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New to eldar, so I would like to know what is a good general setup for them? Competitive?

This largely depends on the role you want them to fill. Generally either double catapult or pw with shimmershield is good (not so much with dire sword imho).

If you're going aggressive (or sit in a serpent until needed) double cat and bladestorm tends to work best. If you want them to sit on an objective, or try to hold against a charge for your counter charge then shimmer shield and defend (and fortune) work well.

Can also turn into a bit of an allrounder unit by doing shimmer shield, defend and bladestorm, in a wave serpent with seer and Yriel. Doom your opponents unit, fortune your da squad, bladestorm and charge in (make sure your wave serpent is in position in previous turn so it doesn't have to move).

I find that either you equip them with the power weapon and shimmer shield and defend to act as a tar pit supported by an assault unit (usually banshees), or keep them as plain avengers. They really don't need the extra shots from bladestorm (especially with the drawback), and the cost for the dual catapult is quite high (when you include the cost of the exarch).

slice'n'dice wrote:This largely depends on the role you want them to fill. Generally either double catapult or pw with shimmershield is good (not so much with dire sword imho).

If you're going aggressive (or sit in a serpent until needed) double cat and bladestorm tends to work best. If you want them to sit on an objective, or try to hold against a charge for your counter charge then shimmer shield and defend (and fortune) work well.

Can also turn into a bit of an allrounder unit by doing shimmer shield, defend and bladestorm, in a wave serpent with seer and Yriel. Doom your opponents unit, fortune your da squad, bladestorm and charge in (make sure your wave serpent is in position in previous turn so it doesn't have to move).

+1 this, word for word.

Well I'm not sure, I am just starting an eldar army. Looking through the codex the unit looked pretty solid and I know that one unit supports another. The double catapults looked good at first but they seem to be good to hold out in CC for a little bit, especially with a PW and the shield. So for a 500-1000pt game what would you arm them with? For 1000-2000 (competitive) what would change or be used?

Double cat. Trust me, anything that wants to assault your DA will make short work of them, shield or not.

With the double cat and bladestorm, you give your squad a total of 32 shots. Combined with guide and doom...

Lord Rogukiel wrote:Double cat. Trust me, anything that wants to assault your DA will make short work of them, shield or not.

With the double cat and bladestorm, you give your squad a total of 32 shots. Combined with guide and doom...

+1.

No other configuration makes sense for the Dire Avengers. Bladestorm is good because you want to be running away the turn you can't shoot anyway. Dire Avengers are just below average in CC and you want to avoid CC as far as possible. Defend is not really going to slow anything down, any CC type squad will mince them.

I had a game recently where 10 Dire Avengers charged 2 Space Marines (BT) and almost lost combat anyway.

Lord Rogukiel wrote:Double cat. Trust me, anything that wants to assault your DA will make short work of them, shield or not.

With the double cat and bladestorm, you give your squad a total of 32 shots. Combined with guide and doom...

+1.Its my favourite and will make mincemeat out of anything you care to point it at.

I'm an ork player but, my roommate and regular opponent plays eldar. He runs his exarch with dual cat and blade storm along with 10 da and a farseer in a serpent. I can tell you from an ork point of veiw this setup is nasty and not half bad in cc either. With fortune my boys practically bounce off of them.

I'm crazy but I used a full unit exarch with PW and Shimmershield BladeStorm and Defend.....add Farseer....Guide DA's and Doom the target....Shoot Shoot and assault.....stuff goes away...even marines! The are also great as a scoring unit...sit back...me sneek and fall back some and them...bam! Move it and Bladestorm and assault!

Without a shadow of a doubt the best set up (for a mech list) is Exarch with 2 shuriken catapults and bladestorm. By himself he dishes out a lot of shots and he can also increase the firepower of his unit by 50%.

phyrephly wrote:

Lord Rogukiel wrote:Double cat. Trust me, anything that wants to assault your DA will make short work of them, shield or not.

With the double cat and bladestorm, you give your squad a total of 32 shots. Combined with guide and doom...

+1.

No other configuration makes sense for the Dire Avengers. Bladestorm is good because you want to be running away the turn you can't shoot anyway. Dire Avengers are just below average in CC and you want to avoid CC as far as possible. Defend is not really going to slow anything down, any CC type squad will mince them.

I had a game recently where 10 Dire Avengers charged 2 Space Marines (BT) and almost lost combat anyway.

