanctioned Psykers (2 Sanctioned Psyker units)

KASRKIN INFANTRY COMPANY [200]
1 Imperial Guard Commander unit and 7 Kasrkin units, Sanctioned Psykers (1 Sanctioned Psyker unit)

SENTINEL SQUADRON [125]
6 Cadian Sentinels

SENTINEL SQUADRON [125]
6 Cadian Sentinels

FLAK BATTERY [150]
3 hydras

FLAK BATTERY [150]
3 hydras

SUPER HEAVY TANK PLATOON [200]
Shadowsword

SUPER HEAVY TANK PLATOON [200]
Shadowsword

DEATHSTRIKE BATTERY [200]
2 Deathstrike Missile Launchers

AIRBORNE KASRKIN [300]
1 Imperial Guard Commander unit, 7 Kasrkin units, and 4 Valkyries

THUNDERBOLT FIGHTERS [150]
2 Thunderbolts

THUNDERBOLT FIGHTERS [150]
2 Thunderbolts


Anyway here's how it played out.

Turn 1 - the iconic cagey snipe and position fest that I've taken to associate with elders armies. Don't know about you but in my experience nothing much happens prior to turn 3. Both armies essentially advanced in lines to take more ground and set up camp on objectives. The scorpion zoomed up to snipe the deathstrikes in the first activation but the rest was pretty anticlimactic. The shadowsword missed the scorpion, revenants missed most of the Valkyrie unit, valkyries missed the shining spears with a BP4 barrage and the leviathan missed the Falcons with all its AT guns. In return the Falcons AA basically missed the thunderbolts killing 1 with 16 shots. Big pile of nothing.


End of Turn 1


Turn 2 - deathstrikes went down almost immediately and some Falcons got blown up by sustained las cannons from the leviathan. Voidspinner rained death of some sort and the revenants carved up the Valkyrie unit who couldn't be lucky twice and got broken. After Mick had run out of activations I thought I had a chance to do some damage running up the two stormtrooper units you can see in the photo on the left and then engaging with the shadowsword. That's when Mick told me that the only units that can be killed by supporting fire are those engaged by the shadowsword... So 1 guy. Damn. Plan buggered. I did break the gaurdians and intermingled scouts but sadly they rallied anyway and began prepping the avatar enima that defines turn 3 in every eldar game ever.

Going into turn 3 we both still have plenty of units left over and the objectives are hotly contested but the revenants damage count is starting to hurt and I know there will be some painful engagements coming up. If I was lucky I would win initiative but otherwise it was brace time.


End of Turn 2


Turn 3 - wasn't lucky. Void spinner primed the stormtrooper unit on the left for the newly arrived avatar supported by the shining spears to break both of the sadly intermingled storm troopers that had charged up at the end of turn 2. Left flank looking very bad! In the middle it was worse with the Falcons sustaining and dropping the shields and 2 DC off the the leviathan. It lost another to difficult terrain and was subsequently wiped by the revenants! The right flank was the one I thought was the weakest at the beginning of the turn and it went as expected with the shining spears picking off more troopers for few losses. I realised that mick had 2-0 and I would need to get into his half to stop the win. 3 failed activations later on the right flank (sentinels, hydras and stormtroopers) it was looking grim. Only a single rallied stormtrooper (last from the valkyries) on the extreme right could save me... And only if he rallied on a 5+

Turn 4 - well he did! Eldar did the maths and worked out that this game was probably going to points. Falcons, revenants and void spinner combined to take out the remaining troopers of the the BTS, everything else really was just sniping and trying to finish things off. Final result was a win by points count back to eldar and a battlefield littered with corpses. Margin was around 400pts. Great game.



End of Turn 4 - Left Side of Board



End of Turn 3 - Right side of board


Thoughts on tactics during the game.

Mick is a very experienced eldar player and frankly I can't tell you any mistakes he made. I reckon he sniped what he needed to, dropped the avatar at the right time, used hit and run amazingly and generally had me reacting the whole time.

For my part I reckon I made a few mistakes:
Deploying across the board isn't necessarily s bad thing with my army but trying to Engage the eldar everywhere caused me to bleed waay too fast. I underestimated the assault synergies of the hit and run shining spears and really paid for that in bodies.

Also having played a lot against prisms I spread my WE armour thinking that Falcons would cut my shadowswords up. In hindsight I don't think I had anything much to fear and would have been better off concentrating shots onto the revenants. Interestingly the shadowswords hit a grand total of once each all game so perhaps it wasn't a drama either way!

I also really struggle with how to use the leviathan. It is such an awkward unit with a super long range BP macro gun, 6 twin las cannons at 45 and stormtroopers who only work in engage. I've tried it as a blitz gaurd before but this time thought I'd try moving up to use the las cannons. Apart from 3 Falcons it did nothing and ended up dying so I don't think this was a good use for it! Try again later

An interesting run for an army I'm still getting my brain around. If anyone has thoughts or comments that would help please post them up!


