I can see what you're getting at, but I'm going to try and address each issue with my specific concerns (thanks for carrying on the discussion, btw
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1. You have to swamp the opponent with multiple threats, so that he cannot deal with all of them. This in turn requires a semi-pop corn approach to the army, and also it needs boldness and redundancy in your strategies:- you really have to teleport a lot of stuff for it to be effective, (minimum of 4+ companies into mutual supporting positions on a flank etc, or 1/3 your army)
This definitely can work, but requires a significant amount of concentrated force. 4 companies and a single Sentinel upgrade is a thousand points, however. And packing them together so they can support each other makes them potentially frightening to a unit next to them. On the other hand, that's a third of your army in a roughly 30cm area (mutually supporting) that have a maximum threat zone of 30cm from there. That concentration is strategically crippling, since your opponent will likely be able to just move out of your range and leave you on foot. Having the large number of companies does mean that it's unlikely he'll be able to "deal with them" via breaking or destroying them all, but he can easily "Deal with them" by rendering them completely ineffective; conceding the section to them, and outmaneuvering them elsewhere.
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2. Use scouts and other companies to pin the opponent into his deployment zone. This will reduce the areas he can evade to, while (hopefully) also restricting the number of formations he can bring to bear.
This is definitely the way to limit the enemies mobility. (pinning into deployment zone might be a bit overly optimistic) Here the difficulty is the fragility of the available scout formations. Tauros formations (since I doubt you're using Vultures for this kind of work
) are a mere 4 Light Vehicles, with 6+ armor. All it takes it two hits to break the formation, which forces them to flee and cripples their screening ability. A single flight of Thunderbolts (same point cost as the Venators, and able to reach them anywhere thanks to the lack of AA) will on average rolls kill about 3 of them in a single strafing run. If they have any hope of penning up the enemy for your next-turn teleport, they will have to activate at the very end of the turn or else they will likely be eliminated.
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3. The table-top "reserves" need to be carefully positioned to minimise the impact of any pre-emptive strike. So carefull use of scout screens, infantry deployed in cover, etc and probably in a single 'castle'.
By reserves, you mean Tauros and the Skimmers, right? This makes a fair amount of sense, but all it takes is a single vehicle lost from a transport squad to effectively cripple them. Even assuming only a single Valkyrie is dead, the squad now has to either a) walk on foot, meaning that they're clustered together with everything else, and have no armor and only a couple plasma shots at 15cm, or b) sacrifice the non-transportable infantry , which makes them halfway to broken. A single additional casualty on them this turn will break them.
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You have to face the fact that the list effectively has no AA - or at least you must trade off AA and AT capabilities (which amounts to the same thing) and play accordingly
Why? For an air-mobile, grav-chuting light infantry list to even be deployed, there has to be a fair expectation of air superiority. The Elysians rely on their aircraft to substitute for a number of things missing from their inventory (Artillery, Tank busting) and having to force your assets into interdicting enemy strikes means you have to do without those capabilities completely. (And since the enemy will almost always have AA of their own, your interceptors are constantly being attrited by flak, leaving them less likely to hurt their targets, or even be able to activate)
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Unfortunately this results in a somewhat repetitive strategy, and one that requires experience to play well. In essence they are a form of "poor man's marines" without much of the punch of the marine air-borne assault, while exaggerating the weaknesses of the strategy (lack of armour, lack of mobility for advanced forces etc).
Being locked in to a repetitive strategy (to me) indicates that something is flawed. There should be definite strengths and weaknesses, of course. Being limited to only one possible strategy is bad enough, but the fact that (as you said) they aren't very good at it makes it worse. Elysians shouldn't necessarily be "better" than the Marines at this sort of insertion, but since this is a points-based wargame they should at least be
comparable.
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If anything embodies "Arnhem" it is the Elysians, who drop significant numbers of light forces on strategic objectives, and hope that the remainder of the army can advance across the table to their support.
This is a good point, but you're missing a few of the key points that made the Arnhem drop at least not a terrible idea. The 1st Airborne Divison had a full regiment of glider-borne 75mm howitzers that they brought with them, not to mention 6-pounder anti-tank guns, transport jeeps, significant numbers of mortars and machineguns, and light anti-tank weapons throughout the squads. I'm not saying the Elysians should have all of that equipment (nor did the 1st Division have Valkyries) but heavier weaponry was prevalent all throughout the Division, and without it they would have suffered an almost immediate defeat.
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There seems to be a very fine balance between formation numbers, upgrades and air-power, that requires more thought than most lists. In your case I think I would reduce the air to 1x Lightnings (300) and 1-2 Lightning strikes, 0-1 Mauraders of some form (these provide the necessary AT capability missing elsewhere) in order to get more grunts and upgrades.
That is almost certainly a better composition. Still suffering from the lack of anti-air, though.
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"assault potential" - through sheer numbers focused on a particular point,
So using multiple formations dropped all together, and then using a Captain to conduct a combined assault? (or relying on not dying->supporting fire) That doesn't really answer my question: Are they supposed to win through being cheap and numerous (they're too expensive to bulk up) striking power (only FF5+ attacks) or durability? (no armor) Buying more formations doesn't necessarily answer the question, as you're pouring more points into inefficient units, trying to compensate for quality with expensive quantity. Which leads to the second problem,
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"getting into position" - teleport in numbers, followed up by mobile reserves to support multiple threats.
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What happens after you teleport? Assuming your opponent isn't kind enough to put all of his forces into a nice intermingled cluster and then let you win the SR roll, you've fired off a third of your points to wipe out a unit or two. He is now going to move away, casually destroy your Armor 6+ Light Vehicles, and spend the rest of the game destroying you from range. While the teleport does help the initial wave get where they need to be, when that's done you have units with a critically limited threat range. They have to Double in order to put some 6+ shots at 45cm away, whereas Steel Legion guardsmen are able to Sustain 4+ shots out to that same range, or threaten out to 75cm if they move. Post-teleport, your troops are essentially worthless due to their limited speed and range.
[I've moved around some stuff in my proposed changes, limiting some of the Infantry Company adjustments.]