I've noticed here on dakka a decline in the number of Eldar lists and tactics. Also, at my FLGS there are suddenly no Eldar players. Is there something wrong with them that is making them unplayable?

They took a hit with 6th, and with every faq they take another one. My brother plays them but only becasue its his only army and he can't afford anything else.

He struggles but its not impossible, you have to be really careful how you play, most games are close but he mostly narrowly looses.

I'm curious, does he play mechdar?

I just put together an Eldar army and have not had much luck on this site getting advice. Seems like only a few people so far

At my FLGS the vet eldar player is STILL steam rolling everyone else. Sure, he uses IA, but he is allowed. We have a youngblood with footdar and vypers..Also a very good player already.
They havn't become unplayable.

I switched to Orks in '08, but I still play Eldar if I'm feeling froggy. It was easier before, but since when (aside from before the fall) has the Path of The Guardian been easy.

Some of my advice to Eldar Players
-Farseer
-Fragons

I also Reapers, Some people don't like them but I never go into battle w/ out reapers. If you can stay out of range of Marines you can slaughter them.

There are still 1 or 2 at my FLGS, Eldar are also getting fielded alot as allies for Tau and DE for a Farseer with RoW as a psychic defense.

 ghastli wrote:
I'm curious, does he play mechdar?

Nope, footdar, and now looking at dark eldar allies. Our gaming group is mostly marines, so he uses two squads of dark reapers to good effect. Fire dragons he uses less now than 5th because of a bigger shift towards foot lists. Always fill the hq slots with avatar and eldrad, wraithguard he uses sometimes to good effect aswell.

I still play Eldar, but I don't play them as often as I used too. I'm by no means a power gamer, but every FAQ they get kicked even harder for no apparent reason, and it makes it really discouraging to play sometimes when you know that every single game is going to be a total uphill battle (especially considering I usually play against CSM, GK, SW, C:SM and IG, all of which are much more powerful than Eldar).

I bring out the old wraithwall every now and again. usually when I'm in a hurry and I don't want to haul a big box of minis around. 2000 points fits easily in a hammerhead box.

Besides the fact that they took a nerf with 6th, the codex is really old and the different editions its seen haven't done anything to change which units are good and which suck.

What this means is that lists haven't really changed all that much since the codex came out. Only minor tweaks were needed to adapt to changes in the meta.

Fritz (WayOfSaimHan on youtube) plays Eldar, he also makes Eldar tactics videos, among others. I also watch his Black Templar tactics videos and so on.

You can win but pretty much ever advantage we had was given to imperial players.

We had special rules to counter balance the fragile nature and points in the dex, but now everyone has a cheap counter or a unit that does the exact same thing but better.

Wave serpents were the last bastion of hope and 6th made them laughably easy to kill. It went from needing 36 krak grenade attacks to kill it down to 9.

I think part of the problem is that they're a very knife-edge army, a few wrong choices and a list can be total garbage, as such only vets and masochists dare play them.

Also the transition to 6th has had a fairly massive effect on the viability of a lot of the codex, previously good or at least average units are useless (Banshees), previously bad / ineffective units suddenly have new-found uses (spiders, reapers).

For people who have invested in the wrong things or are stuck in their ways its easy to not be able to see that Their Eldar Doesn't Work =/= Eldar Don't Work.

Nobody plays Eldar for two reasons:

1) Old codex that hasn't adapted well. You can still win, but you'll have few options for winning (since so many units are weak) and you'll have to work hard to overcome the age of your codex. Most people don't want to bother with trying to compensate for GW's poor updating system, so they just play newer armies.

2) Finecast. Good luck getting those nice fire dragons when it'll probably take you a couple years of sending miscasts back to GW before you finally get them to ship you enough intact pieces to make a full unit.

Well, Eldar was my main army in the editions 3 to 5. But now I've shelved it since there are better armies out there.

I am starting Eldar!
I wanted to stick with a Wraith-army (Avatar Wraithseer Wraithguards and Wraithlords, with some Nightwings and Shadow Spectres). But things are going out of control (again) and I am gathering a full army.

I know it won't be easy, but it wasn't easy with Tau to start with (even if they got some indirect buff with the 6th edition).

My current regular FLGS "enemies" are CSM / IG / Salamanders player, Ork player, BA player and the infamous GK / Necron player (which fortunately struggles a lot to win against my Tau, 60% times he gets beaten but it's damn hard to pull tricks down my sleeve and I extensively use fw models).

I feel like they could be really good in 6th because of the premeasuiring. A buddy of mine had an nigh unbeatable mechdar list in 5th because he was really good at judging distances. He would dance out of range and pounce once you were whittled down to a manageable number for his doom/guide bladestorming DA. I feel like the potential for that type of play is much greater now.

I still play Eldar and still building my army with a moderate amount of success. I hold my own against Necrons and Chaos.

Next thursday I am testing against the brand new Dark Angels.

Eldar have suffered with each rules change because they are ultimately an army of specialists. Most units in the list do one or two things really well, yet suffer with every other role. While they were good in 4th, as editions changed and rules started to work differently, things that certain units lost the ability to do what they were intended to do. One example are Howling Banshees. In 4th and 5th they were designs as anti-MEQ/TEQ assault units, they were fast and lightly armored, but got power weapons and a high initiative to win those combats. However, changes to transport rules, assault (such as the introduction of overwatch) and most importantly, the changes to power weapons, left them unable to adequately fill the niche they were designed for. Interestingly enough, the few Eldar units that have remained good are their more generalist choices, and things like Fire Dragons which will always have vehicles to blow up. This more than anything is what is makes Eldar arguably the weakest codex in the current metagame, even more so that their out of date pricing structure (as is the case with all 4th edition codices. For example, if you compare the 4th edition C:SM to the new DA book, an equivalently equipped tactical squad between 1 and 2 points less per model, and most non-land raided transports got at least 15 points cheaper with 5th editions.

Eldar are by-in-large, Guardsmen with slightly better to-hit skills, with expensive wargear. In GW land, this makes them cost the same (or sometimes more) than a MEQ. Eldar can NOT win the attrition game and have to rely on concentrating force on a portion of the enemy army - smashing it down to a size that it can't retaliate properly.

Three things hampered this a lot between the Eldar's last glory days in 3rd up to 6th.

1. Changes to vehicles. Namely, no charges after disembarks, and revisions to LOS blocking for skimmers. The Waveserpent is grossly expensive for something that has such terrible synergy with half the army.

2. Charge what you shoot. This really weakened elite heavy armies by artificially restricting how many targets your expensive unit could engage a turn.

3. No consolidating into combat. Again, this hurts the expensive t-shirt wearing specialist armies.

Combining 1-3 meant that pretty much all the c/c units in the Eldar army were made sub par as they can't cross the battlefied without getting shot to pieces and transports still meant they were usually exposed to one turn of fire that they can not weather.

Thecodex is also filled with expensive units with no role: i.e. swooping hawks and their long range lasguns / frag. Warp Spiders and their high powered anti-light-infantry weapons.

Regal Phantom covered a lot of the items... but the biggest problems that face the Eldar are:

They are an army that is based on "exceptions" to the main rules. Change the main rules and you throw any semblance of balance in the book out the window. On top of that, they pay dearly in points values for these "powers", regardless of whether they are relevant in the current ruleset.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
-edit 2- by glory days, I mean the days when you could field a varied selection of the codex, and not an army consisting of the last half dozen viable entries.

It may actually be a good time to invest in Eldar, with their current play value so low and rumors of an updated codex later this year.

I run eldar as my primary army. Took 1st last tourney and almost every tourney im top 5 of ~40.

6th was unkind to C:Eldar. Thankfully it buffed Corsairs quite a bit. I run with Corsair allies and Forgeworld slotted items for Eldar to make up for the problems eldar have with fliers and ranged AT.

I still play my Eldar, but since I don't have any FW for them it tends to gravitate to mostly the same list. I tried to use vehicles, but they are just too expensive for what they bring so it's mostly footdar for me now.

Problem is we're so fragile and our long range units doubly so.

When I'm up against Necrons for instance they can do everything we can, but are more durable to boot.

Still play them. My mechanized style of play in 5th edition did not play very well in 6th, but after a lot of games with them and a few tourneys, they play ok. Overall, the points costs are too high compared to newer codexes, but the codex still holds up. I finally placed well in our last tourney (20 players) by going 2-1 and taking home the best painted army award.

Locally, we have 4 players that use them as their primary army.

All excellent points but I would like to add:

- Underpowered weapons in the main or short ranged.

- Inability to add decent long range heavy weapons to most units without BS3, with the exception of the wraithlord. All the long range heavies (except Dark Reapers) are on guardian platforms, artillery platforms, etc.

- Costings are outdated and too high, compare to Dark Eldar and see what you get for your points.

- Previously incredibly powerful psykers are now so-so.

- Mediocre troop choices. Dire Avengers need a heavy weapon choice.

- Unit sizes of most elites, etc too small in the modern game, e.g. only 5 Dark Reapers maximum?

- HQs need eternal warrior or death by insta-kill beckons.

- Low T + rubbish armour = weak army.

- Fleet has been nerfed in 6th ed which was a major Eldar advantage.

