Yoyoyo wrote:
Alternative view time. Force-on-force balance is garbage. Overrated and in truth undesirable.

Wargaming doesn't need points at all. It needs objectives and victory conditions that correspond to the nature of the forces.

Let's say a fictional army in 40k finds itself against 5x Wraithknights. They're going to warn higher command, delay it, disengage, and consolidate for orders or reinforcements. They're not going to complain it was cheesy, that D-Weapons need nerfing, that GW is unfair. That's war. Suck it up buttercup.

This is not war, war sucks. feth that, like hell I'm going to pay money to experience that. This is a game, and GW's gaming ethos has never been about "sucking it up". That's not something GW has ever attempted to sell, in fact their tone has generally been very much the opposite when talking about their games and bringing powerful things when looking at the statements made in their publications. Ultimately, the problem is we have a game that's built around force-on-force engagements, and has been since at least 2E, really late RT, and the current edition is no exception. The problem is that the current edition is increasingly trying to masquerade as something different , but is having problems for two reasons. First, it's largely being done as a "buy whatever you want, we're not going to put any barriers in the way of purchases" thing, and second, the fundamental mechanics of the game missions, unit interaction mechanics, force construction and deployment are all still built around force-on-force battles.

Likewise, scenarios still need some measure to balance forces against each other, even if it's in its imbalance. Sending 5 Wraithknights against a single squad of Guardsmen is a pretty absurd scenario to try and play out without having some measure of how insanely stilted the victory conditions should be in the Guardsmen's favor.

Victory conditions and terrain are always part of wargaming. Balance is not. It's not all about who has too much S6/S7, or what flavor of the month is undercosted or overcosted. Thermopylae is the most famous tabling in history, and we consider the defeated force to have won. This is as much a part of 40k's "balance" problems as anything in the Eldar codex.

There's basically no wargame that works this way, there just isn't unless you're talking historical wargames with largely predetermined forces and detailed scenarios, which GW has historically not done, and when they try, are absurdly terrible at.

For what tabletop miniatures games have traditionally been about, dramatically asymmetrical objectives, particularly those based on force composition, have never really been a thing, and for most purposes, are simply far too complex without what amounts to a 3rd party GM spending time designing scenarios for you (which, admittedly, Rogue Trader had)

Automatically Appended Next Post:
We should add that GW has done themselves no favors by more or less abandoning promotion for wargame-style narrative play, which has allowed the GT scene to carry the banner for how 40k is supposed to be played.

GW has abdicated responsibility for the play experience pretty much entirely and left it to the community to shape itself. GW has gone out of its way to do that, and notes proudly in its messages to stockholders how it does no market research or community interaction. GW doesn't even consider itself a game company, it describes its customers as basically being akin to beanie-baby collectors, who buy model kits because they're cool and everything else is a secondary or tertiary concern. That's how GW sees their market.

Vak, the victory conditions for the lone Infantry Squad are pretty simple.... reach the long-range Vox, send a message to the garrison, and wait to die as heroes. We need to put enough terrain down that they stand a 50/50 chance of making it. But I know what you're saying man.

 Vaktathi wrote:
[40k] is having problems for two reasons. First, it's largely being done as a "buy whatever you want, we're not going to put any barriers in the way of purchases" thing, and second, the fundamental mechanics of the game missions, unit interaction mechanics, force construction and deployment are all still built around force-on-force battles.

Just wanted to snip this for emphasis. To paraphrase, you can't run narrative lists with tournament scoring.

 Vaktathi wrote:
GW has abdicated responsibility for the play experience pretty much entirely and left it to the community to shape itself.

Head and shoulders above their other errors in judgement. It's easy and cheap for GW to hire 1-2 dudes who can write and publish scenarios, explain the process of building your own correctly, and even push out tournament-style comping "unofficially" (wink wink) so they don't abandon those players. Everyone can win here. Why GW isn't doing so is beyond me. They'd probably get a lot more traction out of some customer appreciation than their army of lawyers.

kburn wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
Alternative view time. Force-on-force balance is garbage. Overrated and in truth undesirable.

Wargaming doesn't need points at all. It needs objectives and victory conditions that correspond to the nature of the forces.

I actually agree with you. Balancing in GW is really hard, because of the number of armies involved. Also, the fact that points per unit are small, making up a huge point total of 1500, magnifies any imbalances. Also, 40k units tend to be troops with some variation on the standard marine statline, rather than the utility functions of warmahordes. Combine all of these with people like cruddace of phil kelly who write books based entirely on their personal feelings, and you get abominations like the nids codex (abominably weak) or eldar (abominably overpowered)

I actually hope rumours are true and 40k goes the way of AoS. 20 years on, they have not balanced anything in a single edition. eldar has been grossly overpowered 7 editions straight. you get aberrations like rhino-rush from blood angels in 3rd, to becoming one of the weakest codexes today. You get codexes like nids, which has been underpowered for years, or even orks, who has been underpowered (save for biker-nobs) 7 editions straight.

I think the combination of hiring lousy writers, having a hard system to balance, and an emphasis on being a "modelling company" has led GW down this path.

If they want good balance, they need to scrap the entire system, change units to be much more utility-based, or scrap the whole thing and go AoS

Im gonna bring this up, the number of Armies has nothing to do with it. Look at KoW, they have a ton of armies, but they are all fairly balanced against each other.

 Grimmor wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
But at a more friendly/casual level, where people aren't bringing the same kinds of lists, the game is somewhat more balanced and a lot more fun for many people.

I don't know if I would quite say that. Eldar (Warhost or not) are better than most casual lists. Same thing with Necrons (I'd even go as far as saying without Decurion). I've played casual lists against other casual lists, and some armies are just that good, regardless of how you slice it.

I dont know. Casual Crons arent to bad. I fought some the other day with my Sisters. Ok granted it wasn't Wraith spam, but it was still a Decurion. The only unit that i couldnt really handle was the Nightbringer, but that was because i couldnt get a decent shot with my Exorcist (stupid LOS blocking building). Idk, maybe Sisters just have the odd collection of tools where Necrons arent that terrible for them? I mean i can have a ton of boots on the ground if i choose to, and all of them have Acts of Faith (granted its max of twice per game) to boost their killing power.

Personally i feel that RP are overhyped, i mean its FNP+. Then again im coming from a place where i rarely get to take away FNP so i just shoot them a ton and hope they fail, so Iron Hands and Necrons are very similar to me

Sisters are actually very well equipped to deal with Necrons. Maybe not Wraith spam, but most of their infantry will die to the sheer volume of Flamers, Heavy Flamers, and Meltas everywhere. Also, Rending Heavy Bolters.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Alternative view time. Force-on-force balance is garbage. Overrated and in truth undesirable.

Wargaming doesn't need points at all. It needs objectives and victory conditions that correspond to the nature of the forces.

Let's say a fictional army in 40k finds itself against 5x Wraithknights. They're going to warn higher command, delay it, disengage, and consolidate for orders or reinforcements. They're not going to complain it was cheesy, that D-Weapons need nerfing, that GW is unfair. That's war. Suck it up buttercup. That's a lot more accurate to the prosecution of warfare. You don't always get to pick your engagements.

Victory conditions and terrain are always part of wargaming. Balance is not. It's not all about who has too much S6/S7, or what flavor of the month is undercosted or overcosted. Thermopylae is the most famous tabling in history, and we consider the defeated force to have won. This is as much a part of 40k's "balance" problems as anything in the Eldar codex.

This is a ridiculous and terrible idea.
Yes war isn't balanced but this isn't an actual war, this is a warGAME. GAMES are supposed to be balanced in some way!
And sure it might never be perfect but that doesn't mean "screw balance, lol", that means "try your best and recognize that your best might still leave some holes, but don't let that stop you".
It doesn't matter if a lack of balance is more accurate to true warfare, Warhammer 40000 is NOT in any way accurate to true warfare and few if any are wanting that.
The biggest thing of all is that if you personally aren't interested in balancing stuff or want to tweak or ignore the points then you're free to do so and it's not even hard. It's very, VERY hard to just invent points or other balancing mechanics in a game without them.

And while it's not necessarily something you advocate I wish to address something I think others who support the "no balancing mechanic" idea are thinking. The idea being to strip it out because as long as it's there people won't just see it as a guideline but just go straight for it and taking it away would force them to play along with the "narrative campaign and discussion" idea instead. Truth is some might, but others wouldn't be willing or able to do it and would be forced into quitting the game or even hobby by it if they don't just keep on with the older version, and that's simply not worth it. I didn't add "in my opinion" because it isn't, it's completely not worth it to destroy a particular playstyle you don't like and drive people away from 40k just to further push the playstyle you prefer when it isn't any more valid. It's not like driving away TFG types to make it more enjoyable for people who aren't jerks, it's driving away people who are playing and want to continue playing in a perfectly valid way. I say this as someone who needs a balancing mechanic. I can work with a different idea then points (but I actually push points because it's better for people like you, much easier to tweak or ignore points than a point-less system balanced via a strict FOC or formations and because it's more flexible in general) but I NEED a balancing mechanic. This is why I simply can't try AOS at all and I'm desperately hoping that 40k never goes down that road because I simply couldn't handle it at all. Not because I'm some sort of selfish prick who'd go "I MUST BRING 3 IMPERIAL KNIGHTS, A BANEBLADE, A DEOZEN SQUADS OF BLACK KNIGHTS AND 7 DIFFERENT TERMINATOR SQUADS TO EVERY SINGLE GAME!" but because... Well I wouldn't know how much to bring to each game. How much should I get? How much do I upgrade the units? How many of these should I bring? How many of those should I bring? And without a balancing mechanic to tell me, there goes my hobby right there. At most I could continue on with 7E (or maybe even earlier) 40k but that's it. I couldn't play the new one and I'm not interested in any other wargames, nor would I find much of an audience for anything else... So really, why should I be driven out of the hobby for the sake of this stupid idea?

Exalted

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
I say this as someone who needs a balancing mechanic. I can work with a different idea then points [but] I wouldn't know how much to bring to each game. How much should I get? How much do I upgrade the units? How many of these should I bring? How many of those should I bring? And without a balancing mechanic to tell me, there goes my hobby right there.

You're not wrong to feel that way. Do we have a 40k List Building forum, or a 40k Campaign Development forum? The balancing mechanic in games without points is the experience and judgement of players and scenario developers. Right now, the 40k community isn't capable of it, and GW certainly didn't shown any kind of community leadership in the AoS release. Trying to move towards a more historical-style game concept isn't easy -- those games are completely different than something like X-Wing (which is essentially an overdressed boardgame).

Curiously enough GW actually tried to crack the historical market once, too. Which might explain the disconnect when the design team is thinking "historic", the players are thinking "tournament", and the corporation is thinking "minimize shareholder risk". Anyway, check out who produced this game if you're interested. You might see some names who stir up a lot of controversy when it comes to "fixing" 40k.
http://www.beastsofwar.com/historical-battles/warhammer-historical-good/
http://tinylegions.blogspot.ca/2012/05/eulogy-of-warhammer-ancient-battle.html

And since I have neither and still wouldn't even if there was "community leadership" or whatever the hell.

I need a balancing mechanic and so do many others, having one causes no real negative effects as those who do campaigns and crap can ignore or tweak it and thus there's no good reason not to have one.

No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
And since I have neither and still wouldn't even if there was "community leadership" or whatever the hell.

I need a balancing mechanic and so do many others, having one causes no real negative effects as those who do campaigns and crap can ignore or tweak it and thus there's no good reason not to have one.

No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

When you have people like the OP in this thread who run around saying "LOL L2P" yeah Im forced to agree with you, if their is no STRONG central rulebook that BALANCES the game then it is doomed to failure as we have seen for the last few editions. 1-3 armies being OP as hell and most being meh and then the bottom 1-3 armies getting ROFL stomped unless they get great rolls or the opponent the opposite or the opponent is a moron.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
And since I have neither and still wouldn't even if there was "community leadership" or whatever the hell.

I need a balancing mechanic and so do many others, having one causes no real negative effects as those who do campaigns and crap can ignore or tweak it and thus there's no good reason not to have one.

No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

When you have people like the OP in this thread who run around saying "LOL L2P" yeah Im forced to agree with you, if their is no STRONG central rulebook that BALANCES the game then it is doomed to failure as we have seen for the last few editions. 1-3 armies being OP as hell and most being meh and then the bottom 1-3 armies getting ROFL stomped unless they get great rolls or the opponent the opposite or the opponent is a moron.

Your still upset.? Let it go man.

The game is unbalanced and that's GWs fault, but by this time next year or sooner every codex will be on par (at least for the most part) or who knows maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

Dman137 wrote:

maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

I sure hope so.

Dman137 wrote:
by this time next year or sooner every codex will be on par (at least for the most part)

There is quite literally zero evidence that would suggest this, and GW's past history doesn't support this theory either. The only thing you can and should expect from GW is random. For all we know, the next codex could be total trash and make CSM look good in comparison, or it could be so god tier that Eldar bow in shame.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

Oh for god's sakes relax. It's not going to hurt your brain to think about something different than you're used to for 5 minutes.

It's very, very easy to take points out of 40k, and simply publish an online link to "suggested points" for garden variety Eternal War and Maelstrom scenarios. Update this periodically. It's too easy mate.

Maybe you missed the post where I said "Everyone can win here"?

*Edit* Off topic, don't want to make it worse.

Fix Eldar.

 Blacksails wrote:

Dman137 wrote:
by this time next year or sooner every codex will be on par (at least for the most part)

There is quite literally zero evidence that would suggest this, and GW's past history doesn't support this theory either. The only thing you can and should expect from GW is random. For all we know, the next codex could be total trash and make CSM look good in comparison, or it could be so god tier that Eldar bow in shame.

Yeah because we all saw AOS coming.

 krodarklorr wrote:

Dman137 wrote:

maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

I sure hope so.

Same here. I was tabled in three turns by a rookie Grey Knight player using a Nemesis formation.

 master of ordinance wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

Dman137 wrote:

maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

I sure hope so.

Same here. I was tabled in three turns by a rookie Grey Knight player using a Nemesis formation.

Granted, I hope they keep some form of point system or Force construction method that's more balanced than "bring what you want". Otherwise, bring on AoS 40k.

1. Scatterbikes go back to 1 on every 3 models. Or at least max 3 per unit. Yes you can buy multiple units of 3 bikes to max on your lasers, just like mehreens can 2xgrav + combi grav, but that's way more manageable than units of 5-7-10. Giving troop choices unlimited special/heavy weapons is just silly. That's like giving every tactical a heavy bolter, only the laser is better than the heavy bolter and the jetbike is better than the tactical. And giving all tacticals heavy bolters is a stupid idea to boot. go figure. If I want to press it, send the scatterbikes to the fast slot, where they actually belong. 12" move + flat out jetboke troops. Yeah right.

2. Drop the Wraithknight to toughness 7 and give it a slight price hike, maybe +50 pts or something. Toughness 8 and above is plain silly, no wound-characteristic model should be immune to basic strength 4 weapons, I would know, I play a hierophant bio-titan in apoc. But at least that's apoc and stupid things should belong there. Not in normal games tho.

3. This point goes towards all the new Decurion-style themes in all the newest books (necron, elder, space marines, deamonkin). Having specific formations that give flat out bonuses makes no sense UNLESS said formation has an actual tax included. For example a unit of dark reapers costs X. Now you take it in the aspect warrior formation and suddenly the same dark reapers have an upgraded BS for the same X points. This is bad design: Either the original Dark reaper is correctly costed X, therefore the formation makes it overpowered, or it is costed with the formation in mind, therefore the codex intro is underpowered. It would be justified if you had a silly tax, ie have to also take 2 units of plain guardians as a part of the formation. But you don't, and that's plain stupid.

4. Make warlocks proper psychic brotherhood unit. If 16 horrors of tzeentch are needed in order to add 3 warp charges, I don't see a reason why 5 warlocks would add 5 warp charges. No army should be able to generate that many dice for so little cost in such a durable platform. On a second step, nerf the elder spells. If Prescience was nerfed to WC (2) in the last edition because even GW could see it was plain stupid, why should the Eldars keep their own as WC 1?

5. Nerf/upcost the farseer. 100 pts for a psyche that puts to shame every other psyche in the game is not a good price tag. 115 with a jetbike. (Plus who the heck thought 15 pts for a jetbike is ok when normal bikes cost 20). 4++ and ML(3) included... A chaos sorcerer would have to pay 135 pts to come on equal grounds with a 100 pt farseer. Sorc would have the advantage of power armor, but then the farseer ignores perils rolls, can reroll its dice, can cast on a 3+ with a formation, has WAY better spells and is 35 pts cheaper. I have no problem with Eldar having better posychers than the other races, but this should be reflected in its point cost.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
1. Scatterbikes go back to 1 on every 3 models. Or at least max 3 per unit. Yes you can buy multiple units of 3 bikes to max on your lasers, just like mehreens can 2xgrav + combi grav, but that's way more manageable than units of 5-7-10. Giving troop choices unlimited special/heavy weapons is just silly. That's like giving every tactical a heavy bolter, only the laser is better than the heavy bolter and the jetbike is better than the tactical. And giving all tacticals heavy bolters is a stupid idea to boot. go figure. If I want to press it, send the scatterbikes to the fast slot, where they actually belong. 12" move + flat out jetboke troops. Yeah right.

2. Drop the Wraithknight to toughness 7 and give it a slight price hike, maybe +50 pts or something. Toughness 8 and above is plain silly, no wound-characteristic model should be immune to basic strength 4 weapons, I would know, I play a hierophant bio-titan in apoc. But at least that's apoc and stupid things should belong there. Not in normal games tho.

3. This point goes towards all the new Decurion-style themes in all the newest books (necron, elder, space marines, deamonkin). Having specific formations that give flat out bonuses makes no sense UNLESS said formation has an actual tax included. For example a unit of dark reapers costs X. Now you take it in the aspect warrior formation and suddenly the same dark reapers have an upgraded BS for the same X points. This is bad design: Either the original Dark reaper is correctly costed X, therefore the formation makes it overpowered, or it is costed with the formation in mind, therefore the codex intro is underpowered. It would be justified if you had a silly tax, ie have to also take 2 units of plain guardians as a part of the formation. But you don't, and that's plain stupid.

4. Make warlocks proper psychic brotherhood unit. If 16 horrors of tzeentch are needed in order to add 3 warp charges, I don't see a reason why 5 warlocks would add 5 warp charges. No army should be able to generate that many dice for so little cost in such a durable platform. On a second step, nerf the elder spells. If Prescience was nerfed to WC (2) in the last edition because even GW could see it was plain stupid, why should the Eldars keep their own as WC 1?

5. Nerf/upcost the farseer. 100 pts for a psyche that puts to shame every other psyche in the game is not a good price tag. 115 with a jetbike. (Plus who the heck thought 15 pts for a jetbike is ok when normal bikes cost 20). 4++ and ML(3) included... A chaos sorcerer would have to pay 135 pts to come on equal grounds with a 100 pt farseer. Sorc would have the advantage of power armor, but then the farseer ignores perils rolls, can reroll its dice, can cast on a 3+ with a formation, has WAY better spells and is 35 pts cheaper. I have no problem with Eldar having better posychers than the other races, but this should be reflected in its point cost.

1. As I've said before, I can agree on Windriders needing less firepower, and potentially being moved to Fast Attack.

2. Nope. The Wraithknight needs to be fundamentally changed. Gargantuan Creatures just have too many things going for them. Making it T7 won't stop it from claiming stupid dover saves and stomping units into oblivion. Besides, I think the Wraithlord is just fine for its points at S8 T8.

3. Nope 2: Electric Boogaloo. Formations are here to stay. Everything has built up to this; GW just stupidly decided to go all-out with the Necron book before all the other armies had caught up. There is a price to be paid for the Eldar formations. They are very restrictive in terms of units you can take, and require upgrades and point spending that would otherwise be considered sub-optimal. The opportunity cost of the formations balances out their bonuses.

4-5. Nope Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses. Warlocks are 35 points apiece, and are very limited in the number of spells they can cast. Most of the time they only serve as Warp Charge batteries for other psykers. A unit of three costs about the same as a unit of pink horrors. Besides, the precedent has already been set in terms of models being able to get around the restrictions of Brotherhood of Psykers; just look at Zoanthropes. Guide probably should go to WC2, and Fortune should wither only affect units other than the caster or only affect armour and cover saves. I can see the Farseer increading in cost, but keep in mind that they're only T3 with a 4++ save. The jetbike upgrade needs to go up in cost, but the base Farseer shouldn't be too more expensive; I'd say around 120-125 points.

Dman137 wrote:

The game is unbalanced and that's GWs fault

THEN STOP REJECTING THE IDEA OF PEOPLE FIXING IT!

Yoyoyo wrote:
Oh for god's sakes relax. It's not going to hurt your brain to think about something different than you're used to for 5 minutes.

You're right about that. Too bad that dealing with your awful idea wouldn't just be "thinking about something different for 5 minutes".

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's very, very easy to take points out of 40k, and simply publish an online link to "suggested points" for garden variety Eternal War and Maelstrom scenarios. Update this periodically. It's too easy mate.

No, that's a horrible idea. It sucks enough having 7th be as house rule reliant as it is, having making the game PLAYABLE AT ALL be reliant on house rules would suck harder than a vacuum cleaner powered by a black hole.
A much better idea is to keep the same points system and just tweak the values that need to be tweaked, hell even with no tweaks it's better than this crappy idea because at least there's a 100% official framework to start from, work off of and to fall back on. With your awful idea if the players couldn't agree on a WHOLE CODEX OF HOUSE RULES they couldn't even start playing...

Yoyoyo wrote:
Maybe you missed the post where I said "Everyone can win here"?

No, I saw it, you were just 100% wrong about it, with that idea everyone loses.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Same here. I was tabled in three turns by a rookie Grey Knight player using a Nemesis formation.

Why? Now it goes from needing a few house rules to balance a few things with at least an official starting point to complete pandemonium.
Remember that homebrew TFG Space Marine player you complained about a while back? That would make the whole game like that...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
3. Nope 2: Electric Boogaloo. Formations are here to stay. Everything has built up to this; GW just stupidly decided to go all-out with the Necron book before all the other armies had caught up. There is a price to be paid for the Eldar formations. They are very restrictive in terms of units you can take, and require upgrades and point spending that would otherwise be considered sub-optimal. The opportunity cost of the formations balances out their bonuses.

That doesn't make it a good thing or something we should accept. Banning all the MFDs (Decurion, Gladius, Lion's Blade and so on) would be a really good idea and the sort of house rule that should be spread around and hopefully catch on.
Maybe smaller stuff like the standalone auxiliaries and the various Strike Force type things could stay but honestly if it's all or none with Formations, we're better off with none.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
1. Scatterbikes go back to 1 on every 3 models. Or at least max 3 per unit. Yes you can buy multiple units of 3 bikes to max on your lasers, just like mehreens can 2xgrav + combi grav, but that's way more manageable than units of 5-7-10. Giving troop choices unlimited special/heavy weapons is just silly. That's like giving every tactical a heavy bolter, only the laser is better than the heavy bolter and the jetbike is better than the tactical. And giving all tacticals heavy bolters is a stupid idea to boot. go figure. If I want to press it, send the scatterbikes to the fast slot, where they actually belong. 12" move + flat out jetboke troops. Yeah right.

Agreed on all points. They need -1 Armor save and moved to Fast Attack, and 1 heavy weapon per 3 models. Making them as they are now was just a cash grab from GW....and sadly it worked. I was considering Eldar as my next army, but after this codex I either won't buy anything to support that army, and even if I do, I won't buy Jetbikes.

