I am just back from a 1 day tournament where I was fortunate to be able to get my first real test games with my newly growing Eldar Corsairs army. The development of this army has been somewhat tumultuous in the last month culminating in me getting the majority of the models I needed for the event of the Monday of the week of the actual event! 5 days to paint a good 800 points of the army… sounds like my regular event prep!
Lets kick it off with the list I took.
Detachment: Corsair Raiding Fleet
Faction: Eldar Corsairs
Command Coterie
HQ1: Corsair Prince, Cloud Dancer, Void Sabre, Shadow Field, First Prince: Reaper of the Outer Dark WARLORD
Coterie – Hate Bringers
HQ1: Baron, Cloud Dancer, Void Sabre, Shadow Field, (Reapers Upgrade)
Troops1: 3 Cloud Dancers, 3 Felarchs, 3 Venom Blades (Reapers Upgrade)
Troops2: 3 Cloud Dancers, 3 Scatter Lasers
Troops3: 3 Cloud Dancers, 3 Scatter Lasers
Fast Attack1: 2 Hornets, 4 Pulse Lasers
Fast Attack2: 2 Hornets, 4 Pulse Lasers
Elite1: 1 Wasp Walker, 2 scatter lasers
Heavy1: 2 Warp Hunters, 2 Kinetic Shrouds
Detachment: Heroes Path
Faction: Eldar Harlequins
Elite1: Death Jester, Haywire Grenades
Elite2: Shadow Seer, Mastery 2, Haywire Grenades, Mask of Secrets
Elite3: Solitaire, Haywire Grenades, Cegorachs Rose
Army Building Thoughts
This list is partly dictated by models I had on hand, that I thought I could get painted and that I wanted to try. The Corsair fleet is the planned core of the force. The Prince and Baron are nothing revolutionary in terms of load out (though I would not normally hand the baron a void sabre – I had points to spare!) The 2 units of 3 Scatter Laser Jet bikes are nothing new either for most eldar players. The Trio of Felarch bikes was something I was keen to try – with Rage thanks to the prince they packed 5 attacks each at WS5 and poison 2+!
The Hornets and Warp Hunters are again staples of many corsair armies – bringing heavy firepower and mobility to the list. The single Wasp was simply a model I had on hand I could throw in easily, but I didn’t have enough points for 2!
The Harlequins are again a concession addition – I knew I would not get enough bikes painted to replace the trio of clowns and they soaked up a good 300+ points and were already painted.
I chose the Hate Bringers coterie thanks to the bonus VP I could earn in each game – I really think the ability to score a point your opponent can’t is too good to pass up in many formats.
The Event
Hosted by local gaming club KRAGS, the Champion of KRAGS 2016 was essentially an invite only event run over 6 months. Players played 1 round of the tournament each month with varying missions, points values and even armies! The top 8 from this competition scored invites to the 4 game finals of the event. KRAGS also ran an open event on the same day – The Deadpool. This event had the same missions, limits and structure save that the winner of the Deadpool could not win the Championship.
2 Missions were by the book maelstrom (Contact Lost and Cleanse and Control) while the remaining 2 were eternal war missions (The Scouring and Big Guns Never Tire).
Lists were to be 1650 points, battle forged and up to 6 detachments. Only 25% of the total could be spent on lords of war and fortifications combined. Forgeworld was allowed with the most current rule set.
Table wise, I could expect a fairly consistent covering of terrain – at least 25% coverage typically but often more. I also knew the club was trying to add more height to their terrain to give more variety so there should be a few decent line of sight blockers in the mix.
All in all a pretty solid event to test my Corsairs in!
The Lead In
As I mentioned earlier, I got my latest Forgeworld delivery on the Monday before the event (held on the Sunday following). I made a decision on the spot that I would need to use my existing Craftworld jetbikes and autarchs for the corsairs force – I just would not get it all built and painted in time. Thankfully I had built 3 of these jetbikes with swords in hand in years gone by so I even had a sub in for the Felarchs. The Harlequins were all finished already so that was also a saving grace. I had built my pair of wasps (from a previous order) but had yet to put paint on them as I wanted to do them alongside the vehicles.
As Monday drew to a close, I had 4 hornets and 2 warp hunters to build then the same again plus a Wasp to paint by Sunday. By Wednesday, the vehicles were built and ready for a spray then airbrush…
Did I mention I have never used an airbrush before?