Although dual-cats are my preferred choice, I'll often run a PW/SS Exarch in a third squad for the sheer survivability. Buffed up with Defend and Fortune, packing a PW Autarch and with Doom in effect, I once cut through a Blood Angels Terminator Assault squad with attached Reclusiarch and Priest. It took three player turns but I only lost three models.
Even without the Autarch I've had a crippled (6-man) unit beat up a Sanguinary Guard unit - the I6 exarch pops the Sanguinary Priest, and the rest of the unit strikes at I5. I run a mech eldar army that excels at shooting - and little else - but this unit is an incredible tarpit and can outlast almost anything. Doom is what really give them the punch to actually kill T4, and if it's available you can use them quite offensively.

As a long time competitive Eldar player my favorite configuration is dual catapuls + bladestorm. Dire Avengers best roll is in inflicting torrents of fire upon opposing infantry and any configuration outside that roll is, in my opinion, a waste of efficiency.

Because of the wound allocation rules it’s common to inflict casualties on important members of a unit and that is extremely valuable to the rest of your army’s synergy.

Like Artik, I have run the shimmershield-defend-bladestorm exarch in a unit of 10 and found them defensively really good at tarpitting things that other Eldar units don't want to fight in HtH. Defend is what does it more than the shimmershield, because if you charge a unit of base 2A units, they lose half their attacks against you (and you've already thinned them with bladestorm and your own I5 attacks). Terminators especially--reduced to 1 attack each, hitting only half the time and with the DAs getting the invul save--can be held up for a really long time by a unit configured this way.

But it's expensive, and one bad round of combat followed by a bad leadership roll can wipe out the whole unit.

And you need something to follow up with. The DAs can hold out for several rounds, but they'll almost never actually win. You need a unit of harlies/banshees/scorps/shining spears to come up and finish off the unit that they're holding.

I run my DA on foot. My Exarch has two shuricats. No powers.

The reason for the no powers is that I prefer my DA firing every turn. If you give them BS they can only fire half the game. Not good in a footslogging list.

I'd agree though for mechdar that BS is almost a must.

It depends on the rest of your army, if DA are a supplement, TL Cats and bladestorm are probably enough.

If you want the DA firepower but think you need to standup in CC on an objective or serve as a farseer's guard, I like SS + PW and defend. Bladestorm in this case is optional. The -1 attack and 5++ save combined with a fortune make this a poor man's seer council. It is not the best damage producer but it is second only to warlocks for resilency in close combat.

I haven't ever used the pistol + dire sword. Frankly S3 makes it pretty useless.

I'd give the Exarch bladestorm and the dual cat.

If you want a footslogging Eldar army, then an Exarch with defend and shimmershield can work as a tarpit unit,
especially if it can be fortuned.
Such a unit has held up my 10 Chaos Termies for a while.

Don't bother with the cc stuff. It still makes them only a slightly un-suck cc unit. Any assault type squad of equal number even down to a lowly boyz mob can still give them trouble. The actually mediocre assault troops will take a bit longer than usual to kill them but still end up beating the snot out of them. Good assault squads will rip ithem apart defend power or not.
DA are for sticking in full squads of 10 with a wave serpent, exarch, extra catapult (not necessary but cheap enoughsince you are already paying a big chunk for the exarch as it is), and bladestorm, accompanied by seer with doom. Anything else but the specific role of quick close in-and-out shooting every other turn and you have what amounts to a squishier version of a marine tac squad without any cool heavy/special weapons upgrades for approximately the same price.

I never bother with defend, but I actually do like the diresword occasionally. I feel it is a psychological weapon, at the cost of 5 more points, and a lack of a couple more s4 hits, some opponents are cowardly when it comes to insta-kill chancey weapons like that.

bladestorm/duel catas.

If your dire avengers get into CC your playing eldar wrong

Although I generally prefer the dual cat blade storm approach, it really does depend on your army. The shimmer shield defend approach (and fortune) is never supposed to make them a cc unit. All it does is allow them to sit on an objective and hold a charge for one turn so your *insert cc unit if choice* can counter charge in your turn, taking their unit out and hopefully leaving a few avengers on your objective.

Of course, if you don't like this style if play and prefer to either steal objectives at the end or keep your opponent at arms length, blade storm and dual cats are for you.

Of course, if avengers are your least favourite aspect, just run 5 naked in a serpent to claim objectives.

