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I am a new player to 40k. I decided for my first army that I would play Eldar.

However, after looking at YouTube comments and a few forums, I noticed that Eldar are quite hated by many people.

So, noob question, what made the Eldar so hated in the 40k community?

Over the years they've regularly been one of the best armies in the game, and usually their strong builds have been extremely unpleasant to play against.

Consistently being one of the best armies in terms of competitiveness since 6th.
Ynnari.
Elf smugness.

 Flood wrote:
Consistently being one of the best armies in terms of competitiveness since 6th.
Ynnari.
Elf smugness.

Barring a bit of a weak period in 5th they have been a top army going back to 2nd edition.
Pure Craftworld Eldar is probably the weakest its been in twenty years.

Really though the hatred mainly comes from being comically overpowered through 7th.

Given for some weird reason the most commically OP faction wide rule ever (Strength from death).

I thought that rule was bonkers OP and I played Eldar.

The only time they haven't been op is in 5-th and start of 8-th. Before 5-th they used to have overpowered skimmer rules. In fact, you could steam-roll your opponents with nothing but falcon tanks and some other random op units here and there.
In 6-th they recieved a top-tier codex that, like most things back than, featured a bunch of crappy units that noone ever fielded, a bunch of ok and good units that still noone fielded and a bunch of overpowered and extremely annoying units that flooded the table. You could now steamroll everything with wave serpents and new huge-ass overpowered underpriced wraithknights.
In early 7-th GW took a step back from power creep of 6-th. We got CSM, Orks, Inquisition and a coupe more - all ok books with no particularly overpowered combos, with some variety and even character to it. That brought hope to a suffering and dwinding 40k community that got shot in the foot by how bad 6-th was. But than eldar came out and turned the tables once again. 7-th eldar were so rediculously overpowered, they competely invalidated what good early 7-th brought. To be fair, it was officially started with decurion-style formations that necrons brought to the table, however, necrons were only mildly powerful. Eldar, on the other hand, could field an army of doom with no particular disadvantages. They had best troops in the game - windrider jetbikes - each of them could take an underpriced scatter laser, could shoot and move away, could move 12" - 48", had 3+ armor save, could jink and costed so few points, they could counter 80% lists out there on their own. Wraithknights that now became even more powerful but didn't increase in cost appropriately. Not even close. And most enemies didn't even have weapons fit to fight them. Anti-tank weapons didn't work too good because they were monstrous creatures. And being monstous creatures, they also recieved a bunch of free bonuses like getting cover for having a toe in terrain. Than there were warp spiders that could ignore enemy fire if placed correctly. And a lot of other 'neat' perks like farseers that basically ignored perils, vehicles that basically ignored terrain and in some cases damage table...and eldar ended up with an army that could ignore it's opponents. A person who's played 40k tabletop (not even eldar) for at least a couple times could pick an eldar army and dominate most games.

In 8-th all this stuff got fixed for now. But it's hard to forget how bad it was to get a pickup game with your mishmash forces and than suddenly find out the enemy plays eldar.

What CSM did we get in early 7th? CSM codex dated from the very start of 6th.

But yes, until recently Eldar were ludicrously overpowered and tended to attract obnoxious players.

Cheese, but mostly I think their lore is dumb. Great models though.

Eldar spent a great deal of time having rules that exceeded those of 'everyone else'. Especially marine players (damn you starcannons!).

For various reasons, people hated that.

part of it is that for quite a while now the top tier of Eldar units were so far ahead of everything else in the Eldar Codex that those units just got spammed over and over, making 'competitive' Eldar really frustrating / boring to fight, SfD didn't help either

Yikes! Sorry about all that. Despite them being the army I decided on, and still am going to play, I do hope they have been nerfed in 8th edition. I haven't read the index yet, as I am actually waiting until the codex comes out.
I mostly chose them because I am a D&D player, and elves are my favorite race. So I figured "I like elves, Eldar are space elves. Win-win situation!"
Still, I do like their lore (sorry Gamgee), and I think their models are gorgeous. Plus, I enjoy their mobile/specialist playstyle.

P.S: If I am using any terms wrong, please correct me. Lol

Rules come and go. Models stay forever. If you like Eldars models and lore, play them! People hated them for being "OP" but really only 3-4 unist where really OP. Even in their most OP times, you could play viable armies that wheren't OP.

But people likes to hate a full faction/army when they have some combo that is OP. Normally is pure internet hyperbole, in real life if people see that you are using a normal army they aren't gonna have problems. And if they have, they don't are worth it.

