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Trying to wrap my brain around why Goonhammer is showing Aeldari is consistently winning alot more games than every other faction:





158k games tracked over the last 6 months and Aeldari has won 57% when almost everybody else is winning 40-50% of the time.

I've been scanning through the Aeldari PDF from Warhammer Community and I'm not seeing how they are winning so much. Most infantry have T3 (compared to T4 or T5 for many other armies), fire prisms have T9 (vs T11 for most Imperial vehicles). Shuriken weapons most of the time have BS2 which is nice, but the majority of them seem to have low strength and relatively weak AP.

Aside from the Fate Dice mechanics, I'm not really seeing what's giving them a huge edge. Sure they can shoot better than most, but their weapons overall seem to have less oomph to them when they do hit.

What am I missing?

The fate dice mechanic is very strong. And I say this as one of the last people who ever wrings their hands over "balance".

And then you couple it wraithguard, wraithnight heavy d cannons (oh no, the Dev wounds no longer transfer, whatever shall I do....), fire prisms, bright lances, etc.

Personally? Beyond my rangers & some misc shurikats on stuff I'm not hitting the opponent with anything that anyone in their right mind would consider to lack "oomph".
And in the case of my Rangers most of their shots are coming from Shroud Runners - so just plain volume fire.

Speaking as someone who plays eldar but not especially well, I think ccs has it right. Strands combined with high-damage DW is just a great way to remove big, tough threats from the table. Strands also lets you use your 4s and 5s to autopass clutch saves, so you can basically auto-ignore the first high-damage attack to hit something you care about during each enemy shooting phase.

And also our detachment rule is just "kill more betterer". So if you're like me and tend to favor units with a small number of quality attacks, they're going to perform that much better in general.

And of course there's the fact that our unit range is pretty large. So whatever the meta happens to be, we probably have units that can handle that meta well.

Night spinners have rules they should not have.

The Yncar while expensive can still kill an army almost by itself.

Phantasm is the best stratagem in the game.

Autark gives cp and in live operative.

Swooping Hawk and shadow spectres have good move.

And what everyone above have state.

Yncarne doesn't seem THAT busted.

Spicy shooting attack, if short ranged, and pretty good melee, and half damage is always good... But what makes it able to take a whole army on?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Yncarne doesn't seem THAT busted.

Spicy shooting attack, if short ranged, and pretty good melee, and half damage is always good... But what makes it able to take a whole army on?

Yncarne is very durable with T10, 4++, half damage, fate dice ensuring you pass a save whenever needed, and the mandatory Autarch feeding CP for save rerolls.

Yncarne's "teleport to where something dies" rule makes it the fastest unit in the game, you get to pseudo deep strike it anywhere on the board, but without the 9" minimum range from enemies restriction. Eldar shooting is good enough to kill a unit of choice to line up a good placement of Yncarne for an easy charge. You can do this every turn unless there are no well placed units (in which case Yncarne is naturally fast anyway). Also, killing a bodyguard unit with shooting would be enough for Yncarne to swoop in for an unfailable charge into the leader unit. Also also, if something dies in your turn like an objective holder, just teleport Yncarne onto the objective and wait it out until you score, then shoot something to teleport it back into action.

It's tough, has a good gun, can fight, can score, and is the only model in the game that can move that fast.

Yeah, the Yncarne is expensive but worth his points. He definitely has first dibs on your CP (for save rerolls) and fate dice (for auto-saves). You don't necessarily have to build around him, but he's a lot less good if you aren't taking steps to keep him from taking lascannon damage.

His teleport also tends to throw opponents off if they don't play against him regularly. It's easy to rush to finish off a squishy squad of fire dragons only to realize that, oops, you've just allowed the Yncarne to teleport and escape from the big guns you had pointed at him.

I think the Stats are a bit skewed because you are looking at the game since release when Eldar were comically busted.

If you run the stats from say 1st October 2023, Eldar are doing well (54.16% win rate) - but not quite so outstanding. Dropping to 52.02% if you ran it from 1st November.

Eldar are still probably there or thereabouts the best faction in the game but its not so outrageous anymore versus other high performers.