I want Eldar to be significantly improved in terms of ability and power levels. They should be a high-tech, highly elite force with strong weapons and tough armour, but very expensive points wise. That fits the fluff. A weak army in which every unit is easily killable makes battle a suicidal proposition for the Eldar.

I disagree about the dire avengers. Being limited to only shuriken catapults, it reaffirms their role as strickly anti infantry and the occasional monstrous creature. Access to heavy weapons tempts you to grab something different than their primary role to increase "flexibility". Like you said, it is an army of specialists.

One thing I completely agree with however is the cost of units. Why are guardians 85 points minimum for a squad with t3 and 5+ armor and the same number of guardsman are 50 points?

I don't know much about Eldar or their point costs for the table-top but don't all Eldar (fluff-wise) have passive psyker abilities? I would like to see a truly psyker based army that translates into the game (Not GK).

Obviously nothing over the top, but having defensive/passive/offensive psyker abilities available for all of their troops would be quite interesting plus it would give an edge most other armies wouldn't be able to field.

To add to this, taking away psyker tests would also give them an edge against other armies?

I'm just throwing ideas out there.

I am halfway through painting an Eldar army, and I like them, though my opinion is pretty moot as my buddy and I plan on sticking with 4th/5th edition rules and armies. And before and "you just like the older rules just for the broken skimmers rules" complaints, I have a whopping two skimmers, which are used primarily as Wave Serpents to ferry around the foot elements of my army that aren't mounted on jetbikes.

I think most people have a problem with them as they expect the same game play out of them as Imperial Guard or Space marine armies, which if Eldar are used the same way, will make them look idiotically sub-par with tissue paper armor.

As for the ever-more idiotically expensive and brittle Eldar Finecast, that is easy to avoid with Ebay. I only truly started the army last spring, and I have squads of metal Rangers, Dark Reapers, Howling Banshees, and Wraithguard, just by purchasing OOP minis. In addition my Swooping Hawks are just plastic DE Scourges armed with the basic carbine firearm as counts-as Swooping Hawks, and my Shining Spears are DE etbikes with Dark Elf spear arms. (my army is made with a more savage piratical look in mind).

The advantage of the Eldar model line being old and rarely updated is that Ebay is positively filled with them, at least

Although Wraithguard often seem to go for more than retail.

I'd like to point out that even though they've taken a LOT of nerfs over the years, it's still very possible to win with them given the right list and good strategy. My record with Eldar is probably still higher than with my CSM, even with lots of vehicles and sub-optimal units. I do play against players that aren't overly competitive though, so it helps that I'm not facing flyerspam armies or other brutal lists.

You just have to really think about how you move your troops around and your target priority with Eldar. Before I do anything with them, I like to quickly take a look at the table and go through a couple of scenarios and try and determine the best course of action. Lots of times there are no good options and you just have to go somewhere and hope that they whiff some rolls or that you manage to kill more than you expect. Keep in mind that my rolls are average at best, so if I'm able to win games with them, others should be able to as well.

Still though, I am absolutely looking forward to a new codex. Even if it's underpowered compared to other 6th edition books, it really couldn't be much worse, so pretty much anything will be an improvement.

I play Eldar and did have to adjust my style when 6th hit, but they are by no means unplayable. It just takes a lot of practice and thought to win games. One also needs to have a very good weave between the units in your army. So yes, people still play Eldar

The advantage of the Eldar model line being old and rarely updated is that Ebay is positively filled with them, at least

Definitely. I personally love the 2nd edition aesthetic of the eldar models (maybe it's nostalgia), so my army focuses heavily on that. My wife bought me a 10-man Ranger collection off ebay for Christmas ( the leader has a power sword, and one is dual-wielding laspistols, ) and my Howling Banshees are all wielding Laspistols, too, .

Great comments guys.

Like all armies they can win using the right tactics and good unit selection. However, I genuinely think they are humbled now. I have four armies and the other three (nids, GK and CSM) seem to be ok still. I have noticed a definite weakening of the Eldar in 6th ed. You always had to use them like chess pieces, carefully matching units to opponents. However, this has become much harder.

Love the passive psyker idea. Eldar need a USP. DE have pain tokens, Eldar need something to make them different. They were the mobile army par excellence, now they are not. Nerfs for skimmers and fleet have hammered the Eldar's offensive capability. That leaves mostly short ranged shooting which is hardly ideal.

I am not bitching about the rules. I don't rage about anything. I just think that the changes have made life hard for the Eldar and they need a refresh to make them competitive again. They don't need a super makeover to make them the hardest top army but they do need some tweaks to iron out the problems. I also think the units and choices need some new blood and new choices. A flyer is urgent indeed and should not be long, I personally dislike the fudge of taking fortifications just to get hold of quad lasers, proper AA capability is required, Eldar not purloined human stuff.

Anyone who plays regularly with eldar becomes a very good player/tactician quite quickly. You have to due to their fragile but hard hitting nature.

These skills are easily translatable for other armies and believe me a space marine player who uses eldar like tactics with the right force is a true "Angel of Death"!

 monkeypuzzle wrote:
Anyone who plays regularly with eldar becomes a very good player/tactician quite quickly. You have to due to their fragile but hard hitting nature.

These skills are easily translatable for other armies and believe me a space marine player who uses eldar like tactics with the right force is a true "Angel of Death"!

I absolutely agree but then I am a tactician anyway, by which I don't mean I'm some genius I mean I prefer to play by tactical means than by picking the best units and spamming them. I enjoy the challenge of taking units that are generally poorly thought of (e.g. shining spears, biovores, etc) and making them work in a battle. I make extensive use of guardians and many people I know hold the attitude that you should never, ever use guardians!

Guardians represent!

So Eldar have a few problems at the moment:

- Units priced for two editions ago
- Didn't recieve any of the buffs 6th brought very well
- Lack of quality assault troops

Now none of these are completely unassailable but it does put them behind the curve. I was having this discussion IRL with one of our fellow dakkanauts recently and their biggest issue for me is the lack of assault troops. The lack of assault transports leaves their T3 asses hanging out in the wind and makes even counter assault tricky. Now the Eldar pitch has always been "Their arrogance is matched only by their firepower" but not having a solid assault presence hurts. Scorpions can pull their weight against light infantry like Ork's or Gaunts but i've never been sold on Harlies, their shrouded save helps get there a little but in combat a T3 5++ model doesn't last long. Banshee's are hardest hit by the new assault rules with no infiltrate, psi defence or assault transport as well as going AP3 and so have all but disappeared.

This leaves them with only one recourse, their "legendary" firepower. Shuriken catapults have been hit every update with a nerf since their glory days in 2nd Ed where they were superior to a stormbolter and that has sort of set the tone for the army. Eldar have generally been handed "superior" versions of weapons based on their advanced technology which in tabletop terms are simply worse than their Imperial counterparts. For this they pay high points costs and have low toughness.

The dex is in need of an update, it's special rule driven power has since faded with editions and the races strengths have fallen into ruin. You can still play them at the beer and pretzels levels, you're low tier even there but you can still play the arrogant fallen masters of the galaxy and win. At the competetive level however Eldar have fallen too far behind the times and exist now only to put psi defence on the table for those more capable races who call them Brother....

As an aside, adding FW products breathes some serious new life into them, adding flyers, some solid core troops, BS4 versions of their vehicles (Seriously GW, there is no tank aspect?) and generally giving them some bite back. The Corsairs and attendant add on's sadly create a far more Eldar feeling force than the codex does. It moves fast, hits hard and packs high tech toys.

So yes, people still play Eldar, we lurk in the dark spaces, biding our time, waiting for the strands of fate to come together that we may ascend again. I think however GW needs to be very careful, if this hopefully May did I see, update doesn't bring them back from the brink then one of the great and classic races could fall into the same play levels and obscurity as SoB. 6 years without an update is a long time, a lackluster release with a potential 6 more before update could do what Slaanesh could not.

Footdar is still viable everywhere except the WAAC level, just an uphill battle as people say.

Mechdar is only viable right now as allies. Farseers going around on jetbikes guiding my Firewarriors with markerlights puts da(sorry i just painted some orks for my youger brother) hurt on the DOOMED targets. Especially when they got some outflanking kroot or walkers breathing down their backs, and are going to be assualted by jetbikes next phase. Eldar and tau work well together, because tau doctrine dictates the elimination of targets in a methodical way, and eldar can't survive counterpunches, so the eldar can be used as a way of enhancing the abilities of the cadre, as well as diversionary units(just might make swooping hawks NOT god aweful)

I started playing again in 5th ed and collected an Eldar army, I have about 4k in points now and have everything in the codex. I enjoyed 5th ed, it wasn't without its problems but I am getting my arse kicked in 6th.

My opponents have GK and BA, the severe lack of half decent assault troops really hampers me. I didn't really take Wraithguard in 5th ed but they have become invaluble in 6th as they are the only survivable unit we have. Transports are useless and everything else dies unless hiding in cover. "Shoot them" I hear you cry, tried that but due to short ranged weapons, new assault rules and night fighting he was stuck into combat by turn 2 with very few casualties, tearing me apart piece by piece.

