Bringing a Scalpel to a Knife Fight.

Sadly the pic I posted in the last post would have worked much better for the this topic but alas I did not forsee this conversation. This topic came up earlier today while talking to The Grizz about Stevo's uncertainty on the playstyle of his Dark Eldar. The Grizz's rough description was "He hates the feeling like he has to play gay and fly around and shoot stuff before assaulting instead of just charging in." To which I replied "Thats Eldar, they bring a scalpel to a Knife Fight."

Eldar units are specialized for the most part in performing one primary role, Dire Avengers -> Shooting, Banshee's -> Close Combat etc,etc. Given the right circumstance they can perform their primary tasks quite well. But given the right circumstance, while the banshee's are queens of close combat charging into a thirty man strong orc mob is not going to turn out as well as one would hope. But charging banshee's into a squad that has been softened up by some of our shooting support units or Farseer powers the outcome can be completely different.

Playing Eldar one of the first facts that you must come to grips with is that you are most likely going to be out numbered by the enemy be it in tanks, troops etc. There are ways that the Eldar can out number their foes but in truth when this usually happens the opponent has highly skilled and tooled out choices. While the Eldar boasts some of the most specialized troops in the game they are not the singular best. Other armies can turn out things that the Eldar have no direct counter to, Thunder Hammer Stormshield Termies come to mind. Eldar Units seem to sit at a nice middle ground as for skill and pts cost with usually a rule that gives them an advantage at a right circumstance. Such as Banshees on the charge etc.

Pound for pound the Eldar cannot go toe to toe with equal pt cost troops specialized in the same thing your Eldar troops are specialized in for long on an open and even field. Our stats are just not designed for it, while having a good WS and great I stat our strength toughness and medium to weak armor save means battles of attrition will almost never go in our favor. So you have to play in a manner in which you choose the battles where you have the most favorable advantage. Be it ones the opponents open up for you or ones you create yourself.




While this may sound weird I actually enjoy this fact that my troops did not win because they had super human stats and great armor or overwhelming numbers but struck with percision and overwhelming power. While I will admit it is fun to wade into a nice big blood bath and see who comes out the victor those are just not the fights the Eldar should enter, we are a dying race after all. While your opponent might have some choice words or sigh about you avoiding combat with an obvious assault oriented unit or army remember that once your army starts to take damage the synergy and cohesion of your army breaks apart quickly. This brings me to an important point, our units do not do well alone, yet when working together as one unified entity they can be utterly amazing, like a symphony of destruction and pain, with you as its orchestrator.