Fighting of the Eldar with Imperial Navy

[Hrothgar]

Just got my Imperial ass handed to me for the umpteenth time by an Eldar fleet.

We were playing 1000 points cruiser clash in a campaign, so unfortunately no Emperor and Swords and was stuck with the following:
- Mars
- Dictator
- 2x Tyrant
- 1x Dominator

Was facing an extremely torpedo heavy Eldar fleet with two Aurora light cruisers combined with 3 Craftworld Wraithships and a Dragonship (which makes me wonder, can you even combine Raider and Craftworld Eldar in the same fleet?)

To survive the torpedoes I had to keep my prows aimed at the approaching Eldar, which meant my weapon batteries remained mostly unused. I managed to score a few hits with my nova cannons, but once the Eldar were in range I was ripped apart by pulsar cannons. My god are those things overpowered.

Anyway, anyone have some pointers for how to do better next time? Not so much in fleet selection, but in tactics? What works best with Imperial Navy against Eldar?

[fracas]

Stay far from terrain

Upgrade the tyrant batteries
Keep the fleet together
Hug a table edge

[Lord Duggie The Mad]

Like Fracas said, upgrade your tyrant batteries.  Did you splash out on the Mars upgrade too?

Tactics-wise, try this:  sail as close as you can in a wedge formation parallel to the opposing sun-ward edge in the far corner.  Meaning that if you consider your computer screen as the tabletop and the left hand edge is sun-ward, I'm referring to the right-hand edge; get as close to a corner as you can and sail as slowly as possible away from it down the parallel edge.  I suggest this as their attack runs will (likely) be away from the sun but the retreat will be into the sun or across the sun.  Ideally, you want them to retreat into the sun to reduce the range but an Eldar admiral will likely want to present his flank to you to minimise firepower.  The closer you are to the corner the more his movement is restricted and may be forced to move towards the middle of the table - better to have them in front of than behind.   

Wedge formation, not line:  The Eldar player is more likely to try to engage your rear echelons so a wedge formation gives more support at the rear where one ship can take the beating and the others can fire back.

The placement of your ships will determine in part the incoming attack angles - I know that eldar can move away in the ordnance phase (assuming you are playing the official rules) but at least you can predict to a degree where attacks will come from.  This is doubly true in the case of MMS rules.

Use your attack craft defensively, have all your allowable ordnance escorting the cruisers.  At the same time, and this sounds counter-intuitive, don't allocate fighter escorts equally, leave the ships closest to the right hand edge unguarded.  This will offer an incentive for the eldar player to attack your weakest point, which if placed properly will draw them closer to your guns and further reduce their retreat.  You may want to have your shortest range guns furthest away from the sun in your formation. 

I know you weren't asking for fleet selection so forgive me, but I can't help but feel one recommendation might suit your purposes:  a rogue trader cruiser with upgraded targeting matrix.

More experienced players can probably offer much better ideas than I, but for what it's worth, best of luck.

LDTM

[Gothmog Lord of Balrogs]

Mms or msm?

[Facialmatters]

I fight against ordance heavy MSM Eldar with two Armageddons, 2 Dictators at 1000 points. I will say - try and take the first shot, and wrestle the initiative of the game away from the Eldar player. Under MSM at least, Eldar are very squishy. If you can get any shots hitting them, they will melt. Even lances in large numbers will do something most of the time even with the 2+ save, due to the chance for a critical on a 4+ making any single hit inflicted much worse.

Don't be afraid to pull some hard manoeuvring at the expense of firepower to get a chance to shoot.  All ahead full to get into range, and blast away with the batteries. If timed properly, you can trap them into responding two ways - turn and run to escape the close engagement that they will lose, or stay pointed at you, shoot ( cross fingers, suck up and take it with BFI) and subsequently get demolished again next turn at close range since their movement in the ordnance phase isn't enough to take them out of range. For my fleet at least, its the only chance of pulling off a win. As Duggie said, place your fleet upwind of the sun to reduce their movement.

