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My main takeaway of all this LVO bruhaha has been that ITC may be more balanced than RAW, but is still extremely, and predictably, unbalanced.

CWE still trounce.

What can (and should) ITC do about this?

Reigning CWE in to "normal" levels ("7.5" with Tau/Necrons/SMs, or "7.0" with Orks/DE/etc) would take quite a bit of changes. Perhaps more than is reasonable for ITC.

ITC seems to be mostly an FAQ, plus a lightest-touch-possible targeted nerf of the most rediculous things (2+ rerollable, Invis, etc). The scale of the changes needed to bring more balance seems to be out of scope for them (Warp Spiders, SL Bikes, and Gladius each need fairly significant direct changes).

This isn't to say ITC is bad. From what I've read, I'd much rather play ITC than RAW, even non competitively.

I'm not offering a solution, just wondering if others are seeing the same limitation I am.

Reece recently came out and said marine Gladius dose not do nearly as well across the pond. Why? Because they use TRUE maelstrom rules. Those PUNISH msu lists with all its easily destroyed vehicles and sergents everywhere.

The ITC is made by them to play the style they enjoy. Does it suck to lose maelstrom due to random cards after dominating the rest of the match? Yes. But their style of game has already been formulated. It's better to go second. MSU is king. It's too predictable and lends itself to a narrow scope of potential good armies. If they ever did straight kill point missions in their tournaments marines and eldar wouldn't dominate like they do.

Personally, my thoughts on this...people need to acknowledge and be honest about the fact that this game is fundamentally broken and unsuited to organized, much less competitive, play. The balance and functionality issues are both blatant and huge.

The ITC does fine at what it professes to do, which is to curb a couple of the absolute worst issues and clear up some things so that its possible to at least run an event that wont be a complete shitshow with an otherwise minimal number of changes.

However, if people really want good organized, competitive play, then they really need to stop pussyfooting around and go in and make *drastic* actual changes and Errata along with more restrictions on detachments and allies and whatnot, rather than trying to preserve the integrity of a ruleset that has no functionality to preserve. Be it Maelstrom in any guise, D weapons, formation bonuses & free stuff, etc.

Otherwise all thats going to happen is that we're going to continue the trend of the same few intensely abusable things dominate, cycling only as even more powerful things are added, which is really a terrible way to do things with this type of game.

@OP

The problem isn't with Eldar. It's due to the release of the new Forgeworld expansion, the Mymeara. That book now gives Eldar a lot more tools to work with. They are still very beatable, but when you put them in the hands of a truly great general, they become very, very good.

The problem isn't the army itself. Rather, it is the players behind the armies. If you want to nerf anything, nerf the players. Make them play with 1 arm tied behind their backs and with 1 eye shut.

 Orock wrote:
Reece recently came out and said marine Gladius dose not do nearly as well across the pond. Why? Because they use TRUE maelstrom rules. Those PUNISH msu lists with all its easily destroyed vehicles and sergents everywhere.

The ITC is made by them to play the style they enjoy. Does it suck to lose maelstrom due to random cards after dominating the rest of the match? Yes. But their style of game has already been formulated. It's better to go second. MSU is king. It's too predictable and lends itself to a narrow scope of potential good armies. If they ever did straight kill point missions in their tournaments marines and eldar wouldn't dominate like they do.

The Eldar players "across the pond" run MSU lists as well so how come they are doing well? Maelstrom objectives do not punish MSU. Rather, the best armies at Maelstrom are MSU. To be more specific, the best armies at pure Maelstrom is Fast MSU. It's actually universal, no matter if it is Maelstrom, ITC, Nova or whatever mission. As long as you are playing with objectives, Fast MSU will always have an inherent advantage.




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 Vaktathi wrote:
Personally, my thoughts on this...people need to acknowledge and be honest about the fact that this game is fundamentally broken and unsuited to organized, much less competitive, play. The balance and functionality issues are both blatant and huge.

The ITC does fine at what it professes to do, which is to curb a couple of the absolute worst issues and clear up some things so that its possible to at least run an event that wont be a complete shitshow with an otherwise minimal number or changes.

However, if people really want good organized, competitive play, then they really need to stop pussyfooting around and go in and make *drastic* actual changes and Errata along with more restrictions on detachments and allies and whatnot, rather than trying to preserve the integrity of a ruleset that has no functionality to preserve. Be it Maelstrom in any guise, D weapons, formation bonusrs & free stuff, etc.

