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I'm kicking around starting an Eldar army. I've never played Eldar before, and only played against them a couple of times when this one guy in at my FLAGS used to play Eldar, so I don't really know their strengths & weaknesses.

Is Eldar strong psychicly? Can they Smite Spam?

Do they have enough melee specialist units to be a strong melee army? I mean, obviously not THIS edition, but in prior editions were they a good melee army?

As far as shooting, can Eldar pull off a gunline? Or are all their weapons too short range?

Does Eldar NEED to be mechanized, or can you pull off an Eldar foot horde?

Eldar have the best support psyker powers. They aren't that powerful offensively imho. They have so many ways to re-roll the test and mitigate perils.

1) Eldar are "strong" psychically, but cannot Smite spam, and generally aren't terribly offensive with their spells - consisting more of buffs and negatives. Note that Eldar do not have access to the amount of auras/zones that many armies have, so they make up for it with Warlock powers. Be aware that regardless of your psyker abilities, they are all the toughness of a neatly folded paper doll- being some of the weakest units in the game once targeted/attacked.

2) Melee is not the realm of Eldar in this edition. Shining Spears are your only particularly good unit, and they are only great when charging - so counter attacks can wipe them out with ease (and they die very easily to bolter fire generally). Banshees and Scorpions simply don't compete in this edition (doesn't mean you can't take them, but I get a strong 'tournament' vibe from your post...so skip them). Wraith units are tough in combat, but don't deal out a particularly nasty amount of damage (and they're slow). Anything that shouldn't be in combat which is caught in combat will disappear.

3) Eldar have strong ranged combat with a few units, but as you mentioned the overwhelming majority of their basic firepower is 12-18" making it very difficult. Dark Reapers are superb, and Fire Prisms are solid tank choices. Generally speaking range isn't a great Eldar asset with your lascannon (bright lance) being 36", and your heavy bolter (shuriken cannon) being 24", etc. This makes for bad situations when anything strong gets within your shooting range. If you don't kill it, you're toast.

4) Eldar mechanization is a good choice, because of the whole codex, the toughest nuts to crack are the Wave Serpents. They're a tough shell to hide your units in to avoid an alpha strike.

If you want to play Eldar and spam a few certain units, they're very strong. If you don't spam in a tournament-style, they're competent, but not overpowered.

They have pointy ears, an unhealthy penchante for the dead and will lose you friends.

Nuff said.

phydaux wrote:
I'm kicking around starting an Eldar army. I've never played Eldar before, and only played against them a couple of times when this one guy in at my FLAGS used to play Eldar, so I don't really know their strengths & weaknesses.

Is Eldar strong psychicly? Can they Smite Spam?

Do they have enough melee specialist units to be a strong melee army? I mean, obviously not THIS edition, but in prior editions were they a good melee army?

As far as shooting, can Eldar pull off a gunline? Or are all their weapons too short range?

Does Eldar NEED to be mechanized, or can you pull off an Eldar foot horde?

I mostly agree with Elbows.

PSYCHIC STUFF
Asuryani/craftworlders (i.e. "normal" eldar) don't really smite spam on their own. On their own, they're more about buffs and debuffs. That said, aeldari (i.e. craftworlders, harlequins and dark eldar) can generate a lot of mortal wounds. Executioner is a fantastic mortal wound generating power that Farseers can take, and Mind War isn't bad either. Shadowseers (a harlequin unit) has a couple of mortal wound generating powers of its own. Drukhari have an assortment of untis and stratagems that generate mortal wounds. So crafworlders won't smite spam, but you can branch out into a mortal wound generating list if you're so inclined.

MELEE
In previous edition,there have been times when our melee units were roughly as good as most other melee units. Our seer councils have been very good melee units off and on, though that's usually due to B+ killing power and A+ survivability rather than A+ killing power.

This edition, most of our melee units aren't actually killy, although that doesn't mean they're not useful. Most of our melee units this edition are more like lock down units. Howling banshees imposing a -1 to being hit and ignoring overwatch makes them surprisingly good at disrupting enemy lines even if they aren't very good at killing the enemy lines. Striking scorpions are tougher than they look and can deepstrike meaning they can assault those hard-to-reach units. Shining Spears are actually pretty good at killing things and also happen to make excellent use of most warlock/spirit seer buffs. I haven't tried out wraith blades. They seem difficult to deliver but solid enough to take a hit once they're there. I could see myself trying them out with our deepstrike stratagem and some sort of supporting psyker.

