Bahzhakhain in Fourth Edition: How to Deal with the Structural Changes

The big change for the Biel-Tan army is the change of the force organizational chart back to its norm. We no longer can take our Scoprions, Banshees, and other elite aspect warriors in large numbers as troops. We now are forced to take the normal troop choices of craftworld vanilla. There have been many changes, however, to make the Biel-Tan army, and indeed the Eldar army itself, still function with deadly precision. It is my position that the Biel-Tan way has become even more effective and deadly because of these structural changes, once they are apparent. It is true that in smaller point games it may appear to be harder to cope with the lack of aspect warriors, and much easier in larger points were you only take the requisite troops choices. It merely takes different methods to play at these points levels, but this was true before 4th edition as well. Below I will try to address all of these issues and other to illustrate how to continue the Biel-Tan style and format, in this new structure.

In third edition almost all of our aspect warriors were found in the elites choice, and in 4th edition we have an additional elites choice, and an excellent one at that, this being the Harlequin Troupe. So from the onset it appears that it is going to be very hard to fit in all the precise tools we need from the elites choices. One thing that helped this was the movement of the Warp Spiders to the fast attack chart, opening up quite a bit of room there. Also guardian jetbike units were moved to troops, giving an additional choice there (helping make up for the loss of the FSoD as noted below) to take more Warp Spiders. These small changes help relieve quite a bit of the stress and crowding of our force organization chart when it comes to our aspect warriors.

Almost all of our units through the whole codex have been improved in some way. Aspect warriors most of all, have been refined to their particular roles, given stronger equipment and abilities to these ends, and have overall become far more deadly towards their particular targets. This helps compensate for the fewer aspect warriors that we can take, especially at lower points levels. Also the troop choices which we are now forced to take are far superior than in 3rd edition, and if used correctly, and not just to fill in for the lack of aspect warriors, they prove themselves often quite sufficient.

Here is the big part of the whole structural change. We are now required to take at least two troop choices made up of units we may never have wanted to take before in the first place. But the troop choices have been greatly improved so are not as much the ball and chain as many, including myself, suspected. Jetbikes are now Troop choices and are about 2/3 the cost, making them a much more practical choice. They are fast, they are resilient, and like the Dire Avengers they can take a toll on light infantry, light vehicles, and can lock enemies in CC. The Dire Avengers have taken huge increases as noted above and in their entry. We also have access to the Alaitoc pathfinders which against the right target can be very useful. As always I do not suggest solitary squads of rangers, or even pathfinders, unless you have a particular target in mind that they are fit for. Small groups of rangers/pathfinders will cause few deaths and lack the huge utility of their pinning weapons when found in small numbers. Note that this is not an argument against rangers/pathfinders, it is just a nudge into the path of using them correctly for their proper roles when misuse of rangers is a common mistake.

Mechanized Armies: This is where the troop choices really start pulling their weight. On top of the basic improvements to jetbikes and Dire Avengers, they open up a whole new role in the army. Well, yes the role existed before but now there is a larger and more capable availability. In my last battle I played a 1350pt battle against IG which had 2 jetbike squads, and a Dire Avenger squad in a Waveserpent. In previous battles I've had my IG opponent do a massive redeployment, shooting as he backpedals, making it much harder to chase them down and finish them, especially with my slower units such as scorpions. His actions doubled the requisite mobility on my part. To counter that this battle I had each of my jetbike squads turbo-boost into his flanks and because of their resilience and greater threat of my transports, I only lost one bike. These engaged smaller squads on the fringes (command squads, heavy weapon squads, and just those on the sides) to make a large damaging impact, and to disallow him to re-deploy to either flank.

Because of their firepower against light infantry they heavily damage squads before they charged them, and with their resilience they whittled down the guardsmen until they ran and were wiped. My Dire Avengers blade-stormed one squad in cover, charged it, wiped it, and consolidated into two enemy squads, thus eliminating the threat of three squads in one turn. All together it was like facing six fewer squads as my troop choices eradicated or locked enemy squads in CC. At the same time my aspect warriors, mini-council, and vehicles took down other units and threats, and then turned to the units locked down by my troop choices that weren't wiped by wounds or sweeping advances.

