Caveat: this might sound a little like a vent, but the frustrations I've had with this army and GW's treatment of it are 25 years long so you'll have to excuse me...
I've played 40k since 2nd ed, with a hiatus from 5th-7th due mainly to the direction of the fluff (highlighted by Mat Ward's work).
In 2nd ed I started with space wolves as I like wolves, vikings and space.....
Towards the end of 2nd ed I started to get into the eldar. I loved their background the unit concepts and the cool aesthetic. Their kickass characters - warlocks, exarchs, solitaires etc. The Avatar with its cost the same as a Bloodthirster and a profile that was one of the toughest in the game.
The martial arts/kung fu temple/ninja styling really appealed to me, as did the hitech weaponry. The shuriken catapult was an amazing advanced weapon - 24" S4 AP-2 D1 1 sustained fire dice. It was a better stormbolter at the time.
When 3rd ed came around, the catapult was chopped in half and became a pistol. Exarchs effectively disappeared entirely, becoming nothing more than squad sergeants. Warlocks became squad sergeants. Avatars sucked. pretty much everything I had loved about the army was no longer there. But i persevered. Assault weapons weren't that bad given no one could charge if they'd fired a RF weapon but could with assault.
Then over the next 2 editions RF got better, assault got worse and every other army somehow kept getting improved. Orks went from worse AP bolters to 18" ranged catapults with worse AP - until they released new dire avengers and then the orks had a gun better than a catapult and worse than a dire catapult.
Throughout this time other armies got new units, or improvements on old. Sternguard and Vanguard became a thing and special issue ammo made bolters better.
After coming back into the game in 8th, I find the same problems in the army as I did 10 years ago. Warlocks suck, exarchs suck shuriken catapults suck. But to add insult to injury, it seems like every unique unique type or concept the eldar used, was looted by imperial armies (especially primaris). But admech now have better swooping hawks, the assault bolter is a superior catapult (after decades of people saying it would be broken to put 24" back on the catapult, they went made a BETTER version for the space marines...), and so on.
It just seems like the eldar have been stripped of the unique units and weapons that were a signature of the army, handed out to imperial armies, and left with inferior versions of the unit. Eldar went from most advanced race with cool characters and weapons, to a weird gimmick laden, spam army. Thousand sons do psychic army better, primaris do specialist units better, primaris do cool character options better (or at all).
So I'm just wondering, what the hell are the going to do with them? I would not be surprised if the eldar army isn't popular at the moment - you can pick from a plethora of power armoured imperial armies that do Eldar better than they do, so there's no real incentive to play them. Unless you like flier spam and psychic gimmicks, which isn't why I started playing them.
While they've expanded imperial armies from literally nothing (Ad Mech, primaris), they've shrunk eldar armies. We don't even have the option to take master warlocks or independent exarchs, but primaris get rando executioners never mentioned before? Is it so hard to just make Exarchs independent again? Or give us a new level of exarch? This is asking for stuff that USED to exist, it's not demanding the invention of mariokarts, or sword and board units (ahem).
It's hard enough to convince people that old stuff that used to be available should be there, let alone demand new stuff...
Most of all I'd like aspect warriors to be more than just worse space marines. It just seems like, no matter what the background says, GW is set on a course of making everyone worse at things than space marines...
So, what they hell are they going to do with eldar, that doesn't just continue this tepid, boring gimmick army that clearly looks nothing like what it should and is a shadow of its former self.
Nothing is going to happen till the codex. I would hope in the codex they will make aspect warriors actually good and scary instead of what they did throughout 8th, which was just lower their points cost over and over until they finally arrived at bargain-basement points costs for bargain-basement units.
Striking scorpions ought to be scary elite combat warriors, for example, not bargain-basement junk that gets dunked on by an intercessor.
Eldar have a canonical "weakness" (overspecialization) that GW has a hard time defining for their rules writers and that the rules writers have a really hard time communicating in the game, which tends to lead to horrible internal balance and wildly fluctuating external balance. Craftworlds particularly have been capable of building the strongest lists in the game and the weakest lists in the game out of the same book in the time I've been playing 40k.
AnomanderRake wrote: Eldar have a canonical "weakness" (overspecialization) that GW has a hard time defining for their rules writers and that the rules writers have a really hard time communicating in the game, which tends to lead to horrible internal balance and wildly fluctuating external balance. Craftworlds particularly have been capable of building the strongest lists in the game and the weakest lists in the game out of the same book in the time I've been playing 40k.
I would argue their canonical weakness is inability to take casualties. Overspecialisation doesn't seem to be a weakness when Primaris do it.
I agree that GW has a hard time translating them to the table, because IMO whether their list can create powerful armies or not, they are almost never actually representative of what the army should do. Only what the rules allow you to create. And that's my issue.
I don't want crimson hunter exarch spam lists anymore than anyone else does. But I don't want them because that's not how eldar as a whole should operate, rather than whether they're broken or not.
I think one of the reasons the eldar struggle is that they're already soup - there are three distinct armies in the craftworld codex (like the dark eldar one) - guardians, wraiths, aspects. It's like trying to make a single IMPERIUM army with all those lists in one book and wondering why it's hard to balance them all.
But I doubt we'll get three eldar books - aspect hosts, guardian hosts, Wraith hosts....
AnomanderRake wrote: Eldar have a canonical "weakness" (overspecialization) that GW has a hard time defining for their rules writers and that the rules writers have a really hard time communicating in the game, which tends to lead to horrible internal balance and wildly fluctuating external balance. Craftworlds particularly have been capable of building the strongest lists in the game and the weakest lists in the game out of the same book in the time I've been playing 40k.
Except specialization is rewarded in almost every edition. Especially back when squads couldn't split fire.
Try having over 100 models for an army that you cannot use because that army has become the term for what happened to them.
If you played 2nd/3rd you know what I mean.
And don't give me that crap about how they weren't popular, or other armies did their thing better. Sisters had less popularity at the time. And don't tell me to just play them as Guard or Orks, some people like to argue about "modeling for advantage" due to their relative sizes.
As for the studios "official reasons", if you pay some-one to do something, they either find a way to do it or you replace them.
helgrenze wrote: Try having over 100 models for an army that you cannot use because that army has become the term for what happened to them.
If you played 2nd/3rd you know what I mean.
And don't give me that crap about how they weren't popular, or other armies did their thing better. Sisters had less popularity at the time. And don't tell me to just play them as Guard or Orks, some people like to argue about "modeling for advantage" due to their relative sizes.
As for the studios "official reasons", if you pay some-one to do something, they either find a way to do it or you replace them.
Well, I wanted to play squats as my fantasy army was dwarfs (space wolves are the closest thing I could find), but they had stopped selling them where I lived by that point...
Yeah I think the bigger issue is GW having trouble with glass cannon units. They don't really work well within IGO-UGO. The canonical weakness of eldar is that they are very squishy for their points, and it's difficult to balance that kind of army in IGO-UGO. You either end up with something that gets brushed off the table too easily, or something that is so powerful that it brushes stuff off the table too easily. GW's system doesn't work very well with skewed units of any kind, but especially not with units with very high damage to durability ratios.
I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the less squishy portions of the CWE list that tend to see more play.
This is a bit of a ramble. Apologies ahead of time.
I feel your pain as I've watched it happen. The Shuriken Catapult bit is especially eggregious. Although I think overall the slide wasn't too terrible until later editions. Primaris (and Doctrines) just really take the cake though.
I've thought about this one quite a bit. My best rivals in 2nd, 3rd and 4th were Eldar, but past 2nd Eldar have had a really hard time expressing the core of the character I think most of us want to see (awesome Aspect Warriors kicking butt). Every edition some Eldar units are sort of inevitably the top of the heap in terms of competetiveness, but it's really never the diverse collection you'd want. Usually some combo of special rules brings one or two Aspects to the foreground, like Reapers and Spears in 8th, Spiders in 7th, Dragons in 5th, whatever. But by and large most of the Aspects wind up feeling like they linger behind.
I think some of the frustration here is actually the same as the ever-present marine players frustration however, which is "Why don't my elite soldiers feel elite?"
The answer to that is:
A: Pitched battles because it's meant to be a 'fair game'.
B: Scale of game
C: lacklustre terrain rules making firefight maneuvering less meaningful
D: Global stat inflation over time as newer biggerer units are introduced
E: (Eldar specific) the aforementioned erosion of parity-of-capability with marines.
But really. . . The fact of the scale change is really big, but also really helpful to reframe our thinking. Marines felt pretty rad in 2nd, getting into a good position and gunning down a bunch of Orks or whatever. But when the enemy can bring to bear a bunch of tanks with heavy hitting support weapons, like is standard fare today, the marines just die (as they should). Same with those cool Aspect Warriors. In 2nd ed you had an entire 6x4 table for a couple squads to try and outmaneuver each other, plus multiple to-hit modifiers to help keep you safer. We have neither the space in 8th, nor the evasive capability. We're playing less personal encounters, and playing something closer to Epic. The heroics of a of a squad of Scorpions is less likely to matter.
That said. . .
If you can embrace it as the tank-scale battle that 40K has become . . . Well, how do Eldar fight and fare in a tank battle? Imo, pretty darn good. If you set aside the painful fact that the Catapult secondary weapons aint what they should be, Wave Serpents are really great units and 100% iconic Eldar units for those of us experienced with Epic Eldar and their lore. You can build armies around the idea that the vehicles are faaar less precious than Eldar souls, and be really irritating to your opponents (as Eldar should be). If you consider Wave Serpents to be main battle line units which spar with the opponent while a few choice Aspect units engage with their specialty and by their initiative and choosing, then you have the makings of 'proper' Eldar behavior.
This is not to say that there aren't flaws which should be fixed, as there are many, but I do think that you can make a lore-proper Eldar army that is both viable and fun. I would try to frame my army build around that for starters, and then see where it got me.
I realize it's not 2nd though, Eldar in 2nd were really special. To be fair I want my 2nd Ed Assault Squads back, too. :(
Eldar have been competitive in every edition (at least as far as I know, I haven't played all of them) because there are just so many units of very different types that a few are bound to be good in whatever the particular edition's ruleset favors. But that's a far cry from being a satisfying army overall.
It's hard to think it's intentional how far they have fallen in terms of power level and points cost, particularly aspect warriors. I do not think GW can really be happy with 9 point striking scorpions compared to 7 point ork boyz. Hopefully in 9th they will finally get it together to redo the codex to make aspect warriors actual elite units again.
Yeah those are all good points Insectum and yukishiro.
What frustrates me is they seem to say 'well they're competitive' and leave it, rather than looking at the as a whole and trying to make them GOOD. Which is very different.
10 years ago I wrote my own eldar codex before 5th ed killed my interest. I did what GW have done with Primaris, created small unit sizes with high power output.
Aspects only being in squads of 3-6, highly destructive but still only T3 with 1W. Their armour and equipment was highly advanced as were their skills, but they still had that innate fragility.
The Indomintus box shows what GW can do well - space marines. Necrons are basically Xenos space marines, so they fit into the design space really easily - high toughness and armour.
Orks and nids also fit into that space to some degree and have that swarm aspect to fill in the gaps.
Tau are also good save and toughness due to battlesuits.
But the eldar (any of them), as a dying race and the glass cannon schtick, really have not been effectively represented since 2nd ed (you're right Insectum, that was a special time, ignoring the unintended abuses possible).
The core rules are written around T4 Sv3+, so the further the army drifts from that standard, the less they align with the game.
It just so happens that the eldar as a faction concept, no longer conceptually align with the way GW wants their game to play.
As much as I also hated the game breaking dumbness of Ward's High Elf army book where they all got 'always strikes first' it did attempt to keep that speed concept up to date with the shifting focus of the core rules.
GW haven't seemed to manage to doing this in 40k. As gross as it is, there aren't many ways I can think of in the current paradigm to try and bring the eldar back to that concept other than with rules exceptions like:
No non wraith unit can be hit on better than a 4+ cuz speed
or
Eldar armour can't be reduced to worse than a 4+ cuz speed
or
All eldar are considered 6" further away than they are for shooting cuz speed
Because what I don't want is another bland army that is just spam and psyker tricks. I want an army that doesn't need a farseer to be competitive, that can play across the range of units available.
It's that or they just give them higher Toughness and armour so they fit the game paradigm better. In which case I might as well just play 'counts as' Primaris with eldar miniatures - every difference can be justified through speed....
EDIT: I seem to be a sucker for underpowered units, because concept is always more important than execution. My screen name comes from the eldar corsair escort that was considered the worst at the time (you could spend 5pts more and get two separate ships with the combined same fire power as a Hellebore...), but I LOVED the concept of an escort so advanced it carried the equivalent of an imperial light cruiser's armamanents (in terms of output)....
I'm sorry, but it's extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar seriously.
Eldar have, over every edition, been a force to be reckoned with. In older iterations they were consistently kept strong because they were Phil Kelly's lovechild and he made sure they had a strong codex. Later on this continued because they're one of the most popular armies, so GW has made sure to keep them between "strong" and "gamebreakingly OP," across editions.
Now I won't say that being strong is always being fun. Plenty of units have been average / meh, and you generally do have to chase the new hotness to be gamebreakingly strong; from playing Taudar to stacking Wave Serpents and Wraith Knights.
But even then? Eldar still fairs better. Orks were arguably the worst army in the game in 6th and 7th edition. Nids were awful except for lists packed full of tervigons (in 6th) and flying tyrants (in 7th). Guard weren't as bad as Orks, but were still pretty freaking bad. These armys didn't just suffer from not being able to play into their lore, they suffered from flatly not being able to play. Period. At all.
Even now plenty of armies are in a worse spot than eldar. Orks have been desperately trying to roll with repeated gut punches, to where they're now a bizarre gunline army with tar-pit melee.
The closest Eldar have ever come to being outright bad was 4th edition. So while I sympathize with "my army doesn't play like it's lore says it should!", I find it really hard to give a feth when other armies are relegated to NPC status, and rather than being unable to play "lore friendly", they just can't play at all.
Eldar have not been competitive every edition; a handful of Eldar units have been competitive every edition. Easily half of the book is pretty garbage in 8th edition. You want proof? Almost every aspect warrior outside of Dark Reapers (expensive for what they do), and Shining Spears (one of the genuinely good units) has been made cheaper every single Chapter Approved, and were then given alternate Exarch powers...and most of them are still not taken. When was the last time you saw Falcons in play? Wraithknights on the table in 8th edition? Support weapon batteries? Phoenix Lords?, etc.
Eldar armies are generally one-trick ponies with a few powerful units, and that makes people hate Eldar armies. Some Eldar players *gasp* would like to use the other 60% of their fething codex sometimes.
You find it extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar? Good for you. I find it extremely hard to put up with the "You're Eldar, you're always so good, you don't have an opinion!" kind of nonsense.
I just revised my post, but I'll repeat it down here:
Being unable to play 60% of your book is lamentable, and being unable to make 'lore friendly' armies which are extraordinarily strong is also unfortunate.
But there are entire armies out there which can't even one-trick their way to anywhere near the top. It sucks that you can't play Eldar the way you want and be strong, but it's a far larger priority that there are whole armies which just can't be strong at all no matter how they play.
Which is why I, and others, find it incredibly hard to take any complaints by Eldar players seriously. The army is strong year after year, edition after edition.
Eldar complaining, to me, sounds like someone stepping outside of a nice restaurant and complaining to the starving homeless person on the corner that their order got messed up and now they have to wait for it to be done right. Yeah it sucks in context, but they're venturing about it to someone who'd be happy to just have some food to eat!
(after decades of people saying it would be broken to put 24" back on the catapult, they went made a BETTER version for the space marines...), and so on.
Well, that's what people said. None of those people though were GW....
