But then, you'd be wrong.
After finishing the write up, I just sat looking at my desk for several days. Sort of post-Olympic gold medal winner funk...except that I didn't go to the Olympics or win a gold medal.
I just got the funk.
It happens to everyone at some point. So after not getting anything put together or painted by using my mind (Eldar FAIL), I started thinking about next steps.
Now, to help me get there, i.e. next 1000 points, I wanted to add something interesting to my list that would be fun, yet effective. I attempted to get a Lynx off of ebay, but the bidding on that exceeded my budget, so I had to wave bye-bye to that one. I would like to get one of those sometime as I love the model and I think it would be fun to play with.
So, I finally resurrected Illic Nightspear from his Simple Green bath and got him primed again.
I would also expect that I'm going to convert it to field Bright Lances, rather than the Shuricans.
So that gets me to around...+300 points-ish.
Next up is this guy.
At this point, he will most likely end up looking like this:
That's where we stand at this point.
Also, just to break some ice, Jefe and I got together to do some dice rolling and we got in a 2000 point game. We rolled for the scenario and got the "one objective in your zone and one in mine". That always strikes me as a tough scenario to play. Also, Jefe announced that he was stepping up his list a bit, which considering my limited model availability just made me smile.
I do feel like I have a fairly decent set of units to pick from, but then again, a pure Iyanden list (whatever that really means) doesn't have a lot of variability at lower points levels. At this stage, I'm Ok with what I have, I still like playing with the units and I feel like I still have a ways to go with getting a handle on the "force multipliers" in the Eldar list, which are the HQ choices.
From memory, I took 3 x Wraithguard (1 armed with D-scythes), in serpents, 3 Crimson Hunters (1 Exarch), 3 Spirit seers, 1 Wraithlord with Ghost glaive and flamers, which when you look at it, isn't a lot.
Jefe took, again from memory, a Grey Knight force comprised of 2 Storm Ravens, 1 Dreadknight, a Land Raider Crusader, a standard Land Raider, 2 Purifier squads, 2 termie squads, and Crowe.
I would like to say that despite the tough lessons dealt during the game, Jefe and I still had a lot of fun and I look forward to the next one. Ideally, I'll have a better plan.
Force projection - A couple of points here. The Wraithguard + Wave Serpent is a pretty healthy combination. I still prefer my Bright Lance turrets as they allow me to have an impact on any AV, up to and including AV14. This fits into my view of the WS being more of an infantry fighting vehicle vs. just a transport. Think of it as the difference between a M2 Bradley and...I almost said "Rhino", but what I meant to say is M113.
In this game, I was able to push my forces up the field, isolate and destroy a LRC and termie squad with three WG+WS packages. The down side is that outside of my air force, that was almost my entire army, so my ability to reach other objectives was quite limited.
Control the skies - I didn't do a very good job of that this game. Very early on I lost my Crimson Hunter Exarch to Storm Raven fire and then the remaining aircraft were severely impacted by another "Cleansing Flame" bomb (i.e. Storm Raven + Purifiers "in your face") attacks. Between the Storm Ravens and CF, it was pretty much "Titan Air" the rest of the game. This had a significant impact on my anti-armor assets and prevented me from limiting the Grey Knights mobility. In the latter stages of the game, the Grey Knights were able to pick up troops to challenge and contest the objective I had secured so that instead of fighting to a draw, I lost 1-0.
Force multipliers - The Spirit seers really do a good job of enhancing the capabilities of the Wraithguard. On one particular occasion, I was able to cast Battle Focus on two WG units. That allowed me to pop the LRC with the stationary unit, then after the termies disembarked, chase them down and nearly wipe them out with Wraithcannon and D-scythe fire.
The challenge is that the seers need to deploy with the WG and that limits their availability to support other units.
I think I got some good lessons in this game and I'll take that information and look to see what sort of things I can do to get a little more flexibility.
Here are some more in-game shots, though I seemed to have missed the final round of GK assaults that gave them the win.
Cheers!
(G note: There appears to be an issue with mobile devices and the galleries. I've submitted a ticket. Sorry for that! Thanks to Steve from Graven Games for pointing that out!)