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Caveat: this might sound a little like a vent, but the frustrations I've had with this army and GW's treatment of it are 25 years long so you'll have to excuse me...

I've played 40k since 2nd ed, with a hiatus from 5th-7th due mainly to the direction of the fluff (highlighted by Mat Ward's work).

In 2nd ed I started with space wolves as I like wolves, vikings and space.....

Towards the end of 2nd ed I started to get into the eldar. I loved their background the unit concepts and the cool aesthetic. Their kickass characters - warlocks, exarchs, solitaires etc. The Avatar with its cost the same as a Bloodthirster and a profile that was one of the toughest in the game.

The martial arts/kung fu temple/ninja styling really appealed to me, as did the hitech weaponry. The shuriken catapult was an amazing advanced weapon - 24" S4 AP-2 D1 1 sustained fire dice. It was a better stormbolter at the time.

When 3rd ed came around, the catapult was chopped in half and became a pistol. Exarchs effectively disappeared entirely, becoming nothing more than squad sergeants. Warlocks became squad sergeants. Avatars sucked. pretty much everything I had loved about the army was no longer there. But i persevered. Assault weapons weren't that bad given no one could charge if they'd fired a RF weapon but could with assault.

Then over the next 2 editions RF got better, assault got worse and every other army somehow kept getting improved. Orks went from worse AP bolters to 18" ranged catapults with worse AP - until they released new dire avengers and then the orks had a gun better than a catapult and worse than a dire catapult.

Throughout this time other armies got new units, or improvements on old. Sternguard and Vanguard became a thing and special issue ammo made bolters better.




After coming back into the game in 8th, I find the same problems in the army as I did 10 years ago. Warlocks suck, exarchs suck shuriken catapults suck. But to add insult to injury, it seems like every unique unique type or concept the eldar used, was looted by imperial armies (especially primaris). But admech now have better swooping hawks, the assault bolter is a superior catapult (after decades of people saying it would be broken to put 24" back on the catapult, they went made a BETTER version for the space marines...), and so on.

It just seems like the eldar have been stripped of the unique units and weapons that were a signature of the army, handed out to imperial armies, and left with inferior versions of the unit. Eldar went from most advanced race with cool characters and weapons, to a weird gimmick laden, spam army. Thousand sons do psychic army better, primaris do specialist units better, primaris do cool character options better (or at all).


So I'm just wondering, what the hell are the going to do with them? I would not be surprised if the eldar army isn't popular at the moment - you can pick from a plethora of power armoured imperial armies that do Eldar better than they do, so there's no real incentive to play them. Unless you like flier spam and psychic gimmicks, which isn't why I started playing them.

While they've expanded imperial armies from literally nothing (Ad Mech, primaris), they've shrunk eldar armies. We don't even have the option to take master warlocks or independent exarchs, but primaris get rando executioners never mentioned before? Is it so hard to just make Exarchs independent again? Or give us a new level of exarch? This is asking for stuff that USED to exist, it's not demanding the invention of mariokarts, or sword and board units (ahem).

It's hard enough to convince people that old stuff that used to be available should be there, let alone demand new stuff...

Most of all I'd like aspect warriors to be more than just worse space marines. It just seems like, no matter what the background says, GW is set on a course of making everyone worse at things than space marines...

So, what they hell are they going to do with eldar, that doesn't just continue this tepid, boring gimmick army that clearly looks nothing like what it should and is a shadow of its former self.

Wait 'til the Faction Focus article where you'll find out that Eldar benefit from:

1. The new vehicle rules.
2. The new CP rules.
3. The new aircraft rules.
4. The new table sizes.

And all the other rules that also impact every other army in the game.

Nothing is going to happen till the codex. I would hope in the codex they will make aspect warriors actually good and scary instead of what they did throughout 8th, which was just lower their points cost over and over until they finally arrived at bargain-basement points costs for bargain-basement units.

Striking scorpions ought to be scary elite combat warriors, for example, not bargain-basement junk that gets dunked on by an intercessor.

Eldar have had a gift of awesome rules and a curse of a terrible update schedule.

Eldar have a canonical "weakness" (overspecialization) that GW has a hard time defining for their rules writers and that the rules writers have a really hard time communicating in the game, which tends to lead to horrible internal balance and wildly fluctuating external balance. Craftworlds particularly have been capable of building the strongest lists in the game and the weakest lists in the game out of the same book in the time I've been playing 40k.

