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I'm looking to start a new army and I'm considering craftworlds but know very little. Where should I start?

Well do you care about lore or are you only worrying about the rules?

Altioc is the strongest by far with a blanket -1 to hit.

Otherwise look at what each craft world specializes in and compare it with what you want to run.

I think the apocalypse box is a very good place to start, I saw it for £80 on a 3rd party website which is less than half price of the kits individually. They're not hyper competitive units but they're good enough for pick up games.
One word of warning, if you want plastic kits eldar are quite limited but you can still easily build forces of just plastic but if you want to expand beyond that you will have to start using resin. The sculpts are mostly nice but require more work than plastic to look their best.

Hey buddy.

The sugested appocalypse box is cheap but theres a reason for that. It gives very little utility.

As with any army you will need troops to field a brigade in order to play an average matched game. Also you will meed some psychic characters. Sadly none of the box sets give you any apart from the following:

https://www.games-workshop.com/Craftworlds-Army-2017#share

At £107 this is great value for money if you look strictly at GW and their swingy pricing. If you can get some discount even better.

If you were serious id actualy sugest picking up 2 of those.

You get guardians wave serpents war walkers seers plus some elite wraiths to bolster your force. I think its a great starting point to which you can add a couple more units and have a good starting army. Some bikes, wave serpents, wraiths and war walkers are solid additions that will give good account of themselves.

You ca go to ebay and pick up some Dire Avengers, rangers more guardians. Caveat being as mentioned apart from Dire Avengers and guardians. All of our infantry is Finecast which i would never recomend as a product with good concience to anyone. This from personal experiance.

To summarise, i would recomend getting at least 3 units of troops plus some hq to start with and get a feel for the game. Farseer(or two) is a must have everything else is fairly optional. Eldrad is our plastic named character farseer who is a beatiful sculpt, can be used as a normal farseer or can be played as named special character if you play Ulthwe for your detatchement army.

How you go about getting these is entirely up to you. Ebay is a good place to start if you want you $$ to stretch and i always recomend hunting for models on sprues (currently a lot of wraith avaialble cheap because people sell the start collecting and appocalypse boxes in pieces) if you can get some cyrrebt sculpt rangers in metal on ebay id sugest getting tjose over fine cast. They are very good troop choice.

The eldar theoreticaly have multiple styles of play and you can go troop spamy guardian bombs or more mechanised army. The book internal balance is overshadowed by the eldar flier units( crimson hunter exarch) which are miles better than other things so if you want competative then those will sadly be an auto take. If you dont care much for that than we have a decent selection.

Hope this answers some questions.
Shout if you after any specific information.

It largely depends on whether you want to be competitive with Eldar or you're happy with fluffy builds. There's also the factor of whether you want to work with finecast or even resort to looking for metal models on eBay.

I wouldn't recommend any of the boxsets for Eldar as Wraith units just aren't good and you'd be gimping yourself from the start of the game as they just don't do enough. That being said, the boxsets like the ones linked by others are good value for money and can get you some good units but you're paying a tax for them.

If you wanted to go for a good army (and competitive) from the get go I'd consider 2-3 Crimson Hunters/Hemlock boxes, a couple of boxes of Eldar Rangers, 2-3 Farseer Skyrunners, 2-3 Wave Serpents and a box or two of Dark Reapers. This gives you the base for an Air Wing, Battalion and a potential Spearhead for you to get a 2k list that will compete at tournaments.

Phoenix Rising has just come out so you may want to wait a little bit as the book may shake the "standard" Craftworlds list up.

If you're not looking to get competitive immediately, I'd recommend a "one box" approach.

See something you like? Get a box. Don't get two.

The exceptions being Troops (Guardians, Dire Avengers, Rangers) and Transports (Wave Serpents and maybe Falcons).

And I mean Box, not Unit.

Reason being, this keeps you from overinvesting in a single choice/style. By only getting one box, you make a very diverse force with different answers to different problems. It also preempts both the spam and deathstar antipatterns. I find games more fun playing more diverse lists, and almost all your opponents will find it more fun, too. And, with the diversity, you're less likely to wind up being too strong/too weak for your local meta.

