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Hey all,

So I'm slowly painting up my Imperial Guard, and have the opportunity to build out an Eldar army too. I'm new to 40K, and am utterly overwhelmed by list-building. I have the rules, and the Eldar Craftworld codex. Man, there's a lot of STUFF in that codex.

This is not an ideal game for folks with busy family lives...!

Can anyone recommend a good start, say a 1,000 or 1,500 pt Eldar list? I love the look of the grav tanks, and will probably get a few falcons and/or fire prisms (don't like the weird spines on the wave serpents, so I'll just proxy falcons as WS if the latter are the way to go). I'll likely use it to play exclusively against IG, at least initially. Do I get exclusively guardians? are Dire Avengers better? What the heck is the difference? lol...

Is there a tactics or advice page, that explains what the myriad of Eldar units are good for? I am simply unable to grok what the heck I'm doing when I sit down to try to build a list...

How do you play?

If you're looking for a tourny list, you'll need 2k. And then you want things like Serpents/Reapers/Shining Spears.

If you're not looking for a tourny list, I'd suggest the "one box" method, outside of Troops/Transports. The one box method is "Like that box? Get one. Don't get two". So you'll have a wider selection of units with less repetition. If you pick a bad unit or two, it'll only be a small part of your force. Your force won't be OP or super optimized, but 1k and 1500 pt lists normally aren't. These sorts of lists make for more fun casual games. And CWE can get away with it, because most of our stuff isn't bad. Further, our OP stuff is typically only so OP when built for it.

For HQs, you'll want a Farseer or Autarch as the main HQ. Not strictly necessary, but it's good to have a core HQ, and either can support most units. Warlocks are good too, but they risk frying themselves with each cast, so don't make good Warlords.

For troops, anything but Storm Guardians.

Rangers aren't cheap, but they're cheap enough to screen compared to our other options, when leveraging their cloaks. But usually I use them to hold back/midfield objectives where they're likely to get shot at but not charged. They aren't going to do any real damage. But they'll take a bit of shooting to clear out. They'll fold to even a couple Marines making it into CC with them.

Guardians are our stock troop. The cheapest, but at 8ppm, we can't throw them away like Guardsmen or even Kabs. They've got 12" range, though, so you're either going to WWP in a big squad to do one really great round of shooting, or you'll be taking 10 to sit backfield with a heavy (1 heavy per 10 guys, no specials), and potshot, giving a nice counter-threat to skirmishers (20 ShuriCat shots will scare small ASM squads and other skirmishers, but do nothing to most actual CC threats).

Dire Avengers are more expensive than Guardians, have 18" range, and a 4+ armor. But where they shine is they get one guy upgraded to an Exarch for free. This means a 4++ and 2w. And can take 2 Shuriken Catapaults. His other options are fun, but bad. Guardians have better dakka, but 12" range really limits them to commit-or-die. DAs aren't necessarily dead if they fail to kill everything in range by end of turn the way Guardians are, because they engage from that extra 6" away. 12" vs 18" is super important. But you're paying half again for it.

Most of our CC units aren't great. Shining Spears are the one exception, the rest do worse than their SM counterparts. However, between powers and stratagems, CWE excels at buffing. Almost any of our CC units can be made to actually do work, if you invest enough into them. Don't expect to get a lot out of them, but don't write them off either. Shining Spears, on the other hand, can do work, and buffed, are amazing.

Most of our infantry is short ranged. Only a few of them can shoot more than 12" away. Outside Wraiths, it's mostly t3 without invluns or FnP. And you're paying MEQ prices not GEQ prices. This means that you need to avoid engaging the enemy until you can bring everything to bear. Then you need to cripple the enemy, or you're going to die a horrible death. Serpents, WWP, LOS, movement shenanigans, fire&fade. We have the tools to do it. But you can't meet them in the field toe to toe and expect to win.

Thanks, very helpful! I will never play tournaments, so this is for fun, casual games.

I may eventually get to 2,000 points, but would like to start at smaller points for starting. The rules (in particular: special abilities, stratagems, orders, objectives...) are quite overwhelming initially!

1d4chan's tactics page (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Eldar(8E)) is generally a useful starting point/summary for getting a shorthand description of what everything is; it isn't a complete guide to everything so don't stop there, but it makes for a good overview.

Dire Avengers and Guardians do broadly the same set of things; the statlines and weapons are very similar, but Guardians make better backfield objective holders since they have access to long-ranged support weapons and they are cheaper, while Dire Avengers are better played more aggressively with a transport since they're a bit tougher and might last longer sitting on midfield objectives.

As far as grav-tanks go Falcons are sort of a mediocre mid-range unit; Fire Prisms are the proper battle tank and Wave Serpents are one of the best transports you could have access to. If you don't like the shield spines on the Wave Serpent I'd recommend getting the Wave Serpent kit anyway and just leaving those parts off; you still get the extended transport bay and the Wave Serpent turret, and it'll look more like a Wave Serpent than doing weapon swaps on the Falcon turret. As for the fourth option (the Night Spinner) the Fire Prism is generally a more efficient and more flexible tool, plus Linked Fire makes them vastly more reliable.

On the Falcon vs Serpent: there is no other model that uses the Serpent chasis. There is no option to not include Serpent Shields. That doesn't mean you need to add the kit: quite the opposite, it means that you're legit even if you don't, because there's no potential confusion over what it is. *Only* the Serpent has the extended cab.

Bharring wrote:

...
Dire Avengers are more expensive than Guardians ...

Thanks everyone, this is all very helpful. I think I'll post my first 1K list here soon, to see if folks wouldn't mind commenting on it.

One quick question - I see Dire Avengers as the same price as Guardians in my Craftworld codex, 8ppm. Am I perhaps missing something?

Thanks again

 pancakeonions wrote:

Bharring wrote:

...
Dire Avengers are more expensive than Guardians ...

Thanks everyone, this is all very helpful. I think I'll post my first 1K list here soon, to see if folks wouldn't mind commenting on it.

One quick question - I see Dire Avengers as the same price as Guardians in my Craftworld codex, 8ppm. Am I perhaps missing something?

What you are missing is the cost of the weapon. Shuriken Catapults are 0ppm, Avenger Cats have a cost that makes them more than Guardians

Avengers are more expensive per model than Guardians, but have a smaller unit size. So a "unit" of Avengers is cheaper than a "unit" of Guardians, you just get less models
Food for thought

-

Thanks - I figured I was missing something!

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Dire Avengers and Guardians do broadly the same set of things; the statlines and weapons are very similar, but Guardians make better backfield objective holders since they have access to long-ranged support weapons and they are cheaper, while Dire Avengers are better played more aggressively with a transport since they're a bit tougher and might last longer sitting on midfield objectives.

I actually don't rate Guardians as backfield campers because then the unit is an 80 point tax on a single heavy weapon which is just not efficient. Everyone complains about Tactical squads making poor backfield campers yet they are still better than Guardians in this role.

The best unit for Objective camping is probably Rangers. They cost a bit more but are more durable thanks to their cloaks. They are still Troops for filling Battalions/Brigades and for getting Objective Secured (or whatever it is called these days). They also have 36" range guns meaning they are likely to have targets in range more of the time. Sniper rifles are not great but with more Knights coming into the game, the ability to plink off a few Mortal Wounds just got a little bit better.

The best use for Guardians is a unit of 20 with 2 Shuircannon platforms entering play form Reserves with the Webway Portal stratagem. It is not exactly fluffy but the "Guardian bomb" is efficient at shifting a lot of targets, particularly when a Farseer can Doom the target and you have some source of rerolls for the Guardians.