Hi
I am considering taking up Eldar as my next Epic army and would like some advice from the experts and eldar fanatics on which flavour to try first.

I play a pretty aggressive style weighted towards firefight over close combat or shooting, but prefer some long range firepower to keep the enemy honest and on their toes. I prefer armies able to launch surprise attacks whether due to air assault or speed. Reinforced armour armies (AMTL or Minervans) are extremely popular in my local environment.
I'll admit to being a fairly competitive player, and I love optimising and fine tuning lists to get the most out of them.

So, what's are the essential differences between the various Eldar lists, what are your favourites and what would you recommend?

Thanks!

Well, the lists are so conceived that you can play any Craftworld with pretty much the same army.

Sure you'll need extra wraithguard for Iyanden, extra aspects for Biel Tan, extra guardians for Ulthwe, extra rangers for Alaitoc and extra jetbikes for Saim Hann, but with a decent sized army, you can play them all.

Now if it's a questions of painting scheme, I would suggest you go with the one you prefer.

Concerning playstyle, all Eldar lists are assault based, with a strong focus on Firefights. Typical battleplan is the overwhelming of a battle sector through a sustained assault (Rolling assault) after some prep fire, so as to limit the capacity of the opponent of shooting back. Getting shot at all is a problem, due to the little resilience of Eldar to either damage or BMs.

Your enemies are therefore Markerlights and Indirect fire, especially as Eldar can use pop-up attacks so as to shoot then hide.

List Wise: (personal opinions based on experience)

- Alaitoc does not have anything special except some overpriced pathfinders

- Saim-Hann is underpowered due to Jetbikes having trouble fulfilling their battlefield role in assaults, and otherwise very limited options.

- Biel Tan is a nice army with a lot of options, but not as strong as the next two.

- Ulthwe is basically Alaitoc with SR5 and upgradeable to init 1+ Guardians. That SR5 really gives Ulthwe an edge, and combined with typical Guardians + Wraithguard formations coming out of Storm Swerpents is devastating.

- Iyanden is currently bananas overpowered to use E&C's expression. Wraithguard are the ultimate warriors of the 40th millenium. Fearless, reinforced armor, 2x 4+ MW FF, MW shooting attack, Init 1+, Farsight, 58 points a piece. They can be portaled into battle by Storm Serpents or flown in with Vampires, or even just march down the battlefield through cover. Iyanden has all of the Eldar advantages without the main flaw (little resilience). Honestly, If I were a Biel Tan Autarch and want to reconquer the eldar empire, I'd fly my Craftworld straight into a tyranid Hive Fleet, so as to benefit from a full Wraithguard force after the horrible losses against the Tyranids.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

I've only ever faced eldar lists, but I think the Biel-Tan list gives you the most options, it has the awesome void spinner for the long ranged shooting, and vampire-aspect assaults can be lethal, Steve54 is one of the top eldar players in the UK, I think he runs something along the lines of

2 lots of Aspects (2 FD exarch, 4 DA, 2 DR) one has an autarch
2 vampires
2 falcon formations
2 void spinners
2-3 lots of rangers
guardians with heavy weapons
fire prisms

although in the UK list fire prisms have AA so on balance it may be better with a 3rd falcon formation

it's a very nasty list to face!

I think the main difference between the lists is the main attacking formation, for BT it's big aspect formations, for ulthwe black guardian spam and wraithguard air assaults can be devastating with Iyanden

I mostly face EUK lists which are a little more restrictive outside the BT list so it may be a different story with the NetEA ones..... tbh I think adding a few extra wraithguard stands, plenty of jetbikes and some extra warlock stands to any eldar force will mean you can play as any of the big 4 quite easily and see which suits you best....

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Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

is that right in NetEA lists?

EUK just has MW on the EA, so a standard host puts out 6 normal and 6 MW, I can see 12MW shots being ludicrous and agree with you on taking on the tyranids a second time!

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Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

It's FF4+, EA+1(MW), so not quite so bad as that.

They do have 2x MW5+ shooting, though.

