Starting with Eldar

[Deleted]

Hi all. Ive been thinking about starting an eldar army, mainly because I like the look of them and seems like they would be great to collect. Would it be possible to build an eldar army that mainly uses close combat all round? or would such an army do poorly because of the eldars specialist nature.

Also if a close combat army could be made, could you give suggestions on where I should start.

[Callus]

Harlequins, howling banshees and striking scorpions all mounted in wave serpeants. If going for a CC based army you're gonna want it to be mechanised or they'll get mowed down. I'd throw a unit of fire dragons in too, to deal with tanks or Termantor equivelants. My mate plays a list like this and it's a bit of a glass cannon, it can hit really hard and do massive amounts of damage but it's rather fragile (like most eldar armys) and a couple of poor moves leave most of his army wrecked.

Callus

[ElegaicRequiem]

Avengers, supported by hawks. If I were to do an Eldar army, that's what I'd do. Banshees are also good, but a expensive, and I think them less versatile than avengers. The avengers are good at shooting, and can handle cc reasonably well, the hawks are a great disruption unit, and you would have other support in there too. I've also always been a fan of warp spiders...

Honestly, I wouldn't start too big an army right now with Eldar - they're mostly pewter. GW's bound to get around to making some plastic sets sooner or later. Maybe next year. Although, that's what's been being said about the DE for over a decade...

[RedsandRoyals]

The earliest we would probably see plastic Eldar is the middle of next year, it looks like.

Reds

[The Envoy (AWOL)]

Don't forget Scorpions if you're going to be considering CC.

With the ability to outflank and a large amount of attacks, they can carve through riff raff units like nobody's business.

[Callus]

The only times I've seen avengers do much of importance is using bladestorm, which isn't combat like you want. A unit or 2 to support you're nastier aspect warriors wouldn't hurt to bulk up numbers but you want at least one squad of scorpions and banshees.

Callus

[Rolling Thunder]

The thing with eldar is that it's rather like playing air cav Guard. It's all about the alpha-strike. Yes, you can run a fantastically resilient gunline of Guardians and Wraithlords, supported by a few mobile units and war walkers, but if your going mobile, you need alpha-strike.

Ironically, Dire Avengers with Bladestorm make for an amazing alpha-strike. Think about it. 30 S4 AP5 shots at BS4. Considering that I regularly maim, maul and kill TH/SS Terminators with that, that kind of firepower is going to give you a significant edge over your opponents....

Fire Dragons are obviously good as Tank Hunters. 5 of them isn't too expensive in points or models cost, and they can also double nicely as heavy infantry killers. A somewhat contentious strategy is to actually give them Tank Hunters, but give the Exrach a Dragons' Breath flamer, thus making them a more multi-role unit if supported by guide.

Warp Spiders...well, much as I love them, I find the role they play is too similar to that of Dire Avengers, who are cheaper and scoring.

Banshees are obvious heavy infantry killers, scorpions fulfil a more general-purpose role but each is definitely functional in a multi-purpose sense.

Dark Reapers: Love these bastards. Stupidly resilient, and murder Space Marines.

Swooping Hawks: Mobile light-infantry killers.





Damn. Now I want to play Eldar again.

[The Envoy (AWOL)]

Dire Avengers are actually quite good for assault armies because of Bladestorm. Use it to tear a unit to bloody shreds, then charge in with the Avengers to play clean-up (since after using Bladestorm they can't fire the next round).

Once they're in combat, the unit cannot be shot at, has all the bonuses for charging and are not being charged by the enemy unit they just effectively crippled.

[ElegaicRequiem]

Avengers might be the only aspect that doesn't need to be baby-sat ALL the time by a supporting unit. The others are far too specialized to survive for more than a turn without support. Even scorpions with their 3+ save can be picked apart by any anti-MEQ (and by extension, anti-tank) firepower.

Scorpions are kinda expensive, and are more than not worth the points, but they really suffer from 5th ed giving the ability to run to everybody. They can't really run-down anything, and get into cc. A savvy player's going to keep his forces close against Eldar, because they don't have any big exploding guns. That means outflanking isn't going to be as useful, but more importantly, it's going to give the opponent an easier time of making his forces work together. The whole theory with Eldar is to disrupt the enemy to the point of them having no coordination. Then chip away piecemeal.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the all the suggestions, seems like it would be intresting collecting Eldar and experiment with the various unit types.

Im assuming the wraithlord and avatar are fantastic at close combat themselves, would I be able to comfortably fit one of them into a smaller army?

[ElegaicRequiem]

Wraithlord is obscenely cheap on the table, but it's a huge ripoff in the box... In fact, I'd suggest not letting it get bogged in combat with anything larger than a 10-man squad, and you'd also have to take some kind of psyker to make sure it doesn't just stand there with a stupid look on its 'face area.'

The avatar... is definitely more suited to a cc army, but how small are we talking? Even at 1K, it's a big investment. Thus putting a drain on your other resources - like the troops and elites.

[Ymmot (M.I.A)]

Ah, but the wraithlord cannot be hurt by anything less than S5
Wraithsword lets you re-roll missed CC attacks.

Though he doesn't get to dish out many hits, they will hurt anything you send him after...

Against infantry lacking powerfists he is likely going to win (even a space marine with a powerfist needs a 4+ to wound.)

I4 break test = a good chance to score a sweeping advance.

Most smart players will stay away though...

[Deleted]

anything from 600-1000pts. My friends seem to fit in larger charecters in similar sized armies (but they arnt eldar).