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So let me start off by saying I have 0 experience with Eldar (except for their cooler and darker cousins ), anyway I decided to put together a list because their codex always looked interesting. In fact they were almost my first army before I settled on Necrons. Also let me know if there's anything funny with the format of the list and I'll fix it. Anyway, enough expository banter! Now we fight like men! And elves! And elves who dress like men!

HQ

Farseer- 140
-Spirit Stones
-Runes of Warding
-Guide
-Fortune

-Warlocks X 3- 105
-Destructor
-Enhance
-Embolden

>>>>>Wave Serpent w/TL-Bright Lance- 135
______________________________________
Elites

Harlequins X 5- 140
-Shadowseer
-Kisses X 5

Fire Dragons X 5- 80
______________________________________
Troops

Dire Avengers X 10- 152
-Exarch w/Double Catapults
-Bladestorm

>>>>>Wave Serpent w/TL-Bright Lance- 135

Path Finders X 5- 120

Gaurdian Jetbikes X 9- 278
-Shuriken Cannons X 3
-Warlock w/Embolden
______________________________________
Fast Attack

Vypers X 3- 180
-Scatter Laser X 3
______________________________________
Heavy Support

War Walkers X 3- 195
-Scatter Laser X 6

Falcon- 170
-EML
-Holo-fields

Falcon- 170
-EML
-Holo-fields

Totals at 2000

Since I want to avoid a wall of text in my first post, if you have any questions on the rationale behind certain units please ask below. But, let me just talk about my local metagame a bit. The meta around my area is not very mech and mostly casual. There's no WAAC, or tourney type lists around here so I know I can get away with less AT than normal. I play against Tau, IG, and a few SM. Soon to be added are GK when my brother gets them. I also suppose I can lend my own Crons, CSM, and DE to my friends and play against my own armies.

While I appreciate all comments if you do advise changes try to keep it in the spirit of the list somehwat. For example it won't really be helpful if you just say "scrap this, go jetseer" or " take 3 Wraithlords and Wraithguard as troops". I would like something that resembles this list somehwat (I hope that didn't come off as too rude or stubborn )

Anyway, what do you guys think?

It looks like you're going fully mech, with the Harlies and FD riding in Falcons.

My comments on specific units:

Avatar: Drop him. He's big and scary, but very slow. He works amazingly well in a foot army, but in mech, he'll end up by himself alone on the battlefield and be shot to death.

Farseer: Give him Runes of Witnessing if you're running a council. A failed Fortune cast means he's and his squad are dead.

Warlocks: Don't half ass this unit. Either go with 7+ Warlocks or none at all. They work best on Jetbikes rather than in a transport. I know this is an incredibly expensive suggestion, but the unit doesn't work well unless you fully commit.

Harlies: Sadly, I'm going to have to suggest they get dropped. They just aren't all that useful, especially if you're giving them a Falcon to ride in. Mechdar don't have any great CC units, but if you want, try Banshees.

FD: Drop the Exarch and Tank Hunters. 5 BS4 melta weapons are plenty good enough to take out their target. After they do, the unit dies, so don't commit more points than the minimum. Also, these guys need a WS. A Falcon is NOT an appropriate substitute for them.

DA: No complaint. Consider changing the Brightlance on the WS to an EML or Scatter Laser. You've already got tons of anti-tank.

Pathfinders: I personally feel that this unit is garbage. They look like they'd perform well, but then someone with a flamer deep strikes next to them and the squad goes *poof*. That being said, there are plenty of players who like them.

GJB: A decent unit, not good, not bad. I'd consider splitting them up into smaller clusters to give you more flexibility in capturing objectives. Also, consider giving them a Warlock with Embolden to help keep them from running away.

Vypers: Not a great unit and definitely overcosted. But, if you have points, feel free to run them. But, I'm a fan of Warp Spiders over these junkers.

War Walker: Why the Cannons? Go with 6 Scatter Lasers for maximum shots and to keep your range consistent.

Falcons: Consider changing the Brightlances to EML. They aren't as good anti-armor, but they can be fired in plasma mode defensively, allowing the Falcon more movement. Also, consider giving them a 5-man DA unit to make them scoring (especially if you cut back on the GJBs).

From the top...

