On a side note: May i ask why Daemons appear before the summoning formation activates and not at the beginning of the turn in the same "phase" as Teleporting units and the summoning of the Eldar Avatar?

Actually summoning a Greater Dameon could work in the exact same way as summoning the Eldar Avatar. Instead of a unit with Fareseer it would be the Chaos Lord/Warlord respectively the Demagogue/Arch Heretic and the Daemon Prince.

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I think a more prudent question would be why do the Eldar get the Avatar for free?

As for summoning the Greater Daemon, I think it works better as a 'before action' summon as you do not have to 'reveal your hand', nor are you forced to activate the unit, all in the hope that the Daemon does not die before you get to use it.

At the points you are paying for it and the restrictions to getting it on a table, there is no way I would not want the best use of this monster at the appropriate time.

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The Avatar is also a formation of it's own (with Commander).
The Greater (and Lesser) Daemons are always a part of the formation which has summoned them.

And honestly i don`t know why the Eldar get their Avatar for free. Perhabs it is calculated in the cost of the Farseer unit? Perhabs it is because he will vanish at the end of the turn never to be seen again?

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The second, IMO. Between the fact that only a Farseer can summon him, and that he can only be used for one turn, his value is degraded pretty badly.
I rarely remember to use him, and often have lost my Farseer by the time I can. Also the 15 cm summoning range means that to get his 3+ CC, you have Guardians within 30cm of the enemy. The number of times I don't use WS to get into combat is low, therefore I'm usually at the 40-50cm range band. Overall, the utility is not there like it is for Daemons.

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Eldar have a lot of rules that would never get past inspection if the list was being written now.

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like what?

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The avatar for one. If a fan wrote a list with that in now, noone would accept playing against it. Farsight too probably.

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Aye it'd be nice if the Avatar was at least a token 50 points.

perhaps, but it adds a nice flavour Besides, I've had as many failures as successes with the Avatar, enough so that I don't even bother paying the 50pts for the Spear of Khaine in the Ulthwe list. In fact, if the Avatar had a points value I'd wager that a lot of Eldar players wouldn't bother taking it.

As for Farsight, why not? Every race has it's pluses and minuses - I'm sure if the Eldar list was written now, no Eldar player would accept a sum total of ONE Leader available for the whole army (Avatar excluded, in which it's pretty much pointless anyway). So, let's not go down that road, for there lies ruin  

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ah, but again, when the eldar list was written every formation had a free, unkillable leader...

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There is also the nasty crit, somehow Avatars always happen to go down in flames in plain sight of at least half a dozen Eldar formations, including a few that are broken...

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true, true, though that was before my time. However, the list does seem pretty well balanced, even though such balance tends to appear only with hindsight.

Sorry about dragging the thread so off topic

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AFAIK Eldar is the armylist with most special rules.
- Unique deployment rules only for a single unit (the Avatar)
- Hit-And Run
- Farsight
- Holofields
- Garrisons
- Wraithgate

With the Epic community's almost manical phobia for special rules i wonder if the Eldar army list would be written now if it would gain any of the above special rules  

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IIRC, the Spirit Stones rule was added rather late in the game. One reason it was removed was because of the dissent created by a rule added without contribution from several of the primary developers, and - in their view - insufficient playtesting. That and the cheese factor, but that stemmed from the above.

Whether other Leaders were removed as part of this I do not know.

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actually, I think Tyrannids have an equal no. at 9 (depending on how you count them) and Black Legion and Dark Eldar are not far behind at 7. Given that the Garrison rule is actually a big negative and Holofields are the equivalent of the void shield/powerfield/shadowfield rule, you could probably say they're equal. None of which is especially informative, particularly to Greater Daemons

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