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3 more units from my Eldar army today. Each illustrate perfectly what makes the eldar unique and often difficult to get the best out of for some players. They are the ultimate 'glass hammer' units. in other words: Brutally efficient killing machines as fragile as a paper hat. Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons and Howling Banshees are all regular features of my eldar armies, and my opponents have rightly grown to fear them. I think the reason for this is that used in the right way, your enemies will usually see 3 of their key units dissapear in 1 turn. Using them requires careful planning, finesse and, like everything in 40k, the right amount of luck.

To Start with i'll go into more detail for each unit and then the overall tactics at the bottom of the page.

Dire avengers:
They were the first unit i painted for this eldar army, and i must admit, i rushed them a bit and regret not spending more time on them. Someday i might have nothing else to paint and decide to tidy them up....


I use this one as my exarch, I wanted to paint a banner... :)


I pretty much always run a farseer with these guys


Dire avengers. A common eldar unit that, if you read many of the internet discussions on their use, seem to be used little more than to make a scoring tank with a minimum squad of 5. I guess this tactic works for some, but dire avengers are capable of brutal killing power. First they get a full squad of 10, an exarch (dual catapaults optional) and the 'bladestorm' ability. Personally i find there are only a handful of eldar units that can be effective without a transport. Dire avengers are not one of these units! So i buy them a wave serpent. My favorite combo is EML & shuriken cannon. This gives you the plasma missile to function as a S4 defensive weapon and its versatile. Then add a guide/doom/spirit stones seer.
Remember they are a scoring unit that is more than capable of wiping out a whole squad with one turn of augmented shooting. A guide and/or doomed bladestorm gives 30 BS4 (3@bs5) s4 ap5 shots with re-rolls to hit and/or wound. I don't always use doom, and i suppose it depends on your target as to whether you need psychic powers or even bladestorm to wipe out a whole squad, but i'm talking about what they are capable of and with this bladestorm bomb, you force so many saves out of your opponent that only the largest or most well armoured squad would have any chance of survival, often with so few wounds left that it can be finished off in an assault (they are I5).

My real assault specialists are the howling banshees:




6 of these feisty females do the job for me. Exarch gets the executioner for S5 attacks. War shout is useful and acrobatic is usually something i buy if i have spare points. 18 Powerweapon attacks on the charge. S3 is a downside but keeping them within supporting range of the farseers 'doom' power is required if the target is high toughness. They always strike first because of their banshee masks, and a failed leadership test will give their targets WS1 (i love it when that happens) from the warshout power. I like Scatter laser falcons for their volume of fire, so the banshees ride in one of those. Again, their potential when augmented by the seer is to carve apart most targets in combat. If in doubt doom the target and unload some laser fire into it from the falcon to thin the numbers before charging in.

Finally the dedicated anti armour: Fire dragons.




I have 6 to fit in a falcon. Usually scatter laser, but as i have magnetised my tanks, i sometimes give it a starcannon as its AP2 compliments the pulse laser and is more effective against heavily armoured troops which are a secondary target of the fire dragons inside. In the squad pictured i have an Exarch with the dragons breath flamer (heavy flamer EQ). Although this weapon has proved useful on a number of occasions, it is not important - 5/6 melta dragons will get the job done.
Pretty much the most straight forward unit in my army, no special rules, no tricks, just a bunch of meltas looking at your tanks exhaust pipe. In my experiance fire dragons die. Opponents hate fire dragons. The most amusing thing is that they are the cheapest (sometimes 2nd cheapest) unit in my army and once they get out and melt that land raider or terminator squad they've killed over 2x their points value. In the following turn these guys will most likely be public enemy number one for your opponent. Although i will try to get them back in the transport safely to turn their weapons on a secondary target, i will not sacrifice another unit to achieve this. After their high value target is turned to slag, they pretty much become the most expendable unit as most other units will still have important roles to play. This isn't always true, but the inevitable return fire from your enemy has to go somewhere...

