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Hi, I got into the game about a year ago, loved the Eldar fluff of celtic/japanese psychic technomancers with a dark past, so went with them. Problem is, now I know how ridiculous they are gameplay wise. As an example,I had a 3k game today, my Eldar + other Eldar + Ultrasmurfs on my side 1k each, Tau and Grey Knights 1.5k each on other side.

Turn one was a bit ropey, dreadknight shunted into our deployment zone and Paladin squad deep stuck behind our lines, did a good bit of damage. Wraithblades countercharged turn 2, managing to get in an 11'' charge, took out 1 Paladin and put a wound on librarian, tarpitted them for the next 4 player turns, they did me proud.

No riptides with the Tau, good as I was playing a pretty unoptimised list. Ghostkeel was great though, managed to delete 7 dire avengers with one small blast. Guy was an idiot with his Hammerhead though, parked it behind a building where it couldn't see gak. It took out my 2 vypers in one round of shooting though, lucky smart missile hits.

Game ended turn 4, they had a dreadnought and a Hammerhead, both on 1hp, and we had: a vanilla dreadnought, 2 fire prisms, a hornet, 3 scatbikes, 2 farseers, 2 marine bikes, 3 scorpions, 4 sniperscouts, full tac squad and half-full termie squad. Oh and a Dire Avenger Exarch, whose squad had been wiped out turn one but rolled snake eyes for morale, so he kinda just stayed where he was and waved pompoms at the Wraithblades all game. Most cowardly Exarch ever, and my model of the match.

How the heck do I even out games like this? It was a kerbstomp after turn 2, they just didn't have the manpower to counter us. I just want fun, close, knife-edge games dammit.

My army list was:
Jetbike Farseer with Sniper rifle relic
3x scatbikes
6x Dire Avengers, Exarch with shimmershield
6x Striking Scorpions, Exarch with claw
5x wraithblades with axes
2 vypers, both with 2 shuriken cannons and holofields
1 hornet, 2 pulse lasers and holofields
1 fire prism, cannon and holofields.

I know scatbikes are kinda cheesy, but I've already modelled them with the lasers. What else can I do to tone down the list? I've got about 10 games under my belt, and I've been defeated once, I feel kinda bad.

First, welcome to Dakka.

Honestly, your list doesn’t look too offensive.

Go back to the 1-in-3 heavy weapons for the bikes, rather then full scatbikes. As you mentioned that they were glued, you could just add 3 normal bikes to the squad. That would make the squad a little min/max spammy.

Jetseers are good, but are a pretty core element of the Eldar, so hard to replace.

Do any of your foot units have transports? While effective, they are not the more offensive things that the codex can offer. Even if you did put them in WS/Falcons, I think you’d still be fine.

Vypers are fine. They do the same thing as scatbikes, but not as well. Even with holofields, they are AV10 open toped skimmers. If your opponent has problems with him, that’s on his head, not yours.

Hornets are a little mean, but again, not unduly so. And you aren’t spamming them.

Prisms are solid, but not really up there on the overpowered spectrum.

I’d want to take a look at the lists you are facing. Because while your list is solid and balanced, it’s far from overpowered.

If you want to tone it down, I’d drop the Scatbikes and Hornet. Maybe the seer. Pick up a squad of guardian defenders, probably with a brightlance to make up for the lost AV. You could stick a farseer on foot in with them. Maybe a squad of rangers? They look cool, but don’t do much except camp objectives.

You could just dump spare points on the vehicles for upgrades. None of them are truly useless, but they add up fast and make things very point inefficient.

Bedsides the scatbikes your list isn't that op really. wraithblades, scorpions aren't that bad. might want to change your farseer to an autarch removing yourself from the psychic phase has a big effect especially when you're fighting GK.

Your list is fine. And it's impossible to tell anyway, as you're assuming YOUR Eldar(of the 3 armies on your side) was the issue. You'd be better off giving us examples of 1on1 games.

