Eldar army 5th edition

Combat Drugs allow you to customise your Lord into having an easier time of killing any opponent, and Trophy Racks are quite often feasible, boosting your Lord up to Leadership A tormentor helm is usually an excellent choice as well, giving him an extra attack for a mere 5 points. The weapon you equip your lord with however, seriously depends on how you intend to use him. If you mean to add a bodyguard of Incubi, then a Punisher is usually a good choice.

In the new 5th Edition rules, double handed weapons are permissible on jetbikes as well. An Agonizer is usually deemed pointless on a Lord, as through the use of a Jetbike, a Punisher, an Animus Vitae, and Combat Drugs, a Lord can amplify his strength far in excess of the strength 4 one would usually want to wound marines with.

This is a trade off you should only make if you intend your army to be focusing on close combat, rather than firepower, or a mix of the two.

Equipment wise, the same choices apply as you would make concerning the regular Lord. At a mere 25 points apiece, these can often be good choices to lead your basic troops with, as they have a few unique and nasty pieces of wargear capable of inflicting serious damage. Should you be intending on taking multiple squads of Grotesques, or Jetbikes, Haemonculi are a good option.

Whilst they don't quite possess the killing power of a fully tooled up Lord, they are cheap, and effective for what they cost.

By far the most common and effective way to use this unit is as a combat bodyguard with your Lord. Add in a minimum of 5 Incubi, and a pair of Warriors with Splinter Cannons, add a Raider to the mix, and you have a fast moving, and relatively lethal close combat formation.

Whilst this might seem costly at first, when you look at the relative cost of Incubi compared to their Close Combat equivalents in other armies, you begin to realise what a good deal they are. For 25 points, you're getting a Weapon Skill 5, Initiative 5, killing machine with a Power Weapon that hits at Strength 4. Not only that, they possess by far the best Armour save in the entire Dark Eldar army.

In comparison, a Terminator is 40 points, and the Incubi are more than capable of going toe to toe with them.

Whilst they might not be quite as resilient to enemy firepower as Terminators, their high initiative means that they almost always strike before other combat specialists, allowing them to kill the enemy in conbat before they can be struck back especially when supplemented with the killing power of a Lord.

Heavy Weapons tend to be a bad choice for Incubi to carry, as it increases their base cost exponentially, in comparison to their actual worth. If anything, it decreases the power of the Incubi, as you lose the Power Weapon attacks. Standard Warriors should be the vessel of choice for Heavy Weaponry. The Incubi's role is as combat specialist, and trying to make them multitask is a waste of points, and robs them of their efficency in their chosen field.

The Incubi master can be nice choice if you have the points to spare, especially if you gift him with Combat Drugs, but generally speaking, it's better to take the points that would cost, and add another two incubi to the unit. This can be a matter of personal taste though, as some players may prefer having a secondary killing machine next to their Lord.

They come in at 15 points, the same amount as a Space Marine, and for that price, you get a model that's fairly indestructible. It has no conventional armour save, but it's unique 'Feel No Pain' rule different to the one in the Universal Rulebook means that it's completely immune to any shooting attack under Strength 6. This makes it immune to Tau Pulse rifles, as well as Heavy Bolters! As such, they are an excellent unit for soaking up enemy heavy firepower.

At two wounds apiece as well, even if they get bogged down in close combat, they can take the hits, and strike back, being WS4, Strength 4, and having 2 Attacks. Not only that, be any opponent they beat in combat falls back automatically, thanks to their 'Terrifying Opponent' rule. However, their 'Stupid' rule means that they really need to be joined up with an Independent Character of some sort.

At first glance, the Haemonculus would be the obvious solution, being cheap and cheerful, and indeed, he does the job alright, but in order to have this unit functioning at maximum effectiveness, if you can spare the HQ slot for a tooled up Dracon, the squad suddenly becomes potentially very dangerous. It's main deficiency is its lack of any power weapon attacks, and once those are included, the entire squad functions perfectly as a meatshield and delivery system for that lord.

Their 'Feel no pain' shrugs all but the heaviest of firepower, and you can allocate any wounds that go through onto them! If you can't afford a Jetbike Lord, or a an Incubi Bodyguard, the Grotesques can be surprisingly effective third choice. If nothing else, its role in drawing tremendous amount of heavy weapons fire away from your skimmer is unparalleled. Overall Unit Value:-Good Mandrakes One of the unit choices that is very much a throwback to the good old days, the Mandrakes can be a fun unit to play.

Like the Grotesques, they come in at a whopping 15 points, but fulfil a different role. Instead of deploying like normal troops, scouts, or infiltrators, you deploy 3 mandrake models seperately! You can then move these models like you would move a squad normally, only for all gaming purposes, these models do not exist, cannot be shot at, and cannot be engaged in combat. Then, at the start of any turn up to your third when they are revealed automatically , you can reveal the entire squad as being in the same location as any one of those three seperate models you've been moving around!