And we're Craftworlders - we're all about using the right tool for the right job. Overwhelming the opponent with one tool is for lesser races. And overwhelming the opponent with generalists is so uncultured.

As for balance, things change. By time you have a 2k points force assembled and painted, what's good and what's bad will change. So even if you did aim to be competitive from day 1, what's competitive today is likely junk tomorrow. By having a diverse force, you'll already have a starter subset of what will be competitive in the future. So starting casual is likely to result in more of a leg up, competitively, when you get there than starting competitively.

So find units you like. Get them. And repeat. Just make sure you have 3+ troops and 2+ HQs. And, ideally, avoid getting too much of any one other "slot" (FA, Elite, HS, Flyer, etc).

I still think the apocalypse box has value on the tabletop, I run my wraithlords as assault units and they do well for me. They are often prioritised over stuff like fire prisms because if they can reach something they are pretty nasty in combat. Being toughness 8 helps against assault cannons etc which are popular weapons. Giving them a 5++ visa the ynarri power is something I'm looking to do once I've got round to painting up the ynarri characters.
As for the wraiths, they're all decent choices and you get the chance to build out three loadouts to give you flexibility.
Obviously this box needs expanding on to make a viable force but it is very cheap and can bulk out a starting force quite well.

Thanks for all the advice. This is my third army as I run Tyranids and Blood Angels. Looking to be competitive but had no clue what models were worth buying. Think of starting with wave serpents and farseers/ Eldrad for sure because I like the models. Wraith knights look cool and I would like to buy one to paint but 400+ point cost doesn't seem worth putting in a list especially if they didn't even get mentioned above. Just still undetermined on troop choice (gaurdians or rangers) and elites. I usually play against a 3 Knight army, a Deathgaurd with Morty army or a Tau with commanders drones and riptides.

If you're going competitive ignore my previous advice! I was thinking about the quality of the kits primarily.

akillys wrote:
Thanks for all the advice. This is my third army as I run Tyranids and Blood Angels. Looking to be competitive but had no clue what models were worth buying. Think of starting with wave serpents and farseers/ Eldrad for sure because I like the models. Wraith knights look cool and I would like to buy one to paint but 400+ point cost doesn't seem worth putting in a list especially if they didn't even get mentioned above. Just still undetermined on troop choice (gaurdians or rangers) and elites. I usually play against a 3 Knight army, a Deathgaurd with Morty army or a Tau with commanders drones and riptides.

If you're going for a competitive army then you'll want to be bringing Rangers as your troops choices to fill Alaitoc battalions, they're -2 to hit with their cloaks and Alaitoc, with +2 to cover, and if that isn't good enough they have a 1CP strat that forces your opponent to only hit them on 6s. In the current meta (let's face it, Iron Hands are dominating with the iron stone etc), snipers are excellent and 60 pts for 5 shots is great value.

You may consider a Guardian bomb, but they're situational and need the psychic support to actually kill things reliably. If you are considering them, buy two boxes and make a 20 strong squad and go to town.

Dire Avengers I rate quite highly but place them somewhere in between the two other choices, Psychic Awakening gives the Exarch access to AP -3 catapults and in an MSU squad that is 1/3 of your shots at a nasty AP. Good for filling battalions or screening should you need to do it.

The Wraithknight isn't worth it at all, but if you do get one, magnetise it and enjoy!

 Argive wrote:
Hey buddy.

The sugested appocalypse box is cheap but theres a reason for that. It gives very little utility.

As with any army you will need troops to field a brigade in order to play an average matched game. Also you will meed some psychic characters. Sadly none of the box sets give you any apart from the following:

https://www.games-workshop.com/Craftworlds-Army-2017#share

At £107 this is great value for money if you look strictly at GW and their swingy pricing. If you can get some discount even better.

If you were serious id actualy sugest picking up 2 of those.

You get guardians wave serpents war walkers seers plus some elite wraiths to bolster your force. I think its a great starting point to which you can add a couple more units and have a good starting army. Some bikes, wave serpents, wraiths and war walkers are solid additions that will give good account of themselves.

You ca go to ebay and pick up some Dire Avengers, rangers more guardians. Caveat being as mentioned apart from Dire Avengers and guardians. All of our infantry is Finecast which i would never recomend as a product with good concience to anyone. This from personal experiance.

