Editing Eldar (section)

==Play Style==
[[File:EldarVehicles.png|500px|right|thumb|The Orks may actually be on to something with that red paint...]]
As a general rule, the Eldar are a fast army of specialists. Each unit is engineered for a particular style of fighting but is nigh useless outside of that assigned role. For example, Dark Reaper squads (currently broken) are known to cripple, if not wipe out completely, entire squads of Space Marines in a single volley. Conversely, they are incapable of moving and shooting (but now they can, [[Lulz|lulz]]) and are comparable to [[Imperial Guard|Guardsmen]] in close combat ([[Tau|though they don't wear wet cardboard boxes for armor]]). Usually, everyone in an Eldar squad has the same gun and the squad as a whole aims for one goal, as opposed to squads of dudes each toting a different gun for a different kind of foe. This can help new players by not forcing them to keep all of a squad's weaponry in mind, but it also requires you move the right squad for the job to the right place, which can be tactically challenging. An ill-positioned Eldar squad has a greater chance of doing nothing than those of other armies. Some units, like Jetbikes, overcome this disadvantage with superior speed and mobility. This is huge in a game where most of the missions are about capturing objectives. If you are the kind of elf who likes it when a plan comes together, you might be tactical enough to lead the Eldar to their victories upon the battlefield.

With their new, updated codex, the Craftworld Eldar are given a firm footing in the game to compete with or dominate their numerous foes through their increased special abilities, units’ tactical applications and general ability to put shurikens into things and make those things fall down. The newer codex makes units even more points-efficient in doing their jobs. Tactical blunders will see your army turned into rainbow confetti, but if you can get the right part of your Eldar army fighting the right bad guys, you can ruin Christmas every time.

Eldar are almost universally Fleet, pack high Leadership, high Initiative and good overall stats (apart from defenses, with some notable exceptions, such as Wraith constructs), their accuracy is good, their special abilities are rich and useful and their armies need never run the same trick twice. Prior to 8th edition, their Battle Focus ability let them choose to take a run action either before or after shooting, for free, a benefit that allows them to become more mobile than the competition by far. These days, their Battle Focus simply allows them to advance with no accuracy penalties on non-heavy weapons, a notable nerf to be sure, but still a very usable perk that ensures your infantry and bikers can still run faster than everyone else and still land their shots. Almost all of their vehicles are skimmers or flyers; those that aren't can Deep Strike or outflank; and they have three different flavors of jump troops and fast-as-hell Jetbikes. Eldar look good when they fight and often kill their enemies in style.

Although they have a somewhat justified reputation for being "OP", it's a bit more complex then it looks at first sight. The Eldar have for the duration of most editions of the game enjoyed a position among the more powerful codex's, alongside others such as the Space Marines; a position that many such as the Orks or tyranids would love to be able to claim. This reputation normally takes the form of one or two units in each edition vastly overly performing whilst the rest of the codex ends up being a bit rubbish; this leads to Eldar players spamming the same units over and over again. For example, whilst the majority of the codex in 7th was decently balanced, a small handful of over performing units tainted it for everyone; [[Eldar Jetbike|Jetbikes]] all armed heavy weapons as troops, [[Wraithknight]]s being at least 70-100 pts too cheap and the abundance of D-level weapons ruined what was a mostly well put together codex.

In summary, when an Eldar army is functioning as it should, it is difficult to stop. For this reason, opponents hate them. On the other hand, the army falls apart if their specialized units are outside of their element (Dark Reapers in a fist fight or Howling Banshees in a shoot out, for example) or fail to get the first strike in. They are devastating if they set up, and terrifying if allowed to stick around, but the presence of '''one''' [[Manticore Rocket Launcher]], [[Whirlwind Artillery Tank]] or [[Defiler]] can collapse an entire Eldar battle line should the space elves not fight with care and foresight. Or go second.

With the coming of the 8th edition the Eldar have experienced some rough waters (there won't be many who will shed any tears over this); although they met with initial success with the likes of the combination of Dark Reapers and the 'Strength from Death' rule, most of their special rules from previous editions that they relied on to keep them on par with marines have been stripped away and many of the changes to the core rules, such as the loss of initiative, restrictions to Psychic casting and changes to how WS and BS work have left many units (especially melee units) far weaker then they have been for a longtime (Howling Banshees especially have become a complete burden to anyone brave enough to try and make them work).

As 8th has continued to progress the Eldar army has seen a shocking transformation, turning from a small expensive army of specialized elites to an expensive specialized horde army. This added to the continued process of taking every unique unit within the Craftworld codex and handing them wholesale over to the Imperium (and, of course, the Imperial versions are both cheaper and stronger than the originals) has left a nasty bitter aftertaste. Primaris Marines in general have led Space Marines away from the general Jack-of-all-Trades flexibility that formed the bread and butter of old marines in exchange for dedicated, specialized units that have few (if any) special weapons that differ greatly from the rest of the standard squad (a parallel borderline identical to Craftworld Aspect Warriors). This has become even more apparent with the coming of 9th edition and the introduction of Primaris Marine Eradicators, Space Marines armed exclusively with suped up Meltas who excel at devastating heavy armor (literally Space Marine Fire Dragons, only with ''much'' better rules for virtually no difference in cost) and the Pteraxii Skystalkers, Adeptus Mechanicus flying infantry armed with very shooty rifles and mortal wound dealing grenade packs (Skitarii Swooping Hawks, but of course better in every regard). Ironically, specialization is terrible for both groups anyway as specialization in a group is feasible only for large numbers, which is also how civilizations grow. Both the Eldar and Space Marines are very small, especially the Marines. Which means specialization for either is foolish. Even though the Eldar are still numerous by modern standards, they're not when compared to the enemies they face and the necessities of survival out in the void would also encourage a jack-of-all-trades approach much like Astartes.

Note: although not much can be done from a competitive game front when it comes to casual play the community can still work together to try and makes things less uneven. No one wants a situation where an army is shunned because of factors beyond their control, it's not the players fault. Have a couple of games to see what works or what doesn't, talk with your local games group and discuss what can be done to make sure the experience is an enjoyable one; no one wants any player to not get to use their new goodies but perhaps Marine players, for the time being, wouldn't mind ignoring their Combat and Super doctrines whilst playing against none marine lists for an example. This is not to single out Marines, but a general rule; don't let foolish rule choices by GW course unwanted tension between different player factions, talk to each other and decide what sort of compromise's can be reached, that can ultimately benefit both sides involved.

The 9th edition codex is beginning to feel a bit like a patch job, in that, at some point they had a working codex and then went back and started to add in additions that made certain rules almost worthless, to the point that you begin to wonder what was the point in having it in the first place, and rules written in a way that proves that there was little actual proof reading going on. Until we get the full picture we can only speculate, however there does seem to be some redundant elements to the codex, but again that's kind of expected. Overall the codex looks like it might end up as a high mid tier army (potentially low A, but the codex isn't anywhere near S tier), which is not a bad place to be. Most things in the codex are pretty good with a handful of things being a bit too costly for what they do, but again that's always how these things work out. Give it a few more weeks of actual play for a clearer picture, but a few points cost changes might be all that is needed going forward (a few rules may need to be cleared up, we all hope that GW will get on this ASAP).