Any Tipps/Advice for Eel-free Idoneth?

[Hannibal]

Hi all,

 

I'm a sucker for underdogs and strong themes. As is, eel-free Idoneth fill the bill here. To be more precise: I like to start some Idoneth Deepkin army that is based on Reavers and Thralls (nit to say mainly Thralls). 

Other unis I like: 

Akgelian King, Eidolon, every hero on foot. 

 

Any possibility to start a small 1000 pts army as a side project?

Which heroes to choose?

Any further recommendations?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Thalion]

The strong way to go is morphann and namarti corp. If you dont feel like paying the reavers as tax, maybe 2 units of 20 each guarded by a soulrender, and a akhelian king born from nightmares and with etheral amulet to be de anvil.

[mmimzie]

Keep thralls to units of 10 anymore and they very quickly become unweildly and vulnerable to morale. 

 

 That artifact that gives that immune to morale for s turn aura is also pretty decent.

[TheLongerRoad]

Mor’phann would be your best enclave as you can return D3+3 Namarti slain every turn with your Soul Render (instead of just D3). If you  build a Namarti Corps battalion this becomes six slain (as D3 becomes an automatic 3.)

 

To keep the thematic approach, I would consider leaving the King (would he really fight without eel back up?) and use the points on Soul Renders (resurrect models) and Soul Scryers (start with a unit of namarti and a soul render off the field).

 

How about...

Tidecaster - 100pts

2* Soul Render - 200pts

Soul Scryer - 100pts

 

2* 10 Thralls - 280pts

2* 10 Reavers - 280pts

Total - 960pts.

 

You can play with the balance to suit your style - maybe take more Thralls and lose a hero, but you would need  at least two Thralls and two Reavers to get the battalion. 

Not sure how this would play but you could build a great story around why there are no Akhelians. 

[Rollcage]

Throwing out another idea. 

Soulscryer with Briomdar and Namarti Corps taking loads of reavers.

[HollowHills]

Forget Reavers, they are just complete ******. Even at full strength per 10 you're going to get like 3 to 4 wounds per volley at 9 inches. Which realistically will only be one round of shooting before you get charged. 

The Nemarti Corps battalion isnt worth it. It makes you take reavers and split units up smaller than you might otherwise want. All to treat a single dice as a 3, get a command point you can't use for anything decent and an extra artifact. 

This is what I would run... 

General Tidecaster 100 points with abyssal darkness as a spell and the bravery command trait. 

Soulscryer 100 points

Soulrender 100 points with doppelganger cloak or the midnight ink(?) 

20 thralls x 2 for 560

10 thralls for 140

Send 30 thralls with soulscryer and use the tidecaster to reverse the tides. Try to get an alpha strike on turn 2 with high tide and crush your opponent before you get stuck in combat. 

If you are worried about shooting use the artefact that makes you untargetable for a phase on the render and put him in front. Will deny all shooting for one phase and even if you don't need it for that you can use it in combat to keep him around for ressing thralls. 

I still believe eels are better and this is a bad idea though. 

[Rollcage]

On 10/7/2018 at 8:08 PM, HollowHills said:

Forget Reavers, they are just complete ******. Even at full strength per 10 you're going to get like 3 to 4 wounds per volley at 9 inches. Which realistically will only be one round of shooting before you get charged. 

The Nemarti Corps battalion isnt worth it. It makes you take reavers and split units up smaller than you might otherwise want. All to treat a single dice as a 3, get a command point you can't use for anything decent and an extra artifact. 

This is what I would run... 

General Tidecaster 100 points with abyssal darkness as a spell and the bravery command trait. 

Soulscryer 100 points

Soulrender 100 points with doppelganger cloak or the midnight ink(?) 

20 thralls x 2 for 560

10 thralls for 140

Send 30 thralls with soulscryer and use the tidecaster to reverse the tides. Try to get an alpha strike on turn 2 with high tide and crush your opponent before you get stuck in combat. 

