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Hey there Dakka, I've decided to make a manual showing beginner players how to start playing Eldar in tournaments. I'm making the manual as part of an assignment for my college course, but I've been wanting to create a manual like this for quite some time. The manual is going to show a player what to buy for their competitive eldar army, briefly cover how to assemble it, and thoroughly cover how to use the army tactically. I have come to you, humbled users of DakkaDakka, to ask for your help.

**I need your opinions and individual breakdowns of the units. This means you should list the strengths and weaknesses of the unit, and how you use the unit during a game. Assume that the advice is for a beginning player, but one who understands basic rules. I'll list an example to get everyone started:



Unit: Dire Avengers

Strengths:
Relatively low point cost
Quick on foot (battlefocus)
Strong mid-range firepower

Weaknesses:
Fairly bad armour save (vulnerable to anti-infantry) - Can be improved with exarch's shimmershield
Low strength and low toughness
Bad in close combat

Tactics:
Overall dire avengers are an effective troop choice. While they may die in droves on an open table-top, Dire avengers can be a powerful force. They are best used in squads of 5 or 10 with a wave serpent used as a transport. Keeping them out of the way from the enemy's high-volume (~3 shots) or template weapons is essential to their survival, and the wave serpent does a fantastic job of protecting them while delivering some devasting firepower of its own. To make best use of the dire avenger's mid-range dominance, only disembark them from the wave serpent once they are within range to fire, but make sure the enemy isn't too close either. Ideally you want to keep the enemy at or over the avenger's max shooting range of 18", staying between 12" & 24" will work well due to battlefocus. Battlefocus makes dire avengers the effective troop choice that they are. It lets you sneak into and out of range from your enemy, letting the dire avengers deliver their firepower without as much recoil from their enemy.
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Remember the entries are for Codex: Eldar only

Let me know what you think of my format and content for the example. I'll be drafting up more entries in the mean-time. Thanks again for your help!!

Two words

Wave


Serpents.

Please don't just talk about wave serpent spam, anyone can understand that wave serpent spam is effective.

Awesome college course.

Do you need to pull out the standard elder weaknesses and strengths at the start of the manual. That will let you keep the individual entries more condensed.

Yea that's a good point, I'll definitely list the generic eldar tactics and such before listing the individual units

 Helvost wrote:
Please don't just talk about wave serpent spam, anyone can understand that wave serpent spam is effective.

Possibly anyone can understand it, but not everybody can play it.

If you're listing pros and cons, you may want to rate them.
A Dire Avenger's armour isn't all that bad. A save of 4+ still works against a Bolter, so I wouldn't list it as a con. On a made-up ranking of infantry armour saves, I'd list it as a 6/10, maybe.
Doing it this way, you get to rank everything about a unit, and score them at the end. Give an average rating for each unit, which would help with any conclusions you write up.
Use colour too, red for 1/10, up to green at 10/10. This way, you'll see a unit's weakness at a glance.

Also, make a footnote about any powers a unit gets that you don't think make much difference. Don't DA get counter-assault? That'd be a * on the cons line about 'Bad in close combat'.

Couple points on DAs:
-Low cost compared to what? They're MEQ costed (for good reason).
-Probably worth mentioning that, between a good RoF and Counterattack, they are the best non-melee Eldar unit for receiving a charge. Not good (even Scorps and Banshees suck at receiving a charge), but when Nids or whatever have been trimmed down, DAs are not as soft as many other units.