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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Man, people disliking Elves because they are Mary Sues from "Tolkien on down" really miss the whole point...

...Which is that physical beauty, magical prowess, inhuman reflexes, preterhuman strength, and great hair do nothing to prevent the inevitable decline of their race, while frumpy men with bad breath and greasy hair will succeed, because their soul is noble.

The hroar and feär of an elf are tied inextricably to the world, and thusly they appear perfect within it. But the souls of men are free, even from the world itself. Whence comes death, then - as Illuvatar's gift, an unshackling from the pains and sufferings of the world, a freedom the Elves, for all their worldly perfection, will never enjoy.

(Except for those who fall in love with men or choose to be men, in the case of half-elves lol)

This is a great answer and I just need to clarify something. I didn't hate the elves in LotR because they were supporting players there to nudge the Humans and Hobbits along the way.

If they'd defeated every foe, and the books ended with Legolas becoming High King of Gondor and Rohan and destroying the One Ring, then it would be a different story.

If anything my only complaint is how useless they were. You say you have 2 or 3 kingdoms full of super magical warriors and you're sending one dude to help out?

But once D&D and its legions of imitators made elves a playable faction things got upended. An Elf character was vastly better than any other choice in the game, with abilities that ranged from the super useful (bonuses with swords and bows), to the niche (a dozen or more languages to start with, live for 1000 years, no need to sleep), to the petty (bonus comeliness score!). In a novel where the author controls the horizontal and vertical they can work well, but in a game that needs balance among choices they're just trouble.

If someone wants to make a wargame where an Elf/Space Elf army consists of a dozen sword saints and where losing even one makes for a pyrrhic victory, then that's an way to do it. Otherwise...

 Togusa wrote:
Just to be clear I'm talking about the in game lore, not the players. Maybe it's getting better? But for a while it was getting worse. Remember the T'au Castration Camps?

Oh I knew what you were saying, and I stand by what I said: That's a massive reduction of what 40k is. Simply labelling everything "fascist" misses any level of nuance or even variation within the different societies (and atrocities) of the 40k universe.

My gut feeling is that there are a number of factors. I'm speaking as someone that loves Elves and Eldar in whatever game I play.

Firstly, CWE have had some obnoxiously powerful codexes that really seem to have stuck in folks' minds. The question is why it made such an impression. I remember BA rhino rush being a thing but I don't recall that drawing quite so much venom from the 'community'. It was seen as more a fault of the game system - it was just the BA were really good at that gimmick.

Powerful CWE impacted a lot of players because a majority of folks play Marines who did seem to be adversely affected by Starcannon Spam, scat bikes, etc

There are too many damn elves. As I said, I love elves but even in D&D back in 2nd edition there were just so many different types of the fellas. World of Warcraft currently has one sixth of it's playable races being elves of some variety.

In AoS we have fish aelves, murder aelves, high aelves...and folks clamouring for at least another couple of types of aelf.

Even as an elfophile I get kinda sick of there being just so damned many of them.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
My understanding about Eldar Farseers was always that they more saw possible futures, and attempted to steer the outcomes into the best possible one, more so than just "seeing the future". And sometimes they get it wrong, and it backfires, big time. The obvious example being in the novel Void Stalker, where their actions actually bring about the events that they were trying to prevent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
"Typically they tend to be better for the sake of being better in a lot of material. . ."

That also describes Space Marines.

And there's plenty of dislike for space marines, possibly for similar reasons.

I dislike Space Marines only bc they get literally armies of new releases all the time and DE has not had a new unit in 12yrs and had units taken away. But we got 5 units converted from finecast to plastic 2 of wych are worst than the finecast sculpts, so I guess thats good enough according to GW.

That's a pretty good reason, IMO.

LOL I just notice I said "Wych" instead of "which" shows how often I type that out lawl.

 Souleater wrote:
My gut feeling is that there are a number of factors. I'm speaking as someone that loves Elves and Eldar in whatever game I play.

Firstly, CWE have had some obnoxiously powerful codexes that really seem to have stuck in folks' minds. The question is why it made such an impression. I remember BA rhino rush being a thing but I don't recall that drawing quite so much venom from the 'community'. It was seen as more a fault of the game system - it was just the BA were really good at that gimmick.