Warlock councils hit pretty hard, but they die way too easily for their points. They're also worse in almost every way than just taking a bunch of individual warlocks. I do not reccomend this unit unless you want to field a flavorful, mechanically interesting handicap.

Storm guardians are shaped and equipped like melee units. They are not melee units. They are a delivery system for two flamers or meltaguns.

Also, a lot of our HQs are pretty-good-but-not-amazing in close combat. You usually won't regret throwing a given Phoenix Lord or an autarch into close combat, but don't expect them to perform on the same level as, for instance, a Blood Angels character.

GUNLINES
Eldar can do them. I'd argue we probably don't do them quite as well certain other armies, but we do them well enough. Dark Reapers are still pretty good, although their new price tag has reigned them in a ton. A gunline will probably want to feature some of these as they bypass a lot of anti-gunline defenses (like to-hit penalties) and are effective against both vehicles and infantry. Combine them with a farseer to give deepstrikers a nasty welcome.

Our tanks get expensive fast, but they can form the core of durable gunline with surprisingly flexible firepower. FIre prisms are probably the go-to, but night spinners can be surprisingly useful with their ability to hit unseen targets. Falcons are overpriced and really have no niche these days. If you want a falcon, bring a wave serpent instead. War walkers are more durable than they look and bring some reasonably priced firepower to the table. I'd argue that the biggest issue with a pure-craftworlds gunline is that we don't really have cheap screening units. Guardians are cheap-ish (and can take heavy weapons), but they're not really the kind of unit you can throw away the same way you can some guardsmen or kabalite warriors.

MECHANIZED
Technically, we do not "need" to be mechanized. I'd argue that we're far less dependent on transports than our harlequin and dark eldar cousins. However, I'd also argue that comitting to going completely without transports means that you're going to want to focus on a pretty specific list of units for your army.

Without transports, most of our short-ranged gun units are only going to be useful to you if you deepstrike them. So things like fire dragons and wraith guard are going to cost you 1 or 3 CP to deepstrike 1 or 2 units if you want to bother with them at all. Things like guardians can work, but you'll be using them as screens (or deepstriking a blob of them) instead of as "drive bye" units. Our various deepstriking units and bikes become much more valuable in a "footdar" list as things like warp spiders, swooping hawks, scorpions, jetbikes, and shining spears will be able to move forward to engage the enemy or hit the enemy from an unexpected angle if they're coming to you. Dark reapers become even more appealing in this style of list too as most of our long-ranged weaponry is found on the transports you theoretically aren't using.

If you want to go really extreme with your footdar, I've seen people make hordes of space elves jogging across the table work, but such lists are probably more suited for friendly games than competitive play. You'll want some sort of morale-mitigation mechanic with such a list (like the overpriced Avatar of Khaine or the Iyanden craftworld trait), psykers with debuff powers to make all your small arms fire more effective, and lots of small, cheap units that you can lose without caring too much. A squad of 10 dire avengers is less effective in such a list than 2 squads of 5 dire avengers.

Not asked but I will mention this. Your Hemlock Wraith fighters are kingly. I would argue they are one the best units in the game.

Also while your volume of fire in a gun-line is weaker then some others your accuracy is only matched or surpassed by something like a Guiliman based gunline.

Also did you ask mortal wounds?

Hemlocks deal them.

Guide and Doom are disgusting when combo’d. Disgusting. And when the Guided squad is 20 Guardians dropping out of the Webway, you’ll lose friends.

If the Guardians drop out of the Webway, who casts Guide and Doom?

Farseers on jetbikes.

 Elbows wrote:
Farseers on jetbikes.

Or possibly a deepstriking farseer with the Shroud of Altansair.