When explaining how these units work in my army, it's impossible to describe their roles individually. My tactics involve having all 3 of these units working together to remove 3 high value targets in quick succession. I will spend a turn or 2 moving fast, shruggung of shooting (hopefully) waiting for my opponent to leave their back door ajar. in 90% of games, your opponent will either look to advance across the board or in the case of a gunline, spread their forces across their deployment zone to get the best firelanes.
Either way, it takes a tricky general to deploy in such a way as not to allow your eldar the time and space to perform a surgical strike against a crucial part of their army. By turn 3, you should have a good idead of where your surgical strike will do the most damage for the least casualties. You move your transports (fast) into position, being careful not to expose your rear armour or park your falcons too close to melta weapons, although this makes no difference to wave serpents. Again you ride your luck and hope that the various energy fields and coversaves will not take down your transports. I always give them spiritstones and holofields to ensure that they get to where they need to go. After a turn, you are free to pivot, drop your cargo and shoot or fly off as required. At this point Your focus should be on positioning your transports to block lines of sight to your disembarked units. The passengers inside can, move, shoot, assault as normal. If deployed close enough together you can doom your banshees target after guiding your bladestorming avengers. The odds are strongly weighted for you to erase 3 high value targets in one turn, crippling the core of your enemies force and, with careful positioning, denying LOS to your units enough that they might survive to re-embark, or move on an objective. My army list often includes other units purely to harrass, tie up or otherwise distract other elements of the enemy force. A small unit of jetbikes to boost around and unload shuriken at targets of opportunity, before making a late grab for an objective. A small squad of hawks to pour laserfire into an isolated unit or attach grenades to advancing vehicles. And the all important pathfinders to keep an eye on an objective and generally be an annoying thorn in the side for any footsloggers or lightly armoured vehicles trying to put shots on my skimmers.

The downside to all of this is that once out of ther transports, the eldar are like wet cardboard. T3 4+ save in squads of 6-10 doesnt take alot to kill, so its really important to be aggressive. These units can dish out far more hurt than they can take back, so the key is to deliver it all in 1 decisive attack. When you expose your fragile units, make sure that whatever you leave alive stands a good chance of not wiping you out in the next turn.

That's about it. The glass hammer surgical strike. A good example of why the Eldar are my favorite army in 40k.

Introducing a particular favorite unit of mine: The Eldar Pathfinder. Not to be confused with... er, the tau pathfinder (nice one GW). Making the upgrade from rangers to pathfinders is a tough call for some, but a unit of these pesky scouts will reliably win back their points for any eldar general with an ounce (or more) of cunning.

Vanilla rangers are a decent enough choice. They are a scoring unit especially adept at a couple of roles which i am lacking in my mostly-mech list - Reliable long (ish) range fire, and being able to survive a turn of shooting. Paying the few points extra for the Pathfinder upgrade basically improves both of these qualities to a point where they make their points back everytime. The key to their use lies both in deployment AND in ensuring they the remain part of your strategy throughout the game.
With the skimmers and bikes that make up the rest of my army, it is rare for a battle to ever be fought in my deployment zone, and that's exactly how i like it. Sometimes the pathfinders are my only unit that opens fire for the first 2 turns. with my transports racing into an ideal battlefield position to drop their aspect warriors, the Pathfinders have opportunity to thin the numbers of enemy squads as their slow and lumbering vehichles attempt to maneuver into positions to counter the skimmer rush. In the game i played last night, they killed a whole tac squad over the course of the game and ran last turn to claim an objective all for 0 casualties. This is not uncommon. With all the attention focused on trying to penetrate the forcefields and coversaves of the skimmers, the Pathfinders are allowed to go about their sneaky business almost un-noticed. Sneaky, sneaky Eldar.

Ok, i'll admit weapons that negate coversaves will make very short work of them, and you must decide whether keeping them safe from such threats is a priority or not, and obviously, deep striking flamer or CC units will also see them off in no time.
But i return to my earlier point - deployment. They need to both be close enough to do their work and be within supporting range of your nimble units (i use jetbikes and hawks for this), yet far enough away to remain low on your opponents threat radar, and near, but not necessarily ON an objective that they can claim in turn 5 (if they even need to - remember, you only need ONE more than your opponent!).

