How will 6th Edition effect my Saim-Hann Eldar?

Nick speaking,

One thing I love about the Eldar is their versatility when it comes to making lists, and that's the main reason I gave my Eldar the name IDIC Eldar. These pointed ear Vulcan type dudes really live up to the Vulcan philosophy of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. In my mind I actually have three Eldar armies, a Saim-Hann jetbike themed army, a Harlequin themed army and a Hybrid army. In today's post though, I want to have a look at the IDIC Hann...

As you can see from the picture above, the starting point of my army is a Jetbike Seer Council. I have been experimenting with swapping the Farseers powers, but in all honesty, without Fortune, the Council really loses what it needs to keep it up as long as possible. I have concluding that it's not really worth dropping your Doom and Fortune for the random powers, unless you have more than one Farseer on the table.

Both the Council and the standard Jetbikes have a huge range of movement now, and it's especially useful that you can now cast fortune and turbo boost the same turn. With my five Dire Avengers in the Falcon now having issues with being a scoring unit, the Jetbikes are even more important to my army now, more than ever. I am seriously going consider putting in an Embolden Warlock in each group of Jetbikes, and it wouldn't surprise me if I ended up having to buy some more Jetbikes for my list in the future. Talking of Embolden, have you checked out Embolden40k Blog yet? If not, please go and have a look after you have finished reading and commenting here.

As for Vypers, so far it all looks even worse for these flying beauties. Not that they were the best unit before, but they really do fit in with the Saim-Hann theme so well. OK, so we now have a 5+ cover save for just moving and 4+ if we move instead of shooting as before, but we can now move 12" and shoot all our guns at normal ballistic skill. The main extra issue with these guys is both the rubbish two hull points and the new vehicle damage chart modifiers, +3 to the chart if AP1 and +2 to the chart if AP2, as we are open-topped. Ouch, that really hurts, and a 5+ save really doesn't make up for it. I am not writing Vypers off in my list, as I really like the models and they fit into the list too well for instant dismissal, but some new tactics are going to be needed for them, if they are going to work.

My first thoughts are that the two Fire Prisms are staying in my list. The new blast rules and random weapon destroyed results are going to help these two do damage. I don't think it's worth having Holo-Fields on them anymore though, as three Glancing/Penetrating hits will wreck it anyway. Better to spend the points on Warlocks for the Jetbikes instead. The main issue with them and any Eldar Tank now, is the lack of objective contesting, and long range tank shocking. In 5th Edition, I rarely had the big gun left intact, but they were nearly always around at the end of the game with their Holo-Fields, ready to contest objectives, and I think this is the biggest draw back any Mech Eldar list is going to have.

Now we come onto the Falcon, which was once the most survivable scoring tank in the game, is now just basically a gun boat. Is it even worth putting anything inside it? I think the Falcon is still great, but the only reason I took it over a Wave Serpent, was to have a solid Scoring unit in case my Jetbikes went down, and with the Holo-fields, it very often did score. Maybe it is time to change it over for a Wave Serpent, with a twin linked gun instead. To be honest, unless the Falcon was guided, it didn't really shoot very well anyway! The question is, what to put in the Serpent? I want it to have Troops, so it's either Storm Guardians or Dire Avengers?

One thing I want to quickly add in here, is how happy I am that Shining Spears have had a bit of a boost in 6th Edition. They are still over priced, but then again isn't everything Eldar? The main reason I mention Shining Spears, is from a previous post I did a while back, where I talked about how much I liked the Shining Spear models and paint scheme. Now with a Skilled Rider Exarch, they are actually a potential option for me! 

Well, that's my initial thoughts for my IDIC Hann from what I have seen so far. I haven't put any of this into an actual list yet, as my buddies and I are still experimenting with 1k point games until we get use to the new rules.

Any thoughts and comments are most welcome, as usual...