What's good in CWE and Harlies right now? Standalone and as DE supplement

Cheers everyone. I've been away from the game for a long time, since 7th just didn't click for me and with 8th edition being out for a while I thought I would give the game another look before my army has completely rotten away.

I have browsed the forums a bit and so far lists look really strange and spammy. You almost see no troops except mandatory chaff units to throw away as cannon fodder and instead high volumes of either vehicles or specialized units like 4x DL scourges (who actually built those like that, there's only one lance in the kit FFS?!). For CWE it seems psykers are still great, rangers are a thing now and dark reapers are completely bananas... but I only own five.

I'm curious to what it would take to bring my collection up to date without investing a bucketload of money. GW has made me very cautious with investments, especially in multiples of certain units for they will be nerfed into oblivion usually. If I decide that I need too much money to bring my CWE up to date I might just sell them except for a few pieces to use in an allied detachment. It's a shame because I do like the models, but they just occupy lots of shelf space and I'm more invested in a few other games now as well.

I realize this is a lot to put in one topic, but I'll add what I have:
CWE:
Avatar, Autarch, multiple Farseers and Warlocks in all configurations
40 guardians + 4 platforms, magnetized
5 wraithguard
24 dire avengers
9 jetbikes (only 3 heavy weapons, because that was a thing)
1 full squad incl exarch for Scorpions and Banshees
8 Fire Dragons incl Exarch
5 Dark Reapers
6 Swooping Hawks
2 Fireprism/Night Spinner (magnetized)
3 War Walkers (magnetized)
15 odd Rangers
1 Wraithlord
1 Falcon

For DE I have:
All HQs with different loadouts
5 Incubi
5 Scourges (2 specials, magnetized)
1 Talos
18 Reavers
3 Ravagers, 4 Raiders, 4 Venoms, 1 RWJF
a bucketload of Kabalites/Trueborn/Wyches with different loadouts. Can play anything in that department

I'm definitely not selling my DE, since they are fully painted to high standard, but CWE is still mostly just primed so I could part with some of that. What are your thoughts? Is this any good? I feel there is a lot of doom and gloom going on right now.

happy to hear your thoughts.

All the best,
Dogmar

Things have changed fairly substantially even within 8th edition with big points changes in the recent Eldar Codex.

Here are my quick thoughts about your options:
Avatar / Autarch / Farseer / Warlocks - all reasonable HQ options
Guardians + Platforms - expensive way to get heavy weapons. Guardians are OK if they get to shoot at 12" range, but unlikely to survive the two turns they would need to pay their points cost against most targets
Wraithguard - good balance of firepower and resilience, not quite as strong as they were in 7th. D-Scythes better than Wraithcannons
Dire Avengers - much improved in Codex, now efficient on offence but a bit squishy for points
Jetbikes - OK option, including without max special weapons
Scorpions / Banshees - Scorpions are fairly strong, Banshees less inspiring
Fire Dragons - very good if they can get in range - prime candidate for deep strike stratagem
Dark Reapers - very good at the moment
Swooping Hawks - best option for anti-horde, but limited against tougher targets
Fire Prism / Nightspinner - fairly resilient, but even with Fire Prism shooting buff not particularly efficient
War Walkers - reasonable option
Rangers - probably the ideal troops choice now, especially for Alaitoc
Wraithlord - like the Fire Prism, resilient, but doesn't put out much damage
Falcon - again like the Fire Prism

In my view the good options you have are: Wraithguard / Fire Dragons / Dark Reapers / Scorpions / Hawks / Rangers
The next tier are: HQs / Dire Avengers / Jetbikes / War Walkers
The lesser options: Guardians / Banshees / Fire Prism / Wraithlord / Falcon

About the current list and no troops.

There are many different detachments now, you can have any 3 of them (there are 12 different ones)
There is also no Comp score (40% troops, 20% max in Fast/Heavy/Elite unless your an army specialized in 1, aka like BA for Fast and DE or Fast, or Harlequins for Elites).

Out of the 12 Detachments you are only required to take 1, and out of those 12 only 4 are illegal for an army with 1 detachment.  The other 8 detachments only 3 of them require troops.

You can take your 3 Detachment that requires 0 troops and since you dont have a Comp score you also dont need troops. So this makes it EXTREMELY easy to spam only "good" unit.

To counter this GW gave ALL troops something called Object Secure, that means a Troop will ALWAYS claim an objective unless your opponent also has a troop, so if they have 10 Terminators on an objective your 1 Guardian will get the objective.




The nature of the game also moved to Alpha Strike based armies, damage every edition keeps getting more and more dangerous and easier and easier to out gun each other.