Your avatar has nothing to support. Its very hard to make him useful if he is strolling across the field with harlies under a veil. If you don't have come nice CC troops with him, he's going to get tar pitted and be useless, so either drop him or find a way to make him synergise. He's awesomely fluffy, though.

Guide farseers sit back and guide your warwalkers/falcons. Doom farseers have councils with Destructor. Also, seer councils on foot tend to do a lot of walking and not a lot of flaming or assaulting, so I'd put them on bikes or ditch them completely. If you go the guide approach, just takes Runes of Warding and Guide, and sit him in a falcon.

Harlequins can work, but you'll need more than a minimum sized squad. You're right in taking the shadowseer and kisses, forget the rest, but get more bodies in there. If you can't find a way to synergise them with the rest of your list, drop them, unless you like their fluff. They can work with an avatar, but you'd want 2 maxed squads and prob some storm guardians, and that's most of an army.

5 Fire Dragons have over a 90% chance of wrecking a land raider in 1 turn of shooting, you don't need an exarch, tank hunter or anything to improve that. Take them cheap, get them a transport and make it cheap (shuri cannon on top, maybe stones, 100 or 110 points). T3 4+ elves with melta guns on foot don't last long, and won't get close to anything worth melting. Seriously, transport, and maybe take 2 squads if you drop the harlies. Tier 1 units.

Bladestorm seems like a cool kid, but there's a reason not many people talk to him. Unless you have guide and doom, its just not as scary as you'd think, and chances are they'll just die to return fire or assault if you let them out of their transport. If you want the shooty line of men, go for it, but otherwise drop it to 5 men and keep them safely inside the serpent/falcon you assign them to.

Path finders are fluffy and cool, but they have a strong aversion to flamers and assault. They're just too expensive for what they do, they're 24 points per model and can only drop a few wounds per turn if they're lucky - there are better shooty options and objective campers out there. Unless you love them, drop them fast.

Jetbikes are amazing, they are T4 and 3+ saves, they're like eldar space marines on speed. However, without a warlock with embolden, they will fly off the field so fast after taking a wound or two, and 9 models is kinda hard to keep in cover and dodge assaults with. Drop it to 6, add a warlock with spear/embolden, and maybe take that squad twice if you like the idea of bikes. They're more shooty than pathfinders!

Vypers are fine. Take them as 3 individual units, not a squadron, and try to keep them safe. Never spend more on them than you need to, keep them cheap. Well done.

2 Scatter Lasers each on the walkers please, you don't need to split them up, they'll count them as separate weapons. You can nail out 24 shots at 36" range with full scatter lasers, and they can outflank. If you can somehow give them guide, you're laughing, and your opponent is dying. Problem? Fragile, slow, and they use a Heavy slot, the most valuable to Eldar. Still good though.

Falcons are expensive, and don't know what they want to be good at. Ideally, you'd have starcannons on them because 4x S8 AP2 is just perfect, but alas BS3 and plentiful cover ruined that idea long ago. Either give it an EML and sit at 48" and pray for guide, or drop them and get some prisms. Two prisms are sexy times, and it will free your farseer up to guide your war walkers. Falcons are good because you can have a guideseer and a DAVU (dire avenger vehicle upgrade - 60 points to make your falcon scoring) sit in it all game and camp an objective while unloading twin linked heavy weapons, but for that price you can just get 2 prisms.

Overall, your list has pretty much one of everything, and a whole lot of nothing. If you want a good list, which we assume is why you're asking for help here, you're going to need to narrow it down with a bit of focus. You can play the mech game, you can get your bikes on, you can play harlie/avatar, but not everything at once.

If you have a playstyle preference, or perhaps a playstyle you want to get away from (necrons are generally pretty slow, so did you play fast dark eldar or shooty?) and we can help you from there. But you pretty much just wrote down two thirds of the codex and called it a day, so we'll need some help to help you more.

I agree with everything that has been said. I'm just being nitpicky here but TehScat's mathhammer isn't quite correct on the Fire Dragons.

against AV 14 they have ~58.3% chance of a pen,
and ~13.8% chance of a glance.