See, here's the thing, people talk out of there as's all the time. Doesn't make them right.
Hellebore wrote: While they've expanded imperial armies from literally nothing (Ad Mech, primaris), they've shrunk eldar armies. We don't even have the option to take master warlocks or independent exarchs, but primaris get rando executioners never mentioned before?
Yeah? So what? You do realize that there was a time when much of the Eldar stuff itself fell into that category both rules & lore wise, right? I mean, you gotta mention stuff for the 1st time at some point....
As for what'll happen with the Eldar in 9th?
*At first, nothing. Your codex will roll over into 9th & you'll probably get some errata assuming there's something 9th interacts with oddly.
*Later on they'll change the box art on stuff to reflect the new logo. People on Dakka will freak out when anything disappears off GWs site for a moment while this change occurs.
*Eventually a new codex will arrive. It'll have some awesome broken rules. It'll have several all new, very cool, never before seen units. People will jump on the Eldar bandwagon. Also at that point I'd bet that anything still made in Finecast resin either gets new plastic kits or dropped. I also predict the Avatar will grow to about 18", be super spindly & fragile, be really hard to transport & cost about $300. And no doubt you'll be encouraged to use more than one in your army.
Then about 6 months later? GW will kick you in the nuts by releasing errata that nerfs practically every reason why someone would've have bought all that Eldar stuff.
There's certainly an argument to be made about relative competitive strengths over editions and posters seem to address this, however there's also a very separate discussion present in the original post about the identity of a specialised army being eroded by the ever expanding specialisation of GWs flagship army, and their expansion/invention of other armies who have strayed into Eldar territory - i.e Admech flyboys. Competitive strength doesn't diminish a request from players for their faction to have a unique space carved out for them and shouldn't be used a reason to shout those players down IMO.
I certainly feel some.of the same as the OP with regards to Dark Eldar as they do Eldar! So many special rules were original with those two armies and are now given to everyone or Imperium and in many cases stripped from their original armies.
Drager wrote: I certainly feel some.of the same as the OP with regards to Dark Eldar as they do Eldar! So many special rules were original with those two armies and are now given to everyone or Imperium and in many cases stripped from their original armies.
Exactly my thoughts. Drukhari are one 'Imperium Open-Topped Transport' away from irrelevance.
its a kind of benign neglect as the bad units have just been copy / paste for at least 3 editions
meanwhile other factions have got bumps to bring them on par with the good units, and then a bit more to sell the new hotness
then when we get new hotness they assign the rules to the infinate monkey department, honestly would a +1S on charge banshee exarch power been to much bother, and the less said about the Dark kin Kabals the better, oh and the best new rule if pilfered from them fire spacemans
Eldar have not been competitive every edition; a handful of Eldar units have been competitive every edition. Easily half of the book is pretty garbage in 8th edition. You want proof? Almost every aspect warrior outside of Dark Reapers (expensive for what they do), and Shining Spears (one of the genuinely good units) has been made cheaper every single Chapter Approved, and were then given alternate Exarch powers...and most of them are still not taken. When was the last time you saw Falcons in play? Wraithknights on the table in 8th edition? Support weapon batteries? Phoenix Lords?, etc.
Eldar armies are generally one-trick ponies with a few powerful units, and that makes people hate Eldar armies. Some Eldar players *gasp* would like to use the other 60% of their fething codex sometimes.
You find it extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar? Good for you. I find it extremely hard to put up with the "You're Eldar, you're always so good, you don't have an opinion!" kind of nonsense.
Not to be nitpicky but Falcons and Support Weapons are now actually pretty good because of points decreases and Expert Crafters. 9 Vibro Cannons is some disgusting stuff.
(after decades of people saying it would be broken to put 24" back on the catapult, they went made a BETTER version for the space marines...), and so on.
Well, that's what people said. None of those people though were GW....
See, here's the thing, people talk out of there as's all the time. Doesn't make them right.
GW made their position pretty clear by releasing Eldar for over 20 years across 5 editions without changing it. The master crafters trait is the first time in 22 years that the shuriken catapult has had a range of greater than 12". During that time they bent over backwards making rapid fire better while doing very little with assault. Seems pretty clear to me.
Hellebore wrote: While they've expanded imperial armies from literally nothing (Ad Mech, primaris), they've shrunk eldar armies. We don't even have the option to take master warlocks or independent exarchs, but primaris get rando executioners never mentioned before?
Yeah? So what? You do realize that there was a time when much of the Eldar stuff itself fell into that category both rules & lore wise, right? I mean, you gotta mention stuff for the 1st time at some point....
As for what'll happen with the Eldar in 9th?
*At first, nothing. Your codex will roll over into 9th & you'll probably get some errata assuming there's something 9th interacts with oddly.
*Later on they'll change the box art on stuff to reflect the new logo. People on Dakka will freak out when anything disappears off GWs site for a moment while this change occurs.
*Eventually a new codex will arrive. It'll have some awesome broken rules. It'll have several all new, very cool, never before seen units. People will jump on the Eldar bandwagon. Also at that point I'd bet that anything still made in Finecast resin either gets new plastic kits or dropped. I also predict the Avatar will grow to about 18", be super spindly & fragile, be really hard to transport & cost about $300. And no doubt you'll be encouraged to use more than one in your army.
Then about 6 months later? GW will kick you in the nuts by releasing errata that nerfs practically every reason why someone would've have bought all that Eldar stuff.
It's pretty funny you using that argument as I've done that for 20 years trying to convince people that its ok that non imperial armies get new units without a precedent. It seems to only fly for the umpteen different units the stagnant imperium invents every other week. Suggest the Eldar get a new unit, or options for an existing one and people shout it down...
The point I was making is that the Eldar have LOST options and this is just asking for them back yet that's too hard but a dozen wholly new units is fine so long as it doesn't belong to them?
eldar have lost options, still in a decent state.
Dark eldar have lost MOST of their HQ section you allready see cracks in equipment.
Corsairs don't even exist anymore really.
Not to mention there are armies out there that seen nothing in all of 8th, not even a codex.
And whilest the incessant primaris spam is annoying at best, eldar were still rulewise in a decent spot for most editions due to certain builds.
Now if you ask me if the codex is healthy, aka internally soundly balanced, no. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
by a long shot, it's like with csm, everythings alpha legion or it more or less is a specialst detachment that otherwise sucks.
Now, SM are on a powerlevel where even most of their sucky units are fieldable, whilest most other factions can't really justify their average unit to be fielded but that is normal for GW, because as the new gw is the old gw + a PR department.
Which options have Eldar lost? The True Kin look on with envy.
I too was sad when the Shuriken Catapult got cut to 12", and it seemed entirely irrational that a supposedly dying race would be sending out guardians with a gun that meant whatever they could attack, definitely could charge them (and probably wipe them) next turn.
But it was 20+ years ago. And rather quickly we all discovered our Lord and Savior the Starcannon, and the rest of that edition was history.
As people have said, Eldar have had a top tier selection of units in every edition except 5th (and even then I think their "badness" is exaggerated - but they lacked an obvious *take X, Y and Z, mop the floor with 50% of the game* build).
I guess I can appreciate a bit of sadness that an Aspect Warrior focused Footdar list has gone from being good in 2nd, to possibly not the most competitive but still okay in 3rd and 4th, to being a bit crap the last ten years. But as said, there are so many armies that have had a much worse time over the decades.
As for where Eldar go - thats unclear. The boring option is that you will just slowly see the ancient finecast brought out in new plastic. Would GW ever have the confidence to make new aspect warriors? New takes on how guardians or wraith constructs operate? Its possible - but to a degree I'd more expect them to break out new Ynnari, or Exodites, where you have something of a clean slate. Even if you can argue its all duplication of pointy ear units.
I think Eldar's schtick was always meant to be the glasshammer and small numbers but fast and deadly. Unfortunately it's difficult to portray such an army with the way the game is (and always has been without well thought out *tee-hee* special rules.)
Part of the problem is that it's an army that is quite reliant on penalties to hit as a defence, which can be really unfun for your opponent, and has been increasingly eroded by the slow drip of 'ignore penalties' and re-rolls.
Even with Drukhari, it can be dispiriting to play against someone who constantly moans about Venoms being -1 to hit, but is quite happy destroying vehicles with simple bolter fire.
It may all be too much trouble for GW, who I suspect would be happiest rolling all the Aeldari factions into 'Codex Spess Elfs'
I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad. A 55 point unit that can shut down entire enemy castles is bad and unplayable? Deep Striking saturation units that eat chaff with the capability of droping mortal wounds here and there are bad?
Eldar players live complaining about how bad their codex is when they are just soo deep into the internet dogma about whats competitive and what isn't that they lack the knowledge to actually play their armies. Is very easy to see if a player knows to play eldar or it doesnt. The ones that do rarely complaint about their codex and I have seen many of the top eldar players of Spain destroy flyer spam , dark reaper, shinning spear lists of less knowledge players with things like Fire Dragons.
Because thats the reality of this: We all are for the most part actually quite bad at this game.
We all know the theory, I know it myself, but then doing it on the table is much different. And TBH. How could we be other thing that bad or mediocre at the game? How one can be good at something he plays/Does 3-4 times a month?
Theres some bad units on the eldar codex, thats true, they have too many units to not have some. But the medium powerlevel of nearly every unit in the eldar codex is leagues ahead of many others.
Maybe that has relation also when playing ITC vs WTC. ITC makes a ton of units unusable across all of the game, WTC/ETC/CA tournaments has a much bigger variety of lists and units used.
harlokin wrote: Part of the problem is that it's an army that is quite reliant on penalties to hit as a defence, which can be really unfun for your opponent, and has been increasingly eroded by the slow drip of 'ignore penalties' and re-rolls.
Even with Drukhari, it can be dispiriting to play against someone who constantly moans about Venoms being -1 to hit, but is quite happy destroying vehicles with simple bolter fire.
It may all be too much trouble for GW, who I suspect would be happiest rolling all the Aeldari factions into 'Codex Spess Elfs'
My local is starting to learn that Raider spam is by far worst than venom spam. Venom spam seems bad b.c its -1 (something you need to keep trak of when rolling/rr's) and has lots of shots so lots of dice. Raiders has no -1 (tho they are actually tougher vs 1D weapons) and has less shots. But when you play 9-10 of them vs 10-11 venoms, it is a HUGE difference in power for only 1 less model on the table. Then when you take them as AotF or DT they are either a lot more survivable or even more damaging.
About rolling into 1 book. Nah DE and CWE needs to stay separated, they have enough differences to not even think that should be a possibility. Ynnari and Quins being in the same book i'll be ok with (but separated sections and rules)
There are a few things I hope for in the new edition to make my eldar (and harlequins, and dark eldar) work as I'd actually like them to, as a lightning-strike army.
1) The ability for transports to drop units off after they move. 95% of eldar units have a 1-2" move differential between themselves and imperials, which doesn't really make for an army that actually feels FAST. What we do have is transports that move 12-14" with fly. I'm extremely hopeful that with all the rules for the TRANSPORT keyword living in the main rulebook, GW will realize that transports are supposed to do TWO jobs, not just one: 1, protect the models inside, they do that fairly well, but also 2, make footslogging models FASTER than they would be on foot! Seems obvious, apparently not to GW. Just make it at the end of the movement phase, so the units can't move afterwards except to charge, and you won't see any particular increase in the prevalence of turn 1 charges versus where we're at now, where many units can move just as fast if not faster than the transports (Reavers, Hellions, Razorwings to use some DE examples)
2) reworked terrain rules are actually quite nice for mobile MSU, as is "Defender fights first" that was just recently previewed. Eldar is very good at getting in to terrain in general, and I'm hopeful the new terrain system will lend them some solid advantages. Particularly if the system is less "All or Nothing". Currently, units only gain Cover if every single model meets the terrain-claiming criteria, but all the new previewed rules have said "Models" gain the benefits. We haven't seen the core rules for Obstacles and Area Terrain which will be how you actually claim cover, but I think that's a good sign.
3) Reworked morale to be more of a factor favors eldar, both because we have many rules that mess with morale AND primarily MSU units that typically don't get affected much by morale. waiting to see what the new attrition rule is, but better morale is better eldar.
4) Army building without (as much) of a troop+HQ tax focus. Partiuclarly the CWE do not like bringing tons of troops, it looks like the new army building structure is going to revolve around players trying to use every part of the buffalo and fit their army into a single Battalion detachment. Partiuclarly if the rumor of Drukhari keeping their triple patrol bonus is true (god I hope so, it'd be great to be able to field a triple patrol for free like others field a single battalion) that bodes well for arguably all but Harlequins, though they're so elite that fitting into just a batt isn't much of a challenge.
My local is starting to learn that Raider spam is by far worst than venom spam. Venom spam seems bad b.c its -1 (something you need to keep trak of when rolling/rr's) and has lots of shots so lots of dice. Raiders has no -1 (tho they are actually tougher vs 1D weapons) and has less shots. But when you play 9-10 of them vs 10-11 venoms, it is a HUGE difference in power for only 1 less model on the table. Then when you take them as AotF or DT they are either a lot more survivable or even more damaging.
About rolling into 1 book. Nah DE and CWE needs to stay separated, they have enough differences to not even think that should be a possibility. Ynnari and Quins being in the same book i'll be ok with (but separated sections and rules)
How often in history of w40k were eldar considered to be fun to play against with most armies in the setting? I know about pre 8th eldar only from local stories.
I think GW is often schizophrenic in their design philosophy on many of the units in the game. How do you make a brand new Jain Zar model (a freakin' Phoenix Lord) with only 4 attacks, and in the same breath allow a new space marine bike have 6 attacks?
Aspect warriors should be better, much better than they currently are.
I woudl love for Independent Exarchs to exist again, but don't see it happening (unless they call them Great Exarchs).
It's not all doom and gloom though, since the drop of Phoenix Rises, many Eldar units got a boost (along with points drops, but that will change here soon). Falcons became relevant again, weapon platforms, AP-1 on shuriken weaponry, etc.
I will be interested to see where they go with Eldar, and I do feel that 9th edition will be a major update for them. They have so many old kits that need to be redone, and have room for new models. The big decision they have to make, is what to do with Ynnari.
As others have posted, it's weird in that Eldar have been among the most competitively capable armies in every edition, and been among some of the most horrifically broken in several of them, and yet also often have abysmal internal balance and ostensibly fundamental core units like Guardians being underwhelming for the entirety of my 40k career and most editions of this game, along with some of the oldest models (though many hold up fine, the Falcon is a 2E kit and is still awesome).
I'm not sure what GW wants to do with them, and I'm not sure GW knows what GW wants to do with them. The Primaris thing has been kinda stepping on everyone's toes in various ways and Space Marines at this point can kinda do everyone else's schtick except for building a horde army.
My local is starting to learn that Raider spam is by far worst than venom spam. Venom spam seems bad b.c its -1 (something you need to keep trak of when rolling/rr's) and has lots of shots so lots of dice. Raiders has no -1 (tho they are actually tougher vs 1D weapons) and has less shots. But when you play 9-10 of them vs 10-11 venoms, it is a HUGE difference in power for only 1 less model on the table. Then when you take them as AotF or DT they are either a lot more survivable or even more damaging.
About rolling into 1 book. Nah DE and CWE needs to stay separated, they have enough differences to not even think that should be a possibility. Ynnari and Quins being in the same book i'll be ok with (but separated sections and rules)
How often in history of w40k were eldar considered to be fun to play against with most armies in the setting? I know about pre 8th eldar only from local stories.
I mean, he's talking about Dark Eldar, who historically have been an extremely different story to Craftworlds. Dark Eldar are possibly the most consistently bottom-tier army in 40k, possibly they've been competitive more than Tyranids have, maybe, but it's a close race to the bottom.