Otherwise all thats going to happen is that we're going to continue the trend of the same few intensely abusable things dominate, cycling only as even more powerful things are added, which is really a terrible way to do things with this type of game.

Agreed.

The game needs to either be drastically overhauled for competitive play, or it needs a lot of facelifting along the way.

Kudos to the ITC for making an attempt to make this game more playable on the competitive level. They're the only ones who have taken the time, effort, energy and criticism in order to do so, especially on a more universal level. No one else would even attempt to do this thankless job (and for free!).

IA11 certainly gave some good options, but the CWE book is the root of the crazy.

Scatter bikes. Warp Spiders. Basic WK.

 Orock wrote:
Reece recently came out and said marine Gladius dose not do nearly as well across the pond. Why? Because they use TRUE maelstrom rules. Those PUNISH msu lists with all its easily destroyed vehicles and sergents everywhere.

Gladius doesn't do nearly as well in ETC format play, not Maelstrom specifically, because every ETC mission accounts for kill points in determining overall score. High durability MSU (I'm looking at you, Warp Spiders) has a distinct advantage in the format when compared to low durability MSU (e.g. rhinos, tac marines) in that they won't bleed 8 points in every mission.

 jy2 wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Reece recently came out and said marine Gladius dose not do nearly as well across the pond. Why? Because they use TRUE maelstrom rules. Those PUNISH msu lists with all its easily destroyed vehicles and sergents everywhere.

The ITC is made by them to play the style they enjoy. Does it suck to lose maelstrom due to random cards after dominating the rest of the match? Yes. But their style of game has already been formulated. It's better to go second. MSU is king. It's too predictable and lends itself to a narrow scope of potential good armies. If they ever did straight kill point missions in their tournaments marines and eldar wouldn't dominate like they do.

The Eldar players "across the pond" run MSU lists as well so how come they are doing well? Maelstrom objectives do not punish MSU. Rather, the best armies at Maelstrom are MSU. To be more specific, the best armies at pure Maelstrom is Fast MSU. It's actually universal, no matter if it is Maelstrom, ITC, Nova or whatever mission. As long as you are playing with objectives, Fast MSU will always have an inherent advantage.

I believe that in the old world the ETC missions are the preferred method of playing tournaments. From my understanding those involve kill points in every mission. So when you take 10 free transports there's a downside to that in every mission, not just 1/3 chance to get those maelstrom objectives or mission 3 primary only. The Eldar MSU avoid this a bit by taking warp spiders that are very hard to kill if there's enough terrain on the table. Especially since I think ETC does not limit warp spiders to one jump.

ITC has shown it's limits since people have first started pointing out how good MSU is under its ruleset. ranging from simply encouraging it, to activley punishing larger units vs. MSU with certain mission rules.

bogalubov wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Reece recently came out and said marine Gladius dose not do nearly as well across the pond. Why? Because they use TRUE maelstrom rules. Those PUNISH msu lists with all its easily destroyed vehicles and sergents everywhere.

The ITC is made by them to play the style they enjoy. Does it suck to lose maelstrom due to random cards after dominating the rest of the match? Yes. But their style of game has already been formulated. It's better to go second. MSU is king. It's too predictable and lends itself to a narrow scope of potential good armies. If they ever did straight kill point missions in their tournaments marines and eldar wouldn't dominate like they do.

The Eldar players "across the pond" run MSU lists as well so how come they are doing well? Maelstrom objectives do not punish MSU. Rather, the best armies at Maelstrom are MSU. To be more specific, the best armies at pure Maelstrom is Fast MSU. It's actually universal, no matter if it is Maelstrom, ITC, Nova or whatever mission. As long as you are playing with objectives, Fast MSU will always have an inherent advantage.

I believe that in the old world the ETC missions are the preferred method of playing tournaments. From my understanding those involve kill points in every mission. So when you take 10 free transports there's a downside to that in every mission, not just 1/3 chance to get those maelstrom objectives or mission 3 primary only. The Eldar MSU avoid this a bit by taking warp spiders that are very hard to kill if there's enough terrain on the table. Especially since I think ETC does not limit warp spiders to one jump.

