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So I was looking for creative ways to play Eldar that are competitive, but also fun and unique. We've all seen the Wraith____ armies spamming a million D-weapons and annihilating the opponent. Nothing new there.

But there has to be a way to use the less often used units, whether it's utilizing formations or not, in order to make an army where people would say "hey that's a good idea! Never thought of that before."

Let the game begin!

Basically any Eldar unit other than Shining Spears can find a use on the tabletop. Here are some of my own ideas:

Rangers are useful as minimum troops in a CAD, and can provide Infiltration denial.

Guardian Defenders are great scoring units that have excellent firepower up close, and Storm Guardians are decent in a Guardian Stormhost.

Melee Aspect Hosts are surprisingly effective. Howling Banshees cut through infantry, and Striking Scorpions murder MCs and vehicles. Jain Zar makes Banshees great, as does Karandras for his Aspect.

Most every Phoenix Lord and special character can be made useful when attached to the right units. Especially Eldrad; he makes every army better.

The Avatar is very powerful when taken in a Warhost. He gives a big boost to Eldar melee, and is almost auto-include when using a good number of melee units. The Avatar is no slouch either; he's basically a walking Bloodthirster, and is more than capable of killing an Imperial Knight on the charge.

The Warhost is a great way to build an army and gives a massive boost to Eldar Infantry.

Eldar have plenty of great units and ways to build an army. It's just that they get overlooked in favor of the blatantly OP and undercosted units.

Run a melee Eldar army. Guardian Stormhost with Scorpion/Banshee aspect shrines, Avatar of Khaine and Psychic buffs.

Then bring in DE allies for fast attack venoms and raiders, or harlequins for Starweavers.

OOH! OOH! OOH! Take Dark Reapers with an Exarch, and bring a Plasma Obliterator, Macro Cannon, or anything that you can manually fire, and enjoy your multiple massive blasts.

Utilize the large number of leadership dependent attacks and couple them with the similar abilities of the Harlequins and Dark Eldar, along with the various leadership lowering abilities of those factions.

Here's a nice starting point if you'd like a guide.

Well at the moment theres 2 types of competitive eldar builds, the first has between 6-10 units of warp spiders which when taken on mass are extremely fun to play. The trick is to abuse their flicker jump to the point where your opponent stops caring.

You throw that in with some scatter bikes, D-cannon weapon batteries, a wraithknight and a farseer or 2 and youve got yourself a decent list.

The 2nd type is wraithguard star, 7-10 wraithguard with the standard weapon load out. Then you'll have to throw in 3-4 Farseers plus Eldrad/ Barraroth ( either triple cad or use the battlehost formation with the seer council.). You'll need to roll invisibility,gate and fortune for it to function but when it works it can wreck face. Also dont forget the wraithknight.

I actually build my Eldar lists with the following self-imposed restrictions so as to demonstrate the army works just fine without the units commonly complained about by opponents:

No D weapons
No Wraiths of any kind
No Psykers
No Jetbikes of any kind
No Guardians
No doubling up a unit

The last two aren't common complaints but rather aesthetic choices on my part.

I've had incredible success building armies with these restrictions placed upon them. One or two Phoenix Lords feature prominently, one CAD with an Aspect Host is standard, and one of the Heavy Vehicle Squadrons at max size--usually Falcons or Night Spinners--make for a wonderfully fun list to play. You get to really explore the other units this way without having the opponent grumble the entire game about how cheesy your army is but at the same time sweating out the pressure you're able to put on him.

Asurmen does well with Banshees. The exarch lowers LD by 2 in Close combat which means Asurmen's Diresword will perform better.

Autarch with a Banshee Mask and Striking Scorpions.

People often neglect how much stopping power the Scorpions have.

A full squad with Autarch will make:
10 x Mandiblaster attacks at Ini 10. (Auto-hit, wounds on 4+)
4 x Power Weapon attacks at Ini 7.
4 x Scorpion Claw attacks at Ini 6.
27 x Attacks at Ini 5.

That is 45 attacks before the typical space marine can hit back. Something to consider.

But what if your local meta consist of mostly teqs, marines are no problem but the invuln and feel no pain shun any melee Ive thrown at them. Wraithblades, scorpions lords and knights do not charge termies, they get ate up alive. My option is to pull a han solo but that's hard to do when your opponent deep strikes their chedder in.

personally if i was going to do a Eldar army id try to build it so it kills you in the psychic and shooting phases and dosent use strength D at all.

Mr ghoti wrote:
OOH! OOH! OOH! Take Dark Reapers with an Exarch, and bring a Plasma Obliterator, Macro Cannon, or anything that you can manually fire, and enjoy your multiple massive blasts.

In the same vein... Stick Illic on said fortification... His rules state that ALL shots fire are precision shots, so you can allocate all those plasma/D shots onto whatever you like. He's also BS9, so the blast almost never scatters.

Bring the units nobody really wants to shoot at. For example, in my average list I'll have a squadron of War Walkers - usually with Scatter Lasers - and because they don't seem important compared to Wave Serpents full of Scorpions and Dragons they never get shot at. With a full squadron that's 24 Str6 Ap6 shots that my opponent doesn't focus on.

Also, Jimsolo's Eldar Freakshow list is possibly the most hilarious thing ever, definitely try it at least once.