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 bounty.. that is some good logic but vypers can also take two weapons like warwalkers. and how new is outflank. cause i have no idea what that is but i read about it all the time

AvatarForm wrote:

Smitty0305 wrote:
Also look for my Eldar Strat Guide comming out in a few months, 50+ pages of how to win with eldar.

Also Crom's post about an eldar list is a really bad list and something I would suggest not running.

Heres how Eldar Works. You pick 2 from Farseer or Autarch slot. Then you get 3 squads of 5 fire dragons in wave serpents with scatter lasers. Then you get 4 squads of 5 dire avengers in wave serpents with scatter lasers. Then you pick Fire Prisms/Falcons/Night SPinners/War Walkers. You can also run a seer council on jetbikes. Then you dance around the board taking obectives turn 6 and you say "lolimeldarmytanksdontdie"

You are compiling a strat guide? When there are rumours of 6th Ed in the coming year? Left it a bit late didnt you...

As for Eldar Mech lists, these will earn you a 0/5 Comp score in most tourneys you attend.

I doubt HEAVILY than 6th edition will be out in the next year. Regardless if 6th edition does come out, the Eldar Guide wont be irrelevant until a new Eldar codex comes out, which is years away. Not to mention current Eldar Guides dont talk about any of the units or new army editions that have come out in the past year and a half, I would think that a guide describing the CURRENT meta game is needed, hence why this thread itself proves my point.

Every competitive army will earn you a 0/5 comp score, I dont see your point here and very rare is the tournament that even has comp scores.

Yeah my Eldar army is from 2nd Ed. Not really wanting to drop cash on 6 wave serpents for an army i barely play. I'll stick with my IG, Orks, and Marines. Eldar can be competitive but I think that their point value for what you get isn't the greatest.

Eldar can be a competitive army but only if the tournament is win loss and not battle points. Eldar doesn't have enough firepower get massacres in kill points and it can be hard to nab enough objectives to get a massacre as well. Eldar competitiveness really depends on the points value. Eldar really does better at 1500 win/loss tournaments. High points they get overwhelmed by cheap many small units armies.

CIAbugguy wrote:I bounty.. that is some good logic but vypers can also take two weapons like warwalkers. and how new is outflank. cause i have no idea what that is but i read about it all the time

Outflank is an ability granted by having the scouts or infiltrate special rules. You can stay in reserve, but come in on the short table edges. It has a lot of utility for assault units (lets them spring out on enemies quickly) and for shooting units (targetting side or rear armour, and a sort of guaranteed first shot at the enemy).

Vypers can't take 2 weapons, they can take 2 shuriken cannons. Big difference, it means they are limited to 24" range. Which is precisely where AV10 opentopped vehicles don't want to be. I know I praised multi-meltas and heavy flamers on SM landspeeders. But those are very destructive weapons, capable of doing a lot of damage in one shot, making risky tactics worth it. Whereas all the eldar weapons are better for staying at long range.

No matter how you put it, Eldar has some glaring weaknesses.
They can win RTTs (as I did last time) but generally not GTs.

Thanks I bounty, i think i will steer clear of Vypers for the unforseen future, and outflanking sounds quite useful.

If you're going to play a mechdar army i would be careful with your war walkers. With them being the lightest armoured target that also can't move fast they attract alot of fire. Don't rely on them doing alot of damage past turn 2 because they probably will be pretty beat-up. Also I have found running almost everything you have in tanks in pairs is great. Go for killing in one attack not damaging.

If you decide to run DA's i would run them in groups of 2 squads with one doom/guide farseer and mounted in wave serpents. This eliminates getting counter assaulted which is very very bad. Your DA's that get guided (assuming you bladestorm) can get up to about 24 wounds with some slightly above average rolling. That will get the majority of a 10 man MEQ squad. The other squad can finish off the other ones because that target is still doomed(which helps tremendously at a toughness 4 or higher target).