Craftworlds by contrast are typically a high tier except for in 5th edition. Harlequins have existed only in 2nd ed, 7th and 8th, and were not good in any edition they've existed in.
Vaktathi wrote: As others have posted, it's weird in that Eldar have been among the most competitively capable armies in every edition, and been among some of the most horrifically broken in several of them, and yet also often have abysmal internal balance and ostensibly fundamental core units like Guardians being underwhelming for the entirety of my 40k career and most editions of this game, along with some of the oldest models (though many hold up fine, the Falcon is a 2E kit and is still awesome).
I'm not sure what GW wants to do with them, and I'm not sure GW knows what GW wants to do with them. The Primaris thing has been kinda stepping on everyone's toes in various ways and Space Marines at this point can kinda do everyone else's schtick except for building a horde army.
Fully agree. The problem is as Hellebore stated erosion of theme.
When the Tau came out, they took the theme of high tech shooting that the Eldar used to have in 2nd edition. When the Dark Eldar came out, they took the sheer speed from the Craftworld Eldar. Thousand Sons and other introduced psychic disciplines gradually eroded the theme of Eldar psychic superiority. So what are Craftworld Eldar meant to be? Are they meant to be a sort of jack of all trades that compared to humanity leans more towards speed as defence but not as much as the Dark Eldar? Except the rules don't seem to really reward speed with much extra protection. Also having a jack of all trades is a bit "meh" when other factions have a theme of being good at something. The blanket +1 to WS and BS that Guardians got devalued Aspect Warriors' level of skill, and was a clumsy attempt to boost Guardians who remain a relic of the time when their competition was meant to be the Imperial Guardsman rather than MEQ.
That is not to say the Eldar have not been competitive. Their lists have always had stuff that worked, but it was littered with useless units that were relics of earlier editions, with an odd mixture of rules trying to make them useful. Point decreases for the unused Eldar units, while not unwelcome, are sort of an admission of defeat of any ideas to make them work. Eldar horde strikes me as very wrong in terms of background. The random grab bag of Exarch powers they threw in Phoenix Rising was an example of them throwing random rules and hoping something sticks. There is also the stubbornness of refusing to admit or abandon ideas that didn't work, such as the drop in shuriken catapult range from 24" in 2nd edition to 12" in 3rd edition. The following increase of the Dire Avenger catapult's range to 18" is a tacit admission that 12" wasn't a good weapon especially for fragile infantry like Guardians.
GW needs to take a good fundamental look at the Craftworld Eldar as many of the units, like Aspect Warriors, were initially designed for a far smaller game. Small squads of fragile infantry get deleted all too easily now, and even if not, their contribution is often very limited or dependent on too much other support.
I mean, he's talking about Dark Eldar, who historically have been an extremely different story to Craftworlds. Dark Eldar are possibly the most consistently bottom-tier army in 40k, possibly they've been competitive more than Tyranids have, maybe, but it's a close race to the bottom.
Craftworlds by contrast are typically a high tier except for in 5th edition. Harlequins have existed only in 2nd ed, 7th and 8th, and were not good in any edition they've existed in.
Wait. So in prior editions people couldn't mix different races in their armies
Quins were moved into the DE book for 4th-6th then they got a new army again.
There also was no mixing from 3rd-5th of armies and no one other than Corsairs in late 6th had Army traits. There was Formation bonuses or unit bonuses if you took XYZ or X amounts.
I mean, he's talking about Dark Eldar, who historically have been an extremely different story to Craftworlds. Dark Eldar are possibly the most consistently bottom-tier army in 40k, possibly they've been competitive more than Tyranids have, maybe, but it's a close race to the bottom.
Craftworlds by contrast are typically a high tier except for in 5th edition. Harlequins have existed only in 2nd ed, 7th and 8th, and were not good in any edition they've existed in.
Wait. So in prior editions people couldn't mix different races in their armies
Allies existed in 7th and 6th but they were a very limited thing in 5th and before. in 7th and 6th though the problem with bringing eldar allies with dark eldar and harlequins was the same problem you had earlier in this edition with "just bring guard allies" with the GK - why bring any GK then and not just 100% guard? The BEST parts of Harlequins and dark eldar were worse than the worst parts of Eldar.
DE have had two competitive metas since their introduction in 3rd ed: Both of them based around Venoms. now it's Kabalites in venoms, then it was Trueborns and Wyches in venoms.
I can remember the same number of competitive meta builds out of Tyranids and Orks, but I feel like Nids and Orks hung out around middle tier a lot more than Dark Eldar did, who were basically unplayable all thru 4th and 5th before their codex release, then went right back into the dumpster in 6th and 7th and prior to their codex 8th.
A big problem for Dark Eldar is that we have so few weapons and also relatively few units. This means when one thing is too good and gets nerfed (especially triple nerfed, like disintegrators got) we have nothing to replace it with, so we just become awful. If, for example, you nerf Assault Cannons, then Space Marines just switch weapons. We can't we don't have any others.
The nightspinner BY ITSELF is going to completely warp the game. Taking any unit more expensive than ork boyz at 6+ is basically suicide against any army that has a nightspinner.
Drager wrote: A big problem for Dark Eldar is that we have so few weapons and also relatively few units. This means when one thing is too good and gets nerfed (especially triple nerfed, like disintegrators got) we have nothing to replace it with, so we just become awful. If, for example, you nerf Assault Cannons, then Space Marines just switch weapons. We can't we don't have any others.
Don't worry, GW addressed this problem by removing ever more units and wargear from the DE codex.
If you're wondering how this solves the problem, it encourages DE players to give up and play a proper army instead.
About rolling into 1 book. Nah DE and CWE needs to stay separated, they have enough differences to not even think that should be a possibility. Ynnari and Quins being in the same book i'll be ok with (but separated sections and rules)
There was a time when I would have wholeheartedly agreed.
Now though, this seems like the only way DE might ever be allowed worthwhile HQ choices.
Now GW can tell you what Eldar will be like in 9th.
Spoiler:
Not to give it away, but it turns out that the new general rules that apply to everyone also apply to the Eldar! WOW!
JFC, that last previewed rule...
So, when exactly is that ever going to be useful on a substantial unit of DA and not used on the couple that are miraculously left after one of the many guns in other armies that can easily wipe them out looked their way?
ERJAK wrote: The nightspinner BY ITSELF is going to completely warp the game. Taking any unit more expensive than ork boyz at 6+ is basically suicide against any army that has a nightspinner.
It's the Nightspinner's turn, though. Most Eldar units get to have an edition where they're the most broken thing in the Codex, the Nightspinner hasn't gotten one yet.
Drager wrote: A big problem for Dark Eldar is that we have so few weapons and also relatively few units. This means when one thing is too good and gets nerfed (especially triple nerfed, like disintegrators got) we have nothing to replace it with, so we just become awful. If, for example, you nerf Assault Cannons, then Space Marines just switch weapons. We can't we don't have any others.
The problem is 90% of the gear was taken away, changed, or nerf. They have lots of units, just most of it fills the same roles as other units now and are straight bad. And they also took away literally over 20 unit entries between 2 books. When they redsign the 3 main heroes into plastic they then took away even more options instead of giving them more like Wings/Skyboard/Bikes.
Reavers use to auto hit when they flew over or charged, that weapons is there melee weapon now locked at Str 4, so drugs can not effect it and they no longer have 2 attack profiles (the Auto hits + melee) making the leader pointless to take a weapon, not only did they get their rile taken away, but they also are 1/3 the damage as before. Finally a lot of their special gear rules went to a stratagem.. which is stupid b.c that means Reavers and Hellions both can use each others special rules making them not special at all.
Hellions was made to kill characters in units, they had a special rule to target characters, this is gone and now they have no purpose other than trash
Court used to be in units, this is gone so now they are no longer viable in any way to protect the character
Scourges, they are to weak, thats it, they don't do anything and just die. Mandrakes does what they do better.
Beasts again used to be in units and the BM was 12pts, you took X amount of beasts per BM and you can have 1-5 BM's in a unit. This was a horde unit with 3-5 Wyches on Skyboards and a mix of 8-10 kymerae's, 4-6 RWF, and a Clawed fiend. Their entire unit is ripped apart and way over costed. Also the BM doesn't need to be a character, and if he is make him an HQ ffs.
DE had lots of units and options, GW just kept taking them away one after another making each unit more and more just Str 4 or poison, or Blaster/Lance/HWB only. It also doesn't help that 8th doesn't care about dedicated specialist units like Incubi when Grots does the same thing but are just better at it b.c they are tougher and rolls more dice, they also have a stratagem to re-roll wounds which Drazhar gives to Incubi, having multi units with the same rules makes specialist units pointless.
Previewed? Buddy that last one ain't new. That's one of the replacement Exarch Powers that the DAs got in Phoenix Rising, the first PA book.
I'm sorry if this made the pain worse somehow.
Ah, not picked any of them up as I saw them as a waste of cash. Lobbing my money down the toilet would have been more useful and representative of what buying those books would be to me.
Drager wrote: A big problem for Dark Eldar is that we have so few weapons and also relatively few units. This means when one thing is too good and gets nerfed (especially triple nerfed, like disintegrators got) we have nothing to replace it with, so we just become awful. If, for example, you nerf Assault Cannons, then Space Marines just switch weapons. We can't we don't have any others.
...except in those situations where we have 67 weapons that all do the exact same thing in the exact same way.
"Say jim I'm just about done designing that Haemonculus melee weapon list and I just have one question"
"Yes steve?"
"Should any of these weapons be like, an anti-horde weapon, an anti-tank weapon, maybe a strength boosting one?"
"Nah, I was thinking just 9 different poison melee weapons with slightly different AP values"
"Ok, sounds good to me"
"Make sure one of them does a mortal wound on a 6"
"YES, I was JUST thinking that - I LOVE that dang mechanic, it is just my favorite!!!"
Vaktathi wrote: As others have posted, it's weird in that Eldar have been among the most competitively capable armies in every edition, and been among some of the most horrifically broken in several of them, and yet also often have abysmal internal balance and ostensibly fundamental core units like Guardians being underwhelming for the entirety of my 40k career and most editions of this game, along with some of the oldest models (though many hold up fine, the Falcon is a 2E kit and is still awesome).
I'm not sure what GW wants to do with them, and I'm not sure GW knows what GW wants to do with them. The Primaris thing has been kinda stepping on everyone's toes in various ways and Space Marines at this point can kinda do everyone else's schtick except for building a horde army.
Fully agree. The problem is as Hellebore stated erosion of theme.
When the Tau came out, they took the theme of high tech shooting that the Eldar used to have in 2nd edition. When the Dark Eldar came out, they took the sheer speed from the Craftworld Eldar. Thousand Sons and other introduced psychic disciplines gradually eroded the theme of Eldar psychic superiority. So what are Craftworld Eldar meant to be? Are they meant to be a sort of jack of all trades that compared to humanity leans more towards speed as defence but not as much as the Dark Eldar? Except the rules don't seem to really reward speed with much extra protection. Also having a jack of all trades is a bit "meh" when other factions have a theme of being good at something. The blanket +1 to WS and BS that Guardians got devalued Aspect Warriors' level of skill, and was a clumsy attempt to boost Guardians who remain a relic of the time when their competition was meant to be the Imperial Guardsman rather than MEQ.
That is not to say the Eldar have not been competitive. Their lists have always had stuff that worked, but it was littered with useless units that were relics of earlier editions, with an odd mixture of rules trying to make them useful. Point decreases for the unused Eldar units, while not unwelcome, are sort of an admission of defeat of any ideas to make them work. Eldar horde strikes me as very wrong in terms of background. The random grab bag of Exarch powers they threw in Phoenix Rising was an example of them throwing random rules and hoping something sticks. There is also the stubbornness of refusing to admit or abandon ideas that didn't work, such as the drop in shuriken catapult range from 24" in 2nd edition to 12" in 3rd edition. The following increase of the Dire Avenger catapult's range to 18" is a tacit admission that 12" wasn't a good weapon especially for fragile infantry like Guardians.
GW needs to take a good fundamental look at the Craftworld Eldar as many of the units, like Aspect Warriors, were initially designed for a far smaller game. Small squads of fragile infantry get deleted all too easily now, and even if not, their contribution is often very limited or dependent on too much other support.
Yeah, the army feels very stuck in its 2E/early 3E paradigm (which in some ways is cool, but in some ways doesn't work either). Honestly I'm not sure they have a coherent design philosophy really beyond that, GW is really good at making a couple things really busted seemingly just "Because Space Elfs" that makes the army work competitively, but has largely let the game overrun itself and kinda bury the utility of many units like Aspect Warriors. The point about stuff like Aspect Warriors being suited to smaller games is absolutely true, scale creep has really thrown off a lot of stuff with 40k in general and they're certainly one of the victims, and GW's repeated patching of Shuriken weapons definitely shows they've never quite nailed them down either.
Drager wrote: A big problem for Dark Eldar is that we have so few weapons and also relatively few units. This means when one thing is too good and gets nerfed (especially triple nerfed, like disintegrators got) we have nothing to replace it with, so we just become awful. If, for example, you nerf Assault Cannons, then Space Marines just switch weapons. We can't we don't have any others.
...except in those situations where we have 67 weapons that all do the exact same thing in the exact same way.
"Say jim I'm just about done designing that Haemonculus melee weapon list and I just have one question"
"Yes steve?"
"Should any of these weapons be like, an anti-horde weapon, an anti-tank weapon, maybe a strength boosting one?"
"Nah, I was thinking just 9 different poison melee weapons with slightly different AP values"
"Ok, sounds good to me"
"Make sure one of them does a mortal wound on a 6"
"YES, I was JUST thinking that - I LOVE that dang mechanic, it is just my favorite!!!"
The Warhammer Community Faction Focus today is on Eldar, and it really, really feels like the guy GW used to make commentary was struggling very hard to make it sound like Eldar in 9th were going to do great.
He totally downplayed Eldar "soup" saying you'll want to field a single detachment to maximize your CP, or accept the consequence of cherry picking and running more than one detachment with fewer CP (so... overall nerf?). The spoiled objective, "Engage on All Fronts".... ummm.... smaller games on a smaller table and I can score extra points by spreading out my army to three or more table quarters? Hmmmm. Key Units: Shining Spears (go figure), Night Spinners because they are apparently getting blast to the Doomweaver, and Dire Avengers. Color me... underwhelmed.
Good luck Eldar players! Looks like you ain't gettin' nothin' out of 9th.
Drager wrote: A big problem for Dark Eldar is that we have so few weapons and also relatively few units. This means when one thing is too good and gets nerfed (especially triple nerfed, like disintegrators got) we have nothing to replace it with, so we just become awful. If, for example, you nerf Assault Cannons, then Space Marines just switch weapons. We can't we don't have any others.
...except in those situations where we have 67 weapons that all do the exact same thing in the exact same way.
"Say jim I'm just about done designing that Haemonculus melee weapon list and I just have one question"
"Yes steve?"
"Should any of these weapons be like, an anti-horde weapon, an anti-tank weapon, maybe a strength boosting one?"
"Nah, I was thinking just 9 different poison melee weapons with slightly different AP values"
"Ok, sounds good to me"
"Make sure one of them does a mortal wound on a 6"
"YES, I was JUST thinking that - I LOVE that dang mechanic, it is just my favorite!!!"
I'm glad you brought this up. I think it's one of the most frustrating things about a lot of DE units, with the Haemonculus probably being the worst.
I'd suggest that another problem is that GW have made us a poison-themed army, yet our Poisoned weapons are consistently awful, compared to those of other races.