If you are worried about shooting use the artefact that makes you untargetable for a phase on the render and put him in front. Will deny all shooting for one phase and even if you don't need it for that you can use it in combat to keep him around for ressing thralls. 

I still believe eels are better and this is a bad idea though. 

Reavers are amazing. 3 shots at 9" + charge and 2 attacks a piece in melee combat. Play a bonesplitterz or any 2 wound model army and Reavers outperform thralls any day. 

Stop using them as pure archers and you might actually like them, there profile in melee is extremely close to a Thrall and its a comparable melee profile to alot of other armies main units. 

[Paul Buckler]

Reavers vs Nighthaunts are great, rend is unimportant, just make them roll saves.

[HollowHills]

53 minutes ago, Rollcage said:

Reavers are amazing. 3 shots at 9" + charge and 2 attacks a piece in melee combat. Play a bonesplitterz or any 2 wound model army and Reavers outperform thralls any day. 

Stop using them as pure archers and you might actually like them, there profile in melee is extremely close to a Thrall and its a comparable melee profile to alot of other armies main units. 

 

42 minutes ago, Paul Buckler said:

Reavers vs Nighthaunts are great, rend is unimportant, just make them roll saves.

If you have a look at the Idoneth Deepkin discussion thread there is a spreadsheet that shows the mathhammer for all the units. The Reavers are by far the worst unit in the army. The stats just don't lie.

[Paul Buckler]

7 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

 

If you have a look at the Idoneth Deepkin discussion thread there is a spreadsheet that shows the mathhammer for all the units. The Reavers are by far the worst unit in the army. The stats just don't lie.

? Reply of the month, brilliant.

 

[HollowHills]

1 hour ago, Paul Buckler said:

? Reply of the month, brilliant.

 

I'm not trying to be disrespectful, if you look here you can find some discussion around the math hammer 

. 

I just don't want a new player to buy sub optimal models and then be put off the faction because they are running a bad list. 

[Paul Buckler]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.  One of my favourite quotes (hence my reply)

 

None of that actually relates to in game experiences or situations.  Need a 10 models to run 14 to claim an objective?  Eels stuck in combat with a guy on 1 wound,  need a screen to block off your opponents move?  Mathshammer and tables dont tell you any of these situations, plus many many more.

So much focus on sub-optimal, etc etc.  Honestly the worst part of the game for me. Get some folks enjoy it, power to you but rem, thats not even close to the game as a whole.

No substitute for playing games with models and using them on the table.

I put reavers in my list because they are my fav models in the range, had every expectation of them really not contributing.  I would say in at least 25% of my games they have made a significant contribution, in some role or another.  They actually won me my round 4 matchup at EGGS this year.

 

[mmimzie]

Disclaimer: I'm a enthusiastic person. For some reason when I talk about model, folks get the misconception I think they are great or the best. In the case of thralls I'm on record as saying they are pretty poor, and I stand by that. That said...

 

Alright did a big think here on this. 

 

So first thralls. The best thing to do with thralls is to bring 2 or 3 soul scryers. Do something like an evocator bomb. Bring in a unit of 20-30 thralls. I think 30 is too much but not 100% on the logistics here. Have all your soul scryers point at the same target. Get plus 6 or 9" to your charge. Use that out flank deployment and the large charge range to make sure all the thralls actualy get into range to attack. 

Now the reaver question. @HollowHills is pretty right, but he's missing a component.  Reavers are pretty poor math wise when compared to other ID units. However, the unit is a ranged unit and all ranged units match bad. Even longstrikes math pretty bad. In fact against a 4+ save reavers in triple tap range out math the pants off longstrikes. Even more so if you look at a two turn sequence of shooting starting from deployment. They actualy result in a tie for damage out put. 