There's only one way to run a DA Exarch: With Dual-Catapults and Bladestorm, and leading 9 of his friends.

Don't bother with anything else.

The Shield+Defend combo looks nice, but it's rubbish. DA squads are so terrible in CC that nothing can make them suddenly awesome.

10 DA with Exarch with Shield+Defend taking the charge against 10 SM Tactical with Sergeant with a Power Weapon+Pistol
Exarch: 2 attacks, 1.33 hits, 0.44 wounds (0.74 with Doom), 0.44 dead (0.74 with Doom)
9 DA: 9 attacks, 4.5 hits, 1.5 wounds (2.5 with Doom), 0.5 dead (0.83 with Doom)
Sergeant: 3 attacks, 1.5 hits, 1 wound, 0.67 dead
8.05 SM (7.43 with Doom): 8.05 (7.43) attacks, 4.02 (3.71) hits, 2.69 (2.48) wounds, 1.34 (1.24) dead

So, without doom on the SM: 0.94 dead Marines, 2 dead DA
With doom: 1.57 dead Marines, 1.91 dead Marines

And this is just for tactical marines. A CC oriented squad is going to wipe the floor with DAs.

Grakmar wrote:There's only one way to run a DA Exarch: With Dual-Catapults and Bladestorm, and leading 9 of his friends.

Don't bother with anything else.

The Shield+Defend combo looks nice, but it's rubbish. DA squads are so terrible in CC that nothing can make them suddenly awesome.

10 DA with Exarch with Shield+Defend taking the charge against 10 SM Tactical with Sergeant with a Power Weapon+Pistol
Exarch: 2 attacks, 1.33 hits, 0.44 wounds (0.74 with Doom), 0.44 dead (0.74 with Doom)
9 DA: 9 attacks, 4.5 hits, 1.5 wounds (2.5 with Doom), 0.5 dead (0.83 with Doom)
Sergeant: 3 attacks, 1.5 hits, 1 wound, 0.67 dead
8.05 SM (7.43 with Doom): 8.05 (7.43) attacks, 4.02 (3.71) hits, 2.69 (2.48) wounds, 1.34 (1.24) dead

So, without doom on the SM: 0.94 dead Marines, 2 dead DA
With doom: 1.57 dead Marines, 1.91 dead Marines

And this is just for tactical marines. A CC oriented squad is going to wipe the floor with DAs.

Couldn`t disagree with you more here. I run both a dual cat + BS squad and a PW/SS + BS + Defend in my regular eldar list. Thing you forgot to take into account is that if the above squad is charging the space marines, they've probably already shot into them.

27 shots -> 18 hits -> 9 wounds -> 3 dead marines. All sans doom.

They should not really be charging marines, although if you have some extra fire support before you go in it works just fine. The assault is used to either a) deny the opponent the assault or b) to clean up a unit you didn't quite finish off. Lootas spring to mind, because low squad size and only 2 attacks base means you drop them to 1 with defend, and they only wound you on 4's because they don't have FC. Works vs whittled down boy squads, because the SS nerfs the power klaw. Cleans up small units of nids you need gone, units of guard vets (although not so much vs powerblobs)...hell they even do ok vs sisters because of the T3.

It seems like you're throwing good points after bad, I've been in too many situations where I have a better chance of survival charging then receiving. They've gotta be close to be shooting anyway, and I'd rather charge the remaining 4 genestealers then sit there and take it next turn.

Grakmar wrote:There's only one way to run a DA Exarch: With Dual-Catapults and Bladestorm, and leading 9 of his friends.

Don't bother with anything else.

The Shield+Defend combo looks nice, but it's rubbish. DA squads are so terrible in CC that nothing can make them suddenly awesome.

10 DA with Exarch with Shield+Defend taking the charge against 10 SM Tactical with Sergeant with a Power Weapon+Pistol
Exarch: 2 attacks, 1.33 hits, 0.44 wounds (0.74 with Doom), 0.44 dead (0.74 with Doom)
9 DA: 9 attacks, 4.5 hits, 1.5 wounds (2.5 with Doom), 0.5 dead (0.83 with Doom)
Sergeant: 3 attacks, 1.5 hits, 1 wound, 0.67 dead
8.05 SM (7.43 with Doom): 8.05 (7.43) attacks, 4.02 (3.71) hits, 2.69 (2.48) wounds, 1.34 (1.24) dead

So, without doom on the SM: 0.94 dead Marines, 2 dead DA
With doom: 1.57 dead Marines, 1.91 dead Marines

And this is just for tactical marines. A CC oriented squad is going to wipe the floor with DAs.