Fire Dragons at squads of 5 or 6 can blow up any tank in the game. But if you bring a little more of them with your extra points you could target infantry too and probably wipe a squad (assuming you double them up with about a 7 man squad) it should be very very deadly.

The lists I run now depending on cost of the game have 20 to 40 DA, 2 six to seven man squads of Fire Dragons,
1-2 Doom/Guide Seers, all in wave serpents and then 3 war walkers with scatter lasers(I would bring 2 squads if I had them).

A general tactic is to pick your fight. IMO Mechdar lets you do this best with the 2nd best mobility in the game and one of the best transports.

Unfortunately the lists can get kind of repetitive. Without our updated codex we're limited to certain strategies that work.

About that army list above, I'd drop the vypers and some war walkers and instead think about taking a falcon or two and/or fire prisms.

JGrand wrote:

So it is more of a tactical army, any specific units i should try to avoid?

Loads.

HQ- Any Phoenix Lord is a huge mistake. You will likely want at least 1 Seer, probably Eldrad at higher points levels. So, basically how the other choice fits (if it does) is important.

Elites- Harlies are crap. I personally don't think that Banshees and Scorpions are all that great. As counter assault...maybe. As an active assault unit, no. There is no way to deliver them. Wraith Guard are pretty bad as well. Basically Fire Dragon spam in this slot.

Troops-I don't think any are actually good. DA are overcosted. Guardians are pretty meh. Bikes are expensive as well. Min squads in Serpents is the way to go.

Fast Attack- I don't know that anything is really "good" here. Vypers can be used. Spiders...maybe. Shining Spears are trash. This stuff suffers all suffers from being highly overcosted (a common theme).

Heavy Support-People swear by Prisms and Falcons. In theory they are better than in practice. Falcons can be tough to kill if used right. Prisms really lack punch. War Walkers are good. The rest is kinda bad. Reapers aren't that good because they are entirely geared to anti MEQ out of transports and outside cover. Support Weapons aren't great either either.

Not to be too cynical but the codex is really limited. Successful Eldar are down to a mono-build.

Very little of this advice is actually valid...
Wraithguard are an excellent unit, and especially useful when facing other eldar armies (ignore wave serpent fields), Necrons(ignore living metal), etc. etc. When taken in Squads of 10 as troops, they are a brick wall (especially with a nearby fortuneseer).

DA are overpriced, but they are very capable units. Ditto bikes.

Spiders are an awesome unit, even for the cost, and can usually be relied on to make back their points.

Falcons and Prisms are both great, as is the nightspinner. In fact, the Fire Prism is the only really long range AT in the army. Reapers are great simply for pumping out three tempest launcher shots from the exarch per turn. Support Weapons w/ D-cannons are also an awesome units. I have run at least half of these "lame" units with great success.


As for the Nightspinner, I believe if you look at the rules its stamped official, etc. and made quite clear that it should be counted as part of the codex.

Eldar are one of the most broken armies in the game! Right next to Space Wolves, I.G and Grey Knights/

Field Gen - thats not true. Eldar are pretty well balanced, the only exception being the fortunejetseer council of doom, which very few people take because of its obscene cost.

Yeah, Fortune and Doom as well as them being able to shut down "Any" other Psyker list...period!

As well as the most powerful snipers in the game with +2 cover saves which is far better than anyone else.

One of the most powerful CC monsters in the game. Stinging scorpions and Harlequins being VERY hard to deal with as well as Very difficult to shoot down ships because you have to roll two dice for damage and take the lowest and even re rolling that as well.


Solid Basic Troops and the jet bikes you mentioned.
I don't know what eldar players you have but all of mine spam the crap outa that jet bike thing because it does not matter if its high cost its worth every penny and each of them are vetrean players of eldar. They know how to use them well!

Yeah, its a good thing Eldar can shut down other psykers... keeps us from having to suffer Jaws of the World Wolf and all the other nonsense psychic abilities that the rest of the game can throw around...

