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Since 8th launched, I have seen a lot of Guard, Marine and even necron talks, but near 0 eldar threads.
Are they still hot cakes ? Or have they been nerfed and brought back into the ranks ?
They don't seem overpowered anymore, as noone is complaining anymore.

I know Dark Eldars aren't in a good spot right now, and that the Ynnead faction is the best Eldar faction, but are Craftworlders still the best/among the best ?

All Eldar got nerfed hard. No more Scatbikes. Starcannons got neutered too.

I think a big problem is that there's just no reason to play CWE.

You have almost identical unit choices if you go Ynnari with a major upside. I think that if Battle Focus got tweaked a little to something similar to its 7E version, *maybe* we'd see a little more of them...but not like this.


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...though I'm sure some people still are full of salt from the last edition and we'll see a few, "Good, they deserved it" comments on here.

Right now, they're just okay...riding out the Index time frame. Also the usual lack of current kits stifles much Eldar excitement. There are some very oddly costed units, etc.

Cant say about normal smooth armor eldars


but the spiky eldars are pretty trixy.

when i played against them anyway.

Eldar are in a good place. The fact that you dont see a lot of threads about them is a good thing.

CWE have some power builds but are generally a mid tier army right now. Besides 1-2 cost issues (dire avengers price HAS to be a mistake, and the Falcon and Fire Prism need some work) they are fairly balanced. Almost all things in the codex are decent.

Dark Eldar are great until they run up against vehicles. Craft World is where the issues are. Like others have said, there is no real incentive to play Craft World right now.

I have 4 armies. One being Eldar and I really like them in this edition. They are still really good. (others being Nids, Grey Knights and tempestus)

Probably the easiest army for me to play as at the moment. Great shooting, very mobile and useful Psychic powers. It is also very easy to build a list that can deal with most things.

The biggest issue I have with eldar at the moment is that too many units step on each others toes when it comes to battlefield roles or the unit just has no real place in the army.

For example the Wave serpent is a better falcon/Fire prism for cheaper or about the same price.

The fire prism lance needs a rule like the vanquisher rolling two D6 for damage and picking the highest or else I am never going to gamble on a single shot.

Falcon. What on earth is your role in the army? Costs more than a fully pimped serpent and at best has equal fire power with less survivability and troop capacity. I would let it deepstrike and move it to transport. Suddenly it would have a purpose again.

Bright lances are amazing and you can spam the hell out of them. I have been favoring the twin Aeldari missile launcher on my wave serpents. Gives me antitank/monster and amazing crowd control (that -1ap on sunburst missile is so good) plus that little extra reach over the bright lance has been useful.

Overall they have so many amazing units/weapons but the index is cluttered with a lot of stuff that I would never use (except for fluffy reasons).

For example the Wave serpent is a better falcon/Fire prism for cheaper or about the same price.

Vypers and War walkers too, once you start looking at more than one.

The Craftworld army comes down to two questions:
Is it a wave serpent?
or
Did I buy the models 20 years ago?

If no, then don't bother.

Well, Ynnari with SfD is better than Craftworlds with battle focus. My pick is Ynnari with Wraithguard and Fire Dragons in Serpents atm supported by Guardians.
A player here plays a rather successful DE army based on Trueborn with splinter cannons or blasters mounted in Raiders or Venoms and supported by Ravagers. Once this army is in range, it can dish out a lot of damage.
Mono Harlies are probably not the best pick although the Troupe units are sold out at the GW website atm. If you charge with two Troupes simultaneously, the opponent could use a strategem to strike first in one of the two close combats. This could take the sting out of the assault.

All in all, Eldar is still a viable army. For me, its playable again. I shelved them when the 7th ed came out.

Ynnari and Harlequins both do Eldar better then CWE and DE.

And frankly the two vanilla factions are just boring. They're competent at most stuff but don't do anything particularly well. Dark Eldar haven't gotten anything new in over a decade (to the contrary, they lost options going from 5th edition to 7th).

None of this nescesarrily makes them "bad", but theirs not a whole lot to write about until their codices come out.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Ynnari and Harlequins both do Eldar better then CWE and DE.

And frankly the two vanilla factions are just boring. They're competent at most stuff but don't do anything particularly well. Dark Eldar haven't gotten anything new in over a decade (to the contrary, they lost options going from 5th edition to 7th).

None of this nescesarrily makes them "bad", but theirs not a whole lot to write about until their codices come out.

