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If you're making an Eldar list of 2000 points, is taking Eldrad a given?  Is he THAT good, or rather, 210 points of what Eldar are supposed to be able to do.

1) He's 45 points more than a Farseer with all wargear, Doom and Fortune.
2) Compared to taking two farseers to do the same thing he comes out about even.  Only taking 1 slot you can now add an Avatar, Pheonix Lord, or even another Farseer maybe on a bike.
3) He has all spells so you can change what you want to do as the game permits.  Ever wanted to try Eldritch Storm?  Dooo iiiit.
4) On top of that, he gets his redeploy, which is sick unto itself.

Disadvantages
1) He can only be in one place at once.
2) He can fleet but he can't ride a bike.  You could taxi him in a falcon if all your warwalkers or whatever get blown up.
3) He's not only a 210 point non-scoring unit he's a 210 point non-scoring unit with little direct offense of his own.  If you're going to do it, you better get it done before your opponent withers away your army and leaves you standing there.  Fortune could mitigate this.

I think he's worth it just to cast doom.  Suppose it could get tiresome doing the same thing all the time.  As in WINNING. 

Sorry if this has already been discussed to death.

Another advantage: IIRC Eldrad is T4. Not getting instakilled from perils is pretty big advantage.
Another disadvantage (or corallary to one mentioned already): Having farseer in falcon got nerfed big time (no powers when embarked). This carries over to Eldrad as a big disadvantage in certain builds.

I don't see him as a must have. Maybe in a fearless horde where one HQ slot is taken up by the Avatar but otherwise he's an option worth considering and not a no-brainer.

Don't foregt you can take Eldrad and Yriel the pirate prince.

- Greenie

I like Eldrad with a more static army with war walkers, dark reapers and harlie counter-charge. Throw in Maguan Ra and and I think its a winner.

I posted what I thought about him on this thread:

http://dakkadakka.com/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/14/postid/143208/view/topic/Default.aspx


But he is a huge force multiplier. He can cast 3 psychic powers, and 2 of the same type.  So if you have a  lot of shooting, 2 guides and a doom will work wonders.

But the caveat with him is that he work best with a static shooting army.

If you are taking mech eldar, he will not do that well.

Posted By Tacobake on 02/20/2007 12:59 PM

2) He can fleet but he can't ride a bike.  You could taxi him in a falcon if all your warwalkers or whatever get blown up.

I was not aware Eldrad could fleet. Has this been FAQ'd? 

Actually, he can not Fleet. I played 2-3 games with him before I caught this change.

A huge factor that is hard to assign a point value is the redeployment. This is still catching folks off-guard and horribly screws up their battle plans as they find a good chunk of their army unable to shoot or be directly involved in the game.

The biggest thing I love about the new Eldar is how useful so many of the units have become. This is especially true in the HQ section. Eldrad is pretty standard for as and I really like the Avatar. However, I still want to field Maugan Ra or Asurman, then again, their's Jain Zar that has potential, but I really need a Farseer on a Jetbike or my Autarch on a Jetbike.

No brainer? I won't go that far. At the end of the day, synergy is what makes the Eldar tick and your HQ's need to play a big part in that. If you think how your HQ will complement the rest of the army, I think you will find your no brainer choices.

I play a Guardian heavy army; the Avatar and Eldrad really work for me.

He is rather useful and I did use him quite a bit in my early eldar lists however I have moved away from him to use 2 farseer's attached to pathfinders. My main reason for this si that I was tired of getting 2 or 3 perils of the warp tests a game, now although he can survive them occasionally its not worth it.

P.S: Never ever ever give normal farseers runes of witnessing, you will get at least 1 or 2 perils and they are instakill.

P.P.S: 2+ rerollable cover saves are a beautiful thing, although they haven't infiltrated out of my deployment zonw in about 15 games.

Fortuned Pathfinders? Interesting combo. See, this just further demonstrates how much variety one can see now with the new codex.

You could have Fortuned Pathfinders before. Nothing new there.

The T4 is one of his biggest advantages. I've blown up my Farseer's head T1 in my last two games. With Spiritstones, casting twice/turn, regular Farseers die distressingly often. That said, I'm philosophically opposed to special characters and am dealing with the handicap.

If I played Alaitoc, I agree. However, I've played Ulthwe so this option is new to me.

Still I have heard of the new Eldrad dying in quite a few games after still losing all his wounds to several failed PotW tests. That should tell you something right there to be honest about it.

- Greenie

I think the next person who says that ANY of the new codexes have a lot of variety should be banned.  forever.

lets see there is warwalker army eldar, warithlord/infantry eldar, harlequin on foot with falcon eldar, and full on mech eldar. Thats pretty reasonable variety. Not saying there is a lot of variety but thats some. Better than ass cannon marines, thats a no brainer.

whoa. whoa.

The warwalkers and wraithlords are identical except for the heavy choices. (excluding the fact that the warwalker build is vastly superior)

Have you ever actually seen someone putting large groups of harlies on foot? That would be a mechanized shooty armies dream. Just drive up and double tap. (basically, given the number of shooty mechanized lists out there this is a bad idea)

The reality is that every codex since 4th edition railroads you straight into one style or another. The lucky races get a full 2 archtypes.

Into The Rain: You can't be serious.

Marines: Without even going into the various chapters, there's Drop Pods, Mechanized, SAFH Infantry, Assault Heavy, Terminator Heavy, Scout Heavy. Then throw in the various Chapters and Traits.

Eldar: Mech Lists, Hybrid Mech/Infantry, SAFH infantry, gearing an army to reflect a specific Craftworld which varies lists drastically.