Was there ever a time, when a new eldar codex wasn't "obnoxiously powerful". I have only the expiriance of 8th, where eldar till Castellans were one of the factors that was making whole armies unplayable, and 9th ed which results we see right now. The rest I only know from stories, but even if they are half true eg. it is not one falcons taking shoting from entire army without a scratch, but two falcons, it still sounds crazy.

A lot of armies get their time to shine when they get a new book, not all though as I do remember GK being worse out of the codex or the non impact GSC had on the game in 9th ed, but eldar are always special. The game breaking win rates other factions reach, are often 10 or even 15% less, then what eldar armies usualy get with their new books. And the state often persists for large chunks of an edition. A new marine player got his book at the start of edition, got destroyed by harlequins, then the same place was taken by DE, then replaced by Harlis and CWE. And if the marine didn't pick a "good" chapter he has been sitting at under 40% win rates for 2 years now.

The model argument is an odd one too. Faction wise most marines got 1 character per chapter, sometimes not even that. The rest is stuff no one uses. Primaris in 8th weren't used till 2.0 came out. I have yet to see people use the primaris predators, bunkers, gun emplacments etc Even the supposed OP stuff, had classic marine replacments that were just better. And it is better within the marine codex, the sole fact of having attack bikes or van vets doesn't
make marines great. Even the AoC, a rule lauded as edition killer for non power armour factions had very little to no impact on how the game is played.

But I do agree with one thing non marine players say. It would be better for the game, if instead of inventing primaris and the whole Cawl lore, just made them marine update to new size. Stretching the marine model update for 3 editions is only good for GW.

As mentioned earlier, I’ll dispute CWE ever really having a horrendously powerful Codex.

Yes, each of their iterations has had horrendously powerful lists within. But the rest of it was often a big ol’ steaming pile. That does not in itself make a Codex Good.

Indeed, I argue it’s the sign of a poor Codex, where if someone is into the competitive side they’re more or less forced down one or two list routes if they fancy a chance at winning.

A good Codex should have units where they’re all much of a muchness, to the point where I could write a pretty random list of Just Stuff I Liked The Look Of, and have a reasonable chance in any gaming environment, and do much better once I’d figured out whatever synergies might exist within that list.

I think that’s a fair point.

 waefre_1 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

cavebear56 wrote:
Typically they tend to be better for the sake of being better in a lot of material and that usually garners a lot of dislike.

Kind of like Superman.

I think the fact that people like Space Marines shows that there's more to it than just resenting 'everything you can do I can do better' factions.

Maybe it's because Marines are written to be self-inserts while Eldar/elves are distinctly 'other'. Superhuman protagonists tend to be written as a vessel for a relatable fantasy (eg Marines are pretty much power fantasy through and through), but Eldar/elves are often written as just weird and inhuman enough to be hard to relate to.

I also suspect some of it is gamers identifying more positively with hypermasculine than androgynous character coding. Maybe less so now than it used to be, but I remember a lot of homophobic comments about LotR's elves in the early-00s.

Elves can be just as much inserts and power fantasy, just of a different sort. They aren't the chunky beefcake hypermasculine stereotype but there is more to "relatable fantasy" than just that one niche stereotype. Protagonists don't have to be the biggest buffest one around, and Eldar/elves are more like the kinds of characters seen in wuxia fantasy where agility, grace, and skill are valued and prevail over brute strength. Eldar are space ninjas and there are games where the protagonist is far more like that than Superman. Players don't seem to have any problem identifying with them.

100%. Ain't there some terrible fiction series with an author self insert as an elf dual wielding katanas?

Ah yes, Jarlaxle. Every Fighter for a solid ten years afterwards was a dual-wielding dark elf with a fancy hat for a companion. Truly dark times.

Yeah that's the name, or Drizzt. Both awful regardless.

ah! So I am not the only one that has a murder boner for elves due to 2nd Ed nonsense. You don't know how good it is to hear that. I always felt the odd man out.

For my group it started with Epic Space Marine where we had the 'cheesy Eldar weapons phase'.

One problem with the army that wins by skill and superior tech is can't just be humans +1, it has to be something tricky.