Do you think the new codices will make Eldar overall better?
I doubt this. It appears that the new 'dexes provide some pt adjustments and give some new strategems. Nothing really to improve an army overall.

Dark Eldar can be absolutely amazing, mast Dark Light is arguably the best anti tank in the game and they suffer no movement penalties for it. Troops are cheap and usable and the Venom, whilst slightly nerfed in it's damage output, is surprisingly survivable and still quite good. Their biggest problems are that unlike every other army in the game they have no synergy at all from the HQ's, Wych Cults didn't get buffed anything like enough to be usable and Covens got nerfed. This means that unless you know you're in a friendly game you've got to go all Kabal. I do find that there's little reason to run Ynnari with DE, we rely on our vehicles so much that it limits the units it can work with and most of those that want to get out are close combat oriented so arguably benefit more from Power From Pain than Strength From Death.

CWE are rather middling. Most of the Aspect Warriors are over costed for what they do, Guardians are excruciatingly short ranged and have horrible old models and all of the vehicles are overshadowed by the Wave Serpant which is a better transport and gunplatform than all of the others whilst also being more survivable. They're not helped by their special rules being useless, Ancient Doom is as fluffy and situational as ever whilst Battle Focus has lost all reason to exist due to the changes in the core ruleset, there is litterally no reason ever to not run them as Ynnari.

Harlequins are an elite close combat army, they hit very hard but will drop to weight of dice easily enough.

CWE are rather middling. Most of the Aspect Warriors are over costed for what they do, Guardians are excruciatingly short ranged and have horrible old models and all of the vehicles are overshadowed by the Wave Serpant which is a better transport and gunplatform than all of the others whilst also being more survivable. They're not helped by their special rules being useless, Ancient Doom is as fluffy and situational as ever whilst Battle Focus has lost all reason to exist due to the changes in the core ruleset, there is litterally no reason ever to not run them as Ynnari.

You forgot Fire Dragons and Wraithguard which are decent units.

Dark Reapers are pretty decent, always hitting on 3+ is a solid ability in an edition of -1 to hit being popular.

Craftworld eldar are generally either considered the worst or second worst eldar, competing with dark eldar. This is true both as a standalone faction and as part of a ynarri force. Harlequins are the strongest units while overall ynarri is considered the strongest army (even for harlequin units, so far as I can tell).

You get some debate over dark eldar and craftworld eldar in ynarri, I'm not sure a clear cut winner has emerged there. As a standalone army I'm reasonably sure dark eldar are considered stronger than craftworld.

Humm - I havn't lost a game with my Ynnari - and I used to use only craftworld units. However - I have switched over to using trueborn in venoms for my detachment fillers. Darkreapers are fantastic - always hit on 3's with great weapons. Hemlocks are arguably the best unit in the game - fully capable of picking up it's value in points EVERY TURN. Wraithgard with D scythes - still good as ever.

Voss wrote:

For example the Wave serpent is a better falcon/Fire prism for cheaper or about the same price.

Vypers and War walkers too, once you start looking at more than one.

The Craftworld army comes down to two questions:
Is it a wave serpent?
or
Did I buy the models 20 years ago?

If no, then don't bother.

Funniest thing that I read all day, and I read all day.

 wuestenfux wrote:

CWE are rather middling. Most of the Aspect Warriors are over costed for what they do, Guardians are excruciatingly short ranged and have horrible old models and all of the vehicles are overshadowed by the Wave Serpant which is a better transport and gunplatform than all of the others whilst also being more survivable. They're not helped by their special rules being useless, Ancient Doom is as fluffy and situational as ever whilst Battle Focus has lost all reason to exist due to the changes in the core ruleset, there is litterally no reason ever to not run them as Ynnari.

You forgot Fire Dragons and Wraithguard which are decent units.

Fire Dragons are OK. They are the short ranged suicide unit they've always been that will defintiely kill their target and then die in return quite quickly. Dark Reapers are also very good, competing with Forgeworld Shadow Spectres for best Aspect Warrior unit. I did not mention Wriathguard or blades but they are both very good but the short range on their weapons makes them hard to use.

 Imateria wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

CWE are rather middling. Most of the Aspect Warriors are over costed for what they do, Guardians are excruciatingly short ranged and have horrible old models and all of the vehicles are overshadowed by the Wave Serpant which is a better transport and gunplatform than all of the others whilst also being more survivable. They're not helped by their special rules being useless, Ancient Doom is as fluffy and situational as ever whilst Battle Focus has lost all reason to exist due to the changes in the core ruleset, there is litterally no reason ever to not run them as Ynnari.