2. Drop the Wraithknight to toughness 7 and give it a slight price hike, maybe +50 pts or something. Toughness 8 and above is plain silly, no wound-characteristic model should be immune to basic strength 4 weapons, I would know, I play a hierophant bio-titan in apoc. But at least that's apoc and stupid things should belong there. Not in normal games tho.

I don't know if we should go that far. As it is now isn't terribly bad.....if it were 450 points. Make it cost accordingly, and in the next edition nerf Strength D slightly and fix Stomps to not be stupid and it'll be set.

3. This point goes towards all the new Decurion-style themes in all the newest books (necron, elder, space marines, deamonkin). Having specific formations that give flat out bonuses makes no sense UNLESS said formation has an actual tax included. For example a unit of dark reapers costs X. Now you take it in the aspect warrior formation and suddenly the same dark reapers have an upgraded BS for the same X points. This is bad design: Either the original Dark reaper is correctly costed X, therefore the formation makes it overpowered, or it is costed with the formation in mind, therefore the codex intro is underpowered. It would be justified if you had a silly tax, ie have to also take 2 units of plain guardians as a part of the formation. But you don't, and that's plain stupid.

I have to disagree with this. First off, the formations aren't the broken part of the Eldar codex. Second, yes you are right, Dark Reapers can become BS5/6 for essentially no points. Except those points spent on the other 2 required units to get the bonus. "I wanna take nothing but Wraiths and give them all 4+ RP har har har" Nope, gotta take a unit of scarabs and a Spyder per 6 wraiths. That is your cost. Making it cost more points, and still require you to take units you might not always want to take is too much.

4. Make warlocks proper psychic brotherhood unit. If 16 horrors of tzeentch are needed in order to add 3 warp charges, I don't see a reason why 5 warlocks would add 5 warp charges. No army should be able to generate that many dice for so little cost in such a durable platform. On a second step, nerf the elder spells. If Prescience was nerfed to WC (2) in the last edition because even GW could see it was plain stupid, why should the Eldars keep their own as WC 1?

Because Eldar couldn't only have the best GC and the best troop choice in the game, as well as some of the best firepower. They had to dominate the Psychic phase too, you didn't know? /sarcasm

5. Nerf/upcost the farseer. 100 pts for a psyche that puts to shame every other psyche in the game is not a good price tag. 115 with a jetbike. (Plus who the heck thought 15 pts for a jetbike is ok when normal bikes cost 20). 4++ and ML(3) included... A chaos sorcerer would have to pay 135 pts to come on equal grounds with a 100 pt farseer. Sorc would have the advantage of power armor, but then the farseer ignores perils rolls, can reroll its dice, can cast on a 3+ with a formation, has WAY better spells and is 35 pts cheaper. I have no problem with Eldar having better posychers than the other races, but this should be reflected in its point cost.

Sadly one of the things I thought they would fix with this codex. Last codex, 15 points for +1 T, Jetbike, 3+ armor save. Why wouldn't you put him on one? I guess GW still didn't want to sell the standard Farseer models.

And how would be in charge of making these changes/comping of dexs.? If you want to balance eldar then do people get to also comp SM from talking free transports, necrons from having a 4+ RP.? It's easy to comp one thing but then we have to comp all of it, and I'm sure there will be people that don't like the comp for one thing and not the other, they should do something like ETC did for fantasy and go tru each codex and comp accordingly. That system seemed to balance out a lot of over powered fantasy 8th army's.

Then we can talk about all that other stuff in a topic that's about them.
Sure we should do all of them (that need fixing) but this topic is about ELDAR so your complaints about other factions fall flatter than a crushed pancake. Not to mention I (I'm assuming that was directed at me) just advocated killing ALL the MFDs, the source of free Space Marine Transports. And I as a Dark Angels player am not puling my version of that crap ever.

That's a nice, but an ultimately misguided thought Crash. Rick Priestly mentioned in his AMA on reddit:

"Game balance is a real chimera for GW because the games are driven by model releases that are entirely out of the hands of the designers".

Priestly was referencing the issues with flyers in 6th. Now it's superheavies in 7th. Scatterbikes? Maybe it's the model team's jetbike that drove that addition. Who knows? The facts are, if you think GW is going to nail balance using points -- EVER -- you're wrong. And the "100% official" holy grail you're tweaking over isn't currently used by any of the major GTs anyway, who have extensive FAQs and comping.

Hyperventilating doesn't make for a very compelling argument. Clarity and evidence does. If you're so keen on official GW decisions, why are you yourself asking to modify design choices like mega-formations that are clearly not leaving?

Yeah, that's the thing, I DON'T expect them to nail it but there's a world of difference between house-ruling or otherwise fixing a few things and having to basically scratch-build the rules just to play. I literally said that in my previous post on the subject, I know it was long but I'm sure it didn't make you pass out reading it...

Hopefully you didn't pass out writing it.

If you design a game to be played 100% rules as written, the rules need to be airtight. If you intend a game to be played competitively, you need to track meta and make changes as necessary. I've seen all sorts of powergaming abuse in RTS games; the complaining on dakka is exactly like WC3 or SC2 on BattleNet way back when. You should have seen the exploits some people tried and pull. Don't underestimate the power of human ingenuity. Designers will eventually be outfoxed by players, always.

Now, I think there has been a serious bleeding of competitive players into 40k, tied to the phenomenon of gaming as sport rather than hobby. This is pure gaming rather than wargaming; the goal is winning and high performance, not theme or storytelling. Lists are built like a Magic deck for advantage rather than to create a sandbox for tactics on the table. That's the cause of the "planet bowling ball" thing.

Now, people play for different reasons and that's fine. But it's been a massive strain on 40k and we should recognize that. Consensual games don't require the same controls on the playerbase that competitive games do -- freedom is encouraged rather than fairness. The first step in GW fixing this is to clarify what kind of game 40k is. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that's exactly what they did with Sigmar.

Yeah, gamers can totally outdo the designers and such, where did I say otherwise?
I'm not disputing the need for tweaking but to not even provide a baseline is just crap and is worse in every way.

Limit scatter laser upgrades on bikes to 1 per 5. Unit of 6 takes 2. Give the bikes a different, less insane weapon. Lower point cost a wee bit.

Slow and purposeful on the wraiths, or don't let those D flamers overwatch, or... I dunno, they are just insane.

Wraithknight needs to be a little more expensive. People will take one no matter what, they are just amazing.

Honestly, changing D a bit would make the eldar codex be less crazy.

Dman137 wrote:And how would be in charge of making these changes/comping of dexs.? If you want to balance eldar then do people get to also comp SM from talking free transports, necrons from having a 4+ RP.? It's easy to comp one thing but then we have to comp all of it, and I'm sure there will be people that don't like the comp for one thing and not the other, they should do something like ETC did for fantasy and go tru each codex and comp accordingly. That system seemed to balance out a lot of over powered fantasy 8th army's.

CrashGordon94 wrote:Then we can talk about all that other stuff in a topic that's about them.
Sure we should do all of them (that need fixing) but this topic is about ELDAR so your complaints about other factions fall flatter than a crushed pancake. Not to mention I (I'm assuming that was directed at me) just advocated killing ALL the MFDs, the source of free Space Marine Transports. And I as a Dark Angels player am not puling my version of that crap ever.

While it is true that Eldar do not have a monopoly on cheese and OP units, CrashGordon94 is right. This topic is how to balance Eldar, especially in relation to armies that are not on the same level of power. You can't just handwave away one army's balance problems by saying that other armies are just as cheesy/OP. Also, comp is one of the worst possible balancing formats. All it does is create another mate around exploiting the comp system. The only comp that I can get behind is Highlander, the most restrictive system, and even that needs to be modified to account for the needs of different factions.

On the subject of MFD/Decurion-style/Voltron detachments, I don't think that they are inherently broken or bad. I can understand just wanting to play with the standard CAD or a modified CAD (ex. Baal Strike Force, Wolves Unleashed), and that's perfectly fine. But the problem is that not all of those kinds of detachments are created equal. The Decurion provides an insane boost in durability to all its units. The Demi-Company/Lion's blade is only OP by virtue of the free transports it can provide. In comparison, the Eldar Warhost is relatively tame. The base formation has a lot of units that are considered to be a tax and sub-optimal. The Aspect Host is nasty, but is very restrictive and has a high cost to be effective; 700-800 points is not uncommon. I think that formations are an important and necessary part of the game now, but I understand wanting to avoid them for more friendly/casual games.

Yoyoyo wrote:Hopefully you didn't pass out writing it.

If you design a game to be played 100% rules as written, the rules need to be airtight. If you intend a game to be played competitively, you need to track meta and make changes as necessary. I've seen all sorts of powergaming abuse in RTS games; the complaining on dakka is exactly like WC3 or SC2 on BattleNet way back when. You should have seen the exploits some people tried and pull. Don't underestimate the power of human ingenuity. Designers will eventually be outfoxed by players, always.

Now, I think there has been a serious bleeding of competitive players into 40k, tied to the phenomenon of gaming as sport rather than hobby. This is pure gaming rather than wargaming; the goal is winning and high performance, not theme or storytelling. Lists are built like a Magic deck for advantage rather than to create a sandbox for tactics on the table. That's the cause of the "planet bowling ball" thing.

Now, people play for different reasons and that's fine. But it's been a massive strain on 40k and we should recognize that. Consensual games don't require the same controls on the playerbase that competitive games do -- freedom is encouraged rather than fairness. The first step in GW fixing this is to clarify what kind of game 40k is. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that's exactly what they did with Sigmar.

Unfortunately, as the YMDC section will quickly make you aware, GW is not good at writing airtight rules. House rules/RAI are necessary to play essential parts of the game and to resolve many rules conundrums.

In any game, there is a divide between the competitive and casual scenes. Warhammer 40k just has a larger divide than most games due to fundamental imbalance and other assorted issues.

GW has made it abundantly clear that 40k is not a competitive game. Their lack of support for tournaments, approach to rules writing, and their avowed lack of research into the playerbase is all you need to know that 40k is a casual game. Personally, I enjoy the friendly game a lot more than competitive games. But 40k should have a tighter and more balanced ruleset in order to provide the best experience for both casual and competitive games.

Baselines are definitely important. The problem we have with points is inflexibility. The challenge is in finding an attractive baseline if we try to implement something else.

Until then points + houseruling is the easiest thing to work with.

Yoyoyo wrote:
That's a nice, but an ultimately misguided thought Crash. Rick Priestly mentioned in his AMA on reddit:

"Game balance is a real chimera for GW because the games are driven by model releases that are entirely out of the hands of the designers".

Priestly was referencing the issues with flyers in 6th. Now it's superheavies in 7th. Scatterbikes? Maybe it's the model team's jetbike that drove that addition. Who knows? The facts are, if you think GW is going to nail balance using points -- EVER -- you're wrong. And the "100% official" holy grail you're tweaking over isn't currently used by any of the major GTs anyway, who have extensive FAQs and comping.

Hyperventilating doesn't make for a very compelling argument. Clarity and evidence does. If you're so keen on official GW decisions, why are you yourself asking to modify design choices like mega-formations that are clearly not leaving?

Ever is a very big word. There is a reason their stocks plummeted. There is a reason they are changing ceo. Maybe they will gain some sense from this. "It is not dead that which eternally can lie. And with strange aeons even GW may realize".

 TheNewBlood wrote:
I think that formations are an important and necessary part of the game now, but I understand wanting to avoid them for more friendly/casual games.

Might I ask why? Not really seeing the benefit to having MFDs knocking about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:
Baselines are definitely important. The problem we have with points is inflexibility. The challenge is in finding an attractive baseline if we try to implement something else.

It's actually the most flexible mechanic for balance.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Until then points + houseruling is the easiest thing to work with.

THEN WHY TAKE AWAY THE POINTS?!

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
THEN WHY TAKE AWAY THE POINTS?!

Encourages a lot of negative powergaming tendencies and frames the game around list building in tightly defined and formulaic competitive missions, rather than thematic, flexible, and creative scenarios involving any unit you might care to field.

But unless you want to go Sigmar and simply not offer any kind of baseline whatsoever, right now 40k is stuck with what it's got.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Encourages a lot of negative powergaming tendencies

No points is even worse, then there aren't even limits.

Yoyoyo wrote:
frames the game around list building in tightly defined and formulaic competitive missions

By default, absolutely nothing stopping you from changing it up.

Yoyoyo wrote:
rather than thematic, flexible, and creative scenarios involving any unit you might care to field.

Which many, many people (including myself) can't handle that at all, and once again that option is there points or no points. Again, why should people be driven away from 40k just to force this on them?

Yoyoyo wrote:
But unless you want to go Sigmar and simply not offer any kind of baseline whatsoever, right now 40k is stuck with what it's got.

And the latter is infinitely better than the former, kinda shocking that you'd advocate the former.

While it is true that Eldar do not have a monopoly on cheese and OP units, CrashGordon94 is right

That is true, but no other player can pick more or less any unit and play with it. A casual random units picked army can go against tournament armies, if you play eldar. There is no one unit to nerf, because if someone nerfs WK, then eldar players will just spam something else. So balancing eldar, if it even should be done at all, is either impossible or would have to be done through some sort of special rule added on top of the rules they already have.

Honestly that just means the non-broken stuff is usable, which isn't a bad thing, and probably something to keep in mind for when other stuff is balanced.

Wk are too cheap by at least 100pts for what they do,

scat bikes are also too cheap for what they do compared to similar priced models, up some pts and 1/3 for special weapons

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Honestly that just means the non-broken stuff is usable, which isn't a bad thing, and probably something to keep in mind for when other stuff is balanced.

Define usable. Because I have seen tournament list with almost every eldar unit out there. There are very few which are "bad", and even those aren't bad per se, they are just bad because melee sucks in general this edition and shoting units are point for point better.
On the other spectrum of the game you have books like GK, which are ok, and have like 4 or 5 usable units in the entire codex. Or IG which has no corner stone units, no specialisation or BAs who are Space Marine- the good stuff.

No, not defining anything.

Not having "bad" stuff is a good thing, we shouldn't nerf things that aren't OP, by the sounds of it those "bad" units need a buff more than anything else, but since they're not Eldar that's another discussion for another time.

CrashGordon94 wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
I think that formations are an important and necessary part of the game now, but I understand wanting to avoid them for more friendly/casual games.

Might I ask why? Not really seeing the benefit to having MFDs knocking about.

Sure. I feel that these new kinds of detachments are a great way to represent the lore on the tabletop and to give players to take more generalist and traditionally less optimal units. The Decurion, for all the complaints about it, accurately represents Necrons as an unstoppable phalanx. The Gladius actually gives marine players a reason to take Tac and assault marines. 7th edition was designed to be formation edition from the beginning, but naturally GW screwed up the execution. I still think that formations have had more of a positive effect on the game rather than a negative one.

Makumba wrote:

While it is true that Eldar do not have a monopoly on cheese and OP units, CrashGordon94 is right

That is true, but no other player can pick more or less any unit and play with it. A casual random units picked army can go against tournament armies, if you play eldar. There is no one unit to nerf, because if someone nerfs WK, then eldar players will just spam something else. So balancing eldar, if it even should be done at all, is either impossible or would have to be done through some sort of special rule added on top of the rules they already have.

May I ask one question: do you play Eldar? If you do, you should know that Eldar are an army based on synergy. As an army of specialists, you need to have the right units in the right roles; bring the wrong ones and defeat is almost assured. The firepower, mobility, and special rules of Eldar units are compensated by their weak durability. Make a mistake and it will easily cost you units. If you don't just spam the OP units, Eldar can be fun to both play and play against.

Also, are you seriously saying that all Eldar players are powergamers? I resent that description; by the same standard all vanilla marine players are powergamers because some use the Skyhammer or Full Gladius or Centstar.

Makumba wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Honestly that just means the non-broken stuff is usable, which isn't a bad thing, and probably something to keep in mind for when other stuff is balanced.

Define usable. Because I have seen tournament list with almost every eldar unit out there. There are very few which are "bad", and even those aren't bad per se, they are just bad because melee sucks in general this edition and shoting units are point for point better.
On the other spectrum of the game you have books like GK, which are ok, and have like 4 or 5 usable units in the entire codex. Or IG which has no corner stone units, no specialisation or BAs who are Space Marine- the good stuff.

Just because Eldar are well-balanced internally does not make them OP. The problem lies in their specific OP units, not the army as a whole. Outside of those Broken units, Eldar are relatively balanced, at least against 7th edition books. Saying that vanilla marines only have a few good units because those units win tournaments (Blood Angels are another story) is like saying that Eldar are only good because of Scatbikers, D-weapons, and the Wraithknight. If anything, the new marine detachment has given players an incentive to field things other than Centstar.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Victory conditions and terrain are always part of wargaming. Balance is not. It's not all about who has too much S6/S7, or what flavor of the month is undercosted or overcosted. Thermopylae is the most famous tabling in history, and we consider the defeated force to have won.

Just on this, it's entirely possible for a battle that's unbalanced in-universe to be balanced at the tabletop. White Dwarf have had more than one "last stand" scenario, where the attacker has overwhelming forces, but the player controlling the defenders wins if they have survivors after X turns, or accomplish an objective before they get wiped out. The situation is unfair for the fictional soldiers involved, but the important part is, both players have a relatively equal chance of winning.

Dragannia wrote:
See, this is people overreacting. Complaining about Battle Focus, honestly. Battle Focus is a fantastic rule, it's balanced, and frankly Eldar needed a bit of something ever since Fleet stopped being a big deal (before, they and DE were the only ones with Fleet, and no one could Run in those days, and you could assault).

I mean no one's asking Space Marines to have Doctrines stripped. It's a good, balanced rule.

No its not balanced it is a free thing that makes all eldar ridiculous. The move shoot move or move move shoot should not be some free handout its just wrong. Tau have to pay for it in the form of battlesuits and tyranids only gain it through psychic powers so why should it come with litterally no drawbacks for nearly every Eldar unit. In the same regard their Jet bikes doing the jump shoot jump thing now is stupid. Eldar are literally just better Tau in almost every way now where just a short while ago they were quite different. Oh your battlesuits are so good so let me bring my scat bikes (pun intended) with bigger range and volume of shots. Oh Riptides are such BS, let me bring my GC wraithknight that costs only 100 points more. Oh markerlights are such bs. Let me just get out my aspect warriors who are all BS5 because that is balanced.

Just own up to the fact that Eldar have a book that is naturally better than most. (And by most I mean all but Necrons who they are on par with)

 Yaavaragefinkinman wrote:

Dragannia wrote:
See, this is people overreacting. Complaining about Battle Focus, honestly. Battle Focus is a fantastic rule, it's balanced, and frankly Eldar needed a bit of something ever since Fleet stopped being a big deal (before, they and DE were the only ones with Fleet, and no one could Run in those days, and you could assault).

I mean no one's asking Space Marines to have Doctrines stripped. It's a good, balanced rule.

No its not balanced it is a free thing that makes all eldar ridiculous. The move shoot move or move move shoot should not be some free handout its just wrong. Tau have to pay for it in the form of battlesuits and tyranids only gain it through psychic powers so why should it come with litterally no drawbacks for nearly every Eldar unit. In the same regard their Jet bikes doing the jump shoot jump thing now is stupid. Eldar are literally just better Tau in almost every way now where just a short while ago they were quite different. Oh your battlesuits are so good so let me bring my scat bikes (pun intended) with bigger range and volume of shots. Oh Riptides are such BS, let me bring my GC wraithknight that costs only 100 points more. Oh markerlights are such bs. Let me just get out my aspect warriors who are all BS5 because that is balanced.

Just own up to the fact that Eldar have a book that is naturally better than most. (And by most I mean all but Necrons who they are on par with)

Dark Eldar jetbikes have the exact same ability, and it's arguably more important for them due to their limited durability. The reason people are complaining about Eldar jetbikes being able to move in the assault phase is because of the ludicrous mobility and firepower that Scatbikers possess.

Space Marines ignore most of the section of the rules on morale and get free re-rolls thanks to their doctrines. Necrons are the most durable army in the game with their 4+ Res Protocalls. I'm failing to see how the Eldar ability to run/shoot in either order and get an automatic 6" run qualifies as overpowered. Their mobility and firepower and formations bonuses compensate for thier fragile nature; they are T3 across the board and have a 3+ save at best, so they're hardly easy to kill.

I don't think anyone, including myself, has defended the current state of the Wraithknight or denied that Eldar are a powerful army in the game. Tau have plenty of problems of their own due to increased focous on mobility ingame and their lack of options in that area. But you can't honestly tell me that the Riptide and its Forge World brethren aren't undercosted or ridiculously durable for their cost. At the end of the day, most armies are balanced against Eldar minus their OP units.

I'm failing to see how the Eldar ability to run/shoot in either order and get an automatic 6" run qualifies as overpowered.

Because it is yet another rule piled up on top of other good rules. It is not the case of eldar with runing and shoting are good and without it they are bad. It is the case of them buffing units like firedragons or ignoring the supposed shorter range of their troop weapons with it. On top of WK, very good psykers, D weapons on non titans, scatter bikes etc.

At the end of the day, most armies are balanced against Eldar minus their OP units.

And every eldar army runs them, so that is suppose to balance itself how?

Dark Eldar jetbikes have the exact same ability, and it's arguably more important for them due to their limited durability

Dont the eldar jetbikes get a +3sv when deldar ones have +5 or something just as bad?.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Space Marines ignore most of the section of the rules on morale and get free re-rolls thanks to their doctrines. Necrons are the most durable army in the game with their 4+ Res Protocalls. I'm failing to see how the Eldar ability to run/shoot in either order and get an automatic 6" run qualifies as overpowered.

In an army that's built around blisteringly, sometimes absurdly, powerful short range firepower, increasing the potential range of many of these weapons by 50% (or allowing them to withdraw to avoid danger) is a wee bit silly.

That's not saying that Necrons and SM's can't also be broken, but that doesn't mean the Eldar abilities can't also be so, though admittedly the Eldar power comes more from the units themselves than the automatic 6" for run moves.

Their mobility and firepower and formations bonuses compensate for thier fragile nature; they are T3 across the board

aside from T4 jetbikes and T6 Wraith units.

and have a 3+ save at best so they're hardly easy to kill.

Setting aside the fact that they generally have some of the hardest transports in the game to kill, many units have rules enhancing their resiliency or ability to avoid fire (flickerjump, shadowstrike, Shrouded, Jink, etc), and powerful psychic support abilities that can also greatly enhance resiliency (fortune, conceal, protect, etc)

Eldar are not, and really never have been, "fragile" as an army. They can have fragile elements, but have also historically (and currently still are) been relatively hardy once you get past their statlines.

you can't honestly tell me that the Riptide and its Forge World brethren aren't undercosted or ridiculously durable for their cost. At the end of the day, most armies are balanced against Eldar minus their OP units.

I still don't think I'll ever be convinced that something like AP0 BS5 Fire Dragons are going to be balanced

Makumba wrote:

I'm failing to see how the Eldar ability to run/shoot in either order and get an automatic 6" run qualifies as overpowered.

Because it is yet another rule piled up on top of other good rules. It is not the case of eldar with runing and shoting are good and without it they are bad. It is the case of them buffing units like firedragons or ignoring the supposed shorter range of their troop weapons with it. On top of WK, very good psykers, D weapons on non titans, scatter bikes etc.

At the end of the day, most armies are balanced against Eldar minus their OP units.