Balance analysis

Army overall - I really like my Cadian army TBH, it plays very differently to other varieties of gaurd and other armies in general which is important. The army is all about short range FF engagements and using the big activation count to compensate for guards appalling strat rating. This game really illustrated though the weakness in my build. Once you get past 30cm my options are seriously limited. Look at the positioning of the armies at the end of turn 1 and 2 and note the two opposing lines to see what I mean, mick stayed outside my engage range and then used his much faster bikes to duck in, snipe something and then run back, death by 1000 cuts and I didn't have an answer. Cadians lacking in warhounds as an option is a huge detriment be has they would make my storm troopers so much more powerful I'm combined engagements. Overall I think this game illustrated that a good player can identify and exploit the weaknesses, activation advantage didn't really let me capitalise but I'll keep working on that.

Psykers - I have 7 in my army. 2 in the bts never got to attack and died, 2 in a storm trooper unit got taken out by bp template (no armour saves) and didn't get to attack, one survived but never attacked and the last 2 got one attack each which was in close combat. I've always felt that the attention these get is unwarranted and this supports that. I definitely agree with the new idea of making them macro 6+ in combat, it gave Mick a tactical alternative to exploit and that's a good thing. Units should have strengths and weaknesses so I like the revised version.

Sentinel units - I think that the new points of value of 125 for 6 Cadian sentinels seems ok. In this game they did very little due to consistently atrocious activation rolls but 6 models can be tough to break and the extra armour kept 1 guy alive so yay to that. The loss of scout wasn't really tested in this army because of no deep strike/ lander attackers.

Thanks for the game Steve, close games are the best games!
The Cadians are a tough nut to crack with 14 activations and with fearless commissars it can be a challenge try and delete formations entirely. Your shock trooper formations are sensational in firefight and as such I wanted to stay 31cm away from them unless I was assaulting them. While that may have worked this game I imagine you won't let me get away with that next time


Mic

Thanks for the report! To be able to go to points with a new army is a good result!

We do not play the same type of game so take my advice as you will , but against dodgy opponents overwatch can be a really good asset and ground denial tool.
The Leviathan can also work as a similar threat. No one wants to be able to be shot by a MW Barrage cannon and your table looks like it had some good firelanes in the middle. Just plant it there and move forward if you do not have any targets in sight. I use the kasrkin on board/around the leviathan as an defensive unit against enemy engagements.

When i use deathstrikes I usually try and place them directly behind a cover. That way Scorpions or the like have a real hard time seeing them, so they need to be taken out by airplanes or artillery. It looks like you had some nice ruins to your left that would have been a good spot?

Intermingle is always bad, especially against mobile assault armies like Eldar but you probably know that now

Falcons is really good against any tank so fear them! They have lots of shots and you will fail some RA rolls and they are mobile (and eldars "only" formation with real AA). Their weakness is that they are fragile and do not have any leaders so generally I want to kill one (or two) in every team early so they spend the rest of the game with BM:s. It looks like they are out in the open in the end of turn 1. They should be priority targets until you hurt them.

I only see 4 firestorms so 8 shots, right? Not sure what you were trying to do but avoid the firestorms if possible or sacrifice one formation trying to suppress it and the other to kill it.

Anyway, thanks for the report it looked like a fun game!

Hey Uvenlord.

He had 4 firestorms so 8 shots on each formation (16 shots)

Also you are dead right about the deathstrikes. The problem was that my right flank (with the ruins) had a void spinner covering it (you can just see him behind the Orc building in the last photo) so that limited 2/3 of the board straight up. In hindsight I could have put them further into the left corner where the corpiom would have struggled to reach but that's hindsight.

It was a good game and Mick is always worth playing against, he might flog most people but he knows his sh!t and so you always walk away with something to do better.

Leviathan really did have a bad dice day but that just compounds my poor choices.

I'm pretty sure you can only have 2 firestorms in each falcon formation...

_________________
https://epic40ksweden.wordpress.com/

"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

Both formations of thunderbolts turned to head for home in the same location. Both Swords of Vaul formations were able to get there fire storms in range of this point hence both formations took 8 shots and of the 16 shots in total 5 hits were scored and only I tbolt went down though.

Mic

aha, now i understand!

_________________
https://epic40ksweden.wordpress.com/

"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

Thanks for the report

_________________
_________________
www.epic-uk.co.uk - home of the UK Epic tournament scene
NetEA NetERC Xenos Lists Chair
NetEA Ork + Feral Ork + Speed Freak Champion

Yeah it was totally my screw up. I was very lucky to walk away with those tools still alive. Like I said you learn a lot when you play against good players/builds.