As an example, not counting Relics, DE have 2 varieties of Poison Pistol:
Splinter Pistol: S- AP0 D1 Poison 4+
Stinger Pistol: S- AP0 D1 Poison 2+
Now let's compare that to the Needle Pistol available to some GSC units:
Needle Pistol: S- AP0 Dd3 Poison 2+
So their poison pistol is objectively better than both of ours.
Now how about another comparison:
Haemonculus Tools: S- D1 AP0 Poison 4+
Venom Blade: S- AP0 D1 Poison 2+
Now let's look at the GSC Toxin Injector Claw:
Toxin Injector Claw: S: User AP-1 D1 Poison 2+
Injector Goad: S+1 AP0 Dd3 Poison 2+, Can potentially inflict d3 additional wounds against a damaged character.
Once again, both of the GSC weapons are just objectively better than the ones available to DE. For the record, I'd also take the Toxin Injector Claw over either an Agoniser or Scissorhands, but at least those have *something* going for them.
One final comparison. This is the best weapon available to a DE Haemonculus:
Electrocorrosive Whip: S- AP-2 D2 Poison 4+
Now let's look at a last one from GSCs:
Sanctus Bio-Dagger: S1 AP-2 D2, Poison 2+, Wielder makes an extra attack
So the Electrocorrosive Whip is literally the best possible weapon a Haemonculus can get, and the Sanctus Bio-Dagger outclasses it completely. Hell, the Sanctus Bio-Dagger basically takes the best traits of every weapon available to a Haemonculus and combines them together into a single weapon.
Now, to be clear, I'm not arguing that these things necessarily make GSCs better than DE. Instead, my point relates to the aforementioned erosion of theme. What is the point of giving DE a Poison theme, only to then give them the worst Poison weapons in the game. Even if their weapons aren't the best, surely they should at least be able to claim access to the best Poison Weapons? But instead what we see is the opposite. Races without a strong poison theme like Nids or GSCs are given a multitude of strong/useful/thematic Poison Weapons, whilst the Poison-Themed DE have to live with a trash-heap of bland, flavourless and almost universally ineffective options.
Compare a Canoness to a Archon (Blessed blade vs Huskblade, Inferno P vs Blast P, PfP vs AoF/MD, other supporting heroes and traits). And you'll just like me hate the Archon and wish you were playing SoB.
Amishprn86 wrote: Compare a Canoness to a Archon (Blessed blade vs Huskblade, Inferno P vs Blast P, PfP vs AoF/MD, other supporting heroes and traits). And you'll just like me hate the Archon and wish you were playing SoB.
That's also very true. Even the basic wargear of a Canoness puts that of the Archon to shame.
What's more, there seem to be far more effective ways to build a Canoness, which are supported by the available Relics and Warlord Traits.
Meanwhile, Archons are generally stuck not doing a whole lot regardless of how you equip them.
Vaktathi wrote: As others have posted, it's weird in that Eldar have been among the most competitively capable armies in every edition, and been among some of the most horrifically broken in several of them, and yet also often have abysmal internal balance and ostensibly fundamental core units like Guardians being underwhelming for the entirety of my 40k career and most editions of this game, along with some of the oldest models (though many hold up fine, the Falcon is a 2E kit and is still awesome).
I'm not sure what GW wants to do with them, and I'm not sure GW knows what GW wants to do with them. The Primaris thing has been kinda stepping on everyone's toes in various ways and Space Marines at this point can kinda do everyone else's schtick except for building a horde army.
Fully agree. The problem is as Hellebore stated erosion of theme.
When the Tau came out, they took the theme of high tech shooting that the Eldar used to have in 2nd edition. When the Dark Eldar came out, they took the sheer speed from the Craftworld Eldar. Thousand Sons and other introduced psychic disciplines gradually eroded the theme of Eldar psychic superiority. So what are Craftworld Eldar meant to be? Are they meant to be a sort of jack of all trades that compared to humanity leans more towards speed as defence but not as much as the Dark Eldar? Except the rules don't seem to really reward speed with much extra protection. Also having a jack of all trades is a bit "meh" when other factions have a theme of being good at something. The blanket +1 to WS and BS that Guardians got devalued Aspect Warriors' level of skill, and was a clumsy attempt to boost Guardians who remain a relic of the time when their competition was meant to be the Imperial Guardsman rather than MEQ.
That is not to say the Eldar have not been competitive. Their lists have always had stuff that worked, but it was littered with useless units that were relics of earlier editions, with an odd mixture of rules trying to make them useful. Point decreases for the unused Eldar units, while not unwelcome, are sort of an admission of defeat of any ideas to make them work. Eldar horde strikes me as very wrong in terms of background. The random grab bag of Exarch powers they threw in Phoenix Rising was an example of them throwing random rules and hoping something sticks. There is also the stubbornness of refusing to admit or abandon ideas that didn't work, such as the drop in shuriken catapult range from 24" in 2nd edition to 12" in 3rd edition. The following increase of the Dire Avenger catapult's range to 18" is a tacit admission that 12" wasn't a good weapon especially for fragile infantry like Guardians.
GW needs to take a good fundamental look at the Craftworld Eldar as many of the units, like Aspect Warriors, were initially designed for a far smaller game. Small squads of fragile infantry get deleted all too easily now, and even if not, their contribution is often very limited or dependent on too much other support.
Yeah, the army feels very stuck in its 2E/early 3E paradigm (which in some ways is cool, but in some ways doesn't work either). Honestly I'm not sure they have a coherent design philosophy really beyond that, GW is really good at making a couple things really busted seemingly just "Because Space Elfs" that makes the army work competitively, but has largely let the game overrun itself and kinda bury the utility of many units like Aspect Warriors. The point about stuff like Aspect Warriors being suited to smaller games is absolutely true, scale creep has really thrown off a lot of stuff with 40k in general and they're certainly one of the victims, and GW's repeated patching of Shuriken weapons definitely shows they've never quite nailed them down either.
warhammer 40k
Expectation: superhuman warriors of various alien races maneuver around the battlefield to achieve objectives. Troops charge an enemy position, tanks trade fire across ruins, elite units leap from transports to unload short range weaponry into the enemy
Reality: players set their armies up, roll and re-roll 500 dice over the course of 4 hours, pick their miniatures up and call the game top of turn 3 with 2-3 units on either side having moved any meaningful distance.
Amishprn86 wrote: Compare a Canoness to a Archon (Blessed blade vs Huskblade, Inferno P vs Blast P, PfP vs AoF/MD, other supporting heroes and traits). And you'll just like me hate the Archon and wish you were playing SoB.
That's also very true. Even the basic wargear of a Canoness puts that of the Archon to shame.
What's more, there seem to be far more effective ways to build a Canoness, which are supported by the available Relics and Warlord Traits.
Meanwhile, Archons are generally stuck not doing a whole lot regardless of how you equip them.
That b.c they took away 15+ pieces of wargear away and nerf the ones that are left. Huskblades used to be INSANE, now they are weaker than everyone else's version.
ERJAK wrote: The nightspinner BY ITSELF is going to completely warp the game. Taking any unit more expensive than ork boyz at 6+ is basically suicide against any army that has a nightspinner.
No, it won't. Because of the 2d6 profile, the bonus against units of 6 to 10 is effectively nothing - you go from a minimum of 2 shots to a minimum of 3. It ends up being an increase of maximum of one shot, and on average it's about 1/20th of a shot more than before. It's completely irrelevant.
The bonus against units of 11+ is huge, but 9th edition seems intent on making nobody ever want to take units of more than 10, so I don't expect you'll see any in the first place. And even if you did, a nightspinner is rarely going to be wanting to shoot at horde units even with a gauranteed 12 shots.
If fall-back is getting a nerf so FLY doesn't allow you to shoot after falling back (obviously just a rumor, nobody knows at this point), nightspinners getting blast will actually be a NERF, not a buff.
Amishprn86 wrote: Compare a Canoness to a Archon (Blessed blade vs Huskblade, Inferno P vs Blast P, PfP vs AoF/MD, other supporting heroes and traits). And you'll just like me hate the Archon and wish you were playing SoB.
That's also very true. Even the basic wargear of a Canoness puts that of the Archon to shame.
What's more, there seem to be far more effective ways to build a Canoness, which are supported by the available Relics and Warlord Traits.
Meanwhile, Archons are generally stuck not doing a whole lot regardless of how you equip them.
That b.c they took away 15+ pieces of wargear away and nerf the ones that are left. Huskblades used to be INSANE, now they are weaker than everyone else's version.
Huskblades, Hex Rifles and Implosion Missiles all used to cause instant death. I miss that. Now they're all just bad.
Amishprn86 wrote: Compare a Canoness to a Archon (Blessed blade vs Huskblade, Inferno P vs Blast P, PfP vs AoF/MD, other supporting heroes and traits). And you'll just like me hate the Archon and wish you were playing SoB.
Yeah, and autarchs are in the same place.
In fact every craftworlds eldar character besides the psykers is extremely cookie-cutter and feels very underpowered at this point, except maybe Asurmen and that's mostly just because of his aura.
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
Galas wrote: I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad. A 55 point unit that can shut down entire enemy castles is bad and unplayable? Deep Striking saturation units that eat chaff with the capability of droping mortal wounds here and there are bad?
Eldar players live complaining about how bad their codex is when they are just soo deep into the internet dogma about whats competitive and what isn't that they lack the knowledge to actually play their armies. Is very easy to see if a player knows to play eldar or it doesnt. The ones that do rarely complaint about their codex and I have seen many of the top eldar players of Spain destroy flyer spam , dark reaper, shinning spear lists of less knowledge players with things like Fire Dragons.
Because thats the reality of this: We all are for the most part actually quite bad at this game.
We all know the theory, I know it myself, but then doing it on the table is much different. And TBH. How could we be other thing that bad or mediocre at the game? How one can be good at something he plays/Does 3-4 times a month?
Theres some bad units on the eldar codex, thats true, they have too many units to not have some. But the medium powerlevel of nearly every unit in the eldar codex is leagues ahead of many others.
Maybe that has relation also when playing ITC vs WTC. ITC makes a ton of units unusable across all of the game, WTC/ETC/CA tournaments has a much bigger variety of lists and units used.
I agree with just about everything you have stated. I think the hard truth is that the average player, like myself, probably gets about half of the total efficacy out of any particular unit. I think that its a miniatures game, and most of the time, how you play it is more important than what you are playing. That isnt to say all of the time, obvioulsy there are lopsided situations that create unwinnable game states for one player or another, but on the whole, the reason, I would wager, the biggest reason reason why people loose their games is because of themselves.
I have seen really good players play from losing positions into a win, and I have seen really bad players play the current hotshot meta list and loose to a pretty unoptimized list.
It's really funny to me when you play an army, and you play a model that "isn't competitive" and your opponents ask what it does, and when you tell them, they are like "why don't I ever see more of them?" When i see this happen, and I see it a lot in my local area (or at least i used too prior to 'rona messing everything up for a bit) it always makes me laugh a bit inside because its a wonderful example of how something can be both "not optimal" and still "better than people think" all at the same time.
Hell, id wager that most of the models in most codexes normally fit into that kind of lukewarm category. What the worst part of it is, is given the time constraints on playing, and on painting and preparing models for the table, people dont want to waste their time with something that "isnt the best", and I don't blame them for that, not at all, my time is limited, and I'm sure everyone else is too, but it does open the door for things to be dismissed out of hand far too quickly.
War walkers and Falcons are a good example in the Aeldari codex. Falcons are quite good now with their most recent points reductions, and warwalkers are way better than people i think give them credit. A local was playing with these two elements in their games just to test them and he was brutalizing people with "bad" units. He is also a better player than just about anyone in my area, so again, I'd offer that its more about how you play than what you are playing.
One of the biggest problems for DE is that the poison mechanic as currently written just doesn’t function in the current game. It’s like we’re trying to fight with muskets against armies equipped with modern assault rifles.
"Good players make bad units work" doesn't mean they aren't bad units, it just means good players are good.
But FWIW war walkers and Falcons are both good now because of the ridiculous cheese of the EC/MS combo.
Honestly, GW backed themselves into a corner here because EC/MS makes single entity units so much vastly better that they can't buff them without making them overpowered.
EC/MS needs to disappear in the new codex and be replaced with army-wide buffs, not this terrible bandaid for bad design.
yukishiro1 wrote: "Good players make bad units work" doesn't mean they aren't bad units, it just means good players are good.
But FWIW war walkers and Falcons are both good now because of the ridiculous cheese of the EC/MS combo.
Honestly, GW backed themselves into a corner here because EC/MS makes single entity units so much vastly better that they can't buff them without making them overpowered.
EC/MS needs to disappear in the new codex and be replaced with army-wide buffs, not this terrible bandaid for bad design.
Yes, how you play is more important that what you are playing, most times. I actually think that, with the exception of specific outliers, like the IH and IF codexes, or Ynnari before rework, or AM soup with pre-nerf RIS and Castellan costs, for the typical game of CA missions, the game is a lot more balanced than people give it credit for. That's not to say that anything can beat any other army on any given Sunday, but it is to say that "junk" or "bad" units normally arent as bad as people say they are.
Also, what are you referring too with EC/MS? I'm sure I'm familiar with the concept, just not the abbreviation.
EC = Expert Crafts its really good on a lot of units like Wraithlords, Wraithseers, War Walkers, etc.. ones with good strong single shot guns. You can go Masterful shots for Ignore cover or if all wraiths Wrath of the Dead.
A spearhead with 2 Wraitseers and 3 Wraithlords with CE and WotD are really fun to play and IMO pretty good.
Eldar have not been competitive every edition; a handful of Eldar units have been competitive every edition. Easily half of the book is pretty garbage in 8th edition. You want proof? Almost every aspect warrior outside of Dark Reapers (expensive for what they do), and Shining Spears (one of the genuinely good units) has been made cheaper every single Chapter Approved, and were then given alternate Exarch powers...and most of them are still not taken. When was the last time you saw Falcons in play? Wraithknights on the table in 8th edition? Support weapon batteries? Phoenix Lords?, etc.
Eldar armies are generally one-trick ponies with a few powerful units, and that makes people hate Eldar armies. Some Eldar players *gasp* would like to use the other 60% of their fething codex sometimes.
You find it extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar? Good for you. I find it extremely hard to put up with the "You're Eldar, you're always so good, you don't have an opinion!" kind of nonsense.
Here is an idea, maybe we get all factions able to compete with at least one list, then we can pivot to make sure every eldar unit is worthy of a five star rating. The Eldar faction spent the entire edition being awesome, and had better than a 70% win rate for several FAQ cycles, but to hear this guy talk that is not good enough for him. It's hard to parody this opinion because it is already so over the top, in an edition where entire factions have never made it to the podium, this guy is like "Wait, not every eldar unit is amazing, so that's where GWs focus needs to be". If I were to try and make a meme post that exemplifies how the community perceives eldar players, I don't think I could do better than this. It's so unselfaware that were it not for his post history I'd argue that he is a Poe trolling the Eldar haters.
The OP wasn't complaining about Eldar as a faction being underpowered, but that so much of what should be the core of their army doesn't work, the new stuff they've gotten is relatively limited, and that much of what made them unique in older editions is no longer the case. I don't think that's an unfair complaint nor is it a mutually exclusive state of affairs with Eldar being competitively broken in many respects through most editions. That can all be true.
Same way I can complain that Vanquishers are garbage while Tank Commanders are hilariously overpowered. Both can be true
Eldar have not been competitive every edition; a handful of Eldar units have been competitive every edition. Easily half of the book is pretty garbage in 8th edition. You want proof? Almost every aspect warrior outside of Dark Reapers (expensive for what they do), and Shining Spears (one of the genuinely good units) has been made cheaper every single Chapter Approved, and were then given alternate Exarch powers...and most of them are still not taken. When was the last time you saw Falcons in play? Wraithknights on the table in 8th edition? Support weapon batteries? Phoenix Lords?, etc.
