Okay, so let me start off with admitting that, on the whole, my opinion is that this sort of thing RARELY happens; I don't see Eldar frequently launching boarding actions, with their perceived limited crews, and between their speed, maneuverability, and being made out of glass and hope, I see them either escaping or blowing up, before they can be boarded, in turn. Of course, these are not the only options, so I get to a silly question:

If a Craftworld Eldar vessel were boarded (this takes out crumby Corsairs, for the most part), what are you likely to find? If you want to up the gamut from just Guardians to Aspect Warriors, what are good ones to have on board? Many Aspects are specialized in a form of combat, and a number of them seem to be ill-advised to shipside combat. It might be a bit to enclosed for Banshees, certainly for Hawks. Fire Dragons are great, but their guns might be foolish there. Reapers are long-range, so maybe no. This is starting to smack of Scorpions, Dire Avengers, and Warp Spiders. Opinions? Could a Dragonship, such as the Sword of Elissar, have defending AWs, only Guardians, or would it just have to avoid being boarded at all costs? Partly I ask because players have a tendency to think, and be creative, at least when the GM wasn't hoping for it. There are plenty of upgrades for HUMAN craft, but since the players don't fly Eldar vessels, I'm not sure what all the Eldar could do to avoid crafty PCs from boarding them, and if they are just screwed, at that point.

I figure Eldar also do often raid Imperial ships. Is it just strike and obliterate, or do they come aboard to take stuff? DE of course take people, for their torture entertainment, but CW and Pirate Eldar? What would they board your ship with?

You could make up some new ones, toss in some warlocks, etc. Rangers could hide and snipe away, and with the way close combat works in the 40k RPGs, Banshees would probably work too.

A craftworld eldar cruiser would have a shrine for each Aspect, and would likely also have compliments of other things such as war walkers, wraith guard/lord etc. Not to mention a high crew rating.

Also if it's a particularly important vessel then i could see the Eldar opening a webway portal (that is generally how they move their stuff from ship to planet) back to their Craftworld and requesting an Avatar be summoned and sent to defend them... good luck to your players trying to take out an Avatar in the confined spaces of a ship.

That said i also imagine Eldar vessels to be much more open and spacious than Imperial ships, perhaps with better visibility through transparent walls or similar, not to mention soul stones built into the ship acting as alarms, detection, or generally assisting the crew in defending against attack.

So yeah, boarding Eldar vessels bigger than escorts should be pretty hard.

A craftworld eldar cruiser would have a shrine for each Aspect, and would likely also have compliments of other things such as war walkers, wraith guard/lord etc. Not to mention a high crew rating.

Also if it's a particularly important vessel then i could see the Eldar opening a webway portal (that is generally how they move their stuff from ship to planet) back to their Craftworld and requesting an Avatar be summoned and sent to defend them... good luck to your players trying to take out an Avatar in the confined spaces of a ship.

That said i also imagine Eldar vessels to be much more open and spacious than Imperial ships, perhaps with better visibility through transparent walls or similar, not to mention soul stones built into the ship acting as alarms, detection, or generally assisting the crew in defending against attack.

So yeah, boarding Eldar vessels bigger than escorts should be pretty hard.

^ If it's truly even possibly to do damage that way lol

Boarding actions involving Edlar are going to be annoying as hell. Good luck catching one of their ships in order to board it because an Imperial ship successfully boarding an Eldar ship is kind of like a hog managing to chase down and hump a rooster. I suppose if you found a craftworld you could board that but you would get murdered because you'd have about the same chance of success there as say invading an Imperial sector capital.

Alternatively if you're getting boarded by Eldar...well that's still really slanted against you as an Imperial RT. You have to figure if they're boarding you they're probably after something really specific and they've planned the thing down to the last detail with the benefit of precient leaders. You're going to have a miserable time intercepting their boarding craft that is if they use any.

Webway permitting they'll just appear on your ship scurrying around in the ducts and maintenance areas jumping out of every conceivable panel t like evil gophers and have fun detecting them with their unnatural agility and concealment skills or beating their commander's command skill which is probably going to be pretty high in comparison to those pirates and orks you probably fight more often.

