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So with new dex's being released, and 5th edition, alot of armies seem to have been released past 5th edition, so all seem to be reasonably matched for 5th edition rules, IE Blood angels, DE, new GK, SM etc.

While this is a good thing, it seems most of the older dex's are suffering, as everyone knows. Question is; are eldar still a viable force to excel with? Im not wondering much for tournament, but just in a general sense.

I get stomped most of the time with my eldar. I'm going to say that the rules are unfair towards them, because the alternative is that I'm a sucky wargamer

Mech Eldar are still tournament viable.

Don't use apostrophes on plurals. It's wrong. Say "dexes" and such.

Eldar still have some nasty tricks up their sleeve. They pretty much need to be in Wave Serpents though. They have some pretty garbage unit choices with Guardians and Swooping Hawks as well. They're still a decent army though, and can do well with the right build and the right player.

Their rules and all that is still good imo, but their pointcost has to be reduced.

Eldar are fine, but limited in our choices with each passing codex. If you go full Mechdar and have tactical skill then you can still do very well, or at least I have no real trouble. The biggest problems you will find is dealing with volume FNP or Wolf Cav Deathstar since we don't really have any power weapon heavy hitters (s3 banshees don't cut it vs invul save T5), but if you preplan well enough our speed can't evade them.

Im really glad to hear this =3

Yeah, I hear the big trick with Eldar is making sure everything works together properly. Otherwise, you will get tabled easily.

Every codex that has psychic defense means eldar are useful less and less.. Their hayday was pre-space wolves.. I won semis with Eldar and after that year I really havent played them much cept for apoc

If your meta doesnt include psychic hoods or 4+ negate items then go for it.. Also ive never been a fan of the riposte autarch army.. Yeah it can avoid getting shot, but it feels so boring to play when all you do is run and hide the whole game cause your codex is outdated

I stand by my words that Grey knight book will invalidate the eldar book even more.. along with nids, orks and demons

The rules changeover was a great boon to some armies and absolutely trashed a lot of Eldar strengths. Newer books outclass them, underpoint them, and usually have a lot more available tricks to exploit or stack for truly killer builds.

But, it is possible to learn the acquired taste of spam and visit spamalot frequently with mechdar full of dragons, prisms, bladestorm, and seers and thus still have a very tough hard hitting army. It's possible, but it gets boring. Anything less than absolute spam and repetition of the few actually good selections left to them, and it becomes difficult to compete against anyone with a 5th ed army and a bit of experience to use it.

I was 11/0/1 (win/loss/tie) the first year with my Eldar at my old game club pre 5th ed. In the 12 games I played there in the year of 5th, I was 4/4/4. I have played 5 games with them since I moved and got 1 tie, 2 wins (1 versus a noob, 1 in a team game with new SW as a partner), and 2 losses. It just gets worse because I have so far refused (except a couple of times) to go and borrow the figs for an ideal spam list.

I think an Eldar list nowadays with a lot of variation in it, trying to use the (many) less-than-ideal options available is just outclassed by even a chumpy player with a decent modern army build. The die hard "I am a great tactician" guys will disagree, and claim that cliche that you can win with any army if you are a good general, but it certainly is a lot EASIER for this to be true with some of the newer books or even with an older book that weren't nerfed so hard by the edition changes or weren't underpointsed so hard by codex creep leaving them behind.

But, it is possible to learn the acquired taste of spam and visit spamalot frequently with mechdar full of dragons, prisms, bladestorm, and seers and thus still have a very tough hard hitting army. It's possible, but it gets boring. Anything less than absolute spam and repetition of the few actually good selections left to them, and it becomes difficult to compete against anyone with a 5th ed army and a bit of experience to use it.

Due to how GW "understands" eldar thats how it *always* is unfortunately.. Same thing happened with the 3rd ed book (During 4th ed before the 4th ed book) where you had about 3 good units and 95% utter garbage

5th ed made every eldar CC unit besides warlocks garbage and that to me made the army extremely unfun

Kirasu wrote:Every codex that has psychic defense means eldar are useful less and less.. Their hayday was pre-space wolves.. I won semis with Eldar and after that year I really havent played them much cept for apoc

If your meta doesnt include psychic hoods or 4+ negate items then go for it.. Also ive never been a fan of the riposte autarch army.. Yeah it can avoid getting shot, but it feels so boring to play when all you do is run and hide the whole game cause your codex is outdated

I stand by my words that Grey knight book will invalidate the eldar book even more.. along with nids, orks and demons

I agree with this evaluation. Along with IG (yes, they have a new codex, but its garbage compared to what they are facing.), the Eldar are just too outdated to stand a REAL chance in even freindly play, let alone the more competative tournaments. Just MHO.

