Hi, I'm returning to the world of Epic and thought that to mark the occasion I needed to get myself a fresh army. Having picked Eldar I'm now looking for some list advice. Stompzilla kindly worked my rubbish first thoughts up to this and I thought I'd post it here for further comment before I go shopping:

PWs Eldar, 3000 POINTS
Biel-Tan Craftworld (EA Swordwind)

AVATAR - 0

ASPECT WARRIOR WARHOST - 400
8x Shining Spear
+Autarch
+Exarch

GUARDIAN WARHOST (WAVE SERPENTS) - 350
Farseer, 4 Wave Serpents
7x Guardians

FALCON TROUPE - 250
3x Falcon
2x Fire Storm

FALCON TROUPE - 250
3x Falcon
2x Fire Storm

ENGINES OF VAUL TROUPE - 250
Void Spinner

RANGER TROUPE - 100
4x Ranger

WINDRIDER TROUPE - 200
6x Jetbike

ENGINES OF VAUL TROUPE - 250
Scorpion

REVENANT TITANS - 650
2 Revenant Titans

NIGHTWINGS - 300
3 Nightwing Interceptors

As for my plans, I'm hoping that this list will move pretty fast and hit relatively hard while maintaining decent AA. It's got just enough activations and hopefully with an early game bit of retaining might be able to quickly reduce the activations of the enemy. I'm unsure about the revenants but I do like the models a lot. I'm also tempted to swap the Scorpion for a second void spinner.

The plans the thing! (For all you Rogue Trooper fans out there.)
Whats the plan here?
General points - no wraithgate? A useful tactical option, even if you just replace your own blitz. Its more a headache for the enemy than anything else!
I would concur with the assessment about scorpion and void spinner - Void Spinners are by far and away the best SHT the Eldar have, with Cobras coming second if you really like them.
personally I would have 2 lots of rangers. This is to drive up activations and to ensure you get both free overwatches, no to mention mess up deployments of enemy formations when dealing with objectives on the centre line of the table. They also give an interesting tactical option if put in a vampire - 8 sniper shots against an amry that really relies on the SC is at the very least surprising (though this is very much a random not mainstream tactic).
Eldar are great at engaging - however you have a mostly shooty force it seems. The 2 lots of falcons and fireprisms plus nightwings are a great basline air defence set up. They are also quite shooty. As is most of your other formations. Indeed at the end of the day you have only one assault group (the bikes, spears and wave serpents). If this is smashed early on what is the back up plan? Just keep shooting? Biggles quite likes the wave serpent/2 lots of bikes tactic and can advise on it, however if thats the main thrust you may be better swapping the revenants for a second lot of guardians and 2 more formations of bikes.

Having used them for quite a while I think the revenants are never as good as they look on paper. The lack of RA really hurts them.

For me I'd drop the scorpion and use the points to either upgrade to a phantom, extra rangers and gate or Warlock and gate if your sold on having any titans at 3000 points.

I'm not averse to dropping the titans. The group of players I hope to (re)join includes an Eldar army with Phantom (usually I think) so I'm trying to avoid bringing a list that's too similar. I'll think about losing the two revenants and see what the 650 points might bring me. Any suggestions for a titan-free list?

I'm rather keen on the thought of the Shining Spears as one Aspect Warrior host but I could be convinced to drop them and replace them with a Warp Spider host which I also think would look very cool while delivering a satisfying amount of punch (the fact that that would mean four boxes of troops means I"d need to drop the Spears as the financial cost precludes both for now).

Take a look through Joe's lists, he is a good Biel Tan player but favors an air assault force with a plan b if the oppositions AA looks too tough.

Tim Hunt has made some storm serpent lists work too.

The honest truth is that until you try a list you won't really know if its works with how you view and play the game. Sorry as I realize that's not a lot of help to someone looking to purchase models

Hmmm, must create a page were you can see links to all the lists for a given race.....

I like the list. It is similar to one I just recently fielded. The lack of a Wraithgate is troubling though. For 50 points it is certainly worth bringing, especially for the Shining Spears (my all time favorite formation). A centrally located Wraithgate can help you dominate the middle of the board when playing against an experienced player and is a deadly trap against the novice. Even against good players I've had games where Warhounds or Leman Russ crept a bit too close to the Webway Portal and were obliterated. Having this extremely useful formation offboard and away from BM dropping artillery or aircraft is essential to the blitz assaults. Priming a Leman Russ formation is a single BM, then CCing the units with Shining Spears means you are going into the assault with a +3 in your favor (assuming two Exarchs for you, one Commissar for him). He CCs at 6+, you CC at 4+. Your armor is effectively identical since you are armed with lance weaponry. You should come out slightly ahead on kills which means you could be looking at a +4 assault resolution.

I won't even tell you what I've done to players' Warhounds with those beasts.

Personally I think your list is AA heavy, which means you could stand to drop a Falcon troupe. Those 250 points would be good for:
50 pt Wraithgate, plus...
200 pt Guardian formation plus MW platforms (which could also use the gate), or...
200 pt War Walkers (my second favorite formation), or...
200 pt Jet Bikes (good ol' standby), or...
200 pts of Rangers (1 or 2 formations).

You would have the same number of activations or more, have a wider variety of units, and more options. The rest of the list looks great!

