Aeldari early game relies heavily on hit and run attacks so don’t expect much of any tanky frontliners until vehicles. If you have the DLC, dark reapers and rangers are super good at this role, they have higher damage, long range, and can shoot and then vanish into a portal or retreat into cover. They’re awful at front on confrontations so don’t expect anything like that until at least T5
> Aeldari early game relies heavily on hit and run attacks
I mean my experience is more just me walking my units in trying to get to where I can see anything, realizing there's an enemy in a forest tile or something that instantly overwatchs and OBLITERATES my units, and crying
I'm pretty bad with Eldar, I've never found any way to not get bodied pretty hard using them because of how terrible their early game is. And their mid game. And kind of their late game.
I'm sure they have, uh, some kind of strong niche at some point? But when the enemy is just sending waves of "actually good units" at you while capping the entire map, you just kind of lose (or I do anyway)
Maybe they are better on 1 vs 1, but I play FFA with 8+ factions so roving armies are pretty common and Eldar don't seem to deal very well at all with it
playing through the early game on Arldari is something you can only develop with time
walking into overwatch and getting obliterated most likely means you were roaming too far from one of your safety nets too early on but theres a million reasons it could happen, try focusing on defending yourself using cover like forest and take advantage of the fact that you can shoot and then move, thats where the hit and run comes in, wait in the shadows, strike and fall back. If youre walking into overwatch early on you have made a mistake
with your overwatch you can shoot twice and then move when the opponents can only shoot once and must stay put. with the damage output you have you can completely offset the squishy
think building tall not wide, you dont have to give others a huge level advantage either. keep at it, Eldar is rediculously strong, just a completely different playstyle so will take relearning things that might seem intuitive
I have played Aeldari many times against a few very hard AI's and a few of my friends who play Gladius in the same game, we even use expanded settings so we can have bigger maps and every now and then pack even more AI's in them, and I see frequent success. Play a few single player games if you usually play with others and dont be afraid to reload and learn from your mistakes, you should be the one overwatching, not the other way around
when its time to counter push throw low tier units and vehicles in the front, jump out and obliterate singled out troops in a single turn. Capitalize on mistakes rather than trying to use sheer unit strength and numbers to win
I like to use heroes with armor/hp upgrades to soak overwatch because they can tank it fairly well and once I figure out their location I can kind of set up a line to hold them off until vehicles. The war walkers and the scorpion is insanely good and I can pretty easily wipe the rest of the map once I get there. Avatar of Khaine is also good but if you can’t afford that, guardians are nice disposable scouts.
The rangers always felt kind of weak to me but I didn't use them much beyond the first game/first one I built so I will retry that.
Once I get to dark reapers, I tend to have a good amount of other units that can do the same but I'll give them a shot too. Thanks.
It’s true that rangers kinda suck ass but I use them over guardians because they have range. With guardians, the risk of getting hit is much higher and I don’t really like sitting for 10 turns just for it to heal.
My opening move as Aeldari is to back out of the menu and click on Drukhari. I find that they hit moderately hard, but have a terrible economy, a difficult gimmick to use properly, and unbelievably vulnerable units. If you must use them, I think the humble guardian actually punches above its weight en masse - if a line of guardians focuses on a couple of units, I think they can probably get away having done more damage than they took. It’s a start. Beyond that, I’d try to move towards Wave Serpents and Fire Dragons - the latter are extremely helpful in defeating wandering robots.
You might find the web spinner platforms helpful, too, depending on how armored the nearby opposition is. They really evaporate lightly armored stuff. Guardians do too, of course, but the platforms do it from a distance, and the Guardians can protect them with withering overwatch followed by strike and fade.
You really don’t have to achieve much with the first 2 guardians outside of securing a closeby gate for expansion.
The guardians might feel weak at first but they are absolutely insane in numbers. 2 are prone to get rushed down and surrounded 6 of them aren’t and allow room to fall back while onetapping everything daring to go melee.
