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I just wanted to know, because I'm fed up of being on a "bandwagon" with my army (Draigowing).

After seeing the Adepticon results, I really want to go for one of the fringe armies, so I've decided to collect the only army in 40K I've never ever collected... ELDAR.

They are the bane of 40K in my playing career as I've never ever beaten them, so I'm going for that old chestnut, "If you can't beat them... Join them."

Firstly - I would like to know if anyone has played an army because it wasn't popular.

Secondly - I would like to know from the Eldar players out there... What works and what doesn't?

Thanks.

I always tend to choose the underdogs or underplayed armies, since I don't choose my army or units based on what other people dictate. I field what I like if it looks fun or I like the fluff behind it.

An example of this would be my csm army. I won't touch anything Slaanesh, daemons, daemon princes or obliterators which is to some to shoot myself in both kneecaps and then crawl into a desert without water.

CSM were my second choice, but there a fair few CSM players locally. There are no Eldar players.

Puscifer wrote: I would like to know from the Eldar players out there... What works and what doesn't?

Today Mech'dar is still a decent build. It has some bad match ups, but you can still play it.

A unit of doomed paladins charged by 10 howling banshees probably wouldn't call them underpowered

Joey wrote:A unit of doomed paladins charged by 10 howling banshees probably wouldn't call them underpowered

My Paladins know this too well

I started Chaos Space Marines knowing it was a underdog army and did it any way because that army appealed to me from the get-go. Also I am seriously considering getting Eldar as a side army.

I've read a fair bit about the Eldar in 5th, but I think what I want to do, probably won't work.

I was thinking of doing an all aspect army as I really like the Aspect Warriors, but I've read that it is the most difficult army to play out of all of them. I've seen them work in Cities Of Death, but not in normal games.

My second choice is the Eldar form of Nidzilla. As many high MC as I can field, but then I realised that it will get picked apart by heavy weapons.

My choices are really limited, but what I don't want, is to go for a Mechdar army. It's way too expensive to buy that many vehicles.

Should I just quit now?

fire dragons.....fire dragons.....fire dragons.......put 10 tanks on the board and hope they dont die so you can fly around and contest everything.

I know what they did in 4th ed, but I don't want to be fielding Mechdar.

Footdar is a little tricky though as Mechdar at least have the mobility to play with. For the foot ones you're probably going to end up with an Avatar acting as an anchor for the guardians with his fearless bubble.

I'd say avoid Swooping Hawks and Shining Spears by the way.

Funny I also picked up a chaos force as my underdog force, though went with Daemons. Going with AL-PiXeL01's analogy I've cut off both my legs and half hacked off an arm before going into the desert with no water.

Ive recently been looking into Eldar and have decided to go for a mainly foot based corsairs list. I know it will have some bad match ups but it also has a few neat tricks that will help it. it wont be an underpowered army but it certainly wont be 'competitive'.

I chose to move away from Grey Knights because of all the eye rolling you get when you put them on the table, plus I find their competitive builds boring and certainly wouldnt invest in yet more Grey Knight models just to make them less competitive.

So, i chose Eldar cause they were the first army I ever collected and love how they look. the reason for corsairs is because theyre not very well known so Ill have to think about list building for myself rather than being lazy and looking for info online - theres much less stuff out there for corsairs than for grey knights.

Corsair list eh?

Tell me more...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There was supposed to be a meme picture with that lol.

Eldar Corsairs are an Imperial Armour army from IA 11. I've been wanting to run one since 2nd edition when Corsairs were a troops choice. But it's FW prices... so I am not doing that haha

For Codex Eldar there are 3 choices
Mechdar: Tons of Waveserpents
Footdar: Usually tons of Guardians with an Avatar and Eldrad messin' with stuff
Jetbike: Tons of.... jetbikes. Sometimes you'll see two seer councils which'll just make stuff cry. 3+/4++ rerollable with S9 against vehicles will mess up a lot of peoples' day, especially when you add on the fact that they get WS5/I5 and heavy flamers.

I spam this way too much but I think it's the most comprehensive explanation of the Eldar army with really good breakdowns of units by the knowledgable Akaean.:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/402275.page

Personally i run a list with a seer council, Fire dragons, DAVU (5 Dire Avengers in a WaveSerpent), 2 Fire Prisms and a night Spinner (weapon variation on the FP that isn't in the codex but has add-on rules that are tournament legal). Usually messes with people's heads that they spend a full turn at the seer council as it speeds towards them and they didn't take down a single lock....