One immediate change to Eldar will be that all the unit costs are going up.

So... yay?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Eldar have a canonical "weakness" (overspecialization) that GW has a hard time defining for their rules writers and that the rules writers have a really hard time communicating in the game, which tends to lead to horrible internal balance and wildly fluctuating external balance. Craftworlds particularly have been capable of building the strongest lists in the game and the weakest lists in the game out of the same book in the time I've been playing 40k.

I would argue their canonical weakness is inability to take casualties. Overspecialisation doesn't seem to be a weakness when Primaris do it.

I agree that GW has a hard time translating them to the table, because IMO whether their list can create powerful armies or not, they are almost never actually representative of what the army should do. Only what the rules allow you to create. And that's my issue.

I don't want crimson hunter exarch spam lists anymore than anyone else does. But I don't want them because that's not how eldar as a whole should operate, rather than whether they're broken or not.



I think one of the reasons the eldar struggle is that they're already soup - there are three distinct armies in the craftworld codex (like the dark eldar one) - guardians, wraiths, aspects. It's like trying to make a single IMPERIUM army with all those lists in one book and wondering why it's hard to balance them all.

But I doubt we'll get three eldar books - aspect hosts, guardian hosts, Wraith hosts....

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Eldar have a canonical "weakness" (overspecialization) that GW has a hard time defining for their rules writers and that the rules writers have a really hard time communicating in the game, which tends to lead to horrible internal balance and wildly fluctuating external balance. Craftworlds particularly have been capable of building the strongest lists in the game and the weakest lists in the game out of the same book in the time I've been playing 40k.

Except specialization is rewarded in almost every edition. Especially back when squads couldn't split fire.

Try having over 100 models for an army that you cannot use because that army has become the term for what happened to them.
If you played 2nd/3rd you know what I mean.
And don't give me that crap about how they weren't popular, or other armies did their thing better. Sisters had less popularity at the time. And don't tell me to just play them as Guard or Orks, some people like to argue about "modeling for advantage" due to their relative sizes.
As for the studios "official reasons", if you pay some-one to do something, they either find a way to do it or you replace them.

 helgrenze wrote:
Try having over 100 models for an army that you cannot use because that army has become the term for what happened to them.
If you played 2nd/3rd you know what I mean.
And don't give me that crap about how they weren't popular, or other armies did their thing better. Sisters had less popularity at the time. And don't tell me to just play them as Guard or Orks, some people like to argue about "modeling for advantage" due to their relative sizes.
As for the studios "official reasons", if you pay some-one to do something, they either find a way to do it or you replace them.

Well, I wanted to play squats as my fantasy army was dwarfs (space wolves are the closest thing I could find), but they had stopped selling them where I lived by that point...

Yeah I think the bigger issue is GW having trouble with glass cannon units. They don't really work well within IGO-UGO. The canonical weakness of eldar is that they are very squishy for their points, and it's difficult to balance that kind of army in IGO-UGO. You either end up with something that gets brushed off the table too easily, or something that is so powerful that it brushes stuff off the table too easily. GW's system doesn't work very well with skewed units of any kind, but especially not with units with very high damage to durability ratios.

I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the less squishy portions of the CWE list that tend to see more play.

This is a bit of a ramble. Apologies ahead of time.

I feel your pain as I've watched it happen. The Shuriken Catapult bit is especially eggregious. Although I think overall the slide wasn't too terrible until later editions. Primaris (and Doctrines) just really take the cake though.

I've thought about this one quite a bit. My best rivals in 2nd, 3rd and 4th were Eldar, but past 2nd Eldar have had a really hard time expressing the core of the character I think most of us want to see (awesome Aspect Warriors kicking butt). Every edition some Eldar units are sort of inevitably the top of the heap in terms of competetiveness, but it's really never the diverse collection you'd want. Usually some combo of special rules brings one or two Aspects to the foreground, like Reapers and Spears in 8th, Spiders in 7th, Dragons in 5th, whatever. But by and large most of the Aspects wind up feeling like they linger behind.

I think some of the frustration here is actually the same as the ever-present marine players frustration however, which is "Why don't my elite soldiers feel elite?"

