So I have two armies, and neither is really all that competitive in it's current state. My Eldar is a very fluff oriented army. At 1500pts and lower there seems to be enough room on the table for me to dance around and harrass the enemy at range. At these lower limits I am still pretty competitive, it's when you get into the 1750-2000pts and up that I start to have trouble. My army relies almost entirely on the ability to use it's mobility to stay away from the enemy. With all of the newer codex's coming out having lower points costs and greater mobility I am having a harder and harder time finding these 'safe' spots on the table to move to, and against Orks, there's just too many of them even without a newer 5th ed. codex.
I also have a Crimson Fists army, but it was designed back in 3rd ed. and I haven't updated it yet to reflect the current codex or ruleset. I don't think it was really even that good of an army back then but it certainly fails to pass muster nowadays.
So what am I to do? Well, I have a couple of options I suppose, but they all come down to one real answer...
Spend more $$$!
One option is to start a new army altogether. I have been eyeing a Chaos Deamons army and have always held an interest in Imperial Guard (it was a close decision between them and Eldar when I first started playing!) I even have a few models for each of these armies in progress. Unfortunately I don't have either the time or the money to start a new army from scratch. I need to be able to field 2500pts for an 'Ard boys by mid May. So that pretty much narrows it down to two real choices.
I can always try updating my Eldar by 'Mech'-ing up more. Adding a bunch of Fire Dragons, dropping some jetbikes in favor of the Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents, etc. But I have tried strenuously to keep this a very fluff oriented army. Dire Avengers and Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents is not really what Saim-Hann is all about, it's more Beil Tann's style. So I think for the most part I will be shelving this army for awhile. It saddens me a bit because the general playstyle of the army is very fun, but getting your butt kicked in every battle is not! I will still try to get in some games with it, especially if I can find lower points games where I am still (IMO) competitive.
My final option is to update my Crimson Fists. this could actually be done in a couple of ways. First I can just update them to reflect the new ruleset and codex and call it good. Alternately, they are wearing power armor so I could use them instead as a 'counts as' Blood Angels or Space Pups army. It would still require that I spend some money, but would probably wind up being the most competitive option available. That said, I have never really cared much for the Blood Angels and would feel cheap and dirty about jumping on the bandwagon just cause they have the newest codex. So what about the Wolves then? Well in my 40k history I have only beaten the Space Wolves once and managed a draw against them one other time. Every other game (and in 3rd ed there were lots as I had two friends who at one point or another played them!) I had my ass handed to me. As such I have developed a strong resentment towards them and just couldn't bring myself to do that either. So that means I update the Fists as Fists. Which really is fine with me. I know that the SM codex isn't the most competitive of the 5th ed. codex's, but unlike my Eldar they do at least have a 5th ed codex!
As always I plan on keeping an eye on the fluff as I design my army. This may hinder my lists somewhat, but I don't think I would care for an army that completely ignored the fluff. For me there always has been and always will be more about this game than my win/loss record. For the army specifically I am thinking about using Pedro Kantor (a real divergence for me since I have usually eschewed special caracters in the past) and Sternguard Veterans. To go with that I am thinking about running a couple of Drop Dreads. To get redundancy in the list I want to use 2 Sternguard and 2 Dreads so that means I have to take a Master of the Forge to pull that off. Which is fine with me. I also plan on using a Land Raider and a Lascannon heavy Predator for some ranged fire and having the MotF hanging nearby them to repair any damage and lend the Conversion beam to said ranged fire seems to work well. To round things out I am going to need some troops. These I have in spades, so I will probably run two tactical squads with missile launchers and flamers in Rhinos and a scout squad. It's my belief that most 'fluffy' CF armies should include at least one unit of scouts what with the destruction of Rynn's world and the whole rebuilding the Chapter stuff. Finally I will have enough points left over to add an assualt squad and maybe a melta Land Speeder. I don't really know how competitive an army list this will be, but with 4 drop pods full of nastiness mobile troops with the Rhino Tac Squads and the Scouts infiltrating/outflanking or just loading into the LR, and the Assualt squads jump packs it should at least be a fun army to play!
To do all this though I need to get the models for Pedro, the MotF, all four of the Drop Pods and the Sternguard. I have the rest of the stuff, although one of the Dreads needs to be finished. The predator is an older one using the old Rhino Chassis but it still works so I will hold off on updating that till later.
So the final result would look like this:
HQ:
Pedro 175
Master of the Forge with Conversion Beam 120
Elites
Dreadnaught in Drop Pod with Deathwind Missile Launcher (DML) 160
Sternguard (7+ sergeant) with Power Fist and 3x Combi-Meltas in Drop pod with DML 295
Sternguard (7+ sergeant) with Power Fist and 3x Combi-Meltas in Drop pod with DML 295
Troops
Tactical Squad (9+ sergeant) Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rhino 205
Tactical Squad (9+ sergeant) Melta gun, Missile Launcher, Rhino 210
Scout Squad (9+ sergeant) Power weapon, combat weapons 155
Fast Attack
Assault Squad (9+ sergeant) Power Weapon, 3x Plasma Pistols, jump packs 250
Land Speeder with Multi-Melta 60
Heavy Suppor
Dreadnaught in Drop Pod with DML 160
Land Raider 250
Predator with TL ass cannon and ass cannon sponsons 165
Total: 2500
So whaddya think? I am not sure about the DML's on the Drop Pods. Does anyone use them? Are they worth the +20pts or am I better off keeping the storm bolters and getting another Multi-melta land speeder? Or something else entirely? It seems to me they would be decent at killing infantry and would be a big enough threat that the opponent would feel the need to deal with them or avoid them.
