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I read so many post about how eldar was op in 7th edition. I got eirked when I read a post that mentioned how eldar were less broken in eighth edition but how much more wrong can they get. My eldar have consecutively lost most of their games against Nids, necrons, grey knights, blood angels, orks and so on. My first games in eighth nets me two losses. The only op part of eldar was how cheap their bikes were. The only games I felt over powered in were against vehical heavy list. But eldar will always lose to volume of fire but does not have enough volume of fire to put out. Out ranged. Out gunned and not enough hit points. That been the story of my eldar.

I still love them and plan to keep playing them while building my style of list that focus on the two worst units in eldar the guardians and the wraithlords.
BTW every two of three games that I fielded one or more knights I still lost.

I don't have jetbikes, warpspiders, dark reapers, swooping hawks, crimson hunter/hemlocks or nightspinners in my collection yet.

Whats the intention of this posts? Are you saying Eldar weren't OP in 7th? Or that they are very weak in 8th?

Eldar did have what could be considered some OP builds, however it's stupid to think the entire codex was broken. That was the part of it I didn't like myself, cause they had that reputation where no matter what you played it was "OP".

Eldar weren't that strong in 7th? Tourney results everywhere tell us otherwise...

Sadly, every major edition change makes an army play differently than it did because stuff gets buffed/nerfed. You can't simply keep playing in 8th the same way you did in 7th because of that. The same thing happened to all other codexes!
For example, T'au can't do an all-suit army and have the same results from 7th anymore. Or Marines relying on Grav.

Just because you're losing a bunch does not automatically mean the armies weak.

It just means you're losing, which could just indicate you need to adapt your play style.

You've played 2 games so far?
Hardly a benchmark.
What armies did you face / what was your build / mission / points / dice luck?

 Vector Strike wrote:
Eldar weren't that strong in 7th? Tourney results everywhere tell us otherwise...

Sadly, every major edition change makes an army play differently than it did because stuff gets buffed/nerfed. You can't simply keep playing in 8th the same way you did in 7th because of that. The same thing happened to all other codexes!
For example, T'au can't do an all-suit army and have the same results from 7th anymore. Or Marines relying on Grav.

Take out scatbike spam with WK's and then I bet Eldar didn't win that many tourneys.

Eldar usually had just a few units that were ridiculous. In 6th it was the Serpent Spam and in 7th it was the Scatter Bike spam. Then you would throw in a WK for good measure. Most other units were rather normal.

Only thing I find interesting with Eldar in 8th edition is that Footdar and Serpent Spam is back. Also seems that people are experimenting with wraiths which will be very interesting to see how develops.

Annoying issue now is that standard issue Eldar weapons have gak range. It was mitigated by Battlefocus, but with the change to Advance the range has become an issue again. I would argue that Catapults should now be 18 range and DA Catapults with 24 inc range.

I think a big problem with Eldar now is that GW is trying to balance them also in regards to Ynnari who have a huge range of potential units. This makes balancing a very tricky business as you are trying to balance the same units to completely different modalities which is impossible unless you make point costs for CE and Ynnari Aeldari separate(Guardian would cost 7 points for CE, but 9 for Ynnari or something). A part of me thinks that Eldar players would have been better served if GW turned CE into Ynnari completely and be done with it.

I'll still play my Eldar regardless of what the meta is now. I've gone through almost all the editions so I've had the best and worst of CE already.

Thid almost smells like a bait thread but I'll bite.

Scatter Laser Bikes and a Wraithknight or Riptides or a Corpsethief Claw basically is the 40k equivalent of showing up to a swordfight with an army of horse archers and cataphracts (see: Battle of Carrhae). Throw enough bullets to neutralize things that could conceivably threaten your beatsticks in melee, and things go pearshaped fast.

The problem is that the internal balance for Eldar was and is still a joke. Throw an army of foot guardians or any Aspect Warrior that is not the "one useful one" for an edition (Fire Dragons in 5e and 6e, Hawks in 6e and occasionally 7e, Spiders in 7e, Reapers in 8e) and you're in for a bad time.