The answer to that is:
A: Pitched battles because it's meant to be a 'fair game'.
B: Scale of game
C: lacklustre terrain rules making firefight maneuvering less meaningful
D: Global stat inflation over time as newer biggerer units are introduced
E: (Eldar specific) the aforementioned erosion of parity-of-capability with marines.

But really. . . The fact of the scale change is really big, but also really helpful to reframe our thinking. Marines felt pretty rad in 2nd, getting into a good position and gunning down a bunch of Orks or whatever. But when the enemy can bring to bear a bunch of tanks with heavy hitting support weapons, like is standard fare today, the marines just die (as they should). Same with those cool Aspect Warriors. In 2nd ed you had an entire 6x4 table for a couple squads to try and outmaneuver each other, plus multiple to-hit modifiers to help keep you safer. We have neither the space in 8th, nor the evasive capability. We're playing less personal encounters, and playing something closer to Epic. The heroics of a of a squad of Scorpions is less likely to matter.

That said. . .

If you can embrace it as the tank-scale battle that 40K has become . . . Well, how do Eldar fight and fare in a tank battle? Imo, pretty darn good. If you set aside the painful fact that the Catapult secondary weapons aint what they should be, Wave Serpents are really great units and 100% iconic Eldar units for those of us experienced with Epic Eldar and their lore. You can build armies around the idea that the vehicles are faaar less precious than Eldar souls, and be really irritating to your opponents (as Eldar should be). If you consider Wave Serpents to be main battle line units which spar with the opponent while a few choice Aspect units engage with their specialty and by their initiative and choosing, then you have the makings of 'proper' Eldar behavior.

This is not to say that there aren't flaws which should be fixed, as there are many, but I do think that you can make a lore-proper Eldar army that is both viable and fun. I would try to frame my army build around that for starters, and then see where it got me.

I realize it's not 2nd though, Eldar in 2nd were really special. To be fair I want my 2nd Ed Assault Squads back, too. :(

Eldar have been competitive in every edition (at least as far as I know, I haven't played all of them) because there are just so many units of very different types that a few are bound to be good in whatever the particular edition's ruleset favors. But that's a far cry from being a satisfying army overall.

It's hard to think it's intentional how far they have fallen in terms of power level and points cost, particularly aspect warriors. I do not think GW can really be happy with 9 point striking scorpions compared to 7 point ork boyz. Hopefully in 9th they will finally get it together to redo the codex to make aspect warriors actual elite units again.

Yeah those are all good points Insectum and yukishiro.


What frustrates me is they seem to say 'well they're competitive' and leave it, rather than looking at the as a whole and trying to make them GOOD. Which is very different.

10 years ago I wrote my own eldar codex before 5th ed killed my interest. I did what GW have done with Primaris, created small unit sizes with high power output.

Aspects only being in squads of 3-6, highly destructive but still only T3 with 1W. Their armour and equipment was highly advanced as were their skills, but they still had that innate fragility.

The Indomintus box shows what GW can do well - space marines. Necrons are basically Xenos space marines, so they fit into the design space really easily - high toughness and armour.

Orks and nids also fit into that space to some degree and have that swarm aspect to fill in the gaps.

Tau are also good save and toughness due to battlesuits.

But the eldar (any of them), as a dying race and the glass cannon schtick, really have not been effectively represented since 2nd ed (you're right Insectum, that was a special time, ignoring the unintended abuses possible).

The core rules are written around T4 Sv3+, so the further the army drifts from that standard, the less they align with the game.

It just so happens that the eldar as a faction concept, no longer conceptually align with the way GW wants their game to play.


As much as I also hated the game breaking dumbness of Ward's High Elf army book where they all got 'always strikes first' it did attempt to keep that speed concept up to date with the shifting focus of the core rules.

GW haven't seemed to manage to doing this in 40k. As gross as it is, there aren't many ways I can think of in the current paradigm to try and bring the eldar back to that concept other than with rules exceptions like:

No non wraith unit can be hit on better than a 4+ cuz speed
or
Eldar armour can't be reduced to worse than a 4+ cuz speed
or
All eldar are considered 6" further away than they are for shooting cuz speed



Because what I don't want is another bland army that is just spam and psyker tricks. I want an army that doesn't need a farseer to be competitive, that can play across the range of units available.