Eldar armies are generally one-trick ponies with a few powerful units, and that makes people hate Eldar armies. Some Eldar players *gasp* would like to use the other 60% of their fething codex sometimes.
You find it extremely hard to take anyone's complaints about Eldar? Good for you. I find it extremely hard to put up with the "You're Eldar, you're always so good, you don't have an opinion!" kind of nonsense.
Support Weapons just got a whole lot more interesting as did Wraithlords/Knights. There's also a difference between "bad" and "not as good as the best units in the codex". It is just easier to use CHEs and the like instead of Scorpions or other units, because you get those stacking modifiers and less concern about losses, but with stacking going away other units will have room to breathe.
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
That b.c they took away 15+ pieces of wargear away and nerf the ones that are left. Huskblades used to be INSANE, now they are weaker than everyone else's version.
Huskblades, Hex Rifles and Implosion Missiles all used to cause instant death. I miss that. Now they're all just bad.
I think a big part of the problem was that those weapons didn't just use to cause Instant Death. Rather, Instant Death was their only function.
Without Instant Death, the Huskblade is a glorified Power Sword. Without Instant Death, the Hexrifle is a crappy Sniper Rifle.
In contrast, weapons like Power Fists and Thunder Hammers could often cause Instant Death to low-T characters, but even if you take that away they've still got fantastic strength and AP.
However, Huskblades and Hexrifles lost their ability to cause Instant Death and instead gained . . . nothing.
Oh no, I apologise, the Hexrifle did gain something - the Heavy rule.
Also, in spite of the fact that Instant Death used to be the core ability of the Huskblade, it only inflicts d3 wounds, whilst a Thunder Hammer inflicts a full 3.
I don't mind losing Instant Death as a mechanic, but in that case weapons like the Huskblade and Hexrifle needed a full redesign, not just a tiny tweak.
Amishprn86 wrote: EC = Expert Crafts its really good on a lot of units like Wraithlords, Wraithseers, War Walkers, etc.. ones with good strong single shot guns. You can go Masterful shots for Ignore cover or if all wraiths Wrath of the Dead.
A spearhead with 2 Wraitseers and 3 Wraithlords with CE and WotD are really fun to play and IMO pretty good.
Gotcha, ok, sorry, i had to have someone spell that out to me but I'm with ya. (though I did have to go re-read it in the book, I don't play aeldari so it wasn't on the top of my head)
Ok pet Primaris favourtism aside why does a being the best part of 10000 years old with 100s of lifes of combat only has the same A value as a basic ninja clown, because having twice as many attacks as your Aspect isnt that great if said Aspect is way behind the stat curve for fistcuffs, its almost as if nobody bothered noticing power swords arent very scary in the hands of s3 model
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
The only way this is apples to oranges is in the opposite direction. A melee phoenix lord should be vastly better in melee than a stock primaris biker. She is better, but not by nearly as much as she should be. A white scars stock primaris biker on turn 3 and beyond puts out 6 S4 -2AP 2 damage hits, probably with rerolls. A BA one has 7 attacks at +1 to wound.
It's just stupid. Eldar in general have been hugely left behind by the inflation in the number of attacks most other factions *cough* SPACE MARINES *cough* get. Primaris bikers are the worst, but they're not the only example.
This is just bad game design. The greatest warriors of a race that were ruling the galaxy when humans were still poking each other with sharpened sticks should not get totally dunked on by the Imperium in the way they are.
The marine fapfest that people erroneously claimed existed for years has finally arrived. It's just as bad as they feared. Marines spent a long time as target practice for Eldar, but this is not the appropriate fix.
Galas wrote: I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad.
What happens when Banshees charge a unit of Intercessors? They've spent their turns somehow getting past the Intercessor Bolt Rifles and gotten into a nice ambush position and are assaulting. What happens? Is the result what you'd expect?
2nd edition, Power Swords have a S 6, a -3 save mod, and they can parry. Banshees have an initiative of 5 or 6, I forget their Mask bonus. They have 2 attacks because they hold a pistol and CC weapon, and possibly a 3rd attack because they charged (or it's a +1 to the result, I forget). Their target, a Tac marine has 1A and 1W.
8th Edition. . . S3, 1A? What else do they get? Intercessors are hitting back with 3A and have 2W in defense.
Galas wrote: I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad.
What happens when Banshees charge a unit of Intercessors? They've spent their turns somehow getting past the Intercessor Bolt Rifles and gotten into a nice ambush position and are assaulting. What happens? Is the result what you'd expect?
2nd edition, Power Swords have a S 6, a -3 save mod, and they can parry. Banshees have an initiative of 5 or 6, I forget their Mask bonus. They have 2 attacks because they hold a pistol and CC weapon, and possibly a 3rd attack because they charged (or it's a +1 to the result, I forget). Their target, a Tac marine has 1A and 1W.
8th Edition. . . S3, 1A? What else do they get? Intercessors are hitting back with 3A and have 2W in defense.
Why are you charging with your banshee at the intercessors?
What happens when khorne berzerkers charge a unit of imperial guard infantry? They kill a unit that costs 40 and unless they tri-point it they die.
Banshee are not there to kill anything, they are one of the best tools in this edition to shut down shooting units. TBH I don't really care about other editions, and I'm sad that you would like for them to kill intercessors in combat. I would like for my kroot to be actually usable in HTH but they aren't, and I use them to what they are actually very good for.
I'm a pretty mediocre player, but the reality is that the one that wants to improve at the game adapts and learns, the one that don't just complaints why things don't work when he tries it instead of understanding why that happens. Is legitimate to complaint about balance problems, in 40k there are many, but not as many as most people thinks: People mistakes their perception in how things should work on the tabletop with a unit not working or not being worth taking.
The issue isn't whether banshees are useful or not. It's that there's been a complete inversion of the power pyramid. Eldar aspect warriors used to be elite warriors who dumpstered MEQ. They still are in the lore.
Now eldar aspect warriors are cheap chaff that gets dumpstered by intercessors, marines who aren't even combat focused.
It would be like if leman russ tanks went to T6 5 wounds in 9th edition. With enough points cuts they might still be good...but people would still rightly be annoyed to have their iconic unit totally gutted.
Galas wrote: I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad.
What happens when Banshees charge a unit of Intercessors? They've spent their turns somehow getting past the Intercessor Bolt Rifles and gotten into a nice ambush position and are assaulting. What happens? Is the result what you'd expect?
2nd edition, Power Swords have a S 6, a -3 save mod, and they can parry. Banshees have an initiative of 5 or 6, I forget their Mask bonus. They have 2 attacks because they hold a pistol and CC weapon, and possibly a 3rd attack because they charged (or it's a +1 to the result, I forget). Their target, a Tac marine has 1A and 1W.
8th Edition. . . S3, 1A? What else do they get? Intercessors are hitting back with 3A and have 2W in defense.
Why are you charging with your banshee at the intercessors?
. . .
Banshee are not there to kill anything. . .
Oh.
Oh I see.
So the elite CC troops shouldn't possibly be any sort of a threat in their specialty against elite generalist troops. Ok.
Intercessors also outshoot Tau Fire Warriors and out meele ork nobz. The only troop I believe they don't win against point per point are saggitarum guard from Custodes (I have not done the math, purely from personal experience) but the moment you factor rerolls auras things become insane.
But thats what happen when you have people wishing for masturbatory fantasy with their space marines armies. Horus Heresy became so popular for a reason. I hate what the horus heresy has done to normal 40k, and I hate primarchs, but what can I do? They are here to stay. They have been here for 3 years, and they are gonna be for many more. I played my dark angels when they were trash for the two first years of 8th and stopped after the new marine codex because I knew how they would end. Thats why I learned to play agaisnt space marines, with a ton of loses in between (And even today).
The reality of Primaris, we can defy it or we can accept it, but we can't deny it.
Right. Primaris were a big mistake, but they're here to stay. So GW needs to pull its head out and start updating other factions so their elites don't feel like dumpster trash in comparison to generic space marine troop choices.
Aspect warriors aren't troops (except DIs). They are supposed to be elite, highly specialized choices. The combat specialized aspect warriors shouldn't be cheap trash the way they are now. Scorpions are nine points a model now. Nine! And they still don't see use because they get 2 S4 AP 0 attacks in combat, which is a joke. It's crazy how far aspect warriors have fallen.
yukishiro1 wrote: It is truly pathetic how far aspect warriors have fallen in comparison to marines.
To be fair, it's amusing how far Marines have fallen in comparison to Marines looking at a Tactical Marine and an Intercessor next to each other
Those basic Tac Marines are looking pretty phenomenal when compared to most aspects these days.
Dire Avenger: S3 T3 4+, 18" Assault 2 AP0-ish gun. 1A
Tac Marine: (UM Doctrine) S4 T4 3+ 24" Assault* 2 AP-1 gun. 2A in the first round of CC.
*The constant buffing to Rapid Fire has removed the majority of it's downsides in comparison to Assault weapons. UM Marines are now moving and firing twice up to 24, and are able to assault afterwards.
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
The only way this is apples to oranges is in the opposite direction. A melee phoenix lord should be vastly better in melee than a stock primaris biker. She is better, but not by nearly as much as she should be. A white scars stock primaris biker on turn 3 and beyond puts out 6 S4 -2AP 2 damage hits, probably with rerolls. A BA one has 7 attacks at +1 to wound.
It's just stupid. Eldar in general have been hugely left behind by the inflation in the number of attacks most other factions *cough* SPACE MARINES *cough* get. Primaris bikers are the worst, but they're not the only example.
This is just bad game design. The greatest warriors of a race that were ruling the galaxy when humans were still poking each other with sharpened sticks should not get totally dunked on by the Imperium in the way they are.
Turn. Three.
Let's make an assumption that they're 40 points each. JZ is 115. 3 to 1. gak, no. Let's do 5 bikes.
They charge. JZ fights first.
4 * .833 * .888 * .833 * 2 = 4.9 -- one bike dead; 4 remain
24 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 2 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 3 remain
18 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1.5 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 2 remain
12 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1 wound to JZ
another bike dead; 1 remains
6 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 0.5 wounds to JZ
JZ is sitting on one wound and killed five Outriders - and I didn't even make an expectation for damage to overflow onto other models between each round.
So what do you want? You want JZ to be able to kill the world? Sure, your White Scars are scary. So are Dark Reapers shooting them with Doom. You want rerolls for the bikes? JZ gets Protect or the bikes get Enervate. You want to kick those bikes up with WS doc? Then she doesn't need to fight 5 to 1. You want her to be an uber killy badass? Then double her points and get her more rules.
I would love for most of the units in the game to be made better, points increased, and to play with less miniatures, but thats not what most people wants.
For example the letality problem could be fixed without touching the wound chart with just GW using the whole Tougthness value. Make baneblades and knights T10, make leman russes and land raiders T9, t7 vehicles become t8, make things like normal space marines, necrons inmortals, ork nobzs S5/T5, and leave all shooting S unchanged.
But GW is not gonna make those sweeping changes because thats not what people expect. Theres need of a change like fantasy to sigmar for something like that to happen.
Galas wrote: Intercessors also outshoot Tau Fire Warriors and out meele ork nobz. The only troop I believe they don't win against point per point are saggitarum guard from Custodes (I have not done the math, purely from personal experience) but the moment you factor rerolls auras things become insane.
But thats what happen when you have people wishing for masturbatory fantasy with their space marines armies. Horus Heresy became so popular for a reason. I hate what the horus heresy has done to normal 40k, and I hate primarchs, but what can I do? They are here to stay. They have been here for 3 years, and they are gonna be for many more. I played my dark angels when they were trash for the two first years of 8th and stopped after the new marine codex because I knew how they would end. Thats why I learned to play agaisnt space marines, with a ton of loses in between (And even today).
The reality of Primaris, we can defy it or we can accept it, but we can't deny it.
You can also nerf Primaris, and boost Aspect Warriors. Solutions are available.
Primaris are unfortunately a mistake that is here to stay. Now that SM have 2 wound basic infantry that can outmelee most other factions elite melee specialists I´m not sure what can be done outside of a massive stat overhaul they are not going to do.
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
The only way this is apples to oranges is in the opposite direction. A melee phoenix lord should be vastly better in melee than a stock primaris biker. She is better, but not by nearly as much as she should be. A white scars stock primaris biker on turn 3 and beyond puts out 6 S4 -2AP 2 damage hits, probably with rerolls. A BA one has 7 attacks at +1 to wound.
It's just stupid. Eldar in general have been hugely left behind by the inflation in the number of attacks most other factions *cough* SPACE MARINES *cough* get. Primaris bikers are the worst, but they're not the only example.
This is just bad game design. The greatest warriors of a race that were ruling the galaxy when humans were still poking each other with sharpened sticks should not get totally dunked on by the Imperium in the way they are.
Turn. Three.
Let's make an assumption that they're 40 points each. JZ is 115. 3 to 1. gak, no. Let's do 5 bikes.
They charge. JZ fights first.
4 * .833 * .888 * .833 * 2 = 4.9 -- one bike dead; 4 remain
24 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 2 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 3 remain
18 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1.5 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 2 remain
12 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1 wound to JZ
another bike dead; 1 remains
6 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 0.5 wounds to JZ
JZ is sitting on one wound and killed five Outriders - and I didn't even make an expectation for damage to overflow onto other models between each round.
So what do you want? You want JZ to be able to kill the world? Sure, your White Scars are scary. So are Dark Reapers shooting them with Doom. You want rerolls for the bikes? JZ gets Protect or the bikes get Enervate. You want to kick those bikes up with WS doc? Then she doesn't need to fight 5 to 1. You want her to be an uber killy badass? Then double her points and get her more rules.
Your math displays misunderstandings of basic rules like ASF and ignores doctrines and chapter tactics and the sergeant (who at a minimum has an additional attack, but may also be able to take better weapons), but that's not the point. The point is that a Phoenix Lord has 4 attacks in a game where a primaris biker has 6. Eldar have been ridiculously left behind by the huge inflation in attacks that space marines have seen over the course of 8th edition.
The entire point of this thread is that eldar have fallen from elites to has-beens. Of course you would have to increase points if you made them back into the elite warriors they should be. You're making my point for me, apparently without realizing it.
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
The only way this is apples to oranges is in the opposite direction. A melee phoenix lord should be vastly better in melee than a stock primaris biker. She is better, but not by nearly as much as she should be. A white scars stock primaris biker on turn 3 and beyond puts out 6 S4 -2AP 2 damage hits, probably with rerolls. A BA one has 7 attacks at +1 to wound.
It's just stupid. Eldar in general have been hugely left behind by the inflation in the number of attacks most other factions *cough* SPACE MARINES *cough* get. Primaris bikers are the worst, but they're not the only example.
This is just bad game design. The greatest warriors of a race that were ruling the galaxy when humans were still poking each other with sharpened sticks should not get totally dunked on by the Imperium in the way they are.
Turn. Three.
Let's make an assumption that they're 40 points each. JZ is 115. 3 to 1. gak, no. Let's do 5 bikes.
They charge. JZ fights first.
4 * .833 * .888 * .833 * 2 = 4.9 -- one bike dead; 4 remain
24 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 2 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 3 remain
18 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1.5 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 2 remain
12 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1 wound to JZ
another bike dead; 1 remains
6 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 0.5 wounds to JZ
JZ is sitting on one wound and killed five Outriders - and I didn't even make an expectation for damage to overflow onto other models between each round.