To summarise, i would recomend getting at least 3 units of troops plus some hq to start with and get a feel for the game. Farseer(or two) is a must have everything else is fairly optional. Eldrad is our plastic named character farseer who is a beatiful sculpt, can be used as a normal farseer or can be played as named special character if you play Ulthwe for your detatchement army.

How you go about getting these is entirely up to you. Ebay is a good place to start if you want you $$ to stretch and i always recomend hunting for models on sprues (currently a lot of wraith avaialble cheap because people sell the start collecting and appocalypse boxes in pieces) if you can get some cyrrebt sculpt rangers in metal on ebay id sugest getting tjose over fine cast. They are very good troop choice.

The eldar theoreticaly have multiple styles of play and you can go troop spamy guardian bombs or more mechanised army. The book internal balance is overshadowed by the eldar flier units( crimson hunter exarch) which are miles better than other things so if you want competative then those will sadly be an auto take. If you dont care much for that than we have a decent selection.

Hope this answers some questions.
Shout if you after any specific information.

The price is the same as a start collecting and the serpent and guardians seperately though. You could just go for a start collecting plus a serpent and guardians and split this into two/three purchases (you wouldnt lose any money as far as I know).

As others have mentioned, there are barely any boxes for non wraith units. if you are planning on doing any craftworld except Iyanden you will need to buy much stuff individually :(

https://www.40kstats.com/top-4s

Hold control+r "Craftworld" and "Alaitoc" and "Aeldari" start from the bottom and find every unique list. That gives you a rough idea of what has been viable in competitive 40k.

Caveat being the meta shifts with new rules and we recently had a small rules updates and craftworlders are figuring out optimum builds. CHE still seems like the top dog competative though.

The lists won't change that much based on what has been shown so far on the new book so don't worry, too much.

OP, do you want to soup your army for complete optimisation or are you sticking purely with Craftworlds?

Note that most Eldar buffs don't depend on the models' Craftworld, so an Ulthwe Farseer can help an Alaitoc Ranger with his psychic powers. As a result it's pretty easy to mix and match Craftworlds across detachments, but look out for those few models that do care about Craftworld.

 Saber wrote:
Note that most Eldar buffs don't depend on the models' Craftworld, so an Ulthwe Farseer can help an Alaitoc Ranger with his psychic powers. As a result it's pretty easy to mix and match Craftworlds across detachments, but look out for those few models that do care about Craftworld.

And strategems. Forewarned being one that tripped me up! Lol

Also, most of our special characters do *not* get any Craftworld Attribute, and have no <Craftworld> rule.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:

If you wanted to go for a good army (and competitive) from the get go I'd consider 2-3 Crimson Hunters/Hemlock boxes, a couple of boxes of Eldar Rangers, 2-3 Farseer Skyrunners, 2-3 Wave Serpents and a box or two of Dark Reapers. This gives you the base for an Air Wing, Battalion and a potential Spearhead for you to get a 2k list that will compete at tournaments.

Phoenix Rising has just come out so you may want to wait a little bit as the book may shake the "standard" Craftworlds list up.

This right here is good advice. These are the strongest units Eldar has to offer and that's not likely to change anytime soon.

I am very much in the camp of buy just a few things at a time when you are first starting so that you won't become overwelmed. Once you have a lot more experience under your belt you can start buying units en masse to fill out the rest of your army.

Honestly if you are just starting out I would recommend you just buy a box of guardians and figure out what paint scheme you actually enjoy painting. It's one thing to like a color scheme such as Iyanden, but if you hate painting layer after layer of yellow to achieve the beautiful results you see on the box, then it's not a good idea to pick that as your army wide scheme. As far as painting difficulty goes I'd say Ulthwe and Saim-hann are very easy. Biel-tan and Alaitoc are moderate depending on how close you stick to the box. And then Iyanden would be the toughest since getting that solid yet smooth yellow coat takes a lot of patience. (I know yellow contrast paint exists, but trust me, a year from now when you become a better painter you're going to wish you didn't just rush painting 2000 points of guys. Take your time and make each unit a new learning experience) And of course you can always just make your own color scheme, but if you are new to the hobby then I highly recommend picking a color scheme that has a lot of examples in the book like these.

