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I've been trying out a few different builds and have it narrowed down to either a mech list or a shootier footslogging list that is a little more balanced. Is it going to be a matter of who I am up against, or is one of these options clearly better? Any recommendations for tuning either would be welcome as well.

EDIT: It looks like the Mech List is the clear favorite. I've made some minor tweaks based on the feedback I have so far and a couple corrections to the list after double checking the numbers. I think this one is pretty solid, and I'll probably start building it out today (gonna need to pick up a couple models). Keep the comments coming, I really appreciate them! I'd really be interested in hearing some strategic advise for the mech list, as well as tips on how you feel the army will perform against some common opponents.

Mech Army:

HQ:
Farseer w/ Doom

Troops:
9 DAs + Exarch w/ Dual Cats and Bladestorm
+ Waveserpent w/ Twin-Linked Shuriken Cannons + Spirit Stones

9 DAs + Exarch w/ Dual Cats and Bladestorm
+ Waveserpent w/ Twin-Linked Shuriken Cannons + Spirit Stones

Elites:
6 Fire Dragons
+ Falcon w/ Scatter laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holo Fields, and Spirit Stones

Heavy Support:
Fire Prism

1000 points on the button!

<OR>

Foot Sloggers:

HQ:
Farseer w/ Doom, Guide, Stones, Runes of Warding, and Singing Spear

Troops:
10 Guardians w/ EML

6 Pathfinders

Elites:
8 Harlequins w/ Kiss + Seer w/ Kiss + Master with Power weapon (and 1 fusion pistol to eat up extra points)

Heavy Support:
3 War Walkers w/ dual scatter lasers

1 Wraithlord w/ Brightlance and EML

Both lists are rather good.
The Serpents should have stones and the Falcon shuricannons. To save points, take a naked Prism.

I just looked over my point count and I figured for stones on the serpents but didn't list them. I can take the stones off the Fire Prism to give the shuricannon to the Falcon.

I feel that the mech list is better. Both are strong, but I think the mech opens more options, where the foot based tends to be less fluid.

If you removed the Avenger Exarch upgrades, the Prism's holo-field and the 6th Dragon, you could fit a second Prism in the mech list.

Is it worth neutering my squads to field two naked prisms? Remember that those DAs have to unload and take on the enemy, and they are the only scoring units on the board here. The Fire Prisms hit hard, it's true, but probably not hard enough to make up for the lost damage on all three of my ground units.

I like the idea of having 5 skimmers on the board, don't get me wrong, but as I look down at some mathammer here, it looks like this would hurt my offense slightly and do very little for my survivability. Is there something I am missing? Could someone else give me their opinion on the second Prism, please?

1000 pts seems a bit low to specialize into two fire prisms. That's just me. I really like your first mech list. At this point level, I've seen Eldar players usually take just the regular falcon. This means the fire prism is not used at all at 1000 pts in my local metagame, but there is so much rock/paper/scissors now that just go ahead play with what you like.

I am also mech biased because the waveserpent is my favorite transport in the game, even though I'm a BA player

I think that because of a mistake on my part, there wont be any choice about the second prism. See, I had the Wave Serpents down as 100 points, and when Wuestenfux commented that I should give them Spirit Stones, I assumed that was why I had the extra 10 points on there. But as I look at the Codex now, I realize I had to give them a weapon choice - 10 points for twin linked Shuriken Cannons. That means that I'll need to lose the Holo-fields on the Prism anyway just to keep the first list. I'm going to edit up the first post to reflect this.

I think the mech list is probably the way to go. The other list makes it so that all your eggs are in the one basket of the quin squad and that's probably not going to be very effective or particularly fun. The other down side of that list is that you really don't have much of a way to deal with objectives on the other side of the board since your pathfinders will be hanging back and guardians are unlikely to live long enough to make it across the board if they start advancing.

With those last 15 points you have, there are a couple of things you could do. You could upgrade the weapon on your falcon. You could give the farseer either runes of warding or runes of witnessing (and maybe a spear if you want).

Aww...I guess it's a moot point now, but I think 2 Prisms and 5 skimmers at 1000 points would have been the awsum. The fifth skimmer just puts it over the top in terms of target saturation, since they're all legitimate threats at 1k. And two Prisms can take on anything (with varying degrees of success).

Fifteen points can also get you a FD Exarch w/ DB, and a singing spear. It's a matter of preference, the list should do fine.

I completely agree, Dorf, 5 skimmers would have been pure armor overload, even against IG or Tau. But against MEQs, I like to make sure that the squads that come out of the skimmers will do more than suck and die. The Exarch option is notably strong, but may put me into overkill on armor killers; if the FDs get into range, they're going to bring down at least 1 tank, likely 2 depending on how they are deployed. I'll use the Prism to try to pop Mech as well, at least until it looks like I've got most of the enemy's armor killers out of the game.