Ok, So I tried out the Elysians in several games today with interesting results.

Game #1 Elysians Vs Eldar
2008 amendments
Elysians (earlier version)
So to put the ‘theory hammer’ to the test, we agreed to try the ‘drop army of doom’

Eldar
Aspect + Autarch, Exarch, Wave serpents
Guardians + Wave serpents
Guardians + Heavy Weapons
Falcons (2x Firestorms)
Cobra
Void Spinner
Windriders (1x Vyper)
Night Spinners
Rangers (x5)
Night Wings
Night Wings

Elysians
HQ Drop Company + Support weapons
Drop Company + Mortars
Drop Company + Mortars
Drop Company + Mortars
Drop Company + Support weapons
Drop Company + Support weapons
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
Sentinel (MW)
(and something like 8 commisars? I did not note this)

Deployment
(Hopefully, Dave and Steve will be able to post pictures of the initial deployment to give an idea of the terrain).
Eldar Blitz placed centrally, slightly off-centre; Elysians Blitz placed towards eastern edge, T&H on either side.

Since they know that there is a drop-army en-route, the Eldar castled the entire army behind a screen of Rangers all but one of which were in woods to the front (North) of the army. Artillery and WE were placed centrally with Guardians, Aspects and Falcons forming an inner defensive ring, and the bikes guarding the outer flank of the Aspects.
We agreed that this was probably the best defence given that the Elysians outnumber the Eldar ground forces exactly 2:1

Turn #1
Teleports (and boy was there a lot!!)
Three Drop Companies and nine Sentinel squadrons duly drop around the perimeter, mainly on the other side of the woods or in broken terrain on the western flank. These are set up to form three combined assaults each with one infantry and two Sentinel squadrons, the remaining three filling gaps to open the shooting and provide assault support. Additionally a drop company was placed in reserve on the table centre and two squadrons in reserve on each flank near the T&H objectives, while the HQ company dropped in front of the blitz. 16 teleport BMs (exactly average!) were sprinkled across these formations with only two or three escaping.

The Elysians put these four reserve formations behind the front-line both to fill gaps and catch any escaping Eldar; and they still had one Drop company and one Sentinel squadron off table!

Strategy Roll :- Eldar (phew)
The WS Guardians assault the nearby Drop Company, breaking it. (+4 on BMs and numbers offsets losing 3x Wave Serpents and two guardians). This also places 4x BM on nearby sentinel squadrons. The Guardians push forward to the northern edge of the wood with the remaining WS landing outside, while a commissar and one stand run to the rear.
Retaining (after a reroll!), the Eldar Aspects assault a second infantry, claiming intermingling with a sentinel squadron and are also victorious, sending a commissar and 2x sentinels scurrying rearwards and placing a BM on another squadron. Again the Eldar consolidate forward, the remaining 2x WS landing on the northern side of the wood in front of all eight Aspects.
Retaining for a second time, the Falcons assault a squadron of sentinels requiring the assistance of the Guardians to destroy them all for the loss of two tanks (the remainder retiring back to camp)

Elysian sentinel squadron #2 (now with 2BM) declares an assault on the widely dispersed Rangers, but one sentinel is felled by OW fire breaking the squadron.
On the opposite side of the camp, sentinel squadron #3 also fails to activate against the rangers, so shoots at the nearby Wave Serpent killing it and breaking the Guardians.

The Eldar Cobra fails to activate, so places a BM on a sentinel quadroon it can just see through the trees on the northern camp perimeter.

Attempting to clear away the Eldar ’trip-wire’ scouts, Sentinels #4 shoot but miss the Rangers hiding in the woods, and Sentinels #5 fail to activate, but still succeed in killing a Ranger (3BMs and 4x units)

The Eldar Windriders assault Sentinels 6# both to avoid the impending Elysian assault and clear another threat. This goes to two rounds before the Bikes win, though they end up broken in the process. The three remaining bikes break out towards the Eastern Elysian T&H objective, overflying three withdrawing enemy formations.

