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Hey all.

Instead of starting this thread with my traditional "I'm a newb. Give me tips. Thanks!" I'm actually going to ask some legit questions in regards to where I'm going to get the best bang for my buck.

I'm getting to the point where I'm going to cap off my Space Marine army for a while and pick up a new army. I'm really feeling Eldar as the takers for my second army. With that in mind, I want to know a few things about the direction I'm taking, and I'm hoping you guys can help guide me.

First off, are the Eldar tough to learn? I picked up SM's pretty quickly, but I feel like saying that is comparing apples to oranges.

I've been eying this Eldar Army and I got thinking that this would be a good starting place. It's about 600 or so points, but there's no HQ(unless I missed him ). I tallied up individual costs, and it's a savings of about $25ish, which is cool. I'm all about saving money. But for $175, only getting 600ish points is a bit of a turn off, unless that's a good price for that amount of points?

I've also been looking at the Eldar Battleforce and it seems like a decent value at $90, but unlike the above box, I didn't tally up the point total or the individual costs of each set of figures.

In either case, if I choose to spring on Eldar, I'm going to do shopping on eBay on top of whatever battleforce box I pick above.

What I want to know is:
a) if it looks like I've done enough research to justify the purchase of a new army
b) if Eldar aren't worth my time
c) if Eldar are "too advanced" for a newbie
d) if you could turn me on to another army that may be more worth my time

Thanks!

A preliminary question, regarding your "a": why Eldar? There are several fairly effective variants available, but they involve some fairly significant investment (lots of grav tanks to buy, and/or Wraithguard), and are likely to have a fairly steep learning curve.

Let's back up a few steps, if you don't mind. What do you like about your Marines? What *didn't* you like about your Marines?

If you're cost-conscious, and are looking for a fairly versatile collection of models, then Eldar aren't the way to go. You want something that offers a variety of interesting army styles, but reuses a lot of models between them. Marines are one such army; Chaos Space Marines can be as well. Ork boyz are very solid (but very numerous), and the Assault on Black Reach orkz are fairly cheap. Necron warriors are used in every possible Necron list, though they are expecting a new codex next year.

Apples and oranges indeed, if we were to arrange the units of 40k on a line with 'flexible' on one side and 'specialised' on the other, we'd find most SM units on one side and most eldar units at the other end. SM can be tooled to do anything, they won't shine in every situation but they'll handle themselves in most situation. The thing about eldar is that all units are very specialised in their task and perform one thing very well, but they all have a weakness which needs to be covered by another unit which is in turn specialised against that weakness and introduces it's own weakness which you need to cover again untill you make full circle. The challenge of eldar listbuilding is finding combinations with more than one of those 'circles' in them to avoid being crippled by the loss of one unit, and manouvering the units so they actually cover each other where needed. Eldar is rewarding to play with when you use your brain and frustratingly weak if you're just going to push units forward into one big clusterF***. If your style of game is all about getting toghether with friends having some beers while shoving models and tossing dice, then i strongly recommend using orks instead. Orks are my second army and i enjoy them because i can just bumrush them across the board without too much tought.

Eldar can be tough atfirst to use.Bear in mind that
the Eldar really need a lot of the various paths to be truly
effective.Guardians don't stand up well in a shooting war.
And don't get me started on Eldar saving throws!
I have a marine army and it is nearly finnished in terms
of adding to it.So I've started an Ork army,Just to see
the look of terror on opponents faces when a green horde
arrives on the battlefield!
The futures bright,the futures ORKY!!!!

MrTrain,

Out of all these replies I notice one thing that is lacking. That is you. Do you think YOU will enjoy painting all of them? Do YOU think you would enjoy studying how to use them effectively? And finally..Do YOU see yourself using an Eldar army?

Me, I am a creature of impulse.... It usually starts with a "Oohh...I like that model" and turns into 3000-4000 points of an army. But for me I have to like painting the models first. I personally love searching around for viable tactics on certain races. I never had a clue what a Fireknife or a Fish of Fury was before a month ago when I started amassing a Tau army. And as for using them I am currently at 2-1-1 with them having played every week this month with them.

So deep down it all boils down to do you like them? I don't know how many kids at the FLGS with army's they built by getting the list off a forum somewhere and hate their army. It plays well, but they are not painting it (they are working on something else 99% of the time) and have no intention of doing anything BUT play a game here and there with it.

SO go with what you want... not what we want.

