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Hey guys,
I´m already playing Circle (Beast heavy with Kromac & eKrüger) and Khador (infantry heavy mostly with pButcher and pIrusk) and now I am interested in Elf Qaida.
What apart from their aesthetics distinguishes them from the other factions (especially mine)?

Well. I'm not too sure, as I've not checked into them. In fact I'm new to warmachine.

The answer I'm going to give is: If you need to be talked into building up the army, then you shouldn't.

From what I do know about Scyrah, they are mostly seen as terrorists, that believe that human magicians are the reason the elven gods are dying and use Mage Hunters to kill them.

I´m playing Warmachine for quite a while and I´ve never met a Ret player... So I´m interested but I don´t know what their niche is... Or if they even have one.

I'm playing Ret and based from what I know and what other players have experienced is that it's difficult to unleash the full potential of some units. That is, it's weird to balance out your army when some much of it has units that will perform the same functions, but better and at more/less expensive. Why pick riflemen when you can get higher armour and RAT with invictors for 4 less range and 2 more points (don't quote me on that), or why pick invictors when you can pick magehunters for that matter? What it comes down to is lack of variety within the army composition itself, but more and more models and units are coming out to hopefully flesh it out.

My buddy plays ret. They seem similar to khador in that, they generally favor infantry focused army lists. They have some really powerful warjacks but they almost all have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon which is great for versatility but they suffer from being worse at one or the other than other warjacks of similar cost. A Manticore for instance, is more expensive than a khador juggernaught, but is generally weaker in melee. It has a combo strike, strength boost, and ranged weapon though. The phoenix is expensive but it is really solid. Good ranged weapon, good melee weapon with reach, a cool special AOE attack, AND its a heavy with an arc node which is very rare. They do have good light warjacks and some good jack marshals in faction along with a decent solo warjack support model in the arcanist (Similar to menoth's solo support). They appear to have weak damage grids, but, they also have powerfields that you have to knock down first before damaging their grid. The powerfield can be slowly regenerated similar to how horde beasts can regenerate. Not all ret jacks have power fields, but if you drop the power field, they usually loose one of their cool abilities or the use of their gun. It can be really annoying since the power grid ends up functioning like an additional system that can be crippled but then can be healed. From one khador player to another, their warjacks tend to have low POW attacks but make up for it in versatility.

Ret's warcasters have alot going on, they have alot of spells and upkeeps and some of them tend to want their focus for themselves (Ravyn). I find retribution infantry are really good. They dont really do any one thing really well, but they are good at alot of things. Their spearmen have good solid statlines, set defense, brutal charge, ranked attacks, CMA, sheild wall. Their UA adds some more really good abilities and the unit costs as much as winterguard. Ret also has a 1pt model that be attached to squads that has flank, dispels upkeeps, and cuts down the range on enemy spells targeting the squad. Its a weapon attachment lik WG rockets, but they can be added to any squad.

The rest of their infantry tend to have good stats, good armor, and fill their roles really well. Their solos are very good - ghost snipers auto inflict 3 damage instead of 1, eyriss is a faction model, mage hunter models are down right lethal assassins. Its a cool faction, but they dont have the options that other factions have.

Their jacks are basically glass cannons.

Above average speed, decent armor, but very low damage boxes. Mitigated somewhat by force fields on the House Shyeel myrmidons, which can be regenerated with Focus. The other warjacks have more actual damage boxes instead of Force Fields.

But once stuff has cut through your shields the Jacks will go down quick. Even their heavy jacks only have 22ish boxes. Even low amounts of damage can quickly start crippling their systems.

Offensively their jacks are fairly impressive, most have good ranged weapons and melee weapons. Often with extra special rules and abilities to increase damage output. Many systems, including ranged weapons, are dependent on the field generator(which gives them their force field) and if its disabled they lose the weapon as well.

Also, all their jack's ranged weapons are magical. This is a pretty big deal. It means you can shoot Menoth jacks under the effect of Passage and you can damage incorporeal model. It may seem corner case, but when you need it you really need it.

If you compare their jacks to most other factions, they really are not glass cannons. They only have 22 boxes on their grids, but they also have 10 boxes on the shield. Thats 32 hit boxes total which is the average number of boxes for a heavy. Except with retribution jacks, you have to deal more damage to cripple an individual system than you do any other jack. Think about it like this: To cripple an arm on a crusader, you have to deal 9 damage to slot 1. To cripple the same arm on a manticore, you have to deal 15 to slot 1. So the initial burst to cripple a system is significantly more difficult against a ret jack than any other warjack. It doesnt really matter that they have a smaller damage grid since you have to get through that 10 point barrier first and that barrier can be regenerated albeit slowly. IMO, their only weakness is that the shield itself is an additional system that can be crippled and cause the jack to lose functionality. That and their offensive power is generally weak. I mean, a manticore is 8 points and has P+S 15 melee attacks. Yes it can bump that to 18 but you have to burn a focus to do it which limits your damage potential again.

Honestly, I think the only heavy I would ever take in the army book is the phoenix. It's offense is much better than all the other options, it has reach, causes fire damage, has an open fist and a solid AOE cannon. On top of that, so long it's shield is not gone, it regenerates each turn for free. Did I mention it is an arc node? Every other option in the army book just pales in comparison, although the griffon looks like a perfect jack to be marshaled since ret's solo jack marshal has flank and the griffon is a 4pt with a reach weapon.

Their character jacks are much better but again, they suffer from low power output. My buddy runs Ossyan with Hypnos all the time and the combo can just lock down khador's single jack option that I usually run.

Banshees can be hell on Hordes or Butcher3. Its no casting
spells passive ability can be worked around, but that 10"
bubble can restrict some typically solid power plays such as
a Caine or Asphyxious dive.

PP seems to be making their main infantry plastic.