This is a nifty power, but suffers from one major flaw:- Mandrakes aren't very good in combat. They have WS 4, and that's it. No high strength, no large numbers of attacks they have 2, since they carry a pistol and combat weapon , and no power weapons. So unless you use the unit to pick off fire warriors, imperial Guardsmen, or Devastator Squads, odds are, you'll probably be beaten in combat with whatever you assault. In 5th Edition however, Mandrakes have taken on a new significance, with the addition of all the missions based around holding objectives.

With their boosted cover save, Mandrakes are the perfect unit for sitting on an objective. Not only that, but their cover save counts in combat as well, so they can be remarkably hard to shift. So many armies are based around them, and yet the unit itself is not actually that good. Most of its special rules seem to be focused on protecting the wyches themselves in combat, rather than inflciting damage on the enemy.

Not only that, no model fighting them gets the extra attack for having a close combat weapon. They also get randomised combat drugs, but unlike the ones you can buy for your unit leaders, the effects for this are rolled for at the start of the game and remain fixed.

Haywire grenades are also an option, but at 4 points apiece, they're kind of pricey. Tank hunting is better left to other more specialist weapons, and as grenades are a last resort for tank busting, they're not worth the points cost. The Raider is a must have, as it can deliver the squad into combat very fast, which, being a very lightly armoured unit, it needs.

The Succubus is essential to the Wych Squad. An Agonizer is the usual wargear choice, as the wyches are only strength 3. The objective of the Wych squad is to close as fast as possible, and to tie up and bog down the enemy whilst the Succubus takes them down. That's correct, the entire wych setup is ultimately nothing more than a delivery system for the Succubus!

The Raider gets 'em there, the wyches hold 'em down, and the Succubus delivers the Coup de Grace! At 13 points each with wych weapons, wyches are costly, but not immensely so. Overall Unit Value:-Good Warp Beast Pack Warp Beasts take up no slots on the force organization chart as long as you have an equivalent, or lesser number of them then you do Wych Squads. On the positive side of things, Warp Beasts are Strength 4, WS 4, have 3 Attacks, and can move like cavalry, and are fleet.

Warp Beasts are only good for one thing really, and that's making a madcap dash at the nearest enemy troops. Should they be Tau, or Guardsman, they should perform reasonably well, but against any decent unit, they'll fail quite miserably. For the job being asked of them, Warp Beasts are far too overpriced, and underpowered. Until the release of the latest Guard and Ork Codex, they were the most cost effective troop choice in the game, and they can still hold their head highh in comparison to the more humble slugga boyz, and Guardsmen.

Not only that, but the heavy weapons options are excellent as well! The most common configuration of a Warrior Squad is 10 Warriors with 2 Dark lances for points. It's a cheap, and highly effective tank busting squad. Not only that, it's capable of dishing out a fair amount of anti-infantry firepower too.

This is usually referred to as a 'Dark lance Sniper Squad'. These form the backbone of any kind of shooty list, as they're decent in combat, and in firefights. It is in short, a decent multi-tasking unit that excels at its role as the main ground pounder. In short, Raider Squads have had their teeth pulled. They're still useful in the regard that you can get troops from A to B quickly which can be important in an objectives focused game , and the Raiders themselves can still be used for Tank Shocking when equipped with Torture Amps , but the days of drive by shootings are now gone.

If you are going to take a raider squad though, a shredder and a splinter cannon is the optimum choice, so that you can move, disembark, and shoot. A Sybarite with an Agonizer and a Tormentor Helm can also give them a little extra close combat punch. He referred to this as the Super-Gunboat. Whilst it still fails to overcome the fact that Raiders can only move 6" for the passengers to fire, and now have far less protection, it's made me revise my estimate of Raiders upwards again, as it provides a ew drive by strategy.

Overall Unit Value:-Good Transport:Raider With the downgraading in price of the base Chimera, the Raider is no longer quite the bargain it was, but it still functions as a cheap, and serviceable transport, if a little fragile.

The trick to using your Raiders successfully on the battlefield is to take full use of their speed. If you take them to carry a combat squad, or Raider squad, when equipped with Torture Amps , hey're capable of causing some serious disruption by Tank Shocking. If you intend to tank shock a lot as well, Slave Snares are always worth considering. You have to be careful though, that you don't end up making the Raider cost too much, as it is fundamentally a light, and fragile vehicle, and you're most likely going to lose it before too long.

To finish up on the Raider, you can upgrade the Dark Lance to a Disentegrator for a further 5 points, but that's largely a matter of personal taste and style, and whether you feel you have enough anti-tank capabilities in other fields to compensate for it. When accompanied by one of the Independent characters as well, it becomes a truly dangerous squad.

