40K: Top 5 Favorite Eldar Stratagems
Codex: Craftworlds comes with 27 new Stratagems, here are our five favorites.
Stratagems are one of the biggest additions that every Codex has been bringing. They’re the rules that let you tweak your army to fit a particular niche–they give you that single turn of advantage, or unlock a devastating combo that lets you utterly break your opponent’s spirit (until they roll all sixes and you roll all ones). As the Codexes keep coming out, there are a few that keep repeating themselves: there’s almost always one that lets you set up a unit in reserves that otherwise couldn’t be, there’s the one that lets you add an extra relic or two, psyker-heavy armies get the one that lets you attempt to manifest an additional psychic power (and the Eldar are no exception)–but each Codex also has a few unique Stratagems in there that open up new tricks for the army. You need a mix of these to really make an army sing, and with that in mind, here are five of our favorite new Stratagems for the Eldar.
Boy are some of them Cheaty.
First up, we’ve got Fire and Fade, which brings back the old jump-shoot-jump chestnut of 7th edition. Remember how you used to not be able to target certain Eldar units because they were dancing out of range, or at the very least behind cover or obscuring terrain? Those days are here again. It’s a flat 7″ movement, so some units get less mileage than others, but, this is still incredibly good. It really means knowing the effective threat ranges of your enemy though–but you can use this to keep a particularly important unit safe while still contributing to the combat. And at 1 CP, it’s pretty cheap.
Another workhorse Stratagem. This one’s a little more expensive at 2 CP, but for the price you impose an automatic -1 to hit, which combos nicely with the Eldar psychic power Conceal for a nice -2 to hit if it’s an infantry or biker unit. Or -3 if you’re playing Alaitoc and outside of 12″ from enemy units. Hope those Hellblasters enjoy hitting you on sixes–and if you’re playing against an army with poor average BS, enjoy your newfound shooting immunity.
This one is a variant of the “you set up a unit ready to deep strike” stratagem. You can use it on a vehicle with Fly and it specifically calls out that you can embark units within it. So if you want to have some howling banshees, say, riding around in a Wave Serpent that’s just ready and waiting to cause all kinds of problems, you can. This stratagem is a great way to get a unit across the field, or seize an uncontested objective or just disrupt the enemy’s careful planning.
The Court of the Young King is a great Eldar-specific stratagem. We really like this one because it both reinforces the flavor of the Eldar, while at the same time providing you with some incredibly powerful options to unleash upon your poor sap of an opponent. Biel-Tan are all about the Aspect Warriors, and this one lets you really lend their charge some weight. At its base level, getting to add 2 to distance and re-roll 1s in the fight phase is pretty great–but combo that with an Avatar of Khaine and you really amp up the effectiveness of the charge–this is a great role model for future Stratagems: it feels unique to the army, it’s good, and it does something that not every army can do.
But for an even better example of that, check out Linked Fire. This Stratagem is also pretty bananas–it does require you to have multiple Fire Prisms, but it lets you unleash all kinds of devastation through a network of Fire Prisms. If one Fire Prism has line of sight to an enemy, any Fire Prisms within 60″ of that Fire Prism have line of sight to that enemy. It’s a great way to really focus fire on one unit that you absolutely need to die AND it’s incredibly fluffy. It makes you think of the Fire Prisms just sort of firing their lasers into the other prism, Death Star style. This is far and away our favorite Eldar Stratagem, if only we had more Fire Prisms to capitalize on it.
