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Food for thought:

I personally think the guys inside of the tank are more important than the tank itself usually.

For example, I think fleshing out the fire dragon squad gets you further than buying the bright lance on the Serpent.

Also on the theme of more bodies / tanks on the table, I know people are hyped up on bike seer councils recently but I've played a ton of games both way and I think the warlocks in a waveserpent are superior. It's too easy to gack the farseer and lose the squad when they are on bikes and it's too expensive to equip them like you want too.

I think with eldar the better lists are filled with big impact units.

Think 10 fire dragons with the exarch with the flamer with crack shot.

Or 8 warlocks 1 enhance, 7 destructors.

You start paring these with doom and fortune and you have squads that simply nuke any army in the game.

The other concept that is usually missed is that you can guide, forutne and doom from inside a transport.

So a farseer can keep a guardian squad in a fight without being in the hth or you can just say screw it an take Eldrad.

Also you are right, scoring waveserpents are great but get knocked down in hth. Holofields work in hth. So a falcon is actually a pretty good upgrade with the flying bunker concept.

Also remember you can fortune the tanks cover save making a tank have a 4++.

Which all culminates into a squad of 5 dire avengers in a falcon, with holo fields and farseer with fortune, runes of warding and doom.

Seems expensive, but it makes the whole army better.

Final note, I think fire prisms are better with holofields. Yes I know it means the guns dies more, but consider what you can do with a fire prism without a gun.

It contests, it tank shocks, and it rams. Holofields basically enchances all of those functions and it's one of the best hulls in the game to do these things.

Seems dumb but now think tank shocking a cari on an objective. If he doesn;t attack you, the carni is off the objective, if it does it's almost assuredly dead.

My point is simple the fire prism is better alive and not shooting, than it is cheaper and dead. Plus you save KPs.

Pete

Running 9 fire dragons plus exarch in 1 squad is horribly overkill. 5 will sufficiently pop any vehicle you want, unless you have absolutely abyssmal luck.

Bikers are way more mobile than wave serpent transport as it takes a turn after every squad you kill to get back into the transport and move on.


That being said, I think 10 DA in transports would be better than 5 as at least if you lost a transport or when you disembarked you pack a decent punch with your troops.

Great. Now you play an ork horde, or nob bikes, or nid list in a tourny... Which are all likely match ups you will run into.

You have two units of dragons in serpents for 440 points that are completely and utterly useless...

5 dragons can tank hunt amazingly and suck at everything else in the game.

9 fusion guns + 1 re roll wound hvy flamer can tank hunt better than any unit in the game, can eliminate almost any elite unit in the game and do a solid amount of damage against a horde unit. It's not overkill it's flexible and cheap.

If you drop the twin bright lance on the tank, and spend the points on the squad, you get a much better combo IMO.

As for bike warlocks, remember you can't fortune your bikes if you want to turbo boost... Also bikes die in hth. They are really best at harassing and being a fire magnet. You only throw them into hth if you REALLY need a tar pit.

At 5 bikes they don't win combat....

My warlocks win combats, tank hunt better, and destroy you will 7 hvy flamer templates. Think Doom. And they cost the same points.

Yes. My squad is more alpha strike in concept, but it also starts off the board and come zooming in a 24" (more if you star engine them) to nuke something. But if your saying you do more damage because you are more maneuverable... I call BS. footlocks throw a lot more attacks and a lot more destructors which should make up for the small uptick in harassing linked shuriken catapult fire power.

As for the 10 dire avengers... IF you go with the BL on the tack you are basically saying you aren't committing to the dire avengers. To shoot the tank you usually have to hug terrain or your get shot out of the sky. If you go 10 dires, drop the BL.

Overall Eldar troops are tough in a mech list.

For troops I currently run:
5 dires in a falcon with a farseer
10 storms with 2 flamers, (sometimes a warlock with destructor) (Good squad for Yriel or an autarch)
10 guardian defenders in a waveserpent with a BL.

runs a lot better than when I was using 5 or 10 dires in waveserpents with BL.

Pete

Uh, so when the wave serpent gets blown up on turn 1 and your firedragons pile out. Then what do you do?

Splitting them into 2 groups of 5 is by far the best call. It makes you buy another wave serpent but who wouldn't want another one.

Your squad nukes 1 thing and then is either destroyed or ignored the rest of the game. So your 400 ish points for their one tank. Wave serpent gets shot on side/back armor and your 10 man squad is attempting to foot slog it.

They won't get blown up on turn one. Mech Eldar generally don't start on the table ever

Seriously though, mech Eldar do as much damage as possible in as little turns as possible. That's why units like 10 warlock, or 10 fire dragons or yriel work great.

They reduce incoming fire by playing less turns. Plus you pick up a huge deployment advantage and concentration of force advantage.

As for the fire dragons... First of all they are less than 300 points tooled out and that includes the transport. And if you blow up the transport at the first opportunity they are usually already 24" on the board (or more with star engines).... But yes. Tanks die. Troops get stranded.

Remember fire dragons fleet and have melta bombs. Most people forget this when they ignore them. This is yet another situation where 10 is a lot better. Your bound to get some hits even on vehicles movign more than 6.

What usually happens is that you are close enough to the transport you were hunting. The enemy then unloads the squad out of the transport and trashes the firedragons.

Which is great as you can then you go torch the squad that you were trying to get to in the first place.

If they ignore you and you have no target, you go to ground and hide for a 3+I, and you can play taxi transport with another unit's ride.

But yes. You get the point. With Eldar you nuke a unit and then go hide or zoom away.

Eldar are a thinking man's army. You simply will never do things like clear 200 orks for a massacre, but you can kill an entire half of an army in a turn or two if things work out right, which might be enough to give you a win.

Worst case scenario you can generally spam the crap out of objectives for the draw.

Pete

Bro, you're trying to pull examples out solely against the Fire Dragons without even looking at the rest of my list. If I go against Ork Horde or a horde Nid list that's what prisms and EML + shuri-cannons are for, plus the council can wipe a squad of boys in 1 turn, going in with destructors and jetbike shuri-cats than charging with 3 attacks each on the charge and he needs to hit that aweful save. It's really not as tough as you'd imagine, I don't plan on wiping them, but I only need to drop enough troops to give me the advantage in holding at least 1 more objective than him while my anti-tank focuses on taking out his tanks and his anti-tank. Taking a council doesn't put me at an offensive stand, it's more of a defensive army base in that I only go after what can actually go after me. Round 2; fire dragons more than not will be used as anti-troop (i.e. against terminators or any 3+ or better save models) and also against TMCs, MCs, and solo-ICs. Otherwise my anti-tank is in the form of the bright lances at #1, #2 in the EMLs, #3 if needbe is the prisms. The dragons dont just rush in on turn 1, I have no problems hanging back playing it safe. I'd rather keep my KPs while gaining from my opponent. 10 Dragons is completely overkill and mixing a DBF is not as good a combo as you'd imagine. If you need a flamer, use the warlocks destructors. And on foot (as a side note), against a good horde army you'll never get that flamer off. A good WAAAGH and the Orks will FoF and hit you in combat before you get the chance to use that template. Than you're solely at a disadvantage. On jetbikes, the speed lets me dictate when we hit combat, and gives me the better option of using my skills.

Dragon squad serpents should be as cheap as possible. You want to get close with them so a simple Shuricannon is fine with of course spirit stones. You will not be sitting bacvk firing with those serpents. I would keep the TL BLs on the others. Generally Eldar AT sucks. Only Dragons are halfway good. But at least our TL BLs on serpents have a 17% chance against AV12.

I don't plan on sitting back with the dragon serps, nor do I even really plan on shooting the single shot unless I need to. I'd prefer to use both of those EML+cannon serpents as anti-infantry, putting off the blast on the EML combined with the cannon means I can still move 12" and fire both.