So Wave Serpents got lower armor (because graceful!) but a force field that turned weapons over S8 to S8. No skill required!

Across editions Eldar got strange special rules that were supposed to show their superior tech but really just weighed the game down and didn't require skill to use.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
For my group it started with Epic Space Marine where we had the 'cheesy Eldar weapons phase'.

One problem with the army that wins by skill and superior tech is can't just be humans +1, it has to be something tricky.

So Wave Serpents got lower armor (because graceful!) but a force field that turned weapons over S8 to S8. No skill required!

Across editions Eldar got strange special rules that were supposed to show their superior tech but really just weighed the game down and didn't require skill to use.

It has been a mixed bag. Something like 4th edition bladestorm on dire avengers was interesting because it actually reduced your overall offense over the course of the game, but using it on the right enemy at the right time could be worth it. Having jetbikes that could move-shoot-move back when that was a rare thing meant you had to play the angles to survive by being hidden rather than just shoving rhinos and power armor forward. Plus, it used to be that killing a transport and the models inside required you to plan out your turn and position an anti-tank unit, an anti-infantry unit, and a support psyker at the start of your turn where something like a tactical squad could just run forward, kill the tank with their meltas, and then finish off the passengers with their strength 4 attacks, power sword sergeant, and decent durability that meant they'd probably "win the fight" thus allowing them to either hide in melee during the enemy shooting phase or else sweep the enemy and finish them off entirely.

All that said, player skill and in-universe unit skill aren't necessarily the same thing. Fire dragons get bonuses to killing tanks because of their specialized training and skill, but the player is just putting a meltagun squad in range and getting some extra rerolls.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
For my group it started with Epic Space Marine where we had the 'cheesy Eldar weapons phase'.

One problem with the army that wins by skill and superior tech is can't just be humans +1, it has to be something tricky.

So Wave Serpents got lower armor (because graceful!) but a force field that turned weapons over S8 to S8. No skill required!

Across editions Eldar got strange special rules that were supposed to show their superior tech but really just weighed the game down and didn't require skill to use.

It has been a mixed bag. Something like 4th edition bladestorm on dire avengers was interesting because it actually reduced your overall offense over the course of the game, but using it on the right enemy at the right time could be worth it. Having jetbikes that could move-shoot-move back when that was a rare thing meant you had to play the angles to survive by being hidden rather than just shoving rhinos and power armor forward. Plus, it used to be that killing a transport and the models inside required you to plan out your turn and position an anti-tank unit, an anti-infantry unit, and a support psyker at the start of your turn where something like a tactical squad could just run forward, kill the tank with their meltas, and then finish off the passengers with their strength 4 attacks, power sword sergeant, and decent durability that meant they'd probably "win the fight" thus allowing them to either hide in melee during the enemy shooting phase or else sweep the enemy and finish them off entirely.

All that said, player skill and in-universe unit skill aren't necessarily the same thing. Fire dragons get bonuses to killing tanks because of their specialized training and skill, but the player is just putting a meltagun squad in range and getting some extra rerolls.

Sure having skill and timing things to get results better than what others can is good. However often times GW made it so you had to do all this effort just to get a result that was equivalent, and that actually means something is underpowered if you have to put extra work into getting the same result.

Case in point is the Howling Banshee. In 2nd edition, they were an absolute terror if they got the charge in, with their S5 power swords. Then in 3rd edition, they became S3 and their damage output became seriously nerfed for a melee elite, requiring a babysitting Farseer to Doom their targets in order to get good damage output. That is an example of the kind of babysitting that GW seemed to think synergy equated to.

Synergy is 2+2 = 5. You get rewarded for having everything coordinated and fall into place. GW made it 2+2 = 3. Even if it were 2+2 = 4 it would be evidence of weakness if you do all that babysitting just to get the same damage output that another faction could for less effort.

GW has had a problem in how to make Eldar seem advanced and/or eldritch in their technology. The problem is when they go the special rules route they create potential possibly unintended interactions that can seem overpowered. The Doomweaver in 2nd edition Epic was a case in point where its web templates lasted a turn and were impassable. If anything were forced into them, they were instantly destroyed regardless of anything else. Rules as written, this extended even to things like Titans and superheavies, allowing for a potentially very cost effective way of destroying them. Whether this was intended was never clear as GW never FAQ'ed them AFAIK.