You forgot Fire Dragons and Wraithguard which are decent units.

Fire Dragons are OK. They are the short ranged suicide unit they've always been that will defintiely kill their target and then die in return quite quickly. Dark Reapers are also very good, competing with Forgeworld Shadow Spectres for best Aspect Warrior unit. I did not mention Wriathguard or blades but they are both very good but the short range on their weapons makes them hard to use.

Wraithguard is not hard to use.
I use normally 2 units of 5 Wraithguard w/ D-scythes.
Transport them in Serpents and move the Serpents forward. It depends on the enemy how far. If the enemy is within range, let them disembark and shoot it. If not, move the Serpents closer next turn and repeat. In round 2 (or earlier), you'll see some Wraithguard action.

Wraithguard in Wave Serpents is actually pretty solid. Wave Serpents are super durable for their price, and have decent enough shooting for what they already do. Wraithguard have some wicked stuff. Not to mention 3 wounds a pop and T5...

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

CWE are rather middling. Most of the Aspect Warriors are over costed for what they do, Guardians are excruciatingly short ranged and have horrible old models and all of the vehicles are overshadowed by the Wave Serpant which is a better transport and gunplatform than all of the others whilst also being more survivable. They're not helped by their special rules being useless, Ancient Doom is as fluffy and situational as ever whilst Battle Focus has lost all reason to exist due to the changes in the core ruleset, there is litterally no reason ever to not run them as Ynnari.

You forgot Fire Dragons and Wraithguard which are decent units.

Fire Dragons are OK. They are the short ranged suicide unit they've always been that will defintiely kill their target and then die in return quite quickly. Dark Reapers are also very good, competing with Forgeworld Shadow Spectres for best Aspect Warrior unit. I did not mention Wriathguard or blades but they are both very good but the short range on their weapons makes them hard to use.

Wraithguard is not hard to use.
I use normally 2 units of 5 Wraithguard w/ D-scythes.
Transport them in Serpents and move the Serpents forward. It depends on the enemy how far. If the enemy is within range, let them disembark and shoot it. If not, move the Serpents closer next turn and repeat. In round 2 (or earlier), you'll see some Wraithguard action.

It's nice that you have opponents that just stand there and let you drive up and hit them with multiple S10 weapons.....

I am well aware that Wraithguard in Wave Serpants are excellent, but that doesn't change the fact that with a 12 or 8" range on their guns and having to get out before the taxi moves you need to think carefully about what you're doing with them so that they are not left swinging in the wind.

The Dakka's results thread tells us Ynnari and DE are doing pretty well - hence the lack of threads.
Eldar isn't as good, but miles better than other popular armies - which means they are still pretty playable overall.

Haven't lost with my Craftworlders yet, so not sure what all this gnashing of teeth is about.

The internet seems to think that Craftworlders are pretty meh. While they did take some nerfs, I feel that this impression is at least partially a response to our cheesiest 7th edition units getting balanced out. So if "craftworlders" in your mind amounted only to warp spiders, scat bikes, and wraith knights, yeah, we aren't looking nearly as good. Overall, our army is pretty decent. We can bring some really solid dakka, and bladestorm now allows us to shave off the odd wound from newly-buffed vehicles. Some of our units (rangers and avengers) got too pricey, and a lot of little things that didn't need nerfed (exarchs) were nerfed, but I've found that our codex is in a pretty healthy place overall. Most of our units can be reasonably effective, and our "bad" units are generally less bad than before.

The only pet peeve I really have with craftworlders is Battle Focus. It's much less flexible than in 7th, and some units that used to get a lot out of it no longer benefit. My war walkers, for instance, can no longer benefit from it at all unless they're equpiped with shuriken cannons. Hawks, avengers, guardians, and dragons still benefit from it, but not nearly as much because you can't use it to run away after shooting or to move into range of a new target after your initial target was destroyed (this is a big deal for dragons). Most of our other units have heavy weapons, have very little dakka (pistols, most of our HQs), or would rather charge than advance. So it's an army-wide rule that most of our units don't really benefit from much. This is a fairly minor complaint, but it does mean that you're often better off playing Ynnari instead provided you don't mind taking one of the Ynnari characters.




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I've seen a lot of people say that Drukhari (Dark Eldar) got a lot better. To me, it looks like some very specific options got better, but other options got worse.

