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I'm helping a friend build an Eldar list based around the things he likes, and making sure it looks different enough from my own.

It's completely unmechanised; no transports are used in this army. Instead, it relies on cover, Veil of Tears, mobility and pinning (there are 8 units capable of pinning in this army).

The Jetbike Seer Council is a support/counter charge unit. The harlies attempt (riskily) to waste fire by being one of few viable targets as they slog up the board. The rangers run long range interference and the walkers troubleshoot against infantry and light vehicles. The vibrobatteries take care of any other vehicles though sheer weight of glancing blows.

That's the plan, anyway.

Now, as I said, the army is built around the things he digs the Eldar for. So lots of Harlies, Rangers and a Seer Council, plus the Walkers. That's just about everything he likes from the Eldar, and the Vibros are there to make sure the list is somewhat competitive. I don't wanna build him a bunk list but this is different to the sort of army I'm used to building, so comments are really welcome!

HQ

Farseer: Runes of Warding, Doom, Singing Spear and an Eldar Jetbike - 128

Farseer: Fortune and an Eldar Jetbike - 115

Warlocks: 6 Warlocks on Eldar Jetbikes, 3 Singing Spears, 1 Enhance, 1 Embolden, 4 Destructors - 339

These all run together. 4 witchblades, 4 singing spears for stylistic reasons. A buncha templates and a little tankbusting.

Elites

Harlequin Troupe: 6 Harlies. 5 Harlie Kisses, a Troupe Master, Shadowseer and Death Jester - 184

Harlequin Troupe: 6 Harlies. 5 Harlie Kisses, a Troupe Master, Shadowseer and Death Jester - 184

Harlequin Troupe: 6 Harlies. 5 Harlie Kisses, a Troupe Master, Shadowseer and Death Jester - 184

Three identical units to walk up the board. Fleet is forgone in favour of pinning attacks when units are in range. Pinning is forgone by Fleet when units are in assault range.

Troops

Rangers: 6 Rangers, Pathfinders - 144

Rangers: 6 Rangers, Pathfinders - 144

Yet more pinning. Concealed away with decent cover saves. Good for taking out high toughness creatures too. Possibly be a good idea to drop a squad for a unit of Dire Avengers for objective holding/assault halting.

Heavy Support

Support Weapon Battery: 3 Vibro cannons, Warlock with Conceal - 175

Support Weapon Battery: 3 Vibro cannons, Warlock with Conceal - 175

Warwalker Squadron: 3 Walkers, Spirit Stones, 2 Scatterlasers, 2 Eldar Missile Launchers, 2 Starcannons - 225

Total: 1997

50 models total, 3 vehciles, 8 units with pinning. It's a bit too cookie cutter for standard Eldar, maybe, but will it work?

Be sure to remind your friend about the major nerf of seer councils: since farseers are now independent characters, anybody can allocate his attacks onto the guy with fortune. When he dies, no more fortune for the unit.

Other than that, it looks like it will struggle against mobile shooty armies, especially fearless ones, and most competitive builds, but will still be fun to play.

Thanks Flavius. I was hoping you'd comment.

The IC thing can be mitigated partly by the mobility of the bikes allowing the unit to almost always charge on their own terms, so smart placement of assaulting models and target picking (combined with 4 destructor templates) will hopefully minimise that problem, but I will make sure he knows how to handle that (he hasn't played the game since Harlies were first removed).

Part of the army's tactics with mobile shooty armies is to pin as many of their units down as possible, to reduce the whole 'mobility' thing. I don't have any experience with the effectiveness of Pinning in game, so I dunno how often units will actually be pinned down. If I removed a squad of Harlies for something to more effectively counter that (freeing up 184 points), what would you (or anyone) suggest?

I think the biggest problem that you'll run up against is the low model count combined with the fact that the units fielded outside of the HQ don't have any real survivability (armor)

I honestly have trouble seeing this list perform well because I don't see it having any way to repel enemy firepower.

Pinning is a nice thing to have sometimes, but its not a reliable defense by any stretch of the imagination, in my experience anyhow. For that matter there's no way to pin a vehicle, and the list contains little anti-tank weaponry that functions at high range, so armor could present a serious threat to this list.

Just my $.02

Chaos cult marines, death companies, and tyranids will never be pinned. Wraithguard, wraithlords and characters attached to them will never be pinned.

Vehicles will never be pinned. Neither will a unit being transported inside a vehicle be pinned.

Chaos undivided marines don't get the reroll on pin checks, but they mostly have Ld10, so they will seldom be pinned (aobut 8% of the time). Necrons likewise also have Ld10.

Most other armies have Leadership 8 or 9 (guard use their command bubbles) so you're looking at about a 28% or 17% chance, respectively, of pinning somebody--assuming that the shooting causes a casualty. Against those armies you might expect to pin 0-2 units a turn.

How useful is it to pin one of those armies? If they're jump marines or bikes, it would slow down their assault. You're all set to defeat a ravenwing army. You would reduce the shooting of a static guard army by pinning selected units.

But armies that base their mobility on transports aren't going to be slowed at all in their assaults by pinning. Two major popular groups of fast assault armies--chaos cult marines and tyranids--aren't going to be slowed at all.

Most importantly, pinning doesn't kill the enemy, which should be the "sole object of all engagements." If you're pinning them so they can be assaulted by something deadly, I can see that. But just killing one or two models and pinning the unit over and over again doesn't score points, reduce units, or win engagements.

I once won a game thru pinning tactics. I was playing tau vs space marines this was in 3rd edition. So no leadership 10 for the entire army masters. Every unit in my army had 2 or more pinning models and some with targetlocks were able to split fire. I think I had 11-13 pin attempts per turn. my opponent had 2 assault squads 2 rhinos and a bunch of static stuff. In short order between mass fire power and those annoying as heck pinning weapons, I popped the rhino's and kept the assault squads pinned or reduced them to such small numbers that by the time the last model reached me I was cocky enough to assault the lone powerfist marine with a full squad of firewarriors. That was 2 years ago at least, and its never worked for me since. Drop the pinning stuff, go for the win :-)

Thanks for the math, Flavius, and the first hand experience, Sazzlefrats.

But yeah, the idea is to keep them pinned, keep them back away from objectives and then assault them with the Harlies. Pop transports with the vibros, then target other vehicles. Countercharge/destructor anything that goes places it's not meant to with the Seer council.

A mobile assault army is kinda doing what it's meant to, in trying to get into hand to hand with this army and the main target it provides are Harlies, so I dunno if that is even a problem, or how it will play out. Everything else is left hiding away, or zooming about.

Problem is that its mobile squads are assault elements that may well be wasted if left around objectives, and may not get back to them in time without falcon transport.

Talking to the friend this is for, today, he expressed his desire to mount his council in a Waveserpentm though. He's theming his army around Harlies (to the point of wanting to model all his warlocks after them), so wants a crazy, Harlie painted Serpent.

If he goes that way, I'll probably push him toward a more mechanised grav-phalanx.

Something like replacing the two Vibro batteries with Falcons, dropping the Death Jesters from the two mounted squads (he wants to at least use his old, 2nd Ed Jester) and putting them in said Falcons. Mounting the Warlocks in a Serpent will probably require freeing up points, and I need to figure out where his anti-tank will come from in this set up.

Sorry for the inane rambling. It's 7am and I need to get my ass to bed. I may try and test this out a few times with proxies to see if it works at all in game, if I can find the time.

It might be worth a try. I say proxy it for some test games and see what it does. There are still some good undiscovered army builds out there for Eldar.