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I'm having some issue's with eldar, i can't seem to find a list that gives me a fair chance at winning. Part of my problem is i haven't played in ages so i'm still picking up some of my old tricks. It seems not only am i outgunned in assault, i'm out shot and my survivability doesn't seem that much better. Falcons and wave serpents are rough for me to take down, but i knew that going into TS.

My basic list i used was
3 oblits
defiler
predator las/hb
3 squads of TS w/boc, 1 in rhino
DP w/boc, wt
CL mot, term, twin LC
4 termi's with twin lc, mot, lr
9 termi's w/2x combi plas,1x combi melta,1xautocannon
9 raptors mot, melta
due to special rules also a Dreadnaught w/laz

now due to bad luck my 9 termi's deepstruck in, almost wiped out the reapers, but in next turn fled from combat crappy rolls on my part there cost me alot, and then due to basically a vortex grenade i lost my LR and the termis and lord in it. But on the side note he lost one serpent w/scorps in it and 1 falcon with fire dragons in it through same thing. So that was even'd out, but in the end he still had about 1.2k left and i had nothing.

Now my next game will be 2500 pts and gonna try to field
3x TS marines w/rhino's/boc
1x6 terminators w/1xplc, 2x combi plas, 1x reaper
2x6 term w/1xplc, 2x combi plas
DP w/mot, boc, wt
2x3 oblits
1xdefiler (yes i do love the defiler so i keep using it and its always done well for me)

What ya think? Where can i stick to my fluff with TS and yet still provide competition to eldar?

Vortex grenade? Are you looking for advice for Apocalypse?

No more, general advice or suggestions on what TS can do vs Eldar. Ignore the vortex grenade stuff, i just brought it up, its part of the campaign we were playing, it was a feature of the fight roaming around.

As much as I hate to tell people how to kill eldar, I’ll see what I can do.

First off, you need to figure out what in your opponent’s army is really a threat to you (now, soon, and ever). Let me see if I can give you an example of what I’m talking about. You mentioned your opponent having dark reapers. Now dark reapers are long ranged death for anything walking around in 3+ armor (or 4+ for that matter). So if these guys got range (and at 48” they do) and line of sight to your thousand sons, they are a big threat and you need to do something about them. On the other hand, if they only have line of sight and range to your terminators, you don’t have to worry about them as much since their shooting is rather ineffective against 2+ saves.

The next question for you is how long will they be a threat (or how long will it take for them to become a threat). If the immobile reapers only have line of sight to your terminators, you don’t have to worry about them now. However if they also have line of sight to one (or more) mission objective, they will likely be a threat later since you will have to get units into that area. On a similar note, the reapers might have line of sight on your thousand sons now, but if you can get them out of line of sight on your turn (without moving them into a position where they will be ineffective) you will eliminate the threat the reapers pose without having to actually kill them.

This is all well and good, but how do you put it to use? Well eldar units are all very specialized. In their element, they do very well and out of their element they get trashed. Try shooting banshees or getting into hand to hand with dark reapers and you’ll see what I mean. A good eldar player knows this and will work very hard to make sure his guys stay in their element. So the fun of it all is foiling his attempts. You’re first priority will be to thwart whatever is the biggest threat to you at the moment. Here are some ways to do that.

1) Move. Since the eldar are a very mobile force, this isn’t going to be as useful to them as other armies, but it’s worth mentioning. Shooty units can’t shoot you if you are out of line of sight or out of range. Assaulty units can’t assault you if they can’t get to you. With this in mind, don’t be afraid to move (particularly, don’t be afraid to move backwards).

2) Pick your targets correctly. If you see a hand to hand eldar unit coming your way, don’t send one of your hand to hand units out there to deal with them. That’s just asking to get your unit killed. What you want to do is work it out so that you can shoot their hand to hand unit. Harlequins for example are extremely fast and deadly in hand to hand, but they only have T3 and a 5+ I save to keep them safe (and possibly the veil of tears). If you drive a rhino full of guys up close to them, the veil isn’t likely to protect them and their low toughness and save certainly won’t keep them from all dieing to bolter fire. Similarly, fire dragons have no hand to hand power at all, so if they end up near you (and they have to be close to do any damage), just assault them with anything you have sitting around and wipe them off the board (if you can shoot them before assaulting and still make it into hand to hand later, so much the better).

