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What is the most effective way of arming one?

What are role are you using it for? What are you up against? What else is in your army?

Just starting an eldar army. So Far I have a unit of guardians, 2 dire avenger units, farseer, and a unit of fire dragons. In addition to a small army what is good for a bigger army say 1750?

Personally I would normally go either scatter lasers or eml. Bl can be an option if you feel you don't have enough AT, or shur cannon if you can't afford scatter lasers.

I tend to build my Eldar army first, then use vehicle armaments and upgrades to try and plug perceived holes in my army (anti meq, anti horde, anti tank etc).

As far as additions to your army goes, it depends what direction you want to take it. Your long range is lacking atm, so maybe walkers or fire prisms would be good.

I like EML and Cannon. A bit pricey though. Still has good anti infantry firepower

Consider magnetizing the weapons so you can choose at will?

http://awakeningynnead.blogspot.com/2009/02/tutorial-magnetic-eldar-weapons.html

At 1500 and up, the BrightLance. If your opponents are playing optimum lists, they'll be fielding lotsa armor, e.g. Mech-IG and BA Predator spam. If so, then BL is the way to go, as there really isn't too much anti-T.

A close 2nd is the EML. Same STR, but for considerably less points, it also has template fun for anti-I. And 'clumping' still happens with a lot of rhino 'drive by' shooting tactics.

Neither of these is a great shot at BS3-TL, but there ya go. Eldar have enough anti-I but pricey anti-T, FDs being a suicide-one shot unit in most cases. Tourney players, in my experience, pretty much go BL.

I tend to equip the serpents with what the unit inside is lacking.
Fire dragon serpents get scatter lasers, if i end up playing a literal horde army, and my FD are lacking juicy targets, at least the transport can do something.
On the other hand, DA serpents get an EML or BL, when facing mech, the DA are useless until those transports are cracked open, so you may as well sit back and try take some down at range.

Spirit stones i'd say are a must, you DO NOT want to get stunned and sit there waiting to get smacked out of the sky. Keep moving so your harder to hit in CC and attempt to get into side/rear armours if you can.

Regarding the under-slung shuriken cannon, don't bother. Its 10 points that will hardly get used. You will want to move over 6" a turn to avoid getting taken out in combat, and to avoid it in the first place. Moving that fast means you fire the turret or the SC, turret will win almost everytime, whereas the default catapults are defensive, so can still fire when moving upto 12".

Although... shuriken cannons can be usefull if you have the points. If you have a serp that will, for many reasons, only move 6" a turn, the extra weapon can be handy. a TL-SL and the cannon perform well together for volume of fire.

Another usefull set-up is an EML with the cannon. If you fire the cannon and a S4 plasma missile from the EML you can fire both while still moving 12"

EML + cannon is a great build. Its my personal favourite due to versatility.

That being said, I don't play eldar. It just seems like the best buy to me, from what I've seen others play/theorize.

Scatter Lasers or EML.

Though I have one with Starcannons for some reason.

In addition to what's already been said, wave serpents are one of the 2 good places in the Eldar army to pay the huge cost of a brightlance (the other one is a wraithlord). Because the gun is twin-linked, it actually hits often enough to make it worthwhile.

Having said that, you only need a couple of brightlances at the most. I try to keep the rest of my wave serpents cheap by just giving them shuriken cannon turrets. If they're going to be close to the enemy anyway--like serpents carrying fire dragons or assault units--then the short range doesn't matter.

If it's going to be moving fast a lot, then cheap minimal weapons are fine because it won't be shooting much anyway. If it's going to be sitting back on an objective like a troop-carrier, then the expensive, single-shot, long-range weapons will get more shots during the course of a game.

A combo that I'm exploring right now is scatterlaser turret and shuriken cannon upgrade. A wave serpent configured this way can dump out 7 str 6 shots at range 24", or 4 when moving faster at range 36". Five or six wave serpents configured this way can pour out an astounding amount of str6 fire.

@Flavius

I'll be playing a 2v2 later today (hopefully) and was considering taking the Scatter laser/shuriken cannon combo on my serpents.
It's a little bit expensive, but could be worth it with the amount of shots generated.

I'm expecting to face a mostly rhino mounted force, so the increased S6 fire could be handy, and with that many shots, will even pull down the marines inside.

dayve110 wrote:I tend to equip the serpents with what the unit inside is lacking.
Fire dragon serpents get scatter lasers, if i end up playing a literal horde army, and my FD are lacking juicy targets, at least the transport can do something.
On the other hand, DA serpents get an EML or BL, when facing mech, the DA are useless until those transports are cracked open, so you may as well sit back and try take some down at range.

Spirit stones i'd say are a must, you DO NOT want to get stunned and sit there waiting to get smacked out of the sky. Keep moving so your harder to hit in CC and attempt to get into side/rear armours if you can.

Regarding the under-slung shuriken cannon, don't bother. Its 10 points that will hardly get used. You will want to move over 6" a turn to avoid getting taken out in combat, and to avoid it in the first place. Moving that fast means you fire the turret or the SC, turret will win almost everytime, whereas the default catapults are defensive, so can still fire when moving upto 12".

Although... shuriken cannons can be usefull if you have the points. If you have a serp that will, for many reasons, only move 6" a turn, the extra weapon can be handy. a TL-SL and the cannon perform well together for volume of fire.

Another usefull set-up is an EML with the cannon. If you fire the cannon and a S4 plasma missile from the EML you can fire both while still moving 12"

I completely agree with everything dayve said here.

With one exception: spirit stones aren't a must. They're a nice upgrade, but if you can't afford them, it's not the end of the world.