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Sunday, March 20, 2011

Unit review: Dire avengers!


The typical bread and butter of any Eldar army. Good statline, decent guns, and an armor save that most troop guns will not ignore.

The usual tricks with dire avengers are to stick 10 with an exarch in a wave serpent, take the bladestorm ability, then just drive up and unload on an enemy unit. Combined with guide and doom, you'll hit and wound with most shots, forcing even the hardiest enemies to take around 20-25 saves. If you are really sneaky you can take star engines on another transport, and then use it to block the dire avengers who just shot from any retribution.You usually need to combine fire from multiple DA squads to be able to wipe out any sort of MEQ unit. GEQ units are totally boned unless they have cover however.

A favorite trick of mine is to take the exarch with a shimmershield, stick a farseer with fortune in, and use it as a tarpit unit for deathstars. You have to get somewhat lucky since it's only a 5+ invuln save but, your opponent will still be frustrated that he can't break through just one of your TROOP choices. I've killed things from Greater Demons, to Khorne Berserkers, to Trygons with this technique. Most people would say "Assaulting with Dire avengers? Noob", but because it is so uncommon, it can suprise your enemy enough to create an opening or weakness on another flank as reinforcements come. They are WS 4 and diresword can kill EWs like Abaddon or pick-your-derpstar-of-the-month. That is harder to pull off however.

Another common use is the DAVU. Which is just a 5 man dire avenger squad thrown inside of a falcon with holofields, left in reserves usually, sometimes with a guide-seer included. Pretty self explanatory, you just flat-out to contest or hold an objective with it late in the game, and pray the holo-fields save you from getting wrecked :p Math-hammer players tend to prefer this.. and even take davu's with a wave serpent instead of a falcon, just to spam more vehicles, can't say i'm a fan of that playstyle, but it works.

Weaknesses are basically everything, Dire Avenger use is all about proper positioning and timing, most assault based troops will tear you apart, even in cover return fire will wittle you down. Don't count on them to live too long, unless you have a fortune-seer in with them. Sometime using bladestorm and assaulting afterwards will save you from getting shot to hell the next turn, if you get lucky :p

All in all one of my favorite Eldar units, and they have pretty awesome models too :) I'd post some pictures of some excellent paintjobs, but not sure if i'm allowed to on here without a license. I'll upload some pics of mine later.

Let me know what you guys think of the new layout and background, not sure if it's too busy or not.

21 comments:

  1. Looking forward to see those pics if you can get them posted! Sweet blog following for sure!

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  2. Sounds like a hilariously awesome tactic when it works.

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  3. layout, background is great.

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  4. Yeah leave the background! :)

    Awesome post also! Can't wait for more pics :B

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  5. Overall cool blog you got there..

    /followed

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  6. I like the background, I like it a lot. Keep up the good work. Followed.

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  7. maybe a bit too dark for my taste. anyway nice blog, will follow!

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  8. I sold all my w40k stuff... I miss it.

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  9. Wow this is very strategic! Followed! alphabetalife.blogspot.com

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  10. great post, i follow you, do the same for me!
    http://anonsbloq.blogspot.com/

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  11. Awesome blog, breh! Can't wait to read more. Following

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  12. waiting for the next one!

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  13. This is a really cool blog you have I look forward to seeing more.

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  14. Sweet post.

    Also, your background pic has a section in the middle that is missing.

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  15. I like your new background a lot, looks great. What game is this? Sounds like it could be fun, I'm a sucker for RTS games.

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  16. It is a tabletop wargame. There is an RTS version called "Dawn of war" though! The latest release is "Dawn of war 2: Retribution" and it's a great deal because you basically get all of the dawn of war games, for it's price.

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  17. wow that's really nice, i wish i had the time and patience to do that.

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