An uphill battle: Taking on the Aeldari

 For my first 10th game using the Leviathan mission pack, I was facing the Craftworld Eldar - but the new Aeldari index is very clearly overpowered in many ways, so a list was made that we hoped was possible to play against for the Votann in their current state. 

For the Votann, I picked a fairly straightforward list, with 4 squads of hearthkyn, two squads of hearthguard, three units of bikes and four sagitaurs. They were led by two kahls and two einhyr champions.

They were facing an eldar list with lots of wraiths, but no silly devastating wounds tricks apart from Illic. (Which turned out to be bad enough as he and his rangers killed a Kahl before he even could gaze judgingly at them.) 

The game was good, although a lot of mistakes were made - and the Eldar player did not play particularily well, forgetting his stratagems and ending the game on 9 unspent CP. With that AND a low-powered eldar list, however, the Votann were able to just barely eke out a win.

Some takeaways from the game:

• Picked a Wraithlord for the starting 2 tokens, which worked well. Took quite some focusing, but it went down in round 2. Opponent could have hidden it, but he opted to use it as it had some of his best ranged antitank. If he had hidden it, I would have had less CP, but also less incoming fire, which is likely to have worked out as well.
• A lone echamp is almost impossible for an elite army to screen out, and turned out to be both hideable and reasonably durable, mostly because the enemy wasnt in a position to deal with him with serious firepower. That said, a farseer very nearly killes him with eldritch storm. Used him with behind enemy lines and deploy teleport homers fixed secondaries.
• Speaking of behind enemy lines, even with short edge deployment it worked well. Pioneers and sagitaurs are wicked fast, and combined with deepstrike we have the tools.
• If you see a 10-man wraithblades-unit with a spiritseer, stay away from it as best you can, screen with hearthkyn warriors. I had nothing that could even remotely dream of harming it, but managed to mostly avoid it.
• Votann feel middling tough. Even our Hearhguard has nothing on the toughness of eldar wraith units. But it takes a bit of time to chew through us, especially when you flood the field with hearthguard combat squads.
• Plasma hearthguard felt so much more useful than the volkite guys. Could be because I was facing a tough army. But AP is so huge now.
• Many small units of hearthguard does NOT work to give you more tokens out there, as the same units tend to pick them up.
• Our damage output isn't really bad on average, but it is very swingy and chippy. With no rerolls, but many sources of sustained hits, we can do nothing or everything. 
• Lethal hits and Sustained hits 2 (remember that extra hits are not also lethal) active on a hearthguard unit firing its grenade launchers is amazing.
• Kahls die surprisingly fast to sniper fire. (Of course, Illic + fate dice had something to do with that.)