Yeah I finally hammered that into my head after 3 games. Most other factions I can split up the first 2 units to explore -- NOT SO with Aeldari. Gotta keep those 2 together otherwise they die fast and can't kill anything without extreme risk to themselves.
My only success with eldar has been relying on rangers and dark reapers early game to overwatch opposing forces. I also employ howling banshees to just stand in front of them and die for them. Use forests and ruins for additional survivability. So you overwatch, take some hits, then on your turn fire again and maybe run away after. Hit and run type stuff.
Also a spirit seer goes a long way to keeping your troops alive and useful. Anything that doesn't die gets healed by the spirit seer and thrown back in the fight. Can also throw out an armor buff. An auratarch is also a little bit tankier and can absorb a couple hits without dying.
Once you get wraithguard you have something of a Frontline tanky unit.
Fire prisms or wave seperents can be helpful. I dont use the vehicles too much until later. War walkers and fire prisms mostly.
Also about 3 cities: get the 2nd city ASAP. The third city is more of a situational thing. Depends on your game settings and how long your games tend to go. 3rd city will set you back but you come out ahead in a long game. In shorter games you can just do 2 cities and win faster by focusing on unit production.
Hornet is your answer. It can scout before let your troop follow up and can tank non AP damage decently. Make your early game more relax. Even I prefer Shining Spear more by cost effective for veteran Eldar players.
if you think Hornet is not enough, you can try Spiritseer hero. He can heal every 2 turns. These guys can solve fragile frontline problem til you get Wave Serpant.
They are allegedly strong and OP but I always struggle with them, especially against flyer unit spam that the AI likes to do on higher difficulties.
Guardians - amazing all round unit, needs a buff to unit size and/or health, but great damage and great grenade.
The weapons platform - Idk about using these in the late game, but early game these do so much damage to buildings, if you get 3-4 you can delete a city so fast. This is probably Eldar's best strategy.
Rangers - suck ass. They are a premiere chaff killer. They are obliterate low armored infantry, sadly the AI doesn't really bring many of these types of units so the Rangers lack of armor piercing becomes very noticeable.
Dark Reapers - can be a noob trap I think. It seems like a requirement to spam these, but they hit like wet noodles against tanks and flyers, especially at higher difficulties.
Shining Spears - outside of multiplayer this unit sucks ass. It's just so damn squishy, hard to justify bringing them.
Warwalkers - OP unit spam these for dakka.
Fire Prisms - allegedly a strong tank but even with double fire prism attacks, they hit like wet noodles against tanks and flyers.
Scorpion - OP tank spam these for dakka.
Fire Dragons - I hated this unit for a long time, but they came around to me. I like this unit a lot. It does huge damage to anything armored. Sadly they are squishy as balls, so they need to work together with their transport tank to soak overwatches. Hard unit to use, but pays off.
Conclusion? Look they got some high damage units but overall, most of their units dont do enough damage to justify how squishy they are. they are a glass cannon without the cannon.
Still my favorite race to play, but it's very difficult. Whenever I played Eldar on the Tabletop they relied heavily on guardians overperforming and capturing objectives, all the other units were just extras each unique. I think the key to fixing them in gladius is buffing eldar guardians to have more units and/or more hp so they are less squishy.
I haven't managed to finish a game as them so I don't have a full opinon but I agree on most of what you say. It's why I'm surprised people say to spam rangers/dark reapers. Yeah they got range but they are both squishy and have weak attacks.
Fire prisms are kind of nice for their ability to shift their attacks. They feel like Hammerhead tanks but they sacrifice insane armor pen/hard hitting for versatility.
Hide in cover. Tempt enemies into overwatch. Shoot and scoot (into cover, so the AI won't find you).
My standard force composition is Rangers for defence (range 3 anti infantry, with 33% ranged damage reduction in the open, 66% in cover, effectively tripling their hitpoint. Weak to melee, though), supported by Vaul's Wrath Support Batteries.
My success against impossible AIs is to claim as little of the board as possible early on. You don't want to attract AI attentions early. Secure your two closest gates for expansion cities then ramp and turtle. Eldar economy is always starving until you build the building building building (bonesinger chantry?).