There are a few reasons for the numbers being so high. Historical power is one. Those numbers will take into account games before Eldar took some of their nerfs, other armies were given buffs and also before any other Codex was released. While it's true that the basic Eldar statline is T3 and shuriken weapons aren't really that great, those points are fairly irrelevant to the power of the army because most Eldar armies don't rely on their T3 infantry or shuriken weapons to win. There are plenty of tougher units and better weapons to choose from. I'm pretty sure you can easily build an Eldar army with so few shuriken weapons you can basically ignore them when planning your tactics and still do well. Eldar also have the best army rule and arguably the best detachment rule in the game right now. They also have a lot of ways to manipulate their Fate dice to improve the bad rolls. The detachment rule is especially good in an army that takes a lot of small units, often with a single weapon that does most of the damage. Getting a single re-roll on your Pulse Laser when it's the only weapon you care about in the unit is much more powerful than, say, a single re-roll on an entire unit of Crisis Suits.

I think the reason Eldar is still doing well after all their nerfs is due to the power of their army and detachment rule. The reason they were so laughably broken at launch was because those factors combined with a couple of woefully undercosted units and the Devastating Wounds mechanic to basically break the game. Those issues have been reduced quite a bit since launch, but the core power still remains. The depth of undercosted unit in their Index is also now becoming apparent, as each nerf to specific units seems to just uncover another really good unit that wasn't taken because the recently nerfed option was just better than it.

Aeldari have some incredibly efficient datasheets and some very powerful rules (like the Fate dice) that combine into an army that is frankly overtuned despite multiple nerfs. The fate dice by themselves aren't the problem; Sisters have a similar mechanic and while they are strong they aren't dominating and warping the metagame the way the pointy-eared bois have. I think there's a good comparison between Aeldari and Sisters. The big difference is that Sisters' units and stratagems are nowhere near as efficient as the Aeldari's- they don't hand out Dev Wounds like candy, and they don't have anything like Phantasm that can render any attack against them futile. Sisters also don't have anything like the two Avatars; the Vahl-Paragon brick is a pale shadow of their awesome power. And Night Spinners are just so much better than Exorcists for the points it's not even funny.

As for how to fix the problem, I'm not even sure anymore. Points increases can only do so much, and other adjustments have proven to just end up becoming like a game of whack-a-mole as they correct one thing and then another broken build rears its head.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Aeldari have some incredibly efficient datasheets and some very powerful rules (like the Fate dice) that combine into an army that is frankly overtuned despite multiple nerfs. The fate dice by themselves aren't the problem; Sisters have a similar mechanic and while they are strong they aren't dominating and warping the metagame the way the pointy-eared bois have.

I think that misunderstands the massive difference between Fate dice and Miracle dice. As you say, Eldar datasheets are better, which contributes to Eldar being very powerful. However, the fact you get all your Fate dice at the start of the game is a massive advantage for Eldar, even if the total number of dice both armies get is roughly similar. Eldar can properly plan ahead and don't have to worry about having no useful dice on that one crucial turn. They also have many more weapons with Devastating Wounds, which makes any 6 much more valuable to them and also skews the power level of the rule because a 6 isn't just an auto-wound in the same way a 5+ is for Sisters, it's also pushing guaranteed damage through, which means that Fate dice can't be nullified by the opponent passing a save, for example.

Slipspace wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Aeldari have some incredibly efficient datasheets and some very powerful rules (like the Fate dice) that combine into an army that is frankly overtuned despite multiple nerfs. The fate dice by themselves aren't the problem; Sisters have a similar mechanic and while they are strong they aren't dominating and warping the metagame the way the pointy-eared bois have.

I think that misunderstands the massive difference between Fate dice and Miracle dice. As you say, Eldar datasheets are better, which contributes to Eldar being very powerful. However, the fact you get all your Fate dice at the start of the game is a massive advantage for Eldar, even if the total number of dice both armies get is roughly similar. Eldar can properly plan ahead and don't have to worry about having no useful dice on that one crucial turn. They also have many more weapons with Devastating Wounds, which makes any 6 much more valuable to them and also skews the power level of the rule because a 6 isn't just an auto-wound in the same way a 5+ is for Sisters, it's also pushing guaranteed damage through, which means that Fate dice can't be nullified by the opponent passing a save, for example.

Eldar can ALSO re-roll thier initial fate dice if they aren't happy with the starting #s.
And keep doing it.
Yeah, sure I might drop down a few dice. But if most of my pool is 4+.....
Then, on top of that? Generic Farseers can alter the # on a Fate dice being used within 12" to be a 6.
So guess what happens to any low Fate dice.