Well. I think the Eldar are very neat looking. And I know that if I did pick them up, I'd totally paint them/convert them to look Protoss

But I mean, I'm still shopping around for my next army, and Eldar have stood out to me since my start in to the hobby, and even more so after I played a game against them.

I don't have a "style" of play just yet as I'm still learning how to play. But the race seems really neat to me, but I'm still on the fence as I'm still shopping around for my next army.

Maybe if I can get suggestions as to where I should go next?

First of all, we need to know what's most important to you. Do you like the look of the models and the fluff behind them? Or are you more into actually playing the game?

Even if you don't have a definitive play style yet, I guess the biggest question is what play style seems to appeal most to you? You can figure this, for the most part, without even playing a single game. Does the thought of a massive charge appeal to you, throwing every single unit you have towards the enemy? Or do you more prefer a stoic line of shots that will destroy the enemy's ranks from afar? Do you prefer resilient units that can actually afford to stand out in the open? Or weaker units that can move fast to take advantage of any available cover? A swarm of individual units? Or tanks rolling across the battlefield?

There are a ton of questions you can ask yourself, but if you absolutely love the idea of units that rely completely on speed and not sheer power to overpower units, excel in ducking between cover sources to maximize firing potential, have good psyker capability, and have decent power but almost no resilience to speak of, then Eldar are definetly your army from a gameplay perspective. Ooh, almost forgot that their skimmer tanks are POWERFUL.

You're used to Space Marines, though, so I suggest going in to your first game as Eldar (if they do end up being your final choice) with a completely open mind. Space Marines are a much more forgiving army, and have units to fit any given situation. Eldar require you to use completely different tactics, as well as think a bit more. This does not make them a worse army, as I'd say about 3/4ths of the fights I've seen between Eldar and SM, Eldar wiped the floor with them.

If you enjoy the fluff and the look of all (or most) of the models as well, then I can't recommend anything else. Just know that eldar are a little bit harder to paint well, because of all of the large surface areas, and they may get really boring to paint, as they mostly look identical to each other (within the same box sets, anyway).

Battleforces are always good deals. Some battleforces may end up giving you more points than others, but they always save you around the cost of one box set. So if you're looking to build up a quick army, that's where you start. Also, no box sets (as far as I know, discounting AoBR) include an HQ, besides the Tyranid Battleforce, which hardly even counts. So you'll have to buy one. Ah well.

Chrysaor686 wrote:A lot to think about

Well... There's a lot to respond to here Thanks for making me pick my brain a bit though.

I do enjoy the fluff of the Eldar and I like the overall design of the units. But what I assume their play style would be like, as you said above, running around and making good use of cover, isn't my style, and I can say that knowing how I play video games, D&D, and the few skirmishes I've played in.

I was thinking Chaos Space Marines would be a neat way to go. Like, what I envision in my head is having one to three heavy tanks running up the field causing chaos and having soldiers following closely, or staying at a distance and picking away, yet still being a formidable presence on the battlefield. And I like the fact that they are "supposed" to look messy(I think), which works well with my lack of painting abilities

So I suppose the amount of research I did for Eldar(that sounds wicked lame haha), as in Wiki'ing them and checking out sets on GW's site is my next step.

My biggest issue with all of this searching around is that I'm basically a blank canvas. I don't know what I'm looking for, I just know that I'd like to expand, start a second army, and build a bigger collection.

Okay. This is sort of a double post, but not really because the posts are like a day apart :-p

I did some wiki'ing last night on the various armies, then I got talking with some of the guys I play with, and they all suggest after seeing me in action that Chaos Marines would suit me well. I can do more of the same thing that I've been doing with regular Marines, but adjust my play style slightly to fit the type of army I'd choose to run.

So I ran through the list of figures on GW's site and picked out about 1400 points worth of stuff that caught my eye. Came to a total of $280.

I then decided to look in the "codex and sets" section. I found this and it's almost every unit I picked out to purchase. The troop choices weren't exactly what I picked, but it's cool. For a set that's $240, $40 less than I had planned on possibly spending. The only major difference is that the Greater Daemon and the Chaos Daemon Prince weren't in the set.

In any case, I'm pumped to get in to Chaos. I like the idea of having a dark, evil sort of army. And I like their look, really neat and gothic like. And I love the idea of painting them black and gold.

If you like Eldar, then that is what you should play. Buy the Codex and build your army based on what you like.

The power curve is a lot flatter than before, so most units are at least somewhat playable. Just be aware that they aren't Marines, and if you play them, you will do OK enough over time.

CSM are also a fine army, and well worth considering. But they're perhaps too similar to your existing SM?