Vehicle Unit Markers?

Nick speaking,

Have you ever got confused to what units are embarked in your Vehicles? Or maybe which Vehicles are empty? Maybe forgot which one has your HQ in it? How do you go about remembering which units are where? Or even letting your opponent know what is what easily? Well, this is how I go about remembering mine for my Eldar Wave Serpents...

First I use one of the many Falcon Targeters that I have in my Eldar bitz box. I then paint this up into one of my unit colours, in this case Dire Avengers. I then put a magnet on the underside of it ready for magnetising...

I then glue a strong magnet on the inside of my Wave Serpent right at the front of the chamber. I can now take the unit markers on and off whenever a unit embarks or disembarks. I can paint up different coloured markers for each unit I have, so I can have orange for Fire Dragons, bone colour for Banshees etc.

To indicate my Farseer, I am using the vehicle sensor array, this is magnetised on both the top and bottom, so I can either have both the unit and Farseer mounted, or if the unit disembarks, I can leave the Farseer marker in place with the embarked Farseer. I think this works really well, and lets everyone playing know exactly who is where at just a glance. What do you think, how do your keep track of your units?

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Curiosity killed the...Vectored Engine!

Nick speaking,

I have been playing Eldar for a while now, and right from the begining, I have always geared my Grav Tanks up with Spirit Stones, Star Engines, Holo-Fields and Vectored Engines. I knew that popular believe was that Vectored Engines were a waste of points, and that I could buy another basic Fire Prism for the points I spent, but I just couldn't bring myself to drop them, and here are the reasons why...

The way I saw it, if I was going to spend all those points on a tank to make it last for as long as possible, in order for it to use it's movement and Star Engines to contest or Capture end game, then Vectored Engines would fall into that catagory nicely? After all, once I have moved fast, the last thing I want is to be immobilised and wrecked, and then to lose the game! I might as well pay the extra points and have them 'fully loaded'...

Game after game, I watched my tanks zooming across the board to capture objectives. Knowing that sixes were needed to hit me, then the protectin of the Holo-Fields, and if you do manage to wreck me, I will still be there with my Vectored Engines to contest. The trouble was, those Vectored Engines have never been used, I have never been immobalised after moving fast! This got me thinking that maybe I was wrong about Vectored Engines, so out of curiosity I started to experiment...

It all started when I played a casual four way game with my buddies, I thought it would be fun to get as many tanks down on the table as I could for the 750pts! Taking the tanks bare boned, I managed to get a list which included two Fire Prisms, one Falcon, two Wave Serpents with Dire Avengers and and a Farseer. It was at this point that I started to consider the things I really do need to have on my tanks, and the things I don't!

Needless to say, Vectored Engines were out! and my curiousity litarally did kill them off, well, in a way! Actually, I do still take Vectored Engines on certain tanks, like my Howling Banshee tank, where I know it is going to be moving fast to get the girls into position to assault, but generally, I don't waste the points on them anymore.

Vectored Engines have been an experience for me, and I have learnt that it is best to have something bare boned first, and see what upgrades are needed as you play, rather than take something fully loaded and not realise you are wasting points on things you don't really need, or at least, not very often!

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Why Forge World?

Nick speaking,

Generally, from a gaming point of view, using Forge World bitz to improve the look of our models has no real advantage. Indeed, in some cases it's a disadvantage? Take the Forge World Eldar Avatar for instance! Although it is an awesome model, it's at least double the size of the GW model, and twice as difficult to get 50% behind cover!

Of course there can be some advantages as well, my Forge World Eldar tanks are slightly longer than the GW ones, making it a bit easier to contest two objectives! But this is not the reason I went down the Forge World route! So why did I? Resin can be a pain to use, and it costs a lot more money?

Well, my first army was Necrons, and with only a Monolith as a tank with no FW upgrades, I have to admit I got a bit jealous seeing my buddies upgrading their tanks and dreadnoughts with FW bitz. Necrons of course only had the Pylon as a Forge World model, and at that time I only ever planned on having one army (like you do when you first start playing) so I treated myself to an expensive Necron toy.

It wasn't long after getting my Pylon, that I got the new army bug and it was time for me to get a second army. This time I wanted something different from the stand and shoot Necron's. I looked at Ork Speed Freaks and Eldar Saim Hann, but in the end I settled for the Eye of Terror's Elite, Space Wolves 13th Company army. I was playing alot against a hard hitting Emperors Children army at the time and I wanted some CC revenge. Trouble was, no tanks!

My third army was a Nid army that I got very cheap from a mate of mine. It was basically a massive box of Tyranid bitz, some made, some not, but definitely no tanks!

So that was it, my forth army had to have tanks, and the IDIC Eldar Craftworld was found. After waiting so long, I knew that my Eldar tanks were going to be all Forge World. It just had to be done, and that is why Forge World...

So what do you guy's think of FW models? have you found any advantages or disadvantages to certain models, and with the influx of models like the Mawclaw/Trigon from GW, do we really need to buy FW anymore?

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Forge World Falcon Painted

Nick speaking,

Here is my finished Forge World Falcon Tank that I painting with my Fire Prisms...

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Eldar tanks "Less is more?"

Nick speaking,

The Eldar anti-grav tank is a wonderful piece of machinery, but how are you gearing them up? Not so much as the guns you put on them as we all have our own favourites. I'm talking about the upgrade options like Star engines, Vectored engines, Holo-fields and Spirit stones? Ok, lets forget Spirit stones as everybody takes them, all the time no matter what, right?

I currently have one Wave Serpent, one Falcon and two Fire Prisms and I am still in the process of building up my army with the plan of getting myself two more Serpents in the future. I started off in the usual fashion of just using the models that I had purchased so far and trying out the different combinations of units available.

It didn't take me long to discover that Mech Eldar/Saim-Hann style was the first direction I wanted to go and the rest of my efforts have been to get this style of army up first, followed by a Harlequin list and finally onto a Hybrid style list. As you can probably tell I am the type of person who goes all out, rather than taking a fixed list approach. I just love having all the options open to me to play and have some fun with.

Focussing on a IDIC Hann style Army List, lead me to taking all the options on my tanks that are available. After all, I am going to need to keep them in action ready to contest/control for as long as possible.

Holo-fields (wish you could take these on the Wave Serpent) for durability. Star Engines for the extra speed and for some sneaky Eldar cover save tricks and Vectored engines so that I don't go down after the high speed movement when contesting.

So this brings me on to the whole reason of this post. So far I have been very happy with my very expensive versatile tanks.  I am at a stage now where I am so used to having my geared up tanks, that I am almost afraid to take the upgrades off! But should I be? Am I missing something? Is less, more? After all I could probably get another tank for the cost of the upgrades?

What are your views on Anti-Grav upgrades? Is less More?

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