Our dark lances were solid before and are possibly even more solid now. Coupled with the new vehicle rules, this means that ravagers are in a great place these days. Improved vehicle survivability and the new open-topped rules benefit us greatly.

On the other hand, haywire blasters and heat lances both got a lot worse at hurting vehicles, blasters are now flatly worse than dark lances rather than being cheaper, shorter-ranged versions, reavers are wonky and don't seem to have much of a niche, and Taloi/Croni got flatly worse to my mind.

And then we have a lot of units that moved horizontally. Mandrakes feel more like mandrakes now (better in melee, and better at ambushing), but they're still arguably better at shooting than assault, and they're no longer the world's cheapest 2+ cover save. Wyches got a bunch of buffs, but they still don't hit very hard (in my limited experience), and are worse at tarpitting by virtue of many units getting better at melee (WS3+ on marines, for instance). Their No Escape rule kind of gives them a special niche, but it's basically a 2/3rds chance of preventing people from escaping rather than the nearly 100% chance of preventing units from escaping in previous editions. Venoms gained survivability, sort of, but they now have to get much closer to the enemy to break even offensively.

So far, I've found that dark eldar "feel" very appropriate to their fluff. It's fun to move fast. Our melee units are reasonably good at melee. New reserve rules mean that certain units can alpha strike more effectively than before. They're a blast to play. There are just also a lot of head-scratching changes that make certain options that weren't broken (reavers, haywire blasters, etc.) pretty undesirable.



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Harlequins are flatly better. Less... unique, but better. A lot of our wargear and special rules got dumbed down, but our survivability went up significantly. It's much easier to get across the table and actually get into assault now, and it's way easier to build an army now that we don't have to use the wonky (but cool) formations of 7th edition. There are just a few options that could stand to be looked at again. The Death is Not Enough rule on the Death Jesters isn't nearly as interesting/amusing as before, and his first gun profile is almost always preferable to his second. Shadowseers are much better off, but they lost our most iconic power: veil of tears. As with all haywire weapons (except maybe the forgeworld reaper), harlequin haywire weaponry is now gimmicky, less effective, and less satisfying.

But these are minor complaints. Again, harlies are in a much better place than before.

Ynnari are... Ynnari. They're still really good, but only soul bursting once per unit death instead of twice tones them down a ton. Not being able to take revenant powers on anyone but Yvraine and the Yncarne makes them slightly less appealing than before, as does being required to take one of the characters to play as Ynnari. The loss of deepstrike on some units (warp spiders, anything with a webway portal, falcons) also makes them less good than in 7th as does the fact that power from pain is better and rising crescendo can actually be lost when going ynnari now.

None of which is to say that Ynnari are bad. You just have to think a little harder about whether or not they're worth it now. Which is a good thing. I expect them to get slightly less popular once we get 'dexes and thus have a reason not to mix different flavors of aeldari together.


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Corsairs are kind of unfinished. We only really have our troops so far, and those kind of took a lot of subtle or not-so-subtle nerfs. This is mostly in the form of price changes and the loss of our assault moves. Corsairs have traditionally been all about the move-shoot-move, so this is a pretty major change for us.

One of our army-wide special rules became much more damning than before, and we have no access to the crew-specific special rules that you generally had when playing 7th edition corsairs. It really kind of feels like Forgeworld just wasn't ready to put out Corsair rules for 8th yet. I suspect the number of units they can use will double when they eventually get a 'dex.

Top Craftworlds was 56th at BAO.

All I want from the codex drop is the ability to play Craftworld Eldar over Ynnari and not have it feel like a self-imposed handicap.

I took wraithguard and Fire Prisms to BAO.

I wish Prisms had flat 6/3/1 profiles for the gun vs having variable shots.

37 pt multi smite is awesome. But I am shelving the Prism and running EML and Shuriken Cannons.

Dscythes and hemlock fighters are awesome.

37 points multi-smite meaning Warlocks? Their "Destructor" penalty ruins that. They don't get normal Smite.

Battle focus is absolute trash. I mean...it's not hard to see that it's trash. The rule is basically "advance with shuriken cannons and fire at normal BS"

What the rule should be is "Units that do not advance ignore the penalty for moving and firing heavy weapons - units that advance ignore the penalty for shooting assault weapons after they advance"

This would give craftworld buffs to a lot of it's core units.

Units like Vypers/Warwalkers would become excellent sources of firepower. Scatter lasers on bikes would become useable. Imagine Craftworld wave serpents toating EML/or BL and hitting on 3's. This would be a real decision over soulburst if that were the case.