So what do you want? You want JZ to be able to kill the world? Sure, your White Scars are scary. So are Dark Reapers shooting them with Doom. You want rerolls for the bikes? JZ gets Protect or the bikes get Enervate. You want to kick those bikes up with WS doc? Then she doesn't need to fight 5 to 1. You want her to be an uber killy badass? Then double her points and get her more rules.
Jain Zar doesn't shoot, and she doesn't tank wounds nearly as well as the bikes. ALL she does is CC, and she barely wins. So for similar points, you get a CCCharacter. . . OR You get a shooting unit, a tough unit, and a CC unit that nearly kills the CC character. They could just kite her and shoot her off the board with ease. So if the bikes control the engagement, they win easily. If SHE dictates the engagement, she barely makes it out alive.
Galas wrote: I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad.
What happens when Banshees charge a unit of Intercessors? They've spent their turns somehow getting past the Intercessor Bolt Rifles and gotten into a nice ambush position and are assaulting. What happens? Is the result what you'd expect?
2nd edition, Power Swords have a S 6, a -3 save mod, and they can parry. Banshees have an initiative of 5 or 6, I forget their Mask bonus. They have 2 attacks because they hold a pistol and CC weapon, and possibly a 3rd attack because they charged (or it's a +1 to the result, I forget). Their target, a Tac marine has 1A and 1W.
8th Edition. . . S3, 1A? What else do they get? Intercessors are hitting back with 3A and have 2W in defense.
Why are you charging with your banshee at the intercessors?
What happens when khorne berzerkers charge a unit of imperial guard infantry? They kill a unit that costs 40 and unless they tri-point it they die.
Banshee are not there to kill anything, they are one of the best tools in this edition to shut down shooting units. TBH I don't really care about other editions, and I'm sad that you would like for them to kill intercessors in combat. I would like for my kroot to be actually usable in HTH but they aren't, and I use them to what they are actually very good for.
I'm a pretty mediocre player, but the reality is that the one that wants to improve at the game adapts and learns, the one that don't just complaints why things don't work when he tries it instead of understanding why that happens. Is legitimate to complaint about balance problems, in 40k there are many, but not as many as most people thinks: People mistakes their perception in how things should work on the tabletop with a unit not working or not being worth taking.
The issue is that Banshee's purpose is not to be a gunline disruptor, they're supposed to be shock assault troops, which they're awful at being. Their fluff is pretty clear about that, preferring to advance and engage the enemy on foot, stunning their opponents into being unable to react, and engaging elite armored foes just as easily as they do cannon fodder.
They're not even all that good at shutting down shooting units, the only thing they really do in that regard is deny overwatch, which while not without value, is highly variable in utility. They're fast, but only relative to other basic infantry, and their actual CC punch in removing said units is probably less than equivalent investment in other Eldar shooting platforms to just blast them off anyway.
yukishiro1 wrote: It is truly pathetic how far aspect warriors have fallen in comparison to marines.
To be fair, it's amusing how far Marines have fallen in comparison to Marines looking at a Tactical Marine and an Intercessor next to each other
Those basic Tac Marines are looking pretty phenomenal when compared to most aspects these days.
Dire Avenger: S3 T3 4+, 18" Assault 2 AP0-ish gun. 1A
Tac Marine: (UM Doctrine) S4 T4 3+ 24" Assault* 2 AP-1 gun. 2A in the first round of CC.
*The constant buffing to Rapid Fire has removed the majority of it's downsides in comparison to Assault weapons. UM Marines are now moving and firing twice up to 24, and are able to assault afterwards.
While true, this is also only because of a grip of layered on special rules, and they're still not much to speak about next to an Intercessor
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
The only way this is apples to oranges is in the opposite direction. A melee phoenix lord should be vastly better in melee than a stock primaris biker. She is better, but not by nearly as much as she should be. A white scars stock primaris biker on turn 3 and beyond puts out 6 S4 -2AP 2 damage hits, probably with rerolls. A BA one has 7 attacks at +1 to wound.
It's just stupid. Eldar in general have been hugely left behind by the inflation in the number of attacks most other factions *cough* SPACE MARINES *cough* get. Primaris bikers are the worst, but they're not the only example.
This is just bad game design. The greatest warriors of a race that were ruling the galaxy when humans were still poking each other with sharpened sticks should not get totally dunked on by the Imperium in the way they are.
But this makes sense because GW lore explicitly states that Marines are unmatched by any other fighting force in the whole of the galaxy. So...it makes perfect sense that a Primaris marine is better at fighting than some space elf.
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
The only way this is apples to oranges is in the opposite direction. A melee phoenix lord should be vastly better in melee than a stock primaris biker. She is better, but not by nearly as much as she should be. A white scars stock primaris biker on turn 3 and beyond puts out 6 S4 -2AP 2 damage hits, probably with rerolls. A BA one has 7 attacks at +1 to wound.
It's just stupid. Eldar in general have been hugely left behind by the inflation in the number of attacks most other factions *cough* SPACE MARINES *cough* get. Primaris bikers are the worst, but they're not the only example.
This is just bad game design. The greatest warriors of a race that were ruling the galaxy when humans were still poking each other with sharpened sticks should not get totally dunked on by the Imperium in the way they are.
But this makes sense because GW lore explicitly states that Marines are unmatched by any other fighting force in the whole of the galaxy. So...it makes perfect sense that a Primaris marine is better at fighting than some space elf.
It doesn't because the same lore explicitly states that they're at best, equal to aspect warriors. Marines shouldn't be better than Aspects .
But this makes sense because GW lore explicitly states that Marines are unmatched by any other fighting force in the whole of the galaxy. So...it makes perfect sense that a Primaris marine is better at fighting than some space elf.
yukishiro1 wrote: It is truly pathetic how far aspect warriors have fallen in comparison to marines.
To be fair, it's amusing how far Marines have fallen in comparison to Marines looking at a Tactical Marine and an Intercessor next to each other
Those basic Tac Marines are looking pretty phenomenal when compared to most aspects these days.
Dire Avenger: S3 T3 4+, 18" Assault 2 AP0-ish gun. 1A
Tac Marine: (UM Doctrine) S4 T4 3+ 24" Assault* 2 AP-1 gun. 2A in the first round of CC.
*The constant buffing to Rapid Fire has removed the majority of it's downsides in comparison to Assault weapons. UM Marines are now moving and firing twice up to 24, and are able to assault afterwards.
While true, this is also only because of a grip of layered on special rules, and they're still not much to speak about next to an Intercessor
Individually no, although as units they remain plenty viable because of their options. But either way we're still left with the current problems with Aspect Warriors.
But this makes sense because GW lore explicitly states that Marines are unmatched by any other fighting force in the whole of the galaxy. So...it makes perfect sense that a Primaris marine is better at fighting than some space elf.
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.
I will help you. I play salamanders, and some times Black Legion. Of course, all other factions are inferior to my lovely volcano bois.
A whole lot of the Aspect Warrior problem has to do with the continued betterment of Rapid Fire. In 3rd, a Marine unit could only fire twice up to 12" if it didn't move. It couldn't even fire once up to 24" if it moved, in fact. It's waaaay easier to get CC troops closer when common weapons had such limitations. Also, Assault weapons on fast units like Jetbikes and Warp Spiders had a lot more kick to them comparatively, because they could shoot multiple times after moving a pretty good distance.
These days? Warp Spiders are practically laughable in execution. They have to spend a turn or two moving into position when all an Intercessor has to do is stand there are fire twice up to 30" in return. And the payoff for the Spiders' gun is hardly worth the effort.
Honestly, if we're going to accept that we aren't going back to the artful limitations of 3rd and 4th Ed design, and embrace the fact that Bolters are firing twice up to 24" in the hands of Marines. . . Shuriken Catapults should be back up at 24" range, and we should look at buffing the Avenger Catapult to 24" but with an additional AP or something. Possibly consider dropping Guardian BS back down to 3.
I think that leading the Edition with a long overdue Xenos update is a sign of things to come. I am hopeful that this edition is going to see much updates to all Aeldari factions.
I think that the love given to marines at the close of 8th and the beginning of 9th will keep marines in a high performance space, thus keeping the player base content while other armies come up to meet the bar via 9th ed dexes and releases.
Kabalite Trueborn and Hekatrix Bloodblades ARE DE primaris; Aspect Warriors are CWE primaris. Quins, Ynnari, Exodites and Corsairs are released as supplements with ranges about the size of current Quins. A dedicated Ynnari Aspect for an elites (read: Primaris) unit, and a dedicated Ynnari troop choice.
(Note: by Primaris, I mean a shift to 2W, min 4T, 4S)
The final elimination of finecast from all Eldar ranges.
Then the Tau get attention.
There will, of course, be tiny Imperial Releases in between, but nothing like what the Xenos get.
I hope the Crons sell like nothing in recent history and teach GW the valuable lesson of "If you build it, they will come."
I huge success with Crons will incentivise them to give more Xeno attention.
Galas wrote: I cannot take seriously when most eldar players complaint about stuff like Swooping Hawks or Banshee as being bad.
What happens when Banshees charge a unit of Intercessors? They've spent their turns somehow getting past the Intercessor Bolt Rifles and gotten into a nice ambush position and are assaulting. What happens? Is the result what you'd expect?
2nd edition, Power Swords have a S 6, a -3 save mod, and they can parry. Banshees have an initiative of 5 or 6, I forget their Mask bonus. They have 2 attacks because they hold a pistol and CC weapon, and possibly a 3rd attack because they charged (or it's a +1 to the result, I forget). Their target, a Tac marine has 1A and 1W.
8th Edition. . . S3, 1A? What else do they get? Intercessors are hitting back with 3A and have 2W in defense.
CC in 2nd edition was both sides rolled their Attacks in number of dice, and added their WS to the highest die result. Additional 6's beyond the first added +1 to the total, while 1's subtracted 1 from the total. Compare the totals and the winner inflicts the difference in hits on the loser.
Masks in 2nd edition took effect if the Banshee charged the enemy, and meant the enemy rolled 0 Attack dice in that first round of CC. Jain Zarr's special Mask worked in the 2nd round of CC as well. That meant Banshees were extremely powerful if they charged home because they would inflict massive number of hits with their S5 -3 power swords. Scorpions filled the role more of horde killers as their mandiblasters shot before combat with stats more suited to take down stuff like Ork Boyz.
The issue now is Banshees now being laughable in damage output. The fact people are now claiming they are used as distraction rather than shock assault troops shows how far the Banshees have fallen. The only thing even slightly approximating their old power is that new Exarch power from Phoenix Rising that allows the Exarch to do d3 MW on a 4+, when charging.
Over the years I have also heard arguments by people claiming these kinds of units just needed to be used with "synergy". However what they seemed to mean by this was to essentially babysit the weak unit such as Dooming their target or buffing the unit with things like Fortune. That's not synergy. Synergy is 1+1=3, where the result is more than just the sum of its parts. Right now units like Banshees are more like 1+1=1. Any unit that requires babysitting or some conditional alignment of factors to work in a halfway decent manner is essentially underpowered. Why bother taking such a unit that requires so much effort and potential points of failure over another more reliable and effective unit? That is why the Eldar army has had such horrible internal balance.
I think the differing perspectives in the thread show that players and GW are confused by what the eldar should do.
The tactica on the warcom site says they're now the most tactically flexible eldar army, which I suppose is true and yet many seem to consider them uber specialists because of their single use squads. Now they can be both, if you balance out the unit choices to be tactically flexible by using a range of specialist units.
But they're not very good at it. The spam problems are because people hunt for the one or two good units in the army list and then take as many as they can in order to work.
Aspects are sold in boxes of 5 or 6, but most don't work very well in squads that small.
They have a damage output and a damage input issue. If people are spamming shining spears and dark reapers it's because they don't have the output/input issue every other aspect has.
So the question is, are GW just going to keep limping on with the hodge podge of underpowered units, T3 specialists that are so bad you need to do backflips to get them to function even slightly?
Sometimes I wonder if GW's playtesters take a perverse pleasure in how hard they are to play and how great it feels for them to be able to pull of stupid combos and gimmicks, thereby feeding back that they're great as they play in a style they like.
IMO, the eldar (all 3 kinds) are currently some of the hardest armies to play because if you don't know how to pull off those tricks, the armies are underpowered.
GW needs to go back to the drawing board. If it wants to make the game more accessible as they've said many times in the lead up to Indomintus, then they need to make ALL armies accessible. Not just one and wonder why new players only play that one. They need to strip all the gimmicks out of the eldar army and playtest them until they're good.
They've been overly relying on effectively FARSEERS to carry the whole army for 20 years. Take them out, balance the army and then balance their reintroduction.
No army in the game (not even the other two eldar) has the burning need for a single unit that the craftworld's do for the farseer. Without one the army falls apart. No army should fall apart without the inclusion of a specific HQ choice.
This was one area the 2nd ed army fell down, as if you didn't want a farseer the only other HQ you could take as general was the Avatar. But at least you could take a full aspect army led by the avatar with actual punch.
TLDR, the eldar need to work led by nothing but Autarchs. If you can do that, then I think it might have a chance of being closer to what it used to look like (it would be great if the added solo HQ exarchs back in too though...).
Oh man, I haven't played my Eldar in a while, but when I ran them it was a 5E mechanized reserve-denial army that ran with only Autarch HQ's (running with the fluff that the craftworld's farseer's had interpreted their visions incorrectly and that resulted in its destruction and their own demise). It was a fun army, but it really had to play like a tank company to work without Farseers, and I don't think that concept has been anything near workable in any edition since, not that it was anything but mediocre in 5E anyway
Yeah, the complete reliance on Farseers in every edition is definitely one of the defining traits of the army. One the one hand, it's nice to have such an integral part of the army actually work as one would intend throughout the game's history, nicely reflecting the background. The problem is that it also becomes a crutch and other army builds that should function don't. Far too many units are designed to function properly only in conjunction with direct Farseer support.
Vaktathi wrote: Oh man, I haven't played my Eldar in a while, but when I ran them it was a 5E mechanized reserve-denial army that ran with only Autarch HQ's (running with the fluff that the craftworld's farseer's had interpreted their visions incorrectly and that resulted in its destruction and their own demise). It was a fun army, but it really had to play like a tank company to work without Farseers, and I don't think that concept has been anything near workable in any edition since, not that it was anything but mediocre in 5E anyway
Yeah, the complete reliance on Farseers in every edition is definitely one of the defining traits of the army. One the one hand, it's nice to have such an integral part of the army actually work as one would intend throughout the game's history, nicely reflecting the background. The problem is that it also becomes a crutch and other army builds that should function don't. Far too many units are designed to function properly only in conjunction with direct Farseer support.
Yeah, while you see other armies regularly taking units like Guilliman, it's not actively crippling if you don't. No army that I can think of actually NEEDS a unit to function.
Craftworlds actually NEED farseers to work and this need is wrapped up in their underpowered unit designs. The farseer is basically GW's one man patch for the army. If there's a problem, farseer will patch it...
Automatically Appended Next Post: What I would do is build the three Hosts of the craftworlds out into capable forces:
Wraith hosts - wraithseers and various types of construct
Guardian hosts - Autarchs and the guardian units
Aspect hosts - exarchs and the aspect units
With the Seer councils acting as a kind of Inquisition that joins each, but is not 'part' of any.
Arguably vanilla marines need a Captain/Chapter Master to function because those re-rolls are absolutely critical. Otherwise I agree with the general premise.
Martel732 wrote: Those banshees were way too good, but an effective demonstration of the issue
Imo they weren't "too good" because they were still T3 and 4+sv. On top of that basic Assault Marines could also all have Power Swords (and chainswords for two parries), and had a longer charge range because of their jump pack. Banshees were great at their specialty, and just fell apart if they got caught out. Totally fine in terms of balance.
Insectum7 wrote: Arguably vanilla marines need a Captain/Chapter Master to function because those re-rolls are absolutely critical. Otherwise I agree with the general premise.