In former edition, we had the Seer Council, a unit which was harder to crack than a coconut.
All you had to do is to have Fortune up.
But now, Fortune only gives a 5++ save rather than a 4++ before, and you need to make a psychic test.
This was one of the best cc units in the game.
Now Eldar has no real cc unit.
Better keep the enemy at arm's length and shoot it.

 wuestenfux wrote:
In former edition, we had the Seer Council, a unit which was harder to crack than a coconut.
All you had to do is to have Fortune up.
But now, Fortune only gives a 5++ save rather than a 4++ before, and you need to make a psychic test.
This was one of the best cc units in the game.
Now Eldar has no real cc unit.
Better keep the enemy at arm's length and shoot it.

Shining Spears say hello.

Eh, they're a one trick pony though. They have zero life-span in a protracted fight. You must charge with them in order to be effective. Also, despite some people screaming about how tough they are to kill, they're 2 wound Space Marines (with 4+ invuln...but only if you shoot them - again requiring you to NOT stay in combat).

I think they serve a purpose, but they're not a melee unit to get properly stuck into a combat which lasts more than one turn.

Melee unit: wraithblades?

That's the only strong and durable option you have. They're expensive, and slow...but you can make it work on occasion. I tend to think the concept of Wraithblade is garbage so I personally don't use them (they don't fit the fluff at all).

Why don't they fit the fluff?

To me, in the fluff and in their stats and history, wraith constructs have always been somewhat slow and lumbering (for Eldar at least). They've always had slow movement, and been on the lower end of initiative when that stat was available. They "see" the world through a somewhat vague filter of spirits (more or less). They used to cease operation when there were no more Eldar lives on the table - and were generally thought to be guided by Warlocks and Farseers (the Spiritseer being somewhat new by comparison). None of that makes me think they'd be suitable or useful running around with swords and axes...but then I don't much agree with "D-scythes" either, so ignore me.

The shield-bearing versions made sense, to me, but the dual weapons just screamed passion and vitality. Which feels very wrong on a unit that should be slow and purposeful (not referring to the old rule, which they did not have).

The ONLY problem with the whole ghost sight for normal wraith units is the Wraithlord.

NOW here is a model that can wreck most characters in HtH...no matter what the edition. Generally they could outfight most ancient Marine Dreadnoughts 1v1.

They could also move a good bit faster than their imperial counterparts....


Ofc they were supposed to be the spirit of some famed warrior and thus the better stats. (its a bigger machine as well with bigger guns....that helps too lol)

Yep, they're supposed to be the most powerful spirits/warriors - but even they did not have "swords" until relatively recently. The idea was much more the classic "big swingy fists" thing, much like Space Marine dreadnoughts.

Wraithlords have been as slow as Dreads since at least the start of 6th Ed. The exceptions being Dreads had more/better transport options, and early 6th didn't Wraithlords have mindlock?

6" and I4 for both, IIRC.

A Wraithlord and a Dread are very similar.

So what are some of the shooting units you'd take first and what are some that you wouldn't use?

I'm debating between Warp Spiders and Swooping Hawks for anti-infantry and Crimson Hunter or War Walker squadron for anti-tank.

Shining Spears are a one-hit wonder, hands down.
In opposition to this, the Seer Council was able to win each protracted fight.
Wraithguard are also not an ideal cc unit.
With D-scythes they can dish out a lot of damage via shooting.
Maybe its better to let them charge as the charging unit will certainly suffer.

 Kharneth wrote:
So what are some of the shooting units you'd take first and what are some that you wouldn't use?

I'm debating between Warp Spiders and Swooping Hawks for anti-infantry and Crimson Hunter or War Walker squadron for anti-tank.

I've run the Spiders/Hawks math, and if memory serves, spiders are slightly more effective against MEQs and heavier targets, while hawks are going to dice through lighter infantry and at a longer range. Spiders have much better defenses, but have to get much closer. So I'd recommend just picking the one you want with regards to what you want to shoot.

I think war walkers are really unsung heroes. They're fairly cheap platforms that are surprisingly durable and can outflank. Take them if you're short of points or want the slots. Crimson Hunters are great, too, though.

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 Kharneth wrote:
So what are some of the shooting units you'd take first and what are some that you wouldn't use?

I'm debating between Warp Spiders and Swooping Hawks for anti-infantry and Crimson Hunter or War Walker squadron for anti-tank.