And every eldar army runs them, so that is suppose to balance itself how?

Dark Eldar jetbikes have the exact same ability, and it's arguably more important for them due to their limited durability

Dont the eldar jetbikes get a +3sv when deldar ones have +5 or something just as bad?.

Dark Eldar Reavers have a 5+ armour save, but a 3+ jink save thanks to skilled rider. They're also only one point less stock than a stock Windrider.

Eldar without Battle Focus would be objectively worse, as it would mean a drastic dip in the survivability of their infantry models. As I said before, they are T3 across the board and with only average armour saves. Remove their mobility, and they have no means of compensating for the short range of their infantry weapons and low durability. Taking away Battle Focus would also mean a loss of flavor to the army, as Battle Focus represents Eldar going into the warrior mindset and heightening their reflexes and agility. Nobody took Aspect Warrriors aside form Warp Spiders before because Wraith units were objectively better, even in the 6th edition codex. Nerf Footdar, and you take away any incentive for Eldar players to not spam jetbikes and Wraith units.

Not every Eldar army runs Scatbikers, D-weapons, and Wraithknights, despite what you may read here on DakkaDakka. The reason you see so many lists like that on this forum is due to many factors, including a greater focus on the competitive scene in the game, upcoming major tournaments (NOVA Open), and the recent flurry of activity in a certain topic by the OP of this thread. Before you accuse me of hypocrisy in list building, feel free to check my posting history. I'm relatively clean in that department.

@Vaktathi: You make some fair points. I'd still argue that Battle Focus isn't nearly as powerful as ATSKNF or Res Protocolls, as its a much more tactical ability; you have to have something to run into to hide, or run toward an enemy to get a better shot and risk being wiped out by return fire. I agree that Eldar have many ways of getting around their lack of durability, but outside of the Wraithknight and undercosted jetbikes and re-rollable save shenanigans I still say that those mitigating factors are balanced. In a codex that features ludicrously underpriced and overpowered Wraith units, jetbikes, and the gargantuan creature to rule them all BS5 AP0 Fire Dragons start to look reasonable by comparison.

 Elemental wrote:
Just on this, it's entirely possible for a battle that's unbalanced in-universe to be balanced at the tabletop. The situation is unfair for the fictional soldiers involved, but the important part is, both players have a relatively equal chance of winning.

That's what I was trying to say, perhaps I could have been more clear.

Imbalance can make sense from a fluff perspective. If IG are intended to lose massive amounts of cheap troops, they shouldn't be penalized when it happens. The Eldar losing a single Wraithknight have incurred a much greater relative loss.

We can leverage that to start balancing Eldar, without even touching the stats and costing. Let's rule any points awarded for destroying an Eldar unit count as double. It's not a complete fix but it's going to make risky play more dangerous and give the Eldar's opponent a better chance of winning through attrition, even if outgunned in a force-on-force sense.

Unit costing and stats aren't the only balance tool available to a designer. I think there are still a lot of untapped ideas out there.

^Potentially, but that can't and shouldn't be the primary way of balancing, because most players simply cannot work with that kind of thing.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
[quote=CrashGordon94
May I ask one question: do you play Eldar? If you do, you should know that Eldar are an army based on synergy. As an army of specialists, you need to have the right units in the right roles; bring the wrong ones and defeat is almost assured. The firepower, mobility, and special rules of Eldar units are compensated by their weak durability. Make a mistake and it will easily cost you units. If you don't just spam the OP units, Eldar can be fun to both play and play against.

Also, are you seriously saying that all Eldar players are powergamers? I resent that description; by the same standard all vanilla marine players are powergamers because some use the Skyhammer or Full Gladius or Centstar.

eldar being fragile or a specialist is a huge misconception. having a fast army with most units having a 3+ save, plus gargantuan creatures, jink saves, along with the strongest firepower in the game to table opponents before they can land a shot, and what have you, does not make a fragile army. A fragile army is one like tyranids, with a genestealer's 5+ save, and which will still die to striking scorpions in cover, due to lack of grenades. A fragile army is one like orks, where you can scythe down boyz with abandon using your scatter lasers. The only thing the eldar army is a specialist in, is how easily it can kill anything. Low AV vehicle? shoot it with your scatter lasers or d-weapons till it stops moving. PA models? Spam scatter lasers or D them to death. CC specialists? kill them before they can touch you, CC is for inferior monkeigh scum with weak codices.

Also, given that eldar has been overpowered for 7 editions straight, to say they have gathered the greatest numbers of powergamers is an understatement.

" that eldar has been overpowered for 7 editions straight,"

There were brief interludes of mediocrity.

Martel732 wrote:
" that eldar has been overpowered for 7 editions straight,"

There were brief interludes of mediocrity.

Even in these very brief periods, there were very excellent, and hard to kill opponents. At no point across 7 editions have they even dipped anywhere near "average"

Regardless of how the eldar codex is corrected, it will still be grossly overpowered the next. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me 7 editions straight, and I don't think anything will change on the 8th. The only 2 solutions are these:

1) Fire Phil Kelly

2) Go AoS and remove all point costs.

kburn wrote:
2) Go AoS and remove all point costs.

Why do people keep posting this as a solution? It solves the problem about as well as trying to put out a fire with gasoline!

kburn wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" that eldar has been overpowered for 7 editions straight,"

There were brief interludes of mediocrity.

Even in these very brief periods, there were very excellent, and hard to kill opponents. At no point across 7 editions have they even dipped anywhere near "average"

Regardless of how the eldar codex is corrected, it will still be grossly overpowered the next. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me 7 editions straight, and I don't think anything will change on the 8th. The only 2 solutions are these:

1) Fire Phil Kelly

2) Go AoS and remove all point costs.

I don't think Eldar have been updated in every edition anyway...

I'm getting really tired of repeating myself on this argument. Individual units do mot make an army as a whole OP. Tyranids have an FMC that is ridiculously cheap for the level of firepower it puts out, but you wouldn't in good faith be able to say that the current Tyranid codex is OP. Same goes for Eldar.

Let's take a brief trip back in time, shall we, and chart what has made Eldar OP:

2nd/3rd edition: Starcannons
4th/5th edition: Unkillable vehicles
6th edition: Wave Serpents
7th edition: Scatbikers, D-weapons, Wraithknight

Only the latest codex stands out for the number of broken units, but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. The Eldar codex may be somewhat more OP have have broken units, but that doesn't mean it can't be fixed.

Also, as has been widely argued both here and in other threads, removing points and army construction rules is a terrible idea. Just look at what happened to all the former Fantasy players that got their game desecrated; at least they had alternate game systems to go to. AoS is by far the worst ruleset I have ever read, in that it fails to be a proper framework for a game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

kburn wrote:
2) Go AoS and remove all point costs.

Why do people keep posting this as a solution? It solves the problem about as well as trying to put out a fire with gasoline!

Exalted.

Also, you can actually put out a fire by drowning the flames in gasoline (it doesn't burn at low temperatures). Going full Age of Sigmar is like spreading water on an oil fire; all it does is create a much bigger and nastier mess.

One thing to keep in mind, as a ground-up rework Sigmar had a unified design process. Despite lacking points, the armies were designed by the same people, at the same time, with a single ruleset in mind. There's also secondary balancing mechanisms like sudden death, which reduce the effects of lists power imbalance. This is not the case with 40k.

The lesson to draw here is not "no points are better". The lesson is that unified design and a stable, cohesive team are immensely important to releasing anything that is going to work at all. Sigmar would have been a complete disaster if it had the sprawling inequality that's all over 40k.

Star example of this thread, GMCs. They're a crossover rule from Apoc where the only purposed "normal" hard counter were D-Weapons. In regular 40k, the only ranged D-Weapons belong to the same faction. Grav, which presumably appeared in 2013 to help sell Centurions, was never an option for a significant number of factions in the game. Vehicles in general are an absolute wreck against GMC because they weren't designed around ever fighting GMCs in the first place, and these kits are going to be a lot more difficult to change than an infantry special weapon. So why is the Wraithknight a GMC anyway? Immunity to Stomp. Why is stomp in the game? Imperial Knights. Reactive problem-solving and piecemeal additions of new special rules and units leads to these issues and results in what 40k is, a mess.

No points with global access to grav and D-Weapons, is way, way, WAY more fair than points-equal armies which lack access to a proper counter.

You can build a good game either with points or without, but you can't build a good game without deliberate and thoughtful design.

I'd limit jetbike special weapons to 1 per 3 bikes, and increase the price of the WK by 80 points. That would go quite a long way, tested it numerous times already.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
Exalted.

Also, you can actually put out a fire by drowning the flames in gasoline (it doesn't burn at low temperatures). Going full Age of Sigmar is like spreading water on an oil fire; all it does is create a much bigger and nastier mess.

Thank you.

And that's legitimately fascinating, had never heard that before.

Yoyoyo wrote:
One thing to keep in mind, as a ground-up rework Sigmar had a unified design process. Despite lacking points, the armies were designed by the same people, at the same time, with a single ruleset in mind. There's also secondary balancing mechanisms like sudden death, which reduce the effects of lists power imbalance. This is not the case with 40k.

1) So have that with points and/or another functional balancing mechanic.
2) "Unified design process" or no, it's still completely unbalanced and basically unplayable in any way that would actually have any sort of balance at all without HARDCORE house-ruling because of a complete lack of any balancing mechanics whatsoever. As for sudden death...
3) I heard about sudden death. That's just a crappy excuse for one. For one thing it's horribly easy to exploit just by bringing a few really big and potent models and for another even if you discount TFG behavior like that it still does little to nothing in the way of actually balancing (just a hypothetical for if 40k worked this way: Is a nice, fluffy Deathwing or Grey Knights list necessarily weaker than a nice, fluffy horde-based Guard/'Nids/Orks list just because it has fewer models? NO!) or giving any guidance to list-building so you have some fething clue what to bring to each match.

Yoyoyo wrote:
The lesson to draw here is not "no points are better". The lesson is that unified design and a stable, cohesive team are immensely important to releasing anything that is going to work at all. Sigmar would have been a complete disaster if it had the sprawling inequality that's all over 40k.

Then why keep pushing the no-points crap?

Yoyoyo wrote:
No points with global access to grav and D-Weapons, is way, way, WAY more fair than points-equal armies which lack access to a proper counter.

No, it's worse. The latter can be balanced by nerfing/removing a handful of problem units/gear options/etc whereas for the first you'd need to jump head-first into hardcore homebrew territory just to get the game working at all.

Yoyoyo wrote:
You can build a good game either with points or without, but you can't build a good game without deliberate and thoughtful design.

You can build a good game without points because other balance mechanics exist, I still push points because it's a lot more flexible than the alternatives, which you narrative campaign types should really appreciate. You can just ignore or tweak points as you see fit if you want to do that specialty stuff, not so easy with the alternatives.
What you can't do is build a good game with no balancing mechanics whatsoever, that's something that immediately dooms the game.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

I'm getting really tired of repeating myself on this argument. Individual units do mot make an army as a whole OP. Tyranids have an FMC that is ridiculously cheap for the level of firepower it puts out, but you wouldn't in good faith be able to say that the current Tyranid codex is OP. Same goes for Eldar.

Also, you can actually put out a fire by drowning the flames in gasoline (it doesn't burn at low temperatures). Going full Age of Sigmar is like spreading water on an oil fire; all it does is create a much bigger and nastier mess.

I don't subscribe to your definition of OP. nevertheless, you are free to replace it with "top 3", "best", "most easily used" or whatever you subscribe to. Doesn't change the fact that they were the most powerful 7 editions straight (other than for brief moments, and even then, they were never average, merely very powerful, but not the best)

Maybe people want AoS rules because they're sick of being tabled by cheesemongers who claim to use a "fragile" or "hard to use" army? Maybe they're sick of being grossly underpowered 7 editions in a row. Maybe they're sick of being subject to the whims and fancies of robin cruddace and phil kelly? Maybe they're sick of half their units becoming unplayable every edition? Maybe they're sick of a poorly balanced narrative game masquerading as a competitive game?

Either way, I'd rather burn everything with AoS rules than play under than current farce.

kburn wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

I'm getting really tired of repeating myself on this argument. Individual units do mot make an army as a whole OP. Tyranids have an FMC that is ridiculously cheap for the level of firepower it puts out, but you wouldn't in good faith be able to say that the current Tyranid codex is OP. Same goes for Eldar.

Also, you can actually put out a fire by drowning the flames in gasoline (it doesn't burn at low temperatures). Going full Age of Sigmar is like spreading water on an oil fire; all it does is create a much bigger and nastier mess.

I don't subscribe to your definition of OP. nevertheless, you are free to replace it with "top 3", "best", "most easily used" or whatever you subscribe to. Doesn't change the fact that they were the most powerful 7 editions straight (other than for brief moments, and even then, they were never average, merely very powerful, but not the best)

Maybe people want AoS rules because they're sick of being tabled by cheesemongers who claim to use a "fragile" or "hard to use" army? Maybe they're sick of being grossly underpowered 7 editions in a row. Maybe they're sick of being subject to the whims and fancies of robin cruddace and phil kelly? Maybe they're sick of half their units becoming unplayable every edition? Maybe they're sick of a poorly balanced narrative game masquerading as a competitive game?

Either way, I'd rather burn everything with AoS rules than play under than current farce.

Any one that openly likes AOS and thinks 40k should go down the same road clearly has lost it. It's a game made for kids (the box should just say ages 3-10. regardless of how 40k is going it's still a very fun game to play, if people don't like competitive army's then don't go to events, it drives me nuts that people with fluff army's and garbage list that they still use from 3ed come to events get tabled and then after the event complain that the game isn't fair and people are bringing OP army's and blah blah blah, if your not a competitive player and don't play with a competitive army then please just play with your friends in your gaming group instead of showing up to events to cry and bomb people's scores because your to sour.

In regards to balancing eldar, no matter what units people nerff the eldar book is so good that people (myself included) will just abuse some other unit. Comp the bikes cool I'll just take aspect warriors, comp the aspect warriors no problem I'll take a seerstar or you want to comp that to no problem wraithknight army it is. The list goes on and on

Crash mate.... once and for all, just because I'm discussing the relative pros and cons of ideas, doesn't necessarily mean I'm asking anybody to support one.

Historical "no points" organization is interesting but it's usually pitched at more mature audiences. In this thread at Warlord Games, Rick Priestly and others (including a magazine editor who's been playing since 1969) discuss pros and cons but it's obviously a very different audience than here on dakka.

Edit: Forgot the link. http://www.warlordgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=392

To get back to the point of balancing eldar.

Isn't the big problem spamming? Wouldn't it be great if a units cost increased if you had more of them? And let that go for weapons aswell.

Like first scatter laser is X. Second is 2X. Third is 3X. And so on in a unit.

Then sure you could have loads of the same weapon if you really wanted. But it would cost you.

And for units it could be a "tax" added to some units perhaps. Like first unit of jet bikes costs Y for 3. Next unit costs (Y+30)=Z. Next unit costs (Z+30). And so on.

Would be what I would change atleast.

I don't think Eldar have been updated in every edition anyway...

I'm getting really tired of repeating myself on this argument. Individual units do mot make an army as a whole OP. Tyranids have an FMC that is ridiculously cheap for the level of firepower it puts out, but you wouldn't in good faith be able to say that the current Tyranid codex is OP. Same goes for Eldar.

Let's take a brief trip back in time, shall we, and chart what has made Eldar OP:

2nd/3rd edition: Starcannons
4th/5th edition: Unkillable vehicles
6th edition: Wave Serpents
7th edition: Scatbikers, D-weapons, Wraithknight

Only the latest codex stands out for the number of broken units, but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. The Eldar codex may be somewhat more OP have have broken units, but that doesn't mean it can't be fixed.

1. Tyranid FMC's (suppose you mean flyrants, because harpies suck and crones are average) are definitely NOT cheap. 240 pts is land raider category points spent to get 12 str 6 shots within 18". Exactly the same number of shots eldar get with, let's say, 3 scatter bikes. Only 3 scatter bikes cost 81 pts and can shoot from 36" away. Yeah. Tyranids are ridiculously cheap. Whatever.

2. Your historical analysis lacks a couple of huge facts. From the 5th to the 6th edition, all Eldar guardians got a free point of Ballistic skill for no reason whatsoever. In addition your whole army got to benefit double from the shooting phase, arguable the best phase in the game. There is a reason all other armies are restricted in either running or shooting. Reason is that doing both is too much for a single phase. And then Eldar get to do this with ALL their army. Then in 7th edition your aspect warriors got a free point of ballistic skill, also for no reason whatsoever. In this, you should add the fact that Eldar have the best AND cheapest psychic phase in the game for as long as I can remember, in comparison Tzeentch lies in the corner crying, and that's stupid. If you add specific changes it is easy to miss the bigger picture. And this is the bigger picture:

1. Eldar have (one of) the best movement phases in the game. Troop jetbikes, warp spyders, ability to have all your characters get jetbikes (in contrast,since you like to compare to tyranids, they only have ONE independent character and he isn't even allowed to get wings and join Shrikes), Wraithknights moving 12", skimmer transports etc etc etc.

2. Eldar have the single best psychic phase in the game period. Cheapest way to get multiple warp charges, an EXCELLENT choice of powers, army standalone powers that put to shame all other disciplines in the game, 3+ to cast, reroll dice, ignoring perils etc etc etc.

3. Eldar have the best shooting phase in the game, period. Giving all bikes a laser is akin to giving each single tactical marine an assault cannon, only much much better. Consider an army of 3-4 full tactical units holding 10 assault freaking cannons each and if you think that's crazy, think about scatterbikes. Also with D weapons everywhere for ridiculously cheap you can practically amass shooting that would put Tau to shame. And no army should be better at shooting than Tau, mainly because Tau have nothing else going for them, shooting is all they do. And besides having the best shooting in the game, your WHOLE ARMY also gets to run along with shooting. For completely utter free.

4. Eldar have one of the strongest - if not the strongest - close combats in the game. Melee Wraithknights fast enough that nobody can escape, the most unkillable deathstar (seerstar with farseers) that also deals ridiculous amount of damage due to fleshbane weapons (oh poor eldars with str 3) etc etc etc. When your melee units put to shame armies such as tyranids and orks this is bad.

Now add to the mix interesting little stuff here and there in ALL your units like bladestorm, warp spyders 6 to wound thing, flickerjumps, reapers ignoring jinking, fire dragons shooting with AP0 etc etc etc, add some of the best blanket rules in any codex (maybe second only to marines - and said Tyranids' own blanket rule is a blatant nerf, only army in the game that does so) and then sprinkle on top of it formations that give free ballistic skill to your aspect warriors and better casting to your farseers, effectively leaving you with only ONE bad unit in your whole codex, and that's storm guardians. And since you like comparing to Tyranids, let me tell you that Tyranids STILL have pyrovores.

So that's about Eldar. You got any objections?

topaxygouroun i wrote:

I don't think Eldar have been updated in every edition anyway...

I'm getting really tired of repeating myself on this argument. Individual units do mot make an army as a whole OP. Tyranids have an FMC that is ridiculously cheap for the level of firepower it puts out, but you wouldn't in good faith be able to say that the current Tyranid codex is OP. Same goes for Eldar.

Let's take a brief trip back in time, shall we, and chart what has made Eldar OP:

2nd/3rd edition: Starcannons
4th/5th edition: Unkillable vehicles
6th edition: Wave Serpents
7th edition: Scatbikers, D-weapons, Wraithknight

Only the latest codex stands out for the number of broken units, but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. The Eldar codex may be somewhat more OP have have broken units, but that doesn't mean it can't be fixed.

1. Tyranid FMC's (suppose you mean flyrants, because harpies suck and crones are average) are definitely NOT cheap. 240 pts is land raider category points spent to get 12 str 6 shots within 18". Exactly the same number of shots eldar get with, let's say, 3 scatter bikes. Only 3 scatter bikes cost 81 pts and can shoot from 36" away. Yeah. Tyranids are ridiculously cheap. Whatever.

2. Your historical analysis lacks a couple of huge facts. From the 5th to the 6th edition, all Eldar guardians got a free point of Ballistic skill for no reason whatsoever. In addition your whole army got to benefit double from the shooting phase, arguable the best phase in the game. There is a reason all other armies are restricted in either running or shooting. Reason is that doing both is too much for a single phase. And then Eldar get to do this with ALL their army. Then in 7th edition your aspect warriors got a free point of ballistic skill, also for no reason whatsoever. In this, you should add the fact that Eldar have the best AND cheapest psychic phase in the game for as long as I can remember, in comparison Tzeentch lies in the corner crying, and that's stupid. If you add specific changes it is easy to miss the bigger picture. And this is the bigger picture:

1. Eldar have (one of) the best movement phases in the game. Troop jetbikes, warp spyders, ability to have all your characters get jetbikes (in contrast,since you like to compare to tyranids, they only have ONE independent character and he isn't even allowed to get wings and join Shrikes), Wraithknights moving 12", skimmer transports etc etc etc.

2. Eldar have the single best psychic phase in the game period. Cheapest way to get multiple warp charges, an EXCELLENT choice of powers, army standalone powers that put to shame all other disciplines in the game, 3+ to cast, reroll dice, ignoring perils etc etc etc.

3. Eldar have the best shooting phase in the game, period. Giving all bikes a laser is akin to giving each single tactical marine an assault cannon, only much much better. Consider an army of 3-4 full tactical units holding 10 assault freaking cannons each and if you think that's crazy, think about scatterbikes. Also with D weapons everywhere for ridiculously cheap you can practically amass shooting that would put Tau to shame. And no army should be better at shooting than Tau, mainly because Tau have nothing else going for them, shooting is all they do. And besides having the best shooting in the game, your WHOLE ARMY also gets to run along with shooting. For completely utter free.

4. Eldar have one of the strongest - if not the strongest - close combats in the game. Melee Wraithknights fast enough that nobody can escape, the most unkillable deathstar (seerstar with farseers) that also deals ridiculous amount of damage due to fleshbane weapons (oh poor eldars with str 3) etc etc etc. When your melee units put to shame armies such as tyranids and orks this is bad.

Now add to the mix interesting little stuff here and there in ALL your units like bladestorm, warp spyders 6 to wound thing, flickerjumps, reapers ignoring jinking, fire dragons shooting with AP0 etc etc etc, add some of the best blanket rules in any codex (maybe second only to marines - and said Tyranids' own blanket rule is a blatant nerf, only army in the game that does so) and then sprinkle on top of it formations that give free ballistic skill to your aspect warriors and better casting to your farseers, effectively leaving you with only ONE bad unit in your whole codex, and that's storm guardians. And since you like comparing to Tyranids, let me tell you that Tyranids STILL have pyrovores.

So that's about Eldar. You got any objections?

You forgot the extra free stuff from the formations!

 Farstrand wrote:
To get back to the point of balancing eldar.

Isn't the big problem spamming? Wouldn't it be great if a units cost increased if you had more of them? And let that go for weapons aswell.

Like first scatter laser is X. Second is 2X. Third is 3X. And so on in a unit.

Then sure you could have loads of the same weapon if you really wanted. But it would cost you.

And for units it could be a "tax" added to some units perhaps. Like first unit of jet bikes costs Y for 3. Next unit costs (Y+30)=Z. Next unit costs (Z+30). And so on.

Would be what I would change atleast.

Can we apply that to SM for every droppod they take it costs more and more

", but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. "

Never in consecutive editions, however. Eldar are consistently obnoxious.

Martel732 wrote:
", but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. "

Never in consecutive editions, however. Eldar are consistently obnoxious.

