Hi Guys

This thread has been set up to centralise battle reports for Iyanden v4.2 for it's list development.
Feel free to post up your games with or against Iyanden, pics are always welcome.
Also welcome is general feed back from individual gaming groups.

If the general discussion from those games could find it's way back over to the Iyanden list page then that would be awesome!

Cheers

Mic

Iyanden vs Skitarii (EpicUK)

Forgot both armylists but my build was something like this

Iyanden
WG+2 Wraithlords+ Wraithseer
WG+1 Wraithlord
WG
WG
StormSerpent
Stormserpent
Guardians w 3 Heavy weapon plattforms
Revenants
Nightwings

Turn by turn summary:

Turn 1
Sentry garrison and start on OW in the ruins to the left.
Skitarii wins initiative
Spaceship misses with its barrage but the pin-point does 1 DC on one of the Stormserpents = Crit and destroyed…
Guardians double and prep the Sentry with 1 BM and patrols the wraithgate
Revenants move forward and shoots the Sentry. Sentry fires OW and does 4 hits but the Revenants saves all and fires back, killing 3.
Thunderbolts attack the remaining Stormserpent and does 2 DC breaking it. Stormserpent flees forward.
Wraithguards move out of the Waveserpent into some ruins next to an objective
Skitarii doubles and shoots at the broken waveserpent killing it
Wraithguards with one lord attack the Sentry killing 6. Lone Robot moves back towards home.
Saggitarii doubles and shoots at Wraithguards in ruins killing 1
Nightwings attacks thunderbolts killing 1
Thunderbolts retalliate and kills 1 nightwing
Minoris OW
Leman russ double and shoots against the Wraithguards on the right flank 1BM
Skitarii double and shoots at the Wraithguards in the ruins 1BM
Knights double and shoots at the same Wraithguards killing one and breaking the formation
End. No one of the Eldar rallies.

Turn 2
Avatar is placed close by the knights
Eldar wins initiative
Guardians shoots at the Skitarii and moves back to the Blitz
Retain Wraithguards emerge from the gate and assaults the Skitarii. Leads by 1 but loose the rolloff. Flees back into forest.
Skitarii double and shoots Wraithguards prepping them
Retain. Leman russ engage the Wraithguards supported by the Skitarii. Wraithguards loose and flees to another ruin.
Revenants move and shoots the knights 2 hits!, 1 DC
Retain Avatar engages the Knights through the ruin, sneaking up on their side so not all can join the fun. 0 DC on both sides so the Avatar uses its Inspire to win the combat. Knight regroupe behing some ruins
Thunderbolts attack the Wraithguards killing 1
Nightwings attack t
Lemanruss doing 1 kill
Minoris double to put the AA bubble on the nightwings
Lone Robot double and puts 1 BM on the Revenants
Sagitarii moves and shoots the Revenants 1DC and another crit…
Thunderbolt shoots the Revenants breaking them. They run home to the blitz
Skitarii marshall and removes all BM
End. One Nightwing is killed while leaving

Turn 3
Skitarii Wins
Sagitarii OW
Wraithguards in ruins engage Lemanruss but looses and flees back
Lone sentry double and fires at guardians
Wraithguards move and shoots at a Gorgon doing 1 DC
Skitarii fails to activate and regroups
Guardian does the same
Lemanruss marshall
Nightwing attack lone robot breaking it
Thunderbolt attack Revenants 1BM
Minoris moves back towards blitz
Wraithguards move out of the webbway but the Sagitarii fires on OW killing 2 and breaks them
Some more moves and then the end 


3-0 to Skitarii

It was a fair win.
I had some bad dice all the way through but I was also out manuvered and the loss of both my Stormserpents in the beginning was fatal as I couldn’t get my activations on the table. Perhaps I lost some of my fighting spirit also because I kept on making misstakes
I should have put my nightwings on CAP in the beginning that way I might have been able to save one of the Serpents but I didn’t.
Starting with half the number of activations was probably the main reason I lost (that and some good moves and dice by my opponent )
Not really sure how I could have made another build with more activations and still have the webbway theme. Perhaps I could have skipped the Nightwings and taken some falcons instead?