Each shot's odds of wrecking a LR is [2/3*(.583*1/2+.138*1/6)] or ~21%

5 shots each with a 21% chance of wrecking the raider is [1-(1-.21)^5] or ~69.2%

If you only need to immobalize said raider the % chance of that happening goes up to ~82%.*

*The math I did on excel doesn't have rounding, the numbers I give here are rounded to .1 of a %, but I'm really using the excel numbers.

That said there is still no reason to take the dragon exarch. Hes totally a waste of points. And fire dragons are still one of the best delete buttons in the game. Its just not as foolproof as you might think :x

Ok thanks for all the replies, I'll try to give my rationale for each unit as follows:

The Avatar I can easily drop, he was there mostly because he's cool, but even I wasn't sure of what he'd contribute so he'll be cut.

The Farseer and Warlocks I thought could ride in a Falcon, and just throw out buffs. I took one of each power because Embolden and Enhance don't stack, so that leaves room for one Destructor. Conceal seems uneccessary when you can get 4+ cover from just about anything. Also if I'm not mistaken Embolden will help me with failed Psychic tests, that plus the Ghosthelm seems like it would keep me safe. Warding Runes just seemed like a good anti-psyker gear. If they ride in a Falcon do I need more Warlocks?

Ok the Harlies are there mostly because IMO they are super-cool fluffwise and model wise. I had a tough time deciding if my CC element should be them, Banshees, or Scorpions, but I thought that with a Shadowseer I don't have to have a transport, since 24" is the max distance they can be shot at. I play against a fair amount of footsloggers and armies with slight mech element so they wouldn't be too out of place. But they can get a transport if they really need it.

I can easily make Fire Dragons bare, I can see how the Exarch and Tank Hunters could be overkill. I was also planning to give them the other Falcon, why is it that a Wave Serpent is a far better transport?

I feel like the Dire Avengers and their Wave Serpent are pretty straightforward. They don't seem to be that good in CC so that's why I went with Bladestorm, though a vanilla DA squad could work too methinks. But I'd be hesitant to set them up for CC.

I can easily mess around with Jetbikes squad size though I'd imagine you'd want them in multiples of 3, I could also try getting in a Warlock. This squad also seems pretty straightforward.

I'm unhappy to hear Pathfinders aren't so hot. TBH they are my fave part of this list, they seem very fun to use. Would it be really bad just to keep one squad, because they might be the only thing I def want to use (and maybe Harlies).

Vypers just seemed like cheap Scatter Laser platforms, which seems like a potent weapon, though I could be mistaken. They're only there to pump out more Scatter shots. Warp Spiders seem like they accomplish sort of the same role: A fast unit that dumps S6 shots however with less AP and volume, albeit at less than 1/2 the cost of a Vyper. What's a good way to run them if if I choose them over Vypers?

I would give War Walkers two Scatter Lasers but at the time I think I was low on points, but I think I can find a way to fit them. 6 outflanking Scatter Lasers seems like it could do some damage, and they seem like fun weapons. They are pretty much like the Vypers, there for Scatter shots.

I decided to go with the Falcons because they seem like more reliable AT than Prisms. Though only S8 you do get more shots. On top of that they can be used as transports (and scoring with some DA's).

I think I'll try to fit in more Wave Serpents, and reconsider my HQ and Harlies since the most problems seem to arise from them (I'd like to keep my Pathfinders if I can). Also if I have points to spare should I go for Brightlances over EML? They seem like slightly better AT.

As for playstyle I generally pick an army for it's fluff, theme, and coolness then adapt my playstyle to them. I didn't get DE to contrast the slow and tough Crons, they just seemed cool. Though in general I tend to prefer shooty.

Hopefully I addressed all your comments, which I appreciate. Keep the C&C coming!




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit: I'll update the list later tonight

Over all i like the structure have to go with the other guys with some of the minor flaw though.

Eldrad wrote:Over all i like the structure have to go with the other guys with some of the minor flaw though.

Hmm considering it is none other than the great Eldrad offerring advice I think I should do as you say

Anyway I'll have the update up fairly soon, just have to run some errands and the like.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok list has been slightly updated

When I see a list that needs a lot of work I usually wait till the first revision to chime in. Going off this new list here is some pointers and I'll advise that is didn't read through most of the other postings.

Warlocks with Farseer - 4 man unit will effectively be able to do nothing. With a Brightlance it'll be shot down for being a threat then the warlock unit will give up easy kill points.

