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I've noticed here on dakka a decline in the number of Eldar lists and tactics. Also, at my FLGS there are suddenly no Eldar players. Is there something wrong with them that is making them unplayable?

They took a hit with 6th, and with every faq they take another one. My brother plays them but only becasue its his only army and he can't afford anything else.

He struggles but its not impossible, you have to be really careful how you play, most games are close but he mostly narrowly looses.

I'm curious, does he play mechdar?

I just put together an Eldar army and have not had much luck on this site getting advice. Seems like only a few people so far

At my FLGS the vet eldar player is STILL steam rolling everyone else. Sure, he uses IA, but he is allowed. We have a youngblood with footdar and vypers..Also a very good player already.
They havn't become unplayable.

I switched to Orks in '08, but I still play Eldar if I'm feeling froggy. It was easier before, but since when (aside from before the fall) has the Path of The Guardian been easy.

Some of my advice to Eldar Players
-Farseer
-Fragons

I also Reapers, Some people don't like them but I never go into battle w/ out reapers. If you can stay out of range of Marines you can slaughter them.

There are still 1 or 2 at my FLGS, Eldar are also getting fielded alot as allies for Tau and DE for a Farseer with RoW as a psychic defense.

 ghastli wrote:
I'm curious, does he play mechdar?

Nope, footdar, and now looking at dark eldar allies. Our gaming group is mostly marines, so he uses two squads of dark reapers to good effect. Fire dragons he uses less now than 5th because of a bigger shift towards foot lists. Always fill the hq slots with avatar and eldrad, wraithguard he uses sometimes to good effect aswell.

I still play Eldar, but I don't play them as often as I used too. I'm by no means a power gamer, but every FAQ they get kicked even harder for no apparent reason, and it makes it really discouraging to play sometimes when you know that every single game is going to be a total uphill battle (especially considering I usually play against CSM, GK, SW, C:SM and IG, all of which are much more powerful than Eldar).

I bring out the old wraithwall every now and again. usually when I'm in a hurry and I don't want to haul a big box of minis around. 2000 points fits easily in a hammerhead box.

Besides the fact that they took a nerf with 6th, the codex is really old and the different editions its seen haven't done anything to change which units are good and which suck.

What this means is that lists haven't really changed all that much since the codex came out. Only minor tweaks were needed to adapt to changes in the meta.

Fritz (WayOfSaimHan on youtube) plays Eldar, he also makes Eldar tactics videos, among others. I also watch his Black Templar tactics videos and so on.

You can win but pretty much ever advantage we had was given to imperial players.

We had special rules to counter balance the fragile nature and points in the dex, but now everyone has a cheap counter or a unit that does the exact same thing but better.

Wave serpents were the last bastion of hope and 6th made them laughably easy to kill. It went from needing 36 krak grenade attacks to kill it down to 9.

I think part of the problem is that they're a very knife-edge army, a few wrong choices and a list can be total garbage, as such only vets and masochists dare play them.

Also the transition to 6th has had a fairly massive effect on the viability of a lot of the codex, previously good or at least average units are useless (Banshees), previously bad / ineffective units suddenly have new-found uses (spiders, reapers).

For people who have invested in the wrong things or are stuck in their ways its easy to not be able to see that Their Eldar Doesn't Work =/= Eldar Don't Work.

Nobody plays Eldar for two reasons:

1) Old codex that hasn't adapted well. You can still win, but you'll have few options for winning (since so many units are weak) and you'll have to work hard to overcome the age of your codex. Most people don't want to bother with trying to compensate for GW's poor updating system, so they just play newer armies.

2) Finecast. Good luck getting those nice fire dragons when it'll probably take you a couple years of sending miscasts back to GW before you finally get them to ship you enough intact pieces to make a full unit.

Well, Eldar was my main army in the editions 3 to 5. But now I've shelved it since there are better armies out there.

I am starting Eldar!
I wanted to stick with a Wraith-army (Avatar Wraithseer Wraithguards and Wraithlords, with some Nightwings and Shadow Spectres). But things are going out of control (again) and I am gathering a full army.

I know it won't be easy, but it wasn't easy with Tau to start with (even if they got some indirect buff with the 6th edition).