It's that or they just give them higher Toughness and armour so they fit the game paradigm better. In which case I might as well just play 'counts as' Primaris with eldar miniatures - every difference can be justified through speed....


EDIT: I seem to be a sucker for underpowered units, because concept is always more important than execution. My screen name comes from the eldar corsair escort that was considered the worst at the time (you could spend 5pts more and get two separate ships with the combined same fire power as a Hellebore...), but I LOVED the concept of an escort so advanced it carried the equivalent of an imperial light cruiser's armamanents (in terms of output)....

I'm sorry, but it's extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar seriously.

Eldar have, over every edition, been a force to be reckoned with. In older iterations they were consistently kept strong because they were Phil Kelly's lovechild and he made sure they had a strong codex. Later on this continued because they're one of the most popular armies, so GW has made sure to keep them between "strong" and "gamebreakingly OP," across editions.

Now I won't say that being strong is always being fun. Plenty of units have been average / meh, and you generally do have to chase the new hotness to be gamebreakingly strong; from playing Taudar to stacking Wave Serpents and Wraith Knights.

But even then? Eldar still fairs better. Orks were arguably the worst army in the game in 6th and 7th edition. Nids were awful except for lists packed full of tervigons (in 6th) and flying tyrants (in 7th). Guard weren't as bad as Orks, but were still pretty freaking bad. These armys didn't just suffer from not being able to play into their lore, they suffered from flatly not being able to play. Period. At all.

Even now plenty of armies are in a worse spot than eldar. Orks have been desperately trying to roll with repeated gut punches, to where they're now a bizarre gunline army with tar-pit melee.

The closest Eldar have ever come to being outright bad was 4th edition. So while I sympathize with "my army doesn't play like it's lore says it should!", I find it really hard to give a feth when other armies are relegated to NPC status, and rather than being unable to play "lore friendly", they just can't play at all.

Deleted.

 Elbows wrote:
Gotta disagree.

Spoiler:

Eldar have not been competitive every edition; a handful of Eldar units have been competitive every edition. Easily half of the book is pretty garbage in 8th edition. You want proof? Almost every aspect warrior outside of Dark Reapers (expensive for what they do), and Shining Spears (one of the genuinely good units) has been made cheaper every single Chapter Approved, and were then given alternate Exarch powers...and most of them are still not taken. When was the last time you saw Falcons in play? Wraithknights on the table in 8th edition? Support weapon batteries? Phoenix Lords?, etc.

Eldar armies are generally one-trick ponies with a few powerful units, and that makes people hate Eldar armies. Some Eldar players *gasp* would like to use the other 60% of their fething codex sometimes.

You find it extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar? Good for you. I find it extremely hard to put up with the "You're Eldar, you're always so good, you don't have an opinion!" kind of nonsense.

 Hellebore wrote:

(after decades of people saying it would be broken to put 24" back on the catapult, they went made a BETTER version for the space marines...), and so on.

Well, that's what people said. None of those people though were GW....
See, here's the thing, people talk out of there as's all the time. Doesn't make them right.

 Hellebore wrote:
While they've expanded imperial armies from literally nothing (Ad Mech, primaris), they've shrunk eldar armies. We don't even have the option to take master warlocks or independent exarchs, but primaris get rando executioners never mentioned before?

Yeah? So what? You do realize that there was a time when much of the Eldar stuff itself fell into that category both rules & lore wise, right? I mean, you gotta mention stuff for the 1st time at some point....

As for what'll happen with the Eldar in 9th?
*At first, nothing. Your codex will roll over into 9th & you'll probably get some errata assuming there's something 9th interacts with oddly.
*Later on they'll change the box art on stuff to reflect the new logo. People on Dakka will freak out when anything disappears off GWs site for a moment while this change occurs.
*Eventually a new codex will arrive. It'll have some awesome broken rules. It'll have several all new, very cool, never before seen units. People will jump on the Eldar bandwagon. Also at that point I'd bet that anything still made in Finecast resin either gets new plastic kits or dropped. I also predict the Avatar will grow to about 18", be super spindly & fragile, be really hard to transport & cost about $300. And no doubt you'll be encouraged to use more than one in your army.
Then about 6 months later? GW will kick you in the nuts by releasing errata that nerfs practically every reason why someone would've have bought all that Eldar stuff.