Due to the nature of the game, things are MUCH more survivable, almost any 100pt+ vehicle cant be killed with 1 hit no matter what


BUT there is a good thing, GW is "trying" to balance and Rebalance units MUCH more now, they are keeping track of good/bad/OP units, and trying to fix them, they are going MUCH better this edition than ANY edition so far... are they still missing the mark on some armies and units? Yes, but an Insane amount of units are viable now compare to any other edition before.

Index's vs Codex is a thing, but the Index's was stop gaps for the Codex, so far every codex but 2 has been Extremely good and well balanced, GK wis way to weak and IG was way to strong.  Remember how i said GW is trying to balance? Well they already nerf back IG some and are now well balanced.

Thanks for the replies so far!

It's good to hear that they are at least trying to balance stuff, though honestly GW has such a bad track record of balancing things, that I have serious doubts they will get any of the non-imperium stuff right. I heard they did a good job on nids, but that might have just been a lucky shot.

Anyway, list building sounds really easy, but weird now. Objective Secured is fine and dandy, but we were never good at sitting on objectives and it seems just killing everything with "good" units makes much more sense.

I take out of it that I should wait for a DE dex to see what's good. However CWE is already out.
From your suggestions I have a few competetive units and some that are more bottom of the line. How much would it take to bump that collection up to "viable" or is it just better to sell stuff off at this point? Does it still make sense to take CWE allies for a DE army? And if so, what kind of units? Guess the flyers are really good, but I don't have those.

Cheers

Some of the objective if you are playing Maelstrom is Turn based and not Game end based, you can get anywhere from 5 to 20 points. So each turn you might have to put some troops/units on them to even get your points.

You have a completely viable list right now, many of the units you have are consider competitive units. Many more units are viable now for sure, in no comp games about 2/3 of all units are fully viable.

Your MOST comp units that you have are

Dark Reapers
Fire Dragons
Wraithguard
Incubi
Ravagers

You have MANY more that are still GREAT to use, if you have a Wave Serpent that be great! They are amazing, especially for Wrathguard.  Some other units he said above that are good.

Thanks for the reply, looking at your blog you seem to have a good grasp on tournament gaming.

I see that I have some good, competetive units. I will not sell my DE regardless of competetiveness, because they are my lovechild. I think as it stands I can build a good Kabal list. The models I have also serve for wych cult lists, but those are bad right now.

I'm curious now what I need to add to take both armies up a notch. For DE obviously we can't tell until the codex hits, so I'll wait for that one. But I am afraid it will invalidate a lot of models I have, because something stupid like 60 wracks or 12 talos will be good.

For CWE I obviously need Serpents, but what else? More reapers? I don't want to invest too much money in that project since I currently focus mainly on other games. Are there any units I have that are really bad? I think I could get rid of the guardians and maybe the prisms to give me some budget for other stuff.

I'm really clueless right now and I also really like harlies but I don't want to invest heavily into a third army for a game I rarely get to play, so it's them OR CWE.

Could you provide a sample list and explain what it's intended to do? For CWE / Harlies I mean, I think I got DE down.

Cheers

Reapers, Shiny Spears, along with Wave Serpents and Wraiths are really good in CWE atm. Some other great units are Spiritseers and Fire Dragons. The Hemlock (both flyers honestly) are also great! Some aspects and vehicles are not very good and the WK is overcosted.

As for troop pickf or CWE? Well they all are ok, they all have a role but many players dont like the troop slot, i personally LOVE the rangers and would take all rangers all the time, but i also encounter lots of characters and dont like the play style of Storm guardians or Guardians in CWE. My buddy that is much better at pure CWE than me loves his guardians and takes a 20man unit and then 1 Ranger squad and a Dire Avenger squad.

I like rangers for the deployment and added threat, even tho they dont do to much damage to characters, placing them how you like combine with doing a few wounds (sometimes can kill a character in 1 turn with all 15 shooting them) it really puts pressure on. And my play style is to put pressure on my opponent, i'm not a alpha stripe player, i like to play the long game.


Harlequins best units are for sure the Troupes and starweavers. They can add a lot of melee and short range melta power to any aeldari army for cheap. The Shadowseer is great in anylist but greatly effects quins more, if you take ally quins i would go with a Troupe master instead. The WWP is another good add also to quins. The 100% worst unit in Quins is the Death Jester. A solitaire is basically an assassin, he is really good.

Most CWE and Quins list are extremely spammy atm and take advantage of the -1 to hit.

NOTE: These are off the top of my head, the points should be around 1500-2k most of the time, but its off memory.

Spiritseer
Spiritseer
Wraithguard
Shiny Spears
Shiny Spears
Rangers x3
Dark Reapers 2x5
Wave Serpents 2-4
Hemlocks x2

Quins is also spammy, but they kinda have too....

