"Hey kirby, Kildash here with a little idea. I commonly play against a chaos marine player who runs 6 rhinos filled with plague marine squads and khorne berzerkers, and then two daemon princes and filler-oblits. Fairly simple list to face for your (and my) eldar army.
Pop the rhinos, then block or run, right? Torrent of fire on the DP's with doom, along with fire dragons, fire dragons against plague marines, torrent of fire vs khornates... prism blasts for flank shots without cover (linking helps here)... you know the drill, right? Well, i often find that even with all the blocking and running and whatever, sometimes a squad gets through. Of course, you could sacrifice something to keep them busy, but that's annoying, since its less dakka again. I was thinking of adding Yriel to the army, and sticking him somewhere in a tank. At some point, when a squad of 10 zerkers or 5 melta-plagues approaches and for some reason can't be dealt with effectively, i charge him into them. Now, i know he'd suffer from the same problem as scorpions and banshees in serpents, but consider it to be backup, not an assault-move. Against 10 khornates, charge him in on his own, watch them counter-move, pop the eye with doom, kill em all. against nurgles, spear em to shit in one or two combat phases
155 pts could be used somewhere else though, but i'm honestly thinking this could be useful. Thoughts?"
Yriel isn't a bad choice but he's not great either. T3 FTL but using him quite literally as a bomb can do some damage but is expensive. That said, if you do take Yriel, take him primarily for his Autarch bonus on reserves and he gives you the added bonus of being decent in combat. Could you spend that extra 70 odd points elsewhere? Sure and I'd recommend this (though for most list it's easy to generate that 70 points, drop spirit stones :P). Eldar have issues with removing units currently because they like to hide in their tanks. Sure they have great anti-infantry with mass S6, pie-plates and mobility but when you really need to get a tough unit off an objective Eldar's best bet is tank shocking assuming the Dragons have already been committed. Yriel can help with this somewhat but is anathema to how Eldar play in general so you have to use him as your shaved knuckle in a hole.
At the same time, if you run Eldar without an Autarch I wouldn't bother with Yriel as that's a lot of points to squeeze in. Easier to cut some upgrades and upgrade the Autarch to Yriel rather than slotting him all by himself. Yriel shouldn't cut the effectiveness of an Eldar list too much if worked in and used correctly so if you just had to use him for fluff or asthetics or feel like his bombing/combat potential can aid your list and you don't use him aggressively/screw your list over to get him, sure he can be used in an army. Would I recommend it? Not really. Would I say don't ever do it? Not really. Don't you just love the fence? lol
Does that answer your question Kildash? Or just more questions. What do others think?
9 pinkments:
I think Kirby's analysis is spot on. Yriel is very situational, and I wouldn't play him in games under 1750 points.
ive heard VERY good things about him: hes got a 12" lascannon thats an assault weapon and is 5 attackson the charge :D oh and he can wreck hordes with his eye large blast S6 ap 3 AND has a 3+/4+ iv and 3 wounds :D yeah hes pricey but twinned with banshees or 20 storm guardians hes massacre :D and if you play VS crons lets look at it this way: hes the only monolith defence :P
The problem is, if anything's left standing, Yriel is likely to suck on the rear end of a couple bolters, or kiss a powerfist.
Why would you run him into combat alongside other combat units?
"I pay massive points for a nuke, but it hurts my own dudes, so in hindsight, sending him in with the stormguardians might not have been the smartest thing in the world."
I guess he's kinda cute with his 2+ poisoned power weapon, but the thing is, most other combat characters get power weapons, too, don't need 2+ poisoned weapons to wound on 2+, have much better durability, and just add more presence to the army.
If a marine captain gets stuck in combat with you, you're likely getting ground into the dirt. Yriel burns out if he doesn't kill everything on the charge.
"Oh nooooooo! They have base attacks, and I'm less survivable against those than three space marines!"
Hey kirby, thanks for the reply. However, i didn't really intend to take yriel as an autarch, for his +1 to reserves, which i rarely use (its handy against some types of armies and some opponents, but that's about it). I intend to use him as a counter-charge backup-plan (so i don't plan him in as counter-charging from the start... call it a fail-safe), and also a little as a fear-factor.
Eldar list has been trying Yriel as you've said Kildash. Really, in the limited terms of not being able to charge out of a moving Eldar skimmer, I think the next best thing to try to get some kind of counter charge unit to work is small units/ICs like Yriel make some surgical strikes.
I mean, I have 4 Wave Serpents, 2 Vypers, 2 War Walkers and a Wraithlord for the Eldar list I've been trying, Yriel in it and it works out when the list moves as one and you cover your own arse so you can deploy and charge.
Saw a VASSAL player working on this, and the more practice one gets, I think we can get it to work. :3
@Kildash; as a pure counter-charge unit/psychological factor I'd steer away from him then. As stated he'll take out a bit of a squad but that's about it. As VT2 pointed out, T3/3+/4++ isn't fantastic and any S6 is going to ID him. I really just think of Yriel as a +~70pt Autarch upgrade to make him somewhat decent in combat.
He does wonders when teamed up with a fortuned seer council. He gives them a nice edge in HtH, and with 4++ re-rollable saves on the warlocks you can use his eye without losing to much.
Yes, because a slow rock is so useful.
When I ran Yriel in my Eldar list I always put him with either Fire Dragons or Dire Avengers in a wave serpent. This way, it makes people think twice about jumping into combat with them after they eat a tank/bladestorm. It's not that great of a deterrent, but people still don't like the thought of that S6 AP3 large blast coming down on them.
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