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What are the strongest eldar units or army builds currently?

My friend wants to upgrade his Eldar army so trying to get some better units to improve the list (without considering what he already has sort of starting from scratch)

The strongest eldar units are dark (or forgeworld based rules). What is your friends eldar list/loadout, its easier to give good advice when we can see what we already have to deal with

3 gaurdian squads
1 banshee squad
3 vypers
1 falcon
2 farseers
3 warlocks
2 wraithlords
2 autarch w/jetbikes
1 dark reapers squad

O_O
Wow... he has a less than ideal set of stuff... I'll stick with codex units:

Firedragons - Popular build is 2-3 squads of dragons in wave serpents to handle all your antitank needs with hot melta death.

Dire Avengers - 5 man units in a falcon, known as DAVU (dire avengers as vehicle upgrade). Basically they sit inside the falcon and never get out, and then last turn they swoop in on an objective (stay in the transport) to capture/contest. Not really a fan of this myself, I prefer 10 man squads with bladestorm exarchs in wave serpents, but that isnt necessarily the best build for them given how overcosted they are.

Nightspinners - Nightspinners are great, they dont usually kill a lot outright, but they cause all sorts of mobility issues for your opponent. If a unit hit by the template moves at all they treat it as dangerous/difficult terrain. Awesome against nids, footguard, horde orks, or anything that needs to move at all really...

Fire Prisms - One of the few long ranged anti-tank options in the book, also not to shabby vs. infantry. Combine 2+ of them together for more fun

War Walkers - 3 of them all armed with the same weapon. I'm quite fond of the scatter laser build, a unit of them will put out 24 s6 shots per turn, you can melt infantry units and destroy vehicles with these.

Theres a bunch of other stuff in the book thats pretty good, but those are the popular options

What size games do you play as looking through the unit list you've given those are pretty much the unit types that make up the core of my army (I normally always have rangers upgraded to pathfinders too).

I've found you can rarely go wrong with harlequins as they generally tear through whatever you throw them at (2 blood angel squads and mephiston before mephiston killed the remaining ones in a simultaneous combat)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:O_O

Nightspinners - Nightspinners are great, they dont usually kill a lot outright, but they cause all sorts of mobility issues for your opponent. If a unit hit by the template moves at all they treat it as dangerous/difficult terrain. Awesome against nids, footguard, horde orks, or anything that needs to move at all really...

These are also really funny if you can land them on a small elite unit like sanguinary guard.

My friend would like to know what's best striking scorpions or harlequins?

He wants to have a mixed army of close combat and ranged so he's considering the elite choices for that role.

Its a tossup IMO.The scorps S4 gives them an advantage with the MEQ heavy meta, but... if you tool up the Harlequins with Kiss's, the rending is more beneficial

Akaiyou wrote:My friend would like to know what's best striking scorpions or harlequins?

He wants to have a mixed army of close combat and ranged so he's considering the elite choices for that role.

If he is running a footslogging army, harlequins with a shadowseer.

Actually always run harlequins over striking scorpians.

The best units in the eldar codex are as follows:

Farseers with doom and guide, never leave the webway without them
Banshees, with the farseer dooming and guiding, they will destroy any squad before it can swing back.
Firedragons, all melta, all death
Wraithguard, tough as nails and deadly at range
Dire avengers with blade storm. Combine with doom and guide
Warwalkers, with scatter lasers. Death to everything but av 13+
Wraithlords, toughness 8, immune to str 4 and below

A Jetlock deathstar is always a blast.
I run Striking Scorpions over Harlies due to how much Harlies cost when fully kitted out.
Fire Dragons are auto-include.
Warwalkers with scatter lasers or missles are decent also.
Pathfinders for the likely 2+ cover save when gone to ground, camp on an objective and waiti it out.
More Wraithlords=More fun.
Warp Spiders can be good against Orks and the like.

I personally like ALL the Eldar units, possibly except Hawks simply because they cost a lot for troops who are not that much of an impact.

Harlies can be excellent, especially with a shadowseer as they are hard to target.

Personally I feel dragons are a bit overrated. They hit very, very hard but because they are Eldar with short range weapons they tend to hit very, very hard and then get very, very killed!

Isengard wrote:

Personally I feel dragons are a bit overrated. They hit very, very hard but because they are Eldar with short range weapons they tend to hit very, very hard and then get very, very killed!

