Philosophy of the Bahzhakhain

My personal philosophy of play is almost completely swordwind. The essence of swordwind is to maintain the initiative and give your opponent too many threats to deal with at once.

To gain the initiative does not always mean striking immediately with everything you have, this is actually quite often detrimental to your efforts. Tsun tzu speaks with much weight on the topic of waiting until conditions are right to attack.

In one game where three of us were playing the carnage scenario I kept my harlequins sequestered in the ruins of a building until the third turn, on which I ran, used fleet of foot, assaulted, and then consolidated onto the objective. By doing this, in one turn I was on the objective, with the opponents between me and the objective dead, and myself behind cover. By not attacking immediately I caused both of my opponents to not see me as a large a threat to them as each other, so they spent the first two turns wearing each other down and setting up their troops so that I could execute the above maneuver.

In most cases I make heavy use of CTM vehicles, bright lances, and other ranged weapons to safely take out key enemy units before engaging full scale against the opposing forces, which would be risky if not plain costly if they still had certain units, such as anti-tank units, vehicles, or various utility units. By this you do not necessarily loose the initiative, you are merely waiting for the right time to take it.

Next comes taking the initiative. This does not, as I mentioned before, require lunging at your opponent from the start. It may be gained by either attacking aggressively, picking off your opponent then counter attacking viciously, or by some means of picking off specific enemy units such as transports, or various other units which pose the most threat to you, which robs the opponent of the initiative. Without the initiative you are subject to your opponent attacking what threatens them most, and you must defend yourself, which is rarely the preferable position.

And then what is most clearly synonymous with biel-tan is giving your opponent more threats than they can deal with at once, however most interpret this as a largely mechanized and close combat based attack. By giving your opponent more than they can deal with at once it stops them from being able to focus more than one squad at a time on one of yours except with exorbitant cost. This is done, not only with close combat units, but with ranged squads as well. By using the combined force of ranged weapons and close combat units you eliminate enemy units which threaten you (which means braking the enemy, destroying them, or any other means of removing them from a high efficiency such as heavily wounding them), and/or get into the haven of close combat to do your damage so that your opponents ranged weapons do not affect you.

I have seen biel-tan armies, which are almost completely range based, and those, which are mechanized and are either ranged or close combat specialized. It is not rare to see the occasional counter assault army as well, but you usually find a mix of ranged and close combat either way. Biel-tan is not bound to any particular 'pure' form of practice. The key is making the enemy fight your way; with either speed, range, and highly elite warriors.

This is an analysis on the Eldar army for the game of Warhammer 40,000 and does not assume ownership or rights of Games Workshop intellectual property.