There's certainly an argument to be made about relative competitive strengths over editions and posters seem to address this, however there's also a very separate discussion present in the original post about the identity of a specialised army being eroded by the ever expanding specialisation of GWs flagship army, and their expansion/invention of other armies who have strayed into Eldar territory - i.e Admech flyboys. Competitive strength doesn't diminish a request from players for their faction to have a unique space carved out for them and shouldn't be used a reason to shout those players down IMO.

I certainly feel some.of the same as the OP with regards to Dark Eldar as they do Eldar! So many special rules were original with those two armies and are now given to everyone or Imperium and in many cases stripped from their original armies.

Drager wrote:
I certainly feel some.of the same as the OP with regards to Dark Eldar as they do Eldar! So many special rules were original with those two armies and are now given to everyone or Imperium and in many cases stripped from their original armies.

Exactly my thoughts. Drukhari are one 'Imperium Open-Topped Transport' away from irrelevance.

its a kind of benign neglect as the bad units have just been copy / paste for at least 3 editions

meanwhile other factions have got bumps to bring them on par with the good units, and then a bit more to sell the new hotness

then when we get new hotness they assign the rules to the infinate monkey department, honestly would a +1S on charge banshee exarch power been to much bother, and the less said about the Dark kin Kabals the better, oh and the best new rule if pilfered from them fire spacemans

 Elbows wrote:
Gotta disagree.

Eldar have not been competitive every edition; a handful of Eldar units have been competitive every edition. Easily half of the book is pretty garbage in 8th edition. You want proof? Almost every aspect warrior outside of Dark Reapers (expensive for what they do), and Shining Spears (one of the genuinely good units) has been made cheaper every single Chapter Approved, and were then given alternate Exarch powers...and most of them are still not taken. When was the last time you saw Falcons in play? Wraithknights on the table in 8th edition? Support weapon batteries? Phoenix Lords?, etc.

Eldar armies are generally one-trick ponies with a few powerful units, and that makes people hate Eldar armies. Some Eldar players *gasp* would like to use the other 60% of their fething codex sometimes.

You find it extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar? Good for you. I find it extremely hard to put up with the "You're Eldar, you're always so good, you don't have an opinion!" kind of nonsense.

Not to be nitpicky but Falcons and Support Weapons are now actually pretty good because of points decreases and Expert Crafters. 9 Vibro Cannons is some disgusting stuff.

ccs wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

(after decades of people saying it would be broken to put 24" back on the catapult, they went made a BETTER version for the space marines...), and so on.

Well, that's what people said. None of those people though were GW....
See, here's the thing, people talk out of there as's all the time. Doesn't make them right.

GW made their position pretty clear by releasing Eldar for over 20 years across 5 editions without changing it. The master crafters trait is the first time in 22 years that the shuriken catapult has had a range of greater than 12". During that time they bent over backwards making rapid fire better while doing very little with assault. Seems pretty clear to me.

ccs wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
While they've expanded imperial armies from literally nothing (Ad Mech, primaris), they've shrunk eldar armies. We don't even have the option to take master warlocks or independent exarchs, but primaris get rando executioners never mentioned before?

Yeah? So what? You do realize that there was a time when much of the Eldar stuff itself fell into that category both rules & lore wise, right? I mean, you gotta mention stuff for the 1st time at some point....

As for what'll happen with the Eldar in 9th?
*At first, nothing. Your codex will roll over into 9th & you'll probably get some errata assuming there's something 9th interacts with oddly.
*Later on they'll change the box art on stuff to reflect the new logo. People on Dakka will freak out when anything disappears off GWs site for a moment while this change occurs.
*Eventually a new codex will arrive. It'll have some awesome broken rules. It'll have several all new, very cool, never before seen units. People will jump on the Eldar bandwagon. Also at that point I'd bet that anything still made in Finecast resin either gets new plastic kits or dropped. I also predict the Avatar will grow to about 18", be super spindly & fragile, be really hard to transport & cost about $300. And no doubt you'll be encouraged to use more than one in your army.
Then about 6 months later? GW will kick you in the nuts by releasing errata that nerfs practically every reason why someone would've have bought all that Eldar stuff.