I have found that I'm using the same choices over and over, which disappoints me as there is such a colorful choice of units to choose from, but most are garbage due to the hits we've taken which have already been covered in the thread.

The only units I can rely on at the moment are Reapers (warlord with ignores cover makes them awesome), Rangers and Wraithguard.

I've only played a few games and got spanked on my first two and managed a win when team up with the GK player. They are still viable if you want to use the same unit choice every game, but I didn't choose an Eldar army to do that.

We can but hope that the new codex improves the army rules and brings the points cost down a lot. I still play with them as I'm not overly competitive and the fact I've spent a fortune on them and can't afford a new army

I still use my Harlequin army from time to time, but I don;t really care about winning and that sort of thing. Just getting a decent scenario sorted for the game is enough for me.

Noone plays Eldar at my club since 6ed as the army is almost as underpowered as Orks. I think Eldar and Dark Eldar should pick there table edge and if they will go 1st or 2nd

Mind War should be a Warlock power and Conceal should be a Farseer power and all Eldar unit ( but not Dark Eldar ) should have Embolden.
Wraithguard should have a power weapon or be 25pts ether would be good and Dark Reapers need there unit size change to 10.
Farseer should be 1-2 per HQ
just so you dont need to take Eldrad Ulthran in every game

I feel this would not fix the codex but make it playable in 6ed

Both of the most active Eldar players in my locale have switched to Tyranids.

I did hear Nids are playable again, but :( the best Nid player at my club sold his army after playing a few games of 5ed.

Having played against the space elves in their skimmer hayday I take no small amount of joy in there current stature. However I don't think there unplayable. They've always been an army that excelled at taking out small elite armys. Medium ranged, truly lethal firepower that's highly maneuvarable was always there specialty. Going ork crazy and rushing the enemy only worked when thier current codex was new.

Id say leave there points cost alone but jack up their power. An extra shot for the shooty stuff & a extra attack for the choppy stuff. Maybe another special rule here & there. They were always the "special" guys, but that's s.o.p. for elfs.

Oh & for gawd's sake will they please take the nerf hammer to the wraithlord? Its been 25 frckn years of those pieces of OP nonsense. The eldar are supposed to be agile BUT fragile. Squads of space elf MCs are BS.

You're kidding right? Wraihtlords were amazing in 3rd and even then a good general could deal with them, when rending came out in 4th it made them useless, and now everything and their mom is either poison or rending.

I saw an Eldar battleforce at a local store on sale the other day. They were trying to give it away by only asking $40US.

Even though I have and collect multiple armies (including DE) I still didn't buy it. Instead I picked up a Baneblade that will likely sit on my shelf forever (don't play apoc but it was a great deal and I impulse buy).

Now, why did I pass this over? Simple: the models look like ancient dated crap. Every single time I see those helmets all I can think about is the Coneheads.

As I am not gaming with the current Edition, my opinion isn't very valid, but as I see it, the latest Eldar codex was a perfect replacement for the 3rd edition Codex's hideously overpriced units, but has since been outstripped by the power creep and points value of the various armies since then.

Any of my 40K games are still set in the 4th edition era, and I like it for that (and no, I do not use skimmer-spam). But I can see my army getting torn a new one against 6e stuff, especially fliers, as I don't have access to Forgeworld.

Funny, everyone is switiching from to eldar to nids, i switched from nids to eldar. Nids have exactly 2 lists that are competitive and a total of about 10 units in the whole codex that can be played. I refuse to run tervigons due to the terrible fluff and mechanics they have, so therefore there is exactly 0 lists i can run.

Eldar have gone from a specilist army to an army of force multiplication. Gone are most of the specialist units and warlocks and harlequins are pretty much all that roam the field. GJB sometimes see combat, but spend most of the game hiding. War walkers and support platforms cower in the back, poking what they can. They need both a wargear buff and a cost reduction on a lot of units.

They need both a wargear buff and a cost reduction on a lot of units.

The bummer is that they already got that over the 3rd Edition codex. I remember 50pt Shining Spears and 35pt Guardian Jetbikes.

They were my first army and are still my one true love - but I haven't played them since early 5th ed - when the age of their codex was starting to show.

I wouldn't start them now - even WITH a new codex. As it is, they will be waiting for 7th ed at the earliest, and more than likely, will just be repurposed and renamed "ancient star-faring race of not-elves" for some other SF game.

clively wrote:
I saw an Eldar battleforce at a local store on sale the other day. They were trying to give it away by only asking $40US.

Even though I have and collect multiple armies (including DE) I still didn't buy it. Instead I picked up a Baneblade that will likely sit on my shelf forever (don't play apoc but it was a great deal and I impulse buy).

Now, why did I pass this over? Simple: the models look like ancient dated crap. Every single time I see those helmets all I can think about is the Coneheads.

If its still around ill buy it through you, depending on what it has!

 AegisGrimm wrote:

They need both a wargear buff and a cost reduction on a lot of units.

The bummer is that they already got that over the 3rd Edition codex. I remember 50pt Shining Spears and 35pt Guardian Jetbikes.

Been a long time since 3rd. Game has changed to the point of almost being a different game so many rules are different or added. Up to GK, eldar were decent but largely on the higher scale of cost. GK and Necrons were so undercosted for the power they upped the need for cost effectiveness to compete against them. Now with 6th eldar just got nerfed through rules changes. Points need decreased to compete with GK and crons, and the wargear needs changed to bring them into competition with the changes in 6th rules.

Just give me the 3rd ed codex with craftworld eldar built in and Im a happy camper.

Then again that would mean an army of fire dragons in crystal targeting matrix wave serpents armed with star cannons. But when comparing it to the insanity marines are getting today I wonder if it would be OP.

I think it would take a lot for Eldar to become overpowered in the current game climate.

They could start by giving them back the real Shuriken Catapult. So deadly it was that only half of the guardian squads could take it. That weapon alone made them killers in RT and 2nd ed. Find some way to make banshees and scorpions good again.

Their codex is just horrendously old. Almost everything is overcosted or just doesn't work properly. Add in the fact the majority of the range is finecast, and the sculpts are quite old.

I used to play them, but it's a very boring army. Half of the stuff is just unfieldable if you take interest in the actual game. The other half is still over-costed.

They really struggle for anti-tank too. It's almost impossible to get Str 8+ shooting at a reasonable price unless you're running Fire Dragons, who need an over-costed transport and end up being really expensive suicide squads. Most of the aspects are really bad: Scorpions don't have Anti-tank and the troops choices kill light infantry just fine, Howling Banshees need a Wave Serpent to not die before they get into combat, but not being able to assault out of one means they're going to die to bolter fire before they hit anything. Wraithguard are okay but very expensive, Swooping Hawks are one of the worst units in the game, Spiders are decent but suffer from a lack of wrange and Ap - on their guns, Shining Spears are just awful because they haven nowhere near enough killing power for an expensive elite assault squad, and Dark Reapers just don't put out enough shooting for their high points cost.

Griever wrote:
Their codex is just horrendously old. Almost everything is overcosted or just doesn't work properly. Add in the fact the majority of the range is finecast, and the sculpts are quite old.

I used to play them, but it's a very boring army. Half of the stuff is just unfieldable if you take interest in the actual game. The other half is still over-costed.

They really struggle for anti-tank too. It's almost impossible to get Str 8+ shooting at a reasonable price unless you're running Fire Dragons, who need an over-costed transport and end up being really expensive suicide squads. Most of the aspects are really bad: Scorpions don't have Anti-tank and the troops choices kill light infantry just fine, Howling Banshees need a Wave Serpent to not die before they get into combat, but not being able to assault out of one means they're going to die to bolter fire before they hit anything. Wraithguard are okay but very expensive, Swooping Hawks are one of the worst units in the game, Spiders are decent but suffer from a lack of wrange and Ap - on their guns, Shining Spears are just awful because they haven nowhere near enough killing power for an expensive elite assault squad, and Dark Reapers just don't put out enough shooting for their high points cost.

Doom and gloom!

Seriously, its not that bad. Its the Path of the Eldar; it's a different way of playing.

It is really quite simple. The eldar are a dying race who's soul is being devoured by slaanesh. Soooo GW decided to stop producing reasonably priced models for the army and not to update the "look" of the models.
This takes care of the dying but what about the soul? Well the rules changes in each edition and the faq nerf bat has now worked to turn the "fast" and "elite" eldar into a foot horde with a mix of walkers and large foot swarms of BS3 models. Not to mention every single unique thing the eldar had has now been given to another codex. Want psykers to "guide" units...SW libby with prescience. Want fast flyer/skimmer transports that deploy deadly plasma wielding death anywhere...IG with plas vets in vendettas. Want biker armies...C:SM or DA. Want S6 spam...Grey Knights (wait that is S7 so, er, better).

Honestly though the current GW eldar codex can be pretty competitive. However, there is really only variants on the warwalker build if you don't depend on allies to do all the heavy lifting. This combined with the lack of new/fresh models and no real "cheap" options has left the eldar players to die off much like the race they love.

Now FW has awesome eldar stuff that really does allow for a variety of different styles.

If GW just transferred the old craftworld eldar book to the current edition I would be estatic as that book had a huge number of options (some of which were ridiculous in that meta but would probably be subpar in the current meta).

