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Hey folks,
I've played and plan to play my Eldar army as a combined arms force. That means that I want a solid defensive shooty element and a fast assault element in my army.
Maybe it's not the perfect way to build an army (aka to separate your force), but what I want to know form you is if this army concept can work.

Here's what my army is based on (various builds possible)

1 or 2 squad(s) of Dark Reapers
1 Wraithlord
Farseer
Avatar (?)
Rangers
Defensive unit (which one is the question)

avengers in serpents
Falcon with dragons
Jetbikes with warlock
melee unit in wave serpents (which one is the question) or Shining spears (would like to have new models)
Warp spiders (I would like to have new models to finally buy and field them)

That pretty much sums it up, is it possible to work something out with these units? I played some games with this army and fared pretty well (maybe 8 Games without a loss) but I always had the feeling it was more mixed than matched...

Greets
Schepp himself

Having played a ton of games with Eldar in 5th I think it might actually be optimal.

In 3rd ed I played foot slogging Eldar, 4th ed I played mech, in 5th I think combined arms is the way to go.

This is hard to say because I am pro mechdar. That said, so many of the missions require resilient units to contest objectives and this ultimately comes down to Wraithlords are king at this.

I've found that harlequins are actually the way you make this viable. So before this thread blows up, yes I get harlies are less viable against multi wound units and are often left in the open due to overkill, but they have an additional boon with is really nice... The shadow seer is a psycher. This is huge as I can have a solid back board group and still have my Farseer and Autarch up with the falcons and wave serpents.

Also, I'm think 5 dire avengers in a falcon are the strongest scoring troop unit. Especially if you toss Eldrad into the ride. I've found they just out perform big dire avengers squads. (Not in killing but in all mission objectives.)

The other troop I sometimes take is a min ranger squad to sit on an objective and keep there heads down.

I also have had recent luck with 10 stormies with fusion guns, warlock with destructor, and Yriel in a waveserpent.

Anyway, food for thought.

PS - I realize this is very different thinking than what you'll see on most boards about Eldar right now. All I can say is that ifyour reading about ubber seer councils, and big dire avenger squads, those thoughts are large invalidated now with the SM codex.

Pete

An Eldar hammer & anvil army is quite competitive.

I'd take a Farseer bolstering defense and an Avatar because of its fearless bubble. DA units are perfect to walk in this bubble
Add some shooty support units: Wraithlord, 3 Warwalkers, Warp Spiders.
Then you need fast units for counter-strike: a large Harlie unit on foot, DA in a Serpent, Fire Dragons in a Falcon.

My greatest fear is that my shooty platform is not powerful enough to overcome a real shooty army and then my counterstrike units have to take out some squishy shooty units of the enemy.
I have no experience with this and am struggling how much points I have to dedicate to this part of the army. I'm thinking mainly of lootas, devestators, tau suits or similar units.

But when I invest that many points in counterstrike, how do I fare against all assault armies?

Oh, and eldrad is a no-go, I don't use him.

Thanks for the thoughtfodder!

Greets
Schepp himself

This thread reminds me of a related point: deFlo--when 5th ed first came out I remember you saying "how can Eldar knock 10 plague marines off an objective?"

I recently became a fan of rangers & pathfinders as the shooty basis of a combined Eldar army. In a recent game I had 5 rangers and 5 pathfinders knock out 8 plague marines at during the course of a 5-turn game. By denying them armor/FNP saves, wounding on 4s and leaving only cover saves, rangers & pathfinders do better IMO against high-toughness, multi-save units (Nob bikers, TMCs) at range for the price than other Eldar ranged options. They chew through marine equivalents too. Plus they score, but have more ranged firepower and durability against return fire than other troop options.

I used to build my Eldar combined arms armies around a firebase of walking guardian squads, but I'm retooling now to include more rangers and pathfinders in the firebase. Then I'm tweaking the other choices to support the rangers better--scatterlasers to shoot down incoming flamer-speeders, an avatar to back them up in CC.

Schepp himself wrote:My greatest fear is that my shooty platform is not powerful enough to overcome a real shooty army and then my counterstrike units have to take out some squishy shooty units of the enemy.
I have no experience with this and am struggling how much points I have to dedicate to this part of the army. I'm thinking mainly of lootas, devestators, tau suits or similar units.