It's pretty funny you using that argument as I've done that for 20 years trying to convince people that its ok that non imperial armies get new units without a precedent. It seems to only fly for the umpteen different units the stagnant imperium invents every other week. Suggest the Eldar get a new unit, or options for an existing one and people shout it down...

The point I was making is that the Eldar have LOST options and this is just asking for them back yet that's too hard but a dozen wholly new units is fine so long as it doesn't belong to them?

eldar have lost options, still in a decent state.
Dark eldar have lost MOST of their HQ section you allready see cracks in equipment.
Corsairs don't even exist anymore really.

Not to mention there are armies out there that seen nothing in all of 8th, not even a codex.

And whilest the incessant primaris spam is annoying at best, eldar were still rulewise in a decent spot for most editions due to certain builds.
Now if you ask me if the codex is healthy, aka internally soundly balanced, no. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
by a long shot, it's like with csm, everythings alpha legion or it more or less is a specialst detachment that otherwise sucks.

Now, SM are on a powerlevel where even most of their sucky units are fieldable, whilest most other factions can't really justify their average unit to be fielded but that is normal for GW, because as the new gw is the old gw + a PR department.

Which options have Eldar lost? The True Kin look on with envy.

I too was sad when the Shuriken Catapult got cut to 12", and it seemed entirely irrational that a supposedly dying race would be sending out guardians with a gun that meant whatever they could attack, definitely could charge them (and probably wipe them) next turn.

But it was 20+ years ago. And rather quickly we all discovered our Lord and Savior the Starcannon, and the rest of that edition was history.

As people have said, Eldar have had a top tier selection of units in every edition except 5th (and even then I think their "badness" is exaggerated - but they lacked an obvious *take X, Y and Z, mop the floor with 50% of the game* build).

I guess I can appreciate a bit of sadness that an Aspect Warrior focused Footdar list has gone from being good in 2nd, to possibly not the most competitive but still okay in 3rd and 4th, to being a bit crap the last ten years. But as said, there are so many armies that have had a much worse time over the decades.

As for where Eldar go - thats unclear. The boring option is that you will just slowly see the ancient finecast brought out in new plastic. Would GW ever have the confidence to make new aspect warriors? New takes on how guardians or wraith constructs operate? Its possible - but to a degree I'd more expect them to break out new Ynnari, or Exodites, where you have something of a clean slate. Even if you can argue its all duplication of pointy ear units.

I think Eldar's schtick was always meant to be the glasshammer and small numbers but fast and deadly. Unfortunately it's difficult to portray such an army with the way the game is (and always has been without well thought out *tee-hee* special rules.)

Part of the problem is that it's an army that is quite reliant on penalties to hit as a defence, which can be really unfun for your opponent, and has been increasingly eroded by the slow drip of 'ignore penalties' and re-rolls.

Even with Drukhari, it can be dispiriting to play against someone who constantly moans about Venoms being -1 to hit, but is quite happy destroying vehicles with simple bolter fire.

It may all be too much trouble for GW, who I suspect would be happiest rolling all the Aeldari factions into 'Codex Spess Elfs'

Same goes for all xenos factions.

What place remains for anything but marines who gets better everything than other factions?

I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad. A 55 point unit that can shut down entire enemy castles is bad and unplayable? Deep Striking saturation units that eat chaff with the capability of droping mortal wounds here and there are bad?


Eldar players live complaining about how bad their codex is when they are just soo deep into the internet dogma about whats competitive and what isn't that they lack the knowledge to actually play their armies. Is very easy to see if a player knows to play eldar or it doesnt. The ones that do rarely complaint about their codex and I have seen many of the top eldar players of Spain destroy flyer spam , dark reaper, shinning spear lists of less knowledge players with things like Fire Dragons.

Because thats the reality of this: We all are for the most part actually quite bad at this game.

We all know the theory, I know it myself, but then doing it on the table is much different. And TBH. How could we be other thing that bad or mediocre at the game? How one can be good at something he plays/Does 3-4 times a month?

Theres some bad units on the eldar codex, thats true, they have too many units to not have some. But the medium powerlevel of nearly every unit in the eldar codex is leagues ahead of many others.

Maybe that has relation also when playing ITC vs WTC. ITC makes a ton of units unusable across all of the game, WTC/ETC/CA tournaments has a much bigger variety of lists and units used.