Black Templars: I can't say as all the powergamers felt slighted and shelved their armies (apologies to Black Templar players)

Tyranids: It's been about the same since 2nd edition with one new one added: Godzilla lists

Tau: Mehanized, Farsight, SAFH, balance between the two. Fighting against this army has become seriously fun since the new codex. It actually opened a lot more options than what I saw in 3rd edition.


Please elaborate as I really don't see your point. If you actually are trying to state the 3rd edition codexes were better....wow. A game where everyone's armies dogpiled in the middle for a slugfest. A game where in the far future your best weapon was who had the biggest club....yay.


Now, if you are going back to 2nd edition or Rogue Trader, then I can somewhat see your point- there were some seriously varied lists that were very one of a kind, especially first edition.

3rd edition was superior to 4th edition in many ways. All the bugs and idiotic rules were replaced by new equally bad ones, and a lot of the fun stuff was replaced by useless crap only Eldar and Tau fanatics (read: people who refuse to believe in cheese and constantly talk about force multipliers, mobility and combined arms) might appreciate. The 40K scene has a few types of players: Cynics who keep winning tournaments, idiots who lose all their games regardless of their army, and fanboys who like to convince themselves day after day that one of the worst editions of 40K ever is somehow strategic. I'll keep saying this, stop imagining things and try FB for once and then look back at 40K and see what it is about.

If only Tuomas Pirinen designed 40K we might actually have a decent game, but naturally talented games developers like him don't want to work too long for a company that pays its employees with miniatures.

SAFH, mech Eldar, footsloggers and everything you've mentioned already existed in third edition and those armies were all very succesful too in the right environment. 4th edition is less flexible and promotes mobility much less than third edition did. You must remember the times when everyone thought a Space Marine army with something like 70% shooting 30% assault was king, and same applied to Chaos. My own tournament winning Chaos army had tons of shooting power backed up by two Rhino assault squads and a flying Daemon Prince. Now every Marine army consists of 100% shooting, and the only units that move are ones that can move and fire heavy weapons, or ones that can deep strike. The game simply sucks now.

As far as Eldrad is concerned, yes he's a 'given'. Too bad GW screwed up the psychic powers so bad that you can't use Farseers in transports anymore, so you're pretty much limited to a footslogging army where getting two Fortunes per turn is useful. Eldar codex was screwed over beyond all redemption to be honest, but that belongs to another topic.

You forgot one thing from 3ed: screening. Screening made 3ed dull as hell and is reason enough for me to say that the 4ed ruleset is better.

With the exception of a few wonky rules, I just don't see 3rd being better to play. From my experience, it was transport rush vs. SAFH. All the while, GW smiled as they found the key in rules writing for folks to buy lots models.

I haven't played Fantasy in nearly 11 years. Back then, bad ass characters and flying monsters ruled the day. Made for a boring game. Maybe things have changed. But, if I were to get into another game it would be FOW.

If your 40K scene is as you describe, then I wouldn't be fond of playing either.

Mobility is big now. From even your own list (Elves), it appears the same may hold true even in Fantasy ( I forget how many chariots you ran).

For infantry heavy Eldar, Eldrad seems a lot more viable. In mech lists, Farseers on Jetbikes appear more workable. I still don't see him as a no brainer; it depends on what your overall armybuild is like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Errors...

at citadel97501: Why so many? You will almost never take a PotW on double 6's(need 3), and the percentage for double 1's only slightly increased.

test

Did anyone else notice that Eldrad is no longer limited to 2000+ point armies? I am going to have to face him next week in a 1250 point league game and I am worried.

Darrian

Everyone, actually. This thread would probably not exist if we weren't all aware of it, as 2k is hardly the default game size.

Posted By Darrian13 on 03/01/2007 10:17 PM
Did anyone else notice that Eldrad is no longer limited to 2000+ point armies? I am going to have to face him next week in a 1250 point league game and I am worried.

Try to find solace in the fact that the enemy has a 17% of his points tied up in a single infantry model that happens to be non-scoring.

MotRW on jetbike is a scoring unit. Big whoop.

- Greenie

Eldrad is certainly one of the more powerful special characters.  I'll even go out on a limb and say that special characters that give deployment bonuses (Lysander) have a disproportionately large effect on the game.  He definitely works better in concert with infantry, doubly so in smaller games, where his divination skill could render a whole enemy flank pointless.  Has anyone tried using him at the fore of a big seer council, backed up by harlequins and War Walkers?  That could be a nasty combo.

Its too bad that the Dark Angels Codex has been a disappointment.  I have a small infantry army painted up as DA's that I was hoping might be the backbone of a larger force, but I think I'll paint it up as a traits chapter instead.  The new codex has all of the glaring problems people have pointed out, but it seems like the options meant to balance out those failings have lots of minor restraints that make them less useful.  The lack of termy command squads, pre-determined armament choices, and the re-pricing of useless vehicles all add up to a big no in my book. 

Eldrad is most certainly a given. Here is why:

Compare a fully kitted out farseer with Eldrad. A fully kitted out farseer that is equipped comparably with eldrad costs 215 points (assuming the far seer could legally take 5 pshychic powers). That means he has been given every option available except a singing spear.

Now Eldrad costs 210 points, so he is not only cheaper, but he has an extra point of toughness, 3+ invulnerable save, Divination special ability. The staff of Ulthamar allows him to use three psychic powers a turn (two of which can be duplicate) and counts as a power weapon that wounds on a 2+.

if you were to have a powerful psyker in your eldar list that has any type of high points cost, there are only three reasons not to take Eldrad as default. Eldrad cannot be equipped with a jetbike nor a singing spear, and the DIY farseer can save you on points.

While Eldrad is pricey, he is still undercosted.