Yes, hence why Fast MSU has an inherent advantage. They can play KP-denial better than normal MSU.

Part of the issue is that the FLG team doesn't actually want to turn the game into a whole new game. They've historically tried to skirt by changing the game as little as practically possible while still having a game that can actually be played by two people that don't know each other pre-game. Basically restricting themselves to band-aid-ing a game that has internal bleeding issues.

Over the last year the crazy GW releases have thrown out plenty of forks in the road for them to muddle through, so voting quickly went from a "tournament exit survey" to "holy crap we need another vote AGAIN!" in a small timeframe.

I personally think if they would just cut 'er open and do the open guts surgery on the game instead of placing band-aids, we'd have ourselves a game more suited to a competitive event, with improved balance and rules mechanics that work as intended.

Yknow, kind of like what would happen if any competent game company got the license away from GW.

While the missions are popular and have been good start I feel pretty strongly they need an overhaul. The basic 4/4/1/1/1 split is fine but I think the progresive/maelstrom should be less dependent on random rolls and heavily situational dependent objectives (eg take a nod from NoVa and 2016 Adpeticon missions). I also think Kill Points should be the secondary/progressive in more missions - especially heavy end game objective ones, sort of like how ETC does it. I mean Kill Points is essentially a progressive and during game mission.

Also or alternatively if they keep the maelstrom chart as is they should switch to having scoring start at the top of each player turn (starting turn 2). Like what Adepticon is doing. I think that address both concerns about 2nd turn weighting and Reece's concerns about book maelstrom removing player interaction.

I'm also still baffled that drawing Primary and Secondary awards no points. Its meaningless as far as W/L/D but its a big factor for RenMan and Best in Faction as well as tie breakers. I understood it when the primary was 3 points but now that both are divisible by 2 it should be updated.

 Orock wrote:
Reece recently came out and said marine Gladius dose not do nearly as well across the pond. Why? Because they use TRUE maelstrom rules.

I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with maelstrom. ETC missions have a killpoint differential in every game. UK and many of the European events use the ETC missions hence why they gravitate towards more survivable MSU like warp spiders. Granted the max points from that KP differential is 8 points, so its still possible to win matches with MSU spam, its just less likely to max points. But maxing points is an ETC not as much of an ITC thing (unless going for renman or best in faction). So if ITC mixed in killpoints into the progressive/secondary scoring abit more they could easily balance things I think. Its the direction I may go in my own ITC tournament coming up if the 2016 missions don't address things.

Also to add, the modfied book maelstrom like what ETC does is still a bad mission design. Even putting aside the random nature of it the fact that they score it bottom of every player turn eliminates any tactical skill. You win that style almost purely off of luck and list. Tweak it to work like Adepticon progressive and it functions much better in my opinion.

 Brennonjw wrote:
ITC has shown it's limits since people have first started pointing out how good MSU is under its ruleset. ranging from simply encouraging it, to activley punishing larger units vs. MSU with certain mission rules.

I think that's what I take away from it - as others have pointed out here, of course.

Not necessarily saying it's a bad thing, just that it does seem to tip the scales even more in MSU's favor than the stock rules.

Betteridge's Law applies here

As others have said, the ITC is not in the business of making the game balanced. 40k is an unbalanced mess of a game. What the ITC do is try to curb the most egregious examples of broken/unbalanced units and rules and create something resembling a clear and concise ruleset for play that's fun and enjoyable for all involved. I would argue that 40k needs a ground-up rewrite, but getting the community to agree on one format would be nearly impossible.

Maelstrom Elements in the ITC missions were IMO one of the best ides the ITC has had. It gets rid of the most obnoxious elements of the format while preserving its emphasis on mobility and board control.

The reason the ITC favors MSU army builds so much is simple: Reece believes they deathstars are bad for the game, and so designed a format where deathstars are at a disadvantage. Not that certain deathstars can't do well in ITC *cough*ThunderCav*cough*.

Betteridges Law applies to news article headlines, not the thesises of arguments. To try to apply it so is basically just saying "No".

I said showing its limitations. I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't worth using, only that it can only do so much.

Should just do killpoints based on point cost of models slain irregardless of weather a full unit was destroyed or not.

The whole 'your army is worth 10 points if I kill it but mine is only worth 3' doesn't make much sense.