That being said, call me cynical when I say one never saw any Eldar tournament armies that didn't use FW but that's another story.

Part of it too in 7th was the effortless speed that bikes could achieve.

Oh, it's the last turn, time to move infinity inches and perch on the objectives with my obsec jetbikes.

 Marmatag wrote:
Part of it too in 7th was the effortless speed that bikes could achieve.

Oh, it's the last turn, time to move infinity inches and perch on the objectives with my obsec jetbikes.

This is one of those areas where I feel an alternating activation system could have rebalanced the core game. Something like:

-To control an objective, you must start with a unit within 3" of an objective, and you must be the only player with a unit within 3" the objective at the end of the turn (note: it doesn't have to be the same unit as at the start of the turn). Once secured, the objective is yours until an opponent takes the objective according to the above criteria. Optionally add some weights to objectives (bonus pts for owning objectives away from your DZ, for holding "connected chains" of objectives, holding the centermost objective, etc).

Taking an objective should be about securing the area around it and preventing the enemy from being able to contest it, rather than being a game of "rocket tag" like 7th, or "2 Conscripts > 1 Rhino" of 8th.

I can't conclude that 8th is bad or good yet. You can still keep people away by body blocking their movement, it just takes more than 1 rhino.

So far I like the idea of numbers mattering for physically controlling an objective.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Part of it too in 7th was the effortless speed that bikes could achieve.

Oh, it's the last turn, time to move infinity inches and perch on the objectives with my obsec jetbikes.

This is one of those areas where I feel an alternating activation system could have rebalanced the core game. Something like:

-To control an objective, you must start with a unit within 3" of an objective, and you must be the only player with a unit within 3" the objective at the end of the turn (note: it doesn't have to be the same unit as at the start of the turn). Once secured, the objective is yours until an opponent takes the objective according to the above criteria. Optionally add some weights to objectives (bonus pts for owning objectives away from your DZ, for holding "connected chains" of objectives, holding the centermost objective, etc).

Taking an objective should be about securing the area around it and preventing the enemy from being able to contest it, rather than being a game of "rocket tag" like 7th, or "2 Conscripts > 1 Rhino" of 8th.

...The simple solution to the jetbike problem would have been not letting them go twice as fast as any non-Flyer unit available to any other army (non-Eldar bikes/jetbikes went 12"/turbo-boost 12", Eldar jetbikes went 12"/turbo-boost 36").

The other simple solution would have been turn-by-turn scoring rather than "if you have an obsec unit next to this at the end of the game you get all points".

Cracking the system open and rejiggering the action structure shouldn't be the first place you go every time someone points out a problem.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Cracking the system open and rejiggering the action structure shouldn't be the first place you go every time someone points out a problem.

Anything to keep 7th edition alive, I suppose. Me personally, think the 8th rewrite, albeit bland, has moved in the right direction. Eldar can't cheese objective based games anymore. That's a good thing. The Eldar were way too strong in 7th.

If we all operate under the presumption that everyone wants a balanced game, it would stand to reason that the Eldar would have to be toned down, and you should embrace that. At times i'm frustrated with some of my units, like Centurions, Drop Pods, etc, being all but useless, but, if it makes the games less one sided, who cares? Competitive games are better than one sided smashfests.

The reason I brought it up is because my rock paper siccors luck in a tactical game and I kinda wanted to vent hoping for something to learn in the responses. I have experimented with mech list running 3 serpents 3 falcons and 3 fire prisms minimal troops and hq. White tide with wraithlords or knights. Wraith Guard in serpents with knights. Serpent spam in 7th. And all sorts of hybrids from those. But my luck is always the same. Tabled by turn four or knocked off every objective. The games I win are against imperial knights. At 1850 I had an even game against skitari/mechanicus in CAD.