What if...

...the community is not toxic towards Eldar fans...

BUT

...Eldar fans are toxic to a community.

I think a part of the “being miffed at Eldar” is because they’re an army which typically requires a bit of skill to get the most out of. And once that skill is learned, they can quickly become frustrating foes.

In 2nd Ed Space Marine for instance, if you arranged your army right, you could wait to apply your orders until your opponent had revealed theirs. Which in a game where each order defined not only what your unit could or couldn’t do that turn, but when, that’s a pretty powerful ability. The units themselves weren’t particularly powerful, but add in “I can totally get to react to you” with stuff like wide scale pop-up attacks, where most of time you could strike with little fear of reprisals, and they were a very different challenge to other armies.

I used to hate fighting Wraithlord heavy armies, because Wraithlords were so bloody tough. T8, W3 with a 3+ save meant small arms could do nothing, and ultimately you really wanted to be hitting them with Lascannons etc. And even then, they didn’t degrade at all, being fully operational until that last wound was gone. Get them stuck into HTH, and few units had what it took to wound them, let alone knack them.

And pretty much every iteration has had such Problem Units, from which Problem Lists were derived.

But as noted? The rest of each Codex tended to be crap. And to expand on my previous thoughts? Not only did that mean long term Eldar players would have to field the Good Stuff in a competitive/organised setting if they didn’t fancy being ROFLstomped, but it of course attracted People Arguably More Interested In Just Winning And Didn’t Care If A Given Battle Was A Mutually Enjoyable Experience.

This was often further magnified by those lists having really pretty specific counters. But those counters being so remarkably specific? Would mean a take-all-comers list would suffer. And a list designed to wreck The Current Eldar Hotness would struggle elsewhere.

And that’s the impression that stays in the group consciousness. And is largely the result of poor Codex writing. Had each iteration had better balance, you’d have seen greater list variety, with each list having (theoretically) less notoriety.

This alledged toxicity arround Eldar faction in 40K mounts to nothing compared to "real toxic" issues like FSM and playing (or not) with unpainted armies.

I would argue that TAU get mote flakk due to the "not enough" GD aesthetic and having a mostly boring gamestyle (at least in the past).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think a part of the “being miffed at Eldar” is because they’re an army which typically requires a bit of skill to get the most out of.

Sorry, but not once has this been true about the army.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As mentioned earlier, I’ll dispute CWE ever really having a horrendously powerful Codex.

Yes, each of their iterations has had horrendously powerful lists within. But the rest of it was often a big ol’ steaming pile. That does not in itself make a Codex Good.

Indeed, I argue it’s the sign of a poor Codex, where if someone is into the competitive side they’re more or less forced down one or two list routes if they fancy a chance at winning.

A good Codex should have units where they’re all much of a muchness, to the point where I could write a pretty random list of Just Stuff I Liked The Look Of, and have a reasonable chance in any gaming environment, and do much better once I’d figured out whatever synergies might exist within that list.

Most codices for most armies since forever have had 1 or 2 builds that are just objectively better than any other build you might make from that codex, but I'd argue that through the editions Eldar has been an army that typically has a few exceptional lists and a bunch of good but not exceptional options, where most other armies have 1 or 2 good lists and a bunch of crap options.

So basically a less-than-ideal Eldar army would still have a leg up over a less-than-deal army from most other codices.

At least that's my thought, I don't think Eldar have really ever been more mono-build than is typical of other armies of the same era.

You can assign this to "OP" codexes all you want (despite other factions having plenty of other broken books throughout multiple editions) but all it really comes down to is the general aesthetic and presentation of Eldar is something that clashes with the hyper-machismo dumb ape vibe of the main poster boys of the setting. Not every 40k player is a toxic-masculine frat boy donkey-cave but they certainly exist within the hobby space and even for people who don't present that kind of image they might still harbour similar opinions towards things.

