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What are some good non-FW fast attack option for eldar? Seems vipers have gone out of favor, potentially swooping hawks and warp spiders have come into favor, thoughts?

Vypers aren't great. Ok, but not great.

Swooping Hawks got a bit of a buff in 6th, but they're still terrible, worse than Vypers most certainly.

I still can't find a use for Shining Spears that justifies their points cost, although if someone else has, I'd be happy to learn.

Warp Spiders seem to be the best way to go really, but they're not a fantastic unit by any means.

So basically no FA option is optimal from a competitive standpoint?

Not really, Warp Spiders can do ok but when coming from a competitive standpoint you can argue that those points would be better spent elsewhere.

 Rampage wrote:
Not really, Warp Spiders can do ok but when coming from a competitive standpoint you can argue that those points would be better spent elsewhere.

I think that depends on your meta. Warp spiders do work well in some situations and they are a lot of fun.

 captain collius wrote:

 Rampage wrote:
Not really, Warp Spiders can do ok but when coming from a competitive standpoint you can argue that those points would be better spent elsewhere.

I think that depends on your meta. Warp spiders do work well in some situations and they are a lot of fun.

Yeah, they eat light vehicles, even more so now that AP- doesn't effect it, and now that Haywire is really useful and you hit vehicles on 3s at worst they can even bring down larger vehicles too. But I'm not seeing too many vehicles around any more. The ones that I do see tend to be fliers which you can't plant haywire on and need 6s to hit and things like Manticores which are buried at the back of your opponents army.

Don't swooping hawks have an exarch power that lets you always hit vehicles on a 4+ with haywaire grenades?
That should put paid to those damn fliers...

Having said that, I really like the Warp spiders' JSJ ability, even if it is a bit short-ranged.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Don't swooping hawks have an exarch power that lets you always hit vehicles on a 4+ with haywaire grenades?
That should put paid to those damn fliers...

Having said that, I really like the Warp spiders' JSJ ability, even if it is a bit short-ranged.

Yes, but it's pointless, seeing as now if you can hit a vehicle at worst you'll be hitting it on a 3+, so why pay for an Exarch and a power when it's useless, and I'm pretty certain that you still can't hit flyers.

Additionally, I'm not even sure that Warp Spiders can JSJ anymore.

Warp Spiders are the best. They have excellent S6 Firepower, able to churn out plenty of S6 shots. With the addition of Hull Points, S6 Has become an excellent milestone, as it allows you to shred a lot of vehicles. Spiders can also bring said firepower to pretty much anywhere on the battlefield thanks to their speed and ability to Deep Strike. This gives them an advantage over other S6-contenders, such as War Walkers (although the Warp Spider's cost is a reason to not take them).

Swooping Hawks, thanks to Haywire, have recieved a significant boost. However, they still remain unable to capitalise on this, due to inability to charge when DS-ing and low durability. Hence, they're usually a waste of points.

 Rampage wrote:

I still can't find a use for Shining Spears that justifies their points cost, although if someone else has, I'd be happy to learn.

Shining spears usually make short work of Monstrous Creatures thanks to their high S low AP weapons and a high S power weapon charge. Unfortunately, they are still over-priced as this seems to be their only use as they still struggle with even light vehicles due to their low number of shots. With a squad of 5, any protracted combat is a bad idea so the expensive hit-and-run is mandatory.

 The Shadow wrote:
Warp Spiders are the best. They have excellent S6 Firepower, able to churn out plenty of S6 shots. With the addition of Hull Points, S6 Has become an excellent milestone, as it allows you to shred a lot of vehicles. Spiders can also bring said firepower to pretty much anywhere on the battlefield thanks to their speed and ability to Deep Strike. This gives them an advantage over other S6-contenders, such as War Walkers (although the Warp Spider's cost is a reason to not take them).

Swooping Hawks, thanks to Haywire, have recieved a significant boost. However, they still remain unable to capitalise on this, due to inability to charge when DS-ing and low durability. Hence, they're usually a waste of points.

Sorry, how many S6 shots does an individual Warp Spider get a turn? And how many points does an individual Warp Spider cost?

You say that with the inclusion of Hull Points, S6 has become much more effective against vehicles, and it has. With Warp Spiders it is also helped by the fact that AP- no longer has a negative effect when you do actually penetrate. But you're also assuming that we're going to see the same number of vehicles that we did under 5th in 6th, and with the inclusion of hull points, we're probably not. Rhinos and Razorbacks are quickly falling out of favour, so are things like Vypers, so although Warp Spiders may be better at killing vehicles than they've ever been, how many vehicles are we actually going to see. The fact is we don't know, but it seems likely with the inclusion of hull points non-flying vehicles are likely to see a decrease in use.

So lets say you take war walkers and warp spiders, would you kits the war walkers with scatter lasers even with the warp spiders or would you change them walkers to a different gun, basically is there ever enough st 6?

Swooping hawks got another boost for their haywire grenades with the latest FAQs (depending on if you read the ruling for intercept on Page 1 or the one on Page 2) as the new version says they count any non-walkers as having WS0 so would auto hit.

Their survivability still isn't great though so could be a struggle getting them near enough to a vehicle to assualt it.

So basically wait til hopefully next year for a new codex and better options?

Can Haywire be thrown?
Deep strike next to the vehicle, and lob one over the wall on the turn you land.
Next turn, attack.

 Quinthalas wrote:
So basically no FA option is optimal from a competitive standpoint?

That's true.

Warp Spiders are the only option. One can do crazy things with them. Once, I battled Nids and my full squad of Warp Spiders moved into the swarm when it reached my front ranks. They shot the Warriors further back in the swarm and then (at the end of the shooting phase) moved into a ruin behind the swarm. My opponent got nuts.