2+ cover saves? Take a (heavy)flamer, problem solved.

What is the most powerful cc monster you speak of? Wraithlord? Not really, they just don't die...
Avatar? Not that difficult to kill...

Those fortunejetseer councils ain't hard to kill, hit them with s8 ap3 weapons or better and you'll be instagibbing units left and right vs. their 4+ invul save. Yes, its rerollable, but its way easier to kill them than it is a unit of plaguemarines.

Smitty0305 wrote:
I doubt HEAVILY than 6th edition will be out in the next year. Regardless if 6th edition does come out, the Eldar Guide wont be irrelevant until a new Eldar codex comes out, which is years away. Not to mention current Eldar Guides dont talk about any of the units or new army editions that have come out in the past year and a half, I would think that a guide describing the CURRENT meta game is needed, hence why this thread itself proves my point.

Every competitive army will earn you a 0/5 comp score, I dont see your point here and very rare is the tournament that even has comp scores.

Actually, a BRB will make it redundant.

Your current meta is not the same as someone's LOCAL meta... hence, guides that are specific are not always useful.

Comp scores are in many AUS tournaments.

As far as your list. 3 WW with EML sounds too cheap. I think you would be better served by 2x scatter lasers but I think they cost 180 for a squadron of 3. Are you only buying one EML for your walkers?

chaos0xomega wrote:Yeah, its a good thing Eldar can shut down other psykers... keeps us from having to suffer Jaws of the World Wolf and all the other nonsense psychic abilities that the rest of the game can throw around...

2+ cover saves? Take a (heavy)flamer, problem solved.

What is the most powerful cc monster you speak of? Wraithlord? Not really, they just don't die...
Avatar? Not that difficult to kill...

Those fortunejetseer councils ain't hard to kill, hit them with s8 ap3 weapons or better and you'll be instagibbing units left and right vs. their 4+ invul save. Yes, its rerollable, but its way easier to kill them than it is a unit of plaguemarines.

Of course you can name something that works against a specific unit/item/rule, if there was one that can't be overcome in some way the game would be broken. But the question is: has the opponent those tools available in his army and can he bring them to the point where they can be used? And can you keep him from doing so? That's the whole point. The dynamics of an actual game with a specific setting of own and enemy units is far more complex than "2+ cover is crap cause someone can use flamers".

If you can't kill them with flamers or similar ignores cover weapons, which I think is only like 2 armies in the game that don't have access to such weapons, then you can kill them pretty easily in melee.

Yeah, the warwalkers and vypers were screwed up point wise, the squad is 210 a piece. ill run that with some dire and fire dragons with a few guide seers.

Field Gen wrote:Eldar are one of the most broken armies in the game! Right next to Space Wolves, I.G and Grey Knights/

How are IG broken?

Also, does the term "broken" mean something along the lines of overpowered? Or the opposite?

what sucks about vehicle squads that have armor value is that if they are immobilized they are destroyed. That is why Ork bikes are great because they just have a toughness value and a cover save!

chaos0xomega wrote:If you can't kill them with flamers or similar ignores cover weapons, which I think is only like 2 armies in the game that don't have access to such weapons, then you can kill them pretty easily in melee.

True, but those things are awfully short range. The Pathfinders will have had a few turns by the time those flamers get there. Also, I've seen Eldar players lure people close with the pathfinders on an objective, only to hose the enemy down with fire or a nasty counter-assault.

And you're awfully dismissive of the Jet Council. I've seen that unit go through whole armies (including mine) on several occasions. They are hugely expensive, but they can and do win games.

I've tested lots of lists with my eldar army using proxies if necessary, and so far the elements that stand out against the armies I play against (MEQs 90% of the time, and generally vanilla marines), I've found a few tactics that work wonders.

#1 Eldrad. The only reason not to use him is if you need a cheaper farseer. For anything over 1250, he is great. He is tactically flexible for every situation and a must for a competitive army of any kind.