Much of the Eldar and their presentation and design deliberately leans away from the traditional masculine aesthetic and it's something which, in the west in particular, really makes a lot of insecure people very very angry. If you go and show these same people the designs of like, I dunno, a lot of anime or JRPG protagonists you'll hear the exact same "criticisms" and a lot of the exact same slurs. Because that's something the 40K community really doesn't want to talk about when it comes to certain faction-hate; a lot of true Eldar hate I have seen over the years is just straight up homophobic slurs being thrown around, in a similar vein to transphobic gak being said about anything Slaanesh. And for years this stuff would just be standard discourse within 40k communities, no challenging it and if you did challenge it you'd get attacked in return.

Of course the community has had a whole load of new blood in it over the past few years and has seen its playerbase diversify just ever so slightly, even though it's still unfortunately not particularly good in that respect compared to other TT games, so these toxic views do see a lot more genuine push back than they used to. But y'know, you still saw frantic amounts of Eldar hate even in past editions where nothing they did was especially or uniquely egregious; the above BA/WE Rhino Rush is a perfect example of something in 3rd that was just far more brutal and unpleasant to play against than any jank like starcannon spam or ranger disruption tables the Eldar could do. And yet those factions have never really gotten any hate or lingering stink because, well, if you've read the above post you should know why that is.

Also, somewhat related but a general thing, 40k players have a lot of blind spots and a lack of awareness when it comes to their own factions bs on the tabletop. Marine players can be especially bad for this, but that might just be because they're the majority so you notice it more. Nothing will beat an Ultramarines player in late 8th complaining about Extermination Protocols on my Necron Destroyers meanwhile he's got his chapter master surrounded by 18 Aggressors. Kind of like now Marine players love to moan about the blender Banshee exarch with 10 D2 attacks, despite the existence of BA vet captains that can be throwing out 5 D3 attacks, or an entire unit of WS VVets all with D2 lightning claws.

Have Been playing 40K since 2ED and the "queerness" of Eldar factions like harlequins was never a real issue.

True most people dont really care or support LGTB community... But that dosent mean they are homophobic in a casual situation like a 40K game.

Not to mention the homoerotic implications of many, many Astartes depictions.

 Bosskelot wrote:
<snip>

Ahh, so "toxic masculinity" is the problem, of course!

To me the problem is more than Eldar have pretty much always had really powerful options. Other armies have waxed and waned, good in one edition, crap in another, hated in one edition, no one cares in another. Eldar just seem to be an army that consistently have been strong to overpowered going all the way back to the 90's in 2nd edition.

 Bosskelot wrote:
<also snip>

If you tilt those windmills any harder they'll be underground.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:


For the record I love Tau, they are basically if you took MS gundam and turned it into an army. That and they are (subjectively at least) the closest thing to good in the 40K universe since they are one of the only factions open to diplomacy. Yes they will probably kill you if you refuse but anything imperium would kill first and I don’t think tyranids could possibly contemplate diplomacy since they need to devour biomatter

Orks are open to diplomacy too. You can hire ork freebootas regardless of your race as long as you provide enough booty and fighting.

Means orks are also good?

As for the eldar, they're literally fantasy elves in space. That come with all the regular elf stuff of being a dying technologically and physically superior race that's also extremely arrogant and hypocrittic. It's perfectly fine as in 40k, like in real life, there are no good races. Seems that most problems start when someone actually tries to claim being better.

And from a gameplay perspective, elves have always tended to get a somewhat more annoying set of rules. Like being the first to get titan-class weapons that ignores everything on a 30-pt infantry model, biker troops with as many cheap and extremely good heavy weapons as you like, unkillable,shooty transpoets that are cheap and spammable enough to be much better than battle tanks of other factions, cheap and good psykers with strong magic, etc. A faction with long history of being overbuffed to the point of gamebreaking. However, I think they're much more reasonable now than they used to be. But as the times of elf dominance are not too far in the past, their heritage still lingers.

Gav Thorpe admitted that when he wrote the 3rd edition Eldar Codex he knew that some unit choices were mediocre at best compared to others that were strong. Then for some reason he thought that players would construct a mixed list mixing the strong and the weak units to reach "average" power. Of course we know what happened with mass spamming of star cannons. The idea that people would avoid the weak and only take the strong units seemed to have taken him by surprise.

