Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've played a few games with 40k using friends' various armies - enough to get a general feel for the game and a decent understanding of the rules. With the help of Dakkadakka I've settled on starting my own army of Eldar, but I'm not...really sure what to get.

My friend gave me a few of his Eldar things to get started, but it's not enough for an army.

So far I have:

One farseer
Five Howling Banshees + Exarch
The Avatar
Two Harlequins.

I know I want to make an army that has a slight lean towards close combat but I don't really want to devote myself to it in its entirely - I like options.

So what should my first buys be? I only really need enough to go up to ~1000 points, and I'd like to keep the budget not much more than $200. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice on what to start with?

(Repost of mine from earlier)

I think the first step is to determine what type of Eldar army you want. Basically, your options are the following:

Mechdar (Biel-Tan): This is by far the best Eldar army to run (from a competitive environment standpoint). 3x Wave Serpent, 2x10 Dire Avenger Squad (Exarch with Dual Catapult), 5 Fire Dragon squad (no Exarch), 2xFire Prisms, 3x War Walker, Farseer is a great place to start. Expand as needed. If you want to go Biel-Tan themed, this is the army to run, but throw in some more aspect warriors for fluff.

Footdar (Ulthwe): This army doesn't really work too well any more. You'll rely much more on Guardians. Harlies typically make an appearance here. Avatar does as well, oftentimes. This is the best choice to make a Ulthwe themed army if you go heavy on Seer council and Guardians.

Iyanden: A very fluffy army, and hard to kill. But, it typically lacks volume of firepower and very limited mobility. Doesn't do well competitively. Costs a TON of cash to play. Farseer, 2x 10 Wraithguard (with Spirit Seer), 3x Wraithlord is a great place to start.

Jetbike Eldar (Saim-Hann): Possibly the 2nd best Eldar army, but still not nearly as good as Mechdar. You run a ton of Guardian Jetbike units, and run a Farseer and Warlock squad all on Jetbikes. Again, a rather expensive army to purchase. If you want to go fluffy Saim-Hann, you're already most of the way there, you just need to get some Vypers and maybe drop the Warlocks.

MC Eldar: My favorite army, but not particularly good any more. You run Avatar and Wraithlords to just slowly advance on your opponent with incredibly tough units.

Alaitoc: An awful army. Only run it if you really like the fluffyness of it. Field a whole ton of Rangers/Pathfinders and hope for the best (which won't be much).


Mixing and matching simply doesn't work well in Eldar (or most any other army). Find a theme and stick with it.

First, Look on ebay for cheaper models. Your going to want 20 dire avengers for troops. They are some of the best troops the eldar have right now. After that you probably want to make a list more CC oriented. I play a lot of lists that use one or two strong CC squads backed up with eldar heavy support fire power and strong psychic HQ's to buff up my force. I'll give you my normal 2000pt list that is actually a fairly good all-comers list for an aggressive player.

HQ
Eldrad 210

Farseer 130
Guide, Doom, RoWitnessing, and Spirit Stones

Troops

2 x 10 Dire avengers .......... 304
Exarch w/ twin DA pults and bladestorm
2 x Waveserpent ............ 250
TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones, and Star Engines

Elites

2 x 10 Howling Banshees ............... 374
Exarch w/ Executioner and Acrobatic
2 x Wave Serpent ......................250
TL Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones, and Star Engines

Heavy Support

3 x Fire Prism..........................480
Holo-field & Spirit Stones

Starting 40k with Eldar. How should I start?

Take out a loan...

Well, you've got to start with a legal army, which requires an HQ (which you have) and two troops choices (which you don't).

yuriel is amazing

only other point I can share from playing against them is your transports are great

wraithlords have always been a pain and will save the rest of your army from lots of fire, but you have to use that time effectively because they will go down

Now i will assume you want to go for a themed army while also using the models you have, thus it is looking like a footdar Ulthwe list to me. You will need a bunch of guardians the avatar, eldrad a couple warlocks, you can use your harlies if you have a shadow seer, a wraithlord or two, 3 warwalkers with EML, some fire dragons in a wave serpent, and the banshees can go on foot (risky) or they can have a transport too.

Anyways i digress, you need 2 troops to start, the best all around troop has to be dire avengers, if you want to do a jetbike army, you need guardian jetbikes, and footdar you'll need guardians. Rangers are good troops as a secondary or tertiary troop choice (able to contribute from some range while sitting on an objective). But yes, start by grabbing some troops and the rest will come as you play and learn what you like and dont like.

I tend to run Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents as Troops with a Pathfinder squad to hold objectives, Guardians are only really useful insofar as they can take long-ranged guns. The obstacle to Jetbikes is more the fact that they're $15 each than any problems with the rules, and I can't say that I've ever seen Storm Guardians used.

As far as close-combat units go, I prefer Striking Scorpions to Howling Banshees, the Eldar don't have assault vehicles so your assault troops will usually need to weather a turn of shooting before they make it into combat, and 4+ saves don't help all that much. Scorpions don't need a transport to make it to combat (since you can give them Infiltrate and Move Through Cover), they've got more attacks and higher Strength than Banshees (they're about as effective against Marine-equivalents), and they've got a 3+ save to keep them in one piece.

The most powerful part of the entire Codex tends to be the Heavy Support section; Eldar have marvelously tough tanks that can hurl an absurd amount of fire at the other guy.

Ok here we go.

To start with 1000 pts I would either go with foot-dar.

The avatar is a bargain at 155pts.
(If you can squeeze a farseer in for the points, Avatar+fortune is a great combo)

Then load up on some troops,
DAvengers are the bread and butter of eldar troops, with 18" assault 2, they can stay just out of assault range and lay down BS4 fire.
I would get at least one squad of jetbikes to have a fast unit to harass and get down field objectives.
You can also load up on guardians, but they are paper thing. They can sit in the backfield in cover with a weapon platform.

At 1000pts I would skip the CC and go with small arms fire and good heavy units.... but since you want it...
For your CC take banshees, they have all power weapons so they will kill almost any unit. they will have a hard time deal with hordes though. But assume all your small arms fire from DA and other units will thin those out. Scorps are great if they can infiltrate or deepstrike and they have more attacks. Harlies are too expensive at 1000pts

Lastly you need some anti-tank shots. Eldar heavy tanks are great for that, but its odd to have one tank in a foot list....
Fire Dragons are THE BEST melta unit in the game, but you need a way to transport them.

The great thing about start at 1000pts, is that its easy to scale up... you can start scaling to 1500 by buying transports.


Heres a test list for you
Avatar 155
Farseer, Fortune, 85
DA x 10 120
DA x 10 120
Jetbikes x 3 w cannon 76
Fire Dragons x 5 80
Falcon w/ Cannon 130.
Banshees x 10 160


Then theres some points to play with.