It's competitive if you know how to play them well. They're usually fun even if you don't But don't play them just because we aren't topdog now, we're getting a new codex soonish (AKA probably before I die )

Well I feel somewhat obligated to reply to this thread. Coming from a background of assault armies I was initially attracted to eldar because of the versatility of play style they offered. Beyond that I generally regard eldar as a more refined or possibly classy army and the sentiment at my flgs was that they were underpowered felt like an opportunity. My mixed list has since made strides to reverse that belief. In 1500-2000pts I have beaten tyranids, mech guard, draigo wing, deamons, orks, vanilla templar and wolf marines, with a couple draws and only one loss to space wolves (mostly due to shortsighted objective placement on my part, not that that is any kind of excuse)

I poured over the codex for more than a year before buying a model. I also test played multiple proxy armies against myself. I'd say the three words to success with eldar are synergy, versatility, and exploitation

Synergy- easy to tell when it exists and nigh impossible to define.
Versatility- eldar in fluff are a highly specialized race (ie one tool for one job)- I find the inherent squishyness to be grand liability if this strategy of list building is used. I strive to make units and unit couplings that can deal with almost any threat. My army includes many multiple firing mode weapons (EML is god) and many different types defense (17man blob w/ re-roll ld, T8 and T6, armour with tricks, moving fast cover saves, fortune, veil of tears). I also maximize the number of pinning weapons to further increase speed advantage.
Exploitation- the eldar codex is practically ancient by today's standards and with that comes antiquated language and rules. Making use of these idiosyncratic rules is eldar's only real competitive advantage. All kinds of fun tricks can be used:guardian weapon platform shananigans, ramming with holo-fields, dire swords trumping eternal warrior (not that i support DA, see versatility), fortuned war walkers in cover (can be tricky to pull off, but got to love vehicles getting cover saves instead of hull down), scoring unit jetbikes turboboosting from reserve, 5pt embolden (which works on psychic tests), maugan ra to rend, pin and ignore coversaves (i usually attach him to harlies w/ shadowseer to mitigate his weakness to AP 2)

I'm still learning the method of eldar finesse but I must say I have a lot of fun with mixed lists and my opponents are usually excited to play me because of the relative rarity of eldar armies round our parts.

Puscifer wrote:Corsair list eh?

Tell me more...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There was supposed to be a meme picture with that lol.

Corsairs are based around speed as opposed to armour.

Standard troops can choose DT of venom (not DE venom) or a Falcon. OR jetpacks.

My Corsair list is going to be based around 2-3 squads of 10 jetpack troops with lasblasters (24" S3 AP5 Assault 2)
FA is far more viable with the hornet and nightspinner as options.
Elite you can choose regular Eldar aspects DE warriors or voidstorm Squad

Corsairs have BS of 4 all the around making it a little better than guardians.

The reason they are rare is the reason I want to play them.

There are NO Eldar players locally for me.

Things to avoid:
Shining Spears
Swooping Hawks
Support Weapon Batteries
Vypers
Phoenix Lords

The rest of the codex' options I'd say can perform some sort of role, be it slim (Guardians, Warp Spiders) or huge (Farseers, Dire Avengers). Personally I run an Aspect-heavy list with some tanks. As troops I use Avengers and fill out the rest with Rangers and Guardians, who camp objectives. I use Wave Serpents for my Aspects and Fire Prisms and War Walkers in heavy support. And, as HQ I run the ever awesome Eldrad Ulthran. He is in my opinion the best HQ choice in the game, he is a bargain for what he does.

Can Eldar smash armies with overwhelming firepower?

Puscifer wrote:Can Eldar smash armies with overwhelming firepower?

No. They're firepower is below average.

Puscifer wrote:I just wanted to know, because I'm fed up of being on a "bandwagon" with my army (Draigowing).

After seeing the Adepticon results, I really want to go for one of the fringe armies, so I've decided to collect the only army in 40K I've never ever collected... ELDAR.

They are the bane of 40K in my playing career as I've never ever beaten them, so I'm going for that old chestnut, "If you can't beat them... Join them."

