The Windriders in 7th Ed - Just as Awesome!

 

Back in 6th, the rebellious Windrider faction of Alaitoc was a pretty strong army, with its super-mobile super-fluid brand of warfare being able to always out manouver the enemy. With the entire army traveling at jetbike and fast skimmer speed, it's always able to achieve local firepower superiority by focusing its guns at just any given spot at any given time, while at the same time being able to get out of trouble - real fast!

So after almost a year of not touching this army (played all sorts of others - IG, Rangers, Thousand Sons, etc), I decided to take it for a spin in the new edition last night. I didn't change the list, and it was made up of:

- Farseer Lahn, on jetbike with singing spear
- 2 Warlocks, on jetbikes with singing spears. Each Warlock attached to a Jetbike squad
- 6 Jetbikes - with 2 shuriken cannons
- 6 Jetbikes - with 2 shuriken cannons
- 10 Guardians - with starcannon platform
- they ride a Wave Serpent with twin-linked bright lances and holofield
- 10 Dire Avengers - including and Exarch
- they too ride a Wave Serpent with bright lances and holofield
- 3 Vypers - each with scatter laser and shuriken cannon
- Crimson Hunter exarch!
- Fire Prism - kitted with holofield
- Fire Prism - also with holofield
- Falcon - because I really like the model - pulse laser, scatter laser, shuriken cannon, holofield

The first game was against Alvin's rabid Blood Angels Death Company in the second Maelstrom of War scenario: Contact Lost. The Death Company army is lethal, very ill-fitted to capturing objectives, but more than able to wipe out enemy forces. In fact, the only reason why the Eldar won was because they were able to score VPs through capturing objectives, and the game ended at the bottom of Turn 5. The Eldar survived with only 4 models left alive - 2 Vypers and 2 Jetbikes. Insane. Then again, I did make the horrible Eldar nube error of closing with the Death Company, instead of using my speed to keep my army out of his reach. I guess I was more out of touch than I thought, having not touched this army in so long. Once again, I noticed that my dominant psyker - the Farseer - sucked up all the power dice and dominated my Psychic Phase. The new jink rule was a minor irritant to the Eldar, but otherwise, not really a major problem.

The second game was against Doc Selvam's White Scars with Space Wolves allies. The army had 2 Land Raider Crusaders and a couple of flyers. We played the third Maelstrom mission: Tactical Escalation. This time, I was relearning fast how to handle the army, and while we had to stop the game after Turn 2 (I had a dinner appointment), I was able to blow up one Land Raider and wipe out the passengers - a Space Wolves squad and Jnarl.

The third game was against Patrick's nice looking Wraith Eldar army. We decided this civil war started because my Seers thought that Patrick's armor should be yellow instead of blue. From the get-go, we could sense that it's going to be extremely difficult for Patrick. Except for his Wraihknight and Crimson Hunter, everything moves on foot at 6". We again played Tactical Escalation, and it was unfortunately pretty one-sided as my skimmer army was able to run circles against the infantry-based Wraith army. One thing we realized is that it's extremely hard to use Harlequins now. Veil of Tears is a warp charge 1 psychic power, forcing the Shadowseer to compete for power dice against Eldrad and a Spiritseer. He failed Veil once, but I didn't take advantage of it because I was busy wiping out the Wraithknight. The next turn, he passed Veil with two harnessed Warp Charges, but I threw all 10 of my Deny dice and managed to come up with two 6's. And the really well-painted Harlequin squad was shot to ribbons because of that. Really sad. In this game, I also managed to get Invisibility, which the Farseer used on himself and his squad, but it wasn't tested (would have been great to get this power against the Blood Angels). The lesson Patrick learnt was that he needs Wave Serpents for his Wraithguard.

It feels like my old Windriders of Alaitoc list is more or less still pretty deadly in 7th ed, with the main rules changes to jink not really impacting it that much. It does make it more interesting - there was once when an enemy Crimson Hunter was about to unload on my Fire Prism. Of course, I jinked. The flyer hit my tank with all his weapons - but failed to even glance my tank. Wasted jink there. As I noticed with my Thousand Sons, the army's dominant psyker will dominate my psychic phase, and there will be less spells cast. I'm still curious how crazy Invisibility would be for the Eldar.

Next fortnight I'm going to try one of my less (or even zero) psychic armies - either the Rangers, the infantry IG, the mech infantry IG, or the armored company IG. Let's see what happens then. So far, I'm loving the 7th Ed Maelstrom games.

Keep them dice rolling ...