I've posted many list and usually get the same reply that I need bikes or that guardians arnt for that or that lords don't do that. but I've been stubborn in that I want to play fun games with my guardians and wraithlords but always find myself losing because Im out ranged or I miss a lot of my important shots. I fired two bright Lance's into a necron ghost ark for five turns and only done 7 damage to it. That's a tank buster gun it should have destroyed it in two to three turns.

Thank you all for listening to me even if you think I'm crazy. I just keep beating my head against the wall trying to push the square into the circle hole. The wraith units and my guardians are what have distinguished my list for about 5 years, hopefully one day they can be good too.

I fired two bright Lance's into a necron ghost ark for five turns and only done 7 damage to it. That's a tank buster gun it should have destroyed it in two to three turns.

That sounds like bad luck. I don't have the Xenos book yet, so i can't math-hammer the odds for you, but i would wager what happened was unlikely.

Just because you roll bad doesn't mean you had a bad strategy.

For ex; If you bring psykers you want to cast powers. If you lose a psyker to a perils, and he blows up killing a ton of units, that sucks, but it doesn't mean you misplayed anything. But, it probably means you lost the game.

 Marmatag wrote:

I fired two bright Lance's into a necron ghost ark for five turns and only done 7 damage to it. That's a tank buster gun it should have destroyed it in two to three turns.

That sounds like bad luck. I don't have the Xenos book yet, so i can't math-hammer the odds for you, but i would wager what happened was unlikely.

Just because you roll bad doesn't mean you had a bad strategy.

For ex; If you bring psykers you want to cast powers. If you lose a psyker to a perils, and he blows up killing a ton of units, that sucks, but it doesn't mean you misplayed anything. But, it probably means you lost the game.

It's not bad luck, it's bad strategy.

D6 damage weapons are not the right tool for popping Quantum Shielded vehicles.

7 wounds off is actually statistically exactly what you'd expect to get from firing two bright lances into a QS vehicle for 5 turns. Two bright lances, hitting on a 3+ would average about 1.39 wounds per turn because of QS. You want to fire 1 and 2 dmg weapons at QS vehicles, not D6 dmg weapons.

I think CWE have plenty of options to be decent in 8th. Just need to approach it with an 8th mentality. Everything in its right place. Large guardian sqds with farseer, warwalkers and avatar arent going anywhere in a hurry. Firepower is short ranged, but movement and advance or wave serpents make up for it.
I just hope we get black guardian webway portals back.

pm713 wrote:

 Vector Strike wrote:
Eldar weren't that strong in 7th? Tourney results everywhere tell us otherwise...

Sadly, every major edition change makes an army play differently than it did because stuff gets buffed/nerfed. You can't simply keep playing in 8th the same way you did in 7th because of that. The same thing happened to all other codexes!
For example, T'au can't do an all-suit army and have the same results from 7th anymore. Or Marines relying on Grav.

Take out scatbike spam with WK's and then I bet Eldar didn't win that many tourneys.

This is the single wrongest thing I've ever heard. Ooooh no scatbike spam? K Seer Council wins 8-9 tournaments. Ooooh no scatbikes, 55 warp spiders wins LVO over another 55 Warpspider army. Hornets, warphunters, Lynx, etc, etc,etc.

Even if you did? Take out Grav Cannons and superfriends stars and space marines don't win ANY tournaments. Take out Cheap warpcharge dice and screamers and Daemons don't win ANY tournaments. Tau...already don't win any tournaments unless they let you bring a Tau'nar, just take away the decurion bonus, not even the rest of it, and Necrons never win a single game against eldar.

Eldar had the most powerful codex with the most powerful forgeworld support in the game bar none. It wasn't until people started doing truly insane stuff like Magnus chaos with infinite 2++ rerollable horrors and summoning or Lion's Blade with a Barkbark star that eldar even had any real competition for the best army in the game.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Part of it too in 7th was the effortless speed that bikes could achieve.

Oh, it's the last turn, time to move infinity inches and perch on the objectives with my obsec jetbikes.