By using the strengths of these troop choices it was like fighting only one flank at a time and crushing it. While this is particularly fitting against light infantry targets such as tau/IG/orcs/tyranids/DE, it will still work against MEQ and tougher targets, as long as you pick your targets right (sending jetbikes against squads without rending or power weapons, possibly smaller squads, Dire Avengers against CC squads) and making the most of your heavy hitters, such as using your banshees on the ultramarine assault squad, the fire dragons on the terminator squad, etc. In this way the troops choices can hold their weight regardless of the target, and in effect making it so you don't always have to use your mobility to attack solitary enemies, or flanks, but take the offensive to even the toughest opponents by locking half of them down and crushing the other half. This is also excellent at stopping your opponents fast units from taking objectives, or even leaving their table quarter if you are lucky and play well.

That all aside, these units definitely still have the ability to tear lighter targets asunder, destroy the Leman Rus from behind, wipe an HQ squad in one turn, and all those other capabilities we look to our aspect warriors for when concerning MEQ, or larger squads. Our troops choices can do that too, as long as we look to the right kind of target, just like every other option in our army.

Playing at lower points levels:
In times of old many people used the FSoD (flamy squad of death) to fill up troop slots easily for few points, and make a good suicide unit. The FSoD was a five to six squad (typically) of storm guardians, often in a falcon, with two flamers, possibly a destructor warlock+witchblade, and possibly haywire grenades. This squad could pop out and take down twenty guardsmen, or a tank, or cause other significant damage that often times won their points back and caused major problems for the enemy. This squad is no longer possible, as the guardians are now a ten-man minimum baring them from falcons, requiring more points for the base squad, and an expensive Waveserpent. So we have lost a valuable troops choice, and a multi-role one at that! This was a big blow to many people. This and the combination of having to take the limited troops choices instead of our aspect warriors at the 1000pt and below arena makes things much more challenging. It is a different game. Units must be used much more conservatively as no matter what you do you're going to get about three marine kills per turn with a blade-storming Dire Avenger squad, about six to seven kills from a full squad of scatter War Walkers, which will be easily killed by return fire. To take down an army with much superior resilience you must depend on your assets. They are tough and very well equipped to kill you. You are fragile and equipped for a much lighter foe. You must use your mobility. Focusing your lighter fire all at once on a smaller opposition.

An example: You face a standard MEQ army. You do not have any Banshees, Fire Dragons, Harlequins, and but only four Starcannons found on your two War Walkers. You have a squad of six jetbikes, a mounted Dire Avenger squad, two War Walkers, two Vypers, and a Farseer. Everything is a large amount of your points total at this size of game. You need every last unit. You have excellent mobility, grabbing objectives would be easy but you cannot take the enemy head on. Your options lie in your mobility. You do have a considerable amount of firepower, large numbers of shots, just lacking AP3. The key is concentration of forces, and so as your enemy marches on the objectives you attack one flank and crush it. If you have time you can move onto the other flank and take it down too. Most marines do not have the mobility to catch you, to catch up to 36" star engines, 24" turbo boosting, 12+d6" jump troops. But they may try, and you use this to separate their army. They may send an assault squad at your Vypers. Let them come, and then descend with your Vypers, jetbikes, and War Walker fire. As they advance on the objectives you are whittling them down and they will want to get you. The key to taking resilient enemies is to kill them piecemeal and you can use your mobility to draw this out.

This is using your mobility to combine fire on a solitary foe, eradicating them. This is important when you cannot allocate squad A to enemy squad A, B to B and so on, your units must use their strengths and work together. Destruction is not even required, when you may out maneuver him to the objectives. These are basic rules that apply to 40k at any points level, but here they are paramount, with the structure changes and the lower points level.

The most famous tactic of the Biel-Tan is the fear and awe inspiring Bahzhakhain. This is the fast moving charge utilizing total mobility to allocate forces and crush the enemy completely. Most often we see this as a transport based army, with jet-bikes, and jump-troops. When the vehicle rules for 4th edition came out many stopped using this strategy, believing their vehicles were no longer worth it. "Flying coffin" being the term used most often. With the 4th edition codex I believe this to have changed. I believe the transport rush to be again fully viable, if not more so.