 Nykolo wrote:
Yikes! Sorry about all that. Despite them being the army I decided on, and still am going to play, I do hope they have been nerfed in 8th edition. I haven't read the index yet, as I am actually waiting until the codex comes out.
I mostly chose them because I am a D&D player, and elves are my favorite race. So I figured "I like elves, Eldar are space elves. Win-win situation!"
Still, I do like their lore (sorry Gamgee), and I think their models are gorgeous. Plus, I enjoy their mobile/specialist playstyle.

P.S: If I am using any terms wrong, please correct me. Lol

Amusingly eldar as a whole aren't very good this edition, at least not craftworld eldar which is what most of us assume plain eldar refers to. They do have a codex coming soon though so that could change.

I wouldn't worry too much, irl it won't be an issue. Online everyone is a but they are about everything, eldar just have it a little bit worse for now.

Keep in mind that there is a large percentage of the Warhammer gaming community to which the army/painting/hobbying is more or less irrelevant. Seriously competitive gamers will often flock to whatever the current "power" list is. In many editions Eldar have had a powerful option to take - it may be a narrow options list (i.e. biker spam, powerhouse wraithknights etc.). This edition the most broken thing is perhaps Wave Serpents etc.

So people don't often arbitrarily hate Eldar, but if you show up with a min-maxed power list...they're likely not going to enjoy playing you, regardless of army. If you show up with a nice fluffy army which isn't spammed to death no one is likely to raise a fuss.

Eldar have been upper middle tier or above for the entire life of the game. For several editions, they have been the undisputed top army. Generally, when they are at their lowest, they are still better than more than half of the armies.

As a whole though, it isn't Eldar playersthat are hated, just the army itself. That said, players that did Serpent Spam in 6e/7e or Scatbike Spam in 7e paired with Wraithknight usage (widely regarded as the most broken unit in all of 7e) earned a special level of hatred.

Anymore though, Eldar just aren't that great (their incoming codex could change that drastically though...).

People hate it for the same reason many hate Grey Knights. They've been blatantly OP for a time and regardless if they are now (which they aren't), some people will just hate them.

Eldar, in theory, are suppose to be an army that required some skill to play, in that their units are highly specialized for one purpose, and their general low armor and toughness means that they get shredded if you tried playing them like, say, Marines and Guard. The old saying goes that if you pit 10 eldar (different units) against 10 marines, the marines will kill 9 of the eldar, while the last one singlehandedly kills all of the marines.

In practice, they have basically been anything but that for the past 2 editions. I forgot what specifically made them awesome in 6th but I do remember something about wave serpents, Eldrad shenanigans and so forth. They also got the Wraithknight at this point, although this wasn't an issue because the Tau Riptide was by far considered a stronger, cheaper version.

Things got bad in 7th edition for the following reasons:

1.) All of their Distort Weapons became D-weapons, which basically let them auto-wound anything and have a chance to Instant Death multi-wound models. This is a problem because they also had a Distort Flamer (basically auto-hit), although the rules for D-Weapons was toned back for that. However it still didn't sit well with people because it was available on Wraithguard, a very cheap (relative) platform for a weapon that was once in the realm of Titans (basically imagine if every 3-point grot could have a 10 point lascannon. It doesn't matter if it's comically overcosted; the sheer volume meant they could do ridiculous damage).

2.) Scatbikes. This is specifically the Jetbikes (which were Troops at the time) gaining the ability to take Scatter Lasers on each bike. This became an issue because each Jetbike was basically a slightly more costly Assault Marine, while they could still fire the Scatter Lasers on the move. Being eldar jetbikes meant they had much more manouverability than other types of bikes and the Scatter lasers had both volume of fire, range and strength to deal damage to infantry, tanks and monsters alike. And being troops meant that there was no drawback to taking them since they fulfilled the troop tax (something that a lot of armies struggle with at the time).

3.) The Wraithknight. This guy was ok in 6th, nothing really remarkable. But 7th edition saw him being upgraded to Gargantuan Creature status for almost no increase in points. This became a problem because gargantuan creatures at the time often came at a very high cost; hence your enemies could often field enough troops to counter them with massed firepower (they were basically immune to poison and ID weapons, two methods traditionally used to take down high wound, high toughness enemies). But for a meager 300 or so points you could have a Wraithknight, which meant that it started showing up in low points games where most people don't stand a whiff of a chance of taking one down. What's worse, the only real limiter to the Wraithknight was the lone Lord of War slot FoCs get....but you can get more if you fulfilled the troops tax (see above why this became an issue).

The three problems above basically made Eldar into a "point and click" army, where you basically just set your units down, advance forward and kill everything, then double back to cap objectives (sometimes this could even be done in the same turn). It didn't help that a lot of Eldar players became eldar players specifically to abuse these, all the while claiming it to be "fair". This actually lasted far longer than it should, as a lot of Eldar players still, to this day, insist that these were "balanced" and that GW had some kind of vendetta against them when the Eldar's power were toned back.