As I feared the opponent made good use of the smaller size and their short range by crippelling transports and then staying away shooting at the poor ones until they fled.
Fleeing fearless formations of 3 Wraithguards was a very common sight this game

It's been a while since I played this list so I have a little bit to learn/remember still but the new 4 man strong unit suffer from being outnumbered in every engagement, usually by 1:2. That and the not so big pile of hitts made every engagement a close call even when attacking units worth less points compared to before the change. (Before they were "only" outnumbered and made a causuality more or so)

Skitarii list:

Hypatists+Magos+gorgon+hydra 400
Hypatists+gorgon+hydra 350
Sagitarii+sagitarii+rapiers+gorgon+hydra 400
Cataphractii 400
Sentry+rapiers 200
Thunderbolts 150
Thunderbolts 150
Knight Paladins 500 (BtS)
Space ship 150
Minoris 2xtwin hydra cannons) 300

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Yes storm serpents dying at the beginning tends to pretty much seal it; if you are having to just get formations on the table anywhere and not where you want them then you are fighting the wrong kind of battle - eldar need the upper hand here.

However I'm not convinced you had sufficient hitting power for anything but optimal conditions. It's early days for the list but I personally would not plan to field 4 strong formations except as blitz guard (and guardians are still cheaper/better for this). They may be fearless but they aren't marines, they still break. I would have gone for larger formations, but I can foresee the 1:1 living ratio biting - you had expensive revenants which reduced your activations further, but both these and night wings (also expensive) come from the 1/3. So hard to really build an army with sufficient activations IMO.

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The Revenants is usually a very good formation and the nightwings was instead of a falcon formation as I thought that one unit with AA was not enough. But then I should have used them to CAP ofcourse...
Only two of the Wraithguard formations was 4 man strong and the next time I will probobly try to avoid them but this was a trial run. If I stick with the revenants I will have to drop another activation to get "full" 6 man wraithguard units...
Will have to build a version without the Revenants I guess
Any suggestions?

I tend to agree with Kyrt here, that to work well the Wraith formations need to be 6x units strong. The main weakness of the Eldar is the 2+ initiative, which really bites when a formation is broken and especially when in range of enemy, so the key is not to let them break in the first place. This is achieved by having more, larger formations on the table.

I would also recommend fighting the core armies initially (Marines, IG, Orks and Biel Tan) rather than the newer lists (Chaos, DKoK, Skitarii, AMTL etc) because the core lists will give a better indication of the list balance.

To the list, the main problem with the Eldar deep strike options is that they can be countered fairly easily, and you use up precious points building in resilience to avoid this. The other main issue is the temptation to use the deep strike options too early, leaving the contents dangerously exposed while your army marches to support them. This is why I suggested using lists without either. However if you are going to take Storm Serpents, I would consider a formation of 2x SS (450) to deploy a large Wraith formation (5x WG, 3x WL =475). You might keep a second formation in the Webway possibly even a large WB formation (4x WB, 2x WG, 2x WL =425) to attack a target with the support of the other one.

I would use Falcons or possibly even Fire Prisms (E-UK) to provide AA cover, though the Phantom does also have AA and it also gets around the issue of making the SS a BTS, so you could reduce the size of the formations to 6x units which helps with points.

So, perhaps the following lists might work better for you. Either

455 WG +2WG +2WB
450 2xSS
425 WG +WG +Wraithseer
250 Falcons inc FireStorms
365 WG +WG +WB
125 Rangers (5)
425 WG +3WL
100 Rangers (4)
355 WG +2WB
50 Gate
9 activations, of which 5 are Wraith hosts, most of which are entirely infantry. With a bit of juggling you could get a second Falcon formation at the expense of the Rangers.

Or perhaps

700 Phantom
475 WG +2WL +Wraithseer
450 2xSS
375 WG +2WL
250 Falcons inc FireStorms
325 WG +WL
150 Guardians
225 WB
50 Gate
8 activations of which 4 are wraith hosts also with reasonably resilient AA. The WB formation could be merged with the Guardians to give a more usefull formation reducing the activations to 7, which is getting quite low, impacting the potential strategies.

Also note that both of these armies are slow, so you will need to keep your T&H objectives relatively close together in line with either the enemy Blitz or your own, and preferably as close as possible to one of the enemy T&H objectives in your table half.

EDIT:-
Just been advised on the Biel Tan thread that the Phantom is 750, so that list would need to be revised accordingly, but hopefully it gives some ideas.