Sentinel #7 fails to activate (a recurring theme now), so move to gain LoS through the trees. Meanwhile the Eldar Night Spinners shoot at the infantry in the rough ground on the Western edge of camp leaving 4x BM but only a single casualty

The Western reserve sentinels #8 retire slightly and wipe out the remaining Windriders, while Sentinels #9 kill another Ranger finally breaking them. But their stubborn defence has bought the Eldar time to reposition their forces, so now the planned Elysian assault will strike at thin air.

The Eldar Void Spinner blasts away Sentinels #7 trying to clear enemy near the Guardians. While the thwarted Elysian infantry advance into the camp shooting at and breaking the Falcons, which withdraw to the extreme Western table edge.

Heavy Weapons Guardians advance shooting Sentinel#3 in a further attempt to ease the pressure on the centre, but it is too late as the Elysians reserve infantry assault the broken WS Guardians, wiping them out for the loss of three troopers, and killing another Ranger stand in the process (through the lost assault BM).

Finally the Night Wings destroy another sentinel formation and the second formation shoots another formation with 1x BM. However, even though one sentinel drops, their ‘Iron discipline’ keeps them from breaking. The Eastern reserve sentinels marshall away the BMs

End of Turn
Eldar Aspects, Falcons and Cobra rally (but not the lone Ranger – who is looking for his horse)
Elysians rally 4x infantry remnants and three sentinel squadrons (leaving 4x Sentinel squadrons broken)

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

jah what? Just as it gets exciting, I see there's no turn 2! Talk about a cliffhanger

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numquam culum es

Yes, I'm looking forward to more appearing about this battle.

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Patience girls

Turn #2
Sit rep:-
Eldar have 9x activations while the Elysians have 5x infantry and 6x sentinel squadrons (and another 4x broken sentinels).

The Elysians have a sentinel squadron on each side of the camp and the ‘reserve’ infantry in the woods to the north. Opposing this ring of steel, the Aspects and HW Guardians are both in the woods on either side of the 'reserve' infantry, with the Eldar ‘firebase’ of the Night Spinners, Void Spinner and Cobra clustered in the centre of the camp and the Falcons away on the Western table edge. Various other remnants of Elysian forces are sprinkled around the battlefield,

Teleport:-
The remaining infantry and sentinel squadron both teleport on the western camp edge to link up with the sentinel squadron, and the Eldar Avatar appears in the woods near the Guardians and opposite the ‘reserve’ infantry.

Strategy roll:- Eldar
Trying to weaken the impending assault, the Cobra activates at last, shooting the Western infantry and killing three. The Night Spinners retain, cleverly placing the template over the Infantry but also clipping a sentinel. Only one infantry stand dies, but so does the sentinel, breaking that squadron. Then, emiting a blood curdling scream of rage, the Avatar boldly strides into the midst of the ‘reserve’ infantry only to find the trees hampering its sword, so only two infantry stands fall – but it receives two hits in return, one of which goes critical and the scream turns into a wail (the ‘dice of Dave’ strike again!).

The Western infantry declare a combined assault with the remaining squadron on the intermingled firebase which they win, destroying the night Spinners and Falcon, and leaving the Void Spinners broken with 2x DC remaining.

The HW Guardians assault the Eastern sentinels, destroying them for the loss of the three HW stands, and consolidate back into south eastern edge of the woods to guard the blitz.

A sentinel squadron moves and shoots the Falcons, positioning itself between them and the Western T&H objective

The Aspects assault and wipe out the Western infantry, breaking the nearby sentinels in the process, while the Eastern reserve sentinels double towards the camp shooting  the broken ‘Lone Ranger’ in the back in a fit of pure spite.

The Night Wings swoop down and wipe out the sentinel squadron blocking the Falcons, while yet another set of sentinels advance on the eastern edge of the camp, shooting at but missing the Guardians in the wood.
 
The Falcons advance north to the objective, shooting a sentinel as they go, but the squadron’s Iron discipline holds out. An infantry commissar moved somewhere mid-table, and the other Night Wings took another pot shot at the Elysian Drop HQ.

Flushed with their success, the remaining ‘reserve’ infantry assault the Guardians – and are wiped out for no loss in a flurry of shuriken bolts. Elsewhere small Elysian remnants reposition themselves for turn #3.

