[Jayne Cobb]

H I am a guard player thinking about starting a new army, and eldar seems really neat. I was just hoping to hear some streangths and weaknesses from the experts... you.

Are Farseer councils worth having? the eldar player where i live runs a fast one and wreaks souls.

I like shooty armies (IG ), but want some diversity. Eldar seems like a nice mix of firepower, and CC ability. your thoughts?

are eldar tough to play?

Please shoot some advice back. thanks.

[Yummifoamycoffee]

I asked the same questions not long ago, being a new Eldar player (I don't even have a working army list yet :)
I don't know about the Council, not being a great Psychic fan myself, but you could use them as very expensive meatshields ;D.

Eldar can be made as a nice mix of firepower and CC, but it's a hard way to play and a specialisation is a better way of rolling.

Eldar are one of the toughest armies to play. Even harder than IG. Eldar can be very rewarding, but you need to get a lot of experience before you can vanquish your enemies in 4 turns.


All the above comes from an Eldar player with very little experience. Your best bet is asking Emyln, or Sorc.

[The Man They Call Jayne]

having played as and against them, i can say that they are very hard to master, but once you do they are very very very effective, you may or may not know, the Eldar are the fastest army you can play, and due to there specialist units they always have the tool for the job, but that also means that are left without redundancies. you lose your firedragons, you dont have anything that can do their job.

From a painting point of view, the eldar are great, they have so many colours and patterns, hence their battle cry "TASTE THE RAINBOW!!"

[Wingates_hellsing]

Most of what's been said here is true.

Eldar are difficult to win with, but are very rewarding once you've gotten good with them ;D

Redundancy is very important to me, so I try to make sure I have a passable back-up unit should whatever specialist (tank hunter, CC screen, etc.) go down.

Never used councils since 3rd ed. but unless you mount them up, they probably won't keep up.

[Guitardian]

Originally Posted by Yummifoamycoffee

I asked the same questions not long ago, being a new Eldar player (I don't even have a working army list yet :)
I don't know about the Council, not being a great Psychic fan myself, but you could use them as very expensive meatshields ;D.

Eldar can be made as a nice mix of firepower and CC, but it's a hard way to play and a specialisation is a better way of rolling.

Eldar are one of the toughest armies to play. Even harder than IG. Eldar can be very rewarding, but you need to get a lot of experience before you can vanquish your enemies in 4 turns.


All the above comes from an Eldar player with very little experience. Your best bet is asking Emyln, or Sorc.

Keep up with your codex! IG has just become the most sickly unbalanced army in the game. All the new 'orders' rules, the reduced points cost, etc. makes them even more distorted than the unbreakable 6-point 30 man ork mobs they recently 'updated'. (I prefer the word 'broke&#39

Answer to the origional question: Every time a new edition comes out, whichever armies (usually Marines and xxxx whatever) they use in their intro box get the first codex upgrade. They revamp the rules and release a new Codex one army at a time. As far as I know it's usually just space-marines, orks, nids and (once) dark eldar that have benefitted from this favoritism... but they immediately start revamping all the codicies one at a time once the new box starts selling, encouraging players to invest more and more on the new GW pretty boy featured army. This is usually not Eldar. When 2nd ed. blood angels codex came out, everyone started collecting blood angels, when 2nd ed. 'nids came out, everyone wanted them... same with space wolves, same with DarkAngels, etc... the recent codicies on the shelf or in the works are orks and marines, (obviously since they are in the box), plus the recent Imperial Guard, and rumors of a new (sigh again) space wolf codex.

Eldar do not get nearly as much attention, and our codex, as well as our figure line, is sadly overlooked by GWs marketing approach IMO. We are still using Warp Spider and jetbike models from 1992, and while the SMurfs get a whole slew of figures, new codex, new vehicle options etc etc with every new edition or codex release, while we get umm... a jetbike Warlock conversion kit? Yay. :P

I may sound bitter but it's because I love Eldar, I just think that the game designers let them lag behind time and time again by focussing more on other armies. By the time WE get an updated codex, 6th ed. will be releasing soon and we'll have to revamp our armies yet again for all the new rules changes.

Yes it is quite possible to win with the Eldar... despite rules changes constantly 'nerfing' our effectiveness or giving to other armies our once reknowned maneuverability and flexibility advantage that we took for granted. Yeah it is now possible to be outmaneuvered by imperial guard. Yech.

Some things that will always remain strong:
wraithguard wall, jetbikes doing the jump-shoot-jump thing, ranger pathfinders in cover, bladestorming dire avengers drop-and-pop from a serpent, fire dragons in a serpent, Eldrad is always awesome too.

Some things that used to be very nice but got screwed by rules changes over the years:
falcons lose their firepower unless they stay still, something that was one their strongpoint. starcannons in general, harlequins need an extra roll to rend, fleet-o-foot gets nerfed because every other army can now 'run' (but do our points costs go down accordingly? Nooooo), vypers lose their mobility advantage in defense if they ever want to shoot. morale in cc for small specialized cc squads like banshees or harlies (versus orks its just pointless), damn my list could go on and on...

Our army doesn't suck, it just gets outdistanced by the more currently upgraded armies. Any army can win because dice are dice. We just have an uphill struggle against some of the newer codex armies. We are not the only ones, Dark Eldar and Necrons have gone a long time without much support from GW. I don't know anyone who plays DE any more, their codex is kind of overupgrade-able with all the character options and their figures are embarrassing, and Necrons who I play against almost always have the same army since their choices are so limited in army selection.

Sorry no AssCannons here or 4t/2A/Ld30 troops for 6 points. Maybe the game designers just assume we are good enough players already and don't need the helping hand of 10 new vehicle options, never-miss-drop-pods full of randomly infinite numbers of AssCannons or whatever else every couple of years.

If you want to play Eldar, play them because you love them. They look kickass. They have snarly nasty surprises to pull against witless opponents. It is much fun to beat down the overconfident and brainless SMurf army that has every possible advantage over you, and the only weakness is incompetence on the part of their player (why Eldar are known for this supposed arrogance) But in a competative tournament style setting, in the current GW environment I would leave them at home and grab whatever the latest codex that came out. It's marketing man. Play them if you like them.