Eldar Codex: So, What Do You Think Of It?

[Learn2Eel]

High Elves were the same. In fact, the similarities between the new books for both is striking. Slight cost reductions/increases across the board, a breadth of new special rules added in to emphasise and balance their elite/fragile/low numbers theme, focus on synergy and mixed forces rather than spam lists, require smart play to function. I really like that.

[Sainhann]

So many negative nancies here in this thread. How many of you actually played eldar (not against them) in the last edition?

Eldar armies have parts that fit specific goals (so sorry it's not GK easymode) that go in specific orders. If you play eldar to its strengths then you can easily beat any book out pre this codex. All this book did was fix up units to be even better at what they do.

If you play like a stupid mon keigh with them then you're going to get pasted.

Swooping hawks are awesome at av due to their haywire. You can't expect the to turn two a land raider though, you need to... What's it called? Think ahead. If they're shooting at your hawks but not your D cannons, fire prisms, or other tasty treats then you're doing something wrong. If you don't have more important ground units to be shot than hawks you're doing something wrong.

Between scorpions, hawks, and spiders in your backfield you should give your opponent Plenty to worry about. Your 'line' units should be hitting their line when most threats are damaged/destroyed, and shouldn't have a problem to eliminate the stragglers.

Simple point being that if you don't play the army as its designed to be played then you're not going to win with it. You have 6+ turns to win, use them.

With having few units on the table than any other army other than Space Marines if you are not winning by turn 3 you probably won't.

What Eldar Line units? Eldar really don't want to be in close combat range but they will be because of their inability to shoot at range and nearly every single Eldar figure on has a 12" range weapon.

Eldar vehicles are good but due to their point cost you will only be able to field a few of them. Unlike Marines you can give every single unit a cheap Rhino.

From what I have read nearly everything has gone up in Price and very few things have gone down in price.

You mentioned Swooping Hawks and yes they are very good at destroying vehicles, your opponent's will know this and should for go shooting at something else if they have something to protect from the SH's. They are more than likely going to Deep Strike and their armor is only 4+ and the unit is not going to be that big.

So yes if you Deep Strike them they will become target priority #1, so they will get shot to pieces.

[cebalrai]

That's a pretty good summary of the codex. It's not bad, certainly not horrible, but it's not *great*, and it should have been great. If I had to characterize it, I'd call it "rushed".

A lot of neat ideas - but not well thought out, not well balanced, almost no addressing of how much the 6e rules changed fundamental things about the Eldar, and too many "wouldn't it be cool if..." stuff thrown in that was clearly not thought through.. Compare that to the Tau Codex where you can see the influence of the 6e rules all over it. This codex feels like they ignored the changes in 6e and just through together stuff they thought would be cool.

The Eldar will still be a fun army to play, there is definitely some very cool stuff in here, and they certainly won't be at the bottom as far as overall power. But they will be mostly over-matched against the more powerful codexes.

I think "missed opportunity" and "rushed" is the best way to summarize it.

Compare to the Tau codex? Let me start with this.

Markerlights are stupid. And they're a lazy way to make an army work. And the fact that they were buffed tremendously in 6e doesn't tell me that the codex has 6e rules written all over it, it tells me they lazily turned up the dial on a power they knew would win by just dumbly ignoring defenses.

Can't make armor saves, can't make cover saves, and yeah let's put that all into a big pie plate and call it strong enough for 6e. THAT feels rushed to me.

[calamitycal]

With having few units on the table than any other army other than Space Marines if you are not winning by turn 3 you probably won't.

What Eldar Line units? Eldar really don't want to be in close combat range but they will be because of their inability to shoot at range and nearly every single Eldar figure on has a 12" range weapon.

Eldar vehicles are good but due to their point cost you will only be able to field a few of them. Unlike Marines you can give every single unit a cheap Rhino.

From what I have read nearly everything has gone up in Price and very few things have gone down in price.

You mentioned Swooping Hawks and yes they are very good at destroying vehicles, your opponent's will know this and should for go shooting at something else if they have something to protect from the SH's. They are more than likely going to Deep Strike and their armor is only 4+ and the unit is not going to be that big.

So yes if you Deep Strike them they will become target priority #1, so they will get shot to pieces.

Yup. I'm reading a lot of snark coming from people who don't seem to actually *play* Eldar.

Been playing them for 20 years. I remember when they WERE a hammer army (Falcon rushes FTW, lol) and preferred when they became a finesse army. Truth is, finesse isn't the right word though. I see that used a lot referring to Eldar and I find it inaccurate. Synergy is probably the better word.

But anyway, nobody is talking about wanting an easy button. But this codex missed so many opportunities to fix issues that the previous codex had, especially with 6e. They didn't for the most part and that's disappointing.

