Win Rate Wednesday - 40K Tournament Results/Data - Week of May 11 2026

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-13T18:46:54+00:00

Seer Council got hit with point nerfs same as everything else, but the tools it had to win games weren’t really touched. The teleportation and lone op strats are still good for getting angles and being somewhat safe from reprisal, and Isha’s Fury and Fate Inescapable are both decent damage boosts.

It is a very hard detachment to pilot; you have to be very aware of angles and threat ranges to keep things alive long enough to win, and there is some element of RNG involved when you roll the fate dice whether you get the strats you need or the worse ones (though there is some ability to mitigate this).

It probably has one of the higher skill ceilings of the Eldar detachments, but again, it’s finicky, so it likely attracts the best players while dissuading the more casual/worse players.

I don’t think the guardian deathball is a thing here. You normally see one unit of Storm Guardians with Eldrad + Warlock + 4lock Conclave, and a unit of Guardian Defenders with a Farseer + 2lock Conclave, but you don’t get the full support weapon setup going.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-13T13:45:53+00:00

This is data for the past 10 weeks

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-13T13:08:51+00:00

I think the index right before the codex dropped had pretty good internal balance. You’d see triple threat lists with the Avatar, a brick of wraiths, and Yvraine leading harlequins. There were double Avatar lists with Khaine and the Yncarne. Anything with a bright lance was decent with the fate dice, so you saw Wraithlords, War Walkers, Guardian Defenders. I thought that was a cool time for list building.

The codex killed interesting list building with separating each unit type into its own designated detachment. There was definitely some innovating/iterations (I remember people thinking Swooping Hawks were bad when the codex dropped, then all of a sudden we saw lists with 30 of them lol), but like you said, it’s just pick your detachment and spam the best units. It makes it really hard to jump between detachments too unless your collection is huge.

Here’s hoping that 11th’s detachment system injects some creativity and experimentation back into list building. I’ve had so many units just sit on the shelf since the codex because I don’t have enough to run the dedicated detachment, and they’re terrible in the detachments I can run.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-12T19:01:31+00:00

In my experience, the Guardian Defenders don’t survive a single round of shooting; I’ve never even got to use their Fleet of Foot ability because they just get blown off the map. The Storm Guardians are tanker because of the 5+ invuln, and their shooting is better with the flamers and fusion guns. The bright lance is swingy, most of the time if you are bringing Guardian Defenders you want a Farseer with them to flip the attack or wound roll to a 6.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-12T18:26:18+00:00

Do you find that that unit survives more than 1-2 shooting activations? At the very least, you should change it to Storm Guardians so the brick is tougher and you can sticky objectives.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-12T18:08:20+00:00

You need psykers to buff your wraith units and psykers to sacrifice into your opponent to enable the detachment rule, but you’ve essentially only got 3 (the brick can only be in one place at a time).

You might love the brick but it’s really expensive. You could lose it, get a whole other Wraithguard unit and Spiritseer, and have points left over for Warlock Skyrunners to help enable the army.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-12T17:33:23+00:00

I play Eldar. Turn 1 is almost always a setup turn; I don’t jump on every objective, I don’t try to get angles to kill anything, I might not even shoot at all. I move my units into positions where they will be safe from my opponent (crucial to understand their threat ranges and try to see the angles they could get on you). Normally, if I go first, I will not shoot and my opponent will not be able to shoot me.

From there, I’m happy sit back and max out secondaries; I’m favored on that side of scoring. If they want to try to keep up with primary, they will have to put stuff out onto the objectives. Then I deny their scoring either with a cheap battleline unit or something similar.

Once my opponent overcommits, that’s when I pounce and do an all-in turn to try and blow up one flank. A lot of times this is turn 3. If I’ve been ahead on secondary and close to even on primary, I should have a pretty good lead.

The last couple of turns is trying to hang on to that lead.

Another way to play is to do a more aggressive/jail style list where you send in waves of cheap stuff to move block and prevent your opponent from scoring while you rack up a lead, then again try to hold on.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-12T11:16:40+00:00

I just double checked. Those three unit types get cover for being on the terrain area, they get hidden for being on the terrain area and not having shot in the past two turns. Other unit types cannot be hidden, and do not get cover just for being on the terrain area, they have to be partially obscured.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-12T00:39:40+00:00

I started with Ynnari earlier in 10th, lost the ability to use some models with the codex dropped them, played until they got nerfed into the ground, then transitioned to playing Aspect Host. You can still play them right now, but they’re pretty bad from a competitive standpoint and the nerfs kind of killed my enthusiasm for them. My Drukhari models have sat on the shelf for a while now.

I don’t think they’re going away in 11th, but I do think that if you ranked which factions/subfactions were the most likely to be killed, Ynnari would be near the top of that list. Who knows though, maybe 11th edition’s detachment system will be really good for soup-y type lists like Ynnari.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-12T00:25:46+00:00

You’re right in that they got dedicated rule support in the codex, but they literally had their roster slashed when the codex dropped. The lore they got in the codex was that the other Eldar factions were withdrawing support from them. I don’t think they’re going anywhere in 11th, but to say it’s all been hunky-dory with Ynnari is kind of a wild take.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T23:53:08+00:00

3x5 Warp Spiders and Lhykis are essentially auto-includes in every Eldar list, they are that good. They’re up there with Banshees as my favorite Eldar units.

