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Hey, folks. I am a Drukhari player at heart but am thinking of dabbling in Craftworlders. I like the look and flavour of Ulthwe.

I would be running the armies as pure forces most of the time.

If I picked up the Aeldari half of Wake the Dead, SC! Craftworlds and the upcoming Battleforce would I just have a mishmash of models or can I build a useful army?

I am assuming I would need at least one more Wave Serpent.

How would I be best outfitting the models?

Thank you.

What kind of 40K gamer are you? Because there are vastly different answers depending on if you're a casual/narrative gamer, or a tournament-goer.

As far as outfitting models, there are almost no choices in an Eldar army outside of the occasional heavy weapons for vehicles/platforms. Here's the breakdown:

Shuriken Cannon
Star-player as it's an Assault weapon, and Eldar (mostly) ignore penalties for advancing and firing assault weapons. Only 24" range though and you need to luck out for any AP.

Scatter Laser
More or less useless...as the Shuriken Cannon outshines it in almost every regard. The longer range is often negated by Eldar's speed, and it's a Heavy weapon, incurring penalties where the Shuriken Cannon doesn't. Needs a re-work to justify.

Missile Launcher
Good, versatile, and expensive (paying for that option as all missile launchers do)

Brightlance
Shorter range lascannon, weaker but more AP. It's a good armour-cracking weapon.

Starcannon
The redheaded stepchild. It's a do-everything kind of weapon akin to plasma...but doesn't excel anywhere.
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As a Dark Eldar player you'll probably find yourself spoilt by having a fully comprehensive and modern army in plastic. The Eldar are not so fortunate. The most useful infantry models in your army are terribly expensive ($35 for five Dire Avengers...really?), or in terrible resin...OR both if you're lucky. Eldar being popular means that even the old metals and used minis are extremely expensive on eBay compared to other ranges. Building a versatile and varied army of miniatures is an exercise in frustration. The 3rd party and resin aftermarket support for Eldar mostly sucks ass as well. No one bothers making stuff for them.

All I can say is good luck! Grab Wave Serpents while they're cheap ($30 at the moment) as people are splitting boxes of Wake the Dead on eBay.

I think Elbows' question is the most important thing to ask. Because a lot of the stuff you get in those sets are cool models, but aren't all that hot competitively.

For top competitive stuff you're looking at the likes of Hemlock Wraithfighters, Wave Serpents, Dark Reapers, Shining Spears, Jetbike seers. Of which, the reapers are stuck in Finecast, the Shining Spears are stuck in a hybrid plastic/finecast kit with the old jetbike model, the jetbike seer is plastic but is overpriced in money for what you get... not the nicest army to build a tourney style force for at the moment.

But if you're less concerned about that, then buying up the discount boxes gives a nice range of interesting models, some of which are pretty good at the moment, most of which are okay, and some which are univerally considered trash (namely the wraithknight in the upcoming battleforce).

I barely play myself and love craftworlds enough to look past some of the deficiencies in the range, so I would say that picking up the various discount boxes is a great start for a cool army.

Yeah, the answer to "competitive" Eldar more or less shrinks the codex down to five or six units. Hence the question.

The main hurdle is - as mentioned, collecting the damn models as GW is doing its best not to generate Eldar sales.

Thanks for the replies.

While I am more a fluffy gamer I do want to have an effective army. I think Craftworlders rely more on synergy than Drukhari, but is sounds as if I can put together a decent force with the addition of a couple more Wave Serpents. .

I agree that CW are in a very odd spot with regard to their model range. Models dating back to second edition, and still most of their Troops in Finecast. Given how popular the army has always been, it's mind boggling.

Perhaps, as New GW integrates more female models into their ranges they will realise they have an opportunity to add to the mix with plastic aspect warriors* . Barring SoB the Aeldari have long been the only other 40k army with any form of gender representation.

Thanks again.

*I want to call them Plaspect Warriors.

As you're interested in Ulthwé for the fluff, you won't go wrong with a guardian bomb supported by some rangers or Dire Avengers to make up a battalion with Eldrad and spiritseer/warlock. If you want to be really fluffy you can go for storm guardians and a warlock conclave but they're not great against anything really for their own reasons.

A pretty common practice is to use the Webway stratagem to drop in a 20 strong squad of Guardians 9 inches from whatever you're shooting at and it's got a good chance of killing, especially with doom and guide.

You can support this with Wave Serpents which are cost effective and very beefy, especially if you go for vectored engines which gives them -1 to hit if you advance and the serpent shield is also excellent (I run 3 Serpents). It'll deliver your aspect warriors or farseers into the thick of it.

The bonus with Ulthwé is that fluff-wise, a lot of the craftworld has allied themselves with Yrvaine and the Drukhari so you can make a fluffy Ynnari soup if you wanted to go down that route.

You'd be surprised how easy it can be to pick up lots on eBay, there are a lot of people with guardians to spare so they can be picked up cheap from users that break up new sets. Aspect warriors only get expensive when you look for niche units like warp spiders, shining spears and swooping hawks.

If you want to go Ulthwe, I'd recommend getting Eldrad. He's pretty awesome!

Some other "favor of the month" units that have not yet been mentioned, are Rangers and Fire Prism.
Rangers are for cheap battalion detachments, they block deepstrike pretty well and can snipe characters. Plus they are very resilient whilst in cover.
Fire Prisms work extremely well if you use three of them. With the Linked Fire stratagem they can wreck pretty much anything and are versatile.

I have played quite a few games in 8th with my Ulthwe force. I don't use the most competitive units or lists, but have still fared pretty well. Then again, I don't play competitive games.
What I usually field, is a lot of guardians (storm guardians too, even though they are not very good), Falcons (Fire Prism is better, but I like these things) and Fire Dragons (a useful suicide unit to emerge from webway).

I think you can do pretty well if you buy those boxes and add a wave serpent or two and maybe a squad of Dark Reapers into the mix.

Rangers deploy as normal now - no scout shenanigans. You can DS them T2 instead, if you prefer (don't know if you were referring to this in your post or not). They are still good and all, but took quite a nerf.

 grouchoben wrote:
Rangers deploy as normal now - no scout shenanigans. You can DS them T2 instead, if you prefer (don't know if you were referring to this in your post or not). They are still good and all, but took quite a nerf.

Oh yeah, totally forgot that the updated rules changed that. Thanks for correcting!

Wake the Dead and Start collecting will be decent starts for your army. Wraith units work better as Ulthwe rather than Iyanden. You'll get a farseer and spiritseer to lead, a unit of Guardians (I'd add more, very fluffy for Ulthwe), some wraith units and a serpent. If I didn't already have enough craftworlds, id be all over the Wake the dead box.

 bullyboy wrote:
Wake the Dead and Start collecting will be decent starts for your army. Wraith units work better as Ulthwe rather than Iyanden. You'll get a farseer and spiritseer to lead, a unit of Guardians (I'd add more, very fluffy for Ulthwe), some wraith units and a serpent. If I didn't already have enough craftworlds, id be all over the Wake the dead box.

I'd agree with this regarding which of the two boxes to buy. Wraithguard have been amazing for me in my Iyanden list. Ulthwe is better for the Wraithguard for sure, but Iyanden is fantastic for the Wave Serpent and the Wraithlord. Honestly, opponents get so frustrated that I am firing at almost full effect right up until almost destroyed.

Well I am eagerly awaiting delivery of the SC! and WtD boxes.

I have spare cash sitting in my PP account so I can grab the BF, too. That will give me more of the fluffy guardians plus a couple more mobile units.

Thanks again for the replies.