In any game, you have to decide on the field which enemy units pose the most threat to you winning and you have to deal with them. Now the two important things here are "you winning" which is not the same as having your units survive and "deal with them" which is not the same as killing them. If you can move your army in such a way that lootas or devistators can't draw line of sight to anything in range and they have to spend several turns moving to get into a position to fire, you have delt with them. As for winning, in a 2 objective game, you can have a lone trooper model on your objective and his transport on the enemy objective with the rest of your army totally destroyed and not a single enemy unit dead and win so long as there isn't anyone contesting your objective. These are really the things you have to think about more than "can I kill my opponent's army". So to this end, what does a combined arms approach provide you in terms of winning. Well in objective missions it means that you have half an army to sit back and defend rear objectives while the other half can move forward to capture / contest forward objectives. In kill point missions, it means that you have a lot of options with which to go about killing your opponent and keeping your own units alive.

So, the good the bad and the ugly. Against armies that sit back and shoot, you will do decently. Your shooty units should be able to trade shots with them to reasonable affect while your fast units zoom up on them. At this point your opponent can either try to cripple your fire base or down the assault units bearing down on him. Either way, you still have very dangerous units pointing at him. Just make sure that in the first couple of rounds, you focus your fire on the elements of his army that pose the most threat to your skimmers. As long as they are alive and dangerous, he can't really ignore them.

Against armies that all charge you, you are in a very good position. All assault armies have to get to you before they can do much. This puts you in a doubly good position. First off, you can pepper them with shots on the way in and really blunt their force. Second, with eldar mobility, you can set things up to fight on your terms. Move backwards as necessary and set things up so that your close range units are the ones that get to open fire first (as opposed to the enemy units) or charge first, depending on what you're fielding. The trick here is that you have to be patient and let them come to you, don't meet them half way. The more time you get to whittle their forces down, the more likely you are to win. The other option here is that if their whole army is comming across the board, you can zoom over their heads in a skimmer and go harass their back field. If there is anything back there, it's going to be weak to hand to hand units. If there isn't anything back there, you can capture objectives unharassed.

Against mixed armies like your own, you are on even footing. In this case you can play the dancing game of trying to dodge around eachother and sacrifice pawns to bring valuable enemy units out into the open. It is in fights like these that you really have to think though what you are doing and how best to use your troops.

The place where you will find yourself struggling is against gimic armies. Nob biker armies, green tide, land raider spam and 3 monolith armies will all give you trouble due to their overload on one aspect or another. The combined arms eldar army tends to be a good generalist army and doesn't do so well with armies that require lots of one type of specialist to deal with.

All in all though, I would invest a bit more in your forward units than your rear units. The rear units provide fire support for the ones in front and deal with any outflankers or deep strikers that show up, but do not need the force of numbers investment that really pays off on the front lines. I would say a 60%-40% split should serve you well.

I use this exact list often. I do use Eldrad sometimes to cast guide twice though. I would suggest using S.Scorpions in the Wave Serpent. Ethier fly the 10 of them up the flank or outflank from reserves. This is a good way to kill off those 15 loottas or whatever. This also allows you to concentrate your guided Reaper shots on the advancing cc units. I woudn't go head to head with cc vs cc or ranged vs ranged as this could allow your opponet insight into your plan and fold this kind of force.

That general army set-up can and does work. My army is typically built in the same way with an anchor of the Avatar and Wraithlords, shooting support from Fire Prisms and a mobile assault element. For what you were describing ("a defensive shooty element and a fast assault element in my army"), a Wave Serpent filled with Howling Banshees or Fire Dragons sounds like it would do what you want.

Here's another idea, though: take a unit of Striking Scorpions w/ a Farseer and Infiltrate them up the field. The reason for this is to attract attention away from your Dark Reapers, who are comparatively vulnerable. Since you want your shooting to be a big part of your gameplan, you need something that'll attract attention. The Avatar and Wraithlords will do that for heavy weapons fire while Scorpions can do it for small-arms fire.