I think it's definitely a matter of degrees. There's a spectrum of dependency with eldar and farseers on one end and the other armies spread along.
Intercessors are pretty capable by themselves, the rerolls just make them even more capable. Banshees suck and a farseer makes them suck less...
I'ma be honest. I'd have more sympathy for Eldar players, IF you guys didn't have the top codex for the last three editions. I remember my first LVO, 2017. Something like 6-7 of the top ten were eldar lists. Every other table had a wraithknight on it, sometimes hanging out with some T'au friends.
The first year I brought my Salamanders, I remember the list like it was yesterday. Captain, Librarian, Tactical Marines, Sternguard Vets, Thunderfire cannon or two, a Devestator Squad, 2 squads of terminators and a Landraider Crusader. Not competitive, but not terrible.
You know what happened game 1? Eldar Jet bikes, game was over by turn 2, I lost 80% of my forces. Game 2? Eldar jet Bikes, same result. Game three was a treat, I got to play against Necrons. Necron jet Bikes. Game was over turn three, with a VP score in each game 3:1.
That was the day I learned to hate the Eldar player. And, sometimes the Necron Player. But mostly Jet bikes.
I played against Eldar a lot in 3rd Ed. They were tough, but beatable.
When I finally played my only 7th (I think they were 7th) games, most of them were against Eldar. Getting blasted off the table by Wave Serpents shield attacks and Wraithknights and Tau allies wasn't fun in the slightest.
Togusa wrote: I'ma be honest. I'd have more sympathy for Eldar players, IF you guys didn't have the top codex for the last three editions. I remember my first LVO, 2017. Something like 6-7 of the top ten were eldar lists. Every other table had a wraithknight on it, sometimes hanging out with some T'au friends.
The first year I brought my Salamanders, I remember the list like it was yesterday. Captain, Librarian, Tactical Marines, Sternguard Vets, Thunderfire cannon or two, a Devestator Squad, 2 squads of terminators and a Landraider Crusader. Not competitive, but not terrible.
You know what happened game 1? Eldar Jet bikes, game was over by turn 2, I lost 80% of my forces. Game 2? Eldar jet Bikes, same result. Game three was a treat, I got to play against Necrons. Necron jet Bikes. Game was over turn three, with a VP score in each game 3:1.
That was the day I learned to hate the Eldar player. And, sometimes the Necron Player. But mostly Jet bikes.
You'll notice that, almost without exception, every time a new eldar dex is released and people 'hate' them, it's almost always because of a single unit (generally in association with a farseer), or a couple. Being able to abuse one or two units every edition might make them possible to win with, but it hides how terrible the army is and how impossible it is to play them in any other way than that one particular spam build flavour of the edition.
Giving eldar players the ability to use the whole dex isn't asking to make the whole dex as broken as those specific unit combos, it should actually reduce the broken nature of them.
I want to be able to play the army as they should play, not have to resort to crappy tricks that make people hate the army in order to get any kind of advantage.
At the moment the eldar army is the most gamiest, least representative army out there. That it can only really be competitive with unrealistic army compositions highlights this issue.
It is hard for me to say what direction they will take Craftworlds. I really thought GW had a plan to revise and streamline the entire Aeldari range through the introduction of the Ynarri; this would be their way to forge a more coherent direction for the three Aeldari factions. Somewhere along the line it seems that plan was shelved and GW ended up shoehorning those three models into three different armies.
Your math displays misunderstandings of basic rules like ASF and ignores doctrines and chapter tactics and the sergeant (who at a minimum has an additional attack, but may also be able to take better weapons), but that's not the point. The point is that a Phoenix Lord has 4 attacks in a game where a primaris biker has 6. Eldar have been ridiculously left behind by the huge inflation in attacks that space marines have seen over the course of 8th edition.
The entire point of this thread is that eldar have fallen from elites to has-beens. Of course you would have to increase points if you made them back into the elite warriors they should be. You're making my point for me, apparently without realizing it.
- Fair point in ASF, but I'd wager she gets the charge most games - doesn't change the calculus that much
- I didn't bother adding in doctrines, because the points were skewed heavily against her
- A single sarge attack means diddly squat (a power sword, however...)
So the quality of attacks has literally no bearing? Or the +3 to charge? Or ASF? Or -1 to be hit? (Or the much less useful ignore O/W) - obviously none of that matters, because its not moar attaks. And on a smaller note her shooting does 1.4 wounds to marines. That bike does something like 0.8. (yes, yes blah blah range blah blah she can run and shoot)
Or how we ignore that she can make 6 to 8 attacks against 10 IS, Boyz, Electropriests, Sisters, etc? No, we're going to ignore that, because it doesn't fit the narrative.
I mean...Knights only have FIVE attacks. Those bikes are just wreckin' everything! gak, White Scars could have used regular bikes right now and seen the same number of attacks per point and similar durability. They'll even get the new CS. But they didn't, because D2 is scary apparently unless you're Primaris so then it isn't. These bikes will die just like the old ones - just half as fast for twice the points.
And...oh gak...isn't this funny. Those Outriders lose 3 attacks after the first round of combat and I didn't even bother to reduce them. Enjoy.
Phoenix Lord, greatest warrior of a race that ruled the stars when humans were still using sharpened sticks: 4 S6 -3AP 1d3 damage attacks.
Primaris intercessor that isn't even a melee specialist: 3 S4 attacks, -1AP on T3+.
Striking Scorpion that spends decades or centuries training to be elite shock infantry: 2 S4 attacks, 0AP.
You can mathhammer away all you want on stuff that's totally ancillary to the discussion, but these relative stats are just stupid. Elite Eldar - both characters and units - have totally been left behind. We could ram the point home even more by bringing up a smash captain and comparing him to the phoenix lord too...but that would just be rubbing salt in the wound.
As people have said, Eldar have had a top tier selection of units in every edition except 5th (and even then I think their "badness" is exaggerated - but they lacked an obvious *take X, Y and Z, mop the floor with 50% of the game* build).
I'm late to the party and the discussion has moved on, but I wanted to comment on Eldar in 5th edition anyway. I got into Eldar halfway through the edition's span and it's when I had the most fun with them. I kept playing them in 6th where they were significantly more powerful and actually had a current codex. In 5th people were happy to play me. In 6th not so much.
The reason I enjoyed them so much in 5th because they were a spoiler army. By the time I put them on the table, the metal bawkses meta was well-established and everyone had melta. I had footdar. A good number of my opponents had a hard time grasping the concept that the Avatar was immune to melta weapons. Others had a hard time accepting that wraithlords were T8 and those meltas wounded on a 4+ not a 2+. Similarly they struggled with wasting quality shots on a fortuned, concealed guardian blob. My lists weren't superpowerful and I certainly didn't win any local tournies, but I had fun with the army. So, 5th edition may have been a low point for Eldar codex power historically, but it was my personal Eldar golden age.
Phoenix Lord, greatest warrior of a race that ruled the stars when humans were still using sharpened sticks: 4 S6 -3AP 1d3 damage attacks.
Primaris intercessor that isn't even a melee specialist: 3 S4 attacks, -1AP on T3+.
Striking Scorpion that spends decades or centuries training to be elite shock infantry: 2 S4 attacks, 0AP.
You can mathhammer away all you want on stuff that's totally ancillary to the discussion, but these relative stats are just stupid. Elite Eldar - both characters and units - have totally been left behind. We could ram the point home even more by bringing up a smash captain and comparing him to the phoenix lord too...but that would just be rubbing salt in the wound.
And a chaos lord thousands of years old has four attacks, well 5 now, I guess.
It isn't stupid, because the effectiveness matters. Nurglings get 4 and no one is writing home about those.
Ok, fine. Striking Scorpions get 4 S4 AP0 attacks now. This clearly makes them superior to Primaris. Problem solved?
Listen, I'm not unsympathetic, but the reality is if you want more attacks you're going to pay more points and then you're robbing peter to pay paul by creating a glass cannon. So, pick your poison.
Phoenix Lord, greatest warrior of a race that ruled the stars when humans were still using sharpened sticks: 4 S6 -3AP 1d3 damage attacks.
Primaris intercessor that isn't even a melee specialist: 3 S4 attacks, -1AP on T3+.
Striking Scorpion that spends decades or centuries training to be elite shock infantry: 2 S4 attacks, 0AP.
You can mathhammer away all you want on stuff that's totally ancillary to the discussion, but these relative stats are just stupid. Elite Eldar - both characters and units - have totally been left behind. We could ram the point home even more by bringing up a smash captain and comparing him to the phoenix lord too...but that would just be rubbing salt in the wound.
And a chaos lord thousands of years old has four attacks, well 5 now, I guess.
It isn't stupid, because the effectiveness matters. Nurglings get 4 and no one is writing home about those.
Ok, fine. Striking Scorpions get 4 S4 AP0 attacks now. This clearly makes them superior to Primaris. Problem solved?
Listen, I'm not unsympathetic, but the reality is if you want more attacks you're going to pay more points and then you're robbing peter to pay paul by creating a glass cannon. So, pick your poison.
I'll take more attacks.
Jain Zar should be 4 or 5 base, but at least get +2 A on the charge. The Blade of Destruction is fine as is.
A 4+ invuln would be nice too.
@Daedelus: Unless you are Primaris, where Peter and Paul rob Eldar.
See my post above about how despite being a CC specialist of similar points to the bikes, she barely makes it out alive despite the scenario being skewed in her favor by not giving the bikes the capability to shoot.
I'll take more attacks.
Jain Zar should be 4 or 5 base, but at least get +2 A on the charge. The Blade of Destruction is fine as is.
A 4+ invuln would be nice too.
Which renders storm of silence a moot point and it becomes a role change from horde kill to elite killer, which seems to be the only metric people look at.
With -1 to be hit she gets a bit better than a 4++, too. A TH Sarge lands 2.5 wounds if she has no negative, but a 4++ and 2.2 as she is currently. Of course...having the cake and eating it, too...
Of course you're going to have to pay more points for more attacks. You seem to be mistakenly thinking people want eldar buffed for the same points cost, when literally everyone here has said the problem is that eldar aspect warriors have become bargain-basement junk.
Scorpions shouldn't get 2 S4 AP 0 attacks. They also shouldn't be only 9 points. Both of these things are problems. Hence why I said you seem to be agreeing with me without realizing it.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I played against Eldar a lot in 3rd Ed. They were tough, but beatable.
When I finally played my only 7th (I think they were 7th) games, most of them were against Eldar. Getting blasted off the table by Wave Serpents shield attacks and Wraithknights and Tau allies wasn't fun in the slightest.
I remember third edition Altoic lists with the Ranger Disruption table, constant pinning, free shots, forced into reserves.. not fun.
I can't remember if it was also 3rd edition or 3.5, but the suncannon spam was pretty obnoxious too.
Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
Insectum7 wrote: @Daedelus: Unless you are Primaris, where Peter and Paul rob Eldar.
See my post above about how despite being a CC specialist of similar points to the bikes, she barely makes it out alive despite the scenario being skewed in her favor by not giving the bikes the capability to shoot.
She blocks O/W and is a character. There are few scenarios where the bikes will shoot her. Kiting is not likely - and these bikes are not pointed to shoot. If you wanted to do that just use Intercessors. JZ moves 11.5 and charges 10". Only if she were to fight WS and be outpointed by them with no support would she lose - and I'm not even bothering to spill extra wounds over. She will clean out six of these things without a doctrine.
Attacks on the charge is a bit of a trap. If you charge turn 2 and your opponent successfully locks you into combat (with a tank now, even) the unit's attacks will get cut in half. So even if you're White Scars they'll perform poorly. That means charging them turn 2 could very well be a bad play and you have to keep them alive for a turn 3 charge. At that point you might as well go max (6 probably) and stick them in reserves, but that's a good bit of army that might not see combat until turn 4.
I think people are way overselling these things - and given that the points may even be lower than I'm thinking, which will cause another panic and run on the banks until people actually play them.
I'll take more attacks.
Jain Zar should be 4 or 5 base, but at least get +2 A on the charge. The Blade of Destruction is fine as is.
A 4+ invuln would be nice too.
Which renders storm of silence a moot point and it becomes a role change from horde kill to elite killer, which seems to be the only metric people look at.
With -1 to be hit she gets a bit better than a 4++, too. A TH Sarge lands 2.5 wounds if she has no negative, but a 4++ and 2.2 as she is currently. Of course...having the cake and eating it, too...
that's the problem with probability sometimes, it creates impossibilities. A TH sarge will either inflict 0, 3, 6, 9 or 12 wounds...there is no 2.5. And storm of silence is a joke, it really is. I play Dark Angels, deathwatch and Ravenguard, and I can tell you that no marine player can sit here and complain about Jain Zar's stats. It's beyond laughable.
WS have fall back and charge, so you can charge every turn, assuming that hasn't been nerfed in 9th. But again, it's not about the math, it's about the fact that Eldar have become a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings. Even their special characters that are supposed to be absolute paragons of the race are weaklings compared to generic space marine characters. Hell, not even space marines - even a bargain basement 45 point SOB bloody rose Canoness with the teeth of terra clone and the warlord trait will embarrass Jain Zar.
The fact is that eldar combat choices simply haven't kept up with the ridiculous stat inflation that 8th saw for Imperium factions.
yukishiro1 wrote: Of course you're going to have to pay more points for more attacks. You seem to be mistakenly thinking people want eldar buffed for the same points cost, when literally everyone here has said the problem is that eldar aspect warriors have become bargain-basement junk.
Scorpions shouldn't get 2 S4 AP 0 attacks. They also shouldn't be only 9 points. Both of these things are problems. Hence why I said you seem to be agreeing with me without realizing it.
I suppose, but again you'll make Eldar a glass cannon and cause yourself other problems in the process all for a couple piddly attacks at a time when people lament the durability of Primaris who couldn't give a crap about those. I just don't see the desire.
And if it makes you feel any better (I know it doesn't, but humor me) the Outrider attacks are 50% from gear. Just like SS benefit from their blasters, which is ignored for this mental exercise. They don't actually outclass JZ in a "proper" sense.
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yukishiro1 wrote: Hell, not even space marines - even a bargain basement 45 point SOB bloody rose Canoness with the teeth of terra clone and the warlord trait will embarrass Jain Zar.
Ok you got me there, but you're talking relic and trait. It would have been nice to see Eldar do better in that department with PA.
Yes, it makes me feel much better that the reason Jain Zar gets dumpstered by generic space marines is that Eldar technology is inferior junk compared to the technology of the Imper...oh wait. Hmm.
I mean to be fair, eldar technology IS inferior junk compared to the imperium in 8th edition 40k. But that's part of the problem, not an explanation.
Well, you've got one thing going for you - GW tends to rewrite rules when new models pop up and there's a lot to do for Eldar. You'll just have to cross your fingers to break the JZ barrier.
Not an eldar player but personally i think Striking scorpians should get 5 attacks, 2 base, 2 from mandiblasters and +1 from the sword. 5 s4 ap-, d1 attacks would make them great horde / light infantry cleareres as they shoudl be while being able to do at least some damage meqs. IF 5 is too much make the mandiblasters during the first turn of combat and then down to 3 attacks the rest of it.
if they want to keep banshees at 2 attacks they should all be armed with the scythes, S5 ap? d? attacks would make them great against meqs/teqs as they should be.
Another thing that was always weird in in the fluff of alot of elder and even DE units like incubi they talk about all these other weapons they train on (specifically incubi does) but then they only have 1 melee profile.
Imagine of Dire avengers could all be armed with Avenger shurikens and direswords/power swoerds//shields. Or banshees all armed with the frisbee things...
