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I'm looking into starting Eldar and I would like to know the pros and cons of each army and how competitive they are in the meta of 5th ed.

2 seer councils can be a tough build, but they aren't really viable against newer tier 1 builds.
You cant afford adequate support units after buying the deathstars. When they work they are awesome, but when they fail it is epic.

Mechdar can be very good. This build I run is awesome at 1500:

Seer - stones, Row, row

5 fire dragons - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 fire dragons - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon

5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon

3 x war walker 6 x sl
3 x war walker 6 x sl

That there has won a number of tournaments and performs well - it is the best true all comers build I have. 83 S6 shots out of an army this mobile is just deadly.

Inigo Montoya wrote:2 seer councils can be a tough build, but they aren't really viable against newer tier 1 builds.
You cant afford adequate support units after buying the deathstars. When they work they are awesome, but when they fail it is epic.

This is my experience. Playing two decent sized councils (say 5 locks + a seer) at 1750-2000 doesn't leave you much other than bare-bones troops, possibly a bare prism or two. Eldar are all about the synergy, combining the effectiveness of multiple units, and running two councils really limits what else you have to synergize with.

I love playing mechdar, but I get giddy as a school-girl when I get a chance to field my Exodite Dragon Rider "Jetbike" army!

How do some of you Eldar pros think a list like this would work:

10 DA with Exarch...Bladestorm and dual catapults WS with TL Bright Lance and S Stones

10 DA with Exarch...Bladestorm and dual catapults WS with TL Bright Lance and S Stones

10 Guardians with EML Heavy Weapon platform...Warlock w/ conceal

10 Guardians with EML Heavy Weapon platform...Warlock w/ conceal

3 War Walkers all with 2 scatter lasers

Wraithlord w/BL, EML, and dual flamers

Wraithlord w/BL, EML, and dual flamers

Farseer w/ Runes of Warding, Doom, Guide, and Spirit Stones

The farseer will be put in one of the serpents with the DA to Guide and Doom the bladestorm. I plan on keeping the guardians near the wraithlords to keep them from falling asleep. How will this list do against chaos, blood angels, and necrons? Those are what my friends play and my new Eldar army should be here any day now. This is a 1500 point list (I think, I've never made an eldar list before) and that is what point value we typically play.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, sorry for hijacking. Since you were asking about what Eldar lists are affective maybe this will help you out.

everyone has their own flavor of mechdar and dual council as you have already seen...but it depends on the pt value you are playing at and how your list works for you. inigo has a list that works well for him...however i personally dont like it. im just not a fan of depending on a seer and 2 units of dragons for heavy tank busting no matter how much S6 shots i can pump out. again thats just me

as for a dual council army i find they really start to shine at around 2k pts. at that pt lvl ive grown accustomed to having 2 units of 7 warlocks and a farseer in each with 2 full units of avengers w/exarch in serpents and 3 prisms with holo's and stones. and its worked very well for me so far. the prisms are the stars really as they let me deal with things that my council needs help with. while the list can deal with all kinds of things. but again its what ive found that works for me. although i do have to watch out for psyker defence.

now mechdar is a different story for me...i personally dont play it much so am inexperienced with it overall.

@Inigo Montoya what would you add to your list for an 1850 point tourney I came up with a vary similar list but didn't know where to go from there.

A mix of DA, Farseers, and mech seems to be the best build for Eldar imo, but that depends on how many PHs you encounter at your LGSs. Shooty Eldar seem to be doing better now than stabby Eldar.

Is the dual Artach outflanking build still considered decent or has that fallen by the wayside?

Double seer council doesn't get it done anymore. They get destroyed in the age of uber shooty. If your local area doesn't have lots of venoms, missile wolves, etc. you might be OK. But most competitive lists with mountains of shooting and psyker defense will crush bike council lists.

Mechdar still brings the heat, but you have to min/max it to really do much, as Inigo Montoya said.

I personally would skip the WWs in a Mechdar list for two reasons:

1.) They can't keep up with the army, stragglers tend to die.
2.) They are a soft target. The rest of the Mechdar are hard to kill, the WWs present a softer target that has a huge damage output. They'd die first. (But it sounds like Inago Montoya has been doing well with it, so I may be wrong about that!)