10 reavers vs 3 longsrrikes

Reavers turn 1: move+shoot= 1.375 wounds vs 4+sav

Reavers turn 2 run+shoot=3.875 wounds vs 4+

Total for reavers: 5.25wound/140pts

Reaver 2 turn damage per pts: .0375

Long strike standing still and shooting twice: 3.22x2=6.44 vs 4+sav

6.44/180=.0358

 

 

Which means for the pts reavers come out ahead. And any turns into turn 3 the reavers start drastically pulling ahead as reavers are also well into melee range and can attack first.  Reavers are also a 10 man squad meaning they hold ovjective. Reavers are also in arguably more durable. I think when stack against another good unit reavers can look rather compelling. That said long strike preform better against better saves, and that long consistant threat range is powerful. 

 

Most importantly about reavers however, thralls dont match up well in combat. Think about 140pts of thralls fighting anything because that's all you are gonna get. As you can only get 10 thrall in any reasonable combat (out side of multiple scryer assisted charges).  Reavers fix this. Reavers can shoot into the unit you wish to charge providing so much needed support so thralls can actualy kill what they charge that turn. 

With all that I think the best none eel list is:

Sample list:

Morphan

Tidecast general (whatever command trait you think is cool)

Soulrender (llandras last lament)

Soulrender

Lotann

Soulscryer

Soulscryer

 

20xthralls

10x reavers

10x reavers

10xreavers

10x reavers

Leviadon

 

1960/2000 (bring an endless spell?)

 

Flip the tides, with reavers you want run turn 1 to make sure you get in range. Turtle provides that nice cover bonus to keep the reavers alive. Lotan hangs out with some reavers as that's his only decent use. Though I might drop in have favor of 2 cp for either morale, charge reroll, or auto run 6 for reavers. 

 

Thralls drop with soulf renders and scryers. The soulrenders much charge first and the thralls should charge behind surrounding the soulrenders. So if anything attacks the soulrenders they get stabbed by thralls.  It also insures the soulrenders are in range to provide regen. 

 

The flipped tides means you get turn 2 attack first which is some very important protection against double turns. As soulrenders are useless in any sort of double turn situation. Also if possible I'd charge the reavers in turn 2 for that extra bit of damage.

The turtle is abit bad, but honestly more reavers or thralls sont do anything. There just isn't enough space on the table for more reavers and thralls to be effective. 

 

 

 

[HollowHills]

11 minutes ago, mmimzie said:

*trim*

This is pretty insightful.

I'd say comparing them to longstrikes isn't quite right though. You don't take longstrikes for quantity of damage, you take them for quality of damage. Reavers effective range (i.e. where you need them to be to justify their inclusion) is 9' whereas for longstrikes I believe the range is 30". Now that said I wouldn't take longstrikes either because with look out sir their ability to do what they previously did best (kill support heroes and wizards) is significantly worse. Because of the shooting out of combat rule as well your opponent often wants to charge your ranged units whenever the opportunity presents itself. That 9" range means it's very easy to get counter charged and force into shooting a unit you don't want to be fighting. Whereas many units you can keep them back and screen them from being charged. As a third point reavers have to run up the old fashioned way because unfortunately the range for rapid fire is within 9" and the soulscryer is more than 9". So it's impossible to go exactly 9" and deepstrike them.

If you were really keen on shooting I'd be much more tempted to ally in gladeguard or judicators.

Now that said...

I think you're right about most ranged units coming out poorly. To be honest I think casual players place far, far too much value in shooting. 1) because shooting units can only deal damage for 50% of the game comparative to combat units which can theoretically at least be putting out wounds from turn 1 to turn 10. 2) because the range advantage afforded by shooting can be matched by including a high movement combat unit instead 3) because as you pointed out ranged units almost always offer less average / total wound output than combat units when looking strictly at hit/wound/rend damage.  4) shooting units are almost always costed higher in points than equivalent melee units.

If you look at the best performing lists across all the grand alliances very few include shooting as a significant element. LoN has almost no shooting with the exception of dragon's breath attacks (which are almost closer to abilities / spell damage in the role they perform) and likewise strong DoK lists tend to ignore the shooting they have access to. Heart renders would only be taken for their deepstrike and movement potential because their damage actually doesn't work out great.