Thanks guys, with all the crap I've been getting as an Eldar player (nothing serious, mostly just friendly banter) I was wondering if I was somehow powergaming. The Tau player was fairly new, he started the same time as me along with the other Eldar player, who was running that one Dire Avenger formation that makes them really good. Ultrasmurfs player didn't really do too much, trapped himself in terrain and shot at a couple of GK's. Though his Termie squad did teleport in and take out a squad of GK's, so there's that. I think it was just the GK player getting salty at some bad rolls (my wraithblades should have died LONG before they did) that's throwing my perspective out. Maybe I'll try proxying the scatbikes as shuriken bikes next time, or use starcannons on the hornet maybe. How do EML's do?

I've also been wanting to ally in some Orks ever since I started collecting, because 8 foot tall green football hooligans made out of mushrooms is too hilarious not to take alongside the haughty disapproving space elves. How do they do on the TT?

This specific list doesn't need to be toned down, it only has 200ish points of very good stuff. Only the farseer and the 3 bikes are typically part of eldar competitive lists, your force is very nice indeed but very far from being overpowered. Don't bother with proxing the bikes, three scatter lasers are not scary at all.

I think it's all a matter of practise, your opponents need some games to gain experience.

reflexrex wrote:
Thanks guys, with all the crap I've been getting as an Eldar player (nothing serious, mostly just friendly banter) I was wondering if I was somehow powergaming. The Tau player was fairly new, he started the same time as me along with the other Eldar player, who was running that one Dire Avenger formation that makes them really good. Ultrasmurfs player didn't really do too much, trapped himself in terrain and shot at a couple of GK's. Though his Termie squad did teleport in and take out a squad of GK's, so there's that. I think it was just the GK player getting salty at some bad rolls (my wraithblades should have died LONG before they did) that's throwing my perspective out. Maybe I'll try proxying the scatbikes as shuriken bikes next time, or use starcannons on the hornet maybe. How do EML's do?

I've also been wanting to ally in some Orks ever since I started collecting, because 8 foot tall green football hooligans made out of mushrooms is too hilarious not to take alongside the haughty disapproving space elves. How do they do on the TT?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned this time around is that the GK are very close to the bottom of the stack these days due to poor planning and massive nerfs to their psychic potential. You've got a decent middle-of-the-road Eldar list set up with a few power units balanced out by mostly weaker units, but you're running into very weak opposition.

As to alternate armament on the Hornet I would recommend not using the Pulse Laser on principle because of how badly-costed it is; EML are probably a better choice if you're looking to tone your list down against Marine-equivalent players, Scatter Lasers are less of a threat to vehicles but they still make Terminators run home crying for their mothers.

Orks are a tremendously swingy list; if you can get a large number of Boyz to charge you will swear everything should be about twice the price, but you'll never actually be able to get them into melee because of how fragile they are. They're not necessarily a great pick in this context since one of the only books in existence that actually struggles dealing with Orks is the Grey Knights (who are just too expensive to put out the volume of fire required).

I don't know that I have enough details to give more specific recommendations; with what you've given us your list looks fine to me. Do you have more commentary on one-on-one games and/or details on what other people were playing?

(Addendum: The shortest and easiest answer to "how do I play a weak Eldar list?" is always "use Rangers/Storm Guardians".)

Thanks dude, I think I'll run EML on the hornet tomorrow, having a few 1k games against the local meta. 1 Eldar, 1 Necrons, 1 Tau, 1 GK, 1 Smurfs, 1 Tzeentch daemons, 1 Imp Fists. They vary in terms of experience and skill, but they are mostly on my level or thereabouts, nobody really goes full optimised except the GK player which is fine. Didn't realise they were so weak, the turn 1 deepstrike and Dreadknight seemed really powerful to me. I do have a squad of Guardians, so maybe I can switch out the Dire Avengers or something for them.

The other games I've played have been fairly 1-sided, except when I've played Necrons, the bastards refuse to die. I've not played against the Daemons yet, so maybe they will fare better. I'm not particularly fussed about winning, so I think I will go for some Orks when I start another army. Thanks for the advice, I appreciate your time.

You have 10 games under your belt and that other players have similiar experience, correct?