Thanks for the suggestions Ginger, they are most welcome

We play mostly for fun and I do not think this army is near getting approved so it's not a real playtest just a "battlereport"

Last time my opponent had Deathstrikes so I'm kind of scared to take 2 Stormserpents in the same unit even if it is a good attack unit. But you are right, move those forward and then move two units out to assault is really nasty. I have succeded with this move in the past but now it's alot harder because with only 3-7 formations to set up on the field from the beginning he usually puts the valuable troops in late and far away from my stormserpents...
(They will probably cost 500 for the pair soon also...)

In the first suggestion how many units would you keep in the webb? 2?
And I'm kind of worried about the "plan"
You would have falcons but besides that the whole army would shoot and move 15-30 cm... How would you play? Lets say you face deathstrikes or other artillery and even airplanes that could take out the Stormserpents. It's hard to get around them being key in an gate army but it is nice to have some alternatives
In the game above mordoten just moved ahead and then turned on Overwatch, how would this army counter that? And with their short range they would have a hard time getting blastmarkers on the enemy before the engagements.

Going down to 7 or 8 activations with some in the warp looks very risky and very similar to my last build


My thought is something like this:

WG 275
WG 275 perhaps in webb
WG+2xWL in webb 375
WL+Wraithseer in webb 450
Falcons w Firestorms 250
Stormserpent 250
Stormserpent 250
Windriders w Vyper in webb 200
Phoenix bombers 325
Nightwings 300
Wraithgate 50

Phoenix to deal with artillery etc.
Nightwings and falcons as AA and activations
Windriders is the formation I'm not so sure about. But they could reach the opponent from a normal gate if lucky and they are good at prepping and supporting (or getting support) Could be exchanged for guardians and adding another WG to a unit at the top...
I agree that 4 man strong units is not that good but still want to give them a try. Also the 1:1 ratio means I got to push it to get 10 activations.

Well I spent some time with the list and I simply couldn't build a webway list I would be happy to field. The 1:1 restriction makes it impossible to buy support formations when you have to buy your transport from the troupes section, unless you buy too many assault-oriented formations. The ratio is off either way. Having singleton revenants might help, but is a bit of a sticking plaster.

Personally I think 1:2 would give plenty of wraith units on the board; failing that, a distinction between a storm serpent (what, 3 living dudes?) and a guardian formation (40 dudes) could work. Maybe it could give you 1 infantry troupe or 2 support troupes, although that's a bit more complicated and IMO a straight 1:2 would be fine.

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Uvenlord & Mordoten

Thanks guys for the "battle report".
Man loosing both storm serpents in first turn was a game changer. It seemed things continued to go south with nothing for the eldar rallying turn 1. From what I can see it was a tough order to try and bring it back from there.

Did the animated construct rule have an impact at all?

The game really highlighted the difficulties for the smaller wraith formations being broken and then rallying.

I'll continue the discussion back on the main thread.

Cheers

Mic

Sadly none of the Spiritseers were killed during this game so no animated constructs

This is only one game but without transports the smaller formations usually rallied on 5+ as they had -1 from enemies within 30 cm most of the time.

/Uven

Great bat rep uven! Loved the photos.
Going to put the nids against it over the weekend hopefully. Or my guard.
Tough gig loosing the storm serpents.
Cheers
Jim

Let's try and get some more tests before we start changing the list.

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This is an interesting report from several perspectives. Your poor dice rolling almost rivals mine; having two off table formations fail to come on, and then to lose all three Storm Serpents is unlucky. Indeed your opponent let you off the hook in turn #2 by not attempting to kill the third SS immediately after they had killed the first two, thereby stranding three formations.

However, you also contributed to the problems by not having a Wraithgate, which I deem mandatory when taking SS precisely because of the possibility of this eventuality. I would also suggest that having more than an average of 1.5 formations per wraithgate is a brave choice, because you should anticipate losing at least one SS to enemy fire. Having a Wraithgate, possibly on your own Blitz, allows you to change from an offensive to a defensive strategy.

Finally, at 5000 points I think I would have taken slightly larger Wraith formations. While I understand that you are testing the Iyanden lists, perhaps you could also try formations of 5, and also include WBs with WG as well as WL.

On a different note, in turn #2 a broken WG formation was intermingled in an assault which the Eldar lost, as a result you removed this broken WG formation under 1.12.8. However, Fearless units ignore this rule (see 2.1.3 2nd para), not that this made much difference to the game as a whole.

I look forward to a report of the refight, possibly with a slightly revised list . . . .