Firstly - I would like to know if anyone has played an army because it wasn't popular.

Secondly - I would like to know from the Eldar players out there... What works and what doesn't?

Thanks.

Eldar are definitely winable, but not invincible. What kind of Eldar armies do you usually play against and what type were you wanting to start? Keep in mind Eldar are definitely one of the hardest armies to play as their codex is one of the still outdated ones.

Puscifer wrote:Corsair list eh?

Tell me more...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There was supposed to be a meme picture with that lol.

I'm planning on running a 1750 point list:

4 x 10 man squads with jump packs and 2 x EML and 2 X Fusion guns in each one

3 x Hornets with Pulse lasers

1 x squad of Shadow Spectres (the 1 allowed elite choice that's non corsairs)

1 x Warp Hunter.

HQ will be a prince kept cheap but with maybe a fusion gun - taking him cause you have to take an HQ obviously but also for his 1 turn of nightfighting ability.

Going upto 2K, I'd probably add in another prince for 2 x nightfighting but not sure what else yet but could add in 3 wasp walkers with scatter lasers instead - they don't have scouts like the regular ones though so I'm not sure. Also not sure on what to do with the Hornets as giving them lances would help with more long ranged anti tank that can deal with AV14, although I do have plenty of fusion guns for that. Only problem with those is that I'd have to move my corsairs in close and those guys really want to stay away from closing with the enemy but then they do have JSJ ability. As stated earlier, lasblasters are probably a better bet than shuriken catapults for their range. Not totally worked out the wargear options with this list yet as you can probably tell but it feels like a very fun and challenging army to play with plenty of long range, strong firepower. And crucially, I'll be staying away from playing a mech list cause I really hate that type of list.

felixander wrote:I spam this way too much but I think it's the most comprehensive explanation of the Eldar army with really good breakdowns of units by the knowledgable Akaean.:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/402275.page

Wow. Nice link.

Thanks!

I play Eldar, and I play the Aspect Warrior lists. I own no Guardians, and no Wraith oriented units. I also lack an Avatar. I win I would say 70% of the time with them, but I play very nontraditional lists. I'll rush someone with a Falcon containing 5 Seers + Fortuneseer. So little people would play the list that, surprisingly, it catches people off guard and I win a lot of the time. Always take Outflanking War Walkers, they are fantastic units that always make their points back up. I've had great luck with most of their units, and the worse luck with Howling Banshees due to high expense and low strength. I also prefer to keep my troops Guardian Jetbikes unless I can bring a group of 8+ Dire Avengers. Goodluck and welcome to Eldar!

I played Grey Knights when they were bad. Really bad.

Now though, Eldar is my first love!

Iranna.

Puscifer wrote:Can Eldar smash armies with overwhelming firepower?

They're more of a scalpel than a sledgehammer. You can put out a lot of fire with heavy support options like Warwalkers (scatter lasers all day erryday) and Fire Prisms though. Unfortunately that's basically where all the heavy firepower comes from in the army; those and Fire Dragons. Dire Avengers are really solid troops though, and Eldrad can buff an army to be pretty solid. Eldar are definitely at the lower level of the power scale, but they can still do very well and maintain some of the best sculpts GW's ever done.

Brother SRM wrote:(scatter lasers all day erryday)

This is more true than a lot of you may know. I'm tempted to do a 9 War Walker x2 SL spam list with Eldrad and a Guide seer (for fun). If they're guided one squad will take out a lot of models, even with termie armor. Eldar's S6 unending weapons make Rhino/Razorback Walls cry. Don't be afraid to list tailor if you're fighting a T1 army. If they call you out on it just use the 4th edition codex excuse =P

I like playing armies that are not OP, but I've only ever managed to win with my Eldar, not with my DA because I don't like termie spam.

Akaen's link is pretty much everything you need to know, but if you don't feel like reading through all of that, then follow the general advice on this thread.

felixander wrote:Don't be afraid to list tailor if you're fighting a T1 army. If they call you out on it just use the 4th edition codex excuse =P

Or just make an army that is a TAC list. You can still do that with Eldar without compromising your ethics.

All of my armies are from "weak" codexes. Reason being is I play what I like, not what's the best.

As for what works in eldar:

Farseers, doom and guide.
dire avengers
fire dragons
banshees
harliquins
war walkers with scatter lasers
wraithlords