Here is my 2K Mechdar list:

Unit Description Size Cost
HQ
Autarch Fusion Gun, P.Weapon 1 90
Autarch Fusion Gun, P.Weapon 1 90

Troops
Dire Avengers 5 60
Wave Serpent T.L.S.Lasers, S.Stones 1 125
Dire Avengers 5 60
Wave Serpent T.L.EML, S.Stones 1 130
Dire Avengers 5 60
Wave Serpent T.L.EML, S.Stones 1 130
Dire Avengers 5 60
Wave Serpent T.L.EML, S.Stones 1 130

Elites
Firedragons 5 80
Wave Serpent T.L.S.Lasers, S.Stones 1 125
Firedragons 5 80
Wave Serpent T.L.S.Lasers, S.Stones 1 125
Firedragons 5 80
Wave Serpent T.L.S.Lasers, S.Stones 1 125

Fast Attack

Heavy Support
Fireprism H.Fields 1 150
Fireprism H.Fields 1 150
Night Spinner H.Fields 1 150

Totals 47 2000

The war walkers aren't intended to keep up - 1 squad outflanks for 24 s6 rear armor shots and one sits in the middle in cover getting guided and fortuned. They HAVE to kill that squad, and killing fortuned 4+ cover saves is not an easy task which gives you 2 rounds of free movement for the rest of your army.

It works very well for me.

A side not - with a 36" range they do not want to move much - they do not need to! Keep the fortune and doom up and they are killer.

Seer Council's run into problems when fortune doesn't go off any number of reasons. (Psychic Hoods, Shadow of the Warp, Turbo-boosting in from reserves, etc) If you can't get fortune to go off, your seer council is dead and your army caves in.

If you get fortune though, congrats you'll do fine. On the other hand, some of the newer dexes can put out a respectable number of missiles, and saving against 4++/Reroll is not good against that many shots.

Also, Reece, reading Flavius' Conflict report really brings home the effectiveness of the War Walkers. The list is really dependant on s6 spam, and the war walkers can spam it like no other. I think 1 war walker squadron definetly has a place, and using it in cover as Inigo suggests is probably a pretty pro choice.

If you have 2-3 squads of fire dragons, you probably don't need a fire prism at all really.

I haven't tried a bike council, but i know it to be a huge point sink. however i have a mechdar army where i tend to run a single seer with a squad and then a 5 lock and a seer and it works fantastically. people tend to forget that there is an extra seer that dicks around with their army. That + you can bust out mindwar big time, but as a lot of other people says go for what you think is cool both options have pros and cons. One thing though about guardians, theyr'e terrible. everytime i try to field guardians they always get wiped/assaulted/fails morale checks, it's just horrible to look at.

Gavin Thorne wrote:

Inigo Montoya wrote:2 seer councils can be a tough build, but they aren't really viable against newer tier 1 builds.
You cant afford adequate support units after buying the deathstars. When they work they are awesome, but when they fail it is epic.

This is my experience. Playing two decent sized councils (say 5 locks + a seer) at 1750-2000 doesn't leave you much other than bare-bones troops, possibly a bare prism or two. Eldar are all about the synergy, combining the effectiveness of multiple units, and running two councils really limits what else you have to synergize with.

I love playing mechdar, but I get giddy as a school-girl when I get a chance to field my Exodite Dragon Rider "Jetbike" army!

My seer council list i took to a tournament at weekend was 2x 7 Warlocks with Farseer and 2 flacons (with holo-field and spirit stones) each with 5 DA in and 3 Guardian jetbikers....

But with Jetseers, you have to be willing to lose very quickly/easily sometimes, if you get unlucky with a few saves or one combat (I lost combat by ONE warlock dieing, which happend to be Embolden, failed LD9, and then got caught by I7 Archon.... One warlock dead, coupled with his good feel no pain saves= whole dead seer council squad, which left the whole of his DE 1500 points on one unit essentially)

I play what you'd call a Mechdar build, but I field a unit of shining spears with a bike autarch. They work pretty well after much trial and error, but I can't deny a seer council would probably be better.

Reecius, I have a question for you: your list is very similar to mine in some ways, but I only take 2 FD units, run one autarch and one cheap farseer (mostly for the runes of warding) and no holofields or spirit stone upgrades. This allows me to take 2 vypers, the shining spears, and mount the autarch up. Do you think it's a good idea to use a single assault unit in this kind of list? I see that lots of people online just sacrifice everything foor shooting, but it seems that some enemy units are easier to take care of with an assault - I like the assurance of having something that can assault if needed.