SM, tau have been really good since 4th so eldar aren't the only ones

Dman137 wrote:

Any one that openly likes AOS and thinks 40k should go down the same road clearly has lost it. It's a game made for kids (the box should just say ages 3-10. regardless of how 40k is going it's still a very fun game to play, if people don't like competitive army's then don't go to events, it drives me nuts that people with fluff army's and garbage list that they still use from 3ed come to events get tabled and then after the event complain that the game isn't fair and people are bringing OP army's and blah blah blah, if your not a competitive player and don't play with a competitive army then please just play with your friends in your gaming group instead of showing up to events to cry and bomb people's scores because your to sour.

In regards to balancing eldar, no matter what units people nerff the eldar book is so good that people (myself included) will just abuse some other unit. Comp the bikes cool I'll just take aspect warriors, comp the aspect warriors no problem I'll take a seerstar or you want to comp that to no problem wraithknight army it is. The list goes on and on

Since competitive 40k is a farce, and the current eldar codex is too broken to even play casual games with, why have points at all? IDK, if you want a proper competition, play warmahordes. Unrestricted tournaments are dominated by eldar, and even restricted ones are heavily dominated by them. Its just a competition to see who can bring the most obnoxious list.

Points unfairly penalise players like me, who play weak lists like tyranids, is pigeon-holed into FOCs/formations, into playing sure-lose games. People pretty much have to try to make weak list to match a fluffy tyranid list, and its pretty much impossible for eldar to match a weak tyranid list.

AoS will let me bring 4 squads of 12 stealers, 6 squads of 30 gaunts, a walkrant, warriors and 3 CC fexes and play against an eldar player who takes whatever he wants. Under the current rules, that list will get tabled within 2 turns, regardless of whatever the opponent takes.

Martel732 wrote:
", but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. "

Never in consecutive editions, however. Eldar are consistently obnoxious.

Add on common claim of eldar players claiming their 3++, jink saves, gragangutan creatures, fast every thing, insane shooting and firepower, holofields, etc. is a fragile army "for experts only", and it becomes infinitely more obnoxious. Multiply that with the fact that they've been building powergamers for 20 years, 7 editions straight, and you pretty much have the most overpowered faction with the most obnoxious players. Phil Kelly will continue making eldar more and more powerful, and the whole community gets torn apart even more.

AoS will toss the whole toxic population into the bin, probably they'll go on to play hayley2 in warmahordes, but at least its not an instant win for them.

Dman137 wrote:
[
SM, tau have been really good since 4th so eldar aren't the only ones

False again. Probably SM was only good in 6th and 7th with the advent of grav guns. They've been solidly average from 3rd-5th. Tau has only been good since 6th with riptides. Even in these editions, eldar has been an entire tier or 2 stronger than SM or tau, with theie jetseers, holofields, and generally insanly strong codex. No idea why eldar players love to rip on SM.

Tau has only been good since 6th with riptides.

to be fair, 4 edition Fish of Fury Tau lists were all the rage back in the day.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

Tau has only been good since 6th with riptides.

to be fair, 4 edition Fish of Fury Tau lists were all the rage back in the day.

easily countered with matt ward's grey knights, any eldar codex, even the tyranid codex. Pretty much any CC codex then would trump them, and even the non CC-strong codex have a decent fighting chance, instead of the ROFLMAOLtabledin2turnseldar we have today.

Keep in mind, we're not talking merely strong. We're talking easy-mode, no brainer, cutting edge cheese several tiers above the rest, which only eldar has been for most of these 20 years, or 7 editions.

1) Make scatterbikes 1 in 3.
2) Make wraithknight Unique and cost +100pts.
3) Nerf wraithguard D-weapons.

Simples!

Dman137 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
", but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. "

Never in consecutive editions, however. Eldar are consistently obnoxious.

SM, tau have been really good since 4th so eldar aren't the only ones

Wrong. Very wrong. Vanilla marines were almost at the bottom at the end of 5th. Fish of fury builds were never as remotely strong as the crap Eldar have been known to field.

" Probably SM was only good in 6th and 7th with the advent of grav guns"

Meqs dominated the start of 3rd ed.

kburn wrote:
Maybe people want AoS rules because they're sick of being tabled by cheesemongers who claim to use a "fragile" or "hard to use" army? Maybe they're sick of being grossly underpowered 7 editions in a row. Maybe they're sick of being subject to the whims and fancies of robin cruddace and phil kelly? Maybe they're sick of half their units becoming unplayable every edition? Maybe they're sick of a poorly balanced narrative game masquerading as a competitive game?

Can't speak for the others so much but the bolded problems would only worse with this kind of thing. You'd get the same "cheesemongers" but with them not even limited by points anymore and they can house-rule their army to be even stronger with even less impunity because you can't even PLAY without house rules and the complete lack of balancing mechanics would brand it as the very epitome of "poorly balanced narrative game", while killing any hope for it to be anything else.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Crash mate.... once and for all, just because I'm discussing the relative pros and cons of ideas, doesn't necessarily mean I'm asking anybody to support one.

1) Completely unbelievable, you definitely were pushing that crappy idea and advocating it, don't hide behind some weaksauce excuse.
2) I'm going to pile on the emphasis because you don't seem to get this point: THERE AREN'T "pros and cons" BECAUSE THE IDEA OF A GAME NOT HAVING A BALANCE MECHANIC HAS NO PROS! ANYTHING A GAME WITHOUT ONE COULD DO, A GAME WITH ONE COULD DO BETTER BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST IGNORE OR TWEAK THE BALANCING MECHANIC AS YOU PLEASE WHILE ADDING ONE TO A GAME WITHOUT ONE IS MUCH, MUCH HARDER! Now with that said, actually address that point and stop dodging it.

kburn wrote:
Points unfairly penalise players like me, who play weak lists like tyranids, is pigeon-holed into FOCs/formations, into playing sure-lose games. People pretty much have to try to make weak list to match a fluffy tyranid list, and its pretty much impossible for eldar to match a weak tyranid list.

No, badly balanced points are what hurt you, tweak them with house rules and it gets better. It's what you'd be forced to do with crappy no-balancing-mechanic games like AOS anyway, whereas here you have a defined starting point as well as something to fall back on if you can't agree on house rules. With crap like AOS you'd need to completely start with scratch to get either crappy results (worse than now!) or require an utterly mind-bending amount of playtesting, and you'd have absolutely nothing to fall back on if you can't agree on house rules. Even the status quo is better.

kburn wrote:
AoS will toss the whole toxic population into the bin, probably they'll go on to play hayley2 in warmahordes, but at least its not an instant win for them.

Once again, NO IT WON'T! They'll just be completely unrestrained and run roughshod over everything else, I keep pointing this out and nobody can even be bothered to refute it or even just respond...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

zerosignal wrote:

2) Make wraithknight Unique and cost +100pts.

Not so sure about making them Unique, kind of a middle finger to anyone who bought more than one...
Besides if they're balanced, having more than one won't be such an issue anymore.

Let's not get rose tinted glasses here. 4th edition Eldar codex was hardly something to be feared like you make it out to be. It has very few competitive builds, most were Seer Council based. You try matching up a 5th ed Space Wolves army or GK list during 5th and early 6th and a Biel-Tan or Iyanden or Guardian list and see where that would have taken you. A bit like Tyranids now. Besides you moan about how bad Tyranids are but that's really it, it's Tyranids who are gak. You come up against an optimised Necrons or SM list and you'll suffer the same problem, so don't be unfairly hating on Eldar. I think I've made my opinion clear about Eldar balancing already so I won't go back on it.

You know what would also nerf Eldar?

Nerfing Battle-Brothers.

Solo 2016!

kburn wrote:

Dman137 wrote:

Any one that openly likes AOS and thinks 40k should go down the same road clearly has lost it. It's a game made for kids (the box should just say ages 3-10. regardless of how 40k is going it's still a very fun game to play, if people don't like competitive army's then don't go to events, it drives me nuts that people with fluff army's and garbage list that they still use from 3ed come to events get tabled and then after the event complain that the game isn't fair and people are bringing OP army's and blah blah blah, if your not a competitive player and don't play with a competitive army then please just play with your friends in your gaming group instead of showing up to events to cry and bomb people's scores because your to sour.

In regards to balancing eldar, no matter what units people nerff the eldar book is so good that people (myself included) will just abuse some other unit. Comp the bikes cool I'll just take aspect warriors, comp the aspect warriors no problem I'll take a seerstar or you want to comp that to no problem wraithknight army it is. The list goes on and on

Since competitive 40k is a farce, and the current eldar codex is too broken to even play casual games with, why have points at all? IDK, if you want a proper competition, play warmahordes. Unrestricted tournaments are dominated by eldar, and even restricted ones are heavily dominated by them. Its just a competition to see who can bring the most obnoxious list.

Points unfairly penalise players like me, who play weak lists like tyranids, is pigeon-holed into FOCs/formations, into playing sure-lose games. People pretty much have to try to make weak list to match a fluffy tyranid list, and its pretty much impossible for eldar to match a weak tyranid list.

AoS will let me bring 4 squads of 12 stealers, 6 squads of 30 gaunts, a walkrant, warriors and 3 CC fexes and play against an eldar player who takes whatever he wants. Under the current rules, that list will get tabled within 2 turns, regardless of whatever the opponent takes.

Martel732 wrote:
", but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. "

Never in consecutive editions, however. Eldar are consistently obnoxious.

Add on common claim of eldar players claiming their 3++, jink saves, gragangutan creatures, fast every thing, insane shooting and firepower, holofields, etc. is a fragile army "for experts only", and it becomes infinitely more obnoxious. Multiply that with the fact that they've been building powergamers for 20 years, 7 editions straight, and you pretty much have the most overpowered faction with the most obnoxious players. Phil Kelly will continue making eldar more and more powerful, and the whole community gets torn apart even more.

AoS will toss the whole toxic population into the bin, probably they'll go on to play hayley2 in warmahordes, but at least its not an instant win for them.

Dman137 wrote:
[
SM, tau have been really good since 4th so eldar aren't the only ones

False again. Probably SM was only good in 6th and 7th with the advent of grav guns. They've been solidly average from 3rd-5th. Tau has only been good since 6th with riptides. Even in these editions, eldar has been an entire tier or 2 stronger than SM or tau, with theie jetseers, holofields, and generally insanly strong codex. No idea why eldar players love to rip on SM.

I won the grand tournament in 2008 (4th Ed) the last GT gw supported back in the day with tau that had no fish of fury all foot tau, so pretty sure they were amazing in 4th

The 4th ed eldar codex could burn down careless sw players in 5th with guided scatterlasers. Basically the eldar are always at least average because of their weapon profiles and fast platforms.

 krodarklorr wrote:
You know what would also nerf Eldar?

Nerfing Battle-Brothers.

Solo 2016!

If by "nerf Eldar" you mean "screw over Dark Eldar and Harlequins while Craftworld Eldar have all their cheesy crap to fall back on", then yes.

P.S. You need to drop the Battle Brothers hate, it's got some exploits but there are many valid uses and people have built armies around it. Killing Battle Brothers ally levels because of those would be like squatting Necrons because they have quite a few OP things, and I know you wouldn't like that...

Not so sure about making them Unique, kind of a middle finger to anyone who bought more than one...

On the other hand though, anyone who just went ballistic and bought multiple Wraithknights the moment they saw the codex entry kinda deserves a middle finger imho.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:
You know what would also nerf Eldar?

Nerfing Battle-Brothers.

Solo 2016!

If by "nerf Eldar" you mean "screw over Dark Eldar and Harlequins while Craftworld Eldar have all their cheesy crap to fall back on", then yes.

P.S. You need to drop the Battle Brothers hate, it's got some exploits but there are many valid uses and people have built armies around it. Killing Battle Brothers ally levels because of those would be like squatting Necrons because they have quite a few OP things, and I know you wouldn't like that...

A. Dark Eldar have a terrible codex. That is not by any means my fault, and I feel for them, I really do. Harlequins aren't even involved in any of the cheese builds from what I've heard, so they would remain mostly unaffected.

B. I said nerf, not remove. I'm obviously a strong advocate for playing an army the way it was meant to be played, but I also understand that allying is a fun and fluffy part of the game. I simply think that Battle-Brothers should not be able to take each other's transports. That, at the very least, would fix quite a few issues across the board. Also, remove Come the Apocalypse. But that's another issue that isn't relevant to this topic.

C. You need to chill. I've read your posts across this topic and you either enjoying jumping on people's cases or are very passionate about this topic. Either way, you need to tone it down a bit.

D. Solo 2016 is a joke that I'm running with because why not. I thought that was pretty clear.

 krodarklorr wrote:
I thought that was pretty clear.

T'was.

There's a reason you can't take this guy's face seriously:

 krodarklorr wrote:
A. Dark Eldar have a terrible codex. That is not by any means my fault, and I feel for them, I really do. Harlequins aren't even involved in any of the cheese builds from what I've heard, so they would remain mostly unaffected.

Well, I had heard that Dark Eldar and Harlies are fun/effective with each other, which is more what I was getting at.

 krodarklorr wrote:
B. I said nerf, not remove. I'm obviously a strong advocate for playing an army the way it was meant to be played, but I also understand that allying is a fun and fluffy part of the game. I simply think that Battle-Brothers should not be able to take each other's transports. That, at the very least, would fix quite a few issues across the board. Also, remove Come the Apocalypse. But that's another issue that isn't relevant to this topic.

Alright, that's more reasonable, would still make a couple points:
A) Don't take it any further than that.
B) While "no transport sharing" wouldn't be unworkable, I'm thinking it might be overkill, it sounds like it's more just a few specific transports when taken as Fast Attack that cause the problem. I don't really see any complaints about Guardsmen in Rhinos, Bullgryns in Land Raiders or Terminators in a Stormlord.

 krodarklorr wrote:
C. You need to chill. I've read your posts across this topic and you either enjoying jumping on people's cases or are very passionate about this topic. Either way, you need to tone it down a bit.

Damn right I'm passionate, can't really be anything else when someone's seriously suggesting an idea that would very likely destroy my hobby entirely (if 40k went AOS-style that's basically all that money, time and effort down the drain for me... Unlike what Yoyoyo seems to think I am UNABLE to adapt to that!).

 krodarklorr wrote:
D. Solo 2016 is a joke that I'm running with because why not. I thought that was pretty clear.

Oh, guess it really didn't come across (not anything special, sarcasm doesn't travel properly over the web), maybe just because I've seen people suggest much worse ideas with a straight face (see anyone seriously suggesting the AOS route).

 Selym wrote:
There's a reason you can't take this guy's face seriously:

I just took that to mean he was really enthusiastic about it.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

 Selym wrote:
There's a reason you can't take this guy's face seriously:

I just took that to mean he was really enthusiastic about it.

Fair enough

topaxygouroun i wrote:

I don't think Eldar have been updated in every edition anyway...

I'm getting really tired of repeating myself on this argument. Individual units do mot make an army as a whole OP. Tyranids have an FMC that is ridiculously cheap for the level of firepower it puts out, but you wouldn't in good faith be able to say that the current Tyranid codex is OP. Same goes for Eldar.

Let's take a brief trip back in time, shall we, and chart what has made Eldar OP:

2nd/3rd edition: Starcannons
4th/5th edition: Unkillable vehicles
6th edition: Wave Serpents
7th edition: Scatbikers, D-weapons, Wraithknight

Only the latest codex stands out for the number of broken units, but keep in mind that during that time Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space Wolves, CSM, and Tau have all been broken, OP, and widely hated on. The Eldar codex may be somewhat more OP have have broken units, but that doesn't mean it can't be fixed.

1. Tyranid FMC's (suppose you mean flyrants, because harpies suck and crones are average) are definitely NOT cheap. 240 pts is land raider category points spent to get 12 str 6 shots within 18". Exactly the same number of shots eldar get with, let's say, 3 scatter bikes. Only 3 scatter bikes cost 81 pts and can shoot from 36" away. Yeah. Tyranids are ridiculously cheap. Whatever.

2. Your historical analysis lacks a couple of huge facts. From the 5th to the 6th edition, all Eldar guardians got a free point of Ballistic skill for no reason whatsoever. In addition your whole army got to benefit double from the shooting phase, arguable the best phase in the game. There is a reason all other armies are restricted in either running or shooting. Reason is that doing both is too much for a single phase. And then Eldar get to do this with ALL their army. Then in 7th edition your aspect warriors got a free point of ballistic skill, also for no reason whatsoever. In this, you should add the fact that Eldar have the best AND cheapest psychic phase in the game for as long as I can remember, in comparison Tzeentch lies in the corner crying, and that's stupid. If you add specific changes it is easy to miss the bigger picture. And this is the bigger picture:

1. Eldar have (one of) the best movement phases in the game. Troop jetbikes, warp spyders, ability to have all your characters get jetbikes (in contrast,since you like to compare to tyranids, they only have ONE independent character and he isn't even allowed to get wings and join Shrikes), Wraithknights moving 12", skimmer transports etc etc etc.

2. Eldar have the single best psychic phase in the game period. Cheapest way to get multiple warp charges, an EXCELLENT choice of powers, army standalone powers that put to shame all other disciplines in the game, 3+ to cast, reroll dice, ignoring perils etc etc etc.

3. Eldar have the best shooting phase in the game, period. Giving all bikes a laser is akin to giving each single tactical marine an assault cannon, only much much better. Consider an army of 3-4 full tactical units holding 10 assault freaking cannons each and if you think that's crazy, think about scatterbikes. Also with D weapons everywhere for ridiculously cheap you can practically amass shooting that would put Tau to shame. And no army should be better at shooting than Tau, mainly because Tau have nothing else going for them, shooting is all they do. And besides having the best shooting in the game, your WHOLE ARMY also gets to run along with shooting. For completely utter free.

4. Eldar have one of the strongest - if not the strongest - close combats in the game. Melee Wraithknights fast enough that nobody can escape, the most unkillable deathstar (seerstar with farseers) that also deals ridiculous amount of damage due to fleshbane weapons (oh poor eldars with str 3) etc etc etc. When your melee units put to shame armies such as tyranids and orks this is bad.

Now add to the mix interesting little stuff here and there in ALL your units like bladestorm, warp spyders 6 to wound thing, flickerjumps, reapers ignoring jinking, fire dragons shooting with AP0 etc etc etc, add some of the best blanket rules in any codex (maybe second only to marines - and said Tyranids' own blanket rule is a blatant nerf, only army in the game that does so) and then sprinkle on top of it formations that give free ballistic skill to your aspect warriors and better casting to your farseers, effectively leaving you with only ONE bad unit in your whole codex, and that's storm guardians. And since you like comparing to Tyranids, let me tell you that Tyranids STILL have pyrovores.

So that's about Eldar. You got any objections?

Back in the 6th edition codex, Wraithknights cost about as much as a Land Raider, and it was widely agreed that they were underpriced even then. Believe it or not, FMCs are more survivable due to only being hit on sixes and still having armour and improvable cover saves. If anything, Land Raiders are overcosted for what they do, warranting around 200 points.

Eldar Guardians used to be BS3? Sheesh, no wonder older players think they're garbage. Considering that Eldar are natural warriors and that each Eldar spends a century or two learning how to fight as a Guardian, BS4 seems about right. It's also balanced with their points cost of 9 ppm (and before you complain, DE Kabalites are BS4 at 8 ppm). Aspect Warriors are arguable supposed to be BS5, as they have spent hundreds of years mastering the use of a single weapon. The extra point of BS helps to compensate for a low Toughness value.

I'm not denying that Eldar aren't mobile, but they're actually the 2nd most mobile army in the game; Dark Eldar are the first. As far as the psychic phase goes, Tzeentch Daemons outclass them in terms of psychic power and versatility due to their massive summoning potential.

Scatbikers are widely acknowledged, including by myself, as broken. Same deal with D-weapons. Battle Focus is there to add mobility to foot infantry, and is hardly as powerful as other armies' special rules. Tau have arguably more powerful shooting, and thanks to markerlights can be just as accurate and ignore cover to boot.

You named the one unit in the Eldar codex that is good in CC: the Wraithknight. All other Eldar units, including our assault troops, fold to other armies' dedicated assault units.

Eldar have broken units, I'll admit. But the army as a whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex.

" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Eldar Guardians are essentially a Militia force that is called upon in a time of war. They are not 'Natural warriors' and that century of training is not all training, it is essentially a century of spending a couple of days a week learning the basics.

BS 3 was perfectly fine for them back then and it still is now. Aspect Warriors should be WS and BS 4/5 though, they actually train for it.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
Eldar Guardians used to be BS3? Sheesh, no wonder older players think they're garbage. Considering that Eldar are natural warriors and that each Eldar spends a century or two learning how to fight as a Guardian, BS4 seems about right. It's also balanced with their points cost of 9 ppm (and before you complain, DE Kabalites are BS4 at 8 ppm). Aspect Warriors are arguable supposed to be BS5, as they have spent hundreds of years mastering the use of a single weapon. The extra point of BS helps to compensate for a low Toughness value.

Aspect Warriors can now be BS5.

I'm not denying that Eldar aren't mobile, but they're actually the 2nd most mobile army in the game; Dark Eldar are the first.

Incorrect. I shall state my case.

Windriders vs. Reavers: Same speed. Windriders are more durable and have better firepower.

Scourges vs. Swooping Hawks: By fluff, both of these units fly through the air. In fact, you are correct that in fluff, Scourges would fly as fast as their Raiders, and therefor are more mobile. In game? Scourges are Jump Infantry. Swooping Hawks can precision deep strike, hit fliers, and move 18". They are faster.

Wave Serpents vs. Raiders: Same speed. Raiders are open topped and squishier, but the guys can shoot out of them. They cannot, however, move 12" and fire with efficiency, so they are actually slower than Eldar vehicles if they want to take advantage of the open-topped rule. The only way they could be considered faster is by giving them Enhanced Ether Sails, which no one does. Raiders can Deep Strike though, which is nice. Granted, so can Falcons now, with no scatter (granted to have to take more of them).

Eldar Fliers vs. Dark Eldar Fliers: Both are squishy, Eldar ones have better firepower, are cheaper, and have Vector Dancer. Why don't Dark Eldar ones have Vector Dancer? That's an excellent question.

Howling Banshees vs. Wyches: I don't remember the exact wording, but Howling Banshees get, like, what, +3 inches to charging? Wyches have literally nothing besides explodable open-topped transports. Which I guess is okay.

Lets wrap this up with a few other points. Eldar characters can take Jetbikes, Dark Eldar cannot. Eldar have a 12" moving GC. Eldar have Warp Spyders. Eldar also have Battle Focus.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Unlike what Yoyoyo seems to think I am UNABLE to adapt to that!

You'd be more convincing if you said *why* you're unable to adapt, rather than just having an all-caps freakout moment. Passion isn't a substitute for insight, a 2-year old's temper tantrum qualifies. Anyway, adaptation is pretty easy. Put models on the table, start game. Voilà. Pretty complicated eh?

Balance is balance, maybe some people are too inexperienced to adjust it on their own but wargaming is a social and communal activity. YOU don't need to be able to adapt. You are supposed to have support to help you. Incidentally, in that thread I linked, here is a relevant anecdote coming from a "no points" historical gamer:

I recently played a game of WH40k against a new opponent at a gaming club I just started going to. It was a hard fought game of Spacemarines VS Tyranids. It was also my first game against tyranids so I was a little unsure of thier rules and abilities. This game was an absolute joy to play because I think that the two of us approached the game in a similar way - That it was precisely that - a game - and that we were going to spend the better part of a Saturday doing something fun and enjoying ourselves. Juxtaposed to that was a group of gamers off to one side playing a team game who did nothing but squabble over technicalities and who was and wasnt in cover. Because we didnt do that, didnt mean that certain dice rolls were any less exciting or suspensfull.

