Striking Scorpions

My absolute favourite unit. Back in the old days when I started Eldar I played with guardians. I lost my faith in the Eldar’s combat ability- these guys brought it back.

I currently use the full squad of 10 with Exarch armed with scorpion claw, Stalker (a must), and now even Shadowstrike. A lot of people whine about how you should take the biting blade because it looks cool- I’m not opposed to chainsabres, but going back to S3 is a turn off, especially since hes meant to be the baddest mother. TAKE THE DAMN CRAB CLAW. Lets weigh up the scorpion claw against the biting blade:

Scorpion claw

-S6 always
-Ignores armour
-one handed so you get the +1 attack for CC weapon, wheras the biting blade is two-handed so you don’t
-even a built in shurican catapult, for some improved shooting
-will inflict an average of 2.8 wounds on ANYTHING T4 or less

Biting blade

-stikes at iniative order (Exarch is I6) wheras the scorp claw is at the end of the day just a power fist, so stikes last
-POTENTIAL S8 for insta-killing and tankbusting (but are scorps really a tank busting unit…?)
-will inflict an average 0.7 wounds on T4 marines, and 1.5 wounds on the guard equivalents with an armour save of 5+

in either case, the scorpion claw wins. the iniative order is almost irrelevant because anything the biting blade could take out is’nt going to have an iniative higher than 5 (orcs, gaunts, heck even guardsmen), and thats what the regular scorps are for. The bottom line is, you really do get your 10 points worth with a close combat monster exarch who can kill almost anything (remembering that his WS5, higher than marines and most other things, means he will almost always be hitting on 3’s. on the charge he gets 5 attacks ;D). I’ll do chainsabres another day, but I am definately interested in converting the model sometime. ANYWAY, now that I’ve cleared that up, onto the unit!

Needless to say, scorpions on the charge are terrifying. 36 S4 WS4 attacks, and after all that and they’ve finally fought back 5 S6 ones ignoring armour. If you charge them and you’re not I5, you’re going to get hit by a potential 27 of those WS, S 4 attacks, enough to halt the first assault (too bad the power weapon sarge always goes last ). They’re going to cause so many wounds, marines wil fail some saves and the exarch kills them on 2’s anyway! They probably are our most versatile aspect.

Infiltrating into cover piles on the pressure; don’t want to get within 12″ unless you’ve got some high I power weapons (reminiscent of banshees, ironically. I always thought Eldar would be good against other Eldar ;D). Stalker has proved itself invaluable to me time and again- don’t let anything get between them and the enemy, they rely on charging early so that they don’t sit around getting shot.

The loss of fleet is a shame, BUT THE 3+ SAVE IS A MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT ON 4+. Why the capitals? simply because where dire avengers and banshees get blown away, the scorpions go near unscaved. They can actually make saves against all the eldar-killers: heavy bolters, heavy flamers, even the unlucky assault cannon that did’nt rend (oh poor, poor assault cannon ). In combat, its a godsend. Once I actually won a round of combat against orks (who have’nt got power weapons) whilst horribly outnumbered and demoralised. Combined with the fact that the scorps go first anyway, they whittled down enough orks and the majority of their attacks just bounced off. Needless to say, he was very surprised!