#2 Dark Reapers Squad. Despite the high per model cost for the regular reapers, the exarch is purely murderous! You can twin link his 2 shot tempest launcher with guide, then crack shot lets him reroll wound and skip cover saves. It's also a guess weapon so you can fire it indirectly. When I use this unit, the 4 standard reapers are fodder and I don't even care about their shots, the exarch will easily kill whole squads on his own. I once killed 8 khorne berserkers that popped out of a destroyed rhino with just the exarch. I average 4 kills per turn even when not 100% optimal (when the enemy has staggered for templates). It's even worth it to keep him totally out of LOS if possible and forgoe the other reapers just to keep him safe and alive.

Most people judge the squad by the regular reapers, which perform poorly due to nonstop cover saves in 5th edition. I've almost always made back my points, and almost every kill comes from the Exarch.

#3 Fire Dragons. The fusion gun is the best anti-tank for the eldar, but also great at killing terminators and really any MEQ style troops. You only need 5-6 if mounted, making them very cheap. They work best if they can also assault the vehicle in case the guns dont work.

Really I think Eldrad is what makes the Eldar competetive, as he can change the battlefield so much and seems to go beyond the math of the game. During the game I played today against a deathstar SM army, Eldrad killed a librarian with mind war, kept my gaurdians alive with a reroll cover save, protected his falcon grav tank from destruction, and during the 5th turn of the game, made himself nearly invincible by fortuning himself for a 3+ reroll invo and fought calgar one on one, as well as doomed the final honor guard so the whole squad was wiped by my howling banshees.

In the last round, he even killed Calgar himself with his staff, having dealt two wounds while taking none.

All and all, I would say he was responsible for killing well over 600 points worth of models during the game, either himself or indirectly with doom, as well as protecting at least half of that amount with fortune. That isn't even counting the twin linked shots and other minor boons.

Unbelievable really! You should have seen the look on the other guy's face when eldrad bested calgar in close combat!

In my opinion, forums realy encourage just looking at the list, not so much the tactics, and when you do that you're obviously only gonna come up with a few amazing concepts and see the rest as crap.

Mechdar gets to me because it's all most people think can win. Sure our units seem overpriced, but as others have mentioned, it's not about killing your points worth. So many units become way more than what you pay for them when you combine. I think our tanks are amazing, and definitely pivotal to a lot of tactics, but by no means should they need to be spammed to be any good.

Over and over again I read things like "pathfinders are wayy too much of a point sink for the damage they cause", "swooping hawks don't have the firepower or survivability", "guardians are useless with a poor BS and range and bad armour save" etc... trying out units for yourself shows you just how you can develop a playstyle to make any unit useful, and i think that's what forum list-posting takes away from.
I've had 20 strong guardians in the middle of a board survive 3 turns of shooting, giving the rest of my army the freedom to move, pathfinders infiltrate to the wrong edge for the enemy, knowing he will have to waste several turns to get close enough to reliably hurt them with flamers/CC, and on the flip side, i've had dragons get shot down whithout having had the chance to do anything, dire avengers bladestorm a squad only to be utterly destroyed by that same squad before they can retreat.

Work out what you like, play proxy games to find out how it feels and work on your own list! after all, any eldar general knows the fastest way to learn what does/doesn't work, is by getting your face pummelled for your first 20 games

schadenfreude wrote:
Now time for my minority opinion.

Shadow weavers > Fire prisims.

Their different tools. Night spinners excel in the following tasks.

Plan Disruption
A spinneris great at disrupting opponents plans, much like playing blue in magic the gathering.
A mob of 30 orks is disrupted when they lose 6 to dangerous terrain tests in addition to the units killed under the blast.
A squad of 10 fleeting shrike terminators or a wolfstar will be forced to slow down and move only 1 model to minimize expensive causalities. Losing a turn of movement with a death star in a 5-7 turn game is a large hindrance.
Hitting transports and vehicles that need to move is also an excellent use of hindering plans. A LC has an extremely low chance of destroying a AV 14 crusader full of termies, but a night spinner has a 1/6 chance of immobolizing it, making the vehicle nigh-useless.