Doesn't mean the army is useless or that it sucks. It doesn't. Overall I'd say the new Codex is okay. It's far from great though so yea, after a log wait, and after seeing how much improved both CSM and Tau got (armies I also happen to play, so again saying that from actual experience), maybe it's not unreasonable for some Eldar players to express a little frustration.

[Learn2Eel]

With having few units on the table than any other army other than Space Marines if you are not winning by turn 3 you probably won't.

What Eldar Line units? Eldar really don't want to be in close combat range but they will be because of their inability to shoot at range and nearly every single Eldar figure on has a 12" range weapon.

Eldar vehicles are good but due to their point cost you will only be able to field a few of them. Unlike Marines you can give every single unit a cheap Rhino.

From what I have read nearly everything has gone up in Price and very few things have gone down in price.

You mentioned Swooping Hawks and yes they are very good at destroying vehicles, your opponent's will know this and should for go shooting at something else if they have something to protect from the SH's. They are more than likely going to Deep Strike and their armor is only 4+ and the unit is not going to be that big.

So yes if you Deep Strike them they will become target priority #1, so they will get shot to pieces.

Inability to shoot at range? Defender Guardians, Windriders, Fire Dragons, Warp Spiders and Wraithguard are the only non-assault oriented infantry that have 12" guns for the most part. Defender Guardians shred most anything - hint, they average more or the same number of wounds against a 2+ or 3+ armoured monstrous creature as the equivalent squad size of rapid-firing Kabalite Warriors do - at short range and can then run back out of range after firing, placing an impetus on smart positioning as should be the Eldar way. Windriders and Warp Spiders both have "jetpack" moves to get out of range in the assault phase. Fire Dragons and Wraithguard effectively carry squad-wide meltaguns, with the former being able to run back out of range and the latter being so darn hard to kill/strong that they probably won't care as much. Most other units in the codex have 18" or greater ranges to keep out of the average assault range of most units, and can run after shooting to boot.

The problem here is that you are comparing a dedicated transport to a main battle tank. Wave Serpents should never be considered solely as a transport. Trust me, a lot of players would rather four expensive but nasty Wave Serpents that don't die easily as opposed to eight Rhinos that concede First Blood and victory points like no tomorrow and can do barely any damage. It depends on the army though; aside from Howling Banshees and Wraithblades, most of our assault units have their own ways to make it to combat, and small units of six Fire Dragons or Wraithguard can fit into Falcons or Wave Serpents and effectively be used as miniature devastators ferried around by tanks.

The same thing happened with High Elves. A few went up, most went down - you will find that most Eldar units went down, or rather, gained a whole heck of stuff to compensate if they did go up. Guardians have semi-Rending guns, better BS/WS/I, and cheaper options, for only a minimal points increase. Striking Scorpions went up by a tiny bit but now no longer have to pay for Infiltrate or Move Through Cover, and have gained both Fleet and Stealth as part of their basic make-up. Looking at units in a vacuum doesn't help, as many are naturally designed to work best with others. I keep mentioning them, but the example rings true; High Elves make a good comparison, as some units that look good but not great by themselves, such as White Lions, work fantastically with a Frostheart Phoenix. With Eldar, from what we can tell their commanders are more to do with this stuff, but that is before you actually consider the potential combos of hitting a unit in the same turn with two different units.

They are also exceptional at decimating light infantry, who are becoming more popular with the reintroduction of Cultists, greater emphasis on Fire Warriors and others making appearances in an edition where boots on the ground are key. They can deep strike without scatter; think about that for a moment, as it effectively allows you to pick what units will engage you unless you play on a board that features little terrain. Plus, if they are focusing on your cheap unit of Swooping Hawks - six of them is less than triple digits - you can laugh at them as your nearby Wraithguard or Fire Dragons move into position and land the killing blow anyway. Think of the army like that, and not in a vacuum, and they will probably be a lot more appealing.

[Learn2Eel]

Compare to the Tau codex? Let me start with this.

Markerlights are stupid. And they're a lazy way to make an army work. And the fact that they were buffed tremendously in 6e doesn't tell me that the codex has 6e rules written all over it, it tells me they lazily turned up the dial on a power they knew would win by just dumbly ignoring defenses.

Can't make armor saves, can't make cover saves, and yeah let's put that all into a big pie plate and call it strong enough for 6e. THAT feels rushed to me.

Pretty much exactly. Without Markerlights, the army is decent, but nowhere near as good. Markerlights are an excuse to remove rules that are intrinsic to the functionality of many units, such as not having to snap-fire at flyers with any unit you want, or ignoring cover saves with darn near any weapon you can find. You need markerlights to be an effective army, and they effectively allow you to point at a unit and remove it from the table each turn with almost no involvement from your opponent allowed. Its cool, and it promotes looking at your army with Markerlights as opposed to without, but it isn't fantastic rules design. Hero summed it up very well [URL="http://lkhero.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/so-how-about-that-tau.html"]here[/URL].