So whats the moral of that little vingette - It is your playing style and attitude that will shape your gaming experience and not the rules system.

Martel732 wrote:
BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

That's what you get for picking Team Edward!

Seriously though, can you lay off the BA complaints? You seem to keep bringing it up but there's not a lot that can be done in this particular thread. Maybe that should have its own thread? Then again the answer would probably just point to giving them the boosts that the Unforgiven and Smurfs & Friends got, maybe with added boosts to assault-based units to counteract the 7E shooting bias.

Yoyoyo wrote:
You'd be more convincing if you said *why* you're unable to adapt, rather than just having an all-caps freakout moment.

I did, not my fault if you don't listen when I say it.
While it's easy enough to figure out minor house rules, expecting me to just invent whole rulesets is too big an ask.
For a sort of example, I can totally accept that Terminators might be overcosted and figure out a way to boost them and/or a better new price but if I just had a squad of Deathwing Terminators with the points costs cut out but everything else left in, I'd have no bloody clue how much they'd be worth, even BEFORE upgrades were factored in...
Not to mention this crosses the line from house-ruling to homebrewing, which is difficult, time-consuming and something I'm not even good at by the looks of it, so it's not something you can expect me to do JUST TO PLAY THE DAMN GAME!
Now, is there any part of this you don't understand, that I need to explain further?

Yoyoyo wrote:
Anyway, adaptation is pretty easy. Put models on the table, start game. Voilà. Pretty complicated eh?

Extremely complicated. How much of anything am I supposed to bring? Too much and I'll be TFG and make my opponent miserable (even if I'm not trying to be a powergaming gakker), too little and I'll get hopelessly stomped.
And I can't avoid either because without points or another balancing mechanic because without one I have no idea how much is enough...

Yoyoyo wrote:
Balance is balance, maybe some people are too inexperienced to adjust it on their own but wargaming is a social and communal activity. YOU don't need to be able to adapt. You are supposed to have support to help you.

Sounds nice at first, but falls apart once you think about it.
Having the community handle a few fixes here and there, or even having a gaming group or tournament make extensive house rules/FAQs/errata is fine, because you have an official baseline that you start from and always fall back on.
But having the whole ruleset be that CANNOT work.
It's already bad enough that I won't know from game to game if I can have an Interrogator-Chaplain on Bike lead my Ravenwing Strike Force and how his special rules could be affected if I can. Imagining my entire army and every single unit I could bring being in such a state, along with some being buffed, nerfed or just changed beyond recognition and my "master list" fluctuating in value from 1000 points to 5000 points with the exact same models in it is utterly horrifying to me! And how the hell am I supposed to work with that?!

Yoyoyo wrote:
Incidentally, in that thread I linked, here is a relevant anecdote coming from a "no points" historical gamer:

I recently played a game of WH40k against a new opponent at a gaming club I just started going to. It was a hard fought game of Spacemarines VS Tyranids. It was also my first game against tyranids so I was a little unsure of thier rules and abilities. This game was an absolute joy to play because I think that the two of us approached the game in a similar way - That it was precisely that - a game - and that we were going to spend the better part of a Saturday doing something fun and enjoying ourselves. Juxtaposed to that was a group of gamers off to one side playing a team game who did nothing but squabble over technicalities and who was and wasnt in cover. Because we didnt do that, didnt mean that certain dice rolls were any less exciting or suspensfull.

Yeah, it's nice to be friendly with the opponent and to know that he won't shove my Vindicator up my butt if I suggest that being forced to take a 3+ armor save instead of a 4+ rerollable cover save because of some dippy technicality doesn't make sense and that s/he know I won't make him/her eat his/her Wraithlord if s/he wants to bring an old Forge World model authorized for "Codex: Eldar" rather than "Codex: Eldar Craftworlds".
But as nice as that all is, being chummy with the other player doesn't tell me how many points/whatever a Black Knight is or how many points/whatever we're bringing to this game.

Yoyoyo wrote:
[i]So whats the moral of that little vingette - It is your playing style and attitude that will shape your gaming experience and not the rules system.

Not really, both are important. And in this case a broken, unplayable, unfinished and ultimately unusable ruleset dooms the game to misery no matter the playing style and attitude.

And I'll quote this since you ignored it even though I specific asked you to address it:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

2) I'm going to pile on the emphasis because you don't seem to get this point: THERE AREN'T "pros and cons" BECAUSE THE IDEA OF A GAME NOT HAVING A BALANCE MECHANIC HAS NO PROS! ANYTHING A GAME WITHOUT ONE COULD DO, A GAME WITH ONE COULD DO BETTER BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST IGNORE OR TWEAK THE BALANCING MECHANIC AS YOU PLEASE WHILE ADDING ONE TO A GAME WITHOUT ONE IS MUCH, MUCH HARDER! Now with that said, actually address that point and stop dodging it.

Seriously though, can you lay off the BA complaints? You seem to keep bringing it up but there's not a lot that can be done in this particular thread. Maybe that should have its own thread? Then again the answer would probably just point to giving them the boosts that the Unforgiven and Smurfs & Friends got, maybe with added boosts to assault-based units to counteract the 7E shooting bias.

thats unfair as its a direct response to your own inaccurate statement:

But the army as a whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex.

But having the whole ruleset be that CANNOT work.
It's already bad enough that I won't know from game to game if I can have an Interrogator-Chaplain on Bike lead my Ravenwing Strike Force and how his special rules could be affected if I can. Imagining my entire army and every single unit I could bring being in such a state, along with some being buffed, nerfed or just changed beyond recognition and my "master list" fluctuating in value from 1000 points to 5000 points with the exact same models in it is utterly horrifying to me! And how the hell am I supposed to work with that?!

Almost every single tournament ever run is a House Rules environment - they almost all change the core rules and impose limits and other elements for balance.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Seriously though, can you lay off the BA complaints? You seem to keep bringing it up but there's not a lot that can be done in this particular thread. Maybe that should have its own thread? Then again the answer would probably just point to giving them the boosts that the Unforgiven and Smurfs & Friends got, maybe with added boosts to assault-based units to counteract the 7E shooting bias.

thats unfair as its a direct response to your own inaccurate statement:

But the army as a whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex.

I didn't say that, TheNewBlood said that.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Almost every single tournament ever run is a House Rules environment - they almost all change the core rules and impose limits and other elements for balance.

I actually addressed this in my post:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Having the community handle a few fixes here and there, or even having a gaming group or tournament make extensive house rules/FAQs/errata is fine, because you have an official baseline that you start from and always fall back on.

"Seriously though, can you lay off the BA complaints? You seem to keep bringing it up but there's not a lot that can be done in this particular thread. Maybe that should have its own thread? Then again the answer would probably just point to giving them the boosts that the Unforgiven and Smurfs & Friends got, maybe with added boosts to assault-based units to counteract the 7E shooting bias. "

The BA are just a very obvious counter example to his statement. I could have just as easily picked IG.

Or you could've done neither and just left it.

In any case, it's clear he was talking about the "big four" Codexes.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Or you could've done neither and just left it.

In any case, it's clear he was talking about the "big four" Codexes.

It wasn't clear to me at all.

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

You are also rather notorious as the whiniest Blood Angels player on the forum.

Let's do some math, shall we?

Take any 7th editon codex* (or 6th edition Tau) - Orks (Orks have a terrible codex) vs. Eldar* - Scatbikers, D-weapons, and Wraithknights

*Note that allies are not considered on either side of this equation i.e. neither side uses allies

I think you'll find the result is just as balanced as any other matchup where the 7.5 edition army doesn't bring the cheese.

Many people on here consider Orks to be fairly decent. I'd say they are better than IG or BA.

Also, it's impressive that I'm notorious.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

 Yaavaragefinkinman wrote:

Dragannia wrote:
See, this is people overreacting. Complaining about Battle Focus, honestly. Battle Focus is a fantastic rule, it's balanced, and frankly Eldar needed a bit of something ever since Fleet stopped being a big deal (before, they and DE were the only ones with Fleet, and no one could Run in those days, and you could assault).

I mean no one's asking Space Marines to have Doctrines stripped. It's a good, balanced rule.

No its not balanced it is a free thing that makes all eldar ridiculous. The move shoot move or move move shoot should not be some free handout its just wrong. Tau have to pay for it in the form of battlesuits and tyranids only gain it through psychic powers so why should it come with litterally no drawbacks for nearly every Eldar unit. In the same regard their Jet bikes doing the jump shoot jump thing now is stupid. Eldar are literally just better Tau in almost every way now where just a short while ago they were quite different. Oh your battlesuits are so good so let me bring my scat bikes (pun intended) with bigger range and volume of shots. Oh Riptides are such BS, let me bring my GC wraithknight that costs only 100 points more. Oh markerlights are such bs. Let me just get out my aspect warriors who are all BS5 because that is balanced.

Just own up to the fact that Eldar have a book that is naturally better than most. (And by most I mean all but Necrons who they are on par with)

Dark Eldar jetbikes have the exact same ability, and it's arguably more important for them due to their limited durability. The reason people are complaining about Eldar jetbikes being able to move in the assault phase is because of the ludicrous mobility and firepower that Scatbikers possess.

Space Marines ignore most of the section of the rules on morale and get free re-rolls thanks to their doctrines. Necrons are the most durable army in the game with their 4+ Res Protocalls. I'm failing to see how the Eldar ability to run/shoot in either order and get an automatic 6" run qualifies as overpowered. Their mobility and firepower and formations bonuses compensate for thier fragile nature; they are T3 across the board and have a 3+ save at best, so they're hardly easy to kill.

I don't think anyone, including myself, has defended the current state of the Wraithknight or denied that Eldar are a powerful army in the game. Tau have plenty of problems of their own due to increased focous on mobility ingame and their lack of options in that area. But you can't honestly tell me that the Riptide and its Forge World brethren aren't undercosted or ridiculously durable for their cost. At the end of the day, most armies are balanced against Eldar minus their OP units.

Eldar being fragile is the same as the myth that Necrons are slow. It might have been true several editions ago, but Necrons are definitely a fast army now, and Eldar aren't really fragile now.

Crash, I don't think much of "quote storms", your points ultimately aren't convincing. Many historical players don't use points as a balance mechanic and they do just fine. WHFB/Sigmar players are from a different background and obviously it's been harder for some to adapt than others. Now, at this point we're going in circles. Since I can see both sides of an argument, which is usually how adults resolve issues, the questions you SHOULD be asking are:

-- Does the 40k playerbase have the maturity to deal with complete freedom in list-building? Unbound already ruffled many feathers in 7th and bad behaviour isn't exactly rare.
-- Points have been part of list-building throughout 40k's history. Is it worth abandoning tradition and something many people enjoy as an activity in itself?
-- There's a strong perception of 40k as a competitive game and there's a community of tournament gamers already in place. Is it really worth alienating them to refocus the game on 40k as a more narrative experience?

Now, 40k can still work as a points-based game in something close to it's current form. If you'd stop quoting yourself and learn not to cover your ears and go "LALALA" when you hear something you dislike, you'd see there's two things *I* personally think GW needs to do.

-- Design the next edition of 40k from the ground up, with ultimate authority given to the game design team.
-- Start interacting with the community to ensure the right playing style and attitude from their players.

Someone else may say "reshape 40k as a flawless tournament game, so playing style and attitude are irrelevant", and that opinion is equally valid. Points adjustment is essentially a response to min-maxing and requires tracking game performance; but if you are familar with RTS balance, you'd probably understand it has it's own issues.

Yoyoyo wrote:

-- Does the 40k playerbase have the maturity to deal with complete freedom in list-building? Unbound already ruffled many feathers in 7th and bad behaviour isn't exactly rare.
-- Points have been part of list-building throughout 40k's history. Is it worth abandoning tradition and something many people enjoy as an activity in itself?
-- There's a strong perception of 40k as a competitive game and there's a community of tournament gamers already in place. Is it really worth alienating them to refocus the game on 40k as a more narrative experience?

Great points (pun not intended)

- The removal of points removes that last indicator that 40k is a competitive game. Many toxic players will move to other competitive games, just like what is happening with AoS.
- WHFB was the ancestor of 40k, and the very first GW game. They HAD to abandon the entire game, because its not selling. If 40k continues down this path as a faux-competitive game, it will go down the path of WHFB. Already, the community is very fractured. An entirely new gaming group in my area just formed, composed entirely of eldar players who were kicked out of my group, and another group.
- 40k's reputation as a competitive game is extremely poor, or non-existent. Competitive gamers play warmahordes or infinity. 40k competition is to see who can be the most obnoxious.

Points are not really the source of the problem, it boils down to min-maxing and the competitive mindset.

Eldar is a good choice for these types, so it's not surprising the faction has a bad rep with players who don't like that kind of behaviour.

Nobody's really too upset with CAD Guardians and Fire Prisms, from what I gather. Or how about the FW Firestorm? Amazing looking unit but it's not going to see play time in a min-maxing environment,

 TheNewBlood wrote:
Tau have arguably more powerful shooting, and thanks to markerlights can be just as accurate and ignore cover to boot.

BS3 across the board. Markers are on BS2/3 units or need HQ support to change that.
This statement is just wrong on so many levels. With a huge amount of access to reliable D weapons and jet bikes with better mobility, weapons, BS, and durability than any Tau troop I just don't see how you could make this statement. If we take away the Riptide, WK, Broadsides, and Scat bikes from the scenario do you still think that Tau can outshoot Eldar?

Eldar have better transports, stronger shooting, more accurate base shooting, access to psychic buffs and defense, more access to mobile units, better in CC, and less reliant on unit-unit synergy like Tau needing to dedicate their FA choices for Marker support.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Crash, I don't think much of "quote storms"

So what? Yeah, i use quotes so the context of each reply section is clear, that's a perfectly valid way to reply. How does that give you carte blanche to just randomly ignore things? Like, say for example an extremely important point I brought up and emphasized TWICE!

Yoyoyo wrote:
Many historical players don't use points as a balance mechanic and they do just fine.

Did you miss the times i referred to other balance mechanics existing? I don't know how, I kept bringing it up...

Yoyoyo wrote:
WHFB/Sigmar players are from a different background and obviously it's been harder for some to adapt than others.

If by "harder" you mean "absolutely impossible, immediately killing their interest in the game and forcing them onto a different system or out of the hobby altogether", then yes and that's exactly why this idea needs to die!

Yoyoyo wrote:
Now, at this point we're going in circles.

Because you keep refusing to acknowledge important parts of my argument! Like, say for example an extremely important point I brought up and emphasized TWICE!

Yoyoyo wrote:
Since I can see both sides of an argument, which is usually how adults resolve issues, the questions you SHOULD be asking are:

-- Does the 40k playerbase have the maturity to deal with complete freedom in list-building? Unbound already ruffled many feathers in 7th and bad behaviour isn't exactly rare.
-- Points have been part of list-building throughout 40k's history. Is it worth abandoning tradition and something many people enjoy as an activity in itself?
-- There's a strong perception of 40k as a competitive game and there's a community of tournament gamers already in place. Is it really worth alienating them to refocus the game on 40k as a more narrative experience?

Yeah, two sides. Upon seeing one was strictly and objectively the same or better for everyone (for reasons you continue to refuse to acknowledge) I picked a side. I don't need to ask those questions because I already have the answers:
-- No, nobody does and nobody ever will.
-- Absolutely not.
-- That's not even a question, how could that ever be worth it when you're not even gaining anything? You don't want to use points? Ignore 'em! Then again I suppose that still didn't click for you, since it was the thrust of the extremely important point I brought up and emphasized TWICE but you ignored because quote markup is the work of Satan or something...

Yoyoyo wrote:
If you'd stop quoting yourself and learn not to cover your ears and go "LALALA" when you hear something you dislike

You mean the extremely important point I brought up and emphasized TWICE? I quoted it because you ignored it completely the first time despite me pouring on the emphasis to make sure you didn't miss it, it being absolutely crucial to the argument and specifically saying to address it! And I'll do it again at the end of this reply and every other reply I make to you unless you directly address it head on because it's too crucial to ignore and you have no valid reason to do so.

Yoyoyo wrote:
you'd see there's two things *I* personally think GW needs to do.

-- Design the next edition of 40k from the ground up, with ultimate authority given to the game design team.
-- Start interacting with the community to ensure the right playing style and attitude from their players.

And those are both horrible, horrible ideas and here's exactly why:
-- The game has a few problems that need to be fixed, that's not something that warrants rebuilding it from scratch. And rebuilding it from scratch is a terrible, terrible idea because you're killing the game many love and are invested in without any guarantee it'll be any better. Even if it was equal or better, having a game you like killed sucks and they'd have to dump loads of stuff to re-learn from scratch too. How is that an even remotely reasonable response?
-- So rather than fix the problems with the game, bully the players into playing it a particular way? Now certainly they should interact to find out what needs updating/changing/fixing/etc but that doesn't seem to be what you're suggesting. Don't bully the players, fix the game!
The solution is in reality to just fix broken stuff as it needs it. Fix bad rules, nerf overpowered units, buff underpowered units and make tweaks as need be. Don't tear it all down because some of it is wrong and don't focus on this "attitude" nonsense while ignoring the game's faults.

And now, the extremely important point I brought up and emphasized TWICE, once again:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
2) I'm going to pile on the emphasis because you don't seem to get this point: THERE AREN'T "pros and cons" BECAUSE THE IDEA OF A GAME NOT HAVING A BALANCE MECHANIC HAS NO PROS! ANYTHING A GAME WITHOUT ONE COULD DO, A GAME WITH ONE COULD DO BETTER BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST IGNORE OR TWEAK THE BALANCING MECHANIC AS YOU PLEASE WHILE ADDING ONE TO A GAME WITHOUT ONE IS MUCH, MUCH HARDER! Now with that said, actually address that point and stop dodging it.

I'm not going to stop until you directly address it head on because it's absolutely crucial. It's the center of why I won't let this go and am rushing full-steam-ahead still as well as why the idea of a game with no balancing mechanics and depending on players to somehow magically fix it themselves needs to just die and rot in the pit of bad game design.

I'm putting you on ignore, and that's the first time I've had to do that on dakka. Sorry buddy.

kburn wrote:
- The removal of points removes that last indicator that 40k is a competitive game. Many toxic players will move to other competitive games, just like what is happening with AoS.
- WHFB was the ancestor of 40k, and the very first GW game. They HAD to abandon the entire game, because its not selling. If 40k continues down this path as a faux-competitive game, it will go down the path of WHFB. Already, the community is very fractured. An entirely new gaming group in my area just formed, composed entirely of eldar players who were kicked out of my group, and another group.
- 40k's reputation as a competitive game is extremely poor, or non-existent. Competitive gamers play warmahordes or infinity. 40k competition is to see who can be the most obnoxious.

- No, they'll keep being that way because their "attitude" hasn't been changed (as people like Yoyoyo will attest to) and will be completely unleashed now that there are no restrictions on what they can do. I keep pointing this out and they keep ignoring it... I can only presume because there is no counter and that's shot their idea down completely. If not, feel free to actually acknowledge it and counter it!
- The best way to fix it to fix the balance problem, not put water on an oil fire (thanks TheNewBlood) by stripping out the game's only method of even having the necessary balance to be a playable experience at all.
- That necessitates killing all balance why? Really that just suggests to tweak the problem with the games or the tournaments.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:
I'm putting you on ignore, and that's the first time I've had to do that on dakka. Sorry buddy.

Just brilliant, I ask perfectly valid questions and you ignore them and then put me on ignore too for absolutely no good reason.

I guess it's too hard to just respond to valid complaints.

fething brilliant.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

- No, they'll keep being that way because their "attitude" hasn't been changed (as people like Yoyoyo will attest to) and will be completely unleashed now that there are no restrictions on what they can do. I keep pointing this out and they keep ignoring it... I can only presume because there is no counter and that's shot their idea down completely. If not, feel free to actually acknowledge it and counter it!
- The best way to fix it to fix the balance problem, not put water on an oil fire (thanks TheNewBlood) by stripping out the game's only method of even having the necessary balance to be a playable experience at all.
- That necessitates killing all balance why? Really that just suggests to tweak the problem with the games or the tournaments.

- AoS has removed a lot of TFGs. It actually has happened, go have a look around their forums. It can be a battle of I said, you said with regards to this point, but at least I have the backing of precedence. All AoS will do to eldar players is kick them out, because they cannot negotiate a casual battle, nor can they win tournaments without their easy-mode armies.

- TheNewBlood has a vested interest in points. He plays eldar, and wants to keep points, so he can keep playing on easy-mode. Phil Kelly has broken eldar for 7 editions straight, what makes you think he'll have a change of hear on the 8th? All points does is let him write even more and more ridiculous rules for his favourite special-snowflake faction. Points are a farce in 40k (my next point)

- Points in 40k are pretty much the opposite of balance. You get factions broken 7 editions, 20 years in a row. You get factions like orks that are unplayable 7 editions, 20 years in a row. All points does is make the power-difference between armies as large as possible. With AoS, at least they're not subject o Phil Kelly's or Robin Cruddace's whims and fancies. AoS is building up a much fairer and better comp scene, with tournament endorsed balancing systems for tournaments, and for players being able to negotiate what to bring for casual games.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

This statement is just wrong on so many levels. With a huge amount of access to reliable D weapons and jet bikes with better mobility, weapons, BS, and durability than any Tau troop I just don't see how you could make this statement. If we take away the Riptide, WK, Broadsides, and Scat bikes from the scenario do you still think that Tau can outshoot Eldar?

Eldar have better transports, stronger shooting, more accurate base shooting, access to psychic buffs and defense, more access to mobile units, better in CC, and less reliant on unit-unit synergy like Tau needing to dedicate their FA choices for Marker support.

Eldar is the specialest, most elitest, hardest to play, fragile, glass cannon, for experts only, because they're not the bestest in every single thing. I mean, how can gargangutan creatures, units with 3++, jink saves, holofields, survive when the majority of them have T3! The horror! orks have T4! OP! nurf! nurf! spess mareens drop pod can drop anywhere, unlike eldar's fast-everything, ultra-mobile army, nurf! nurf! flyrants can beat guardians in CC! nurf! nurf!

you gotta understand, their army is ultra-hard mode, super hard to play, which is why only the best of the best play them, and win all the time. you're a mere monkeigh pleb out of their group of specialest snow-flake elite players, and will never understand the tactical complexity of using a D-cannon to wipe out anything on the board. In fact, the D-cannon is so hard to use, that it cannot wipe out a titan instantly, that's how hard eldar is!

kburn wrote:
- AoS has removed a lot of TFGs. It actually has happened, go have a look around their forums. It can be a battle of I said, you said with regards to this point, but at least I have the backing of precedence. All AoS will do to eldar players is kick them out, because they cannot negotiate a casual battle, nor can they win tournaments without their easy-mode armies.

- TheNewBlood has a vested interest in points. He plays eldar, and wants to keep points, so he can keep playing on easy-mode. Phil Kelly has broken eldar for 7 editions straight, what makes you think he'll have a change of hear on the 8th? All points does is let him write even more and more ridiculous rules for his favourite special-snowflake faction. Points are a farce in 40k (my next point)

- Points in 40k are pretty much the opposite of balance. You get factions broken 7 editions, 20 years in a row. You get factions like orks that are unplayable 7 editions, 20 years in a row. All points does is make the power-difference between armies as large as possible. With AoS, at least they're not subject o Phil Kelly's or Robin Cruddace's whims and fancies. AoS is building up a much fairer and better comp scene, with tournament endorsed balancing systems for tournaments, and for players being able to negotiate what to bring for casual games.

