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hi all, im new to 40k, wanting to put together 3 eldar armies in wysiwyg format, must be able to play tournaments in the long run. what i feel i want to do is end up with 3 3,000 point armies, 1 balanced, 1 aggressive and 1 defenceive.

I really have no idea where to start. but i like the idea of building them in teirs so to speak, so i can play and hobby at the same time. the way i see this is to design the 3k points list, but then brake it down into playable number. so 500pts , 750pt, 1000 pts, 1500pts, 2000pts, 2500pts and 3000pts. so i can upgrade towards that final 3k list

i hope this make sense

any help would be really appreciated.

matt

Wave Serpents are your friends. Put a troop choice in them and give the serpents Holo Fields and twin linked scatter lasers maybe even upgrade you shuriken catapults to a shuriken canon.

Crimson hunters are really good air support, exarch as many as you can and rape the sky's, or tanks if your opponent doesn't being any flyers, which probly won't happen

I like jet bikes with jet locks for the super jink save,

Wraith knight will scare the gak out of anyone you play, and if your doing 3k bring lots of then with sun cannons and scatter lasers(at least one) jump around and nuke mfers or assault and scare the gak out of people making them pray for the power fists they didn't bring

Pretty much stick with wave serpents. They deal with fliers, infantry and light to medium vehicles pretty easily. There is 2 routes, either go with 10 guardians, or 5 dire avengers. 25 points gets you 10 extra shots,range doesn't usually matter because of battle focus.

As far as wave serpents go, Scatter lasers and Holo fields are all you need. You can go with shuriken cannons but honestly the 12" movement can keep you out of harms reach.

Optionally you can take a spirit seer with 5 d-scythe wraithguard in a wave serpent (as above) with ghostwalk matrix and vectored engines. It gives you a counter assault unit that shake and bakes anyone that gets too close to your wave serpent core.

Some random tricks:
Farseer on a jetbike with mantle of the laughing god, 2+ rerollable cover save. and you just take Guide, Prescience and Psychic shriek (roll and try and get invisibility if you like).

3 man jetbike squad; 48" movement can steal or claim objectives late game. Sneaky buggers.

Swooping hawks are awesome against vehicles, throw a haywire grenade then assault, its basically a free hull point stripped.

Here's a list:
HQ
Spirit seer

TROOPS
5 D-scythe wraithguard
- wave serpent with holo, scat, shuriken, vector, ghostwalk

5 Wraithguard (not as good as dragons but t6 and scoring)
- wave serpent with holo, scat, shuriken

4x 10 guardians
- wave serpent with holo, scat, shuriken

HEAVY
Night spinner
-Holo, crystal targeting matrix

Total: 1850

OPTIONS:
-Drop them to 5 man dire avenger squads and save 100pts
-Drop shuriken cannons for 60 extra points.
-Drop wraithguard to dragons and save 50pts.
- Use spare points for extra unit of 5 avengers in wave serpent (MOOOAR!!)

Aspect warriors are one of your best buddies. Learn to utilise one and an aspect warrior can chew through anything on the tables. For instance: fire dragons (2 squads of 5) in a wave serpent with holo field, star engines and possibly a star engine. Run em up with the 24' range first turn. Try to block LOS and second turn pop the fire dragon out to demolish a tank.
In other words, each aspect warrior does a job really well. There are combos out there to make them more devastating, 1 i have heard of is dar reaper infantry killing machine (or WS) with fire dragons in another WS.loads of S8 AP3 long range back up with loads of AP1 shots to shoot tanks. However, also remember each aspect is good at doing one or two things ONLY. I Wouldn't charge warp spiders into a bunch of boyz etc. The eldar has alot of nice combos and trickeries to try out. You have to explore it to understand and exploit it against your sad opponent.

yep, like everyone else said, serpents are your freinds.

take allot. easy to wysiwyg to make, just give em scatter lasers.
warp spiders are great.
war walkers are great

A note on warp spiders.

Very awesome offensively, but defensively they aren't great. If you run serpents and don't have a lot of models to back them up you'll find every small arms weapon that cant hurt the serpents pointed at them. 3+ save is great and all but the T3 makes that negligible. Usually for me they don't survive past turn 2, because realistically there isn't that much blocking line of sight terrain in most games, and sometimes that jetpack move isn't enough.

Playing them defensively defeats the purpose and you have points sitting around doing nothing when you could have just bought another wave serpent and put more shots down range.

War walkers and scatters are a great firebase (especially when guided). Jetbikes and cannons also good (especially with the 6s to wound being ap2). Serpents are just amazing, they can get pricey when you throw upgrades onto them but they serve as transport and reliable bringers of pain

Basically the best units in the codex are Warp Spiders, WS and to me jetbikes are amazing too. 51 points for 3 S4 T4 3+ save plus loads of dakma is great.

ok thanks for the help so far. So what would be a good 500pt balanced starter army

Don't forget warwalkers. 5++ save plus two heavy weapons I like the Scatterlaser/Brightlance combo. Even shoot snap shots at fliers you stand a good chance of hitting with the SL, that makes the Brightlance TL. Take a full squadron for a little more than 200 pts. In short there really are very few "bad" units and even those come down to utility. Vypers are considered bad mostly due to the comparative cost. 10pts less than walkers with one heavy weapon instead of two, the trade off is its a fast skimmer. Falcons aren't "bad", but there are better choices for the HS slot. Banshees are probably the only bad unit as there is no obvious utility for them. They are a counter assault unit that really just doesn't perform well in assault (or worse yet can't get to assault).