I think you're missing the point of many of the posts earlier in this thread, Grakmar.

First of all, the sergeant in your example above only gets 2 attacks (remember defend?). But who actually runs a power weapon sergeant anyway. If there's a weapon upgrade on that sergeant, it's a fist, which means he's reduced to 1 attack.

Secondly, 9 charging DAs get 18 attacks, not 9. The charging Exarch gets 3, not 2.

So the DAs are actually doing .66 wounds at I6 (the exarch) and 1.0 at I5. But that's not what really matters.

The 8 or 9 marines striking back do 1 or 2 wounds from the squad and .11 wounds from a power fist sergeant (.43 wounds from a power weapon).

So you tie, or lose by 1, or maybe win by 1. So the unit sticks most of the time. Charging 10 marines without bladestorming them is chancy, and charging tactical marines is dumb anyway (you want to charge dedicated assault troops) but we're talking hypotheticals here.

Then in your next phase they stick again, then the following turn the banshees charge in and the marines are dead.

And the numbers work out the same against BA assault marines or space wolves or chaos marines, because defend nerfs away the extra attack. Terminators (in smaller squads) too. Yes, the DA are crap in terms of the damage they do and they are never going to do enough damage in HtH to kill an equal number of marines. But they can hold them until the killers get there, which is the whole point.

[edit] Ooops, you said "taking the charge." Okay, so that's chancier because you might take an extra wound or two, but my overall point still stands.

I usually run my exarch w/ diresword+pistol and bladestorm. The exarch might not be able to benefit from bladestorm, but I don't usually miss the absence of a couple extra shots. I find that my squads will usually be charged by something, its almost inevitable, so the ability to hit back is very beneficial to me. More importantly, I have gotten lucky enough w/ that diresword to have eliminated special characters and HQs in cc (out of shear dumb luck).

To do a little mathhammer compare DA to Striking Scorpion and Howling Banshees. Assume all 3 are shooting then charging.

Target 1: 10 Tac Marines(Sgt w PF)

vs DA w SS/PW exarch BS and Defend:

with doom: 7 dead marines vs .67 dead DA (CC 2.6 vs 0.67 in favor of DA)
Without: 5 dead marines vs 1 dead DA (CC 1.67 vs 1 in favor of DA)

vs Striking Scorpions (Exarch with std wpns)

w Doom: 5 dead marines vs 1.27 Scorpions
Without: 4 dead marines vs 1.38 Scorpions

vs HB - Exarch w Executioner

with Doom: 8 dead marines vs 0.99 HBs
wiithout: 6 dead marines vs 1.33 HBs


Against ork mobz, scorpions will look better but banshees will do worse. Both squads will come out of it chewed up and of questionable value in the next turn.

The difference is the survivability of DA. They can shoot up their target and with defend reduce the effectiveness of the opponent. The banshees and scorpions will win CC but note that they tend to get more beat up and by the way cost 33% more. If you figure you need to face off against pains filled with PW or PF, the shimmershield and defend will keep the DAs around. Now add in a fortune and they survive quite nicely.

Warlock councils will hang around better than DA and even work well in combat but that often turns into a 300+ cost for that squad and then you could field 2 squads of DA.

Dire Avengers are the main reason why the Eldar have not falled off the face of the map with all the new codexes in 40k.

DAaddict wrote:Dire Avengers are the main reason why the Eldar have not falled off the face of the map with all the new codexes in 40k.

No this is not why. The reason they have not fallen off the map is because they have amazing transports and cheap HQ force multipliers.

Also the mini's look great!

slice'n'dice wrote:Also the mini's look great!

QFT

I started Eldar because of their look and feel and they still have my favortie look of all the armies.

I ran 3 units of 10, each led by exarch with dire sword.
Run all the numbers you want, and you'll find that 10 dire avengers suck against....

But what they were outstanding at, is finishing off enemy units. With 4 power weapon attacks on the charge (at WS5 Init6), those guys can do some damage. And yes, you do get those odd ball rolls of instant death. Bagged more than one carnifex in my day.

-Matt

slice'n'dice wrote:Also the mini's look great!

Yes