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As my sig suggests, Eldar and Marines are my 40k armies, though with 6th edition I've pretty much been solely playing Eldar. It seems like I'm going to have to settle in for a long wait for a GW eldar flyer, so I was thinking of getting an allied one. Forgeworld is only allowed in tourney play at my FLGS, so picking up one of their Eldar flyers would provide limited use.

Firstly, I hate the current SM flyer. I think it's ugly and I really want to have nothing to do with it. At the same time, I don't want to buy a Dark Eldar force, to unlock their flyer. So I'm in a bit of a bind on which one to grab. From those more experienced with each type, which would you suggest is better game wise?

The Eldar player at my FLGS has Dark Eldar allies to unlock their flyer. His Dark Eldar are painted up to match the Craftworld he uses. And the flyer is actually heavily converted to look like something regular Eldar use.

Its actually quite amazing and gives you the ability to run it without feeling like you are selling out to another codex.

If you don't want to use DE infantry miniatures and you dislike the stormtalon, you have a few options:
- you could use a converted DE flyer, as already suggested, or even the eldar FW flyers (proxying for the DE ones); you could field the bare minimum 1 troop and 1 HQ of DE using Eldar (or even better, FW Eldar Corsairs) miniatures as proxies (DA or corsairs with warrior rules, or HB as wyches, for example).
- you could use third party miniatures (like the wonderful absolutely-not-a-stormtalon form puppetswar: http://puppetswar.com/product.php?id_product=160) as SM flyers, if your FLGS doesn't frown upon them (maybe you could convert it with SM pilots from ground vehicles, weapons and iconography to get an appropriate percentage of GW parts).

Forgeworld stuff is only allowed in tourney play, but not in friendly games? That's really weird.

You could do a counts-as Dark Eldar ally. Use Guardians as counts-as Dark Eldar Warriors, and an Autarch counts-as Archon. Then just paint up the DE flyer however you like; there are some ways to convert it to look more Eldar-like. If you're feeling more inspired, you could even convert (or use the Forgeworld models) the allies to corsairs!

Wow! How did I miss that puppets war light fighter!
I like that it has some Imperial navy aesthetic to it. It would look natural escorting a valk or vulture. Anyway, You could allie with another space marine chapter to get a stormraven, or wait for the anticipated DA flyer?

 Grey Templar wrote:
The Eldar player at my FLGS has Dark Eldar allies to unlock their flyer. His Dark Eldar are painted up to match the Craftworld he uses. And the flyer is actually heavily converted to look like something regular Eldar use.

Its actually quite amazing and gives you the ability to run it without feeling like you are selling out to another codex.

Yo!

(Thanks for the compliments!)

Game-wise, I've got a small Dark Eldar force and my Razorwing performs quite well; I haven't tried it allied with my Craftworld Eldar but I could see situations where it'd be helpful.

The other thing you might consider trying is Imperial Guard, for allied flyers you'd get three in one slot and Valkyries/Vendettas are actually pretty darned good as flyers go (solid armor, decent firepower, and transport capacity). It's a bit of a challenge to work into the background, but I could certainly see an alliance of convenience or a particularly desperate Craftworld and a particularly desperate Guard regiment forced together by circumstance.