Good Offensive units:
Heavy Hitters(Warwalkers, Wrathknights, reapers, fire dragons)
Highly mobile units (Crimson Hunter, Jetbikes, Wave Serpents, Spiders, Hawks)
Assault (Scorpions)

Good Defensive units:
Guardian Blobs (20 elder+2 gun platforms)
Wraithguard (wraithcannon or d-scythe)
Wraithlords (unless playing Iyanden where you can give them Battle Focus)
Dire Avengers.

Almost any HQ is a good choice. If you have multiple fliers, consider an autarch to help get it on the board.

Wave serpents for their cost are stupidly broken.

 tdwg83 wrote:
Don't forget warwalkers. 5++ save plus two heavy weapons I like the Scatterlaser/Brightlance combo. Even shoot snap shots at fliers you stand a good chance of hitting with the SL, that makes the Brightlance TL. Take a full squadron for a little more than 200 pts. In short there really are very few "bad" units and even those come down to utility. Vypers are considered bad mostly due to the comparative cost. 10pts less than walkers with one heavy weapon instead of two, the trade off is its a fast skimmer. Falcons aren't "bad", but there are better choices for the HS slot. Banshees are probably the only bad unit as there is no obvious utility for them. They are a counter assault unit that really just doesn't perform well in assault (or worse yet can't get to assault).

Good Offensive units:
Heavy Hitters(Warwalkers, Wrathknights, reapers, fire dragons)
Highly mobile units (Crimson Hunter, Jetbikes, Wave Serpents, Spiders, Hawks)
Assault (Scorpions)

Good Defensive units:
Guardian Blobs (20 elder+2 gun platforms)
Wraithguard (wraithcannon or d-scythe)
Wraithlords (unless playing Iyanden where you can give them Battle Focus)
Dire Avengers.

Almost any HQ is a good choice. If you have multiple fliers, consider an autarch to help get it on the board.

Thank you this info really helps

good 500 pointer could be somethinbg like this....

offenseive
hq....
autarch with fusion gun. 80

troop
5 dire avengers 65
wave serpent wit hTL SL, shiuken cannon 130

5 dire avengers 65
wave serpetn wti hTL SL, shuiken canon 130.
that also leave you 40 points to screw aroudn with.

defensive list.
spirit sear

5 rangers
5 rangers

3 war walkers TL SL (best in small point games)
that leaves you 110 points. i would recomend either an aeigis defence line or a 10 man gardian squad with hvy weapon.

There are a few things every Eldar Army needs:

2-3 Wave Serpents
2 squads of Guardians (or Dire Avengers for some people, but not my cup of tea)
2+ squads of 3+ Jetbikes (2 squads of 3 is sufficient, but you will want more)
Warp Spiders. Seriously. If you can every pick any up cheap do so, until you have 30. You will use them to fill in points, whenever you can. The minimum you need is 10. If you are doing 2 squads, you can do 2 squads of 7 each, but i would never run less than 7 in a squad, because one round of shooting will render a squad of 5 ineffective, whereas those 2 extra bodies, make them last WAAAY longer.

Finally, the thing every army needs is heavy support.
Everyone needs War Walkers (at least 6 eventually) and Wriathknights, because those change depending on the type of list you want to run.

Nightspinners are amazing, but you need them to work in compliment with WK or WW. They are not a viable stand alone heavy support.

That will be the back bone of your army. You can add other stuff as needed from there. But that is a very solid/flexible place to start.

qballony wrote:
There are a few things every Eldar Army needs:

2-3 Wave Serpents
2 squads of Guardians (or Dire Avengers for some people, but not my cup of tea)
2+ squads of 3+ Jetbikes (2 squads of 3 is sufficient, but you will want more)
Warp Spiders. Seriously. If you can every pick any up cheap do so, until you have 30. You will use them to fill in points, whenever you can. The minimum you need is 10. If you are doing 2 squads, you can do 2 squads of 7 each, but i would never run less than 7 in a squad, because one round of shooting will render a squad of 5 ineffective, whereas those 2 extra bodies, make them last WAAAY longer.

Finally, the thing every army needs is heavy support.
Everyone needs War Walkers (at least 6 eventually) and Wriathknights, because those change depending on the type of list you want to run.

Nightspinners are amazing, but you need them to work in compliment with WK or WW. They are not a viable stand alone heavy support.

That will be the back bone of your army. You can add other stuff as needed from there. But that is a very solid/flexible place to start.

while i agree wit hmost of that, i have 2 things to say.
forst, i only run 1 squad of jet bikes (when i have the poitns which i usually dont because of all 5 of my serpents )
and second, i disagree about minimal warp spider squad being that of 7.
i run 2 5 man squads, and they pack a serious punch.
2 5 man have different roles though. a 10 man squad is good against one of any unit, 2 5 man squads are devastating to 2 units, BUT generally only vs vechcles. 10 s7 shots into a vehcles back armour is a nasty thing.

Thank you all for the replys. so many diffrent play sytles coming through. i think best start would be a 3k balanced build that i can break down and into the points groups, may just give me the best idea of what i would like to play.

any ideas welcomed

That is probably the best thing anyways. 50%-75% of your balanced list would fit into the other ones anyways. Not to mention figuring out what works for your play style.

I typically run Warp Spiders in 5-6. 7 or higher makes them unwieldy to keep behind cover to reduce losing them after their alpha-strike. Also, over-kill against most targets if using more than 6.

Wave Serpents are great choices. Farseers and Spiritseers are both amazing, and depending on your armies focus will change games by themselves. Autarchs aren't really worth it except for the one-trick-on-a-pony style.