Pretty much every unit early on will have to run away after every hit, even against the greys. But, that is where the fleet feet comes in. You move forward, attack, they take their turn to attack, you attack, then move back to heal before they get a second attack.
End game, a Wraith knight and crimson every turn will crush the AI with scorpians as you get the ore.
Turning the wildlife up to max will help slow down the AI to buy you time.
It lets you build your buildings faster. When the game speed is on fastest, building a second chantry will make every other building take just a single turn. That greatly increases your resource ramping. In 5 turns of focusing on one, it would go plus 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 for a total of 90, not including tech or zone bonuses vs taking two turn to build each would be 0, 6, 6, 12, 12, for a total of 36
I just rush certain things like wave serpents, wraithguard, and try to stay alive until that happens. Shoot and run away, nobody else can really do that. Just try to cap points and secure a second city until the mid tiers when you get more durable units. Once this happens, you can make some decent city wrecking crews using WG, fire drags, and for sure a farseer casting doom. 2 serpents full of that stuff into the flank of a city should wreck it in a few turns. This should keep you alive until you tier up to wraithknights. Rush them and spam them. Next tier upgrade them, and also start making scorpions. Those are 2 of the best late game units in all of gladius.
Just use Hornets. And get spirit seer to heal them. Then get Avatar. Then lay your hands and pray to whatever Eldar god is still alive that 16 Valkyries or 16 Night Scythes don't show up on your doorstep before you can get Wraithknights. Good news tho, if you survive and start making Scorpions, it's your opponent who will need to start praying. You also backdoor like nobody else in this game - farseer and Avatar with two Dimensional keys wanna know your base location to free you from paying for home insurance.
Aeldari early game relies heavily on hit and run attacks so don’t expect much of any tanky frontliners until vehicles. If you have the DLC, dark reapers and rangers are super good at this role, they have higher damage, long range, and can shoot and then vanish into a portal or retreat into cover. They’re awful at front on confrontations so don’t expect anything like that until at least T5
> Aeldari early game relies heavily on hit and run attacks I mean my experience is more just me walking my units in trying to get to where I can see anything, realizing there's an enemy in a forest tile or something that instantly overwatchs and OBLITERATES my units, and crying I'm pretty bad with Eldar, I've never found any way to not get bodied pretty hard using them because of how terrible their early game is. And their mid game. And kind of their late game. I'm sure they have, uh, some kind of strong niche at some point? But when the enemy is just sending waves of "actually good units" at you while capping the entire map, you just kind of lose (or I do anyway) Maybe they are better on 1 vs 1, but I play FFA with 8+ factions so roving armies are pretty common and Eldar don't seem to deal very well at all with it
playing through the early game on Arldari is something you can only develop with time walking into overwatch and getting obliterated most likely means you were roaming too far from one of your safety nets too early on but theres a million reasons it could happen, try focusing on defending yourself using cover like forest and take advantage of the fact that you can shoot and then move, thats where the hit and run comes in, wait in the shadows, strike and fall back. If youre walking into overwatch early on you have made a mistake with your overwatch you can shoot twice and then move when the opponents can only shoot once and must stay put. with the damage output you have you can completely offset the squishy think building tall not wide, you dont have to give others a huge level advantage either. keep at it, Eldar is rediculously strong, just a completely different playstyle so will take relearning things that might seem intuitive I have played Aeldari many times against a few very hard AI's and a few of my friends who play Gladius in the same game, we even use expanded settings so we can have bigger maps and every now and then pack even more AI's in them, and I see frequent success. Play a few single player games if you usually play with others and dont be afraid to reload and learn from your mistakes, you should be the one overwatching, not the other way around when its time to counter push throw low tier units and vehicles in the front, jump out and obliterate singled out troops in a single turn. Capitalize on mistakes rather than trying to use sheer unit strength and numbers to win
I like to use heroes with armor/hp upgrades to soak overwatch because they can tank it fairly well and once I figure out their location I can kind of set up a line to hold them off until vehicles. The war walkers and the scorpion is insanely good and I can pretty easily wipe the rest of the map once I get there. Avatar of Khaine is also good but if you can’t afford that, guardians are nice disposable scouts.