I'm currently painting an Eldar army at the moment. When I am done I will play with it. If I don't like it, I may sell it

I mostly bought it for the banshees and harlies being cool models, and so I had an excuse to buy an Eldar titan at some point in the future

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think it would take a lot for Eldar to become overpowered in the current game climate.

There is actually a very easy way to throw them back near the top of the food chain, just make them amazingly good at dealing with aircraft (which matches the fluff that they fly circles around everyone in the air) and they become a hard counter to a number of top tier build . Give them a flier which specialises in dealing with other fliers (think re-rolls to hit/no jink/arrive behind you etc) and let Hawks assault fliers and they will do pretty well imo.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

They need both a wargear buff and a cost reduction on a lot of units.

The bummer is that they already got that over the 3rd Edition codex. I remember 50pt Shining Spears and 35pt Guardian Jetbikes.

Um what? There were a few points changes and wargear nerfs (I don't think anything got better), but they still weren't enough. The current codex is a great example of a 'cut and paste' codex/army book that GW occasionally produced pre 5th edition - they tweaked a few points costs, double nerfed the stuff noob MEQ players complained about (i.e Starcannons) and added a single new shiny unit for people (Harlies) to buy then threw it out the door. Shining Spears are STILL terrible at 35pts apiece and Jetbikes still aren't overly impressive at 22pts apiece because they have no way to buff their Ld, have very short range primary weapons and can't get any special weapons to do some real damage.

The underlying issue for Eldar is pretty simple, they don't hit hard enough to balance out their terrible defense (same deal with DE really). Probably the only ones which do are Dragons, and unfortunately Melta isn't as useful in 6th. If you compare them to High Elves in Fantasy they don't get anything like the same level of help in bypassing their weak/fragile nature. In 5th and even 4th people largely bypassed this fragility by taking largely mech forces to hide all the sub par infantry, Serpents and Falcons were difficult to drop and could carry the rest of the list which largely did nothing. In 6th all the mech elements became much easier to kill with Hull points and assaults now reliably crushing them, but also the changes to the objective rules mean that Eldar infantry simply has to get boots on the ground at some point. This leaves Eldar with the bulk of the codex completely invalidated and relying on infantry/MC based builds and/or gimmick 2++ re-rollable stupidity.

At least there are fairly good odds that they will be getting updated within the next year, so I'm not too worried about things at the moment. I'm pretty happy with my Eldar/GK list atm despite it being completely different to what I played in the past.

If you want to play Eldar look for the corsairs rules,

BS 4 across the floor

The prince is a great unit that allows in 3 units that are part of your force to deepstrike with pretty much pinpoint acuracy, + you get a 1 shot void strike in the form of a lascannon pieplate lance, 1 turn of nightfighting, forgot the other one.

basic infantry can become Jumppack units (relentless) with 2 fusion guns and 2 eldar missle launchers persquad.

Wasp assault walkers for troops (lots of dakka)

Falcon's as dedicated transports (with bs 4)

and you get an amazing fighter and bomber on your list.

I was flicking through the C:Eldar last night, and came across a pic of a Dire Avenger.
He had a knife strapped to his leg, and a grenade.
Even the plastic kit seems to give them grenades.

So, a CCW and some sort of grenade would be nice, if only as upgrades.

to answer OP, Yes.

Wraithwall. Annoying people since 3rd ed

While I love my eldar and am shamelessly partisan with them, I feel the lack of decent ranged guns, combined with the transport nerfs really kicked the eldar in the nuts. Then the latest faq came along and stuck the boot in while we were down.

Our HQ choices are overall good, but the choices are limited because Farseers/Eldrad are an autotake. I'd love to take the new psychic cards I bought but I have to ask myself in every game - Is it fortune/guide/doom? no. Oh, and now he can't cast in a vehicle. Full stop. Other races get to shoot/buff stuff, but the great psykers of 40k?
And Runes of Warding causes sulks in non eldar players. We have to take them, because other than that we have no psychic defence.
The Avatar is great fun in the right list - almost an autotake now everyone seems to be running footdar due to his fearless bubble.
The autarch is pointless - his force multiplier is to +1 to reserves. Woo. Is it fortune/guide/doom? no. At which point he's rarely used.
Phoenix Lords have finally become good (imo) as a 2+ now actually means something now. One for the fans though. And now we have the fun of USR's interacting in weird ways and producing strange combinations of rules. And no one knows if we're supposed to be able to do what we appear to be able to, which causes mid game arguments.
And they are still expensive.

Fire Dragons - autotake.
Banshees - can't charge out of a transport, can't survive out of one.
Scorpions - slightly more durable, but can't deal with other assualt units. Oh and the exarch can have a str 6 power fist or a biting blade. Either of which gets him killed in a challenge.
Harlequins - our only survivable assault unit. Until the flamers arrive. Fortune becomes a necessity.
Wraithguard - better as troops. They get called overpowered, even though they have a 12" range.

Wave serpants - have been poor since 5th (IMO again) 5th was where missile spam hit and most armies just blow them up straight away - unless it's night fighting. In the meantime, a razorback is what, 35pts? compared to 120pts odd. Oh, and when ours blow up, we always lose half the squad. And whats left tends to be not enough to do a decent job.

Guardians combine the stats of guard with a higher points cost and less range.
Guardian Jetbikes are good - one of the few good choices we have left.
Rangers are good if people don't dring flamers/drop pod sternguard/other things that ignore cover. Since these are appearing everywhere now....
Dire Avengers - brilliant when in range and used in conjunction with doom. Without a farseer casting doom, they don't do anywhere near enough damage. Like most eldar units they can't take a punch.

Our fast attack slots?
Warp spiders are ok but expensive, Shining spears were always laughable and swooping hawks are an aquired taste.
Unitl FW nightwings are used.(which I need to do - the disapointing part is they are £68 pounds each - the de flier is £27.50 - which makes converting some de fliers into nightwings the only sane choice. I wanted to try to stay 'pure' craftworld for the aesthetic but it's either buy 2 razorwings for less than the price of one nightwing or spend £136.)
Vypers are very fast, but very flimsy.

In our heavy support slots, Falcons and prisms die relatively easy now, especially since hull points were shoehorned in, wraithlords are great against some armies, but poisoned weapons laugh at them. Snipers love them. Our support weapons aren't great. The vibro cannon was hilarious until the 'no shooting flyers faq nerf' (although I do admit I was expecting that and when I bought support weapons, I made D-cannons as I didn't believe for a second that the faq nerf for them was anything but a certainty), the d-cannon is lethal within 24" (laughably bad range for a support weapon) and no one normally even remembers the shadow weaver.
War Walkers with scatter lasers are an autotake for a lot of people.
The Night spinner was a W/D update and I've no idea where to get the rules from anymore and it's already in a slot which is hideously over populated with 'best of the rest' choices.

Which leaves forge world. Which I see a lot these days for eldar armies. With all the arguments using forgeworld entails.

It forced me to boil down my army to (unless I'm messing about with themed army lists)

Farseers/FW Wraithseer (+phoenix with useful USR/avatar in 2000pts+)
Harlequins
Fire dragons
Wraithguard/rangers and jetbikes for troops
Warp spiders/hawk (maybe) Obiligatory FW night wings
Wraithlords/War walkers for HS.
This is when my opponants have told me eldar are overpowered - when I've boiled off all the chaff from the dex, I'm left with a very specific army which only fights in one way and can STILL be easily countered - Drop pods/dreadnought drop pods/flamers/poisoned weapons/anything that ignores cover.

If you don't spam those, then the game can be good fun.

Hopefully, the rumours of a new flier will actually turn out to be true and it may be a useful unit. Because at the moment, without forgeworld or allies we have no realistic flyer defence. But with rumours of no more W/D rules updates I won't hold my breath.

But at the end of all of it, I still will play my eldar. I've had to change my style to mainly shooting, and I can't do the banshee/dragon in wave serpent combo anymore, but we still are able to win games. Just about.
/Rant.

All I want from the new 'dex is a 24" gun for troops and an assault vehicle. I'll compete a lot better then. Oh, and some eldar structure/defence type things. I would love an aegis, but I don't want an imperial one.
And wishlisting - make my vehicles BS4

 Ravenous D wrote:
Wave serpents were the last bastion of hope and 6th made them laughably easy to kill. It went from needing 36 krak grenade attacks to kill it down to 9.

Ummm...yeah and don't you think that the previous need of 36 krak grenade hits might have just been more than a little excessive? Sorry that the wave serpent has been brought back into some part of realistic territory...

Yep Eldar vehicles can no longer shrug off ludicrous amounts of fire anymore. No other armies could ever do that to the extreme level of the Eldar. Holofields made trying to pop otherwise weakly armored eldar tanks into a game long battle of continuing frustration. It is about time that they were toned down.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:
It is about time that they were toned down.

Toned down yes, but not battered down. And stamped on.

We lack on skimmers
Assault ramps.
No fire points.
No psychic powers cast while in them (which is worse than all the other vehicles in the game)
I agree holofields were annoying, but they used the nerf bat too much and now I don't believe GW will sell many tanks for the eldar.
Which, in the next 'dex they could easily overcompensate on to sell more again. then we go round again....