Anti-Horde
Lets face it, a large STR 6 pie plate is just good against hordes. Be it gaunts, IG foot soldiers, or orks. A well rounded army should have a solution to handle hordes, and the spinner helps to fill that role.

Accurate
My simhammer puts a twin-linked large pie plate with BS 3 at about a ~90% accuracy ratio to hit a vehicle. There is a 55% of getting a 'hit' under the scatter dice, and you have two chances to stay on target with your scatter dice. This means that against infantry its possible to scatter around an inch or three, but you should be in the same ballpark.
This is a nice change for otherwise lack-luster BS 3 guardians/vehicles.

Fire Prisms can be utilized for anti-horde, or for anti-tank. Instead of plan disruption, two of them are good at delivering a STR 10, AP1 highly accurate shot where it needs to be.

Overall, I don't think one is better than the other, they just fill different roles. As I play with 3 squads of dragons, and 6 serpents with scatter lasers, vehicles have not been my biggest problem. Currently I play with 2 prisms and 1 spinner, but I may change that up a little bit to test out more spinners.

Eldar have always been pretty fun and hard to play.

I've been playing Eldar for a couple years now, and I've narrowed down my list quite a bit to a hybrid of foot and mech and I love it. It's fun to play, you have more then 10 models on the board, and I've won the last 3 tournaments it's gone to, GT and local, and it's undefeated in casual play.

http://thewraithgate.blogspot.com/2011/04/are-eldar-still-competitive.html

chaos0xomega wrote:Yeah, its a good thing Eldar can shut down other psykers... keeps us from having to suffer Jaws of the World Wolf and all the other nonsense psychic abilities that the rest of the game can throw around...

2+ cover saves? Take a (heavy)flamer, problem solved.

What is the most powerful cc monster you speak of? Wraithlord? Not really, they just don't die...
Avatar? Not that difficult to kill...

Those fortunejetseer councils ain't hard to kill, hit them with s8 ap3 weapons or better and you'll be instagibbing units left and right vs. their 4+ invul save. Yes, its rerollable, but its way easier to kill them than it is a unit of plaguemarines.

Bull Crap! I have seen multiple times where that council, The avatar and anything else under the influence of Fortune Take 5,10 and even twenty Inv Saves and not take a single wound on any of them.

Once a player with eldar figures out how to work jetbikes, How to spam Fortune and Abuse their special rules. They are one of the most diffucult and hardest to deal with armies ever!

Right next to Large Squads of Dark Eldar Bikers. Once someone masters those it simple declaring. Oh well I will just shoot them all with my gun that can easily kill them argument is no longer valid.

You're just doing a lot of whining about someone getting lucky. Fortune on a 4+ invuln statistically will fail 25% of the time. That is a worse save then Terminator armor, so you must think anything with Termy armour is practically invincible and broken as hell.

Councils are huge points sinks, can't kill things in close combat because they have very few attacks, and no power weapons. They can get tied up quite easily, and will die to torrent of fire faster then Terminators, sure you can go against someone with some good dice rolls and that'll happen from time to time and it doesn't take fortune to survive if dice are on your side.

Fortune isn't broken, no more then most anything else is. I don't know what army you're playing but there are plenty of things that can stop it, Hoods are great, Null Zone is great, Send a unit of plague marines in there, neither unit will ever die, psyker battle squad them to LD 2 and then kill one or two and watch them run off the board. Lots of ways to get around them.

Field Gen wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:Yeah, its a good thing Eldar can shut down other psykers... keeps us from having to suffer Jaws of the World Wolf and all the other nonsense psychic abilities that the rest of the game can throw around...

2+ cover saves? Take a (heavy)flamer, problem solved.