 

 

[Drofnum]

I think I would run something like this personally:

 

Isharann Soulrender (100)
Isharann Soulrender (100)
Lotann, Warden of the Soul Ledgers (100)
20 x Namarti Thralls (280)
10 x Namarti Thralls (140)
10 x Namarti Reavers (140)

10 x Namarti Reavers (140)

Total: 1000 / 2000

 

Lotann isnt a normal pick but he gives +1 bravery and reroll 1's, which will help with battleshock tests. At 2k I would probably take an AoSea again mostly for the bravery, but I quite like them in general as a tough 2 spell caster, AoStorm isnt a bad idea either though with his wound rerolls and he's a bit more of a combat pick. 

I also dont think large blocks of Thralls are a bad thing, yes they can lose models to battleshock and you're definitely not getting them all in combat but they're going to be pretty hard to shift.  I wouldnt go with 3x30 but 1x30 could be nice for board control and objective holding.

 

At 2k I would take this list, not sure what I would want with the last 100 points.  Soulscryer or another Soulrender, both have their advantages.

 

Isharann Soulrender (100)
Isharann Soulrender (100)
Lotann, Warden of the Soul Ledgers (100)
Eidolon of Mathlann, Aspect of the Sea (440)
Isharann Tidecaster (100)
30 x Namarti Thralls (360)
10 x Namarti Thralls (140)
10 x Namarti Thralls (140)
20 x Namarti Reavers (280)
10 x Namarti Reavers (140)

Total: 1900 / 2000

[mmimzie]

1 hour ago, Drofnum said:

30 x Namarti Thralls (360)
 

This is almost never worth doing, infact i wouldn't even bring a 20 man units in most cases. The onyl time i'd go north of 10 thrall units would be in list with multiple soulscryers. You just can only realisticly get maaaaaaaaaaybe 10 thralls fighting from a unit at a time. Any more between terain and the threat of pulling other units into combat make getting more than that into a fight is exceedingly unrealistic.

The only way isee more then 10 as i said is with soulscryers. With 2 or 3 you get +9 to your charge, and along side the "forward" command ability you can reroll that charge to in sure you get ALOT of charge distance and can actualy spread out and get that many models into one fight. 

Soulrenders similarly i'd honestly also only take with soul scryers in toe. SO that the soul render can be garenteed to make it in with the thralls, a failed charge by a soulrender can very often just mean that you may as well not even have brought that soulrender. 

 

1 hour ago, HollowHills said:

This is pretty insightful.

 

Now that said...

 

 

I agree to an extent, but more over the quality of damage doesn't matter against the meta. As you have armiers liek DoK and LoN doing well in the current meta. While nighthaunt isn't doing well in the meta it's also very popular in the meta as well and against all of those armies against most targets you are going to see more favorable reaver shooting numbers. 

I do agree shooting is very far out of favor right now. The key being that you can snipe heros so well, which was the biggest hinge with which shooting armies swung. More over many armies don't rely on heros that can be sniped any way. The only army vulnerable to this is really DoK where they want all thier buffs, but the army sans the buffs will still kill any shooting army to a model lol. 

I think thralls bring really good damage for thier points rivalling  evocators even, but you can only ever get 10 in any given combat outside of soul scryer stuff. Which leads me to believe any thrall list NEEDs to have a shooting element behind it to make those combats go well, otherwise the thralls even attacking first just die to the counter swing. 

[Drofnum]

31 minutes ago, mmimzie said:

This is almost never worth doing, infact i wouldn't even bring a 20 man units in most cases. The onyl time i'd go north of 10 thrall units would be in list with multiple soulscryers. You just can only realisticly get maaaaaaaaaaybe 10 thralls fighting from a unit at a time. Any more between terain and the threat of pulling other units into combat make getting more than that into a fight is exceedingly unrealistic.

