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Thinking of starting either a Dark Eldar or Eldar army. Not sure what the difference is and who is better. Any suggestions?

Thanks

Which one appeals to you more by the look of the miniatures?

Dark Elder are.. wait for it.. the dark ("evil") version of the Eldar (though it's surely complicated). They also have the newer book and more recent miniatures (and more in plastic), which would make Dark Eldar slightly easier to collect than Eldar.

Dark Eldar are also more straightforward to play than the highly specialized Eldar (with their dated rules).

Eldar are an army of highly specialized units with limited durability. Almost every unit in the codex does one or two specific things extremely well, and is almost useless outside of those roles. For example, Howling Banshees are extremely good at dealing with small, elite squads in 3+ amour, but suffer against TEQ, hordes, and shooting. Fire Dragons are extremely good at destroying heavy armour and monstrous creatures, but can't really deal with infantry and can get into trouble if they loose their transport as they have limited mobility. There are some units that are a bit more generalist, but they aren't particularly impressive. In terms of power, Eldar are probably the third weakest codex right now (with Dark Angels and Black Templars being the only codexes that are weaker), as they are expensive when compared to modern codexes, and were designed to interact with the rules in 4th edition, and show their age more than any other army. They are also traditionally one of the more difficult armies to play, as you have to know what unit to apply to what task, and how best to apply them. In terms of fluff, Eldar are the 'good' Eldar. They live in both Craftworlds (giant ships which house Eldar populations equivalent to some medium sized Imperial worlds) and on Exodite planets. They are highly manipulative and arrogant, and would manipulate two other species into engaging in an apocalyptic war so that one Eldar life would be spared. They are also strongly opposed to Chaos, because a fall to decadence of a large portion of the Eldar population lead to the birth of Slaneesh, one of the four chaos gods, and to the Necrons, who were the ancient enemies of the Old Ones, who created the Eldar.

Dark Eldar are a mobility based army. Their units are somewhat expensive and lack the durability of most other armies, but are arguably the best at moving around the board. They can be shooty or assaulty, although assault based Dark Eldar got nerfed hard with 6th edition, and nearly every Dark Eldar unit that can take a transport should, both to protect the contents and to help them move around the board. In terms of power, they are on either the higher end of the middle tier, or the lower end of the higher tier (depending on who you ask), yet once again are an extremely difficult army to play (although less so than Eldar) because of the fact that their greatest strength is in the movement phase, which is one of the hardest phases to master. In the fluff, they are the hendonistic Eldar who were in part responsible for their societies collapse, their excess resulting in the birth of the Chaos God Slaneesh. They largely live in within the Webway, a non-realspace dimension similar to the warp, but much more stable and without daemons. They are less interested in conquest than other species and more in the capture of slaves. In order to stave of Slaneesh, the Dark Eldar essentially steal the life energy of their slaves through torture to make themselves immortal.

Dark eldar Is a strong assault army with recent figures (as mentioned)and vehicles. Eldar are strong in other areas. I have a vast Dark Eldar army and , once you are used to playing it, they can confound any player who does not fight them on a regular basis. Be warned, However, their models are fragile, in ever sense of the word. But ther a variety of effective lists worth building there and a lot of conversion potential.

Thanks for the advice so far. I have the Dark Eldar codex, and really like the look of the models. Then I saw Eldar and thought they look pretty cool too. By the sounds of it from what you guys have said, it seems like Dark Eldar would be a bit easier to play with, which is what I need as I have only recently got into 40k. Have been playing fantasy for quite some time now and got the Dark Vengeance box set to start me off.

I would just like to add that, while I have no experience with Eldar's models, DE's models are physically fragile, and because of the number of transport unit you'll need, you'd have to really consider investing in some ways to carry the models to your FLGS/gaming club/wherever, just so you won't break them on the way. It's kinda funny how they even made the models physically accurate to the army's fluff: break on touch.

Also, spikes, funny that their iconic rule is called "Power from pain", because they are, quite literally, power from pain, your pain though, not your opponent's.

Gameplay-wise, I won't repeat what others have said.

Again, take heed of what has been told of the Dark eldar. Espeacially in light of 6th edition changes, they will need finesse to get the win and your strategies will take time to perfect. But they are a fun army to build, paint and play.

And also bear in mind that they Eldar and Dark Eldar are Battle Brothers so you can run both together if you like (which in a way gives you 3 armies for the price of two if you end up with both a pure Eldar and pure Dark eldar army).