Shadowseer
Shadowseer
Troupe Master
Troupes x5, Embraces/FP
Troupes x5, Embraces/FP
Troupes x12, either or Embraces/FP < WWP
Starweavers x4+
Skyweaver 1 unit


Many CWE players are taking a Patrol of 1 Shadowseer and 1 Troupe unit of 12, all with FP's and WWP them, DS both, Shadowseer cast Twilight pathways on troupe unit to make them move again to get within range of FP's and shoot 12 Melta's into things.


A general CWE/Quins list would IMO be better with 2 Detachments 1 being Ynnari and 1 being Alaitoc. This is something not to spammy but competitive.

Alaitoc - Spearhead
Spiritseer
Rangers
Rangers
Dark Reapers x5
Dark Reapers x5
War Walker
Hemlock
Wave Serpent

Ynnari - Battalion
Yvarine
Shadowseer WWP
Shiny Spears
Wraithguard
Troupes x12 FP wwp
Troupes x5 embrace/fp
Troupes x5 embrace/fp
Starweaver
Starweaver
Wave Serpent


A Friend of mine is doing a GT tournament soon with Eldar. His list is (Off the top of my head from talking to him) I believe its a 1850 list. To me its a VERY boring list.


The reason for it is b.c of CSM and SM with modifiers to hit and alpha strikes. He just needs to make sure he goes 1st or hav as many units survive turn 1 via in Wave Serpents and the Shiny Spears between the 2 Hemlocks

2 Detachments of Spearhead
Spiritseer
Spiritseer
Shiny Spears x5
Shiny Spears x5
Dark Reapers x3
Dark Reapers x3
Dark Reapers x4
Dark Reapers x4
Dark Reapers x4
Dark Reapers x4
Hemlock
Hemlock
Wave Serpent
Wave Serpent

Wave Serpents are to hold all the dark reapers and spiritseers, he will only have 6 drops.

Thank you for the amazingly detailed reply. This has given me a good image what current lists look like and it's really different from what I know from 6th edition. Being out of the game for so long really shows. Let me pick up a few things specifically:

amishprn86 wrote:

Reapers, Shiny Spears, along with Wave Serpents and Wraiths are really good in CWE atm. Some other great units are Spiritseers and Fire Dragons. The Hemlock (both flyers honestly) are also great! Some aspects and vehicles are not very good and the WK is overcosted.

That's a lot of units I don't own a lot of. I guess I could get away with my corsair jetbikes as shining spears. In summary it's all the big guns that are really good... how does it deal with say a blob of gaunts though?

amishprn86 wrote:

As for troop pickf or CWE? Well they all are ok, they all have a role but many players dont like the troop slot, i personally LOVE the rangers and would take all rangers all the time, but i also encounter lots of characters and dont like the play style of Storm guardians or Guardians in CWE. My buddy that is much better at pure CWE than me loves his guardians and takes a 20man unit and then 1 Ranger squad and a Dire Avenger squad.

With the additional -1 to hit at range from Alaitoc, rangers are actually pretty tanky, so I guess I can see their appeal as objective campers and really cheap troops for one of the larger detachments.

amishprn86 wrote:

Harlequins best units are for sure the Troupes and starweavers. They can add a lot of melee and short range melta power to any aeldari army for cheap. The Shadowseer is great in anylist but greatly effects quins more, if you take ally quins i would go with a Troupe master instead. The WWP is another good add also to quins. The 100% worst unit in Quins is the Death Jester. A solitaire is basically an assassin, he is really good.

This sounds really really good. I've always missed a dedicated assault unit in Eldar (all flavors) that actually excelled at their role and it seems with the 'quins they finally designed one. Also with like 30 'quins plus vehicles and a few bikes you're basically done with the army, that's a bonus. The WWP first turn assault seems really good too, so I might have to invest in a unit of those. They are obviously better at anti tank than for example scorpions and similar against infantry. It's a bit sad to see one of my favorite units outperformed.

About the lists specifically:
The last one is horrible. I would never play something like that or invest in so many dark reapers to actually play that. Similarly I googled a GT list with 3 Ravagers and 9 or so Crimson Hunters... never going to put something like that on the table. The other ones look fairly balanced and fun, but don't play into my collection really well. I suppose for casual play my collection is good, but the power gap between competetive units and the rest has always been huge with GW.

Would you wait for the 'quins dex some time next year to buy into them or do you think it's safe now? I think I will sell some of my CWE collection to make space on my shelf for the 'quins. I've always liked their aesthetics. Do they also make good allies for DE? Do you think that will change when the DE dex drops?

Harlequins are very safe to invest into, they will not change at all, you will still play with lots of Troupes, 1-2 of each HQ, the Solitaire and Starweavers. FP's will still be good even if they go up by 3pts (i'm 100% sure this will happen) and you will see 20 still on the table, just might not see all 20 with embraces.

The only things that will change in the quins codex will be Skyweavers, Death Jester, and Voidwevers might get better.