- This I find impossible to believe. How does that even work? You take the brakes off the OP Train and it suddenly stops? All this would do is make it impossible to avoid game-breakers, on the TFG side there's nothing stopping them from bringing as many Wraithknights as they can afford and fit on the table and on the reasonable side there's no indication how many Fire Dragons is too many and even if the opponent says "that's too many" there's no telling how many need to be ditched...

- That's not points doing that, that's some undercosted units doing that. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The way to fix this is to fix the broken units (like this topic is supposed to be about), not to ditch the very thing need to put a can on it...

- No, points are just a flawed implementation of balance. You wanna know the real opposite of balance? Having no balancing mechanics whatsoever, like AOS!

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

- This I find impossible to believe. How does that even work? You take the brakes off the OP Train and it suddenly stops? All this would do is make it impossible to avoid game-breakers, on the TFG side there's nothing stopping them from bringing as many Wraithknights as they can afford and fit on the table and on the reasonable side there's no indication how many Fire Dragons is too many and even if the opponent says "that's too many" there's no telling how many need to be ditched...

- That's not points doing that, that's some undercosted units doing that. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The way to fix this is to fix the broken units (like this topic is supposed to be about), not to ditch the very thing need to put a can on it...

- No, points are just a flawed implementation of balance. You wanna know the real opposite of balance? Having no balancing mechanics whatsoever, like AOS!

- Like I said, this is a I-said, you-said scenario, but AoS got rid of many of the annoying TFG elf players. I have precedence on my side.

- You can say in theory all you want about adjusting the eldar codex. Fair for me is doubling the points of everything, quadrupling the points of WG and scatbikes, but will Phil Kelly do it? All Phil will do is reduce the points of everything and distribute more buffs. You idea is great in theory, but terrible in practice, because Phil doesn't care about you. He cares about his special-snowflake faction. AoS is a very blunt club, but is also a very practical solution, seeing how GW has done it, and seems to be gravitating towards it for 40k.

- Points are merely a tool for Phil and Cruddace to make the difference in army powerlevels as wide as possible, It is a tool, and nothing more. It is a tool that hasn't worked for 7 editions, 20 years. How will it work now? Again, great in theory, terrible in practice.

I miss Matt Ward.

- AoS has removed a lot of TFGs. It actually has happened, go have a look around their forums. It can be a battle of I said, you said with regards to this point, but at least I have the backing of precedence. All AoS will do to eldar players is kick them out, because they cannot negotiate a casual battle, nor can they win tournaments without their easy-mode armies.

Go around WFB forums then or places where WFB died out. AoS did not remove any TFG. In fact it is even easier to do it. Because now you can do it with one unit or three to four models, and before one had to invest in to a 2250 pts army, which not everyone wanted or could do. Also can you tell me which eldar units are not easy-mode? Sure there are a few that are worse compering to other eldar units from the same codex, but that is it. Even the "bad" melee units are offten much better and actualy playable unlike the stuff other factions got. So if someone went with the magical AoS mind set and started checking eldar armies with it, they would not only not get game with their tournament armies, but wouldn't get any game at all. Someone could probably build and army of WG and melee units footslogging across the table and it would probably work, because of focus and psyker support.

Im just gonna say this, they drop points, im out. Im not goinna jump through hoops figuring out how many Vanguard i need to bring to have a good fight with my buddy. And do you want to know why no points work in historical games? Its because the stat blocks on units arent that different. Look at Black Powder, most of those units look the same. You want to see a game with points done well? Look at KoW.

Points are not the problem, GW having its head up its is the problem.

kburn wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

- This I find impossible to believe. How does that even work? You take the brakes off the OP Train and it suddenly stops? All this would do is make it impossible to avoid game-breakers, on the TFG side there's nothing stopping them from bringing as many Wraithknights as they can afford and fit on the table and on the reasonable side there's no indication how many Fire Dragons is too many and even if the opponent says "that's too many" there's no telling how many need to be ditched...

- That's not points doing that, that's some undercosted units doing that. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The way to fix this is to fix the broken units (like this topic is supposed to be about), not to ditch the very thing need to put a can on it...

- No, points are just a flawed implementation of balance. You wanna know the real opposite of balance? Having no balancing mechanics whatsoever, like AOS!

- Like I said, this is a I-said, you-said scenario, but AoS got rid of many of the annoying TFG elf players. I have precedence on my side.

I think more to the point, it's gotten rid of many players.

- You can say in theory all you want about adjusting the eldar codex. Fair for me is doubling the points of everything, quadrupling the points of WG and scatbikes, but will Phil Kelly do it? All Phil will do is reduce the points of everything and distribute more buffs. You idea is great in theory, but terrible in practice, because Phil doesn't care about you. He cares about his special-snowflake faction. AoS is a very blunt club, but is also a very practical solution, seeing how GW has done it, and seems to be gravitating towards it for 40k.

We don't know who wrote the current Eldar codex, GW stopped attributing authorship to individual codex books a while ago, and by all accounts have changed the way they do things internally such that one person generally doesn't do everything anymore. The bigger issue is that they're writing rules around marketing and sprue contents. The "omg Phil Kelly is always going to make them amazeballs" conspiracy is rather silly in such light, especially because Eldar were broken in older editions he had nothing to do with. It's an issue common to most game systems where the "mysterious elder race", usually some sort of elf-thing but usually following the same mold, has the same issue of being overdone, often simply for the sake of "well they're just supposed to better!" or because they function so differently from everything else that they have issues balancing the paradigm correctly.

You can see such issues with Eldar throughout GW's history, in various editions of D&D with elf races, Protoss in much of Starcraft 1's early lifetime, some claim it to exist in Dropzone Commander with the Shaltari faction, and a whole lot more.

- Points are merely a tool for Phil and Cruddace to make the difference in army powerlevels as wide as possible, It is a tool, and nothing more. It is a tool that hasn't worked for 7 editions, 20 years. How will it work now? Again, great in theory, terrible in practice.

points systems work rather well for most other games out there. Points aren't some mystery boogeyman that ruins wargaming, and that concept that they were such was basically unheard of until suddenly it became the flavor of the month paradigm with AoS. GW's just bad at it and doesn't care to fix anything.

 Vaktathi wrote:
We don't know who wrote the current Eldar codex, GW stopped attributing authorship to individual codex books a while ago, and by all accounts have changed the way they do things internally such that one person generally doesn't do everything anymore. The bigger issue is that they're writing rules around marketing and sprue contents. The "omg Phil Kelly is always going to make them amazeballs" conspiracy is rather silly in such light, especially because Eldar were broken in older editions he had nothing to do with. It's an issue common to most game systems where the "mysterious elder race", usually some sort of elf-thing but usually following the same mold, has the same issue of being overdone, often simply for the sake of "well they're just supposed to better!" or because they function so differently from everything else that they have issues balancing the paradigm correctly.

You can see such issues with Eldar throughout GW's history, in various editions of D&D with elf races, Protoss in much of Starcraft 1's early lifetime, some claim it to exist in Dropzone Commander with the Shaltari faction, and a whole lot more.

Quoted for Truth. Kelly wrote the Eldar 6th ed book IIRC which was far more reasonable, still really good, but more in line with everyone else. Also he wrote the 4th ed Codex, so to me he is always Big Boss Kelly.

kburn wrote:
- Like I said, this is a I-said, you-said scenario, but AoS got rid of many of the annoying TFG elf players. I have precedence on my side.

@Bold: I don't even have a clue what you mean by that, explain.
@Italics: That doesn't make it any less unbelievable, and according to Makumba I was right.

kburn wrote:
- You can say in theory all you want about adjusting the eldar codex. Fair for me is doubling the points of everything, quadrupling the points of WG and scatbikes, but will Phil Kelly do it? All Phil will do is reduce the points of everything and distribute more buffs. You idea is great in theory, but terrible in practice, because Phil doesn't care about you. He cares about his special-snowflake faction. AoS is a very blunt club, but is also a very practical solution, seeing how GW has done it, and seems to be gravitating towards it for 40k.

So what if Phil Kelly doesn't do it? We can!
1) The "GW isn't listening!" defense is just as invalid here as it was when Dman used it. To quickly re-iterate, that logic would invalidate ALL fan discussion, this topic, our Proposed Rules forum and maybe even all of DakkaDakka. The fact we have such things shows how that's bogus.
2) What's more, if you're gonna say house rules are impossible or invalid then that hurts your side even worse, due to requiring them to FUNCTION rather than just for tweaks.

kburn wrote:
- Points are merely a tool for Phil and Cruddace to make the difference in army powerlevels as wide as possible, It is a tool, and nothing more. It is a tool that hasn't worked for 7 editions, 20 years. How will it work now? Again, great in theory, terrible in practice.

No, they're a tool for balance. It may not be functioning correctly but the solution is to fix the problems, not to throw it away and with it lose any hope of any form of balance ever existing, forever condemning the game to be So Bad It's Horrible and completely unplayable.
And honestly this makes it sound like your whole wish for this horrible non-solution that screws people over with no positive effects at all is based on a grudge against a writer. You realize that's like someone wanting Ultramarines or Grey Knights squatted because of Matt Ward, right?
Speaking of...

kburn wrote:
I miss Matt Ward.

You sure about that?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
points systems work rather well for most other games out there. Points aren't some mystery boogeyman that ruins wargaming, and that concept that they were such was basically unheard of until suddenly it became the flavor of the month paradigm with AoS. GW's just bad at it and doesn't care to fix anything.

The whole post was solid, but you can have an Exalt on me just for this!



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimmor wrote:
Im just gonna say this, they drop points, im out. Im not goinna jump through hoops figuring out how many Vanguard i need to bring to have a good fight with my buddy. And do you want to know why no points work in historical games? Its because the stat blocks on units arent that different. Look at Black Powder, most of those units look the same. You want to see a game with points done well? Look at KoW.

Points are not the problem, GW having its head up its is the problem.

You get it too (particularly the bold), you can have another Exalt!

 Vaktathi wrote:


- I think more to the point, it's gotten rid of many players.

-We don't know who wrote the current Eldar codex, GW stopped attributing authorship to individual codex books a while ago, and by all accounts have changed the way they do things internally such that one person generally doesn't do everything anymore. The bigger issue is that they're writing rules around marketing and sprue contents. The "omg Phil Kelly is always going to make them amazeballs" conspiracy is rather silly in such light, especially because Eldar were broken in older editions he had nothing to do with. It's an issue common to most game systems where the "mysterious elder race", usually some sort of elf-thing but usually following the same mold, has the same issue of being overdone, often simply for the sake of "well they're just supposed to better!" or because they function so differently from everything else that they have issues balancing the paradigm correctly.

You can see such issues with Eldar throughout GW's history, in various editions of D&D with elf races, Protoss in much of Starcraft 1's early lifetime, some claim it to exist in Dropzone Commander with the Shaltari faction, and a whole lot more.

- points systems work rather well for most other games out there. Points aren't some mystery boogeyman that ruins wargaming, and that concept that they were such was basically unheard of until suddenly it became the flavor of the month paradigm with AoS. GW's just bad at it and doesn't care to fix anything.

- At this point, going AoS might break or save 40k. Like I said, the community is extremely factured. Many refuse to play Eldar, and 2 of my local groups has kicked ALL eldar players out. Gotta lose some good with the bad.

- Phil wrote 4th and 6th, with both being significantly more overpowered that what preceded them. Eldar in 2nd (Rick) and 3rd(Gav) were the top codexes, but not much better than #2. 4th and 6th were out of this world better, and 7th continues with the trend. Its almost like saying cruddace didn't write 6th tyranids (he was exposed to have done so a week later on white dwarf). You can see the pattern of the authors.

Either way, regardless of who wrote it, eldar has been disgustingly powerful for 20 years in a row. What makes you think it'll change?

- Like I said, points are great for GW in theory, but terrible in practice for GW. GW needs to get its gak together, etc. but GW will never get its gak together. Rather than raging about it, or migrating to other systems, why not AoS it?

kburn wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


- I think more to the point, it's gotten rid of many players.

-We don't know who wrote the current Eldar codex, GW stopped attributing authorship to individual codex books a while ago, and by all accounts have changed the way they do things internally such that one person generally doesn't do everything anymore. The bigger issue is that they're writing rules around marketing and sprue contents. The "omg Phil Kelly is always going to make them amazeballs" conspiracy is rather silly in such light, especially because Eldar were broken in older editions he had nothing to do with. It's an issue common to most game systems where the "mysterious elder race", usually some sort of elf-thing but usually following the same mold, has the same issue of being overdone, often simply for the sake of "well they're just supposed to better!" or because they function so differently from everything else that they have issues balancing the paradigm correctly.

You can see such issues with Eldar throughout GW's history, in various editions of D&D with elf races, Protoss in much of Starcraft 1's early lifetime, some claim it to exist in Dropzone Commander with the Shaltari faction, and a whole lot more.

- points systems work rather well for most other games out there. Points aren't some mystery boogeyman that ruins wargaming, and that concept that they were such was basically unheard of until suddenly it became the flavor of the month paradigm with AoS. GW's just bad at it and doesn't care to fix anything.

- At this point, going AoS might break or save 40k. Like I said, the community is extremely factured. Many refuse to play Eldar, and 2 of my local groups has kicked ALL eldar players out. Gotta lose some good with the bad.

- Phil wrote 4th and 6th, with both being significantly more overpowered that what preceded them. Eldar in 2nd (Rick) and 3rd(Gav) were the top codexes, but not much better than #2. 4th and 6th were out of this world better, and 7th continues with the trend. Its almost like saying cruddace didn't write 6th tyranids (he was exposed to have done so a week later on white dwarf). You can see the pattern of the authors.

Either way, regardless of who wrote it, eldar has been disgustingly powerful for 20 years in a row. What makes you think it'll change?

- Like I said, points are great for GW in theory, but terrible in practice for GW. GW needs to get its gak together, etc. but GW will never get its gak together. Rather than raging about it, or migrating to other systems, why not AoS it?

Because AoS doesnt work either, jus for different reasons. 40K as a basic system works, it just needs tweaks, and honestly 7th needs less than others. Its the Codexes that are the problems not the basic rules (though they have some of their own problems, just nowhere near as bad).

kburn wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

- This I find impossible to believe. How does that even work? You take the brakes off the OP Train and it suddenly stops? All this would do is make it impossible to avoid game-breakers, on the TFG side there's nothing stopping them from bringing as many Wraithknights as they can afford and fit on the table and on the reasonable side there's no indication how many Fire Dragons is too many and even if the opponent says "that's too many" there's no telling how many need to be ditched...

- That's not points doing that, that's some undercosted units doing that. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The way to fix this is to fix the broken units (like this topic is supposed to be about), not to ditch the very thing need to put a can on it...

- No, points are just a flawed implementation of balance. You wanna know the real opposite of balance? Having no balancing mechanics whatsoever, like AOS!

- Like I said, this is a I-said, you-said scenario, but AoS got rid of many of the annoying TFG elf players. I have precedence on my side.

No...no you don't.
The game hasn't been out long enough for a "meta" to develop. Honestly, one could argue that fantasy was never popular enough to have a meta (my own experiences with magic in the last edition can attest to this) like 40k or WMH has.
In order to claim precedence like you're doing you'll need something along the lines of the following;
Some sort of proof that elves are in decline. A large tournament (without house ruling) would be great, the more the better. This is impossible since, as far as I know, there has been exactly one tournament under AoS that had more than 20 players, and it had 22 pages of house rules. For a 4 page rulebook.
Some sort of record of sales that suggests that the sale of elven models has dropped much more than other armies have experienced.
Lists of forum traffic from each races' website, with druchii.net, for example, being a barren wasteland while the ogrestronghold is teeming with life.

Unless you can do these things, you don't have anything other then "I said". The forum traffic from other fantasy sites appear to be getting a lot less traffic, at least the ones I visit (ogre stronghold and bugmans).

kburn wrote:

- You can say in theory all you want about adjusting the eldar codex. Fair for me is doubling the points of everything, quadrupling the points of WG and scatbikes, but will Phil Kelly do it? All Phil will do is reduce the points of everything and distribute more buffs. You idea is great in theory, but terrible in practice, because Phil doesn't care about you. He cares about his special-snowflake faction. AoS is a very blunt club, but is also a very practical solution, seeing how GW has done it, and seems to be gravitating towards it for 40k.

He is suggesting house rules with adjusted point costs for units.
Something similar once happened to the druchii in fantasy, so it actually does have precedence.

kburn wrote:

- Points are merely a tool for Phil and Cruddace to make the difference in army powerlevels as wide as possible, It is a tool, and nothing more. It is a tool that hasn't worked for 7 editions, 20 years. How will it work now? Again, great in theory, terrible in practice.

Its a tool that has worked for many other game systems. Mordenheim isn't too unbalanced (some of the equipment options are, but everyone has access to them, and the elves need 1 house rule to be fine). Necromunda is pretty balanced. WMH is very well balanced (though I'm salty about my Acosta nerf, I JUST BOUGHT HIM PP). It hasn't worked for GW because GW doesn't try to balance.
Look at some of the fan dexes for the Chaos marines (or don't, a lot of whiners in those threads). Those dexes are a lot better than what GW puts out, and are about as strong as Marines without grav but better combat options would be (so...wolves?). These are often made by 1-3 people in their spare time.

kburn wrote:

I miss Matt Ward.

The guy who broke fantasy?

Savageconvoy wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
Tau have arguably more powerful shooting, and thanks to markerlights can be just as accurate and ignore cover to boot.

BS3 across the board. Markers are on BS2/3 units or need HQ support to change that.
This statement is just wrong on so many levels. With a huge amount of access to reliable D weapons and jet bikes with better mobility, weapons, BS, and durability than any Tau troop I just don't see how you could make this statement. If we take away the Riptide, WK, Broadsides, and Scat bikes from the scenario do you still think that Tau can outshoot Eldar?

Eldar have better transports, stronger shooting, more accurate base shooting, access to psychic buffs and defense, more access to mobile units, better in CC, and less reliant on unit-unit synergy like Tau needing to dedicate their FA choices for Marker support.

I should have qualified my statement: Tau can in fact outshoot Eldar, in the absence of D-weapons/Scatbikers/Wraithknight.

Despite my personal hatred of the model, I don't think that the Riptide is broken or overpowered. What is overpowered is the ability to take three in a 1500 point list due to it being undercosted. If you had to face that, you would hate Riptides too (it was a relatively new player, so I let him off with a warning). Broadsides are only nasty because of one somewhat underpriced unit upgrade, and they have a whole host of problems (like not being Relentless)

The Wave Serpent is a better transport than the Devilfish, not least because the Devilfish is overpriced. Because of that, Tau infantry aren't as mobile as they should be. Eldar are in fact reliant on unit synergy, but more in terms of overall strategy/list-building "what units do I need to take" level. There is significant synergy due to their psychic abilities on the tabletop; I'd argue that it's a similar situation to markerlights. Kill the Eldar caster and watch the army suddenly start performing worse. The problem with markerlights is that they don't have platforms that are mobile and effective enough for their points cost to provide the kind of support the rest of the army needs.

Full Disclosure: I like Eldar. I love the way their units look, enjoy reading their excellent lore (both Craftworlds and Dark Eldar), and I play them on the tabletop in what I believe isn't a cheesy way. I have a vested interest in the army not being terrible. I'm more than willing to accept that certain Eldar units are OP; that much is obvious to anybody. But I'll reasonably debate you until the end of time (or the next edition of the game) if you try to nerf the codex as a whole, and I'm pretty sure plenty of other players will say the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Akiasura wrote:

kburn wrote:

I miss Matt Ward.

The guy who broke fantasy?

I think this guy has just lost all credibility. You know, like my signature...

Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

The guardians aren't only trained in the weekends, almost all of them have been an aspect warrior at one point or another and all have to train extensively in order to ensure they aren't eaten by the first thing that stumbles on the craftworld.

Aspect warriors and exarchs in particular got a buff, I personally think they do read things on the internet, creepy ex boyfriend style and saw that nobody took exarchs, and if they did nobody took the upgrades for them because it was a one wound toughness three model worth 50+ points. Same with bikes, nobody took the cannon because you just wanted min squads to claim objectives. Now you may want to get some killing done, so buy the upgrade.

Windrider jetbikes and wraithknights are indeed broken, jetbikes have been since 6th ed, started with eldar at the midpoint of 5th. Once the price point dropped for bikes, I made them 4+ save.

My houserules are on page one, I rest my case on those. Feel free to comment or ask questions on any of them you want to

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

You are also rather notorious as the whiniest Blood Angels player on the forum.

Let's do some math, shall we?

Take any 7th editon codex* (or 6th edition Tau) - Orks (Orks have a terrible codex) vs. Eldar* - Scatbikers, D-weapons, and Wraithknights

*Note that allies are not considered on either side of this equation i.e. neither side uses allies

I think you'll find the result is just as balanced as any other matchup where the 7.5 edition army doesn't bring the cheese.

Well so far I have played about 5 games against Eldar and I have won 1 of them. And that was because my SAG rolled boxcars and killed his WK and his HQ in a single phase and the next turn it scattered onto his SCAT bikes.

I played a game against a Eldar player bringing the Full Cheese, WK's SCAT bikes and was tabled by turn 3. I played the same guy who took a 1,500pt army and told me to take a 2k point army. He won by turn 4. I played again against an Eldar player who brought a "Fluffy List" all footdar and he had a Wraith Lord. Not only did he table me again he did it with relative ease.

Yes by all means I except the 1-2 idiots to jump in and say "lol you suk l2p" But im fairly good with my army and I would say I win over 70% of the time. Eldar are OP almost across the board. WK, Scat Bikes, Wraithguard, Psychic shenanigans, D-weapons, BS5 regular infantry that can JSJ ohh and if you don't feel like bringing Strength D weapons you can take AP0 Fire dragons to ensure something explodes. Even if by some miracle I can close the distance with my orks they tend to die in CC to the Eldar CC units because they all have way higher Init and ridiculous abilities to boot.



The Eldar codex is and has been broken since it first came out. ALMOST and I have to emphasize that "ALMOST" all the units in the codex need a points hike and some need a complete rework.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

You are also rather notorious as the whiniest Blood Angels player on the forum.

Let's do some math, shall we?

Take any 7th editon codex* (or 6th edition Tau) - Orks (Orks have a terrible codex) vs. Eldar* - Scatbikers, D-weapons, and Wraithknights

*Note that allies are not considered on either side of this equation i.e. neither side uses allies

I think you'll find the result is just as balanced as any other matchup where the 7.5 edition army doesn't bring the cheese.

Well so far I have played about 5 games against Eldar and I have won 1 of them. And that was because my SAG rolled boxcars and killed his WK and his HQ in a single phase and the next turn it scattered onto his SCAT bikes.

I played a game against a Eldar player bringing the Full Cheese, WK's SCAT bikes and was tabled by turn 3. I played the same guy who took a 1,500pt army and told me to take a 2k point army. He won by turn 4. I played again against an Eldar player who brought a "Fluffy List" all footdar and he had a Wraith Lord. Not only did he table me again he did it with relative ease.