I'd say to any new players that they should choose biel tan
- allows pretty much any style effectively (mech, air assault, titan, etc)
- benefits from 1+ initiative aspects
- only list with the void spinner - easily best artillery in the game and far superior to the other eldar shts, also no other eldar unit fulfills its role of being capable of hitting opponents deployment zone (which is vitally important for eldar as they are very vulnerable to artillery)

My advice would be go biel tan, paint them generically and then try other lists

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www.epic-uk.co.uk
NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

Thank you, mixed them up .

My point still stands though. Flawless killing machines.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

If you're going to play Biel-tan against RA-heavy armies, would Shining Spears be a good choice?

That depends. My experience with them is that they are a cheap, resilient (for eldar), assault initiating formation with a good initiative. This would be good against any army.

Their CC ability (lance or not) is too weak to be of any consequence in my experience. Moscovian has a different experience with them and apparently has already slaughtered large Titans due to their Lance ability.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

To actually get back to answering the original question, since this isn't supposed to be yet another debate about whether units are effective or need a rules change, I would say that it's best to start with Biel-Tan. It has the advantage of being the standard list, meaning you don't have to learn about any additional special rules or formations, and you could always convert it into one of the craftworld lists later if you prefer.

As one of the original official GW lists, it also benefits from a certain amount of stability and balance, owing to the fact that it has been around for such a long time. It's also the most flexible of the lists in my opinion.

I started with it and have never felt the need to branch out.

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^This.

There are so many playstyles that can be accomplished with a reasonably well-rounded Biel-Tan collection; I've yet to exhaust the possibilities of list-crafting with plain Biel-Tan. It's certainly my favorite army to play, still.

That being said, you should consider your preferred playstyle when assembling the initial force - it is easy to get sidetracked by all the neat options and collect something that doesn't synergize as well as it could.

Alaitoc is just as, if not more, flexible as Biel-Tan, and it has no special rules or formations (unless you insist on counting aspect troupes and ranger hosts as special formations simply because Biel-tan flips it).

Alaitoc lacks the punch of a full Aspect host, and is therefore likely harder to use, but for me I'd say the aspect troupe is more flexible than a full host, not less.

+1

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

I agree with most of the above - Biel Tan is the basic and probably more flexible list. Indeed Eldar are arguably the most strategically flexible list in the game. As S2M says I have yet to exhaust the various permutations at 3K, and if you check out my lists on the E-UK site you will see what I mean

Eldar are harder to play well, because most formations are intentionally more brittle than other lists, and their greatest strength - the "rolling assault" - is one of the hardest tactics to set up and pull off, but very brutal (and satisfying) if you can achieve it. The different variant lists play to certain strengths and give other challenges.

In my experience, Eldar also tend to play better where you have several formations of a particular type to support a given strategy, and so can be a little more expensive in the long run as you collect the additional formations.

Not just titans. I play Imperial Guard opponents frequently and there is nothing quite as satisfying as having the Storm Serpent - Shining Spear one-two punch to obliterate a Leman Russ formation.

Storm Serpent doubles and lays a BM on a LR formation within 30cm.
Retain... Assault with Shining Spears, eight strong, plus two exarchs.

Leman Russ have lousy close combat values, which means they will have 2x FF4+, 1x FF5+ (token Hydra), 6x CC6+, 1 MW6+ for the Commissar who will inevitably be in there somewhere. That's 2.5 hits. Their awesome armor is halved because of the lance shots from the Shining Spears, so now they are running with 4+ armor straight up.

Shining Spears come in with 4+ armor, equal to the Leman Russ, 8x CC4+, plus an extra 2 hits a 4+ which means they will take out an average of 2.5 Russes.

Eldar...
+2 for BM advantage.
+1 for Inspiring Advantage (assuming all characters survived on both sides of the assault)
-1 for outnumbered (and half the time you'll have equalized the numbers)

So you go +2 into an assault roll against arguably the toughest formation in the game after reducing their numbers by a quarter. And God help the LR player if you've managed to kill just one tank prior to the attack, as that puts you at a +3 or +4 going into the assault roll.

If you lose, you lose small and withdraw 70cm to safety.
If you win you win big, breaking (most likely) the enemy's BTS, costing him at least one more unit, setting it up for a severe pounding while broken, and you still withdraw 35cm to fight another day.

Shining Spears also FF at 5+, which make them perfect for clipping assaults.

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