Note that at the time, the Eldar codex as a whole wasn't unbalanced, but those three stood so far above the rest that they were basically all that was remembered. For example no one remembers how much Eldar Rangers sucked during all of this, and Banshees and Scorpions became the butt of all jokes on par with the Pyrovore.

As for the present, apart from a few nerfed units (most notable is the Dire Avengers), Eldar are relatively balanced. People will tell you they suck, but that's only because the all-elf faction (the Ynnari) has a rule that replaces the Craftworld Eldar rule with a superior one. Taken on their own, they don't suck, but with the Ynnari rule in place there's basically no reason to play *just* craftworld (especially since, on top of the rules, it also opens up you allying with the Dark Eldar and Harlequins with no drawbacks).

 Galas wrote:
Rules come and go. Models stay forever. If you like Eldars models and lore, play them!

Great advice!

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

As for the present, apart from a few nerfed units (most notable is the Dire Avengers), Eldar are relatively balanced. People will tell you they suck, but that's only because the all-elf faction (the Ynnari) has a rule that replaces the Craftworld Eldar rule with a superior one. Taken on their own, they don't suck, but with the Ynnari rule in place there's basically no reason to play *just* craftworld (especially since, on top of the rules, it also opens up you allying with the Dark Eldar and Harlequins with no drawbacks).

Even if you only play *just* craftworld units, the Ynnari special rule is just better. However, this may (hopefully) change in the codex, where craftworlds will actually get rules/traits/doctrines of their own. I suspect the Ynnari "trait" will be the one they already have (which is fine).

Unfortunately, at present a lot of Eldar units are heavily overpriced (a problem that the orks currently have too, for some reason), which makes only a very few units actually viable/efficient to use competitively. I didn't play 40k at all in 7th, so I can only assume this is in retaliation to Eldar being a competitive army, which is apparently only allowed these days if you worship the Emperor. They also have some rules that are essentially broken (in the bad way) that makes several of the more iconic units unplayable. This isn't unique to Eldar though, I know Orks are in the same situation, as are Tau (and maybe Necrons, but they always seem to have issues). Next months codex release will tell us a lot about how GW are planning to deal with codices as time goes on.

Maybe it sounds bad that an Eldar player is complaining about this, but then I didn't play any spam lists (never do) and didn't take advantage of any Eldar "power builds" (I didn't actually play any games in 7th edition at all) so I'm totally happy to be annoyed by unnecessary nerfs.

Nykolo wrote:Yikes! Sorry about all that. Despite them being the army I decided on, and still am going to play, I do hope they have been nerfed in 8th edition. I haven't read the index yet, as I am actually waiting until the codex comes out.
I mostly chose them because I am a D&D player, and elves are my favorite race. So I figured "I like elves, Eldar are space elves. Win-win situation!"
Still, I do like their lore (sorry Gamgee), and I think their models are gorgeous. Plus, I enjoy their mobile/specialist playstyle.

P.S: If I am using any terms wrong, please correct me. Lol

Dont be sorry, Imperium players are the ones who get all the best toys, models, and rules. As a filthy Xenos player you have to make do with the leftovers, so you should keep your chin up and enjoy it! Just cross your fingers that GW decide to release some models for Eldar sometime... I think the melee wraithguard are the only new model we've had in like 10 years (craftworld I mean, not counting ynnari), and far too many of the models are still old-school metal I think. (Edit: Actually looking at it, it seems that they replaced a lot of the metal aspect warriors with identical versions in *mild vomit* "finecast", which is... well, was, terrible. They may have improved their finecast over the years, but I'd still prefer to see plastic aspect warrior kits). I've always had a soft spot for wraithlords, though the kit is getting very dated now compared to all the new imperium dreadnoughts (like 10 different variants and still growing). The wraithlord does have a nice ability to be converted and improved on though, if you wish to get into converting models.


Which lore do you like? It might help you to pick a craftworld, and then a paint scheme, and also which models to pick up first. Though I'd recommend not buying too many new models yet, until the codex comes out. The craftworld traits might effect what you can field.

I think it's more that Elves are a marmite faction to begin with and there's possibly a tendency for Eldar players to match the personality of their army - a bit reserved and superior.

The 'cheese' accusation might hold some weight but I think they also a reputation which has stuck and has been sustained through confirmation bias. 2nd and 7th are really the only periods during which Eldar were pure OP. 3rd-4th Eldar has some strong builds but the internal balance was very poor and many units had perpetually crap rules. As formidable as the star cannon army of doom may have been, it relied on only a small selection from the codex. Same during the holo falcon days - an incredibly effective choice and annoying as hell to play against but nothing else in the codex was especially OP.

 Gamgee wrote:
Cheese, but mostly I think their lore is dumb. Great models though.