This. You have to get pretty damned creative if you dont want that to happen.

I guess it depends on how you play and the type of game. If you are playing to win at all costs (e.g. a tournament) and have a specific high value target to kill at all costs then dragons would be ideal. You can throw them in a wave serpent, whip across the table, dump them out and shoot the high value target. They will then be killed.

I like to play Eldar in a surgical way, avoiding casualties as I think that's the Eldar way. I do this by using the various units in concert depending on the opponents. For example, I often use guardians but usually as defensive troops, usually backed up by heavier units for fire support and intermingled cc units to counter-attack any enemy that get in close.

Eldar units all suffer from glass hammer syndrome and although many of them hit very hard they cannot survive significant return firepower or especially counter charges. Low T means that exposing your units to counter charges is a bad idea. I usually hold my cc units to finish off incoming units and if I need to capture objectives I do so late on, using firepower to whittle down the defenders. An Eldar army going gung ho and barrelling in tends to get squashed by anyone with decent cc.

That's just me, with nids I throw them in frontally but never with Eldar.

The main competitive Eldar build right now is S6 vehicle spam. Tons of Wave Serpents, Falcons, and War Walkers putting out 80+ S^ shots per turn.

There's also "Footdar", a non-mechanized build centered around a Fearless core using Eldrad and an Avatar to make the center of your army solid. This army normally relies on the Avatar + wraithlords and a big squad of harlequins for counter-assault, and some war walkers and maybe warp spiders to add more S6 spam.

Yeah, if you want Eldar to do decently well in cc (aside from the dedicated assault units), you have to follow what I call "the path of the hidden character". In other words, if you're running fire dragons (the most obvious one since they tend to be very very close to the enemy front lines and have absolutely no combat ability to speak of), you should stick a phoenix lord or yriel into the squad with them. It gives the unit some much needed firepower and will make your opponent think twice about the assault, you still have the issue of low toughness, but it usually means you can put out a number of higher-strength power-weapon attacks at a higher initiative. Unfortunately, there isnt much you can do about shooting...

Yriel + 5 Wraithguard + warlock with Enhance in a wave serpent is a pretty darn good assault unit. You just need to keep Yriel out of base contact with power fists.

Even if he was out of base contact with power fist it doesnt mean the power fists can't hit him.

If they are not in base contact with any other unit/model and within 2" of a model that IS engaged with your independent character, then said character CAN be targeted by the fist or whatever special weapon it may be.

It's in the multiple assault rules.

The only strong Eldar build is full Mech.

3 Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents.
Fire Prisms
Holo-Falcon with Dire Avenger Vehicle Upgrade (DAVU) and HQ.
DAVU Wave Serpents to fill the rest.

It then plays lawyer ball the entire game.

The only strong Eldar build is full Mech.

3 Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents.
Fire Prisms
Holo-Falcon with Dire Avenger Vehicle Upgrade (DAVU) and HQ.
DAVU Wave Serpents to fill the rest.

Saying the only strong build is Mech is false, not true at all. Warp Spiders can be very devastating in an army, you just gotta know how to use them ( Deepstriking them can be very effective ). Jetbike Seer Council still owns. War Walkers with scatters are amazing against light/medium vehicles, and infantry, as are the rest of your str 6 guns from serpents/falcons, and anything with higher armor value you just use Fire Dragons to pop them. Fire Prisms are only ok, and lol to the person who plays with DAVU Dire Avenger/guardian units in transports. Doom, and sometimes guide, and 2 units of Dire avengers in serpents bladestorming can wipe out any unit in the game besides plague Marines/Paladins ( I have killed so many monstrous creatures as well, even though they wound on six's ). Ive taken out Trygons, Hive Guard, Hive Tyrants, Tervigons, Daemon Princes, you name it with them. Also ive had a fully upgraded unit of Dire Avengers easily take out 5 man squads of terminators with ease ( Bladestorm + Charge, Shimmershield and defend helps here alot ). Scorpions/Warlocks in a serpent with a Farseer with fortune/doom is amazing. You fortune the Wave serpent on your first turn and go flat out, so you get a re rollable 4+ cover save. Next turn, your opponent has to deal with a nasty fortuned assault squad hitting there lines.