40k TACTICS – How to Beat the New Eldar?

So there’s gonna be D weapons, and people are gonna cry.

But I ain’t crying. I don’t care. I learned to stop worrying and love the D.  Ahem, anyway, I ain’t scurred of no damn D weapon. You know why?

Because I actually think its good for the game. Here’s how its gonna go down.

In the good old days when you could hop out of a rhino and still assault, combat was king.Lately, not so much. As a chaos player with a thirsty demon weapon to feed, this naturally bums me out a bit, but hey, get with the times. The game got tweaked in 6e to get shootier, these things happen. Guess what though? You can’t get shot if you’re punching someone in the face, at least not in the 41st millennium apparently. So what now? Well, now you actually have to try, and now it actually has to matter. Before you could just drop D guns everywhere, you either swung for the fences or you didn’t. Having D shooting in normal 40k games is going to change the way people think about the strategic use of assault again, and that isn’t a bad thing. Is it still going to suck? Yes. Are you still going to get shot up on the way in? Yes. But it is it going to be such a huge no brainer decision, whether you stay home with the bolter or hop out and rev up the chainsword? No. You’re actually going to think about it now. That’s not a bad thing.

2-MSU DON’T CARE ABOUT THE D

Let’s get one thing straight here- 40k has been in a permanent arms race with itself since 4th edition. What I mean by that? Everyone has been getting more dakka, all the time, every year. Look at an old model like a dreadnought, or a landspeeder, or a predator… These guys have all had the same handful of guns on them since your uncle was playing Rogue Trader with pewter beakie marines. Now look at land raider crusaders, storm raven gunships, wyvern mortar tanks… The amount of boom the designers are willing to let you put on the table has significantly increased. We’ve gone from a rinky-dink rhino with an autocannon on the roof and some guns duct taped to the side to A-10 warthogs firing kitchen sinks at your army.

And what does the meta think about that? Well, Multiple small unit is looking pretty good again.

If your opponent has a giant death boat with 12 guns on it, and he can just erase a unit with it every turn, why give him 10 models when you can spread them out and make him settle for 5? This is what’s been going on lately- deflate your unit size and inflate your unit count to make him have to waste all his giant mega shooting on target priority.

And guess what, that works on D weapons. So if you have 5 guys, and a battle cannon eats them, or a D weapon eats them, who cares? You gave up 5, not 10. It’s wasted firepower, there’s no difference. If he’s gonna try to kill your stuff anyway, spread the butter out thin over multiple slices of bread, don’t let him get fat on the first thing that dings coming out of the toaster.

3- D WEAPONS ARE A RESET BUTTON ON EVERYTHING THAT MADE THE GAME SUCK.

Let’s take a look at everything that is no fun in this game right now.Space Wolf Pound Puppy lists. Yea, cute army. Boring as hell though, you’ve played one space wolf player with a handful of fleas and storm shields, you’ve played them all.Chapter Masters with the Shield Eternal. Oh, you’re a space marine player? Tell me more about your unique and wonderful HQ model that’s going to ride his bike down my throat and sit in the ass of my army for 3 turns just taking shots on the chin with his immortal 3++ save while I go grab a slice of pizza next door. Good game, bro.

Serpent Spam- D weapons won’t necessarily solve this, but what we’re assuming here is that in the fancy new codex, the serpent will not be as hot as it was in the 6e book, preventing abuse.

Jump Monster Shenanigans- Pick your poison, demon princes and bloodthirsters, flyrants, riptides, whatever new big box monster model GW releases this summer… In the hands of a player who knows when to flap the wings and when to touch down, these bastards can really suck the fun out of the game. I would know, I’ve been that bastard plenty of times to a lot of people.So, how do D weapons fix all these?Well, one hot roll on a D weapon followed by a followed by a few tragically failed saves will either put all of those models back in the foam where they belong, or at least get them so close to death’s door that a handful of lucky bolter shots will pick up the spare, and that’s not bad at all, there’s nothing wrong with that.The nice thing about hurling ranged D weapons back and forth at each other in a normal 40k game is that it will keep us honest. No more bullshit list building around the handful of invincible bully units in the game that show up and kill everything or can’t die. There’s no deathproof against the D, you actually have to think twice about buying an extra 6 thunderwolves or that second or third double-devourer flying hive tyrant. Too many expensive fat targets will be a recipe for failure against a gun that will just dunk anything it shoots at, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

Now I know what else you’re thinking…

“But only the Eldar get those ranged D weapons!”

No, only the Eldar get them in their fancy new codex. We’ve already seen them in melee on the imperial knight and the khorne skulltank skullaxe skull skull, so we know this isn’t a thing that’s going away anytime soon, and is probably only going to escalate.

So dust off your baneblade or get one of those sweet new Heresy legion super heavies, and shoot it out with the Eldar. Now I know that sounds counter-intuitive, why give him a fat target for his D weapon? Well, he gave you a fat target for yours, so fair is fair. It’d be much more fun to have a shoot out with the big guns, don’t you think? And if on the way, somebody’s thunderwolf cavalry gets wiped off the table and sent back to the pound where they belong, would that be so bad?

Escalating firepower has been a trend in this game for a long time. The boys in Nottingham have been inching us towards playing with the big toys with not-so-subtle shoves since they started making plastic baneblades.

The solution? Embrace it. Your opponent didn’t already have any trouble wiping your favorite unit off the table anyway. Do unto others before they can do unto you.

I’m not scared… I own a Typhon. Just give me an excuse to put that big resin sledgehammer on the table. What’s the worst that could happen, someone has fun?

Hope you enjoyed another Jstove original. Checkout what else he has to say about the game we all love to hate sometimes, HERE!