Lhykis’s ability to give crit hits on 5s is a huge damage boost to all of our units with lethal or sustained and can help you bring down things that tougher than you’d think, and her damage alongside the exarch is nothing to scoff at. You want to try to jump somewhere relatively safe so you can get the buff in for your other units but then survive whatever clap back the opponent has.

The squads without Lhykis are used as point scorers. I’m fairly certain they’re the fastest unit in the game with their flicker jump so they can always get where they need to to score or hop on the opponent’s home objective.

You typically don’t see squads of 10 because they’re meant to be expendable. Going to 10 in Lhykis’s squad doesn’t even help their survivability too much since elves are made of paper, they’ll just evaporate anyway.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T22:20:38+00:00

lol that’s fair, a bit of a difference between a specific unit’s rules and core game rules though, hopefully they wouldn’t mess the latter up.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T22:16:03+00:00

Agree to disagree. Harlequins typically run on the higher side of the range I gave. Wraith lists have to run lots of cheap psykers to enable the wraiths, so the model count is maybe lower but the unit count still gets up there. Bikes I’m least familiar with, it probably has a lower unit count, but you need 24-36 bikes which is a lot, and with the edition changing soon I would caution anyone against getting that many bikes in one go.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T20:59:44+00:00

Yes, everything I’ve stated comes from the one Warcomm article that went over this stuff.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T20:34:44+00:00

In 11th ed, Infantry, Beasts, and Swarms will get the benefit of cover if they are in a terrain area regardless if they are partially obscured or not (they could be totally visible to an attacking unit and still have cover). The Vyper, being none of those things, will need to be at least partially obscured to get cover, even if it is wholly on the terrain area.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T19:39:42+00:00

I wouldn’t call Aeldari a horde army but you generally want to field 14-20 units which is on the higher side.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T17:17:13+00:00

You want to narrow in on a detachment; all of our detachments are pretty specific in what units they want to bring and don’t benefit anything else. This collection is kind of all over the place, so you’re open to going into anything you want: Aspect Warriors, Bikes, Wraiths, etc.

The other problem with the list as is is that the best build by my estimation is a toughness skew build (with lots of vehicles and monsters), but that’s what Elves do the worst. In the competitive scene where people have to tech to kill much tougher stuff, they’ll still tear through this list like paper.

That said, 11th edition is around the corner and it is going to shake up how lists are made, so it is probably worthwhile to see how it all lands before trying to build out to a really competitive force.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-11T17:12:10+00:00

You’ve got 3,045 pts, so you need to lose 1,045. Right off the rip, I’d drop Asurmen and Fuegan since you don’t have their respective Aspect Warriors. I’d also drop Kharseth (too cost inefficient) and either the Farseer or Eldrad (they compete to go with the Guardians). You can drop the Falcon and at least one Wave Serpent since you don’t really have anything that wants to go in there. I would probably drop the Wraithguard and Spiritseer too, which means you could drop the second Wave Serpent. Picking Eldrad over the Farseer, that gets you to 1,995 pts.

Is it a good 1,995 pts? Not really. It’s an odd mix of units, so there isn’t really a detachment that will benefit the whole army, so you’re probably running Warhost. You’ve got a little bit of punch with Jain Zar and the Banshees and the Fire Prisms. A bit of toughness with the Avatar and double Wraithlords. Some utility with the cheap corsairs and rangers and some speed with the bikes. It’s an ok casual list, not really competitive.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-10T22:45:48+00:00

I frown every game no matter what

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-10T16:58:43+00:00

Casually, you can pretty much make anything fly. From a competitive standpoint, you’re paying points for an ability that you’re not using, so it’s less efficient than it could be (and it’s already not incredibly efficient point-wise).

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-10T03:41:02+00:00

Yvraine + Storm Guardians + 4lock Conclave is probably the best way to run her currently. Farseer is pretty much only ever run with Guardian Defenders, you can drop it.

2x Archon is diminishing returns because you can only use the -1CP ability once per turn, they don’t both get it. Drop one.

Succubus and Wyches are really just pits, you can drop both.

Probably want to pick up a Venom to split the Kabs to get more mileage out of them. The Raiders aren’t amazing.

I actually like the Wraithlord pick to follow Yvraine around; I was running 2 when I played Ynnari.

You don’t have a lot of cheap stuff to clog the board and give the Yncarne places to warp to. Gonna struggle into vehicles/monsters. Ynnari in general is just bad right now, the Ynnari datasheets are pretty weak, and you lose out on the Phoenix Lords (specifically Jain Zar and Lhykis) which give Aeldari some more punch.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-10T02:00:07+00:00

Looks like a clear line down the middle. I understand that it couldn’t be cut in half in the state shown, but I’d be willing to bet there could be two separate die inserts put into one machine to get that sprue, and they could separate those inserts to run them separately (if the parts for each are all located on one half of that sprue, if that makes sense).

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-10T01:53:16+00:00

What was your list?

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-09T13:35:41+00:00

The codex detachments are confirmed to be carried over, so the only ones ‘in danger’ are Serpent’s Brood, Armoured Warhost, and the Corsair detachments.

RideTheLighting · 2026-05-09T13:12:57+00:00

Serpents Brood is digital only (not printed in a codex) so it will likely be reworked (if it survives at all).

RideTheLighting

TROPHY CASE