Vypers - Break up that unit, to 3 individual Vypers or squadron rules will rape you.

Falcons - I'm sure someone else already advised (I hope) but NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER put fire dragons or front line troops in a falcon. This is a long range gunboat, play it that way or remove itfrom your list, period. (hopefully this emphasis will keep at least one thread from this having to be repeated)

Harlies - Take a 10 man or leave them on your shelf, I read that you like them for fluff, but without a 10 man you won't kill off a unit before they swing back which means you are throwing away 140 points. Yes, they are that fragile.

Pathfinder - Suck

GJB - Look into purchasing another Warlock biker to split that into a 7 man and a 4 man unit.


K now to fix up the list.

Split the DA and put a 5 man in each Falcon, if you don't have a tenth DA model beyond the Exarch then hell keep the exarch in one of the units... better then what you currently have. Drop the 3 man lock unit, it's a liability, and put the seer with guide in a falcon.. he'll be casting guide on his falcon or the walkers. Use the Wave Serpent from DA for your Fire Dragons and use the Lock's serpent empty (yes you can still buy it's pts for a DA and keep it empty) as the harlie's ride. Deploy your harlies behind the empty serpent and jump in turn one, VoT will keep them from getting shot up (hopefully). Break up the Vypers and user the left over points from dropped locks for another guideseer in the other falcon or fleshing out the harlies.

BlueDagger wrote:When I see a list that needs a lot of work I usually wait till the first revision to chime in. Going off this new list here is some pointers and I'll advise that is didn't read through most of the other postings.

Warlocks with Farseer - 4 man unit will effectively be able to do nothing. With a Brightlance it'll be shot down for being a threat then the warlock unit will give up easy kill points.

Vypers - Break up that unit, to 3 individual Vypers or squadron rules will rape you.

Falcons - I'm sure someone else already advised (I hope) but NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER put fire dragons or front line troops in a falcon. This is a long range gunboat, play it that way or remove itfrom your list, period. (hopefully this emphasis will keep at least one thread from this having to be repeated)

Harlies - Take a 10 man or leave them on your shelf, I read that you like them for fluff, but without a 10 man you won't kill off a unit before they swing back which means you are throwing away 140 points. Yes, they are that fragile.

Pathfinder - Suck

GJB - Look into purchasing another Warlock biker to split that into a 7 man and a 4 man unit.


K now to fix up the list.

Split the DA and put a 5 man in each Falcon, if you don't have a tenth DA model beyond the Exarch then hell keep the exarch in one of the units... better then what you currently have. Drop the 3 man lock unit, it's a liability, and put the seer with guide in a falcon.. he'll be casting guide on his falcon or the walkers. Use the Wave Serpent from DA for your Fire Dragons and use the Lock's serpent empty (yes you can still buy it's pts for a DA and keep it empty) as the harlie's ride. Deploy your harlies behind the empty serpent and jump in turn one, VoT will keep them from getting shot up (hopefully). Break up the Vypers and user the left over points from dropped locks for another guideseer in the other falcon or fleshing out the harlies.

It seems like you need a lot of Harlequins and Warlocks to make them effective, which is kind of annoying. A huge points sink to make one unit effective.

Splitting the Vypers is easily done.

Ok may I advise taking a chill pill (is that still a cool thing to say?) when it comes to the Falcon. I understand your point, and I didn't like the idea of Dragons in Falcons but I can't always conjure up transports. A "never put Fire Dragons in a Falcon" would have sufficed.

Pathfinders are probably the only thing I really really would like to hang on to. And to a lesser extent Harlequins too, bah why do I always like the crappy units :(

Splitting the GJB isn't so hard though I'm curious as to why that's more effective.

I guess I could split the DA's but wouldn't two 5-man units accomplish little besides an extra KP? Also maybe I could just ditch the Warlocks all together and attach the FS to a group of DA's. I do like the idea of two seers, guiding things. Also I wonder do I need both Guide and Fortune? Fortune'd GJB sound like they could be pretty tough to put down.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'll update the list a little later but I plan to do the following:

Ditch the Warlocks, get another identical Farseer, sans the Runes. I'm also splitting the DA into 5 man squads, no exarchs anywhere and putting them in Falcons with the FS (one with each DA squad).