I've run the Spiders/Hawks math, and if memory serves, spiders are slightly more effective against MEQs and heavier targets, while hawks are going to dice through lighter infantry and at a longer range. Spiders have much better defenses, but have to get much closer. So I'd recommend just picking the one you want with regards to what you want to shoot.

I think war walkers are really unsung heroes. They're fairly cheap platforms that are surprisingly durable and can outflank. Take them if you're short of points or want the slots. Crimson Hunters are great, too, though.

Doing the math just now, I have 7 Swooping Hawks outperforming 5 Warp Spiders (91 and 90 points) against both t3 and t4/5, excluding the possible AP for spiders. The hawks move faster and have longer range, which I feel like would work better with Alaitoc. But I fight a lot of MEQ and the spiders can also threaten vehicles whereas the lasblasters aren't going to do much against a vehicle. Idk, but then the Swooping Hawks can drop bombs, too. Warp Spiders are awesome and can even keep their -1 to hit when in close quarters with their special rule, but that won't protect them from chargers.

2 War Walkers with bright lances is 20pts more expensive than a Crimson Hunter and has basically the same firepower, though doesn't have -1 to hit by default. A unit of 3 with bright lances could be a great potential target for Guide whereas the Crimson Hunter kind of feels like it's depending on Guide. The Crimson Hunter is surely tougher, with -1 to be shot at, and more mobile (allowing me to protect my characters by being in the front lines), and can block melee units without risk.

But all 4 of these units are solid choices?

War Walkers are a great choice.
I use them as outflanking unit.
Three WW's with shuricannons can dish out a lot of damage.
I use them mainly against units in the backfield, e.g., Pathfinders and Devs.

I take Warp Spiders on occasion but they've never done anything remarkable. They can be a little tough to hit (because of the flicker jump thing), but two Strength 6 shots with arguably no AP is pretty crap most of the time. Their mobility is pretty good though, and it's nice that the codex allows them to deep strike.

Swooping Hawks, while fragile do put out loads of shots, and have one of the only 24" range infantry rifles in the Eldar army. The potential for mortal wounds is fun, but not reliable. They're the only "bucket o' dice" option I have in my Eldar army.

War Walkers can be good, but equipped with strong weapons they can become pricey and then quickly targetable. I just magnetized my weaponry for mine yesterday so I hope to field them more often. Good for a quick CP bump as well, running them as one model per datasheet when needed. They do have battle focus which means that armed with twin shuriken cannons they can really shift and get fire around on targets (again though, not an amazing weapon).

Crimson Hunter? Haven't used one, but I can't think of reason you'd take one over the Hemlock which is one of the best units in the codex from what I understand (don't own one of those either).

If I took War Walkers I don't think I'd give them Shuriken Cannons because I've got plenty of those elsewhere. They'd be very quick advancing and shooting those cannons, though. I was more thinking about using them with bright lances or star cannons. Then I worry about outflanking with them, giving them -1 to hit.

Is the Hemlock really all that good? 200 points for a d3 shot 2 damage gun and half a battle rune (plus smite)? I can see this thing inflicting 2d3 wounds to any target it gets within 16" of, but is there more to it?

The Hemlock is pretty much incredible.

1) It's a flyer, thus hard to hit...that's always good (and when you make it Alaitoc that's -2...)
2) It can go anywhere on the board in one movement phase.
3) It has 16" weapons which are extremely strong and automatically hit (any time you remove shooting as an issue for a unit this is massive)
4) It ignores wounds on a 6+ making it surprisingly durable for a fighter.
5) It can cast Smite or other powers, and can attempt to deny enemy psykers.
6) It applies a -2 Leadership penalty to units within 12" meaning they will suffer more from Morale tests (losing more models)
7) It's weapons are also friggin' Strength 12 and -4...meaning they'll zip through most things which don't have access to an invulnerable save.
8) All of this for something which costs about 20 points more than a Wraithlord...

Yes it's guns will "only" do max 12 damage (D3x2 per gun), but these are very easy to accomplish, you'll increase the damage a unit takes from Morale that turn - and you may hit them with Smite at the same time...it's an exceptionally strong option for the point cost. God help you if you were to run three of them together across the board. I don't even own one, but yeah it's damn good.