Inigo Montoya wrote:2 seer councils can be a tough build, but they aren't really viable against newer tier 1 builds.
You cant afford adequate support units after buying the deathstars. When they work they are awesome, but when they fail it is epic.

Mechdar can be very good. This build I run is awesome at 1500:

Seer - stones, Row, row

5 fire dragons - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 fire dragons - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon

5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon

3 x war walker 6 x sl
3 x war walker 6 x sl

That there has won a number of tournaments and performs well - it is the best true all comers build I have. 83 S6 shots out of an army this mobile is just deadly.

Brutal list!

Have you noticed problems with the walkers being overly fragile?

whitedragon wrote:Seer Council's run into problems when fortune doesn't go off any number of reasons. (Psychic Hoods, Shadow of the Warp, Turbo-boosting in from reserves, etc) If you can't get fortune to go off, your seer council is dead and your army caves in.

If you get fortune though, congrats you'll do fine. On the other hand, some of the newer dexes can put out a respectable number of missiles, and saving against 4++/Reroll is not good against that many shots.

Also, Reece, reading Flavius' Conflict report really brings home the effectiveness of the War Walkers. The list is really dependant on s6 spam, and the war walkers can spam it like no other. I think 1 war walker squadron definetly has a place, and using it in cover as Inigo suggests is probably a pretty pro choice.

If you have 2-3 squads of fire dragons, you probably don't need a fire prism at all really.

The above is what I was going to say.

Here's the link to Flavius' report for anyone who missed it. Well worth reading:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/340795.page

Yeah at 2k I was thinking something like this:

Farseer w/RoWarding+Guide
Autarch w/Fusion
2x5 Fire Dragons w/TLSC Serpent
1x10 Striking Scorpions w/PF Leader in TLSC Serpent
4x5 Dire Avengers w/TLSC Serpent
3x1 Vyper w/Scatter Laser
3x2 War Walkers w/4 Scatter Lasers

It's 1997 and seems like it would be brutal. I'm personally not comfortable without a fighting unit as sometimes your gonna need to go in and dig out a squad from cover so hence my addition of the Scorpions.

@I-bounty-hunt-the-elderly
The assault unit, as others have said, is really useful for taking an objective. The farseer helps units like warwalkers immensely, so yeah, I could see both options helping a ton.

@Inigo Montoya
Hey like I said, if you are winning with them, then the reality of your experience is superior to the theory we propose here, by all means.

Reading about your success with them makes me want to try it out, actually. I always theorized that the WWs would be the first targets to die in a list of hard targets. I know I would kill them first. But, outflanking them, particularly with the Autarch, ensures that they will get at least one volley before dying, and that could easily be something that is worth more than their points.

@WD
I agree about the FDs and Prisms, my only counter to that is redundancy and multiplicity of threats.

You put the Autarchs in with the DAs, and now you have 7 unique anti tank units that can overlap in the case of failure of any one element to complete it's task.

WWs are the business though, no doubt. They wreck face in my footdar list.

Inigo Montoya wrote:2 seer councils can be a tough build, but they aren't really viable against newer tier 1 builds.
You cant afford adequate support units after buying the deathstars. When they work they are awesome, but when they fail it is epic.

Mechdar can be very good. This build I run is awesome at 1500:

Seer - stones, Row, row

5 fire dragons - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 fire dragons - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon

5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon
5 DA - serpent w/ tl sl and shuricannon

3 x war walker 6 x sl
3 x war walker 6 x sl

That there has won a number of tournaments and performs well - it is the best true all comers build I have. 83 S6 shots out of an army this mobile is just deadly.

Looks quite good. But here you need an Autarch when the army is kept in reserve.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Farseer w/RoWarding+Guide
Autarch w/Fusion
2x5 Fire Dragons w/TLSC Serpent
1x10 Striking Scorpions w/PF Leader in TLSC Serpent
4x5 Dire Avengers w/TLSC Serpent
3x1 Vyper w/Scatter Laser
3x2 War Walkers w/4 Scatter Lasers

Well, Yriel would fit well if you want some cc punch. Lots of scatter lasers is key, as you said.