 Skriker wrote:

 Ravenous D wrote:
Wave serpents were the last bastion of hope and 6th made them laughably easy to kill. It went from needing 36 krak grenade attacks to kill it down to 9.

Ummm...yeah and don't you think that the previous need of 36 krak grenade hits might have just been more than a little excessive? Sorry that the wave serpent has been brought back into some part of realistic territory...

Yep Eldar vehicles can no longer shrug off ludicrous amounts of fire anymore. No other armies could ever do that to the extreme level of the Eldar. Holofields made trying to pop otherwise weakly armored eldar tanks into a game long battle of continuing frustration. It is about time that they were toned down.

Skriker

It was the same for a rhino or razorback, that was 75-90pts less. Only difference was only being able to fit in 5 or 6 wave serpents while marines could easily do 10+ vehicles in 1 army.

I know they aren't very good, but can you elaborate the "Aquired taste" on the swooping hawks?

Also, I did the math, and If a marine squad is 6, the shining spears can kill them without taking a single casualty except by overwatch. so 12 shots, 8 hit, 2.66 get through armor, and they are strength 4(?) so they wound about 1.33, but thats not accounting for the aprox 2 dead space marines from a round of shooting before assualt, so its more like 1.33*4/6 or about .89
Im probably wrong though, because the close combat weapons rules make no sense to me, if you use a CCW, do all your attacks gain the stats?

Eldar are another classic example of a army that isn't underpowered, but looks that way because of all the other armies that are overpowered and more cost efficient for what they get on the battlefield.

A bunch of their stuff that was over-costed in the 3e codex got dropped in price for the current codex, and they got some new stuff. And in true GW fashion, all the other armies got the same friggin' treatment, which kept all the comparisons with other forces that made the 3e codex bad, completely the same......

Some people like Hawks - I'm not a fan but they can be useful. They have haywire grenades which can total vehicles really quickly. They have lasblasters which have a 24" range. I don't like the cost in points compared to the damage output. Mine never do anything - beneath is a better post for the pro's of hawks.

warpspider89 wrote:

The SHs serve three purposes: anti-light infantry, anti-tank (their average threat range for a charge on a vehicle, using their jetpacks in the movement phase, is about 21 inches with fleet), and to score line breaker at the end of the game.

Shining Spears are 35pts per model.so it's 175 for the squad. Add the exarch and his powers and it's more like 230 points for the squad. For that many points, I want more than 5 3+ models. Skilled rider gives them a 3+ cover save from turbo boosting. They still won't survive a round of shooting from 10 marines. They have laser lances, which are st6 on the charge at ap3. After that they go to ap4. Ultimately, they just cost too much to be worth it.
The only time I'd take them is if I was doing a themed list - and then I'd use them to counter charge but thats about it.

 Skriker wrote:

It is about time that they were toned down.

This is what frustrates me to no end about people's perception of the falcon... all they see is "It's the hardest unit is the game to kill!!!1!11!" and therefore think its the end all be all of vehicles. Well guess what. Of all those supposedly impossible to kill Falcons, how many units did you actually loose to it? I can't tell you how many times I was stun locked after the first turn, never getting to fire a shot. A 175s that did practically nothing except live and tank shock like mad because there was nothing else it could do. Hell, I used it more as a guided missile than a gun ship. (Which has been taken away as well I might add)

At least now I get a jink save. Still a mediocre gunboat for the cost (at BS3)

PredaKhaine wrote:
Some people like Hawks - I'm not a fan but they can be useful. They have haywire grenades which can total vehicles really quickly. They have lasblasters which have a 24" range. I don't like the cost in points compared to the damage output. Mine never do anything - beneath is a better post for the pro's of hawks.

warpspider89 wrote:

The SHs serve three purposes: anti-light infantry, anti-tank (their average threat range for a charge on a vehicle, using their jetpacks in the movement phase, is about 21 inches with fleet), and to score line breaker at the end of the game.

Shining Spears are 35pts per model.so it's 175 for the squad. Add the exarch and his powers and it's more like 230 points for the squad. For that many points, I want more than 5 3+ models. Skilled rider gives them a 3+ cover save from turbo boosting. They still won't survive a round of shooting from 10 marines. They have laser lances, which are st6 on the charge at ap3. After that they go to ap4. Ultimately, they just cost too much to be worth it.
The only time I'd take them is if I was doing a themed list - and then I'd use them to counter charge but thats about it.

I agree with most of what you are saying here, but they are always AP 3, due to their special rules which make them count as the generic weapon. Go to the power weapons section of the BRB for more information.

I might give them another shot...

I like them as a unit, they just exemplify high cost and low model count.

PredaKhaine wrote:
Check the rules for the power lance.
Charging into combat is +1 Str and Ap3.
After that it's base str and ap4.

It means withdraw is an autotake. And if the exarch dies in a challenge, you can no longer run away either, so you sit with jetbikes in cc until they're dead.

I like them as a unit, they just exemplify high cost and low model count.

I recommend double checking the rules in Codex: Eldar for Laser Lances, which are what Eldar Shining Spears use. They have different rules from the standard BRB power lances, namely, that they attack STR 6 on the charge, in addition to their shooting attack, which regular power lances do not receive.

I am unfamiliar with how 6e works because I don't have the rulebook, but in the older editions, it seemed the viable tactic of the Shining Spears was to move within charge range of the enemy unit, and then fire all the unit's Shuriken catapults, including a Shuriken Cannon if the Exarch has one. Then perform a charge, with the Spears giving them S6 power weapons for the first turn with a high initiative.

Then, providing that they are still alive, use the Exarch's power to Hit and Run to get out of contact at the end of the combat phase (3D6, at least in 4th edition, so up to 18 inches).

Now, it seems there are additional benefits and downsides to this tactic due to the new parts of 6e rules (Hammer of Wrath benefiting, but then having a downside of Overwatch shooting against the Shining Spears), but I don't know for sure on those because I don't currently play with 6e rules.

Shining Spears also have the benefit of their Spears being Lance Weapons, in a pinch, though horribly short ranged.

Wave serpents and Fire Prisms were hard to kill because they were literally the only armor the army gets. a 150 point vehicle for SM gets you a fully decked out pred and still some to spare. 150 in guard gets you a Russ. For the cost of a falcon decked out you can almost get a stormraven. Yeah, they were hard to kill, but that was their selling point. Anything could hurt them, not much could kill them, but at the same time they couldnt put out much damage either. Also, skimmers should have kept at least hit on 5s in melee. You cant easily hit a vehicle that hovers and moves as fast as a flier. No, its not unrealistic to need 36 grenades to hit a vehicle in those circumstances, especially since melee attacks are supposed to be hitting weak points which seems impossible for a vehicle moving that fast.


Shining Spears do NOT have power weapons after the charge round. Re-read Laser Lance. It counts as a power weapon on the turn they assault, giving them AP3 on the assault and AP- afterwards. With 1A base, 1 weapon, and challenges easily able to mitigate the damage from the small squad the exarch occupies, shining spears are STILL worthless, as they have been since... well forever. They were rarely used as a necessity due to the lack of weapons Sam Han lists had. 35 points for a marine defensive stat in 4th was still prohibitive. They didnt progressively get worse, they just were always bad.


PS, S6 lance weaponry is a joke. OOH, we have a 1 shot 6" range weapon that can glance on a 6. Even the S8 version is still AP4 and 1 shot at 6" on 1 model.

I still play.

Everyone else has shelved their space elves and taken up Marines, IG or Necrons in my shop. I refuse to because I can still fight. GW insists on silly FAQs, but that does not change my mentality. The Eldar are in decline both fluffwise and tabletop. I would rather go down shurikens blazing than trade in for a Marines +1 codex.

The DA are still a solid choice, mass precision fire from Rangers are also nasty. The WW and Reapers as always shine bright. Really the only difficulty I have is fighting Fliers, though WW with EML's and guide have done ok against them. I can still murder their infantry. I am not saying all is roses, but this is the 41st millennium so get used to it, embrace the despair and choke slam its ass. I think so many players give up precisely because the internet tells them too. Not everyone who plays surfs these forums and just because the "accepted" web list does not work does not mean you can not win. Deployment, Army list and luck are the only things that matter. It is all about changing the game and making your opponent react to you, not vice versa. In the last tourney I was in, I sometimes had to resort to bizarre tactics, but they worked because my opponents were caught with their pants down. Not many expect spandex wearing space clowns to fix bayonets and charge Death Company, but it worked and I was promptly told that shimmershield is broken. As a side note, having a GK player rage quit on you after your runes blew up his Grand Master's head is simply priceless.

Eldar are not worthless, they just require a different approach. Maybe my game area is weird or an outlier in the spectrum of gaming, but here at least my Eldar make the Mon Keigh bleed.

 Tusken Sith Lord wrote:
I still play.

Everyone else has shelved their space elves and taken up Marines, IG or Necrons in my shop. I refuse to because I can still fight. GW insists on silly FAQs, but that does not change my mentality. The Eldar are in decline both fluffwise and tabletop. I would rather go down shurikens blazing than trade in for a Marines +1 codex.