This is one of those areas where I feel an alternating activation system could have rebalanced the core game. Something like:

-To control an objective, you must start with a unit within 3" of an objective, and you must be the only player with a unit within 3" the objective at the end of the turn (note: it doesn't have to be the same unit as at the start of the turn). Once secured, the objective is yours until an opponent takes the objective according to the above criteria. Optionally add some weights to objectives (bonus pts for owning objectives away from your DZ, for holding "connected chains" of objectives, holding the centermost objective, etc).

Taking an objective should be about securing the area around it and preventing the enemy from being able to contest it, rather than being a game of "rocket tag" like 7th, or "2 Conscripts > 1 Rhino" of 8th.

...The simple solution to the jetbike problem would have been not letting them go twice as fast as any non-Flyer unit available to any other army (non-Eldar bikes/jetbikes went 12"/turbo-boost 12", Eldar jetbikes went 12"/turbo-boost 36").

The other simple solution would have been turn-by-turn scoring rather than "if you have an obsec unit next to this at the end of the game you get all points".

Cracking the system open and rejiggering the action structure shouldn't be the first place you go every time someone points out a problem.

I like turn-by-turn except you then still have the issue of "must keep a unit camping the objective", as well as needing some sort of system for determining "precedence". A system like "most models wins", favors hard-to-kill chaff (hence "brimstone spam" theorycraft, among other ideas).

I'm well aware of the alternating activation issues, how you could game a system with "acolytes to pass my turn" among other things. However, I feel that "objective" games should be about "controlling the battlefield", be it controlling a clear path of objectives from your DZ to the enemy DZ, controlling the center, etc. Ymmv.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Cracking the system open and rejiggering the action structure shouldn't be the first place you go every time someone points out a problem.

Anything to keep 7th edition alive, I suppose. Me personally, think the 8th rewrite, albeit bland, has moved in the right direction. Eldar can't cheese objective based games anymore. That's a good thing. The Eldar were way too strong in 7th.

If we all operate under the presumption that everyone wants a balanced game, it would stand to reason that the Eldar would have to be toned down, and you should embrace that. At times i'm frustrated with some of my units, like Centurions, Drop Pods, etc, being all but useless, but, if it makes the games less one sided, who cares? Competitive games are better than one sided smashfests.

Don't get me wrong, 7th is a flawed edition (incidentally: it's funny that "keep 7th alive" and "crack the system open and rejigger the action structure" are in the same convo chain). However, I feel 8th is the equivalent of removing a tumor with a hatchet. There are enough idiosyncracies in the game system that frankly bug me, and the system broke parts of 7th that themselves didn't need fixing. See: Squad coherency as an example.

 Marmatag wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Cracking the system open and rejiggering the action structure shouldn't be the first place you go every time someone points out a problem.

Anything to keep 7th edition alive, I suppose. Me personally, think the 8th rewrite, albeit bland, has moved in the right direction. Eldar can't cheese objective based games anymore. That's a good thing. The Eldar were way too strong in 7th.

If we all operate under the presumption that everyone wants a balanced game, it would stand to reason that the Eldar would have to be toned down, and you should embrace that. At times i'm frustrated with some of my units, like Centurions, Drop Pods, etc, being all but useless, but, if it makes the games less one sided, who cares? Competitive games are better than one sided smashfests.

I know a few people who will almost always only play one-sided smashfests, but only if they are the smashers...

...and then they wonder why nobody wants to play them anymore...

Irrumare wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

I fired two bright Lance's into a necron ghost ark for five turns and only done 7 damage to it. That's a tank buster gun it should have destroyed it in two to three turns.

That sounds like bad luck. I don't have the Xenos book yet, so i can't math-hammer the odds for you, but i would wager what happened was unlikely.

Just because you roll bad doesn't mean you had a bad strategy.

For ex; If you bring psykers you want to cast powers. If you lose a psyker to a perils, and he blows up killing a ton of units, that sucks, but it doesn't mean you misplayed anything. But, it probably means you lost the game.