My current regular FLGS "enemies" are CSM / IG / Salamanders player, Ork player, BA player and the infamous GK / Necron player (which fortunately struggles a lot to win against my Tau, 60% times he gets beaten but it's damn hard to pull tricks down my sleeve and I extensively use fw models).

I feel like they could be really good in 6th because of the premeasuiring. A buddy of mine had an nigh unbeatable mechdar list in 5th because he was really good at judging distances. He would dance out of range and pounce once you were whittled down to a manageable number for his doom/guide bladestorming DA. I feel like the potential for that type of play is much greater now.

I still play Eldar and still building my army with a moderate amount of success. I hold my own against Necrons and Chaos.

Next thursday I am testing against the brand new Dark Angels.

Eldar have suffered with each rules change because they are ultimately an army of specialists. Most units in the list do one or two things really well, yet suffer with every other role. While they were good in 4th, as editions changed and rules started to work differently, things that certain units lost the ability to do what they were intended to do. One example are Howling Banshees. In 4th and 5th they were designs as anti-MEQ/TEQ assault units, they were fast and lightly armored, but got power weapons and a high initiative to win those combats. However, changes to transport rules, assault (such as the introduction of overwatch) and most importantly, the changes to power weapons, left them unable to adequately fill the niche they were designed for. Interestingly enough, the few Eldar units that have remained good are their more generalist choices, and things like Fire Dragons which will always have vehicles to blow up. This more than anything is what is makes Eldar arguably the weakest codex in the current metagame, even more so that their out of date pricing structure (as is the case with all 4th edition codices. For example, if you compare the 4th edition C:SM to the new DA book, an equivalently equipped tactical squad between 1 and 2 points less per model, and most non-land raided transports got at least 15 points cheaper with 5th editions.

Eldar are by-in-large, Guardsmen with slightly better to-hit skills, with expensive wargear. In GW land, this makes them cost the same (or sometimes more) than a MEQ. Eldar can NOT win the attrition game and have to rely on concentrating force on a portion of the enemy army - smashing it down to a size that it can't retaliate properly.

Three things hampered this a lot between the Eldar's last glory days in 3rd up to 6th.

1. Changes to vehicles. Namely, no charges after disembarks, and revisions to LOS blocking for skimmers. The Waveserpent is grossly expensive for something that has such terrible synergy with half the army.

2. Charge what you shoot. This really weakened elite heavy armies by artificially restricting how many targets your expensive unit could engage a turn.

3. No consolidating into combat. Again, this hurts the expensive t-shirt wearing specialist armies.

Combining 1-3 meant that pretty much all the c/c units in the Eldar army were made sub par as they can't cross the battlefied without getting shot to pieces and transports still meant they were usually exposed to one turn of fire that they can not weather.

Thecodex is also filled with expensive units with no role: i.e. swooping hawks and their long range lasguns / frag. Warp Spiders and their high powered anti-light-infantry weapons.

Regal Phantom covered a lot of the items... but the biggest problems that face the Eldar are:

They are an army that is based on "exceptions" to the main rules. Change the main rules and you throw any semblance of balance in the book out the window. On top of that, they pay dearly in points values for these "powers", regardless of whether they are relevant in the current ruleset.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
-edit 2- by glory days, I mean the days when you could field a varied selection of the codex, and not an army consisting of the last half dozen viable entries.

It may actually be a good time to invest in Eldar, with their current play value so low and rumors of an updated codex later this year.

I run eldar as my primary army. Took 1st last tourney and almost every tourney im top 5 of ~40.

6th was unkind to C:Eldar. Thankfully it buffed Corsairs quite a bit. I run with Corsair allies and Forgeworld slotted items for Eldar to make up for the problems eldar have with fliers and ranged AT.

I still play my Eldar, but since I don't have any FW for them it tends to gravitate to mostly the same list. I tried to use vehicles, but they are just too expensive for what they bring so it's mostly footdar for me now.

Problem is we're so fragile and our long range units doubly so.

When I'm up against Necrons for instance they can do everything we can, but are more durable to boot.