Eldar are a flexible army, but need a central principle as others have said. My suspicion is that your list is a little to generalist, and lacks a core set of strategies. So I would start by considering how you would intend to meet the various opponents and races, then build a list that meets that strategy. For example the others have explained how they would tackle IG armoured force, but how would you meet a Marine air assault army, or massed Ork onslaught.

Some quick thoughts:-
Keep the activations high, a minimum of 10-12 to allow the army to set up attacks in the next turn. This in turn necesitates the use of several 100-200 point formations to keep the numbers up. Jet Bikes and Rangers are excellent formations for this.

Revenants definitely do not work for me, but the Phantom and especially the Warlock are probably the best titans around. If you use them, you need to build the army around them and their ability to provide awesome support to assaults.

An air assault capability is also usefull, but Vampires are the weakest air transport. If you are going to use one or two, they need protection from the ground and air - so 1-2 Night wings and 1-2 Falcons - which as you can see automatically skews the list in that direction.

As TRC says, Cobras are awesome against most targets - but several need to be used to take advantage of the economies of scale (I used two to take out an undamaged Warlord). They need carefull handling, and formations to support them - which skews the army - - -

Probably the best formation are Guardians. Crazy FF assault capabilities, and the Farseer capabilities (MW, invulnerable, commander - and especially bringing in the Avatar) make this a core formation both for attack and defence. But they are weak by themselves, so need upgrading (Vampire, Wave Serpents, Wraith Guards / Wraith Lords) - or kept off table to protect the BTS Wraithgate. You should probably try to have a minimum of two in any army. Use more if you intend to major on their assault capabilities - but then you are building the army around their use.

Aspects are also formidable, but tend to be specialists. There are whole threads on their use. Arguably the best are Warp Spiders and the worst are Howling Banshees, but all are brutally effective in their specialisms.

Probably the hardest trick to master is the Eldar hit-and-run, which is the force magnifier that sets the Eldar apart. Doing this properly means that Eldar assaults become truely frightning as each formation assaults and supports several enemy formations - but even here, some formations are better than others and so you skew the army - - -

Thanks for all the ideas. This is fast becoming something of an enjoyable nightmare! I'm glad that there's clearly a lot to think about and learn and horrified that I'm likely to muff this up horribly when I buy my 'first' set of Eldar toys... I'll try and come up with a second list based on what's here and will post again.

Ask Stomp nicely if you can borrow his army for some practice...

there are honestly so many permutations on how to play Eldar that only my trying most of them will you get a good idea about what works

I've spent a lot of time playing with Ulthwe and lots of guardians+wraithguard with Storm serpent and gate, which I feel I have down pretty well now. ONly problem is my regular opponent is completely wise to my tactics so he can stymy me pretty easily. I'm now trying out wave serpents and aspects.

One key tactic I've found with Eldar is that it's often worth waiting for your opponent to spread out a bit, send a formation ahead of the rest, then hit it with everything you can. Prep it with BMs, assault then consolidate into support range of another fm. Taking on the bulk of your opponent's army or landing in front of his/her battle line will see you wiped out or broken (which is essentially the same thing with Eldar).

I have a feeling that my Space Marines might just be pretending to be Eldar in the near future, buying will just have to wait until I work out what sort of game I want to play. Cheers - P.

The problem with Eldar is that they are horribly fragile (deliberately so) but they do pack a punch, so you have to keep moving - providing you do not throw '1's as regularly as I do for activation rolls.


So, you need to try to

• keep the formations in cover in case they do not activate,
• fire-and-run if you do not mean to engage,
• only engage when you are sure to win (so you can make best use of the consolidation move).

As mattthemuppet says, if the Eldar get caught 'static' (out in the open, after shooting, failing to assault etc) they are usually broken quickly, and are then quite hard to rally

i have a similar question when using the Exp. Iyanden list.
So far i have these in my collection pool for using a 3000 point list and i'm also able to scale it up a bit for bigger games.

3 wraith guard formations of six each ( one squad can be split into three wraithguard to support the guardians)
1 guardian formation
2 formations of war walkers
1 formation of 6 jetbikes
15 wraithlords (old metal variety! they look nice with the army)
1 squadron of bombers
1 squadron of fighters
1 squadron of 2 fireprisms and 4 falcons with two home made firestorm options
3 Cobra's
1 Vampire raider
1 Warlock titan with powerfist/psi lance.

i think thats it. though i'm going to get me a storm serpent for a few different reasons that Matthemuppet told me about (thanks Matt).
So i know this is a lot more than 3000 points but knowing the people i play with here in Houston we're beginning to play a bit bigger for the fun of it. I usually try to build a max of 5000 with most of my armies i have collected. It is themed around a mostly walker army but with some heavy support if i don't take the warlock. Also i have a house rule that lets me use the missile pod version of the old metal dread as a ap5/at5 option that i think i'm gonna have running with my guardians. Also i have a decent sized pool of aspect warriors in my collection but was not going to use these since you only have a choice of 4 to choose from.
any ideas for me?

wraithguard in vampire and webway, squad of fighters and a fm or 2 of falcons+firestorms for air support/ tank hunting, storm serpent for wraithguard delivery, warwalkers as garisons, some jetbikes for harassment/ objective capturing, some wraithlords either in webway or on the ground and fill out the rest of the points with war engines and guardians as you see fit

BTW, I know a few people whose gaming groups no longer allow Iyanden armies as all fearless MW toting fms can be a bit unpleasant at times, so make sure you explain your army to your opponent first or they'll get a nasty surprise!