The DA are still a solid choice, mass precision fire from Rangers are also nasty. The WW and Reapers as always shine bright. Really the only difficulty I have is fighting Fliers, though WW with EML's and guide have done ok against them. I can still murder their infantry. I am not saying all is roses, but this is the 41st millennium so get used to it, embrace the despair and choke slam its ass. I think so many players give up precisely because the internet tells them too. Not everyone who plays surfs these forums and just because the "accepted" web list does not work does not mean you can not win. Deployment, Army list and luck are the only things that matter. It is all about changing the game and making your opponent react to you, not vice versa. In the last tourney I was in, I sometimes had to resort to bizarre tactics, but they worked because my opponents were caught with their pants down. Not many expect spandex wearing space clowns to fix bayonets and charge Death Company, but it worked and I was promptly told that shimmershield is broken. As a side note, having a GK player rage quit on you after your runes blew up his Grand Master's head is simply priceless.

Eldar are not worthless, they just require a different approach. Maybe my game area is weird or an outlier in the spectrum of gaming, but here at least my Eldar make the Mon Keigh bleed.

I am with you all the way fellow child of the Craftworld. All is not lost! Our decimated race simply cannot beat our opponents at their own game. Perhaps we could when the Empire was strong but that time has passed. Now we must force them to face us on our terms on the battlefield; their every move must transition them from disadvantaged situation to disadvantaged situation.

Seriously though, by playing Eldar in "dickish ways", like seriously we aren't space marines so why play like we are, I've had more wins from people giving up against my force because I broke their moral than their armies straight up losing. I wasn't being cruel, manipulative (outside of the tactical positioning of models), or mean. I just filled them with doubt by forcing them to make hard decisions at every turn until it got to them. That's the Path of the Eldar. If you play this army its the path you walk. If you want something that wins through force alone there are much better armies. I'm looking at you IG (and other armies).

zephoid wrote:
Shining Spears do NOT have power weapons after the charge round. Re-read Laser Lance. It counts as a power weapon on the turn they assault, giving them AP3 on the assault and AP- afterwards. With 1A base, 1 weapon, and challenges easily able to mitigate the damage from the small squad the exarch occupies, shining spears are STILL worthless, as they have been since... well forever. They were rarely used as a necessity due to the lack of weapons Sam Han lists had. 35 points for a marine defensive stat in 4th was still prohibitive. They didnt progressively get worse, they just were always bad.

Had a look at the codex when I got home last night - yeah, you're completely right. Must've had a bit of a moment. The line in the codex reads something like "on a turn in which they initiate a charge/cc". So it's not even power weapons if they get charged. And if you charge it lasts for a turn. It would've been nice to be wrong, but they still are just not good.

Other than losses, tears, boredom and eventual death there's no reason to ever stop playing Eldar 40k.
There's still no way I'm putting my eldar down. Got myself 2 razorwings last night - now to make nightwings.
Once this is done, bring back those annoying imperial planes!
We'll see what happens now..

 Ravenous D wrote:
It was the same for a rhino or razorback, that was 75-90pts less. Only difference was only being able to fit in 5 or 6 wave serpents while marines could easily do 10+ vehicles in 1 army.

When did Rhinos and razorbacks have holofields that made them near impossible to take out?

Skriker


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PredaKhaine wrote:
We lack on skimmers
Assault ramps.
No fire points.
No psychic powers cast while in them (which is worse than all the other vehicles in the game)
I agree holofields were annoying, but they used the nerf bat too much and now I don't believe GW will sell many tanks for the eldar.
Which, in the next 'dex they could easily overcompensate on to sell more again. then we go round again....

How do you lack skimmers? Most every eldar vehicle is a skimmer unless they somehow changed in that in the FAQ and if so what did they change them to since they have no wheels or anything of that nature?
Few vehicles have assault ramps. The most common space marine transport, the rhino, isn't even an assault vehicle. No fire points is kind of dumb in my book, but looking at the models, where would you shoot out of anyway? As for not casting psychic powers I thought that was a blanket rule for vehicles and psykers, not just against Eldar. Just because eldar players can't seem to rely on their troops to get the job done and *have* to use fortune and doom all the time doesn't make it a specific eldar nerf. Some people will still buy tanks because they like them and want to use them despite the rules no longer being super, duper awesome for them. Not everyone plays WAAC or even worries about it. No matter what changes are made to the CSM codex I still use all of my minis with each new version, as long as they are still allowed by the codex. I ultimately don't really care if the rules supposedly make the unit "completely unusable and a total waste of points" because usually that is an over exaggeration by the person making the claim and I still enjoy games where such pointless loser units are involved.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:


When did Rhinos and razorbacks have holofields that made them near impossible to take out?

How do you lack skimmers? Most every eldar vehicle is a skimmer unless they somehow changed in that in the FAQ and if so what did they change them to since they have no wheels or anything of that nature?
Few vehicles have assault ramps. The most common space marine transport, the rhino, isn't even an assault vehicle. No fire points is kind of dumb in my book, but looking at the models, where would you shoot out of anyway? As for not casting psychic powers I thought that was a blanket rule for vehicles and psykers, not just against Eldar. Just because eldar players can't seem to rely on their troops to get the job done and *have* to use fortune and doom all the time doesn't make it a specific eldar nerf. Some people will still buy tanks because they like them and want to use them despite the rules no longer being super, duper awesome for them. Not everyone plays WAAC or even worries about it. No matter what changes are made to the CSM codex I still use all of my minis with each new version, as long as they are still allowed by the codex. I ultimately don't really care if the rules supposedly make the unit "completely unusable and a total waste of points" because usually that is an over exaggeration by the person making the claim and I still enjoy games where such pointless loser units are involved.

Skriker

Sorry - that was supposed to read
Things we lack on skimmers.

A rhino is about 20pts?
A Wave Serpent is 100ish?
Wave serpents NEVER got holofields. Not once - I've checked 2nd to 4th ed codex's. As I said in the other thread, if you fought one with holofields, you got cheated.

Everyone else can cast witchfire out of a tank and blessings while embarked. We now cannot because of the faq. Marines have access to assault vehicles and flyers. We have no assault vehicles or fliers (bar forgeworld for the fliers)
Marines are able to survive a rhino explosion by having T4 and a 3+. We do not survive our tank explosions, nor can we take troops for assualt that will survive without being in a tank. Nor can we charge out of a skimmer (unlike land raiders and storm ravens)
I agree with you on using mini's I like - In my last game I used both striking scorpions and howling banshees, squad that aren't 'good' in the current meta - I beat DA. It was fun.

It used to be that if a vehicle moved, it was very hard to hit - thats where the 36 krak grenades to take out a vehicle came from. Rhino's and razorbacks were able to use that rule, just the same as skimmers.
I have never been WAAC either - I only play for fun.

Why do you hate the skimmer tanks sooo much?
They were never that good.

PredaKhaine wrote:
This is when my opponants have told me eldar are overpowered -

Very nice unit by unit breakdown Pred. Yes eldar have taken a hit from the new rules and GW trying to press them into the new mold. I will never call Eldar overpowered these days. Even in the days of eldar dominance years ago I never had a problem dealing with them. With such specialized troops it was always easy to take them out of their element and deal with them. Assaulting fire dragons and dark reapers and shooting the heck out of banshees, scorpions and harlies.

If I was running the show at GW I would have Eldar high on the list for a new codex, but who knows what the yahoos really calling the shots will do with them. I've never understood the way they just let some armies languish forever without a codex update. Each time a new rules version comes out there *should* be a detailed and spelled out codex release order that includes *ALL* existing force codecies, most smartly with those that had the most recent update being listed last. When called on the mat for codecies being left in the dust GW staff have talked about not having someone who is inspired to write a new version of a codex so it waits for that to happen. That is some serious BS right there. Sorry, no one here likes Tau or has any ideas for them so we just aren't going to do anything.

Given the DV box contents I expect Chaos and Dark Angels to be first in release this time around, in whichever order, but would expect Tau and Eldar to be the next two books in line given how old they both are. If they aren't I would be pretty cranky if I played either of those armies. I had an eldar army for sometime, but after so many years of playing chaos space marines I just couldn't adapt to the way eldar played, or their different stat line and weapons. Always took too many losses that just hurt too much as eldar. Making those mistakes while playing my renegades isn't as hurtful since I get so bloody many of them as the eldar were pricier. So I eventually sold off all my eldar.

Skriker

Im betting on Eldar, Black Templar and Tau next. Although Ive been hearing some noise about Daemons.

The other elephant in the room with Shining Spears is that the poor dudes DO NOT HAVE GRENADES. This means that if- god forbid- those marines you want to shoot and charge are sitting in some forests or whatever. They go first. Truthfully the only CC units Eldar have that have grenades are Harlequins, and Scorpions (Hawks have them as well I guess, but they suck in assault, and Banshees don't care with I10 on the charge).

The point is though, that generally your Shining Spears will be going last when they charge. Which sucks, at least your s3 ap- hammer of wrath attacks still go off

I'm really looking forward to the new codex despite common sense telling me - it'll be the same. some new good units, a new fluffy choice which sucks, a lick of paint, some copy/paste fluff and a price hike.
I really want the new 'dex to go for balance, cos at the moment with my eldar it's either smash or be smashed. It just doesn't make for a fun game.