To instantly balance Maelstrom just draw the same cards for both players - no more complaining about bad draws and people can focus on just building lists that are good at achieving all the cards (and make the d3 ones just auto count as 2 points)

First blood - I tried to think of a way to balance it but I think it is too imbalanced for some armies to pull off (especially assault based ones) and depends on who goes first.

This is why I prefer the good ol days of "Blow up crap and count the point costs in the end". However even that has it's inherent balance problems without even counting the codex power creep.

MSU is going to have an advantage in any game with progressive objectives, but from my experience, progressive objectives make the game more enjoyable; however, MSU lists also bring up issues of slow play, intentional or not. Having 20+ units to manage in a game is difficult, especially when movement is critical.

I remember 6th ed where everyone sat on objectives and camped until the 5th turn turbo-boost to contest. That was not fun. I also remember the usual deathstars that have popped up at different times in different editions, and those are certainly not fun either.

When you also have victory points at all times, then deathstars become even more common as they are the best at not giving victory points just as MSU are best at scoring progression objectives.

There is surely a middle-ground that helps foster army and list diversity. Perhaps having another mission other than purge in rotation that promises at least 2 KP missions in a 6 round GT would help as well as more varied progressive objectives like ETC (I think I heard they use 18 cards/options ).

Perhaps ETC and ITC can hash out some middle-ground.

I rather like that the ITC is more msu focused. I think it leads to more interesting varied games when there are a lot of units on the table.

While Eldar made a big showing at the LVO if you look at the other tournament results they havn't been rocking tournaments everywhere in the ITC.

You can check out ITC tournament results here.https://www.frontlinegaming.org/community/frontline-gamings-independent-tournament-circuit/2015-itc-event-results/

I didn't look at all of them, but from what I did see it looked like it was space marines that where winning most of them.

I think the recent doom of mymeria really has brought eldar up a notch. The pale court and the skathach wraithknight are both amazing. Combined with the allowance of two aspect shrines makes the fast killy eldar even faster and even killier.

I watched the semi finals between Alan(The ITC champion), and Alex (the winning eldar player) player. It really seemed like Alex won entirely on luck. Before the match started Alex seemed to think he was doomed. Alan failed cursed earth on 5 dice, and got the -1 invuln save winds of chaos even with the fate weaver reroll. So instead of having a 2+rerollable invulnerable save he had a 4+ invulnerable save. Because of this his entire screamer star was wiped off the board turn 2. To top it off the wraithknight got a six on the stomp to kill be'Lakor. Even with all that Alan almost won the game. I really think with just a little less obscenely bad luck it would have been a daemon vs eldar final.

 Orock wrote:
Reece recently came out and said marine Gladius dose not do nearly as well across the pond. Why? Because they use TRUE maelstrom rules. Those PUNISH msu lists with all its easily destroyed vehicles and sergents everywhere.

The ITC is made by them to play the style they enjoy. Does it suck to lose maelstrom due to random cards after dominating the rest of the match? Yes. But their style of game has already been formulated. It's better to go second. MSU is king. It's too predictable and lends itself to a narrow scope of potential good armies. If they ever did straight kill point missions in their tournaments marines and eldar wouldn't dominate like they do.

I disagree so strongly, that I almost want to declare what you said as objectively wrong.

A) Marines hardly dominated.

B) Include KP in all your missions and I GUARANTEE the game becomes more HOMOGENOUS in list-building. KPs being overly represented in missions (I am not against kill point missions, but they shouldn't be part of every mission) favors certain army types and codices. The real question is, would you rather play against extreme MSU armies, or would you rather play against deathstars? If you move towards KPs being a major part of every mission, all you will see on top tables is deathstars. At least MSU armies can be interacted with in a meaningful way. If you switch to a KP heavy format, yes, you will most likely kill off Gladius, but that would be about it. Spiders are every bit as good in the ETC format, despite KPs being heavily used in their missions, because of how absurdly mobile they are. In fact, all the Eldar units I see people spam or run MSU style (Scatbikes, Aspect warriors) have the ability to play extremely defensively and deny KP.

Do we really want to return to the 6th ed, early 7th ed Deathstar domination? Was that fun? I'd rather play against a 45 spider Eldar list than an Eldar Seer Council any day of the week. One army I can actually interact with, even if it is annoying as hell, the other consists, almost entirely, of one unit that is essentially invincible and will likely be one of very few units you can engage with.

