So now that the effects of jet lag, that lovely stomach flu, and sick kids are beginning to subside and life is returning to some state of normal, I will be dedicating myself to the assembly, painting, learning and playing my new army, the Eldar. I am really looking forward to it, this being my now fourth 40K army. I can't help it, I just want to own them all some day, and to be honest, "it looks like it may actually happen" - Egon, Ghostbusters.
"But EvilEd209?" you ask, "if you are this super competitive, tournament player that you say you are, Why Eldar? Why not Space Wolves, or the new shinny Blood Angles, or the super duper tournament winning leafblower Imperial Guard. Or, why not wait a few months and go after those super scary Dark Eldar that are coming, really this time, we swear. Why Eldar?"
Well fine reader, I will answer that question. For starters, I am a competitive player, this is true. When it comes to tournament play or my gaming club, I often have a similar attitude to that clip of Herm Edwards when he coached the Jets saying, "You play to win the game". But I feel that not only do I compete with the guys at my FLGS and my Gaming club, but I compete with myself as well. I do not feel that to be competitive that you need to swap over to the newest, greatest army to smash face for a few months until people figure out how to deal with your army and then move on to the next best thing. That is not competitive to me, it is taking advantage of your opponent's lack of knowledge of your army to win. There is very little challenge in this tactics to me. The real challenge is to take your army and adapt to new armies and tactics out there. Or better yet, start and older army and try to win with it, this is what separates a good tournament player from a great one.
For example, do you remember when Nob Bikers were the scariest thing in the 40K Universe and they took advantage of that new fangled wound allocation thingy that 5th Edition introduced? I sure do, it was right when I first started playing 40K competitively. And I remember my first tournament and being crushed by those damned things and cursing them. However, I began to adapt my army to prepare for such thing. Playing Tyranids back then, the SniperFex with it's STR 8 Barbed Strangler Large Blast was more then enough to equalize that threat. Add in some Genestealers with Implant Attack and I was eating Nob Biker Lists alive. I adapted, I did not dump my bugs to go play Nob Biker Orks.
But this does not really answer the question, "Why Eldar?" Well for starters, as I was doing my research into the other 40K armies out there that were not Necrons, Tyranids, or Codex Space Marines, I was looking for something specific. I wanted start an army that was totally different then what I had been playing. At frist I was looking at the aforementioned Orks, but if I ran Orks, I would run them mob style, which is basically how I run my Tyranids now. So I moved on to Space Wolves, but these guys are only very slightly different from Marines and I did not want to cheese it up too much. I looked at Tau for a moment, but not only does the army not appeal to me at all, sorry Tau players, but I already had all shooty all the time army and it simply does not fit my play style.
So I then came across the Eldar. I know this will sound bad, but I have three sons who, gods willing, be playing 40K here in the near future. And I already have two "bad guy" armies and only one "good guy" army. So I started looking for another army who could be argued to be a "good guy". I started reading the Eldar Codex and I really started to get into the fluff. And I loved the story. That is what really made the decision for me. They were not bad guys, but god guys, from a certain point of non-Imperium view. The models look super cool, and this not being least of course, they can run Mech and are pretty good at it as well. They use a lot of Eldar Psychic powers and employ completely different tactics to play the army. It was perfect.
So keep your eyes pealed for pics of the new Eldar being built and painted with future army lists and battle reports to follow.
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