I disagree for the reasons stated above.  I've run similar units with Fyreslayers and the size of the unit really isnt a big deal, not that they play all that similarly but they are on the same size bases so movement and such is the same.  Its something I would want to test to be sure but I think you're exaggerating the downsides a bit just based on my own experiences with units with a similar footprint.

I did totally space out the +charge from Scryers though in my 2k list, not sure why since I use him all the time in my eel lists.  He would bring more value than another Soulrender I think.

[mmimzie]

1 hour ago, HollowHills said:

1) because shooting units can only deal damage for 50% of the game comparative to combat units which can theoretically at least be putting out wounds from turn 1 to turn 10.

Oh forgot i wanted to needle this alittle.

This actualy to a large extent isn't true save for specific units that are designed to do this. In the case of the fyreslayers that @Drofnum speaks off. Counter attacking is what they do, and i'll get to that later.

However:
1. most melee units on a none charge turn can't get all of thier attack back. Meaning that the pile in is not enough to get all your attacks in. Even on the initial charge most melee units bring extra models that either get reduced effectiveness or no efftiveness. Look at evocators who lose 25% damage on half of a unit of 10 when ever they fight as you can onyl get 5 models realisticly in combat against a unit to do melee wings, and thier mortal wound attack all has to be dedicated toward one target unit meaning if they can't split this damage willy nilly. Witch elves can most optimally get 30 models in combat but in practise often only get 20-25 of thier models fighting the unit they desire to hit. So even on the swing they they don't do 100% damage.

2. The current meta is one of total annihilation on the charge. No one swings back. Witchelves/evocators/morrsarr are all units that completely destroy units on the charge. Meaning you don't swing back, and swing back damage only matters against anvil units whose role is to pointlessly time up your unit for several turns. In which case you'd get even fewer of your attacks in as these units often only charge in such a way that your units don't get as many attacks to swing back, read pt 1. 

3. most melee units aren't active every turn of the game. Out side of gav bomb. Units either need to walk up the table for a turn (witch elves) or need to charge in and our (morrsarr). Meaning they lose the first 1 or 2 turns of the game worth of damage

 

shooting units have none of the above restrictions. when they shoot all the models shoots. So turns in which they do damage they have 100% of thier damage output available. SO they definitly have low damage numbers and all of the above things don't make that big a difference to make up the difference, however, their damage is like the difference between mortal wounds and none rending damage. Their damage is consistant and real, where the other units have damage calculations that are more a..... best case scenario.

19 minutes ago, Drofnum said:

I disagree for the reasons stated above.  I've run similar units with Fyreslayers and the size of the unit really isnt a big deal, not that they play all that similarly but they are on the same size bases so movement and such is the same.  Its something I would want to test to be sure but I think you're exaggerating the downsides a bit just based on my own experiences with units with a similar footprint.

I did totally space out the +charge from Scryers though in my 2k list, not sure why since I use him all the time in my eel lists.  He would bring more value than another Soulrender I think.

fyreslayers are fundmentally different from thralls.

For one with fyreslayers they ahve the durability to pull multiple units into combat. Which mean you aren't trying to compact your unit. You need to compact the from of your thrall as running your thralls head long into 2 or 3 units at a time means you will have lots of dead thralls on the swing back because the thrall neither do enough damage to kill decent sized units in one swing nor the durability to take a swing back. (see point 2 above, annhilation meta). 

Fyreslayers have blades shields that allow ever single model in the unit to apply thier damage into one unit, no matter how far away each model is. Given they charged of course. This means that you good work around pt 1 above. Which your damage is off set some.

Last Fyreslayers also work on pt 3 as they have shooting, which is another aspect in which every model you bring can participate in any given fight. Meaning taking more models is work while. 

Thralls provide no such benefit for large unit sizes out side of 10 or so models the others are only extra wounds, and if you spread your unit wide terrain will very quickly reduce your number of attacks and thw swing back will see your units crushed in short order and the battle shock will devastate your unit as an added result. Where as Fyreslayers are considerably more durable for the pts and won't lose as much to such a swing back. 

