Eldar the best all-round army in 40k!

I was reading this months white dwarf, and came across a fantastic battle report about how not to play eldar/dark eldar. The Eldar army was described as follows:

Quote :

The Eldar are arguably the best all-round army in Warhammer 40k. Not even Space Marines can field squads as specialised as the Eldar Aspect Warriors (well, not without paying an enormous premium in points anyway). This allows Eldar players to adapt to any opponent and make expert use of the perfect weapons and wargear to kill them.

Quote :

If there's one thing that everyone has to respect about the Eldar it's that they can field the perfect weapon for any opponent they will face.

I had a good laugh, especially at the "without paying an enormous premium" part. Hope you found this as entertaining as I did.

in a way, it is true, eldar can field the best specialists, but those specialists cost a helluwa points. 40pts for a BL on wraithlord? C'mon.

Enfernux wrote:

in a way, it is true, eldar can field the best specialists, but those specialists cost a helluwa points. 40pts for a BL on wraithlord? C'mon.

But doesn't that make them a specialist army rather then an all-round army?

The irony is that being all-round isn't much to do with being specialist. Space wolves are a good all-round army. What he is basically saying is Eldar are good if you tailor lists, which is kind of the opposite of being all-round. Are Eldar the ultimate rock-paper-scissors army?

To be honest I just found it hilarious because Eldar specialist are so expensive compared to any of the marine specialists it's not even funny.

I do always enjoy WD battle reports and/or tactica. Not for the reasons that I'm supposed to enjoy them of course...

Example - Matt Ward's Necron Tactica from a few months ago stated that opponents would be thrown into confusion as they desparately tried to react to a unit of Flayed Ones deep striking near them. Err...not so much really! If they were any sort of threat maybe but as they can't fight their way out of a paper bag I think I'll just say thank you for the free kill point!

Or the DE list in this months battle report. Certainly an...unusual army selection!

yep, they are mostly a rock-paper-scissors army

The funniest thing was the conclusion:

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If I could write the army list again I definitely would have made a few changes. The first would have been to take a Dark Eldar army with an allied detachment of Eldar.

The conclusion is to play a different army!

I guess that's what happens when you field one bright lance as your only anti-tanks against two AV13 soul grinders and two AV11 chariots.

lulz, if you dont take lances, take fire dragons...idiot...they dont know how to play eldar -.- or wraithlords, or Fuegan, or Karandras, or a farseer and warlocks with spear...man

This is pretty hilarious.

I am almost tempted to do MSTK versions of WD articles, they do sort of deserve it - even from a fluffy player side, much less a competitive one.

The whole list made no sense whatsoever. Taking Eldar for their shooting when you can get better shooting against daemons for less points by taking DE was mad. Taking just wyches in the allied troops option was mad. Not giving those same wyches haywire grenades was insane. Not swapping out the Farseer powers for rulebook ones was a strange move for them, as you'd assume they'd be all about trying to sell power cards, or at least demonstrate the new powers. Plus there's not much point taking battle brothers for your psker led army then not picking powers you can cast on them.

Not upgrading the shuriken catapults on the vipers, and the splinter rifle on the venom. Going after the nurglings on an objective (hint they are not even scoring! fail). I still can't get over only running one lance weapon though, it's mind boggling. It said a new gold standard for horrendous white dwarf battle reps!

Agreed, I'm not the most competitive of players, in fact it's been said that my list wastes a lot of points, but even I looked at that list and cried a little inside. Worst sin committed? Scourges, up against sould grinders, and equipped with? 1 splinter cannon.

Hehe, nice thing about this site: you people don't mess around with criticism!

On topic, I guess we might be expecting a new Eldar codex soon, since yes, they have become so overpriced as to be unplayable. Jetbikes as troops: yes. The rest... One point extra on a warrior versus a guardian nets the warrior extra BS/WS/I, power from pain AND a better weapon, am I missing something here?

When I saw the allies rules I was tempted and read the Eldar codex, but, no, I'll wait...

(I, however, would be tempted to build a traitor Slaanesh IG army with Slaanesh chaos deamons, but that's a different matter entirely...)

Chaeril wrote:

On topic, I guess we might be expecting a new Eldar codex soon, since yes, they have become so overpriced as to be unplayable. Jetbikes as troops: yes. The rest... One point extra on a warrior versus a guardian nets the warrior extra BS/WS/I, power from pain AND a better weapon, am I missing something here?

Well...

The Guardian's shuriken catapult is an Assault weapon, so the Guardians can charge after shooting.

[snark] Clearly, this is a huge advantage. [/snark]

I was very amused by "the Eldar are a great all-rounder army because of their highly specialized units" talk in the article.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

Agreed, I'm not the most competitive of players, in fact it's been said that my list wastes a lot of points, but even I looked at that list and cried a little inside. Worst sin committed? Scourges, up against sould grinders, and equipped with? 1 splinter cannon.

That was just ridiculous. What were they even for?! I'm also not terribly competitive with my list building, but while I don't expect them to field tournament bothering lists in battle reports, when you have the whole range to choose from, why not mix it up? All the beasts just released in finecast, and they don't field them. They could have looked great next to the daemons, and surely it'd help shift models. So often you see the sentence "With the release of the new <Insert brand new thing for chosen army>, I had to give them a try!" in the magazine. I just assumed they'd be there.

with the new release of mandrakes i dropped them. Before i used 3 full squads and no i didnt give them a try. I cant fool my opponent, cant keep him at bay on where to go, who knows, where the original unite is? And with 3 squads it was very tormenting to say the least

WD battle reports are somewhat limited as the players can generally only choose from the units that the 'eavy metal team have painted up. This is usually one of each type of model plus a few extra troops choices. Given that most competitive lists revolve around spamming the best unit in each FOC slot that pretty much makes the battle reports useless from a competitive standpoint but, even so, they could at least make an effort not to make then suck so much!