What do you find dumb about the Eldar lore? Given that they play a central role in the history of the primary narrative, how would you change it?

I just hate Elves in general but the army itself has been massively imbalanced for most of its existence. Outside a small time in 5th where they were decent and the current index iteration, they've always been at the near top or actual top.

Then you got the silly myth that they're a hard army to play because everything is specialized...specialization actually makes it easier to play.

I picked up Eldar in 6th (my first army) because I love the lore and idea behind the aspects. Spent a lot of time on forums, trying to learn both what was good and how to play in a balanced way in friendly settings because I, too, saw all of that bitching. Regardless, it still resulted in untold bitching at my "unfair" rules for battle focus by a SM player who charged me from deepstrike in the same game.

Some people will bitch regardless of what army you play - your OP Necron reanimation rules, your free Khorne blood tithe units in 7th, your massive quantity of new Imperium toys and models. Long story short, don't let it bother you. Play what you want to play, have fun, stay away from those jerks, and be a good person to play against. That's what matters.

You'll find in this game that imperium players will always complain the loudest about other armies having units that kill them. They'll also be the ones saying that units like gallivanting gulliman and scions are perfectly balanced, even though noone else has anything even vaguely equivalent.

It has always been this way in 40k, a side effect of imperium armies being the default/average choice, particularly among less mature players.

Not saying all players are like this, as that's not true, but there's definitely a large community that gives a bad impression.

Niiru wrote:
You'll find in this game that imperium players will always complain the loudest about other armies having units that kill them. They'll also be the ones saying that units like gallivanting gulliman and scions are perfectly balanced, even though noone else has anything even vaguely equivalent.

It has always been this way in 40k, a side effect of imperium armies being the default/average choice, particularly among less mature players.

Not saying all players are like this, as that's not true, but there's definitely a large community that gives a bad impression.

This does, to some extent, explain why Eldar were considered OP in 3rd ed. They had all the tools to thrive in the MEQ dominated meta. Most MEQ players tooled to face other MEQs whereas less favoured options such as Heavy Bolters were far more effective against T3 4+ save Eldar.

Op in 4th edition and then again in 6th & 7th, classic case of fanboys in the dev team screwing over balance in favour of making their favorite army the best.

It doesn't help that historically a few Eldar units are really OP and then these get spammed by TFG's and people who are only into winning so all Eldar are treated as being OP. So if you don't play OP Eldar you get the short end of the stick.

hobojebus wrote:
Op in 4th edition and then again in 6th & 7th, classic case of fanboys in the dev team screwing over balance in favour of making their favorite army the best.

You mean like how the imperium has been treated in every edition ever? And is currently being treated, except doubly so?

Imperium armies, especially space marines, have always been on the receiving end of all the best things, particularly when it comes to new models.

Eldar shine because they used to be the paper to space marines rock. They are the army that were the hard counter to space marines. Which is why marine players hated them, and cried that they couldnt face roll over Eldar like they could other armies.

So we get our current situation, where all of elders moves and abilities that helped them kill space marines have been removed,and the imperium is by a large margin the strongest faction.

I don't recall any ork or tyranid players particularly hating Eldar (I played tyranid back in those days and didn't notice any particular problems playing them), it's mainly just marines. But as has been said before, because marines make up a large share of the player base, anything that kills marines is screamed and cried and tantrumed about until it is eventually removed from the game. And because it gets brought up and complained about so often, other people get used to seeing it and get bored of the complaints, and so the hate multiplies. Internet 101.

Edit: I meant weapons, not moves. I was thinking of Pokemon at the time. Eldar are were super effective against space marines.

See, and hear I always thought people didn't like us eldar because of ear envy. :p

Seriously though, at the moment eldar have issues. Dark eldar on the other hand are incredibly powerful and scary to face. I hope the new eldar codexes put us with our dark eldar brothers in terms or competitive ability.

Erm, Ork players were not pleased with 7th edition Eldar at all. Plenty of Ork players were not entirely overjoyed that their one good formation (Green Tide) was effectively hard countered by scatbikes, and that they may as well not even put the models on the table because of the foregone conclusion.

Rihgu wrote:
Erm, Ork players were not pleased with 7th edition Eldar at all. Plenty of Ork players were not entirely overjoyed that their one good formation (Green Tide) was effectively hard countered by scatbikes, and that they may as well not even put the models on the table because of the foregone conclusion.

I was talking about in the previous editions. I took a break from 40k in 7th so I didn't comment on it either way.

It must have taken a lot of bikes on the table to single-handedly wipe out a green tide within the first couple turns though. Wouldn't it take 10 bikes (with a 100% hit and wound success rate, so actually more like 30 or 40 bikes) to just take out one boyz mob?