Yes, NOVA/ITC missions, to an extent, favor MSU, but that isn't entirely true. Look at the top lists and I would hardly call most of them true MSU armies (20+ units). ITC and NOVA both do a good job hurting these armies (NOVA may have gone too far last year, as evidenced by how many Deathstars made top tables). Also, keep in mind, 2 very-non MSU Cron armies made top tables, a Daemon list that is DEFINITELY not MSU made top 8,TWC star made top 8 and a list featuring the Corpsethief formation (which is a very pricey unit that could easily qualify as a deathstar). So by my count, Pajama pants ran a deathstar-styled list, Aaron Aleong did, Alex Fennel did and so did Sean Nayden. If the missions favored MSU as heavily as you make it out to be I highly doubt that the results would have been what they are

IMO, anything that encourages people NOT TO USE giant, completely invulnerable units, is a good thing. Sorry if you don't like MSU, but I (and I think many others) find it far more enjoyable than playing deathstar 40k.

Just one more note, for about a year I used a SW/DA TWC army and I won 7-8 ITC events with it, beating very many MSU lists. I would say that ITC is about as well balanced between being pro-MSU and anti-MSU as you can get.

KP's are, and always were, a bad mechanism.

They were never intended to be a balance mechanism, but rather just simplified victory tabulation that didnt require a calculator. People just adopted them as some sort of balance mechanism post-facto because it sounded like a better explanation and thats stuck ever since 2008.

Theyre also really bad as a balance mechanism. They are an artificiality in every sense, poorly reflecting the actual results of the battle by any other means. With regards to MSU, they dont hurt the top tier MSU armies much, but will crush the mid and lower tier armies, particularly, those that are inherently designed around unit attrition.

The old VP system, calculating actual points values of units lost, was a fsr better mechanism and reflection of tabletop performance. MSU armies bled points faster, smaller hardier armies made you work more but rewarded greater effort.

 Vaktathi wrote:
KP's are, and always were, a bad mechanism.

They were never intended to be a balance mechanism, but rather just simplified victory tabulation that didnt require a calculator. People just adopted them as some sort of balance mechanism post-facto because it sounded like a better explanation and thats stuck ever since 2008.

Theyre also really bad as a balance mechanism. They are an artificiality in every sense, poorly reflecting the actual results of the battle by any other means. With regards to MSU, they dont hurt the top tier MSU armies much, but will crush the mid and lower tier armies, particularly, those that are inherently designed around unit attrition.

The old VP system, calculating actual points values of units lost, was a fsr better mechanism and reflection of tabletop performance. MSU armies bled points faster, smaller hardier armies made you work more but rewarded greater effort.

Agree completely, KP is an awful mechanic and really steers players into building lists that are far less fun to compete against.

There were two Marine armies and two Necron armies in the final top eight - that is domination .

 Dozer Blades wrote:
There were two Marine armies and two Necron armies in the final top eight - that is domination .

He talked about Eldar, not Necrons, I did not contest that point.

There was one true marine army in the finals. If you consider Aaron Aleongs list a marine army by theme, I dunno what to say, because it clearly is a TWC deathstar list whose faction simply happens to be "marine" Also, OP mentions gladius specifically.

Furthermore, his post is concerning the impact of MSU in a decidedly KP light mission format. Aarons list was certainly not MSU and I would argue, STRONGLY, that Fennels Orikanstar list nor the Living Tomb list qualify as MSU (considering one list pays nearly 1/3 of its points for 2 models and the other pays over 1/3 of its points for one unit).

Actually, this thread kinda got away from what I was posting about.

CWE doing so well was an example. The point was that, even with ITC doing its thing, the lower Dexes have no real chance against the upper Dexes. Currently, that's Orks/SoB/Harlies etc versus Eldar trailed by the rest of the 7.5 crowd.

I actually like MSU more than Titanhammer or death stars. But MSU vs fewer better units is a worthwhile conversation worth watch.

I think the ITC vs ETC kinda suggests that it is within ITCs scope to balance that factor a bit, which takes the topic out of scope of my original post. But that is what the thread has become, and it is a useful conversation.

 jy2 wrote:
The game needs to either be drastically overhauled for competitive play, or it needs a lot of facelifting along the way.