What is the most powerful cc monster you speak of? Wraithlord? Not really, they just don't die...
Avatar? Not that difficult to kill...

Those fortunejetseer councils ain't hard to kill, hit them with s8 ap3 weapons or better and you'll be instagibbing units left and right vs. their 4+ invul save. Yes, its rerollable, but its way easier to kill them than it is a unit of plaguemarines.

Bull Crap! I have seen multiple times where that council, The avatar and anything else under the influence of Fortune Take 5,10 and even twenty Inv Saves and not take a single wound on any of them.

Once a player with eldar figures out how to work jetbikes, How to spam Fortune and Abuse their special rules. They are one of the most diffucult and hardest to deal with armies ever!

Right next to Large Squads of Dark Eldar Bikers. Once someone masters those it simple declaring. Oh well I will just shoot them all with my gun that can easily kill them argument is no longer valid.

Field Gen wrote:Bull Crap! I have seen multiple times where that council, The avatar and anything else under the influence of Fortune Take 5,10 and even twenty Inv Saves and not take a single wound on any of them.

Once a player with eldar figures out how to work jetbikes, How to spam Fortune and Abuse their special rules. They are one of the most diffucult and hardest to deal with armies ever!

Eldar Jetbikes, with fortune, have a 75% invlun save and a 8/9 normal save (~90%). Compare those to TH/SS termies, which have a 66% invun, and 84% normal save, the eldar bikers top out as the units with the best save in the game.

Combine that with witch blades on every model, a 24" turbo boost ability, the ability to move another 6" in the assault phase, and warlock powers, and you have a top notch unit. This unit excels when you use it against units with low armor saves (think orks, IG, or nids). Its also highly effective against high toughness opponents with decent saves, such as termigons. The sheer number of wounds will kill the creature.

All of this will grow even more powerful with the next edition of 40k, which is rumored to allow witch blades the ability to insta-kill like a force weapon. Owch!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

coolkidroc wrote:You're just doing a lot of whining about someone getting lucky. Fortune on a 4+ invuln statistically will fail 25% of the time. That is a worse save then Terminator armor, so you must think anything with Termy armour is practically invincible and broken as hell.

They have a normal save of 3+ on bikes giving them better saves than on termies. This means your comment about dying a a torrent of fire faster than terminators is mathematically incorrect.

coolkidroc wrote:Councils are huge points sinks, can't kill things in close combat because they have very few attacks, and no power weapons.

Your using them wrong. Either your going after the wrong targets with them, or you are forgetting that one of their best powers is the ability to bog down enemies.

The thing about the seer bike squad is that you cant just ignore them. If you try, the witchblades rip up vehicles like their covered in wrapping paper. Their speed will allow them to target whatever they need to for maximum effect.

I'm not saying their a god unit, just that their a good one that must be delt with, which is an advantage to the eldar player.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Flavius Infernus wrote:

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/12/eldar-analysis-different-way-of-doing/

If your heavy slots are already filled with falcons and you still want massed str6 firepower comparable to what war walkers can lay down, then squadrons of 2-3 vypers with dual cannons or scatter/cannon can provide it.

Look at the year that blog was written.

In 2009, the meta was all about "Melta is king", and so people's anti-vehicle weapons generally were 12" to 24" in range. When that is the case, you could keep a squad of vypers in relative safety through careful placement. 3 years ago, Vulcan was the way that people wanted to play.

Today, people are bringing more long range AT to handle targets like valkaries and stormravens. BA, IG, and GK are much more common and Vulcan lists are much less common.

There was merit to the blog army list when it was created in 2009, but today is a different story, and that list would get tore up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AvatarForm wrote:As for Eldar Mech lists, these will earn you a 0/5 Comp score in most tourneys you attend.

Why is this? The eldar are a race with advanced technology and few bodies. Having as many in vehicles as possible fits the fluff quite well.

If people give them a 0/5 comp, its just because they did not want to play eldar in a tourney.