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Eldar Tau
Control Tournament Quality
A surprisingly strong all-round deck. Use mobility to force your opponent to overcommit to the first planet, then nuke them with a Doom. Or exhaust their warlord with a Harlequin, and then assassinate him. Build momentum and snowball planets by having your Wildriders and jetbikes leave the first planet once you've secured it, avoiding sending them to HQ, so they'll be ready to fight again next round.
And with a good number of 2-hammer command units, you're guaranteed a reasonable income of cards and resources, and may even be able to choke your opponent. Whatever they try to do, you've got a way to respond to it.
The basic strategy of this deck is to force your opponent to constantly make tough decisions all the time.
Your mobility allows you to threaten the first planet every turn (forcing your opponent to overcommit if they want to take it), while moving most of your units to the second planet if the first planet is secure (letting you build momentum), and also gives you a good chance at hunting down the enemy warlord. Use your mobility to make your opponent paranoid, forcing them to use their units suboptimally. Then capitalize on whatever weaknesses they open up. The deck has enough 2-hammer units to squeeze your opponent command-wise as well.
Doom is surprisingly useful, despite its cost. With so many mobile units, you can usually avoid sending any units to your HQ, and because of the reach of your units, your opponent is typically forced to overcommit to the first planet if they want to win it, which means you can nuke them with a Doom once they return to HQ. Especially against swarm decks, this is a lifesaver.
The Shrouded Harlequin is one of the key enablers of this deck as a hunt deck. You can put it at the first planet, forcing the opponent to kill it if they want the planet, or if necessary, you can kill it yourself by giving another unit a jetbike and jumping to its planet, dealing the Harlequin a damage. Then use its interrupt to exhaust the enemy warlord.
Seers Exodus is there in lieu of Nullify (the cost of Nullify is steep, as Baharroth is the only unique unit, and he is not a warlord you want to exhaust needlessly), and it allows some really surprising moves. You can use it defensively to bail out your entire army if your opponent plays a Preemptive Barrage, or trick your opponent into believing he can bloody you. It can also be used offensively, allowing you to jump into a battle where you're severely outnumbered. Your opponent will never see it coming (you don't expect your opponent's warlord to go on seeming suicide runs), and then you fire off your couple of attacks (perhaps staying just long enough for your Vyper to hit their warlord for 5), and then bail out with an Exodus.
Eldar Survivalists are used instead of the neutral command units, partly to conserve deck space, but also as warlord bait. You've got enough strong command units that you can probably keep winning command at the planet where your survivalists are, so your opponent will really want to commit there to take it out. And that means you might be able to set up a trap, moving mobile units there as soon as he commits, in an attempt to bloody or kill him. Alternatively, give the survivalist a jetpack and just have fun.
While Baharroth used to be incredibly mentally taxing to play, I've actually found this deck to put that burden on your opponent instead. You just have to place all your mobile units where they can reach the potential hotspots (the first planet, and whereever their warlord might want to go), and then you just sit back and smile and wait while your opponent tries to work out how to play around your mobility. They *will* make mistakes.
The deck has relatively few units, but I haven't found this to be a major problem. You may need to mulligan if your starting hand is too unit-starved, but once the game gets going, your units gain a huge amount of staying power through mobility. If a battle is a lost cause, don't go there, and you've lost nothing. And your Wildriders can often avoid going to HQ after winning first planet, allowing them to be reused immediately next round. You really don't need a huge number of units if the units you have can go where they're needed, and avoid getting killed.
3 Comments
My only question is on Promotion. Does it do much for the deck? I'd wonder about replacing it with Ion Rifle?
It might be worth a shot. The reason I included Promotion was mostly that with relatively few cheap command units, I wanted to make sure that I could actually win command on the planets I went for, but so far promotion has rarely been necessary.
The problem with Ion Rifle is that there aren't a whole lot of great targets for it. The Hawks and Wraithguard all have a measly 2hp, so they get shot down if they ever present too much of a threat, and and I think that resource and card could be better spent beefing up the Wildriders. I'd be more inclined to swap the promotions for additional DDS and Starcannon (or perhaps just adding some more fighting units.) Even the Odds is another one that might be worth considering.
Alternatively, I could throw in an Ambush Platform (again; I used to have one of those, but removed it to get down to 50 cards), which would make Ion Rifle a lot more appealing.
Calculated Strike is tempting as well, but... it's not an attachment, which means it waters down the ECT's and For the Tau'va a bit, and it's only really useful against AM. That might be a worthwhile trade, though.
There's plenty of room for experimentation. I've only played 8 games or so with this deck, so I'm sure it can still be improved.