They also possess Combat Drugs in order to further enhance their effectiveness. When tooled up with the appropriate Punisher, Tormentor Helm, and Combat Drugs, she's capable of dealing some serious damage when accompanied by another 4 or 5 bikes, without even considering adding a Lord.

For example, on the charge, with the right combat drug selections, I could have 4 attacks at Strength 6, initiative 6. And that's just from the Succubus, and ignoring the rest of the squad, who can deal out some fair damage in their own right. In short, if you position them wisely, they can be capable of cracking even a unit of terminators. With the ability to go flat out across the board as well, the Jetbike Squad is capable of quickly relocating away from any danger to themselves, and moving into the most advantageous position to strike from.

Now that may sound like a lot. But what you need to consider is that this is essentially, a combat unit. A combat unit with a poor invulnerable save against shooting, an enhanced attack in the first round of combat only, and the ability to disengage from combat.

Against any dedicated combat unit or decent unit, period , Hellions will suffer terribly, and they're likely to suffer from shooting quite badly as well. For 18 points apiece, they're quite simply far too many points for the role they will actually play in the battle. If they had been 10 points, maybe 12, they would have been a viable combat unit, but at 18, you might as well just spend another 7 points, and get yourself a Reaver Jetbike or Incubi.

However, in order to supposedly compensate for the Dark Eldar play style, the geniuses that used to work at GW decided it would be appropriate to stick jump packs on them. That's right.

They took a heavy weapons squad, who cannot fire some of their weapons if they move, and gave them jump packs. Am I only the one to see a little illogicality here?

Scourges weigh in at 16 points apiece base for what is a basic warrior with jump-pack, and then you have to pay separately for the heavy weapons. To add insult to injury, the weapons themselves are a minimum of 20 points each for a splinter cannon or 25 for a dark lance. Now whilst the Splinter Cannons can fire if they move, the most basic and cheap squad of scourges would cost you points for 5 scourges, with 4 splinter cannons. For that price, I could buy myself 6 Incubi to bodyguard my lord with.

Guess which one I'm going to go with there? As for Dark Lances, since you can't move and fire them, and the squad would cost me for 5 models, to be perfectly honest, I'd rather just take 2 Dark Lance Sniper Squads for points. I get the same number of Dark Lances, with the option of dividing their fire, and an extra 16 other warriors into the bargain. To conclude, this is the MOST overpriced and useless unit in the entire codex.

It's still lightly armoured, but at armour 11 on the front and sides, it's immune to small arms fire at least.

You have a choice of kitting it out with 3 Disentegrators or 3 Dark Lances. Whilst 3 Dark Lances does make it a veritable tank killer, the 3 disentegrators give your army a serious bit of anti-infantry heavy weapons fire that it otherwise lacks. Not only that, disentegrators are death on legs to marines and their equivalents, due to their low AP. With a Night Shield to help boost their survivability, a ravager with 3 Disentegrators weighs in at points, quite affordable.

Their usefulness in the battle is always quite excellent, be it as targets, or as fire support, and the two different modes available for their guns mean that they can function as anti-light vehicle if necessary as well.

It's gun is effectively a bolter that takes a single potshot at every unit in range, and whilst it functions as a monstrous creature in combat, it's actually a skimmer. It has 3 wounds, and a high toughness of 7. One of it's primary problems under 4th Edition rules was that it tended to get shot down before it ever reached combat, and its depressing vulnerability to Power Fists.

Under 5th Edition, its new ability to run somewhat combats its slowness, and at points, it's not overly priced what it's capable of accomplishing. If nothing else, it tends to draw a lot of fire, and if properly supported, is capable of smashing an opposing battleline.

It's main flaw is that it's simply not quite as effective as a Ravager, but if you're running a combat army, a Talos can be a very good choice, as it promises you a way to deal with Dreadnoughts in close combat. Overall Unit Value:- Good I shall probably have the next section out tomorrow. Enjoy and feel free to disagree with me on any of these points. I'm more than happy write amendments if you can prove that I'm wrong about my analysis. Units with jump packs have the Relentless USR in fifth edition.

Scourges can move and fire heavy weapons. So let's pull all our teef out! Dey'll be back in a year! Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Scourges have Jump-Packs, not jet-packs. I'm not sure if jet-packs even existed when the DE codex was made? I'm going to stick to the rules as written for now, but if that is the case, then I'd probably revise them up to being, 'Average' instead of 'poor'. Onto the next section, the Characters! With his 'Energy Field' special rule, his customised Ravager counts as Armour 14 all round against any shooting attacks, mounts two Disentegrators and a Dark Lance, and can dish out 5 power weapon attacks at Strength 4, WS6 in close combat.