Still play them. My mechanized style of play in 5th edition did not play very well in 6th, but after a lot of games with them and a few tourneys, they play ok. Overall, the points costs are too high compared to newer codexes, but the codex still holds up. I finally placed well in our last tourney (20 players) by going 2-1 and taking home the best painted army award.

Locally, we have 4 players that use them as their primary army.

All excellent points but I would like to add:

- Underpowered weapons in the main or short ranged.

- Inability to add decent long range heavy weapons to most units without BS3, with the exception of the wraithlord. All the long range heavies (except Dark Reapers) are on guardian platforms, artillery platforms, etc.

- Costings are outdated and too high, compare to Dark Eldar and see what you get for your points.

- Previously incredibly powerful psykers are now so-so.

- Mediocre troop choices. Dire Avengers need a heavy weapon choice.

- Unit sizes of most elites, etc too small in the modern game, e.g. only 5 Dark Reapers maximum?

- HQs need eternal warrior or death by insta-kill beckons.

- Low T + rubbish armour = weak army.

- Fleet has been nerfed in 6th ed which was a major Eldar advantage.

I want Eldar to be significantly improved in terms of ability and power levels. They should be a high-tech, highly elite force with strong weapons and tough armour, but very expensive points wise. That fits the fluff. A weak army in which every unit is easily killable makes battle a suicidal proposition for the Eldar.

I disagree about the dire avengers. Being limited to only shuriken catapults, it reaffirms their role as strickly anti infantry and the occasional monstrous creature. Access to heavy weapons tempts you to grab something different than their primary role to increase "flexibility". Like you said, it is an army of specialists.

One thing I completely agree with however is the cost of units. Why are guardians 85 points minimum for a squad with t3 and 5+ armor and the same number of guardsman are 50 points?

I don't know much about Eldar or their point costs for the table-top but don't all Eldar (fluff-wise) have passive psyker abilities? I would like to see a truly psyker based army that translates into the game (Not GK).

Obviously nothing over the top, but having defensive/passive/offensive psyker abilities available for all of their troops would be quite interesting plus it would give an edge most other armies wouldn't be able to field.

To add to this, taking away psyker tests would also give them an edge against other armies?

I'm just throwing ideas out there.

I am halfway through painting an Eldar army, and I like them, though my opinion is pretty moot as my buddy and I plan on sticking with 4th/5th edition rules and armies. And before and "you just like the older rules just for the broken skimmers rules" complaints, I have a whopping two skimmers, which are used primarily as Wave Serpents to ferry around the foot elements of my army that aren't mounted on jetbikes.

I think most people have a problem with them as they expect the same game play out of them as Imperial Guard or Space marine armies, which if Eldar are used the same way, will make them look idiotically sub-par with tissue paper armor.

As for the ever-more idiotically expensive and brittle Eldar Finecast, that is easy to avoid with Ebay. I only truly started the army last spring, and I have squads of metal Rangers, Dark Reapers, Howling Banshees, and Wraithguard, just by purchasing OOP minis. In addition my Swooping Hawks are just plastic DE Scourges armed with the basic carbine firearm as counts-as Swooping Hawks, and my Shining Spears are DE etbikes with Dark Elf spear arms. (my army is made with a more savage piratical look in mind).

The advantage of the Eldar model line being old and rarely updated is that Ebay is positively filled with them, at least

Although Wraithguard often seem to go for more than retail.

I'd like to point out that even though they've taken a LOT of nerfs over the years, it's still very possible to win with them given the right list and good strategy. My record with Eldar is probably still higher than with my CSM, even with lots of vehicles and sub-optimal units. I do play against players that aren't overly competitive though, so it helps that I'm not facing flyerspam armies or other brutal lists.

You just have to really think about how you move your troops around and your target priority with Eldar. Before I do anything with them, I like to quickly take a look at the table and go through a couple of scenarios and try and determine the best course of action. Lots of times there are no good options and you just have to go somewhere and hope that they whiff some rolls or that you manage to kill more than you expect. Keep in mind that my rolls are average at best, so if I'm able to win games with them, others should be able to as well.

Still though, I am absolutely looking forward to a new codex. Even if it's underpowered compared to other 6th edition books, it really couldn't be much worse, so pretty much anything will be an improvement.