Transports Reborn:
The main point that makes this whole tactic workable again is the vectored engine. Yes many people advocate against them as another piece that just adds to the unnecessary cost of your transport. There are times when this is definitely true, but there is a place for it. If you are unable to hide your vehicles and they get shot at on the first turn, the vectored engines definitely help but where it becomes a godsend is on your first big rush. A vehicle destroyed result for skimmers means complete death. Those who do not die from the crash (which most do die) will die from being trapped in the wreckage; easily destroyed thereafter, especially as most of those being transported in the Eldar army are either close range shooting, or close combat units. But with vectored engines a vehicle has to either get a destroyed result (1/6 chance after actually getting a glancing hit, this often taking a considerable amount of firepower in itself) or get a shot-down result (another 1/6 chance, with the other 4 results besides the destroyed being meaningless) and if they do manage to get a crash result to get at the gooey innards they have to blow it up twice. Yes you may have lost your expensive 150pt transport but unless they survive and have bright lances, they're never going to make back their points anyway generally.

Their role is to get their cargo there intact. If they merely get shot down then the passengers can safely get out and charge next turn. Very...very few armies have the power to shoot down 4 transports 2 times in a 1500pt list, in one turn. The cost of the upgrade may seem like a lot for an upgrade, but look at it in the scope of for 3-4 vehicles in a 1500 point list. This doesn't make for 10% of your list and it may make the entire operation viable. Yes there are other upgrades that are important too; spirit stones, holo-fields where able, sometimes star engines. But we should all know that mobility is the most expensive thing in the game, more than resilience, and more than firepower. The Eldar thrive on it, and while you should never pay for upgrades in excess, there is a point when you should know its worth.

I don't advocate vectored engines on every vehicle all the time. I merely wish to illustrate that this gives a strong backbone to the Bahzhakhain transport rush. But it is not the only part. Many people believed that when our previous aspect warrior troops choices became elites, that it became too expensive and difficult to pack in enough power along with all these transports. There are a few things that save us from this.

The Hurdle of Troops Choices:
One being that jet-bikes are an excellent troops choice to take most of the time. Against light infantry they can cut swaths in enemy squads and are resilient enough to tackle large enemy squads until transported squads, or jump-pack squads arrive (and also have the possible role of occupying any heavy weapon squads that might be a risk to your transports). Against MEQ targets they are excellent at pursuing those troublesome Landspeeders, Rhinos, and the aforementioned heavy weapon squads. In the 4th edition codex this unit has become quite viable points wise. Because of their mobility and troops choice status they fit in very well in the Bahzhakhain army structure. Also their resilience can attract those low AP weapons that often target vehicles. Many of my opponents realize they cannot down the vehicle in a worthwhile way, so just shoot at my non-vehicle based units until my troops disembark. This is perfectly fine with me.

Another very viable troops choice is the Dire Avengers. These work very well in a Serpent of Fury format, and when used against horde armies I haven't felt a lack for the heavier duty Scorpions in that sector of battle. With these two units, which are actually cheaper than aspect warriors and can fill many of the same roles, I find that the handicap from the structural change of the army choices can be easily overcome.

Non-Transported and Supporting Units:
The next point is our supporting and non-transport based units. Our Warp Spiders, as mentioned in their unit entry, are now a Fast Attack choice, and so are much easier to include in our Bahzhakhain lists. Both the Warp Spiders and the Swooping Hawks took large increases to their ability to fight their respective foes. Sadly these are not Meq Killers, and against those kinds of opponents the Eldar will have to continue to use our mobility and focusing of force. But either way, these two options work very well for deep striking in, or coming up the board 12"+ at a time. They host a large amount of firepower and are as much of a threat to horde opponents as your transported units. While Vypers are still good cover fire, I find that the boost to the other fast attack units is more worthy, and that the new jet-bikes fill the same role better (ie; do it, and do it from your troops section), though having more vehicles for your opponent to have to deal with does make the vehicle saturation harder to deal with.

The Eldar army as a whole has shifted from close combat domination to close action fighting (short range shooting), and some of our bigger guns. There have been considerable increases to the abilities of Swooping Hawks, Dire Avengers, Warp Spiders, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, the Wraithlord, the Fire Prism, and others. And yes, while we have increases to all the close combat aspects, and units like the Harlequins, and improved Shinning Spears, the overall format of the Eldar army has become much more conducive to the above mentioned units. The 4th edition rules limited many of us to this army instead of our expensive and well painted Waveserpents, but now with a 4th edition codex that makes the transport army viable again we have many flavours of Biel-Tan and the Bahzhakhain that are intensely competitive. With the avatar, new wraithguard, and various other units and unit changes, a footslogging Biel-Tan is something to be feared. Try them all and realize that you are no longer limited to any single one to have an effective force. I have used all of them and enjoyed them a lot, though my style will always be mechanized in one form or another. 4th edition has given us much freedom.