3) Don’t waste your resources. This is kind of a 2 part issue. The first is that you want units that do one thing well more than you want units that can do everything. For example, your predator. It has las cannons and heavy bolters on it. Why? Any time you fire it, you are either wasting good heavy bolter shots on monstrous creature or vehicles that they can’t hurt or you are wasting las cannon shots on infantry models that would be killed much more efficiently by an auto cannon or some other higher rate of fire weapon. So pick a role for your units (killing troops or killing vehicles, or whatever) and make sure they do that job and do it well without wasting points and other valuable equipment on situations that they are not designed to deal with. The second part is to apply your firepower (and hand to hand strength) where it is most useful. For example, pumping las cannon after las cannon into a falcon trying to kill it is a waste. Those things are so resilient that your chances of killing it are slim. However since it’s a good gunboat, doing damage to it so that it can’t shoot you is probably worth the effort. So shoot at the falcon till you do manage to get though it’s armor, but then direct the rest of your firepower at other targets since continued shoots on the falcon will probably not yield any further results. Similarly, if you have some ap 4 weapons, shoot at targets that have 4+ armor and try to ignore ones with 3+. Get the most from your shooting.

4) Know some tricks. One example is how to deal with wave serpents. Serpents usually carry dire avengers, banshees, or sometimes fire dragons. There isn’t much you can do about the avengers or dragons till they get out and shoot. In those cases, just shoot back next turn and finish them off in assault if they live. Banshees are a different story. These girls need to assault to be useful. They also can’t assault after disembarking if the transport moved that turn. This means that most eldar players with banshees in a serpent will move the serpent up, wait a turn, and then disembark the banshees, move them, fleet them, and charge. Since the serpent will be sitting there for a turn, you have a chance to react. If you can move far enough away from the serpents door to avoid the banshees charge range (2” disembark + 6” move + d6 fleet + 6” charge = 19” to 24”) then you can back up and force them to move again (or risk the banshees being stuck out in the open). If the eldar player has moved the serpent right up into your ranks, the best thing you can do is move up to it and block off it’s rear door. If you do this, the serpent will have to move on it’s turn without disembarking the banshees (remember, turning counts as moving so they can’t just spin in place). Don’t forget that if you can’t quite make it in the movement phase, you can always declare a charge on the serpent in your assault phase…even if you can’t actually hurt it.

5) Just because you have deep strike doesn’t mean you have to use it. For the most part, I find that deep strike isn’t worth using. Here is what happens. You hold a unit in reserve to deep strike. This means that they spend the first turn doing nothing…always. Now on turn 2, there is a 50% chance they show up and do something. Not the best of odds if you ask me. By turn 3, it’s rather likely that they’ll be in…either from a turn 2 roll or a turn 3 roll, however what happens when they get there? Well when deep strikers land, they are usually close enough to their targets to shoot them up. This is, again, rather deadly to the target most times. However the deep striking unit is now deep in enemy territory and the enemy normally turns most of their army around and obliterates the deep striking unit. So deep striking gets you into position to wipe out one target before you die and that’s about it. So unless you have suicide squads that are fairly cheep and deadly (IG drop troops with lost of special weapons) or you are deep striking so many units that your opponent doesn’t have enough firepower to deal with them all (drop pod armies) then you probably shouldn’t deep strike at all. Do yourself a favor and start all your terminators and obliterators on the board, it will go a lot better for you.

With all that being said, can you give some specifics of what is actually giving you trouble. Are dark reapers and war walkers shooting you to bits? Are banshees and quins chopping you up all the time? What is really doing damage to you that you can’t seem to deal with? That and how are these things being used? With a little more information I can be a lot more useful in pointing out ways to deal with them.