It's not bad luck, it's bad strategy.

D6 damage weapons are not the right tool for popping Quantum Shielded vehicles.

7 wounds off is actually statistically exactly what you'd expect to get from firing two bright lances into a QS vehicle for 5 turns. Two bright lances, hitting on a 3+ would average about 1.39 wounds per turn because of QS. You want to fire 1 and 2 dmg weapons at QS vehicles, not D6 dmg weapons.

Okay - thanks for the info. Like I said, I don't have the Xenos book. In the case of Quantum Shielding - I am familiar with this rule - firing a d6 weapon against it is a really bad decision.

But you're right. This was a bad tactical decision on the OP's part.

What's a good strategic decision for Eldar anti-armour?

I'm thinking against either SM Methul Bawks spam or against Necron QS stuff.

Yeah, you don't want to use anti-tank weapons against quantum shielded vehicles, as strange as it sounds.
You actually want to use something like standard strength plasma against it, since the QS vehicles tend to have a 4+ save (so ignored by -3 save modifiers) and T6 (so 3+ to wound in most cases.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Selym wrote:
What's a good strategic decision for Eldar anti-armour?

I'm thinking against either SM Methul Bawks spam or against Necron QS stuff.

What's the strength, ap and damage on starcannons? If its at least S6, -3 mod, and has less than 3 damage, then using a bunch of that should be effective against QS. Also, against necrons try to play the range game. The average strength of necron weapons is 24". You'll usually be able to shoot them before they can shoot you. Unless you like, use nothing but guardians or something.
Metahl Bawkses are just Metahl bawkses. Use standard anti-tank against the fools.

Starcannon: 36" Heavy 2 Str 6 Ap -3 D 3

Suncannon: 48" Heavy 2D6 Str 3 Ap -3 D D3

On running some numbers, it''s hard for an AT choice in the eldar dex to do more than 1-3 dmg per turn on average against methul bawkses..

Our most efficient choice is the Avatar, but he needs LOTS of screening..

Eh, might work. QS has a 33% chance of ignoring Damage 3.
If you had damage 2 weapons that would be better, as then it becomes something like 16% chance.
Damage 1 completely ignores it.

Don't bright lances deal D6 damage with a -4 save mod? it should be able to ignore marine vehicle armor.

Well, so far I'm liking 8th, because at the moment EVERY army has a chance. Things might change when TFG find some new combo, but because if the new faction/keyword system it probably won't be game breaking, and any codex imbalance will hopefully get sorted ASAP due to the new way they are set up.

But, until then, I'm going to enjoy not knowing the outcome of any battle unlike in 7th...

 Selym wrote:
Starcannon: 36" Heavy 2 Str 6 Ap -3 D 3

Suncannon: 48" Heavy 2D6 Str 3 Ap -3 D D3

On running some numbers, it''s hard for an AT choice in the eldar dex to do more than 1-3 dmg per turn on average against methul bawkses..

Our most efficient choice is the Avatar, but he needs LOTS of screening..

Starcannons will work. The shielded model would have a chance to negate the wound, but it'd be successful on a 1 or 2, only.

Metal boxes aren't that threatening, in general, and should not be at the top of your worry list.

Been facing them since 5E, and I'm still not good at killing them. Srsly, I'm batting 3 for 3 in the last few editions of being tabled every damn time I meet a parking lot. Even in 7E I had a bad time, and in that I had more AT weapons that ever before.
Running numbers vs points, the Eldar aren't on average particularly efficient.
Combine that with my historically bad rolls, (I have never made a penetrating hit with a Leman Russ Tank, and I have used them countless times), and I'm in for a bad edition.

I've found through testing that anything strength 7-8 that deals 2 damage to be the ideal QS vehicle smasher.

For most Imperial armies, that's plasma and autocannon spam.

But, bizarrely, lots of Necron players I know are talking of dumping their ghost Arks for Doomsday Arks for the dakka, as they are relying on the new RP to keep squads alive...