I use chaos to let my hair down in 40k - I take 'silly' choices like possessed. Not really comp, but great fun.
With my chaos, I tried the Juggernought Lord with the axe of blind fury. He smashed everything he charged. I'm not going to use him again as it made the game a lot less fun. I use Lucius instead now and it's so much more fun, going into a challenge and not knowing the outcome. (His best fight so far was corbulo - with a 2+fnp. Very cinematic as he kept hacking lumps out of corbulo, but corbulo just completely refused to go down)

My philosophy with 40k is I don't care whether I win or lose as long as it's fun. I find close games are more fun as you don't know the outcome till the end.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 akaean wrote:

The point is though, that generally your Shining Spears will be going last when they charge. Which sucks, at least your s3 ap- hammer of wrath attacks still go off

Lol - we're saved!

SaganGree wrote:
This is what frustrates me to no end about people's perception of the falcon... all they see is "It's the hardest unit is the game to kill!!!1!11!" and therefore think its the end all be all of vehicles. Well guess what. Of all those supposedly impossible to kill Falcons, how many units did you actually loose to it? I can't tell you how many times I was stun locked after the first turn, never getting to fire a shot. A 175s that did practically nothing except live and tank shock like mad because there was nothing else it could do. Hell, I used it more as a guided missile than a gun ship. (Which has been taken away as well I might add)

At least now I get a jink save. Still a mediocre gunboat for the cost (at BS3)

Funny, but I owned and played eldar too, so my perspective comes from *both* sides of the table. As an opponent it was frustrating to continually waste the same heavy weapons on the same target over and over and over each turn. It just got irritating and frustrating. As an eldar player while my falcon might have been in stun lock, my war walkers and other light stuff were flooding the table and wiping out my opponents troops. If they finally gave up on the falcon and started shooting the other stuff that would then mean the falcon could do whatever it wanted for a while. It just isn't fun to keep shooting the same target multipl times every turn and never destroy it. It is one thing if you just roll poorly on the vehicle damage table all the time, but another when the destroyed vehicle result is almost never available to you thanks to the holofields. Holofields still take away the ability of an enemy to instakill the tank in question, so are *still* useful in that regard. It just is no longer an unlimited shot bouncer like it used to be thanks to the addition of hull points. I used to benefit greatly from one of my regular opponents being unable to roll anything over a 2 on the vehicle damage chart against my daemon possessed vehicles. Pretty much made them invincible, but now no matter what he rolls, after 4 hits my Plague Hulk is dead and gone, combine that with the fact that I no longer "automatically" ignore those shaken and stunned results and my daemon possessed walkers got nerfed to. Only difference is that I just accept it and continue playing within the new paradigm instead of acting like GW personally screwed me over with their spiteful rules changes.

I have to admit that some of the rules changes they made this time around actually do address a lot of complaints I have heard from players in the past: Assaults from vehicles too easy and plentiful; vehicles being too hard to deal with no matter how many times they were hit; eldar holofields making the previous situation even worse. The have actually be dealt with in this new edition. I am curious if that was intentional on GW's part or purely accidental. Hard to tell with them sometimes.

Skriker

PredaKhaine wrote:


Phoenix Lords have finally become good (imo) as a 2+ now actually means something now. One for the fans though. And now we have the fun of USR's interacting in weird ways and producing strange combinations of rules. And no one knows if we're supposed to be able to do what we appear to be able to, which causes mid game arguments.
And they are still expensive.

Fuegan is less expensive than Eldrad. Puts things into perspective doesn'it? Put him in a squad of Harlies with a Shadowseer and cheap Fortune-seer shove everything down your opponent's throat witha borrowed Wave Serpent.

PredaKhaine wrote:

Our fast attack slots?
Warp spiders are ok but expensive, Shining spears were always laughable and swooping hawks are an aquired taste.
Unitl FW nightwings are used.(which I need to do - the disapointing part is they are £68 pounds each - the de flier is £27.50 - which makes converting some de fliers into nightwings the only sane choice. I wanted to try to stay 'pure' craftworld for the aesthetic but it's either buy 2 razorwings for less than the price of one nightwing or spend £136.)
Vypers are very fast, but very flimsy.

Nevermind the Vypers, if you are open to FW, look into Hornets. It's a cross between a Vyper that does not suck and a War Walker.

PredaKhaine wrote:

In our heavy support slots, Falcons and prisms die relatively easy now, especially since hull points were shoehorned in, wraithlords are great against some armies, but poisoned weapons laugh at them. Snipers love them. Our support weapons aren't great. The vibro cannon was hilarious until the 'no shooting flyers faq nerf' (although I do admit I was expecting that and when I bought support weapons, I made D-cannons as I didn't believe for a second that the faq nerf for them was anything but a certainty), the d-cannon is lethal within 24" (laughably bad range for a support weapon) and no one normally even remembers the shadow weaver.
War Walkers with scatter lasers are an autotake for a lot of people.
The Night spinner was a W/D update and I've no idea where to get the rules from anymore and it's already in a slot which is hideously over populated with 'best of the rest' choices.

Here are the rules for Night Spinner, straight from GW: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=cat440244a&aId=15100016a

PredaKhaine wrote:

Which leaves forge world. Which I see a lot these days for eldar armies. With all the arguments using forgeworld entails.

Two words...Warp Hunter. You will never even look at a Fire Prism ever again.

I think 6th really helped my Eldar. I play an all shooty foot list with Eldrad and the avatar. Lots of bodies and S6 shots. Still gives my highly competitive group problems.

PredaKhaine wrote:
Sorry - that was supposed to read
Things we lack on skimmers.

Everyone else can cast witchfire out of a tank and blessings while embarked. We now cannot because of the faq. Marines have access to assault vehicles and flyers. We have no assault vehicles or fliers (bar forgeworld for the fliers)
Why do you hate the skimmer tanks sooo much?
They were never that good.

Gotcha on the "on skimmers"

Ah didn't realize that on the psychics. As I said I thought that was everyone, but haven't done much with psychic powers since they came back. Thanks for the clarification.

I don't hate skimmer tanks at all. It is the holofields that always annoyed me. I benefited from them when I played eldar, but when not playing eldar they were just very annoying. If I really hate anything about it is some eldar players who seem to think that their tanks *should* be impossible to kill or that makes them totally useless which is just not true. It doesn't help that the codex is so old and prices are still so high either. The Tau get nailed with that too. Crisis suits are ludicrously expensive for something that has less survivability than an assault marine and gets a lower state line, the ability to jump back to cover and some extra weapons to compensate for it. Might find them pretty cool at maybe half the price. A lot of this stuff comes in from GW's inability to even consider balancing the point costs of forces in the game. They seem incapable of doing it over a series of Marine codecies that would be super simple to coordinate so it should come as no surprise that the xenos books would be all over the place and over costed on things.

Might make the pain a little easier to bear right now if the eldar faq included a line that said to halve all vehicle prices in the codex. Vehicles in general have become much easier to kill, it just seems to be the eldar players that are complaining the most about it.

Skriker

What could also help the eldar are some vehicle aspects. Lets face it the aspect warriors came out in RT when the game was basically an infantry game. With all the vehicles now they should introduce rules for vehicle aspects.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
What could also help the eldar are some vehicle aspects. Lets face it the aspect warriors came out in RT when the game was basically an infantry game. With all the vehicles now they should introduce rules for vehicle aspects.

Lots of cool things that could be done with the eldar...would be nice if they would actually do *something*. Eldar have been a mainstay of the 40k universe from the beginning and it is sad that their codex is so far out of date.

Skriker

 Andrew1975 wrote:
What could also help the eldar are some vehicle aspects. Lets face it the aspect warriors came out in RT when the game was basically an infantry game. With all the vehicles now they should introduce rules for vehicle aspects.

Check the Shining Eagles aspect - not sure where it's appeared from, but they are a vehicle pilot aspect.

 Skriker wrote:

 Ravenous D wrote:
It was the same for a rhino or razorback, that was 75-90pts less. Only difference was only being able to fit in 5 or 6 wave serpents while marines could easily do 10+ vehicles in 1 army.

When did Rhinos and razorbacks have holofields that made them near impossible to take out?

Skriker

Wave serpents not falcons or prisms.

As for holofields, that was 4th edition when falcons and fire prisms were immortal, in 5th they werent unstoppable in the slightest, now in 6th holo fields dont even matter.

I think the jump from 2nd edition to 3rd was the hardest hit to Eldar.

THe aspect warriors of old were fantastic. The Striking scorpions were tough and could do some serious harm. Now they really don't get much field time. Dark Reapers had actual missile launchers. Warp Spiders were flamer troops. Damn nasty at that. In 2nd Eldar ran faster than humans. They moved 5 inches when humanoids moved 4. They had a 10 inch range unlike now when everyone has the same movement rules.

The Exarchs and their build what you want warrior was the best ever. Now they just don't have anything like it. I had an opponent in 2nd build a Dark Reaper Exarch with a warp spider jump pack and a powerful shuriken catalpult from the codex that did a lot of damage and he would just pop out of cover and fire before disappearing back. I know i played with dual power fisted hand to hand exarchs with warp spider packs and invulnerable saves with parry on both fists. Now its much blander and not nearly as fluffy with these characters who have fought for 100's of lifetimes with their soulstones handing down the knowledge they contain.