Eldar have also many times whether in BFG or Epic "not played by the same rules" that everyone else uses. They often have special rules or rely on different mechanics that those factions with more conventional rules may find frustrating. Eldar in BFG had holofields that made it very hard to hit them with any precision weapons though massed weapon batteries still worked well. They also relied on hit and run, or staying behind a slow turning Imperial/Chaos ship that could not turn sharply enough to bring its broadsides to bear. The thing they don't do is stand there and take the blow, toughing it out, and that playstyle can be frustrating to some players just as it is frustrating in universe to the Eldar's foes.

On the “play by different rules” I think a good dose of the associated opponent salt stemmed from those primarily unwilling, secondarily unable, to adapt their targets.

In BFG, Eldar ships tended to fold like a cheap suit when caught out of position. 4+ armour, and suffering increased rate of critical damage (I think 4+ as opposed to 6+?) meant they were super soft targets. And so they had to rely on being fast and slippery. If an opponent engaged them with their standard tactics, it rarely went well.

I mean, for those people it was the tactical equivalent of an Englishman in Spain simply speaking English louder and slower at a Spaniard, expecting a different result.

I mean, was never very good at BFG, but even I knew I had to use my torpedoes and other ordnance to dissuade the Eldar from going to certain areas of the board, and to adopt a more dispersed deployment, giving my opponent fewer safe areas to sit in.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the “play by different rules” I think a good dose of the associated opponent salt stemmed from those primarily unwilling, secondarily unable, to adapt their targets.

In BFG, Eldar ships tended to fold like a cheap suit when caught out of position. 4+ armour, and suffering increased rate of critical damage (I think 4+ as opposed to 6+?) meant they were super soft targets. And so they had to rely on being fast and slippery. If an opponent engaged them with their standard tactics, it rarely went well.

I mean, for those people it was the tactical equivalent of an Englishman in Spain simply speaking English louder and slower at a Spaniard, expecting a different result.

I mean, was never very good at BFG, but even I knew I had to use my torpedoes and other ordnance to dissuade the Eldar from going to certain areas of the board, and to adopt a more dispersed deployment, giving my opponent fewer safe areas to sit in.

Whilst true in BFG, I'm not sure that's quite true in 40k.
How exactly were you supposed to adapt to 5th(or was it 6th?) ed wave serpents? Or 4th ed Harlequins with their"lol, can't shoot me" fields and their penchant for sweeping across your army?
Eldar in 40k have a reputation for being cheesy buggers that break the game. That's why you get players with a grudge. No one likes having to deal with a single unit that can solo their army or getting sniped across the field by something that was more durable than it had any right to be.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think a part of the “being miffed at Eldar” is because they’re an army which typically requires a bit of skill to get the most out of.

Sorry, but not once has this been true about the army.

Eh. "Skill." As Iracundus points out, the design philosophy behind them for a while was "2+2 = 3" or maybe "2+2=4.1" on a good day. So if I wanted to kill a transport full of dudes, I had to (in the movement phase) position one or more anti-tank units and the support needed to bust the tank, a melee unit with psychic support to charge the passengers and win combat so I could either hide or finish them off with a sweeping advance, and ideally some sort of anti-infantry shooting support to whittle the passengers down after the transport had been popped.

In comparison, it felt like marine players pretty much just had to shove a squad forward, and they'd be able to get similar results on their own. You had the meltaguns to pop the transport on the same squad that could win in melee, and you were semi-immune to morale and also durable meaning you didn't have to worry as much about whittling the target down before charging them. Not that marine players lack intelligence or don't get rewarded for good tactics, but a certain amount of planning was required to kill that transport full of dudes with eldar. Whereas the marines could stumble forward, have a bad shooting phase, and then still punch/krak the tank to death in the assault phase and end up having a pretty decent turn.