 Quinthalas wrote:
So basically wait til hopefully next year for a new codex and better options?

Check out IA 11 and the Corsairs. Very mobile, geared towards 6th points-wise, and some great modeling possibilities. The fluff is nice and the opportunities presented for great tactical battles will hold you over til the next codex brings Eldar back in line with the new rules and seeming decrease in other armies troop costs.

IA 11 is FW, which he said he didn't want to use.

Hawks are AWESOME now. Intercept now autohits non-walker vehicles and that means a 5 man squad will wreck a Land Raider every turn if they get the charge.

Put a suicide melta gun squad ( I can't remember their name) in a transport and zap the crap out your enemy's armor. I saw an IG player have a fit when his entire Heavy Support section in his army got toasted in two turns by the buggers. They are not to be messed with.

The best with Warp Spiders is to make a squad of 5-6 + exarch with dual-spinners and hit & run if you have the points to spare.

A full squad will have too big of a footprint and will make deep strike tricky.

This will churn out 16 S6 shots per turn.

Don't forget you can still use your assault move after Deep Striking.

Deep Strike-Shoot-Move away/spread to prevent retaliation from templates and blast weapons.

As for the hit & run if you get charged and survive (decent save afterall) back away at the end of assault. Move out to max range shoot up and move further to be at the limit of charge range.

 ENOZONE wrote:
Put a suicide melta gun squad ( I can't remember their name) in a transport and zap the crap out your enemy's armor. I saw an IG player have a fit when his entire Heavy Support section in his army got toasted in two turns by the buggers. They are not to be messed with.

Fire Dragons, but they're Elites choice.

Wow, I don't understand the complaints I am seeing here. Spiders and Vypers are pure ace! I agree that Hawks could be better such as assault after DS or hitting/shooting fliers with buffs.

Vypers are great because they are mobile. One of my peeves about my warwalkers is how static they are. Eldar are not meant to be static. If you stop, you die. Plus with the Jink rule, vypers only got better. I like being able to give some S6 cover fire to my DA squads with a vyper or two.

However, IMO the WarpSpiders are the true stars of FA. 3+ AS with feth loads of S6 shooting and teleport make them a nightmare to fight. It gives Eldar durable infantry with weapon platform that deal with tanks, monsters and infantry. So far 6th ed is all about the shooty, and our FA has plenty of S6 that throw down range.

Maybe I am the weird one, but I can not help but notice how often Eldar threads devolve in to how crappy we are. We are not that bad. So, suit up and go kill some Mon-Keigh!

To be frank, I don't come from bleeding-edge competitive meta environment, so I have no idea how my list would perform against some kind of Vendetta spam or a cheesy Space Wolves list.

But I do know that my Eldar have been performing far better in 6th edition than in 5th. Mainly playing against Orks and vanilla Marines, both with excellent lists, I've been able to keep them at bay with volleys of S6 shooting and take and contest objectives with impunity.

In my 1750 list, I use 2 squads of Warp Spiders, 6 each and Vypers for FA and two Prisms and War walker squad for HS. Add in a Dragon Serpent for elite and a few jetbike squads and a squad of Rangers for troops and that's my list. And let me tell you those Warp Spiders sure can do crazy stuff.

Some people in this discussion seem to think Spiders are made to kill light tanks. Which is wrong, because S6 shooting is made specifically to decimate light infantry. With 14 S6 shots for cca 150 points, a 3+ AS and a move of 15 - 30 inches a turn, what exactly could you possibly spend the points for in an Eldar army that's more useful than that? Plus, if you're lucky, they can score, which makes them absurdly spectacular in certain games.

Hawks are decent if the other guy's got skimmers and no flyers (so if you're facing another Eldar army, a Tau army, or a speeder-heavy Marine army, basically), but they're highly situational. Shining Spears are horribly, horribly overpriced, Warp Spiders are kind of useful but can't really do enough damage to justify their cost, and Vypers are no longer worth it in these new days of Skyfire and Intercept. If you did consider Forge World units the Wasp is probably the way to go, since it means you get more War Walkers but these ones have jet packs.

My apologies! I missed the NO FW part of the first post. Just got Corsairs on the brain. Still... worth the look if you're gonna spend money on something. Other than that I think everyone's covered the rest.

I'm missing something...

 AnomanderRake wrote:
... Vypers are no longer worth it in these new days of Skyfire and Intercept.

How do Skyfire and Intercept affect Vypers?
They're not fliers. Are they used for the same role as quad-guns?

Wasps are a mixed blessing, Mr Rake, since you need to ally with Corsairs to get BS4 pilots. For Craftworlders they come cheaper, but only get BS3.
Hornets are, essentially, everything Vypers should be. Scout, AV+1/+1/+0, extra real gun, and not open topped. The down-side is that you pay a one-time fee of about 15 points for BS4 (the weapons aren't more expensive).
That said, Vypers never were good and still aren't, even if their main weapon is turreted and not fixed position.

Regardless, my army lists usually end up heavy on Fast Attack, but I use Forge World. If I don't, then Fast Attack would end up with a summary execution. Aside from Warp Spiders, which I take in units of 2x7 or 1x10, it's all pretty crap.
Nothing else in Fast Attack does anything that isn't done better by either Elite or Heavy Support, and considering the costs associated with a 3,5ed codex* you can't afford not to pick the best possible.
Still, if you ignore the gaping maw of a pitfall that are Shining Spears, Fast Attack isn't the worst section in the Eldar codex.

* If you've got a 3rd edition codex you can compare them. Aside from obvious edition updates (dedicated transports), there's only a rare few things that stand out. Avatar is no longer as useless and Fire Dragons got 1 point cheaper was essentially all I spotted the first time I went through the old codex.