40k's rules are for the most part pretty good if you are playing in a narrative manner and construct scenarios and lists cooperatively. But army construction and BRB missions are not truly dynamic, and tournaments push standardization. No wonder things get stale.

Drafting limited choices from your army on-the-fly while responding to diverse mission formats and radically different terrain and board sizes could be interesting.

Basically:
- Explain the mission and win conditions
- Examine the terrain
- Explain any environmental rules or 3rd party actors
- Explain points limits and conditions for reserves
- Select the active force from your wider army
- Deploy the active force according to mission parameters
- Play the match
- Score the match according to the win conditions

Needing to fight on open ground, ground that blocks all long-range weapons, difficult terrain, etc -- different armies and different units have an edge. Chimeras are amphibious, when is the last time that rule mattered? How about a raid that revolves around infiltrators, DS and extraction on offense, reserves and pursuit for the defender?

Maybe you can't adapt these to a large tournament environment well but I imagine it would shake up armies that are constructed to a consistent format and meta.

 coblen wrote:
I rather like that the ITC is more msu focused. I think it leads to more interesting varied games when there are a lot of units on the table.

While Eldar made a big showing at the LVO if you look at the other tournament results they havn't been rocking tournaments everywhere in the ITC.

You can check out ITC tournament results here.https://www.frontlinegaming.org/community/frontline-gamings-independent-tournament-circuit/2015-itc-event-results/

I didn't look at all of them, but from what I did see it looked like it was space marines that where winning most of them.

I don't think tournament wins are a good gauge of a codex's power level. Eldar didn't have a ton of big wins this year, but I don't think anyone will say that codex is under powered. I calculated the average scores of Top 10 faction finishers in the ITC for 2015 and then compared how each faction did compared to the average. Eldar players had scores 40% above the total average. Oddly, Orks came in second by that metric, which goes to show you that one good trick (Zardsnark) can also keep an army competitive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-G4ftYsnn4RSFVxdF9LZm1aazA/view?usp=sharing

I think the other thing to remember is that the ITC isn't trying to make things more even for the top finishers. To keep driving people to events, they want to make things more balanced for the middle tables.

It's hard to lose big with Eldar, they are an army where not much can go disastrously wrong.

I think that's part of the frustration of the wider 40k playerbase, there is no obvious single point of failure to target.

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's hard to lose big with Eldar, they are an army where not much can go disastrously wrong.

thats a big part of the problem, Eldar are an army that, ostensibly, should go disastrously wrong if not well thought out and played well. Theyve had so many buffs and have so much multirole weaponry and support elements that they really cant fall apart.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's hard to lose big with Eldar, they are an army where not much can go disastrously wrong.

thats a big part of the problem, Eldar are an army that, ostensibly, should go disastrously wrong if not well thought out and played well. Theyve had so many buffs and have so much multirole weaponry and support elements that they really cant fall apart.

Wraithknights (and other Wraith units) and Scatbikers sure, but the rest of the Eldar codex is universally T3. Massed Bolter fire is a serious threat to most Eldar infantry.

The reason Eldar units can seem multirole is because of the game prioritizing medium-strenght high-ROF weapons, which I why Warp Spiders are so powerful. Fire Dragons can kill a vehicle dead, but unless they have some cover they're dead next turn. Eldar have great psychic powers, but if you have a similar amount of psychic power or know how to deny well you can mitigate their power.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's hard to lose big with Eldar, they are an army where not much can go disastrously wrong.

thats a big part of the problem, Eldar are an army that, ostensibly, should go disastrously wrong if not well thought out and played well. Theyve had so many buffs and have so much multirole weaponry and support elements that they really cant fall apart.

Wraithknights (and other Wraith units) and Scatbikers sure, but the rest of the Eldar codex is universally T3. Massed Bolter fire is a serious threat to most Eldar infantry.

The reason Eldar units can seem multirole is because of the game prioritizing medium-strenght high-ROF weapons, which I why Warp Spiders are so powerful. Fire Dragons can kill a vehicle dead, but unless they have some cover they're dead next turn. Eldar have great psychic powers, but if you have a similar amount of psychic power or know how to deny well you can mitigate their power.

Eldar have infantry? Where is this infantry you speak of? Bolters and serious threat in the same sentence seems very inappropriate.