This wisdom of knowing the weakness of thralls IE thier fragility and large base side being a liability is why everyone in the ID thread proper have shied away from thralls. Even the most staunch defenders of the thralls will say that 10 model units is the only real way to use them out. I know and see that you've done fyreslayers, my friend played them as well and for them big units is the way to go, but thralls just don't work that way at all. 

[Aelfric]

2 hours ago, Drofnum said:

I think I would run something like this personally:

 

Isharann Soulrender (100)
Isharann Soulrender (100)
Lotann, Warden of the Soul Ledgers (100)
20 x Namarti Thralls (280)
10 x Namarti Thralls (140)
10 x Namarti Reavers (140)

10 x Namarti Reavers (140)

Total: 1000 / 2000

 

Lotann isnt a normal pick but he gives +1 bravery and reroll 1's, which will help with battleshock tests. At 2k I would probably take an AoSea again mostly for the bravery, but I quite like them in general as a tough 2 spell caster, AoStorm isnt a bad idea either though with his wound rerolls and he's a bit more of a combat pick. 

I also dont think large blocks of Thralls are a bad thing, yes they can lose models to battleshock and you're definitely not getting them all in combat but they're going to be pretty hard to shift.  I wouldnt go with 3x30 but 1x30 could be nice for board control and objective holding.

 

At 2k I would take this list, not sure what I would want with the last 100 points.  Soulscryer or another Soulrender, both have their advantages.

 

Isharann Soulrender (100)
Isharann Soulrender (100)
Lotann, Warden of the Soul Ledgers (100)
Eidolon of Mathlann, Aspect of the Sea (440)
Isharann Tidecaster (100)
30 x Namarti Thralls (360)
10 x Namarti Thralls (140)
10 x Namarti Thralls (140)
20 x Namarti Reavers (280)
10 x Namarti Reavers (140)

Total: 1900 / 2000

This is the sort of list I am aiming for, though I am going to include 20 Eternal Guard as allies for 140 points as objective holders.  Would probably reduce the 30 Thralls to 20 to accommodate them.  Thinking of 3 Soulrenders or a Soulscryer. It's early days yet as only have 10 Thralls and 10 Reavers painted plus a Soulscryer and I'm a slow painter.  Fortunately, I already have the EG painted as Wanderers is my main army.

[Drofnum]

1 minute ago, mmimzie said:

fyreslayers are fundmentally different from thralls.

snip

Like I said, i was comparing movement and all of that, not really the combat prowess.

[Nos]

Yeah don't buy eels and I guarantee you will be free of them ??

[Austin]

The Reaver hate continues strong I see. They are still the best looking (though eyeless) aelf models GW makes, and they are no slouches and movement and doing damage that can add up over time. I wouldn’t take a ton of them, but two units isn’t overkill in 2k games.  

Also, if you only take 10 man units of Thralls, you will probably not get into combat with 10 bc of spells or shooting (despite claims here that shooting does next to no damage). So despite very valid point about battleshock and the difficulty of maneuver, large units of Thralls are probably the way to go. 

[Rollcage]

10 hours ago, HollowHills said:

I'm not trying to be disrespectful, if you look here you can find some discussion around the math hammer 

. 

I just don't want a new player to buy sub optimal models and then be put off the faction because they are running a bad list. 

The interesting thing is that my what I said is proven by your own mathhammer spreadsheet link. 

Reavers vs thralls against a 2-3 wound opponent (bonsplitterz or otherwise) the reavers are better then thralls per point.

Its simple math really. 3 + 2 attacks per model in a ranged/melee charge vs 2 attacks per model in melee only. The reavers simply do way more attacks against some armies. 

The original poster didn't ask for a mathhammer top tier list, they asked for an underdog list and I gave him an idea as an option. It will do just fine vs some armies.

[Hannibal]

Hello everybody,

 

totally forgot that I opend this thread. And man, what a great read it is! Thank you so much. I highly appreciate the discussions here. Well done!

 

Hope that there is more to say.