At its core the reason Eldar hurts is they have a crappy base weapon. The Shuriken Catapult. If it was the same as a bolter or storm bolter the Guardian squads would be somewhat scary. Right now I know they have to run up on top of me to shoot which makes them easy to charge or shoot to death with rapid fire.

Add to that the fact that the close combat units that used to be feared have had their rules chipped away at since 2nd to make them more flat line and you have a mess.

I think Striking scorps will be re written to have hammer of wrath to represent their stingers in combat. If they do that they aren't understanding their tech at all.

Eldar should be a move and shoot army from top to bottom. Nothing in their forces should be unable to move and fire its weapons. They should have loads of longer reaching powerful guns. The Tau have better guns and they are a fraction as old as humans and a speck of time considering the Eldar's species timeline.

They need to rework the whole army to be more effective and rebuild almost 80% of the miniature sets to be plastic. Their codex revision has turned into that storage room they keep saying they have to clean out but now you can't get the door open.

 Skriker wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
Sorry - that was supposed to read
Things we lack on skimmers.

Everyone else can cast witchfire out of a tank and blessings while embarked. We now cannot because of the faq. Marines have access to assault vehicles and flyers. We have no assault vehicles or fliers (bar forgeworld for the fliers)
Why do you hate the skimmer tanks sooo much?
They were never that good.

Gotcha on the "on skimmers"

Ah didn't realize that on the psychics. As I said I thought that was everyone, but haven't done much with psychic powers since they came back. Thanks for the clarification.

I don't hate skimmer tanks at all. It is the holofields that always annoyed me. I benefited from them when I played eldar, but when not playing eldar they were just very annoying. If I really hate anything about it is some eldar players who seem to think that their tanks *should* be impossible to kill or that makes them totally useless which is just not true. It doesn't help that the codex is so old and prices are still so high either. The Tau get nailed with that too. Crisis suits are ludicrously expensive for something that has less survivability than an assault marine and gets a lower state line, the ability to jump back to cover and some extra weapons to compensate for it. Might find them pretty cool at maybe half the price. A lot of this stuff comes in from GW's inability to even consider balancing the point costs of forces in the game. They seem incapable of doing it over a series of Marine codecies that would be super simple to coordinate so it should come as no surprise that the xenos books would be all over the place and over costed on things.

Might make the pain a little easier to bear right now if the eldar faq included a line that said to halve all vehicle prices in the codex. Vehicles in general have become much easier to kill, it just seems to be the eldar players that are complaining the most about it.

Skriker

Don't forget that Eldar are the only army in the game that needed those Holo Fields and Energy Shields on their vehicles as the army is designed to shoot and scoot. The Eldar anti personnel weapons are not at all long ranged so the only way for them to get into combat range was to put them in vehicles and move them. Consider that they don't have the armour or toughness to foot slog all the way across the battlefield and they are not a swarm army that can soak up losses so what else have they got besides wave serpents and falcons? nothing.

Consider also that Eldar are the only race in the game except for tyranids that do not have access to even one vehicle with an armour greater than 12.

Space Marines of every variety have the Land Raider and it's variations

Imperial Guard have the Leman Russ and it's variations

Chaos Space Marines have the Land Raider

Sisters of Battle have the Exorcist

Chaos Daemons have the Soul Grinder

Necrons have the Monolith

Orks have the Battlewagon

Tau have the Hammerhead or Sky Ray

Dark Eldar have the Dais of Destruction

Eldar?...nope...sorry...no AV above 12.

Taken in that light, having Holo Fields on tanks in 5th wasn't such a bad thing as it allowed Eldar vehicles to have a passing chance of not getting destroyed by mass Strength 7 or 8 fire. Which most of the vehicles listed above either ignore completely or have very little chance of having anything done to them at all.

Never understood the point of the decreased ranges on eldar weapons. They are supposed to be *the* most technologically advanced race in the galaxy, have some amazing technology, but can't figure out how to make them deadly out to a longer range? Not buying it. I think the current Eldar codex came out of all the old school complaints of how eldar with "unbeatable" in their previous incarnation so they had to get nerfed. Only time eldar were unbeatable is when you tried to play the game their way and allowed the various aspects of the eldar army to do the job they were built for. Let banshees assault and you deserved to get spanked for not shooting them or assaulting them first. Trying to out manuever jetbikes was useless. Also panicking when the newer and cooler eldar units were seen on the table didn't help either. Warp spiders and wraithguard used to make people sweat, but both could be dealt with it you didn't freak out. Heck any unit with heavy weapons could sit back out of range of the wraithguard weapons and gun them down without fear.

So to make up for it the eldar got nerfed and they are still paying the price of their nerfing. Hopefully that will change once a new book is written.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:
Never understood the point of the decreased ranges on eldar weapons. They are supposed to be *the* most technologically advanced race in the galaxy, have some amazing technology, but can't figure out how to make them deadly out to a longer range? Not buying it. I think the current Eldar codex came out of all the old school complaints of how eldar with "unbeatable" in their previous incarnation so they had to get nerfed. Only time eldar were unbeatable is when you tried to play the game their way and allowed the various aspects of the eldar army to do the job they were built for. Let banshees assault and you deserved to get spanked for not shooting them or assaulting them first. Trying to out manuever jetbikes was useless. Also panicking when the newer and cooler eldar units were seen on the table didn't help either. Warp spiders and wraithguard used to make people sweat, but both could be dealt with it you didn't freak out. Heck any unit with heavy weapons could sit back out of range of the wraithguard weapons and gun them down without fear.

So to make up for it the eldar got nerfed and they are still paying the price of their nerfing. Hopefully that will change once a new book is written.

Skriker

The range is the killer for eldar imo. Having my footslogging Dire Avengers shot to pieces by DE warriors in a raider with twin-linked shots (roughly equal in points btw, another kick in the nads) without even getting in range is just depressing.

The shorter range was kinda balanced with older RF rules.
Now it's plain worse, especially with the latest FAQ. Every bolter unit can get cheap long range weapons to increase threat radius. Spiders, Wraithguard, Avengers went downhill because they don't bring other weapons.

Eldar need either point reduction (bad idea as it pushes them into swarm), increase the range or redo the shuri- weaponry to be more deadly.

AP system also hurts us because AP4 big blasts, templates, high RoF weapons are fine because marines shrug them and hordes don't loose that many points. We are in a sweet spot that get full damage while having the most expensive troops fully affected by it.
Heavy flamer has 83% to kill Dire Avenger and 22% to kill 13pt marine. That's a difference of 1 point (or 7%) in price.

I've got a mate in our group with a pretty effective Eldar force, but it relies on FW units to be able to really become deadly.

Hornets and Warp Hunters do wonders to level the playing field, and make up for the overcosted and mediocre-at-best Aspect Warriors.

I don't play Eldar myself, my only experience is from fighting them, and it seems the real kicker is that their infantry just don't compete.

They're of alright power level, but the points costs are way beyond their capacity. Banshees are pretty good in CC, Fire Dragons are good anti-tank in a quick moving transport, but when they're costed well beyond how good they are.

It seems to me that Eldar players are forced to rely on a couple useful units, while most of the codex sits unused outside of Apoc due to prohibitive costs. That seems to be the trend with most outdated codexes, however.

Save for Orks, that was one well balanced book.

spamthulhu wrote:
I think the jump from 2nd edition to 3rd was the hardest hit to Eldar.

The Exarchs and their build what you want warrior was the best ever. Now they just don't have anything like it. I had an opponent in 2nd build a Dark Reaper Exarch with a warp spider jump pack and a powerful shuriken catalpult from the codex that did a lot of damage and he would just pop out of cover and fire before disappearing back. I know i played with dual power fisted hand to hand exarchs with warp spider packs and invulnerable saves with parry on both fists. Now its much blander and not nearly as fluffy with these characters who have fought for 100's of lifetimes with their soulstones handing down the knowledge they contain.

At its core the reason Eldar hurts is they have a crappy base weapon. The Shuriken Catapult. If it was the same as a bolter or storm bolter the Guardian squads would be somewhat scary. Right now I know they have to run up on top of me to shoot which makes them easy to charge or shoot to death with rapid fire.

I miss the 24" -2 mod strength 4 with 1 sustained fire dice on the catapults. Guardians and Avengers could actually have a gun battle with marines.
The nastiest exarch ever was the warp spider exarch. 36" teleport. Vortex grenade.Enemy character = off.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
They're of alright power level, but the points costs are way beyond their capacity. Banshees are pretty good in CC, Fire Dragons are good anti-tank in a quick moving transport, but when they're costed well beyond how good they are.

Yeah they seem to be costed based on how good they are at their given role, but then little was included in the cost to show that they are *only* good at their given role. The easiest way to defeat eldar is to take all their specialists out of their specialty element and they fall pretty fast. I never could get used to the weakness of the characters in the army after years of playing CSMs. Would charge my general into a light walker and find that he could only barely scratch it, even with a power fist...that was painful and a lesson I kept forgetting over and over. Doh!

Skriker