Yes by all means I except the 1-2 idiots to jump in and say "lol you suk l2p" But im fairly good with my army and I would say I win over 70% of the time. Eldar are OP almost across the board. WK, Scat Bikes, Wraithguard, Psychic shenanigans, D-weapons, BS5 regular infantry that can JSJ ohh and if you don't feel like bringing Strength D weapons you can take AP0 Fire dragons to ensure something explodes. Even if by some miracle I can close the distance with my orks they tend to die in CC to the Eldar CC units because they all have way higher Init and ridiculous abilities to boot.



The Eldar codex is and has been broken since it first came out. ALMOST and I have to emphasize that "ALMOST" all the units in the codex need a points hike and some need a complete rework.

There were a few eldar codex that were only alright in earlier editions. also, you play one of the more powerful codex.. the orks.. wanna talk about a hard time? Dark eldar. Bam.

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

You are also rather notorious as the whiniest Blood Angels player on the forum.

Let's do some math, shall we?

Take any 7th editon codex* (or 6th edition Tau) - Orks (Orks have a terrible codex) vs. Eldar* - Scatbikers, D-weapons, and Wraithknights

*Note that allies are not considered on either side of this equation i.e. neither side uses allies

I think you'll find the result is just as balanced as any other matchup where the 7.5 edition army doesn't bring the cheese.

Well so far I have played about 5 games against Eldar and I have won 1 of them. And that was because my SAG rolled boxcars and killed his WK and his HQ in a single phase and the next turn it scattered onto his SCAT bikes.

I played a game against a Eldar player bringing the Full Cheese, WK's SCAT bikes and was tabled by turn 3. I played the same guy who took a 1,500pt army and told me to take a 2k point army. He won by turn 4. I played again against an Eldar player who brought a "Fluffy List" all footdar and he had a Wraith Lord. Not only did he table me again he did it with relative ease.

Yes by all means I except the 1-2 idiots to jump in and say "lol you suk l2p" But im fairly good with my army and I would say I win over 70% of the time. Eldar are OP almost across the board. WK, Scat Bikes, Wraithguard, Psychic shenanigans, D-weapons, BS5 regular infantry that can JSJ ohh and if you don't feel like bringing Strength D weapons you can take AP0 Fire dragons to ensure something explodes. Even if by some miracle I can close the distance with my orks they tend to die in CC to the Eldar CC units because they all have way higher Init and ridiculous abilities to boot.



The Eldar codex is and has been broken since it first came out. ALMOST and I have to emphasize that "ALMOST" all the units in the codex need a points hike and some need a complete rework.

There were a few eldar codex that were only alright in earlier editions. also, you play one of the more powerful codex.. the orks.. wanna talk about a hard time? Dark eldar. Bam.

yeah we've gone over this already, I don't play the Biker heavy Tourny list nor will I ever play Green Tide again because it is so incredibly boring to play and to play against. Orks are OP? so thats why they win all those tournaments recently huh? Just drop it dude. Eldar are OP as hell and need to be hit a few hundred times with the Nerf Hammer.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

You are also rather notorious as the whiniest Blood Angels player on the forum.

Let's do some math, shall we?

Take any 7th editon codex* (or 6th edition Tau) - Orks (Orks have a terrible codex) vs. Eldar* - Scatbikers, D-weapons, and Wraithknights

*Note that allies are not considered on either side of this equation i.e. neither side uses allies

I think you'll find the result is just as balanced as any other matchup where the 7.5 edition army doesn't bring the cheese.

Well so far I have played about 5 games against Eldar and I have won 1 of them. And that was because my SAG rolled boxcars and killed his WK and his HQ in a single phase and the next turn it scattered onto his SCAT bikes.

I played a game against a Eldar player bringing the Full Cheese, WK's SCAT bikes and was tabled by turn 3. I played the same guy who took a 1,500pt army and told me to take a 2k point army. He won by turn 4. I played again against an Eldar player who brought a "Fluffy List" all footdar and he had a Wraith Lord. Not only did he table me again he did it with relative ease.

Yes by all means I except the 1-2 idiots to jump in and say "lol you suk l2p" But im fairly good with my army and I would say I win over 70% of the time. Eldar are OP almost across the board. WK, Scat Bikes, Wraithguard, Psychic shenanigans, D-weapons, BS5 regular infantry that can JSJ ohh and if you don't feel like bringing Strength D weapons you can take AP0 Fire dragons to ensure something explodes. Even if by some miracle I can close the distance with my orks they tend to die in CC to the Eldar CC units because they all have way higher Init and ridiculous abilities to boot.



The Eldar codex is and has been broken since it first came out. ALMOST and I have to emphasize that "ALMOST" all the units in the codex need a points hike and some need a complete rework.

There were a few eldar codex that were only alright in earlier editions. also, you play one of the more powerful codex.. the orks.. wanna talk about a hard time? Dark eldar. Bam.

yeah we've gone over this already, I don't play the Biker heavy Tourny list nor will I ever play Green Tide again because it is so incredibly boring to play and to play against. Orks are OP? so thats why they win all those tournaments recently huh? Just drop it dude. Eldar are OP as hell and need to be hit a few hundred times with the Nerf Hammer.

Shame on you for not playing viable lists, then complaining about not having viable lists. Shame shame... And I never said eldar aren't op. Orks do when tournies. And dark eldar are still worse off.

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

Shame on you for not playing viable lists, then complaining about not having viable lists. Shame shame... And I never said eldar aren't op. Orks do when tournies. And dark eldar are still worse off.

I am not complaining about viable lists my friend, im complaining that my codex is WEAK. you either play those 2 lists or you don't compete at all. Eldar on the other hand have every unit being OP as hell comparatively. The only ACTUAL OP unit in my codex would be the Mek Gunz. And they aren't so much OP as they are under costed.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

You are also rather notorious as the whiniest Blood Angels player on the forum.

Let's do some math, shall we?

Take any 7th editon codex* (or 6th edition Tau) - Orks (Orks have a terrible codex) vs. Eldar* - Scatbikers, D-weapons, and Wraithknights

*Note that allies are not considered on either side of this equation i.e. neither side uses allies

I think you'll find the result is just as balanced as any other matchup where the 7.5 edition army doesn't bring the cheese.

Well so far I have played about 5 games against Eldar and I have won 1 of them. And that was because my SAG rolled boxcars and killed his WK and his HQ in a single phase and the next turn it scattered onto his SCAT bikes.

I played a game against a Eldar player bringing the Full Cheese, WK's SCAT bikes and was tabled by turn 3. I played the same guy who took a 1,500pt army and told me to take a 2k point army. He won by turn 4. I played again against an Eldar player who brought a "Fluffy List" all footdar and he had a Wraith Lord. Not only did he table me again he did it with relative ease.

Yes by all means I except the 1-2 idiots to jump in and say "lol you suk l2p" But im fairly good with my army and I would say I win over 70% of the time. Eldar are OP almost across the board. WK, Scat Bikes, Wraithguard, Psychic shenanigans, D-weapons, BS5 regular infantry that can JSJ ohh and if you don't feel like bringing Strength D weapons you can take AP0 Fire dragons to ensure something explodes. Even if by some miracle I can close the distance with my orks they tend to die in CC to the Eldar CC units because they all have way higher Init and ridiculous abilities to boot.



The Eldar codex is and has been broken since it first came out. ALMOST and I have to emphasize that "ALMOST" all the units in the codex need a points hike and some need a complete rework.

I'll raise your anecdotal evidence with my own. A friend of mine (who used to frequent these boards regularly) has a fluffy eldar list that I regularly beat, with IG.

Neither of our anecdotes are worth anything to the discussion.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The bigger issue is that they're writing rules around marketing and sprue contents.

This sentence didn't get enough attention.

All the design philosophy in the world is irrelevant if the design team isn't actually in charge.

425 base cost WK
Removal of Blade Storm USR
Scatter lasers for bikes going up 10 points per model or limited

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

stop it your making sense.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The bigger issue is that they're writing rules around marketing and sprue contents.

This sentence didn't get enough attention.

All the design philosophy in the world is irrelevant if the design team isn't actually in charge.

Aye. Almost everything that comes out of GW these days, be it rules, art, fluff, etc feels increasingly directed by markating and management, and is increasingly less functional, interesting, and attractive

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

stop it your making sense.

Shhh...it only happens sometimes

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

But... But.... Mah special snowflake speehse elves

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

Well, I might be going into "devil's advocate" territory here but not necessarily.
While they might have the same "effective range" as if they simply had 6 inches more on their range, this requires them to close that extra 6 inches, getting them closer to enemies and enemy weapons.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

As I said before, their guns have always been short ranged. The issue was before 6th edition if you moved with a rapid fire gun you could only fire half range. When 6th came out they decided to give the eldar the mobility they are known for instead of just increasing g the range on their weapons.

In conclusion, the guns used to equal the range of other units weapons, the core rules changed, they gave eldar an ability to account for it instead of just making the guns longer range.

Battle focus IS NOT OP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

But... But.... Mah special snowflake speehse elves

How many games did you get in 6th with the 4th ed eldar book? Special snowflake my arse, without battle focus you would never see an infantry unit on the table.

Jetbikes should be 4+
Scatterlasers should be 5 points more than shuriken cannons
Wraithknight should be 395

Everything else is just a FAQ.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

As I said before, their guns have always been short ranged. The issue was before 6th edition if you moved with a rapid fire gun you could only fire half range. When 6th came out they decided to give the eldar the mobility they are known for instead of just increasing g the range on their weapons.

In conclusion, the guns used to equal the range of other units weapons, the core rules changed, they gave eldar an ability to account for it instead of just making the guns longer range.

Battle focus IS NOT OP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

But... But.... Mah special snowflake speehse elves

How many games did you get in 6th with the 4th ed eldar book? Special snowflake my arse, without battle focus you would never see an infantry unit on the table.

Jetbikes should be 4+
Scatterlasers should be 5 points more than shuriken cannons
Wraithknight should be 395

Everything else is just a FAQ.

What about D weapons and Firedragons getting special snowflake AP0? Or how about the Allying with DEldar so they can plop Wraithguard randomly around the map to flame things with their stupid D scythes?

I think every army should have 1-2 things they are really good at, 1-2 things they are good at and everything else should be meh or garbage. Right now Eldar are good at everything and thats why people are hating on them. Without list tailoring there is no way to really play a game against Eldar and not be immediately at a disadvantage.

kburn wrote:

- Points in 40k are pretty much the opposite of balance. You get factions broken 7 editions, 20 years in a row. You get factions like orks that are unplayable 7 editions, 20 years in a row. All points does is make the power-difference between armies as large as possible. With AoS, at least they're not subject o Phil Kelly's or Robin Cruddace's whims and fancies. AoS is building up a much fairer and better comp scene, with tournament endorsed balancing systems for tournaments, and for players being able to negotiate what to bring for casual games.

Your argument is akin to saying "This sandwich is overcosted! Money is a bad idea!"

Points are a balancing mechanic. The devs have just been ignoring them for the last seven editions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:
I'm putting you on ignore, and that's the first time I've had to do that on dakka. Sorry buddy.

Read and answer:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
2) I'm going to pile on the emphasis because you don't seem to get this point: THERE AREN'T "pros and cons" BECAUSE THE IDEA OF A GAME NOT HAVING A BALANCE MECHANIC HAS NO PROS! ANYTHING A GAME WITHOUT ONE COULD DO, A GAME WITH ONE COULD DO BETTER BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST IGNORE OR TWEAK THE BALANCING MECHANIC AS YOU PLEASE WHILE ADDING ONE TO A GAME WITHOUT ONE IS MUCH, MUCH HARDER! Now with that said, actually address that point and stop dodging it.

Thank you Selym.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

As I said before, their guns have always been short ranged. The issue was before 6th edition if you moved with a rapid fire gun you could only fire half range. When 6th came out they decided to give the eldar the mobility they are known for instead of just increasing g the range on their weapons.

In conclusion, the guns used to equal the range of other units weapons, the core rules changed, they gave eldar an ability to account for it instead of just making the guns longer range.

Battle focus IS NOT OP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

But... But.... Mah special snowflake speehse elves

How many games did you get in 6th with the 4th ed eldar book? Special snowflake my arse, without battle focus you would never see an infantry unit on the table.

Jetbikes should be 4+
Scatterlasers should be 5 points more than shuriken cannons
Wraithknight should be 395

Everything else is just a FAQ.

What about D weapons and Firedragons getting special snowflake AP0? Or how about the Allying with DEldar so they can plop Wraithguard randomly around the map to flame things with their stupid D scythes?

I think every army should have 1-2 things they are really good at, 1-2 things they are good at and everything else should be meh or garbage. Right now Eldar are good at everything and thats why people are hating on them. Without list tailoring there is no way to really play a game against Eldar and not be immediately at a disadvantage.

Except the eldar are just the xenos equivalent to space marines. They have the breadth of units to facilitate any strategy you want, and the allies to make it work. But you do have to pick what you want them to have to start. I have never said eldar aren't stronger than other armies. If you look at my houserules, you will see what I've done to make things less rediculous.

What makes me mad is that people would rather make the eldar a laughing stock and their own army ungodly instead of simply trying to balance them accordingly.

As for fire dragons, they are sisters of battle with melta guns. They fill the same slot, don't get the ignores cover or outflank, but gai n and additional +1 to the damage chart and battlefocus. When you look at their role on the table as a suicide unit that is designed to kill a target and then be annihilated, them having a rule to help in that regard shouldn't be a serious issue. Combimelta vets do the same thing, but can kill anything else they need to as well because of special ammunition and are more durable and capable in combat to boot.

If you are taking allies into account for an army's capabilities, then why arent the dark eldar considered th e over powered option? Why not when they are what eliminate the weaknesses inherent in some eldar unit choices? Why aren't blood angels over powered when they are the best way to give droppods to all the armies of the imperium? Eldar units are either slow and durable, or fast and squishy. They all pack a lunch but the balance should be how long it takes to get there. They have points discrepancies (again, I fix those at home) and some of their rules are a bit shoddily worded (again, I poi t to my houserules) but for the most part they are actually balanced.

If there is something in my houserules you disagree with, let me know what and why and I am willing to adjust accordingly

I wouldn't mind the Eldar's current incarnation if either the points costs or their rules reflected the dying race aspect of their existence.

Having "suicide" units seems completely at odds with their situation.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

As I said before, their guns have always been short ranged. The issue was before 6th edition if you moved with a rapid fire gun you could only fire half range. When 6th came out they decided to give the eldar the mobility they are known for instead of just increasing g the range on their weapons.

In conclusion, the guns used to equal the range of other units weapons, the core rules changed, they gave eldar an ability to account for it instead of just making the guns longer range.

It would seem that the better change then would have just been to fix the individual weapons that had range issues. Even then, such weapons are relatively limited in number, it's largely just shuriken catapults, and they increased the range for Dire Avenger catapults to 18" from 12" quite some time ago specifically to address that. Why pistols, meltaguns, flamers, Ranger long rifles, and the like needed to benefit as well, when they already match their Imperial counterparts, is difficult to fathom.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:



What makes me mad is that people would rather make the eldar a laughing stock and their own army ungodly instead of simply trying to balance them accordingly.

Most of the suggestions here I don't think would do anything of the sort, particularly with Eldar psyker support still intact.

As for fire dragons, they are sisters of battle with melta guns. They fill the same slot, don't get the ignores cover or outflank, but gai n and additional +1 to the damage chart and battlefocus.

I assume you mean Dominions? Dominions are FA, not Elite (those are the Celestians...which are abysmal ). They're 23ppm with a meltagun, not 22, and at barebones cost 105pts for a squad with 4 meltas next to a naked squad of Fire Dragons at 110 with 5 meltas. They have inferior WS, Init, and Ld. Their Ignore Cover ability is one-use and reliant on a Leadership test, and they can only include 4 meltaguns, not up to ten. They also can't get formation bonuses that make them BS5.

Really, the only way in which they have any leg up on the Fire Dragons is an Ld-test reliant, one-use ability to ignore cover.

When you look at their role on the table as a suicide unit that is designed to kill a target and then be annihilated, them having a rule to help in that regard shouldn't be a serious issue. Combimelta vets do the same thing, but can kill anything else they need to as well because of special ammunition and are more durable and capable in combat to boot.

The Combi-melta Sternguard Vets are 32ppm, not 22, and can't get BS5 for zero additional points increase. The BS5 and AP0 makes Fire Dragons as effective at one-shotting tanks as BS4 Destroyer weapons (slightly less so against AV14, moreso against AV13 and under, notably moreso against anything open-topped) . A barebones 110pt squad of 5 Fire Dragons like that are exploding AV14 vehicles at 3.12x the rate that a 105pt IG Carapace Melta-vet unit is and inflicting HP loss at more than twice the rate of the guardsmen.

 Selym wrote:
Read and answer [Crash's rant]

Selym dude, I am more than a little tired of seeing Crash getting any traction from that unenlightening and immature freakout, but if you really don't get it here's one last shot.

The facts are exactly as you said, 40k has a balancing mechanism, points, which isn't working. Why isn't it working? I can guarantee you it's NOT because the design team don't understand the concept of costing. The issue is as Vak pointed out, the design team is forced to argue balance against other company priorities, such as sales and marketing. Now guess what. GW probably moves more product through hype and power creep, than by stability. Plenty of players like buying the new hotness and chasing the meta. The minute any faction gets a new OP model or a new OP formation like Skyhammer, all of a sudden, it's selling out. Er, what exactly is the problem on GW's end?

This would be like Blizzard releasing a new Starcraft unit every few months, which required an expensive purchase and usually dominated the game until the next update. And that's what 40k players want. If the new models don't have impressive rules, you typically see a lot of disappointment expressed. Players like buying advantage. They are saying "balance" with their mouth and voting power creep with their wallets.

In light of this I think it's very unlikely we'll see points used as a balancing mechanism, because GW is obviously using them as a sales tool. This isn't necessarily the design team's fault -- the company's ultimate responsibility is to it's shareholders, not consumers of WH40k.

Next, what Crash "asked" is ultimately misleading; balance is not a goal in itself. It's simply a means towards creating quality gameplay and good experiences. And what's good is subjective. Some players like min-maxing their lists, playing standard mission types and dealing with a constantly evolving meta. Some like recreating historical battles completely independent of points values and standardized terrain, or building themed lists that reject min-maxing but instead obey the "rule of cool". One of these groups needs a rigorously applied external balance mechanism for fair gameplay. The other just needs a social understanding. And as a player you can do both these things, they're not mutually exclusive. But these game styles do NOT play well together at the same time.

I'd think the design people at GW understand this very well. A corporate entity is not a hivemind; don't ever assume the decisions taken by a company reflect the opinions or wishes of those inside it, and don't assume they can talk too freely about their real thoughts, either.

The real question is not "do points work". Of course they do. Does "no points" work? Yes, that can work too. But both these systems break down when poorly applied, or when players don't play towards the same goals. The "no points" is not about balance in the end, it's about how 40k is positioned -- it clarifies the type of game style that 40k is meant to be.

Keep in mind while I'm arguing for this point, I personally think there are alternative ways to both preserve the tourney scene while encouraging and clearly distinguishing casual or custom scenario play. Nobody needs to get left behind or feel left out -- and I think that's where Sigmar clearly went wrong, and where GW failed a sizeable part of their audience.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Selym wrote:
Read and answer [Crash's rant]

Selym dude, I am more than a little tired of seeing Crash getting any traction from that unenlightening and immature freakout, but if you really don't get it here's one last shot.

The facts are exactly as you said, 40k has a balancing mechanism, points, which isn't working. Why isn't it working? I can guarantee you it's NOT because the design team don't understand the concept of costing.

That's a bold guarantee to be making, considering every edition of everything being released from them ever. This is including 2nd edition, where the company was relatively small and was most likely not being lead by the marketing team.

Yoyoyo wrote:

The issue is as Vak pointed out, the design team is forced to argue balance against other company priorities, such as sales and marketing. Now guess what. GW probably moves more product through hype and power creep, than by stability. Plenty of players like buying the new hotness and chasing the meta. The minute any faction gets a new OP model or a new OP formation like Skyhammer, all of a sudden, it's selling out. Er, what exactly is the problem on GW's end?

The problem on GW's sale is that, while that unit might sell quite quickly, the sales of the overall game line have been decreasing. Their revenue is not doing great, and they are destroying their own game through these OP cycles. You saw something similar in hearthstone when the new expansion was released; the new cards were really good, so a lot of players left since their old collections that they worked hard for were crap now.
Other mini games don't do this with new releases. Gaspy 2 and Skarre 1 were original releases, still the strongest in cryx for WMH. Hayley 3, while fun, is not seen more than Siege or Stryker 2. Their sales are going up, while GW is going down.

Yoyoyo wrote:

This would be like Blizzard releasing a new Starcraft unit every few months, which required an expensive purchase and usually dominated the game until the next update. And that's what 40k players want. If the new models don't have impressive rules, you typically see a lot of disappointment expressed. Players like buying advantage. They are saying "balance" with their mouth and voting power creep with their wallets.

You can make things equally strong but different in function, especially in a game like this. If Blizzard did that, people would stop playing starcraft in discuss. Sure, those units would sell quickly, to the few remaining players that are left, but the overall game would tank. Like what we are seeing with GW.
People are voting against power creep with their wallet. Sales are down.

Yoyoyo wrote:

In light of this I think it's very unlikely we'll see points used as a balancing mechanism, because GW is obviously using them as a sales tool. This isn't necessarily the design team's fault -- the company's ultimate responsibility is to it's shareholders, not consumers of WH40k.

Points are used as a balancing mechanism for a vast majority of war games for a reason. Only historicals, as far as I know, don't use them. AoS isn't doing well with many players...I believe the last tournament had 22 pages of house rules, for a 4 page rulebook.
We can point the finger at different members of the design team quite easily. Why did nids go from great to garbage? Cruddance. Why are eldar and wolves strong? Kelly. Why did demons break fantasy? Ward. Keep in mind that the last one was a death knell for fantasy.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Next, what Crash "asked" is ultimately misleading; balance is not a goal in itself. It's simply a means towards creating quality gameplay and good experiences. And what's good is subjective. Some players like min-maxing their lists, playing standard mission types and dealing with a constantly evolving meta. Some like recreating historical battles completely independent of points values and standardized terrain, or building themed lists that reject min-maxing but instead obey the "rule of cool". One of these groups needs a rigorously applied external balance mechanism for fair gameplay. The other just needs a social understanding. And as a player you can do both these things, they're not mutually exclusive. But these game styles do NOT play well together at the same time.

You are very wrong here, outside of the fact historical battles chose not to use points.
Balance helps casual players MORE than competitive players. Competitive players tend to buy 1 or 2 lists and just play that until editions change. Casuals who like the setting have huge collections and field what they think looks cool, or just what they think looks cool and nothing else. Usually units that look cool are pretty bad in this game, for whatever reason.
Take marines. Best unit is the Centurions. They look hideous, and are a terrible model. People who care about the setting especially hate them. Terminators, one of the fluffy cool units that draws kids into the game, is terrible. And has been forever.
If the game was balanced to any degree, you could build a list with a theme in mind and have it work, instead of spamming the really strong unit or cheap formations.

Worse yet, a casual player who plays eldar or necrons will roll a Chaos player quite easily. Their dex is overall just better at everything. A competitive player doesn't have that problem; they would never play Chaos Space Marines and instead would use Codex Marines for their army. In what world does this help anybody?

Yoyoyo wrote:

I'd think the design people at GW understand this very well. A corporate entity is not a hivemind; don't ever assume the decisions taken by a company reflect the opinions or wishes of those inside it, and don't assume they can talk too freely about their real thoughts, either.

