Monday 8 March 2010

Where to start...: Part One - Purchasing power.

A PM, from Heresy Online's Azrael Ironfist:
eldar

hey i am starting an eldar army and was wondering if i could get some advice.


Well...like the title says.

The first thing that's important is learning what, if anything, you have already bought. Ideally, you haven't bought anything but Fire Dragons, Dire Avengers, Jetbikes or Grav Tanks.

Starting an Eldar army, there are a number of things you just shouldn't bother wasting yuor money on. These are ofc well enough documented, but a summary here hurts no-one.
- Swooping Hawks
- Shining Spears
- Artillery
- Avatar
- Phoenix Lords
- WRAITHGUARD!!!!
- Wraithlords
- Striking Scorpions
- Dark Reapers
- Howling Banshees
- Warp Spiders
- War Walkers
- Guardians
- Rangers

...Now, I know that's a lot, and not everyone will agree. But I don't care. In a nutshell, we've just separated the wheat from the chaff, and left ourselves with the core elements of the Eldar:

Fire Dragons
Wave Serpents
Seer Councils
Eldrad

and the supplementary things good enough to be considered, in some capacity at least. NOTE - Vypers are still in contention. This is primarily for scaling up to larger points when the FoC gets slightly restrictive, but also because they can provide fairly cheap flurries of S6 shots...they are the least viable unit remaining, of course.

On the one hand, starting Eldar can be expensive. The requirement (OUT Blackmoor-philes) for a fully mechanised list pushes the cost up a lot, as does the critical factor of Fire Dragons not being plastic. Converting your own Seer Council is also a tricky and expensive process. Fortunately, I just saved you a lot of money by relegating most of the Codex to the scrapheap.









6 comments:

Unknown said...

I agree on the suckage units. I have tried Banshees in the past and currently using Scorpions. Scorpions are meh and Banshees too fragile.

The problem is assaulting OUT of the transport.

Tempted to drop them and get more Fire Dragons and possibly more Jetbikes.

Warhammer39999 said...

Wow.

Everyone has their thoughts on what units are ineffective in their codex, I've just never seen someone quite so opinionated.

You seem to have left Autarchs, Falcons, & Harlies off of both lists--so how do you think those rate?

Also, I'm surprised that you think Rangers, War-walkers, and Wraithlords are bad, as they seem to be well liked elsewhere.

Personally, I'm also a fan of Reapers, Spiders, & some Phoenix Lords, but, like you said, not everyone will agree.

Turbo said...

youre 100% right on this. the people who go on about other units being viable are just trying to self-justify what has pretty clearly been a waste of money. ive got 10 scorpions, 5 reapers, 6 warp spiders, two wraithlords and 20 guardian defenders, permanently collecting dust on the nerf shelf - just get over it i recon.

when we talk about 'viable', i don't think anyone means anything but 'competitive' - it makes no difference if you can thrash your little brother with swooping hawks, theyre still not good.

i wish someone had been around to tell me when i started collecting; Viable Eldar Units are -

Eldrad, Yriel, Seer Council, Wave Serpents, Mech'd melta Guardians , Jetbikes, Fire Dragons, Fire Prisms, Falcons.

Rangers and war-walkers are ok, but its really too complicated to make them worthwhile.

TheKing Elessar said...

Part Two coming later tonight. :)

SandWyrm said...

But... But... BoLS told me that foot Eldar were L337!

(ducking)

TheKing Elessar said...

*Wrath*

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