He's a tank, an HQ choice, and a Dreadnought, all in one sweet package. He's a bit pricey, at points, but his overall flexibility means that you rarely regret forking out for him. When fielded in an army with 3 Ravagers, Asdrubael allows you to bring that little bit of extra firepower to the table in larger games which considering he can only be used in games of points or more, are the only ones you'll see him in anyway. Alternatively, if you were loath to sacrifice a Ravager spot in your army, he can take it's place, allowing you to grab that Talos you wanted without losing out in the firepower department.

Overall Rating:-Excellent Kruellagh the Vile At points, Kruellagh costs slightly less than an Archon kitted out with the standard combat drugs, shadow field, and so on. However, only by a small amount, and looking at the wargear she carries for her extortionate cost, it's quickly obvious that for her cost, she clearly fails to make the grade. Kruellagh has no combat drugs to enhance her effectiveness, and only the most basic of armour saves to protect her. The eye of terror.

Jetseer councils are pretty hairy. Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents still work pretty well too. Fire prisms are dangerous and fairly durable.

Why did the berzerker cross the road? Las Vegas, NV. Elfzilla seems to be doing pretty well. I just got mine a while ago but I have yet to assemble it and take it for a test run. I will post a report as soon as I do though as on paper it is great but we will see how it plays in the real world. Essentially that is the only change I have seen or read about. The old lists still work apart from clowns in a falcon as the new assault rules and rending nerf really hurt them.

Firedragons in super falcons still do well though. A solid 4th ed list will still be very competitive, although I am curious to hear what more experienced Eldar players have to add to this thread. Salem, MA. The jetseer council is effective, but I doubt it would fulfill the OP 's request for a list that's fun to play against. The bike council--either dealing with it or dying to it--kind of tends to dominate the play action of the game.

Probably the most frequent one I've seen since 5th edition, though, is the Eldar Mech Tau list. It works for Tau. Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration. Los Angeles. Going down the list The idea is that everything is so tough it's mostly not worth attacking.

Great in 2 objective missions and kill points. Struggles against large numbers of power fists or rending attacks and has difficulty covering 5 objective missions.

Mech Eldar: Avengers in serpents, fire dragons in serpents, and fire prisms with optional jetbikes, shining spears and bike seer council. Some versions rely on putting everything in reserve and using an autarch or two to bring everything on from off the board on turn 2. I find what keeps me going in an army is not really the win column.

I won't be a hypocrite and say I don't care about winning, but I prefer the word 'competitive'. I prefer to add units to my army as I were planning to recreate an entire Craftworld for some massive Apoc battle that never happens! But on the other hand there are people that play simply to win, with not much thought to the hobby side of the game. That list IMHO is geared towards that type of player. The repetition is common in good lists, but the lack of unit variance I don't think I could do that.

It got so bad I sold my Ulthwe. That list looks strong enough, just a little I imagine if you're just going for the win, it will do Just a guess though. Prot; I would not field this list as it really is dull. I avoid reserve denial and like to iclude some cc units to keep it interesting. At 2k i have 2 each of avenger serpents, dragon serpents and prisms and use the rest of the points for "fun" stuff.

I thought It would be interesting to see if others agree that this is eldar at its most competative. I'll post here to provide some of those links for you But let me also provide this, as my personnal guide, or things to think about when building a list.

Please realize that I have a lot of work to do one this article, as its basically in the concept stage.. In general you should consider all of these 10 things, and use your own personal style to make them work together Also consider that you need to build Eldar with Troops First, then add supporting HQ, and then add the rest in a manner that makes your Troops work more synergetically.

Here is a Run down on how I rate a competitive build in 5th Ed.. This is the rating that moc will give to the army list and will always be between 1 and 10 with: It will primarily focus on battlefield Effectiveness.

To this end I will be looking for cross-team support and combinations, redundancy of ability, durability of firepower and survivability as a scoring unit coupled with a very critical eye on point effectiveness. The things evaluated will be as follows: moc-score Again the obvious would be mass ranged shooting; but other things such as mobility, templates, or add-ons such as re-rolls to wound, etc must also be considered.

Ranged Firepower potential up to 1 point given ; I know this looks redundant in a way; but Low, Mid, and Longe range Firepower must be considered on their own. Assault potential up to 1 point given ; This score is focused on Dedicated close combat potential; but will also consider Holding Power, numbers, etc… As the 5th Ed Combat Resolution makes certain things very prevalent reduced LD base when testing after a loss in CC, etc Durability or Resilience up to 1 point given ; This score includes VP denial as well as pure toughness, and saves.

Flexability up to 1 point given ; This score is odd in a way as it will gauge the armies overall Ability to react to different opponents; in short, how well will you do versus known enemies Drop Pods, Mech Eldar, Nid-zilla, etc Mission Capabiliy up to 1 point given ; This area will cover Scenerios and Mission ability; but actually looks at the 9 potential start points as well as some special mission items.

Very Good. Above Average.