A company is the decisions of everyone inside of it summed up. The design team and marketing team must work together to make a good product. Other companies manage this quite well, GW fails.
You'll have a hard time convincing anyone that GW understands anything very well.

Yoyoyo wrote:

The real question is not "do points work". Of course they do. Does "no points" work? Yes, that can work too. But both these systems break down when poorly applied, or when players don't play towards the same goals. The "no points" is not about balance in the end, it's about how 40k is positioned -- it clarifies the type of game style that 40k is meant to be.

A historical game? A game where you don't play your armies, but recreate battles from the fluff that number way over what most players own? That's not what I signed up for.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Keep in mind while I'm arguing for this point, I personally think there are alternative ways to both preserve the tourney scene while encouraging and clearly distinguishing casual or custom scenario play. Nobody needs to get left behind or feel left out -- and I think that's where Sigmar clearly went wrong, and where GW failed a sizeable part of their audience.

Fantasy has been dead since demons. The game was broken, usually by the magic system, for a few editions now.


Also, you may want to tone down the condescending tone. Most of the people on this site are engineers, programmers, managers, and professors. You'd be surprised how many of us understand how companies are supposed to work, and why GW doesn't.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Selym wrote:
Read and answer [Crash's rant]

You're arguing that, because points are being misused in 40k, that points shouldn't be used at all.
Crash's statement is that a game /with/ points has more advantages over a game that /does not/ have points.
In a game with points, you have a base to work with, making balancing modifications easier, and possibly mathematically modelled.
In a game with points, you can ignore the points, and have a scenario based game.

In a game without points, you can only do the latter.

Further, you seem to be under the impression that we give a toss about what is good for GW.

We don't. The thread is asking "how can we make Eldar balanced". Your response is "remove points".

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Battle focus is not over powered, period. It was given, and is still given to eldar because their guns are very short ranged.

This would seem to defeat the point of making such weapons short ranged in the first place

As I said before, their guns have always been short ranged. The issue was before 6th edition if you moved with a rapid fire gun you could only fire half range. When 6th came out they decided to give the eldar the mobility they are known for instead of just increasing g the range on their weapons.

In conclusion, the guns used to equal the range of other units weapons, the core rules changed, they gave eldar an ability to account for it instead of just making the guns longer range.

It would seem that the better change then would have just been to fix the individual weapons that had range issues. Even then, such weapons are relatively limited in number, it's largely just shuriken catapults, and they increased the range for Dire Avenger catapults to 18" from 12" quite some time ago specifically to address that. Why pistols, meltaguns, flamers, Ranger long rifles, and the like needed to benefit as well, when they already match their Imperial counterparts, is difficult to fathom.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:



What makes me mad is that people would rather make the eldar a laughing stock and their own army ungodly instead of simply trying to balance them accordingly.

Most of the suggestions here I don't think would do anything of the sort, particularly with Eldar psyker support still intact.

As for fire dragons, they are sisters of battle with melta guns. They fill the same slot, don't get the ignores cover or outflank, but gai n and additional +1 to the damage chart and battlefocus.

I assume you mean Dominions? Dominions are FA, not Elite (those are the Celestians...which are abysmal ). They're 23ppm with a meltagun, not 22, and at barebones cost 105pts for a squad with 4 meltas next to a naked squad of Fire Dragons at 110 with 5 meltas. They have inferior WS, Init, and Ld. Their Ignore Cover ability is one-use and reliant on a Leadership test, and they can only include 4 meltaguns, not up to ten. They also can't get formation bonuses that make them BS5.

Really, the only way in which they have any leg up on the Fire Dragons is an Ld-test reliant, one-use ability to ignore cover.

When you look at their role on the table as a suicide unit that is designed to kill a target and then be annihilated, them having a rule to help in that regard shouldn't be a serious issue. Combimelta vets do the same thing, but can kill anything else they need to as well because of special ammunition and are more durable and capable in combat to boot.

The Combi-melta Sternguard Vets are 32ppm, not 22, and can't get BS5 for zero additional points increase. The BS5 and AP0 makes Fire Dragons as effective at one-shotting tanks as BS4 Destroyer weapons (slightly less so against AV14, moreso against AV13 and under, notably moreso against anything open-topped) . A barebones 110pt squad of 5 Fire Dragons like that are exploding AV14 vehicles at 3.12x the rate that a 105pt IG Carapace Melta-vet unit is and inflicting HP loss at more than twice the rate of the guardsmen.

Eldar long rifles can't benefit from battle focus, and the avenger shuriken catapults were given their range to make them better than most army's sidearms. You can't add the benefit some units might get for formations as a talking point about unit viability. I don't say the space marine tactical squads are broken because they have objective secured or free transports. The eldar are mobile. That has been a part of their fluff since I started playing this game, and is the reason I started them as an army. Battle focus allows them to get within range with their weapons quickly without the need for a transport. The army needs that because we don't have cheap ones in codex.

As for firedragons and other units, don't those sisters get outflank, allowing them to get their target efficiently even without a transport. If I want to get my fire dragons the ability to deepstrike without problem, I have to buy a 60 point character, a 35 point upgrade, and a 40 point troop unit. So that unit of firedragons, in order to do what deepstriking melta sternguard can do cost me 245 points and another codex. The sterguard in a drop pod are 190 AND they have more durability, melee ability, and viable targets due to weapon loadout than the fire dragons do. For the unarmored melta vets, they can take 7 casualties before losing any ofb their efficiency at killing vehicles. Fire dragons do one thing better than everyone else, and that is kill vehicles. They do not do it cheap, they are not going to survive long after, and they are certainly not overpowered.

 Selym wrote:
You're arguing that, because points are being misused in 40k, that points shouldn't be used at all.
Crash's statement is that a game /with/ points has more advantages over a game that /does not/ have points.
In a game with points, you have a base to work with, making balancing modifications easier, and possibly mathematically modelled.
In a game with points, you can ignore the points, and have a scenario based game.

In a game without points, you can only do the latter.

Thank you again Selym, he seems to be so preoccupied with dismissing what I said as an "immature freakout" because I had the stones to use the perfectly valid tool of emphasis that he can't be bothered to read what I actually wrote.

 Selym wrote:
We don't. The thread is asking "how can we make Eldar balanced". Your response is "remove points".

Honestly? That's not what I'm saying. I'm more interested in pulling apart problems, than offering solutions.

 Selym wrote:
In a game with points, you have a base to work with, making balancing modifications easier, and possibly mathematically modelled.

We already have that. And yet, this thread exists.

Akiasura wrote:
If the game was balanced to any degree, you could build a list with a theme in mind and have it work, instead of spamming the really strong unit or cheap formations.

That's not how competitive games works. You take the units that have the most effective synergies or best counter the enemy's units. Your feelings and your preferences run second to knowledge of effectiveness.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Selym wrote:
In a game with points, you have a base to work with, making balancing modifications easier, and possibly mathematically modelled.

We already have that. And yet, this thread exists.

Correlation =/= cause.
Yes, 40k uses points. Yes, there are balancing issues.
Did points cause the balancing issues? No. Poor writing, lack of playtesting and sales bias did.

I don't disagree with that Selym, in fact I thought I already said as much myself. The questions are this:

1) What type of game is 40k trying to position itself as?
2) What kind of freedom does the 40k design team at GW actually possess to implement changes to the company's structure, which could better balance the game in the future?

I don't think you're going to find the answers to these questions on dakka.

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

I play dark eldar. Don't see me complaining either.

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

That was a bit harsh. Blood Angels didn't get all the new shiny toys that Vanilla got. In fact, they lost stuff. And considering he plays in a highly competitive meta, I'm sure he has an uphill battle every game.

You're also talking about a game where tactics matters little most of the time.

Yoyoyo wrote:
I don't disagree with that Selym, in fact I thought I already said as much myself. The questions are this:

1) What type of game is 40k trying to position itself as?
In its current arc, a company scale pitched battle, with capacity for skirmish engagements and heroic encounters. The schizophrenic ruleset this causes is one of the major balancing issues in 40k.

2) What kind of freedom does the 40k design team at GW actually possess to implement changes to the company's structure, which could better balance the game in the future?
No freedom whatsoever. If they have leeway to make half a codex balanced, there will be 2-5 items in there that GW insisted on having that result in codex creep or codex failure. This thread has shown that it is relatively easy to locate the major issues, and resolve them. Something anyone with 3-5 games of playtest per unit could have figured out. Luckily this thread is about what we would do, because if it is about what GW would do, the answer is "release new kit, make it super op, screw everything else" and "Ultramarines get an equivalent or counter item",

I don't think you're going to find the answers to these questions on dakka.
Just did

 krodarklorr wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

That was a bit harsh. Blood Angels didn't get all the new shiny toys that Vanilla got. In fact, they lost stuff. And considering he plays in a highly competitive meta, I'm sure he has an uphill battle every game.

You're also talking about a game where tactics matters little most of the time.

Idk about tactics maybe it could just be the fantasy player in me but I use quite a few tactics lol. My area is quite competitive itself not OTT competitive but there's some quite tough lists. Yes Blood Angels lost some stuff so did csm heck my csm list is actually mostly marine stuff with 1 daemon unit in the entire thing (oblits)

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

That was a bit harsh. Blood Angels didn't get all the new shiny toys that Vanilla got. In fact, they lost stuff. And considering he plays in a highly competitive meta, I'm sure he has an uphill battle every game.

You're also talking about a game where tactics matters little most of the time.

Idk about tactics maybe it could just be the fantasy player in me but I use quite a few tactics lol. My area is quite competitive itself not OTT competitive but there's some quite tough lists. Yes Blood Angels lost some stuff so did csm heck my csm list is actually mostly marine stuff with 1 daemon unit in the entire thing (oblits)

I'm not saying tactics are non-existent, but Fantasy made them to much more prevalent (rip fantasy). Minus the OP spells and gross codex imbalance (surprise), fantasy had quite a bit of tactics. Where and when to charge, using chaff units, where to move units, which units to buff this turn, where and when to take cover, ext. 40k is more like: When to head for objectives, what to keep in reserves, which unit to burn down this turn. Most of the mentioned tactics for fantasy do not matter in the slightest for 40k.

 krodarklorr wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

That was a bit harsh. Blood Angels didn't get all the new shiny toys that Vanilla got. In fact, they lost stuff. And considering he plays in a highly competitive meta, I'm sure he has an uphill battle every game.

You're also talking about a game where tactics matters little most of the time.

Idk about tactics maybe it could just be the fantasy player in me but I use quite a few tactics lol. My area is quite competitive itself not OTT competitive but there's some quite tough lists. Yes Blood Angels lost some stuff so did csm heck my csm list is actually mostly marine stuff with 1 daemon unit in the entire thing (oblits)

I'm not saying tactics are non-existent, but Fantasy made them to much more prevalent (rip fantasy). Minus the OP spells and gross codex imbalance (surprise), fantasy had quite a bit of tactics. Where and when to charge, using chaff units, where to move units, which units to buff this turn, where and when to take cover, ext. 40k is more like: When to head for objectives, what to keep in reserves, which unit to burn down this turn. Most of the mentioned tactics for fantasy do not matter in the slightest for 40k.

I do agree to some extent there but quite a few tactics do exist in 40k. I will say though that obviously the list you bring in 40k is more important than fantasy but in general I play my csm like I used to try to play my dark elves fast with tactical hard hitting strikes lol

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Imperium in no way means the codex is good.

Martel732 wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Imperium in no way means the codex is good.

But you can easily augment your blood angels with allies and get rid of alot of BAS weaknesses where as csm as far as I'm concerned I only have 2 real allies R&H and daemons. I never use R&H and I rarely ally the few Nurgle Daemons I have in as my great Unclean One seems to annoy people

Martel732 wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Imperium in no way means the codex is good.

I concur. BA have terrible performance, and the IG codex isn't compatible with itself.

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Imperium in no way means the codex is good.

But you can easily augment your blood angels with allies and get rid of alot of BAS weaknesses where as csm as far as I'm concerned I only have 2 real allies R&H and daemons. I never use R&H and I rarely ally the few Nurgle Daemons I have in as my great Unclean One seems to annoy people

Having allies does not mean a codex is any good.

 Selym wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Imperium in no way means the codex is good.

I concur. BA have terrible performance, and the IG codex isn't compatible with itself.

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Imperium in no way means the codex is good.

But you can easily augment your blood angels with allies and get rid of alot of BAS weaknesses where as csm as far as I'm concerned I only have 2 real allies R&H and daemons. I never use R&H and I rarely ally the few Nurgle Daemons I have in as my great Unclean One seems to annoy people

Having allies does not mean a codex is any good.

I never said that I was pointing out as a imperial player he has a easy time removing his armies weaknesses via allies

True enough. Still makes some of us fairly annoyed though. Especially as "Codex: Allies" costs a minimum of £60-£75...

It does me too why do you think I rarely ally my daemons in lol. Heck I refuse to play daemons as a solo army as they either end up being stupid or rubbish.

I run a almost pure mech Nurgle csm army so I can feel the pain purist BA players must feel but then again I started csm as my first proper 40k army with their previous book

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" whole is no more broken than any other 7th edition codex."

BA. Most of my codex is unplayable garbage. This is a false statement.

Uh what your an imperial player saying your army is unplayable? Grow a back bone I play csm don't see me complaining about actually having to use tactics to win. Oh sorry I forgot I don't play sparkly vampires

Imperium in no way means the codex is good.

But you can easily augment your blood angels with allies and get rid of alot of BAS weaknesses where as csm as far as I'm concerned I only have 2 real allies R&H and daemons. I never use R&H and I rarely ally the few Nurgle Daemons I have in as my great Unclean One seems to annoy people

That's not BA being good. As soon as I start "augmenting" with allies, I might as well get rid of all the BA units. They are just liabilities.

"as a imperial player he has a easy time removing his armies weaknesses via allies"

My wallet doesn't think it so easy.

Well what kind of lists are you fielding? If your trying to go assault heavy then is it any wonder your struggling. Have you tried fielding a mech army

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
Well what kind of lists are you fielding? If your trying to go assault heavy then is it any wonder your struggling. Have you tried fielding a mech army

Be warned, this is the guy who thinks land raiders cause you to auto-lose.

 Selym wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
Well what kind of lists are you fielding? If your trying to go assault heavy then is it any wonder your struggling. Have you tried fielding a mech army

Be warned, this is the guy who thinks land raiders cause you to auto-lose.

Wow guess my chaos marines didn't get the memo lol

To be fair, he supposedly plays in a local scene where people are always balls out competitive with scatbikes, D scythe wraithguard, wraithknights, decurions, and the other top table lists. I wouldn't run a land raider in today's top table meta either.

See I'm probably lucky there my meta has most things all the way from space mutts to a nasty white scars biker army lol so my land raider is actually useful

 Selym wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
Well what kind of lists are you fielding? If your trying to go assault heavy then is it any wonder your struggling. Have you tried fielding a mech army

Be warned, this is the guy who thinks land raiders cause you to auto-lose.

Land Raiders basically ARE an auto loss. Very little firepower, too expensive for the fragility, and compete with the Spartan Assault Tank, which can get Melta immunity.

Land raiders are NOT auto lose I've only ever lost mine turn 1 once and that was yesterday after I went at full speed + flat out to 1 grab a objective 2 to get my lord and his terminator retinue in range to charge the skitarri/grey knight lines turn 2

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Selym wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
Well what kind of lists are you fielding? If your trying to go assault heavy then is it any wonder your struggling. Have you tried fielding a mech army

Be warned, this is the guy who thinks land raiders cause you to auto-lose.

Land Raiders basically ARE an auto loss. Very little firepower, too expensive for the fragility, and compete with the Spartan Assault Tank, which can get Melta immunity.

My Templars use two Land Raiders.
They are useful. Could do with being cheaper, but my army would be worse without them.

 Selym wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Selym wrote:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
Well what kind of lists are you fielding? If your trying to go assault heavy then is it any wonder your struggling. Have you tried fielding a mech army

Be warned, this is the guy who thinks land raiders cause you to auto-lose.

Land Raiders basically ARE an auto loss. Very little firepower, too expensive for the fragility, and compete with the Spartan Assault Tank, which can get Melta immunity.

My Templars use two Land Raiders.
They are useful. Could do with being cheaper, but my army would be worse without them.

And when you read the stats and options of the Spartan, you weep for what purpose the Land Raider could possibly fulfill.

Arguing about land raiders in your flgs games is silly. Your local meta can make them anywhere from godlike to dead on arrival.
In the widespread competitive meta, they don't have a place in a list trying to get to the top. That much is certain.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Arguing about land raiders in your flgs games is silly. Your local meta can make them anywhere from godlike to dead on arrival.
In the widespread competitive meta, they don't have a place in a list trying to get to the top. That much is certain.

Well, yea, not with Wraithcannons around.

Actually there is a eldar player who goes Wraith heavy but he hardly ever comes in lol. Then there's another Eldar player who uses guardians with aspect and fire prism support lol. And there's quite a few vanilla marine and admech players plus atleast one Necron player and a couple of nid ones. So my meta is quite diverse

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:

Eldar long rifles can't benefit from battle focus,

Can they not? I must have missed that. Either way, still applies for the other weapons.

and the avenger shuriken catapults were given their range to make them better than most army's sidearms.

And with Battle Focus they largely match everyone else's range, and are in fact superior at that "over 12" range. It's hard to see this rule as compensating for any general lack of range on the part of the army as a whole.

You can't add the benefit some units might get for formations as a talking point about unit viability. I don't say the space marine tactical squads are broken because they have objective secured or free transports.

They have to finagle the army a whole lot more to get that, whereas Fire Dragons can get it without changing the unit or model composition of many existing armies.

The eldar are mobile. That has been a part of their fluff since I started playing this game, and is the reason I started them as an army. Battle focus allows them to get within range with their weapons quickly without the need for a transport. The army needs that because we don't have cheap ones in codex.

Even with Battle Focus, I don't see people taking most Eldar units without transports. It's almost without exception used to augment transport disembark or movement after disembark, not to initially cross the board to engage (where really a run augment would provide more value).

As for firedragons and other units, don't those sisters get outflank, allowing them to get their target efficiently even without a transport

This assumes their target is within easy range of a flank, really it's typically most used to get more movement turn 1, which Eldar having Fast Skimmer transports matches pretty well. I don't recall ever seeing Dominions having been used footslogging.

If I want to get my fire dragons the ability to deepstrike without problem, I have to buy a 60 point character, a 35 point upgrade, and a 40 point troop unit. So that unit of firedragons, in order to do what deepstriking melta sternguard can do cost me 245 points and another codex.

Or you can just take one of the two best transports/medium tanks in the game and engage a target just about anywhere on the board by turn 2. With my Fire Dragons I've never felt the need for a deep strike option, I've never had a problem getting them to their targets on time.

The sterguard in a drop pod are 190 AND they have more durability, melee ability, and viable targets due to weapon loadout than the fire dragons do.

Mostly only at longer ranges. Within meltagun range, the meltas work pretty well except against large numbers of weeny infantry. The Sternguard only get to fire their meltas once, and are only more durable against attacks S5 and lower (which isn't unimportant, but with the weapons these units are equipped with, T is a rather irrelevant stat in many respects). For purpose of which these units are taken and utilized, the Fire Dragons are drastically superior.

For the unarmored melta vets, they can take 7 casualties before losing any ofb their efficiency at killing vehicles.

Hrm, in theory? Maybe. In practice, often those meltas are the first thing to go between having to stretch to get within range and casualty removal rules. Likewise, the Fire Dragons can lose 3 Meltaguns before they're worse at inflicting HP damage on AV14 tanks and 4 meltaguns before they're worse at inflicting Explodes results.

Fire dragons do one thing better than everyone else, and that is kill vehicles. They do not do it cheap, they are not going to survive long after, and they are certainly not overpowered.

They do it several multiples more effectively than equivalent units at largely equivalent prices, they're still pretty excellent against heavy infantry and MC's, and their AP0 special rule and ability to make them BS5 were absolutely unwarranted, nobody thought they had any problems killing tanks when they didn't have those in the previous book.

 Selym wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
Arguing about land raiders in your flgs games is silly. Your local meta can make them anywhere from godlike to dead on arrival.
In the widespread competitive meta, they don't have a place in a list trying to get to the top. That much is certain.

Well, yea, not with Wraithcannons around.

My BA are on a first name basis with those damn things.


And, yes, I think LRs are awful. I always snicker a bit on the inside when my opponent has them. It's a really expensive way to do one assault. Assuming it doesn't get stuck on a bush.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
Well what kind of lists are you fielding? If your trying to go assault heavy then is it any wonder your struggling. Have you tried fielding a mech army

By mech, I do frequently hide units in Rhinos. Any other marine tank at this point is a bit suspect at best. AV 11 sides suck.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Selym wrote:
We don't. The thread is asking "how can we make Eldar balanced". Your response is "remove points".

Honestly? That's not what I'm saying. I'm more interested in pulling apart problems, than offering solutions.

 Selym wrote:
In a game with points, you have a base to work with, making balancing modifications easier, and possibly mathematically modelled.

We already have that. And yet, this thread exists.

Akiasura wrote:
If the game was balanced to any degree, you could build a list with a theme in mind and have it work, instead of spamming the really strong unit or cheap formations.

That's not how competitive games works. You take the units that have the most effective synergies or best counter the enemy's units. Your feelings and your preferences run second to knowledge of effectiveness.

I can't speak to some competitive games, but in WMH you can run themed lists. You may have to pick certain casters, but if you want a theme, it's usually very doable. The game is balanced enough that most ideas or concepts can be played.

40k that is not the case, because 40k has a noticeable disparity between good choices and bad. Saim Hann or iyanden will destroy an ultra marine or tyranid swarm themed list. Yet all are fluffy. Balance would fix this, not hurt it in any way.

But turn one negation is a quick way to guarantee superiority. The eldar fast dedicated transports are way more expensive than the dedicated transports other similarly coated units utilise. After the drop, longer range benefits matter because there will be little in the way of targets for foot spotters afterwards.

When you look at lists in 6th ed, how many exarchs did you see? None, because they were considered not worth the points. So now if you want to run the aspect warrior host you not only need three units, some of which you may not have wanted, and all of them have to take the search also, which while better than before is still something you may not have wanted to add to your army. Especially if you had all of your aspect warriors built without them. If I am spending 220+ points on a delivery system and unit to allow them to (maybe) kill a single vehicle, I expect it to be damn good at its specific job. That's the point of a specialist unit.

As for the long rifle, it is heavy, thereby excluded from being used in conjunction with battle focus.

Dire avengers are still more susceptible to small arms fire than marines, and are still out ranged by most troop units. In order to get their double tap, they have to get within 18", meaning they are a 6" movement away from being double tapped themselves. Even if they run afterwards they will still be in range to be shot at and they do NOT want to be shot at. They are as survivable to small arms fire as carapace vets or fire warriors but are 5 points more expensive per model. They should be more capable then their opposite units.

Even if Dire Avengers have some practical advantage over marines or what have you, they are NOT the problem unit in the Eldar codex.

Right. I fixed the problems in my houserules (see page one)

I am just trying to show where discrepancies actually lie with the army.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Right. I fixed the problems in my houserules (see page one)

I am just trying to show where discrepancies actually lie with the army.

Foot DA are actually usually in big trouble vs BA because sometimes we can save bladestorm wounds with FNP and assaulting them at S5 wipes them up quickly. But I guess that's why no one uses them.