So a conclusion of sorts:
I believe the essence of the eldar army is to be where your enemy doesn't want you to be. To force them to try and out maneuver you. This is playing by Eldar rules. In a game of maneuverability, the eldar take some beating. Force them to turn their tanks to protect the rear armour, to dedicate the majority of their army to protecting their own objectives and to waste all their shooting on your resiliant transports. These tactics let your snipers pop a few heads and the occasional dread or transport and more often than not, claim a crucial objective which can win you the game.



Close up the the rear of a pathfinder. I've given them muddy cloaks and weathered backpacks.



The squad. I made their cloaks the same colour as their base to give the impression of camouflage. I also wanted them to be patterned, but not with military style camo, so i painted on the vine pattern you can see.

Firstly, my apologies to anyone who has stumbled across this blog so early in it's life. It's a bit of a mess, but i'm still working on it.

So check out this sketch i did the other day. I was stuck at a family thing, miles from home, trying to avoid engaging anyone in conversation as i normally do when the OAPs decide everyone needs to be together in the same room. So anyway, i popped out a sketchbook and scribbled this down, trying to remember what the models looked like for reference.



It was done on pretty small paper - A5 or so, and i just scanned it a minute ago. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks i'll get some time to turn it into a digital painting, so look out for it.

Also, another unit from my current eldar army. I painted this a few months ago, i notice the infinity symbol on the face isn't quite right. I corrected this on my wraithguard squad (which i will post soon). i am happy with the freehand details and the pose in particular, there are a few little touches on this model that give it character.



The wraithlord on the tabletop is a fearsome opponent. Its a toughness 8, strength 10 monsterous creature. Reasonable points depending on weapon choices (no-ones going to choose the TL bright lance are they?!?). I gave mine a shuriken cannon, missile launcher and 2 flamers which i think gives good versatility. Being able to move and fire 2 heavy weapons is great, and its status as a monsterous creature is a huge advantage making him tougher in close combat and hard to kill. There are, however, particular disadvantages to the wraithlord. Most obviously: wraithsight. Having taken up a valuable heavy support choice, the last thing you need is for him to do nothing for a turn. This means it pretty much requires a psychic presence nearby. I've tried a few things for this...
1: walking a seer council around with it. pop in some destructors and you have a lethal close range flame squad and a good number of hits in cc which will hurt anything. This option is expensive on points and in practice the warlocks do little on the battlefield as not many players will risk letting this little tag team close enough to be effective.

2: lurk it with some Heavy weapon platform buddies. You can add a warlock to a heavy weapon team. So make you wraithlord a long range 'sniper' and have him sit at the back with a couple of vibrocannons. Also in this role it acts as a deterrent to pesky reserves coming in to shut down your artillery. You sort of miss out on the fear factor that a rampaging wraithlord causes when advancing. also, this is a second heavy support slot used and i like falcons....

3: Guardian guardians. Either vanilla with a weapons platform (which can also move & fire) or as i prefer - with storm guardians, 2 flamers and the all important warlock with either destructor or enhance (I5 makes a difference!). My 2nd favorite team. all those flamers can really leave a hole, and although the guardians almost always end up dead or running by the end, they normally cause a few headaches before they do so. Adding in an avatar is fun, but will attract lots of attention. Consider this a sort of wraithlord delivery system, almost great for assaulting objectives, if only those stormies had grenades....

4: Finally... The wraithwall. A troops choice of wraithguard and the wraithlord. At over 500 points, this is expensive and as a whole still quite vunerable to massed firepower or particularly large squads in CC like boyz or gaunts (they just dont have enough attacks to cut their way through). The main concern here is their points value. You want to avoid this expensive and powerful unit getting bogged down for 3 turns in assault.

Overall A wraithwall is my pick. As the rest of my army tends to be mobile i find that opponents will focus on the immediate threats of my skimmers and bikes allowing the wraithwall to move in close. Large outflanking units are still a danger, particularly if they are also fleet, which would make it unlikely to see a volley of wraithcannon shots hit home before the charge. i'm thinking genestealers are a particular concern, also given the rending rule.

As if all that wasn't enough.... here is my desk!
Notice the sinlge most important accessory in a painters arsenal:
a wet palette! if you don't use one of these, or worse... don't know what one is: stay tuned as i will be ranting about this very soon.