End of Turn
All Eldar formations rally and surprisingly, most Elysian formations also rally (except for 1x Drop infantry and 1x Sentinel squadron

Turn #3
Sit Rep:-

Elysians have 11x activations left and occupy all objectives except the Eldar Blitz, so are currently 2-0 up. The Eldar have 4x ground activations, and only the Falcons (with a BM) can hope to get into the enemy table half. After some discussion we decided to call it an Elysian victory (albeit a somewhat Pyric one).

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

wow, Eldar outmaneuvered and worn down, that doesn't happen often. Looks like the sheer no. of Elysian units managed to swamp the Eldar, with not enough units to go around.

I wonder if dropping the Cobra and perhaps Void Spinner (poss. even 1 Nightwing) would have freed up some points for more Wind Riders, Guardians and Aspects and allowed you to retain more tactical flexibility. It's not like there was anything really heavy in the Elysian list that needed pounding. Did your opponent know what he/she was facing?

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numquam culum es

Post battle thoughts

Dave and were both expecting the Elysians to do slightly better considering the number of MW around. However, they won reasonably easily despite having poor dice rolls and the Eldar using both the best defence and having reasonable dice (and the stubborn Ranger defence preventing the Elysians swamping the camp in turn#1).

In retrospect this is probably down to the 'popcorn' effect and using terrain to mitigate casualties thus keeping a siginificant activation advantage while bottling the eldar up in their deployment zone.

In general, having teleport, MW and Iron Discipline for 25 points over normal sentinels was considered a little excessive. To be fair, this is offset to a degree by the short range and no doubt will be the subject of further discussion.

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

Yes, I used my Eldar tournament list and created the 'Drop army of doom' as discussed on the forums, merely asking Dave to run the Elysians. Using the rangers to 'castle' against teleporters is a standard defence, but does mean that the forces are grouped together on one part of the deployment zone - if they had been spread out the results may have been even more abrupt.

The strength / weakness of this particular variant is the 12x MW sentinel squadrons that teleport 'in the teeth' of the opposition. In practice, Dave kept two mid-table and a third off-table, so there were *only* nine up-close-and-personal, but even with a lot of BMs it was very scary.

I might add that the revised list only allows 1x support group per Drop Infantry company which plays very differently as you shall see - tomorrow.

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

In general, having teleport, MW and Iron Discipline for 25 points over normal sentinels was considered a little excessive. To be fair, this is offset to a degree by the short range and no doubt will be the subject of further discussion.

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Honda

"Remember Taros? We do"

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment

Honda, I tried this list out to see if it really was as deadly as it looked on paper, and while it was evidently OTT, in practice it slightly underperformed against those expectations, mainly because of the teleport BMs as you predicted. This is essentially down to stats; Sentinel squadrons without teleport BMs can usually expect to get ~1.3 hits while having BMs both reduces the likelyhood of activating or scoring any hits. However, by arriving in shooting range the sentinels can always shoot to place a BM, and this ability to place at least one BM together with the high formation count eventually tells in the end.

However, having no armour or ranged weapons makes the Drop infantry surprisingly weak, so they do need upgrades or support of some kind, and must make best use of cover which in turn governs how and where they can be used. Here there is strength in numbers and the ever present 'Fearless' Commisars.

To Hena's point, taking 'hardened veterans' will provide resilience through numbers rather than their 5+ armour, but if you do indeed take more upgrades, at ~150 per set this reduces the army to a maximum of 6x infantry (14 strong) @350 and 6x sentinels @125 (or 2850 the lot), which has no AA and limited AT capabilities.

It is this aspect that provides the rather clever dilema in the list; do you go for activation numbers, resilience, AA (which is expensive @300 per formation) or enhanced Artillery (Valkyries / Vultures) which in turn shapes how the list works.

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

It is this aspect that provides the rather clever dilema in the list; do you go for activation numbers, resilience, AA (which is expensive @300 per formation) or enhanced Artillery (Valkyries / Vultures) which in turn shapes how the list works.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

It is this aspect that provides the rather clever dilema in the list; do you go for activation numbers, resilience, AA (which is expensive @300 per formation) or enhanced Artillery (Valkyries / Vultures) which in turn shapes how the list works.

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Honda

"Remember Taros? We do"

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment