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I think you're right. This is one of those "old 4th codex being translating into 6th" complications.

I would like to add a few things. I have played extremely aggressive Eldar since the inception of 6th, often against very competent opponents and lists, and my win rate has actually gone way up instead of down.

The difference is I focus on reserves, flanks, and speed more so than charging the enemy head on.

You need to picture the army like a Matador,

1) Taunt the bull into a charge I keep around 50% of my army on the board turn 1, and keep them in the back of my deployment zone, to taunt the enemy into moving into the uncontested mid field. The enemy charges the main elements of their army forwards to get their weapons in range, while their fire support typically hangs back, and does some damage.
3) Spin and Throw the Cape As the enemy approaches my backfield units, typically bikes and dragon wagons, they slip up the sides and move out of range again. It also helps to have Multiple small units, since that way squads like Paladins are forced to super over kill a single unit per turn, greatly reducing their effect on the over all battle.
4) Stab em in the Side on turn 2+ my reserves arive on a 2+ from outflank and deep strike, engaging soft spots in the opponents line targeting their long range fire support squads like long fangs or Havocs.
5) Rince and Repeat until dead. You spend the rest of the game always moving away from their powerful close range units (paladins, terminators, etc) which are survivable and typically have a range of 24 inches or so. These units are meant to fight head to head, which you will deny by leveraging your speed. While your opponent struggles to bring his front line units into the fight, you are constantly targeting first his long range fire support, then his troops. Once his support and troops are dead or maimed, you simply take objectives wherever on the map with quick units like Jetbikes, who can get pretty much wherever in a single turn.

This is a generalized strategy, but I have found it to work incredibly well against Space Marine armies which typically enjoy moving up into the mid field. Ideally you will surround your opponent, forcing them to fight from angels that their army is not built to fight from (generally armies are built to shove powerful short ranged + durable units into their opponents face while softer long range fire power shoots from afar). By leveraging speed you can place your front line units against their back field units, while simultaniously not giving their front line any good targets.

This type of build is especially satisfying because you know full well that if you were to engage the enemy head to head you would lose. It feels good to win in the movement phase, and put your knife deep into vulnerable parts of your opponents list while expertly dodging thier clumsy lunges.

THAT SAID. like a matador, if you do get caught by his lunge, and he forces a scrimmage with his front line units before he is sufficiently weakend. You will get gored and lose badly

 akaean wrote:
I would like to add a few things. I have played extremely aggressive Eldar since the inception of 6th, often against very competent opponents and lists, and my win rate has actually gone way up instead of down.

The difference is I focus on reserves, flanks, and speed more so than charging the enemy head on.

You need to picture the army like a Matador,

1) Taunt the bull into a charge I keep around 50% of my army on the board turn 1, and keep them in the back of my deployment zone, to taunt the enemy into moving into the uncontested mid field. The enemy charges the main elements of their army forwards to get their weapons in range, while their fire support typically hangs back, and does some damage.
3) Spin and Throw the Cape As the enemy approaches my backfield units, typically bikes and dragon wagons, they slip up the sides and move out of range again. It also helps to have Multiple small units, since that way squads like Paladins are forced to super over kill a single unit per turn, greatly reducing their effect on the over all battle.
4) Stab em in the Side on turn 2+ my reserves arive on a 2+ from outflank and deep strike, engaging soft spots in the opponents line targeting their long range fire support squads like long fangs or Havocs.
5) Rince and Repeat until dead. You spend the rest of the game always moving away from their powerful close range units (paladins, terminators, etc) which are survivable and typically have a range of 24 inches or so. These units are meant to fight head to head, which you will deny by leveraging your speed. While your opponent struggles to bring his front line units into the fight, you are constantly targeting first his long range fire support, then his troops. Once his support and troops are dead or maimed, you simply take objectives wherever on the map with quick units like Jetbikes, who can get pretty much wherever in a single turn.

This is a generalized strategy, but I have found it to work incredibly well against Space Marine armies which typically enjoy moving up into the mid field. Ideally you will surround your opponent, forcing them to fight from angels that their army is not built to fight from (generally armies are built to shove powerful short ranged + durable units into their opponents face while softer long range fire power shoots from afar). By leveraging speed you can place your front line units against their back field units, while simultaniously not giving their front line any good targets.

This type of build is especially satisfying because you know full well that if you were to engage the enemy head to head you would lose. It feels good to win in the movement phase, and put your knife deep into vulnerable parts of your opponents list while expertly dodging thier clumsy lunges.

THAT SAID. like a matador, if you do get caught by his lunge, and he forces a scrimmage with his front line units before he is sufficiently weakend. You will get gored and lose badly

You've articulated the strategy of the Eldar quite well.

I've played SM, Eldar and Chaos for some years now and this analogy, while colorful, is actually quite simple. Eldar are simply not a "stand and fight" style battle force. It is possible to create a list for many armies, wherein you can dig yourself into a position, or hold a specific area on the table and be quite inflexible. The Eldar do not have this option. They are a highly mobile, highly offensive force that has almost no defensive abilities at all (I can think of perhaps only one or two exceptions).

So, just as you stated, you should always be "busy" on the field with your models. Infiltrate and Outflank are powerful tools for the Eldar, who do not have the tenacity for headlong engagements. I will not discuss the details of my last game in the same context since that has resulted in an inflammatory debate I did not enjoy, but it did answer my original question in a way.

The general consensus is that my list should not have performed as well as it did. Perhaps because it greater differs from the more common or proper Eldar tactica.

I deliberately wanted to avoid certain things.
1) Wraithwall. I do not find that useful at all. 12" seems plain silly to me in 6th Ed. For this reason I also avoid Fire Dragons.
2) Harlequins. I personally can't justify the point cost. Certain models in the squad are amazing ,and others are just holding them back.
3) Most Vehicles. For some reason the Eldar Machina are typically BS3, which is crazy considering their point cost. with a few exceptions, this makes them poor choices IMO.

That being said, to achieve any kind of syngery (which the Eldar warhost would be useless without) I had to place certain combinations of units in specific roles or the whole operation would fail.

This game was only a small scale of what I had planned. I used only 1 squad of Scorpions, and 1 squad of War Walkers. The purpose of those units is that they possess rules (Scout/infiltrate/move through cover/etc) that force a response. They MAKE your enemy take a reactive approach to battle instead of a proactive approach. They cannot plan new strategies if they are busy reacting to mine.

The simple act of placing an infiltrated unit in their deployment zone, and also having the walkers make a scout move to within 36" range for their scatter lasers, FORCES your opponent to make a choice. And no matter how they react, they have engage one or both of them to avoid early losses. This "frees" some of the other elements of your army to engage the further sides of their armies.

In an ideal situation, you would have more than a 2-angle approach. I would prefer to have 3 squads of Scorpions, and two squads of 3 walkers. In this way, I could "threaten" the entire front line of the enemy deployment zone with the walkers, while positioning the scorpions in such a way that I can collapse their lines into a funneling point. That would probably require placing two of the scorpion squads very close together, and one very far away, in effect, creating a 3-progn attack that has varying levels of threat, based on where I chose to place the models... it give me control, or takes it from them, however you like to look at it.

In a small way, this is exactly what happened in my last game. The Scorpions forced a defensive stance while the walkers pushed in from the front. It definitely messed up his Necro-mojo.

 akaean wrote:
I would like to add a few things. I have played extremely aggressive Eldar since the inception of 6th, often against very competent opponents and lists, and my win rate has actually gone way up instead of down.

The difference is I focus on reserves, flanks, and speed more so than charging the enemy head on.

You need to picture the army like a Matador,

1) Taunt the bull into a charge I keep around 50% of my army on the board turn 1, and keep them in the back of my deployment zone, to taunt the enemy into moving into the uncontested mid field. The enemy charges the main elements of their army forwards to get their weapons in range, while their fire support typically hangs back, and does some damage.
3) Spin and Throw the Cape As the enemy approaches my backfield units, typically bikes and dragon wagons, they slip up the sides and move out of range again. It also helps to have Multiple small units, since that way squads like Paladins are forced to super over kill a single unit per turn, greatly reducing their effect on the over all battle.
4) Stab em in the Side on turn 2+ my reserves arive on a 2+ from outflank and deep strike, engaging soft spots in the opponents line targeting their long range fire support squads like long fangs or Havocs.
5) Rince and Repeat until dead. You spend the rest of the game always moving away from their powerful close range units (paladins, terminators, etc) which are survivable and typically have a range of 24 inches or so. These units are meant to fight head to head, which you will deny by leveraging your speed. While your opponent struggles to bring his front line units into the fight, you are constantly targeting first his long range fire support, then his troops. Once his support and troops are dead or maimed, you simply take objectives wherever on the map with quick units like Jetbikes, who can get pretty much wherever in a single turn.

This is a generalized strategy, but I have found it to work incredibly well against Space Marine armies which typically enjoy moving up into the mid field. Ideally you will surround your opponent, forcing them to fight from angels that their army is not built to fight from (generally armies are built to shove powerful short ranged + durable units into their opponents face while softer long range fire power shoots from afar). By leveraging speed you can place your front line units against their back field units, while simultaniously not giving their front line any good targets.

This type of build is especially satisfying because you know full well that if you were to engage the enemy head to head you would lose. It feels good to win in the movement phase, and put your knife deep into vulnerable parts of your opponents list while expertly dodging thier clumsy lunges.

THAT SAID. like a matador, if you do get caught by his lunge, and he forces a scrimmage with his front line units before he is sufficiently weakend. You will get gored and lose badly

You've articulated the strategy of the Eldar quite well.

I've played SM, Eldar and Chaos for some years now and this analogy, while colorful, is actually quite simple. Eldar are simply not a "stand and fight" style battle force. It is possible to create a list for many armies, wherein you can dig yourself into a position, or hold a specific area on the table and be quite inflexible. The Eldar do not have this option. They are a highly mobile, highly offensive force that has almost no defensive abilities at all (I can think of perhaps only one or two exceptions).

So, just as you stated, you should always be "busy" on the field with your models. Infiltrate and Outflank are powerful tools for the Eldar, who do not have the tenacity for headlong engagements. I will not discuss the details of my last game in the same context since that has resulted in an inflammatory debate I did not enjoy, but it did answer my original question in a way.

The general consensus is that my list should not have performed as well as it did. Perhaps because it greatly differs from the more common or proper Eldar tactica.

I deliberately wanted to avoid certain things.
1) Wraithwall. I do not find that useful at all. 12" seems plain silly to me in 6th Ed. For this reason I also avoid Fire Dragons.
2) Harlequins. I personally can't justify the point cost. Certain models in the squad are amazing ,and others are just holding them back.
3) Most Vehicles. For some reason the Eldar Machina are typically BS3, which is crazy considering their point cost. with a few exceptions, this makes them poor choices IMO.

That being said, to achieve any kind of syngery (which the Eldar warhost would be useless without) I had to place certain combinations of units in specific roles or the whole operation would fail.

This game was only a small scale of what I had planned. I used only 1 squad of Scorpions, and 1 squad of War Walkers. The purpose of those units is that they possess rules (Scout/infiltrate/move through cover/etc) that force a response. They MAKE your enemy take a reactive approach to battle instead of a proactive approach. They cannot plan new strategies if they are busy reacting to mine.

The simple act of placing an infiltrated unit in their deployment zone, and also having the walkers make a scout move to within 36" range for their scatter lasers, FORCES your opponent to make a choice. And no matter how they react, they have engage one or both of them to avoid early losses. This "frees" some of the other elements of your army to engage the further sides of their armies.

In an ideal situation, you would have more than a 2-angle approach. I would prefer to have 3 squads of Scorpions, and two squads of 3 walkers. In this way, I could "threaten" the entire front line of the enemy deployment zone with the walkers, while positioning the scorpions in such a way that I can collapse their lines into a funneling point. That would probably require placing two of the scorpion squads very close together, and one very far away, in effect, creating a 3-progn attack that has varying levels of threat, based on where I chose to place the models... it give me control, or takes it from them, however you like to look at it.

In a small way, this is exactly what happened in my last game. The Scorpions forced a defensive stance while the walkers pushed in from the front. It definitely messed up his Necro-mojo.

 akaean wrote:

You need to picture the army like a Matador,

1) Taunt the bull into a charge I keep around 50% of my army on the board turn 1, and keep them in the back of my deployment zone, to taunt the enemy into moving into the uncontested mid field. The enemy charges the main elements of their army forwards to get their weapons in range, while their fire support typically hangs back, and does some damage.
3) Spin and Throw the Cape As the enemy approaches my backfield units, typically bikes and dragon wagons, they slip up the sides and move out of range again. It also helps to have Multiple small units, since that way squads like Paladins are forced to super over kill a single unit per turn, greatly reducing their effect on the over all battle.
4) Stab em in the Side on turn 2+ my reserves arive on a 2+ from outflank and deep strike, engaging soft spots in the opponents line targeting their long range fire support squads like long fangs or Havocs.
5) Rince and Repeat until dead. You spend the rest of the game always moving away from their powerful close range units (paladins, terminators, etc) which are survivable and typically have a range of 24 inches or so. These units are meant to fight head to head, which you will deny by leveraging your speed. While your opponent struggles to bring his front line units into the fight, you are constantly targeting first his long range fire support, then his troops. Once his support and troops are dead or maimed, you simply take objectives wherever on the map with quick units like Jetbikes, who can get pretty much wherever in a single turn.

This is an excellent articulation of how Eldar can win these days. It is accurate and concise. Eldar cannot win when played otherwise.

It also reveals why Eldar are the worst army in the game.

 akaean wrote:

The enemy charges the main elements of their army forwards to get their weapons in range, while their fire support typically hangs back, and does some damage.

Victory dependent on your opponent stupidly falling into your traps is not a victory one can count on.

Eh, yes and no. Marine players go to the middle of the board because that is how Space Marines win. Most guns shooting 24 inches (bolters, plasma, etc), means that by moving units into the mid field they can threaten the widest area possible. It also gives them flexibility in objective games since they can feasibly move from the middle and onto objectives far more freely than when positioned on a table edge.

Most armies don't have the pure speed that Eldar and Dark Eldar have, and when I place objectives I always spread them out all over the board as best I can.

If my opponent thinks hes being cheeky and "not stupidly falling into my trap" he'll probably castle into a corner, since that gives him the best protection from being surrounded. But it also means that his mobility is a lot more limited, and he won't be able to swarm objectives as easily. This is a weakness in itself because when played right models like guardian jetbikes are very effective at spreading out and moving to objectives all over the place. Sure it may not be a glorious fight, but you should be able to beat a castle by playing to objectives. You just have to bring enough long range fire power to silence his artillery, and then hide as best you can for 5 turns.

I do think that Eldar are terrible at kill points though.

Also, a personal pet peve of mine is everyone saying "eldar are specialized and need synergy to win". This may have been true in the past I don't think its necessary anymore. Strength 6 is a great example. Eldar have great access to strength 6, and it is one of the best generalist strengths in the game. Eldar tanks are more durable then most others with av 12, and protection against melta, rending and strengths over 8 as well as the option for 7 s6 shots. Warp Spiders are another good example with guns capable of engaging most every enemy on the table with one of the better armor saves in the codex. Ultimately I think Eldar units should operate largely independent of each other and focus on putting weapons which are dangerous to every enemy (shuriken cannons, death spinners, scatter lasers, etc) into vulnerable spots of the opponents list. I would describe it as placing fast, somewhat survivable, generalist units against your opponents back field support

I am not saying that there should be no synergy or specialist units but its not like you have to bring the right tool for every job with Eldar. Scatter Lasers are a pretty good tool for most jobs, and that doesn't strike me as being particularly specialized. Yea, units like Fire Dragons are amazing, and they are heavily specialized by their nature, but they are the exception, their purpose is to break open heavy armor so that our general s6 can shoot everything to death.