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I han't played since 3:ed but I'm collecting for an eldar army in 5:th and I'm having a few difficulties. Please help me out.

When it comes to troops choices I realise that eldar get raped against almost everybody in close combat..The pathfinders are good and I'm going to use them but for the rest, tricky. DA seems to be most players natural choice and I can se why. Then again they really only get one round of shooting before getting assaulted in 5:th and S3 T3 A1 aren't great. Same with Defenders. Storm guardians have +1A but still, gets killed by orks and such every time. So the question is how to make that one shot as deadly as possible. I'm building an army for 1500p and concidering taking 20 Defenders with shuriken cannon and a farseer with guide and doom. The idea is to run them behind two fireprisms and other cover. Just thouth that 40 shots with rerolls end up with 30 hits statistically. Counting against T4 (Marines, orks etc) it should allocate around 15 wounds. even the marines can't save all those, and the orks don't get to save at all. Any comments?

I'm also having trouble pickin the best unit to get rid of tanks. I stand between 5 firedragons i waveserpent or 3 vypers with bright lance (planning on using the prisms on infantry). Firedragons seem better but will they survive landing in the heart of the enemy army and actually do something before getting obliterated? Will the vypers get shot down to easely? I'm playng aggressively as a concept.

Dire avengers can most certainly get more than one round of shooting before being assaulted. Assault range is 12 inches for most models, and dire avengers have a shooting range of 18 inches. Besides, a properly augmented dire avenger unit (doom plus guide and/or bladestorm as needed) should have a good chance of reducing the nearest unit to something manageable in hand-to-hand. An exarch with power weapon, shimmershield and defend can turn the avengers into a reasonably well-rounded unit.

Fire dragons will indeed do something before getting obliterated: they will obliterate whatever you shoot with them. That's more than can be said of a vyper, which will just die. Against a vehicle with AV 12+, the vyper has only a 1/4 chance of doing anything at all. Moreover, now that a vyper can be penetrated (and doesn't even get a SMF 4+ save on a turn that it shoots), it's more fragile than ever.

Well, if you take a Farseer and Defenders, then add an Avatar. The Defenders walk in the Avatar's fearless bubble and the Avatar should be fortuned by the Farseer. Eldrad is the best choice, though. Add a Wraithlord for cc goodness. The enemy will think twice before charging your anvil.
Then you need a hammer. Two Fire Prisms can do it.

Fearless is not good for the guardians with the new No Retreat rule.

Gaurdians are cheap. You might want to think about running gaurdians with some kind of vehicle support in front of your dires and trying to draw an assault on the gaurdians. If they flee, which they probably will, then you can unload on the opponent with the dires. This same tactic works using fire dragons or some other shooty unit. Just a thought.

Maybe buy a unit or two of Wraithguard?

whitedragon wrote:Fearless is not good for the guardians with the new No Retreat rule.

If I have 20 guardians, and I lose a combat by 5. I would rather take 5 armor saves rather than try and make a LD test on a 3.

But that's just me.

Falling back and the attendant opportunity to fire at the assaulting unit with Shuriken Catapults seems, in general, better than sticking around in close combat for one or two S3 attacks. Worth the risk of a Sweeping Advance, at least.

Nurglitch pretty much hit it on the head.

Unless you are using your guardians as your speedbump for your elites to assult next turn. In 5th, guardians are guaranteed to speedbump if they are fearless. Opponent assaults them, beats them in h2h, then you assault him with your close combat elite squad(s) that was hanging back. Because the guardians will not run and the opponent could not consolidate into a new unit if the guardians all died the unit is guaranteed to give you a cheap speedbump.