Yup. I'm reading a lot of snark coming from people who don't seem to actually *play* Eldar.

Been playing them for 20 years. I remember when they WERE a hammer army (Falcon rushes FTW, lol) and preferred when they became a finesse army. Truth is, finesse isn't the right word though. I see that used a lot referring to Eldar and I find it inaccurate. Synergy is probably the better word.

But anyway, nobody is talking about wanting an easy button. But this codex missed so many opportunities to fix issues that the previous codex had, especially with 6e. They didn't for the most part and that's disappointing.

Doesn't mean the army is useless or that it sucks. It doesn't. Overall I'd say the new Codex is okay. It's far from great though so yea, after a log wait, and after seeing how much improved both CSM and Tau got (armies I also happen to play, so again saying that from actual experience), maybe it's not unreasonable for some Eldar players to express a little frustration.

I'm reading "snark" from everywhere. No one can definitively say with any real weight how this book will turn out competitively without some extensive play-testing.

I would disagree with your opinion of Chaos Space Marines, solely on the proviso that you don't feel Eldar have greatly improved as well. Aside from Emperors Children and perhaps Iron Warriors, it doesn't reward themed army lists at all. Competitively, it relies on the most broken unit released in a hardback codex yet. The Eldar codex looks to have much better internal balance, and competitively we can already see that Iyanden and Saim Han will at least feature, if not be popular. The Eldar Fast Attack and Heavy Support choices aren't tough picks because there are a lot of them - like with Chaos Marines - but because pretty much every single one of them is darned good.

[cebalrai]

Wait - what kind of horrible list did the tau player have if your bomber wasn't blown out of the sky on the turn it came in or your tank(s)? I can't think of an army better suited to annihilate this strategy better than the tau.

At the top of turn one most of my army was pretty much in his deployment zone. And because of how the battlefield was set up he couldn't focus on a single Wave Serpent so none were destroyed. I had a huge turn 2 and turn 3... he never got to fire across the map at me, I was in his face the whole time.

Halfway through the match he was grousing about the new Eldar codex being OP.

[Learn2Eel]

At the top of turn one most of my army was pretty much in his deployment zone. And because of how the battlefield was set up he couldn't focus on a single Wave Serpent so none were destroyed. I had a huge turn 2 and turn 3... he never got to fire across the map at me, I was in his face the whole time.

Halfway through the match he was grousing about the new Eldar codex being OP.

Coming from a Tau player, that must have been quite the laugh

[UrielVentris]

Learn2Eel nice to see another vet of the finesse army here.

You guys are right eldar used to be a hammer. 15 years ago. 15 years ago Internet wasn't even dial up and America online was brand new.

Eldar plays like chess, and you need to strategize your strikes accordingly. Someone was saying that hawks will be target number one once they land. That's fine, turn your tanks around so your line units of S6 aren't being targeted, or your D cannons are hitting rear armor. Shooting at hawks? Scorpions get closer with fewer casualties, your spiders are hitting side armor or troops and not being targeted.

Because of the fragility of eldar you truly need to force your opponent to hit your bishops sometimes so your pawns can get into place.

[cebalrai]

Coming from a Tau player, that must have been quite the laugh

It was really a huge mess in his backfield and a crazy battle in all.

- Guardians were assaulted a huge blob of blinded Kroot snipers in order to avoid getting shot at and then remained locked up with those Kroot for the rest of the game. He was trying that BS5 no-cover 20-man sniper crap...

- My Scorpion squad was instantly shot down to one (non-exarch) guy on turn one - and then that lone Scorpion managed to charge into the fray with the rest of my forces backing up the Guardians above, living to see the end of the game.

- My Swooping Hawk Exarch (no CC weapon) and one remaining Hawk ended up piling into the Kroot blob battle as well, followed by a bunch of his Fire Warrior stragglers. It was a mess but a lot of fun

- Yeah, two units tank shocked off the map at the same time with one Wave Serpent. They were tightly packed together for their overwatch stuff so it was easy.

- Warp Spiders are officially amazing. I'm going to try bringing two units of them next time.

-

Wave Serpent tank shocks are sweet. Even if Death or Glory is successful the guy goes squish on a 2+.

Learn2Eel nice to see another vet of the finesse army here.

You guys are right eldar used to be a hammer. 15 years ago. 15 years ago Internet wasn't even dial up and America online was brand new.

Eldar plays like chess, and you need to strategize your strikes accordingly. Someone was saying that hawks will be target number one once they land. That's fine, turn your tanks around so your line units of S6 aren't being targeted, or your D cannons are hitting rear armor. Shooting at hawks? Scorpions get closer with fewer casualties, your spiders are hitting side armor or troops and not being targeted.

Because of the fragility of eldar you truly need to force your opponent to hit your bishops sometimes so your pawns can get into place.

I've played Hawks lots of times and I've never had them killed as soon as they land. And now we don't have to worry about scatter so they're even safer.