10 games in is realy a beginner level of experience - you didn't even had a chance to play every basic scenario twice (that takes at least 12 games by definition) and you haven't even started on having multiple games against each faction available to you. You said "I just want fun, close, knife-edge games" - this doesn't really happen in 40K as a standard, unless players know exactly how to counterplay things or a "bad dice day" happen to even first turn advantage. And one thing in this game you described shows that players involved probably just lack experience: your Wraithblades shouldn't really get to charge anything. Even countercharge. They should be either shot down from far away, avoided by outmanouvering them or assaulted to strip them of Rage attacks. Your list isn't really OP (single Scatbike squad is just a priority target, not a game braker), it's just that Eldar faction is quite easy to learn because of all those specialised or overly universal units. If you think that foot slogging Dire Avengers are too strong, then there is really a lot for all of you to learn.

My advice to you and your friends - play a lot of small, 1K games instead of rare 3K games. And replay games on the same terrain using same armies, but with different deployment zones or missions, to grasp a feel on how important utilising terrain and movement or playing to mission really is. Try to fit multiple games with a single opponent in one session, so you can both play a second or third game that day against a well known enemy. Not everything in 40K goes down to lists being OP or weak and experience do matter a lot.

nou wrote:
You have 10 games under your belt and that other players have similiar experience, correct?

10 games in is realy a beginner level of experience - you didn't even had a chance to play every basic scenario twice (that takes at least 12 games by definition) and you haven't even started on having multiple games against each faction available to you. You said "I just want fun, close, knife-edge games" - this doesn't really happen in 40K as a standard, unless players know exactly how to counterplay things or a "bad dice day" happen to even first turn advantage. And one thing in this game you described shows that players involved probably just lack experience: your Wraithblades shouldn't really get to charge anything. Even countercharge. They should be either shot down from far away, avoided by outmanouvering them or assaulted to strip them of Rage attacks. Your list isn't really OP (single Scatbike squad is just a priority target, not a game braker), it's just that Eldar faction is quite easy to learn because of all those specialised or overly universal units. If you think that foot slogging Dire Avengers are too strong, then there is really a lot for all of you to learn.

My advice to you and your friends - play a lot of small, 1K games instead of rare 3K games. And replay games on the same terrain using same armies, but with different deployment zones or missions, to grasp a feel on how important utilising terrain and movement or playing to mission really is. Try to fit multiple games with a single opponent in one session, so you can both play a second or third game that day against a well known enemy. Not everything in 40K goes down to lists being OP or weak and experience do matter a lot.

Oh no, I don't mean to say that Dire Avengers are too strong, just that the formation he uses them in makes them quite strong for a smallish game; they get +1bs and +1 shot, so a 10-man squad can deal 30 S4 rending shots that hit on 2's. That will put a big dent in any infantry unit in the game, barring horrible luck. And yeah, we are pretty much all newfags, so there's a lot of playing and feeling things out to be done I suppose. Will take your advice on the smaller games, we're doing that tomorrow.

We also played a pretty fun custom mission about a week ago, 3 players 500pts where we each had an objective represented by an HQ model in another players deployment zone, and an enemy general in ours. The friendly was worth 3pts if held at endgame, the enemy ones worth 1. Was a really fun game, led to lots of chicanery and backstabbing. Thanks for the advice friend.

You're facing a Grey Knight player using Paladins - that's the problem.

If that was a kitted out squad of 5, plus the librarian, you're looking at spending 500 points for 6 models, and about 4 warp charges, and about 10-12 attacks in melee combat per round.

That kind of expense is fundamentally insane for what you get.

And really, he should be going hard for cleansing flame if he insists on this build. It would be incredibly helpful against you, but, he'll still have trouble manifesting it, and will probably get denied by your Eldar.

In all reality he would have been better with a squad of terminators in a land raider crusader against your list. I skimmed it, but i didn't see high strength of D-weaponry (sorry if i'm wrong - i read a little too fast at work). He will get his guys where they need to go and spit out a ton of bullets along the way.

My personal stance is this: If you're beating people with an "underpowered" list (don't like that term), or a friendly (don't like that term either) /casual (appropriate, now we're in business) list, that's not something to feel bad about. I played a game where my opponent really wasn't able to deal with my Dakka-predator & venerable dreadnought. I can't feel bad about that.

Offer some advice to your friends, if they're receptive.