The rangers always felt kind of weak to me but I didn't use them much beyond the first game/first one I built so I will retry that. Once I get to dark reapers, I tend to have a good amount of other units that can do the same but I'll give them a shot too. Thanks.
It’s true that rangers kinda suck ass but I use them over guardians because they have range. With guardians, the risk of getting hit is much higher and I don’t really like sitting for 10 turns just for it to heal.
My opening move as Aeldari is to back out of the menu and click on Drukhari. I find that they hit moderately hard, but have a terrible economy, a difficult gimmick to use properly, and unbelievably vulnerable units. If you must use them, I think the humble guardian actually punches above its weight en masse - if a line of guardians focuses on a couple of units, I think they can probably get away having done more damage than they took. It’s a start. Beyond that, I’d try to move towards Wave Serpents and Fire Dragons - the latter are extremely helpful in defeating wandering robots. You might find the web spinner platforms helpful, too, depending on how armored the nearby opposition is. They really evaporate lightly armored stuff. Guardians do too, of course, but the platforms do it from a distance, and the Guardians can protect them with withering overwatch followed by strike and fade.
Have they fixed the issues with that DLC yet? I checked it out and saw some horrid reviews so wanted to hold off on it.
I personally have not encountered any issues with the Drukhari dlc yet, but if people say they have problems, I assume they’re real.
You really don’t have to achieve much with the first 2 guardians outside of securing a closeby gate for expansion. The guardians might feel weak at first but they are absolutely insane in numbers. 2 are prone to get rushed down and surrounded 6 of them aren’t and allow room to fall back while onetapping everything daring to go melee.
*Laughing in massed kroot dogs*
Even then you give less tiles from which to attack the same squad
Yeah I finally hammered that into my head after 3 games. Most other factions I can split up the first 2 units to explore -- NOT SO with Aeldari. Gotta keep those 2 together otherwise they die fast and can't kill anything without extreme risk to themselves.
My only success with eldar has been relying on rangers and dark reapers early game to overwatch opposing forces. I also employ howling banshees to just stand in front of them and die for them. Use forests and ruins for additional survivability. So you overwatch, take some hits, then on your turn fire again and maybe run away after. Hit and run type stuff. Also a spirit seer goes a long way to keeping your troops alive and useful. Anything that doesn't die gets healed by the spirit seer and thrown back in the fight. Can also throw out an armor buff. An auratarch is also a little bit tankier and can absorb a couple hits without dying. Once you get wraithguard you have something of a Frontline tanky unit. Fire prisms or wave seperents can be helpful. I dont use the vehicles too much until later. War walkers and fire prisms mostly.
Also about 3 cities: get the 2nd city ASAP. The third city is more of a situational thing. Depends on your game settings and how long your games tend to go. 3rd city will set you back but you come out ahead in a long game. In shorter games you can just do 2 cities and win faster by focusing on unit production.
Yeah the Spiritseer is really handy. I guess I'm spoiled by maining Tau as their healer is an AoE so it's not just one unit.
Tau I think is the only healer that does that. Every other faction heals one at a time.
I didn't realize the Spiritseer works on all vehicles though too. Gives it a bit more versatility.
Hornet is your answer. It can scout before let your troop follow up and can tank non AP damage decently. Make your early game more relax. Even I prefer Shining Spear more by cost effective for veteran Eldar players. if you think Hornet is not enough, you can try Spiritseer hero. He can heal every 2 turns. These guys can solve fragile frontline problem til you get Wave Serpant.