Once you've figured out your color scheme I would start increasing slowly. First pick up another box of guardians and 2 boxes of rangers. As well as a Farseer Skyrunner and a Warlock Skyrunner. Congrats! You now have enough units to field a Battalion and these units are basically the foundation of every single competitive Eldar list. I don't know how competitive your local scene is but if it's competitive then you have a great basis to start building a competitive army to deal with other competitive lists most people will be bringing. And if your local scene is more casual, no problem! If that's the case then just buy whatever you want from here and you're almost guaranteed to have a moderately strong list that will perform well without cheesing your opponent off the board and becoming know as "that guy".

This all factors out to about ~$200 depending on where you're buying from and can get even cheaper if you seek out Ebay deals.

Oh and side note, don't pick a color scheme just for the rules. Rules change on a whim, your 2000 point armies paint job doesn't. So unless you want to strip your guys every time a new codex comes out, pick a color scheme that you love so much that you don't give a damn how bad their rules are, they just look so damn cool!

I hope this helps!

Excellent advise from you all and thanks again. I'll get on battlescribe and build a more complete list once I have saved up some funds. As of right now with out looking too close at point im thinkingesomething along the lines of
HQ
Farseer
Farseer(couldn't find Eldrad in battlescribe)

Troops
Rangers
Rangers
Rangers

Flyers
2 crimson hunters

Dedicated Transport
2 wave serpents

Without changing any loadouts and running each unit stock it puts me at 1436.

My group plays between 1600 and 2000 points. We are also very relaxed and don't play WYSIWYG. So I can build what I think lools cool on units and run it how I want. As for my painting skills I'm not too shabby and tend to paint how I feel not what lore dictates. So I guess when I say competitive I mean an army that wont get tables by knights after the second round

Some painting examples

A few more

akillys wrote:
Excellent advise from you all and thanks again. I'll get on battlescribe and build a more complete list once I have saved up some funds. As of right now with out looking too close at point im thinkingesomething along the lines of
HQ
Farseer
Farseer(couldn't find Eldrad in battlescribe)

Troops
Rangers
Rangers
Rangers

Flyers
2 crimson hunters

Dedicated Transport
2 wave serpents

Without changing any loadouts and running each unit stock it puts me at 1436.

My group plays between 1600 and 2000 points. We are also very relaxed and don't play WYSIWYG. So I can build what I think lools cool on units and run it how I want. As for my painting skills I'm not too shabby and tend to paint how I feel not what lore dictates. So I guess when I say competitive I mean an army that wont get tables by knights after the second round

Eldrad becomes available when you pick ulthwe craftworld trait for the detatchement.

Prince Yriel is locked Iyanden

Illic nightspear is locked to alitoic



Good luck with your eldar. Sounds like an alright starting point.

akillys wrote:
Excellent advise from you all and thanks again. I'll get on battlescribe and build a more complete list once I have saved up some funds. As of right now with out looking too close at point im thinkingesomething along the lines of
HQ
Farseer
Farseer(couldn't find Eldrad in battlescribe)

Troops
Rangers
Rangers
Rangers

Flyers
2 crimson hunters

Dedicated Transport
2 wave serpents

Without changing any loadouts and running each unit stock it puts me at 1436.

My group plays between 1600 and 2000 points. We are also very relaxed and don't play WYSIWYG. So I can build what I think lools cool on units and run it how I want. As for my painting skills I'm not too shabby and tend to paint how I feel not what lore dictates. So I guess when I say competitive I mean an army that wont get tables by knights after the second round

I think you could change the Crimson Hunters and make them exarchs with starcannons, they're super killy and that 2+ BS is fantastic. Give the wave serpents vectored engines for -1 to hit when they advance. You're also lacking anti-tank outside of the crimson hunters and they'll go down quickly as they're the number one target in the list so consider Dark Reapers. Mount the farseers on skyrunners and that's a good start!

Sweet. Thabks for more info. Found Eldrad and Switched the crimson hunters for exarchs. Also realized that I still had the knight in the list so instead of 1400 some pints the list was close to 1000.one question I now have is what vehicle honors, and equipment would be good to put on wave serpents and exarchs. I do have a shadowsword that I run with my nids. Should/can I run it with craftworld?