As a GM I don't really throw Eldar at the player's lightly because Eldar grunts are more or less the equals of low to mid level PCs.

I don't think the Webway works that way, with them just bamphing out of thin air, like Nightcrawler; they need a gate or portal on your end to pop out through, and most RTs aren't just carrying a Webway gate around. I'm not saying that they don't have some teleportarium analogue, maybe more of what I said with Warp Spiders as boarders (tough, hard to hit, no Pen to blow through hulls), but they like to minimize their Warp exposure, which is much less a Human problem, in that way, at least.

Still, getting boarded by Eldar seems a terrible fate.

Meh, 80 Fellowship and +60 Command says I win.

Catching the Eldar shouldn't be that hard, either. If their ships are within firing range to begin with, pretty much any ship can enter their space. Even on five speed, if you go with a double-move and hit ten DoS on your Flanking Speed maneuver (and past Rank 3, you should), that's 20+ VU of movement right there.

Personally, I like to have one Eldar ship - the one with the best commander - deliberately board enemy vessels. The enemy may think they're fighting a winning battle of attrition, until the other three eldar vessels open fire on them while they're sitting pretty without any way to fight back.

Of course, that's how i play out *most* voidship combats.

I don't think the Webway works that way, with them just bamphing out of thin air, like Nightcrawler; they need a gate or portal on your end to pop out through, and most RTs aren't just carrying a Webway gate around. I'm not saying that they don't have some teleportarium analogue, maybe more of what I said with Warp Spiders as boarders (tough, hard to hit, no Pen to blow through hulls), but they like to minimize their Warp exposure, which is much less a Human problem, in that way, at least.

Still, getting boarded by Eldar seems a terrible fate.

IIRC there are explicit examples of (Dark?) Eldar sending a single eldar over, to enter the enemy ship.

Then it activates the portal-device it brought along, and bam, there's your webway portal.

I don't think the Webway works that way, with them just bamphing out of thin air, like Nightcrawler; they need a gate or portal on your end to pop out through...

Really the webway is not one of the better defined aspects of the setting but the way it seems to work crunchwise in tabletop and what I've seen or read in other stuff seems to suggest they have some way of tunneling through without a permanant portal assuming there are webway passages in the local area. I dunno like I said the webway is a pretty poorly defined piece of fluff in terms of what exactly they can do with it and what they can't. Personally for the sake of my games I'm going to say that their ships gave systems that let them use it like a teleportarium because I think it makes things more interesting.

I think the most important thing to understand about the Eldar as a GM is that in character they should never really engage in any combat they don't think they can win by a pretty wide margin unless they're super backed into a corner. By their very nature they're pretty damned plot heavy and personally I would never just throw them into a campaign beofre mapping out in my head some sort of goal they're trying to accomplish and how what they're doing slots into it in an almost pointlessly convoluted and deceitful way.

I don't think the Webway works that way, with them just bamphing out of thin air, like Nightcrawler; they need a gate or portal on your end to pop out through...

Really the webway is not one of the better defined aspects of the setting but the way it seems to work crunchwise in tabletop and what I've seen or read in other stuff seems to suggest they have some way of tunneling through without a permanant portal assuming there are webway passages in the local area. I dunno like I said the webway is a pretty poorly defined piece of fluff in terms of what exactly they can do with it and what they can't. Personally for the sake of my games I'm going to say that their ships gave systems that let them use it like a teleportarium because I think it makes things more interesting.

I think the most important thing to understand about the Eldar as a GM is that in character they should never really engage in any combat they don't think they can win by a pretty wide margin unless they're super backed into a corner. By their very nature they're pretty damned plot heavy and personally I would never just throw them into a campaign beofre mapping out in my head some sort of goal they're trying to accomplish and how what they're doing slots into it in an almost pointlessly convoluted and deceitful way.

Totally this. Players should be encountering lone or small groups of rangers or corsairs easily enough, but to come across their ships or any sizable contingent of Eldar means "PLOT IS HAPPENING" and your players will soon get frustrated trying to communicate with a Warlock or Farseer who talks in riddles and half-veiled references to futures-as-yet-unrealized.