That said, my dark eldar always felt like they required way more skill to win with than my eldar. Like, you had to utilize sections of the rulebook your opponent had never even looked at to have a chance at winning. There were discussions on the exact number of wyches you should put in a unit so that you could avoid winning combat on your turn while also maintaining enough living bodies to win on your opponent's turn so t hat the wyches didn't get wiped out by bolter fire. There were articles on how how cover with intervening models worked so that you could use one raider to provide cover saves for your other raiders without interfering with your own offense. You had to figur eout when it was worth it to sacrifice your raider by ramming it straight into an enemy transport so that your incubi could get at the juicy passengers inside. I'm glad that drukhari are more accessible now, but back in the day you knew you'd earned every victory with dark eldar.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Whilst true in BFG, I'm not sure that's quite true in 40k.
How exactly were you supposed to adapt to 5th(or was it 6th?) ed wave serpents? Or 4th ed Harlequins with their"lol, can't shoot me" fields and their penchant for sweeping across your army?
Eldar in 40k have a reputation for being cheesy buggers that break the game. That's why you get players with a grudge. No one likes having to deal with a single unit that can solo their army or getting sniped across the field by something that was more durable than it had any right to be.

Oh man, 6th edition serpent shields were sooo frustrating. Not only becasue they were OP, but because the lore really made it seem like that 60" range was meant to be 6" and GW was too embarrassed or lazy to fix the typo.

5th edition's main annoying thing was the falcons (not serpents) because they could take holofields which made it really likely that your damage results would be downgraded to shaken. So combine that with an edition where only troops could score and all the eldar troops were squishy as heck, and you end up with the "DAVU falcon" (a falcon with dire avengers inside) that would spend all game flying in circles and not dying so that you could land it on an objective at the end of the game. That, and unkillable seer councils with rerollable 4+ invulnerable saves and wound allocation shenanigans.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Oh man, 6th edition serpent shields were sooo frustrating. Not only becasue they were OP, but because the lore really made it seem like that 60" range was meant to be 6" and GW was too embarrassed or lazy to fix the typo.

Nah, the old background for the Wave Serpent in 2nd edition Epic (the one that looked like a big boat), had the wave being able to be fired a long distance (d6 x 10 cm). The hit was relatively weak though could kill infantry. The main benefit was removing IIRC removing the orders of the unit hit, effectively stunning them.

Iracundus wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Oh man, 6th edition serpent shields were sooo frustrating. Not only becasue they were OP, but because the lore really made it seem like that 60" range was meant to be 6" and GW was too embarrassed or lazy to fix the typo.

Nah, the old background for the Wave Serpent in 2nd edition Epic (the one that looked like a big boat), had the wave being able to be fired a long distance (d6 x 10 cm). The hit was relatively weak though could kill infantry. The main benefit was removing IIRC removing the orders of the unit hit, effectively stunning them.

That takes me back, I picked up a fair few of them in one of the store sales GW used to have in the 90s, had to travel all the way across the Shire as I think GW Torquay was the only one at the time, and the wave had add triangle(ish) template (2" or so wide) so it usually bumped 2 or 3 bases, and if you have enough to cover a big chuck of the table turn 1 usually sucked for the other player

And that's just sort of bad beats stories most players have from confronting Eldar hi-jink hence the bias

And still of the mind that 40k Eldar are more Melnibonéan than WFB efs in SPAAACE !

I do have a laugh at the Eldar players who look at some negative responses and conclude that it’s just that they’re too skilled. That attitude right there probably does more to drive the distaste than anything. It didn’t take skill to fill the board with wraith knights, take an extra turn with ynari, turboboost hidden bikes onto objectives at turn 5, or summon 100’s of points worth of demons with practically no drawback. The Eldar codex always produced at least one broken build. It’s laughable that anyone could elect to take an action even a brain dead person would choose and think that they’re being carried on skill. There were plenty of fun options in the Eldar book, but you never saw them when you instead of d weapon spam or warlock blobs tanking insane amounts of wounds.

I don't think it's specifically Eldar hate. I think it's largely hate from Imperial, specifically Marine, fans who get a little 'too' into character and directly it unhealthily towards whatever Xenos faction happens to be the most powerful/overpowered at that moment in time. I see Tau get a lot more flak than the Eldar, even though there's plenty of that as well. It's a perfect combination of Marines being overwhelmingly popular, a deeply entrenched and unoriginal meme culture within the community and and many players taking certain attitudes too far.

It's interesting that Chaos Marines/Daemons don't really suffer from the same issue despite the propensity for 'heresy' memes, but that probably has a lot to do with there only really being two Chaos codexs until very recently and none of them have been brokenly overpowered for a long time the way Eldar and Tau regularly have been. Compare and contrast that to "dirty blue communist anime fish should be deleted from the game."