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.

The title is fairly descriptive after years of playing dawn of war, Space Marine and even Fire Warrior I want to try getting into the tabletop again and my chosen army is the Craft world Eldar, I want to know what's the best way to get started, should I go for a small kill team sized force, get the Eldar starter set or is it worth hunting down a battle force?

Any help is much appreciated.

I'd start small and start with some staple (read: potentially boring) units. While the game changes with editions and the codices change every now and then I'd get some very basic stuff to start you out.

Namely an HQ and a couple of troop choices. Perhaps a Farseer, a squad of Dire Avengers and some Guardians. Start small, simple and move on from there.

Start wherever you think looks cool, but you'll probably end up at scatbike, warp spider, Wraithknight. The holy trinity.

What kind of list do you want to play? What craftworld? What units? How competitive do you want to be? Do you like having friends?

Eldar are great in that they are on the top end of the power curve, so you can pretty much take what you want and still do well. There are very few “bad” units in the codex. The top dogs in the book are warp spiders, wraithknights, and jet bikes. Wave serpents are one of best transports/tanks in the game. The problems most of the other units have is not a failure on their own merits, but not being one of the power units in the book.

Some of the formations are a little over the top, but you can do just fine with a CAD.

The start collecting box is not bad. Jetseer and bikes are highly competitive, the fire prism is merely average.
The old battle force is fine for generic Eldar, but is a little unfocused. Like any box set, the value of it is very dependent on if you would actually use the contents. The guardians suffer from not being jetbikes, as does the vyper. Dire avengers are OK, and can be used in an aspect host. Wave Serpent is good.

But frankly, if you are playing at a more casual level, including some “average” units in your list will help keep the game more fun (and your friends from hating you)

Welcome Rahshen!

The Eldar are one of the most powerful factions in the game at the moment, and there's almost no way to go wrong with them. This is AWESOME for you, since it means you can pick up the stuff that sounds the most fun to you while also knowing that you aren't making big mistakes!

First off, you really want to get an HQ and 2 Troop choices. That's the basics of any force, and the Eldar have some nice options for you here. Since you've been playing Dawn of War, I'm sure you know just how powerful a Farseer can be given the right powers, and in 40k Farseers are the best psykers in the game (before counting special formations and special characters).

But if the combat prowess of the Eldar is what you're going for, an Autarch is a strategic and tactical genius, and gets to pick gear from the best Aspects available. It's hard to understate just how malleable an Autarch can be for your preferred style.

Lastly, the Avatar is an amazing centrepiece model that also happens to be pretty darn effective! There's almost nothing that an Avatar cannot dish out the pain to.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice to give you an idea of what i'm aiming for is a small Altansar army that will eventually grow to an 1850 or slightly more competition and fun army that's mobile and I need that wraithknight after seeing it move in the dawn of war 3 trailer they gave me chills and maybe a Heros Path Harlequin formation as allies. I a want something I can play and do well with.

One day I'll make a heavily converted necrons army ruled by Dyscro Overlord of Dance, but I want to get better at modeling first his necrodermis afro must be perfect

Then you can't really go with Eldar. It sounds like it's difficult to make them non-competitive.

I'll still suggest painting your basic troop choices first (whatever they end up being). Once you start painting fancy characters and Wraithknights etc. you're going to struggle with motivation to go and paint 10-20-30 basic troops. Get them out of the way and keep them around for 10 or 15 years and they'll do you good service.

I’m not that familiar with the ways of war for Altansar. The little blurb in the codex mentions a long fight vs. chaos and a connection with maugon-ra, but that’s about it.

Bikes, tanks, or footslogging? Aspect, wraiths, or guardians?

Fielding a WK will solve most any problems you run across on the battlefield. So more then normal you are free to take whatever.

The WK can deal with heavy armor. If you feel you need more AV, wraithguard or fire dragons in transports, or just scattering some brightlances around can work.

For troops, the power pick is scatbikes. But a squad of DA or guardians, on foot or in a transport, also work well.

I’ve not experimented with foot based eldar, but it looks like some large blobs centered around the avatar could be fun.

Don't listen to Elbows, you definitely can do casual stuff! If you focus is casual stuff, then here's a list of the stuff that's great for casual games:

TROOPS:
#1 - Guardians: The Defenders are by far the most common you'll see. The ability to Run & Shoot, or Shoot & Run with Battlefocus is a ton of fun, and makes it that the very short range of your guns suddenly becomes much longer! These guys play really well with the core idea of the Eldar; hit hard, and run away! I've never had the pleasure of fighting Storm Guardians, but these guys are slightly-better Guardsmen from what I understand. which combined with their short-ranged special weapons could make them really fun in figuring out how to best use them.

#2 - Couple of small squads of Jetbikes, or one large squad of Jetbikes (with limited 1-per-3 jetbikes of the optional heavy weapon). These guys get a lot of flakk for being SO GOOD when equipped with heavy weapons on each, but just avoid that and they're quite fun and balanced. They're not that tough, have lower than average leadership, but man are they FAST, which is very Eldar.

#3 - Rangers. Just take one unit of them and have fun using them in a different way nearly every game. They're not the best at anything, but Sniper Rifles are just one of those weapons that lets you be pretty good at anything.

#4 - Striking Scorpions & Howling Banshees. You wouldn't think that T3 models could pile on the pain, but wow will these guys make your opponents think differently! They have so many special rules that you'll be able to take on things that would normally be too tough or well entrenched to handle.


There's lots more that's good and fun in the Eldar codex for casual play. The trick is to take a real smattering of units. This is fun both as a collector, and as a gamer, and as an opponent of the Eldar!

Kit-wise, grab 1 or 2 of the WIndrider/Fire Prism boxes. that gets you 2 Warlock/Farseers, 2 untis of Troops and 2 Prism/Night Spinners. You can't go wrong with that start.

Whoops..I meant to say "can't go wrong with Eldar" not "can't go with Eldar", lol.

 Galef wrote:
Kit-wise, grab 1 or 2 of the WIndrider/Fire Prism boxes. that gets you 2 Warlock/Farseers, 2 untis of Troops and 2 Prism/Night Spinners. You can't go wrong with that start.

I second that - there is no better option money-wise right now. With two boxes built as 1 Farseer, 1 Warlock, 1 Night Spinner, 1 Fire Prism, and two squads of windriders (you can go with couple of options with them to have some point-wise flexibility when building your army, not only "all scatterbikes"), you can have the most common (and great) HQ choice (farseer); an additional HQ choice (warlock) to either form a single unit with your farseer as his bodyguard or go as an upgrade to one of your windrider squads; two troop squads; a crowd controll tank and an anti-armour tank… It is really an instant and very mobile and quite all-rounder army to start with, for a very reasonable price (by GW standards of course).

And if you want to test your converting skills just grab an old D-cannon somewhere and convert your Fire Prism to Warp Hunter and now you have the best Eldar tank there is...

The new bikes are also very magnet friendly, so you can build them to swap as needed. Not just for points, but you can run the "1 bike in 3 gets an upgrade” rule from the past to make your list a bit more friendly. Or go full scatbike when the gloves are off.