Then the Wave Serpent from the DA are going to the Harlies, Fire Dragons will have their own Serpent. Then all Brightlances are being downgraded to EML's. Finally that leaves me enough points to get 2 more Harlies, but only one more Kiss.

I don't want to update the first post right away because I want to get some confirmation that the aforementioned changes are good ones.

Thanks again for the help guys.

Sorry the Fire Dragon thing wasn't at you personally, just have to keep saying it over and over again to list threads here since it's a mentality held over by 4th edition Eldar players and is a common new eldar play snag. All changes you suggested sound good to me. Play it a few times and get a feel for it and over time you'll find that the Harlies while beatiful and cool, just don't cut it and at that point you can swap them for Banshees if you want a CC element.

BlueDagger wrote:Sorry the Fire Dragon thing wasn't at you personally, just have to keep saying it over and over again to list threads here since it's a mentality held over by 4th edition Eldar players and is a common new eldar play snag. All changes you suggested sound good to me. Play it a few times and get a feel for it and over time you'll find that the Harlies while beatiful and cool, just don't cut it and at that point you can swap them for Banshees if you want a CC element.

No harm done on the Falcon thing. I was just poking fun with my reply is all.

Man I'm bummed out about harlies :/ TBH they didn't really look good on paper but I wanted them to work. Same deal with Pathfinders.

I wonder how mech-y I'll need to be overall, since most players round here are mixed mech/footsloggin. If that's the case I may be able to try less vehicles or something. Only playtesting will tell for sure on that one. Either way I won't be able to update for sometime as I have a busy next couple of days.

Once again thanks to everyone who has commented so far, I most certainly will appreciate any more stuff you guys have to say.

GJBs are better split up because smaller groups are easier to move around and keep alive. Big units don't fit in cover well and are too hard to keep out of unwanted assaults.

He didn't overdo the Fire Dragon thing - we might as well just copy paste our rants regarding Fire Dragon squads from post to post. Once you start using them, you'll see what we mean.

Harlies are fething cool. Nothing can change that. If you want to use them, go for it, you just need to find out how you want to use them with pathfinders. On the note of them, yeah, they seem so cool but at the end of the day, they're expensive and don't kill much.

If you want to get pathfinders in, then they can be used as objective campers, they just need to be used in a certain way. If you let your opponent near them, they'll get flamed or assaulted and die and you will lose the objective. If you play in a way to defend them, to stop enemies closing with them, you can often keep them alive and allow them to keep shooting and camping the objective.

If you want harlies, you're going to need to use emptry transports for them, or a foot army. Each squad of harlies you want transported will need a 5-man DA squad with a serpent, and a falcon to put the DAs in. So if you take 2 squads of 10 harlies, take 2 falcons with 2 lots of DAs in them. There are 2 free serpents for your harlies. Harlies are amazing (seriously, amazing) with Doom, because you can reroll to wound and hence get another shot at rending. You can, if you need to, reroll successful wounds to try to score more rends. I can't remember the math, but pretty sure its only worth it vs TEQs.

How much mech, and potentially viability, are you willing to sacrifice to get the units that you want to play into your list? Do you like harlies and pathfinders enough to abandon mech play altogether?

I'm not a huge fan of mech, but honestly I think the problem is that I don't have a right feel for Eldar. I think I'll play a few Vassal games with varying lists and go from there. It's unlike DE where I knew I would needs lots of Raiders and so on.

I think Harlies and Pathfinders are the only thing in the list that I deem to be hella cool and I would love to fit them in somehow. Moreso than the rest of the army. I suppose next in line in the coolness ratings are the FS, DA's, and Dragons, though most of those seem mandatory for most lists.

I might miss Scatter Lasers, vehicles, and bikes but I'm willing to sacrifice stuff like that to make Harlies and Pathfinders work, (if that's even possible). Man I hope having both those units don't gimp me too much :/

Thanks for all the info doodz! (Now it's bedtime :p)

Only thing to beware of on vassal is your testing of pathfinders and jetbikes will be off due to TLoS. Bikes are a lot harder to hide in a real game especially in large numbesand pthfinderrs don't usually have as much area terrain