It depends on the player. My friend consistently curb stomps us with his eldar. And by curbstomp, I mean that we barely make even in an annhilation game even though he rolls 5 consecutive ones on a turn-by-turn basis (and the ones are on his avatar and his fire prism too, so the ones where the dice actually matters) and we get consecutive 6's.

Cortez667 wrote:
I agree with this evaluation. Along with IG (yes, they have a new codex, but its garbage compared to what they are facing.), the Eldar are just too outdated to stand a REAL chance in even freindly play, let alone the more competative tournaments. Just MHO.

Wait, are you saying IG are garbage compared to what they're facing on the table these days? Are... are you serious? You can't be serious.

Lol I thought he said only the Eldar were garbage. Although tbh even with the hype, I haven't seen IG produce the skills to pay the bills, so to speak.

Well, considering IG have melta vets in Chims where Eldar have Fire Dragons in Serpents, both performing almost the same duty, I would say the Eldar have the advantage. Oh yeah, then I look at the points and the FOC and all the IG orders, and well, it's not like they can even run out of troop slots before running out of space on the table if they don't want to. Never mind.

I still use my Eldar when I play (which is seldom these days) and they don't do horribly, they just don't win as readily as they used to, and my Phoenix Lords, Hawks, Harlies, Autarch, Vypers haven't seen table in a long long time unless it's to fill up points in a game bigger than I like to play. My collection is only optimal around 1000-1500 without taking filler units and it seems the usual game is 1850 here. I can put about 4000 on the table, and only really approve of about 1250 of it - where I used to feel I could play around a lot more with subbing in and out different stuff for variety from one friendly game to the next (not talking about league or tourney stuff), now even that's just suicide.

I must really be bad at picking which army to back because I was playing IG in 3rd-4th ed. and I'm playing Eldar in 5th. Silly me.

Been playing IG since 2nd ED. and its like this, IMHO:

They've been going down hill since 4th ed. codex (3rd was still good, no super powered SM or Nid-Zilla yet). Then in the 5th Ed. codex, they tried to re-invent them as some sort of airborne force that could manuever. This diden't work. Plus it made all of us whose armies were from before, absolutly useless.

Obviously the dissenters either A) don't play IG, or B) don't know what their doing and got it handed to them by IG. One of the two.

Not trying to be a prick (please don't spam me to death with explanations of how good you are) but my ground pounding IG beats Airbourne/vet. IG everytime.

I started an Eldar army last year, (painting started feb, first game july) I viewed them as a challenge, having felt I'd got as much out of my previous army as possible (daemons).

I've taken them to 2 tournaments, and it's W5 D1 L2, and yes at 1750 it's eldrad, it's waveserpents, but only one squad of dragons...

You do struggle against BA and Wolves (guard less so I found), but tbh I found you do better in objective missions by zooming onto objectives (just avoid najal really!).

So yes challenging but from the pre 5th ed books it's probably the strongest

Reaver83 wrote:I started an Eldar army last year, (painting started feb, first game july) I viewed them as a challenge, having felt I'd got as much out of my previous army as possible (daemons).

I've taken them to 2 tournaments, and it's W5 D1 L2, and yes at 1750 it's eldrad, it's waveserpents, but only one squad of dragons...

You do struggle against BA and Wolves (guard less so I found), but tbh I found you do better in objective missions by zooming onto objectives (just avoid najal really!).

So yes challenging but from the pre 5th ed books it's probably the strongest

Not sure about the OP, but I apprieciate the input. I got some pointy-ears on my shelves, waiting for GW to redo their codex. Maybe I'll paint them up and give them a whirl early.

Cortez667 wrote:Been playing IG since 2nd ED. and its like this, IMHO:

They've been going down hill since 4th ed. codex (3rd was still good, no super powered SM or Nid-Zilla yet). Then in the 5th Ed. codex, they tried to re-invent them as some sort of airborne force that could manuever. This diden't work. Plus it made all of us whose armies were from before, absolutly useless.

Obviously the dissenters either A) don't play IG, or B) don't know what their doing and got it handed to them by IG. One of the two.

Not trying to be a prick (please don't spam me to death with explanations of how good you are) but my ground pounding IG beats Airbourne/vet. IG everytime.

Hate to be that guy who calls people out but, I dont see IG as being remade as an airborne force. Sure they got the Valk and Vendetta (two fliers, but really should be considered one since it's only a weapons difference between the two) but so did many others. SMs got the Storm Raven, DE got the Voidraven and Nightwing, even nids got the Harpy and the other sms might get the storm raven as well, given how GW is pushing it. IG was more developed as a groundpounder force, given that they suddenly got a slew of imported Forge World tank rules (so you didnt have to clear it with Tournaments to use them) and the Orders system made the guardsmen much more powerful, especially FRFSRF in groups.