Of course, you have much more battery firepower and at longer range than me, so you might not need to get as close for the same effect. Which on that note, how did you fit those ships into 1000pts? 185x2 (Tyrants) + 190 (Dominator) + 220 (Dictator) + 270 (Mars) = 1050 without admiral.

[horizon]

always start of with thinking in official rules.
eg, Hrothgar his tournament uses rulebook + faq2010, so test games will use that as well I think.


Anyhoo, the eldar fleet was illegal.
With FAQ2010 you need a 100pts Hero to have acces to Corsair or Craftworld vessels, depending what your parent fleet is.
If you have that hero you may picj vessels on a 1:3 ratio.
So 3 Wraithships & 1 Dragonship would allow for 1 Aurora max.

(Before FAQ2010 you needed a 150pts Hero!).

/tips
Keep fleet together.
Use Dictator fighters as cap on your ships. If you want to do agressive use single bomber markers to hunt Eldar. Never as a wave.
Try to deny the Eldar the good escape runs (eg deny him abeam sun routes).
And in this case: escorts would be vital. Swords can be a bane to Eldar due their speed, manouevrability and gunnery.

warning-
Agreed all ahead full is a good idea, 1 battery can still be harmful to an Eldar vessel. Come to New Heading as well.

[Lord Duggie The Mad]

Horizon,

Single bomber squadrons?  Is that because Eldar have no turrets and hence do not apply negative modifiers to bombing runs or as a matter of protection? (direct fire against ordnance knocking out a whole wave)

Actually, as an extension of Horizon's idea having placed a blast marker on Eldar ships via bombers or saving against lances does offer two benefits: slowing them down and making them have to pass the 'blast marker save' too.

[horizon]

Yep and yep. 

[Hrothgar]

Yes actually my fleet was 1070 with the Tyrant upgrades and his was 1080. I realise now that the Mars left shift upgrade would have been a good upgrade, but its not a fixed upgrade for my Mars class in the campaign, so I couldn't use it anyway.

Thanks for all the tips. I see I forgot a few things which will come in handy next time.

[hakkikt]

Two thoughts:
- Under the official rules, Eldar must roll for blast marker damage even if they move away from a blast marker. So I try putting blast markers on as many Eldar ships as possible... it slows them down, and it makes the opponent roll for blast marker damage.
- Keeping everything in good friendship, taunting Eldar players in the line of nail-polish-wearing wussies who will run from a fair fight works sometimes. I had one nice moment where the Eldar player felt confident enough to put a Void Stalker on lock-on to show me. Didn't work out for him as expected.

[Cneo]

Against Eldars, Dominators are your friends.

I squadron him with a Dictator, so two squadrons of Domi & Dict. are a seriously headache for an Eldar admiral. The huge firepower of the batteries allows yo to use orders and maintain a good punch,

And squadrons of 4 Swords & 1 Firestorm, I've destroyed and crippled some 4-6 hitpoints cruisers with that.

In my case I forget the Mars, lances and novas are commonly useless vs. Eldars.

And, as said before, stay away from scenery...

[unseelied]

An important thing to remember is that in order to lock on the eldar have to not turn in both of their movement phases.  Some times people forget this.  This keeps eldar firepower in check as anything that has locked on is normally very exposed next turn.

Stay away from asteriod fields.  Eldar love to hide behind one, jump out, shoot and then turn around and go back in. 

Stay together.  I often like to bait an opponent into splitting his forces by splitting mine.  Eldar ships are fast enough to recombine into one force and then double team any split off force.

[AndrewChristlieb]

I think asteroid fields give Eldar a false sense of security. Don't avoid them, point your prow to them and head in. They like to sit in the field because you cant target them but once your in the field too you can target them, at close range to boot. Same thing if theyre going through to the other side, just slid through and hit them, even if you get hit by asteroids any hits that might pass your shields are well worth it for the chance to get some damage on them too.

Special orders can be your friend too, even at half strength your weapons batteries can still do good damage so feel free to go AAF or use CTNH to get them in arc and range.