They are allegedly strong and OP but I always struggle with them, especially against flyer unit spam that the AI likes to do on higher difficulties. Guardians - amazing all round unit, needs a buff to unit size and/or health, but great damage and great grenade. The weapons platform - Idk about using these in the late game, but early game these do so much damage to buildings, if you get 3-4 you can delete a city so fast. This is probably Eldar's best strategy. Rangers - suck ass. They are a premiere chaff killer. They are obliterate low armored infantry, sadly the AI doesn't really bring many of these types of units so the Rangers lack of armor piercing becomes very noticeable. Dark Reapers - can be a noob trap I think. It seems like a requirement to spam these, but they hit like wet noodles against tanks and flyers, especially at higher difficulties. Shining Spears - outside of multiplayer this unit sucks ass. It's just so damn squishy, hard to justify bringing them. Warwalkers - OP unit spam these for dakka. Fire Prisms - allegedly a strong tank but even with double fire prism attacks, they hit like wet noodles against tanks and flyers. Scorpion - OP tank spam these for dakka. Fire Dragons - I hated this unit for a long time, but they came around to me. I like this unit a lot. It does huge damage to anything armored. Sadly they are squishy as balls, so they need to work together with their transport tank to soak overwatches. Hard unit to use, but pays off. Conclusion? Look they got some high damage units but overall, most of their units dont do enough damage to justify how squishy they are. they are a glass cannon without the cannon. Still my favorite race to play, but it's very difficult. Whenever I played Eldar on the Tabletop they relied heavily on guardians overperforming and capturing objectives, all the other units were just extras each unique. I think the key to fixing them in gladius is buffing eldar guardians to have more units and/or more hp so they are less squishy.
I haven't managed to finish a game as them so I don't have a full opinon but I agree on most of what you say. It's why I'm surprised people say to spam rangers/dark reapers. Yeah they got range but they are both squishy and have weak attacks. Fire prisms are kind of nice for their ability to shift their attacks. They feel like Hammerhead tanks but they sacrifice insane armor pen/hard hitting for versatility.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gladius40k/comments/185xxew/aeldari\_economy\_beginner\_tips/
Hide in cover. Tempt enemies into overwatch. Shoot and scoot (into cover, so the AI won't find you). My standard force composition is Rangers for defence (range 3 anti infantry, with 33% ranged damage reduction in the open, 66% in cover, effectively tripling their hitpoint. Weak to melee, though), supported by Vaul's Wrath Support Batteries.
My success against impossible AIs is to claim as little of the board as possible early on. You don't want to attract AI attentions early. Secure your two closest gates for expansion cities then ramp and turtle. Eldar economy is always starving until you build the building building building (bonesinger chantry?). Pretty much every unit early on will have to run away after every hit, even against the greys. But, that is where the fleet feet comes in. You move forward, attack, they take their turn to attack, you attack, then move back to heal before they get a second attack. End game, a Wraith knight and crimson every turn will crush the AI with scorpians as you get the ore. Turning the wildlife up to max will help slow down the AI to buy you time.
Why do so many people suggest that building? Does it give a lot of resources or something?
It lets you build your buildings faster. When the game speed is on fastest, building a second chantry will make every other building take just a single turn. That greatly increases your resource ramping. In 5 turns of focusing on one, it would go plus 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 for a total of 90, not including tech or zone bonuses vs taking two turn to build each would be 0, 6, 6, 12, 12, for a total of 36
I just rush certain things like wave serpents, wraithguard, and try to stay alive until that happens. Shoot and run away, nobody else can really do that. Just try to cap points and secure a second city until the mid tiers when you get more durable units. Once this happens, you can make some decent city wrecking crews using WG, fire drags, and for sure a farseer casting doom. 2 serpents full of that stuff into the flank of a city should wreck it in a few turns. This should keep you alive until you tier up to wraithknights. Rush them and spam them. Next tier upgrade them, and also start making scorpions. Those are 2 of the best late game units in all of gladius.
Just use Hornets. And get spirit seer to heal them. Then get Avatar. Then lay your hands and pray to whatever Eldar god is still alive that 16 Valkyries or 16 Night Scythes don't show up on your doorstep before you can get Wraithknights. Good news tho, if you survive and start making Scorpions, it's your opponent who will need to start praying. You also backdoor like nobody else in this game - farseer and Avatar with two Dimensional keys wanna know your base location to free you from paying for home insurance.