Eldar Analysis - Fuegan

Yes, this post has taken a little while, however, since I opened the book to Fuegan's page to get some really deep impressions down, I have really been getting excited. I have always had a soft spot for one thing in particular in 40k. Hammer Units. With my Orks I ran 2 10 man squads of Nobz with Ghaz in one and a big ass Warboss in the other. With my Necrons I wanted to try a wave of Metal made up of enormous Warrior squads (that idea sucked). Even now with my Chaos Marines, I am running 2 squads with 35 attacks on the charge plus Daemon Weapons.

Fuegan awakened an avalanche of hammer possibilities, but more on that later. What does he actually do?
He has the basic Phoenix Lord Statline, Fleet, Eternal Warrior, Fearless, all that Jazz. He is the Pheonix Lord of the Fire Dragons, and as such, he comes with a Firepike, which is an 18" Meltagun. Combine this with his BS7 and his Fast Shot Exarch power (he fires the thing twice every turn) and even at range he's a brutal tank killing machine.

I say 'even' at range, because he also comes weighed down with a number of tank killing melee goodies too. First up, Melta Bombs. Next up, the Fire Axe, which is an Armourbane AP1 weapon, but then he does have 5 attacks on the charge and Crushing Blow which increases his strength. In addition, his Warlord Trait gives him and his unit Split Fire, which isn't bad, but I have a better idea.

First off, diving into his special rules, he has Feel No Pain. Pretty nice, makes him as durable as a Lone Wolf without the Storm Shield. Secondly, he has a rule entitled 'Unquenchable Resolve'. This means that whenever Fuegan suffers one or more wounds in a single phase, he gets a permanent boost to his Strength and Attacks. So hurt him and he's already insta-gibbing your Dark Eldar/Eldar HQs.

Now, this is what got me thinking. Sure, he becomes more of a beatstick, but he's much more likely to die as he's losing wounds. However, if you give him his wounds back, he still keeps the Strength and Attack boost. Eldar don't really have access to Biomancy, however, they do have the Runes of Battle, and one of their powers Renewer/Destructor, allows you to restore wounds from 18" away, and as a Blessing you don't need Line of Sight. Then, if you don't need to rejuvenate Fuegan's wounds, you can fry stuff instead.

However, with just a small Warlock Council I can't guarantee that I'll get the power that I need (I probably only need it once). Therefore, I decided to take a whole Seer Council of 10. However, it also needs to be useful, so I rammed them all on Bikes as well to make a 500pt hammer, they're still a pretty good hammer unit, but for their points that cannot be their sole use anymore, but we'll get to that later on. You also need a Farseer to take them, so I also picked up a Farseer and put that on a Bike too.

So it's all well and good that I have one big threatening unit and the ability to rejuvenate Fuegan. But firstly, I need to make sure that my opponent will shoot at the guy, and secondly, I need to make sure that they won't shoot him so much that he'll die before I can help him. I needed a squad that I could put him into, so that he could pass off wounds and be a part of a unit so threatening that they need to be removed. Grotesques anyone?

I get majority Toughness 5, making Fuegan, who will be a 2+/FNP tank standing at the front of the unit taking a wound and then passing the rest off as he has been fed. Plus, I get a crap load of attacks on the charge.

Then there's another problem, the Grotesque squad is slow, I need to be able to get them into combat stuff. The Council and its enormous threat range can go some way to herding the enemy towards them with their massive threat range but I need more, plus I need some scoring.

Enter Windrider Jetbikes, I'm taking 3 squads of 6 with 2 Shuriken Cannons each, they provide decent fire support and are extremely quick.

The problem then is that my opponent can then just pick off my scoring as I only have 18 T4 3+ bodies on the board. I also need a Troops and HQ slot to make the Dark Eldar allies legal. So, I slam in a regular Haemonculus and a 5 strong squad of Wracks to wander onto the board late game and hold my home objective, although the Haemonculus will probably just go with the Grotesques.

I haven't tried this list yet so it could but utter trash, but you can tell that when playing against it your target priority has to be impeccable. Do you go after the Grotesques or the squad which is enabling the Grotesques (which could well be Fortuned). If it's an objectives game do you try to pick off the Troops because I'm going to use terrain to hide them so in order to get a good shot off at them you'll be forced to put yourself in an undesirable position by moving forward, and Fuegan is still pretty strong even if you don't shoot him.

But back to the original point, Fuegan is definitely an expensive character, and again isn't something that you can just throw into a list and everything will be better (Eldrad). He is definitely something that you need to build a list around in order to be effective. For the example above, I'll let you know the results on Monday.

If you're looking for some more Fuegan action though. I'd thoroughly recommend PerpetuallyThwarted.blogspot.co.uk (a link can be found on the left hand side of the screen). Meatshield over there always writes good stuff and he has some more good points to make on Fuegan in his latest post (28/06/2013).