Warp spiders with power blades on top of their main guns or able to take the other rifle types not just on the exarch.
would probably go a long way to helping fix the infantry and just adjust the point costs up as needed.
Alot of the Exarch gear options (especially with the PA exarch ability options) are so anti-synergy with what the unit does with its base wargear.
Or even if Banshees got the wych treatment and only a few could replace their powerswords with select pieces of the exarch gear woudl go a long way to makign them better (same with other aspect warriors)
It would be fun to be able to at least match the aspect warrior to their phoenix lord, fire dragons with axes, avengers with sword/shield, etc etc.
Eldar have always been top tier or close to it. They are a true evergreen army. Aspect warriors suck bum but honestly I can't complain. Plenty of fun to be had spamming grav tanks and flyers this edition.
Also technically, Shining Spears and Crimson Hunter Exarchs ARE aspect warriors....
EDIT: Just wanted to add the total lack of infantry in my lists this edition actually felt pretty fluffy. It was as if the eldar had more tanks than they had pilots to fly them. Really played into the whole 'dying race' aesthetic.
warmaster21 wrote:Not an eldar player but personally i think Striking scorpians should get 5 attacks, 2 base, 2 from mandiblasters and +1 from the sword. 5 s4 ap-, d1 attacks would make them great horde / light infantry cleareres as they shoudl be while being able to do at least some damage meqs. IF 5 is too much make the mandiblasters during the first turn of combat and then down to 3 attacks the rest of it.
if they want to keep banshees at 2 attacks they should all be armed with the scythes, S5 ap? d? attacks would make them great against meqs/teqs as they should be.
Another thing that was always weird in in the fluff of alot of elder and even DE units like incubi they talk about all these other weapons they train on (specifically incubi does) but then they only have 1 melee profile.
Imagine of Dire avengers could all be armed with Avenger shurikens and direswords/power swoerds//shields. Or banshees all armed with the frisbee things...
Warp spiders with power blades on top of their main guns or able to take the other rifle types not just on the exarch.
would probably go a long way to helping fix the infantry and just adjust the point costs up as needed.
Alot of the Exarch gear options (especially with the PA exarch ability options) are so anti-synergy with what the unit does with its base wargear.
Or even if Banshees got the wych treatment and only a few could replace their powerswords with select pieces of the exarch gear woudl go a long way to makign them better (same with other aspect warriors)
It would be fun to be able to at least match the aspect warrior to their phoenix lord, fire dragons with axes, avengers with sword/shield, etc etc.
Yes I would have loved it if they'd put options on the banshee sprue so you could get that weapon variety the exarchs have on the whole squad. Alas they did the cheapest job they could with tiny sprues, duplicate unhelmeted heads to count as Ynnari and that's it. Primaris got more BOLTER options than that...
slave.entity wrote:Eldar have always been top tier or close to it. They are a true evergreen army. Aspect warriors suck bum but honestly I can't complain. Plenty of fun to be had spamming grav tanks and flyers this edition.
Also technically, Shining Spears and Crimson Hunter Exarchs ARE aspect warriors....
EDIT: Just wanted to add the total lack of infantry in my lists this edition actually felt pretty fluffy. It was as if the eldar had more tanks than they had pilots to fly them. Really played into the whole 'dying race' aesthetic.
If GW just End timesed the eldar and said 'your're a tank army now', that's one thing. But we don't have that. We've got an army described one way and an army list playing entirely differently.
Aspects and exarchs are in my view one of the coolest and most interesting concepts in 40k. It's a crying shame how poorly GW have treated them for 20 years.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks[ on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army make not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
Maybe from eldar players point of view not being the best is an unacceptable state of the game. They lost their minds when IH, became the best army, it was even cited that the IH armies had a X% higher win ratio then the best eldar list, which is laughable considering at the same time in the game there were armies that didn't even have a 50% win ratio.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks[ on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army make not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
Maybe from eldar players point of view not being the best is an unacceptable state of the game. They lost their minds when IH, became the best army, it was even cited that the IH armies had a X% higher win ratio then the best eldar list, which is laughable considering at the same time in the game there were armies that didn't even have a 50% win ratio.
By definition, not all armies can have a 50% win rate - in fact, allowing for the fact that a draw is a reasonable result, I believe the realistic balance point is around a 45-48% win rate.
I was watching an art of war stream and the question of eldar in 9th came up. They were all in agreement that eldar will probably struggle due to the smaller board size making it harder for eldar to hide and pick their engagements. It's basically the shooting fish in a barrel scenario. They seem to think it will be possibly even more shooty than 8th but with some strong melee to counter charge.
Obviously we don't have the full picture so time will tell but when three top tier players say they will struggle I'm inclined to believe them.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army make not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
Most of the thread's contributions from Eldar players are about a desire to see a thematic shift in how the army functions, a return to aspect warriors and force multipliers instead of EC spam or flyer gimmicks as we have seen in 8e. It looks like these players would happily pay a point premium to see a boost in strength to "elite" units.
There's every chance that in implementing the above changes Eldar may be less competitive than their current state, and my take is that most contributors to this thread would be happy with this so long as it meant that when their aspect warriors did get into combat with other army's troops choices they dominated that micro element of the game.
Repeatedly decrying people's ambition to see their army's direction change just comes off as bitter and doesn't really add to the discussion.
While on the subject, theres a fantastic thread on the Eldar subreddit which shows the release date of our kits. It summarises by showing that 52% of the Eldar kit is metal, resin/finecast. Theres even one piece of our range still produced that uses the original Rogue Trader cast. Interesting as a retrospective, and probably indicative that there should be a pass at some point soon
The one thing that every stopped me from getting into eldar is how ugly and old most of the models are (and i started early 3rd edition) and one oft he things that keeps stopping me from picking up any elder kits whenever i get the urge to start up a new army
I hope eldar gets the big model line revamp that sisters got, even if it means they get 0 new units a full line redo of their kits is needed.
Hellebore wrote: Caveat: this might sound a little like a vent, but the frustrations I've had with this army and GW's treatment of it are 25 years long so you'll have to excuse me...
I've played 40k since 2nd ed, with a hiatus from 5th-7th due mainly to the direction of the fluff (highlighted by Mat Ward's work).
In 2nd ed I started with space wolves as I like wolves, vikings and space.....
Towards the end of 2nd ed I started to get into the eldar. I loved their background the unit concepts and the cool aesthetic. Their kickass characters - warlocks, exarchs, solitaires etc. The Avatar with its cost the same as a Bloodthirster and a profile that was one of the toughest in the game.
The martial arts/kung fu temple/ninja styling really appealed to me, as did the hitech weaponry. The shuriken catapult was an amazing advanced weapon - 24" S4 AP-2 D1 1 sustained fire dice. It was a better stormbolter at the time.
When 3rd ed came around, the catapult was chopped in half and became a pistol. Exarchs effectively disappeared entirely, becoming nothing more than squad sergeants. Warlocks became squad sergeants. Avatars sucked. pretty much everything I had loved about the army was no longer there. But i persevered. Assault weapons weren't that bad given no one could charge if they'd fired a RF weapon but could with assault.
Then over the next 2 editions RF got better, assault got worse and every other army somehow kept getting improved. Orks went from worse AP bolters to 18" ranged catapults with worse AP - until they released new dire avengers and then the orks had a gun better than a catapult and worse than a dire catapult.
Throughout this time other armies got new units, or improvements on old. Sternguard and Vanguard became a thing and special issue ammo made bolters better.
After coming back into the game in 8th, I find the same problems in the army as I did 10 years ago. Warlocks suck, exarchs suck shuriken catapults suck. But to add insult to injury, it seems like every unique unique type or concept the eldar used, was looted by imperial armies (especially primaris). But admech now have better swooping hawks, the assault bolter is a superior catapult (after decades of people saying it would be broken to put 24" back on the catapult, they went made a BETTER version for the space marines...), and so on.
It just seems like the eldar have been stripped of the unique units and weapons that were a signature of the army, handed out to imperial armies, and left with inferior versions of the unit. Eldar went from most advanced race with cool characters and weapons, to a weird gimmick laden, spam army. Thousand sons do psychic army better, primaris do specialist units better, primaris do cool character options better (or at all).
So I'm just wondering, what the hell are the going to do with them? I would not be surprised if the eldar army isn't popular at the moment - you can pick from a plethora of power armoured imperial armies that do Eldar better than they do, so there's no real incentive to play them. Unless you like flier spam and psychic gimmicks, which isn't why I started playing them.
While they've expanded imperial armies from literally nothing (Ad Mech, primaris), they've shrunk eldar armies. We don't even have the option to take master warlocks or independent exarchs, but primaris get rando executioners never mentioned before? Is it so hard to just make Exarchs independent again? Or give us a new level of exarch? This is asking for stuff that USED to exist, it's not demanding the invention of mariokarts, or sword and board units (ahem).
It's hard enough to convince people that old stuff that used to be available should be there, let alone demand new stuff...
Most of all I'd like aspect warriors to be more than just worse space marines. It just seems like, no matter what the background says, GW is set on a course of making everyone worse at things than space marines...
So, what they hell are they going to do with eldar, that doesn't just continue this tepid, boring gimmick army that clearly looks nothing like what it should and is a shadow of its former self.
Thank you for this, this is exactly how I feel about my Eldar. I started collecting them for the feel of the army, super elite but fragile space ninjas. Deadlier and faster than marines, but with a glass jaw. The archetypical high elves when compared to the marines' knights. Instead they're now somewhere between oldmarines and guard when it comes to an individual model's capabilities (not to mention that all aspects feel like chaff when compared to primaris). This is why I've become more and more disillusioned with them, and why they were gathering dust way before corona hit.
For those of you ranting about eldar being tournament op or whatever; try reading the original post? It's clearly about loss of identity, not power level
I know the thread kind of moved on, but earlier people were talking about Night Spinners and seemed to think that they weren't already very good units. In fact they're a highly competitive CWE choice right now.
Eldar have been an overpowered scourge upon the game like 15 years, 8th edition including, so hopefully just break the army's legs and let it sit for a few years.
BlaxicanX wrote: Eldar have been an overpowered scourge upon the game like 15 years, 8th edition including, so hopefully just break the army's legs and let it sit for a few years.
Does posting like a dill weed help in any way, or is this just for gaks and giggles?
BlaxicanX wrote: Eldar have been an overpowered scourge upon the game like 15 years, 8th edition including, so hopefully just break the army's legs and let it sit for a few years.
Does posting like a dill weed help in any way, or is this just for gaks and giggles?
I donno, does crying because your consistently ultra powerful army isn't as thematically fulfilling as you'd like it to be help in any way, or is it just for gaks and giggles?
Let's not mince words here: Eldar players want to have their cake and eat it too; they want to be ultra powerful and have a thematically fulfilling army which can curb stomp near everything else.
I hope everyone in this thread gets what they claim to want. I hope that, in 9th, Aspect Warriors become the bread and butter of Eldar. And in turn I hope that they're gimped beyond belief and spend the entire edition near the bottom of the barrel unable to escape, so they can appreciate the special treatment they've had for the better part of a decade.
BlaxicanX wrote: Eldar have been an overpowered scourge upon the game like 15 years, 8th edition including, so hopefully just break the army's legs and let it sit for a few years.
Does posting like a dill weed help in any way, or is this just for gaks and giggles?
I donno, does crying because your consistently ultra powerful army isn't as thematically fulfilling as you'd like it to be help in any way, or is it just for gaks and giggles?
Complaining that an army/faction isn't where it should be is legitimate, and is one of the purposes of a forum such as this. The same can't be said of the trolling by some people who have no interest in the faction other than being disruptive and acting like witches.
Togusa wrote: I'ma be honest. I'd have more sympathy for Eldar players, IF you guys didn't have the top codex for the last three editions. I remember my first LVO, 2017. Something like 6-7 of the top ten were eldar lists. Every other table had a wraithknight on it, sometimes hanging out with some T'au friends.
The first year I brought my Salamanders, I remember the list like it was yesterday. Captain, Librarian, Tactical Marines, Sternguard Vets, Thunderfire cannon or two, a Devestator Squad, 2 squads of terminators and a Landraider Crusader. Not competitive, but not terrible.
You know what happened game 1? Eldar Jet bikes, game was over by turn 2, I lost 80% of my forces. Game 2? Eldar jet Bikes, same result. Game three was a treat, I got to play against Necrons. Necron jet Bikes. Game was over turn three, with a VP score in each game 3:1.
That was the day I learned to hate the Eldar player. And, sometimes the Necron Player. But mostly Jet bikes.
You'll notice that, almost without exception, every time a new eldar dex is released and people 'hate' them, it's almost always because of a single unit (generally in association with a farseer), or a couple. Being able to abuse one or two units every edition might make them possible to win with, but it hides how terrible the army is and how impossible it is to play them in any other way than that one particular spam build flavour of the edition.
Giving eldar players the ability to use the whole dex isn't asking to make the whole dex as broken as those specific unit combos, it should actually reduce the broken nature of them.
I want to be able to play the army as they should play, not have to resort to crappy tricks that make people hate the army in order to get any kind of advantage.
At the moment the eldar army is the most gamiest, least representative army out there. That it can only really be competitive with unrealistic army compositions highlights this issue.
Was going to chuck my 2 cents in here, but this pretty much covers my feelings about Eldar, and it's what I always crash into when I start thinking about doing an army. Maybe it's just that most of my Eldar knowledge stems from the 1st/2nd ed. background material, but things like shuriken catapults being super short-ranged, and Howling Banshees not being the terrifying CC monsters they once were just means Eldar don't feel like Eldar to me. I'm old enough to remember when all the forums were perma-mad about Wraithlords in 3rd ed., and it seems like Eldar have just jumped from being reliant on one or two super-effective units ever since. Which perhaps explains why people seem to be so cross at them all the time too – if you make the army work more like it "should', then maybe people wouldn't find them so annoying, and you keep Eldar players AND their opponents happy?
2nd edition charachters where bad game design. You ad so many rules on them they can not be touched. 2nd edition had a lot og unnesasery rules. Like eldar pop up attacks.
The idea with excharcs having special rules i stil pressent as squad leaders. Not all their rules are that inpactfull, but it is there. The autarch took the place of the hero excharc. You stil have the phoenix lords who are rather unoque.
In 4th edition most armies where very specialised with. 5th edition rounded many armies out. 6th edition gave every army a flyer. Etc.
Jump pack shooters was not only an eldar thing. Dark eldars have it as well with heavy weapons. Now primaries has it. Ad mech needed more design space. Dune type flyers with wings is not a bad place for them.
Eldars stil have unique weapon categories: Shuricen, fillament, psyker melee weapons, warp spider packs, hawk bombs etc.
BlaxicanX wrote: Eldar have been an overpowered scourge upon the game like 15 years, 8th edition including, so hopefully just break the army's legs and let it sit for a few years.
Does posting like a dill weed help in any way, or is this just for gaks and giggles?
Let's not mince words here: Eldar players want to have their cake and eat it too; they want to be ultra powerful and have a thematically fulfilling army which can curb stomp near everything else.
This is just describing Marines currently though.
Make no mistake, Marines are the only S+ Tier army in the game, even after the nerfs. And only very specific cheesy CWE army builds can put up a fight vs that army while 90% of the CWE Codex is actually underpowered or completely reasonable. Meanwhile you could blindfold yourself, throw darts at a board with marine units on it and still come out with a relatively competitive list that will still stomp most army lists in the game currently.
I know where the 'rage' comes from, but it seems wrong headed.
Imagine explaining to a new player, who happens to have picked Eldar, that the reason it's ok that much of their codex sucks, is because several editions ago, they were too good.
I've never played Eldar, but my experience with Drukhari is that players often bemoan certain rules as unfun or broken in isolation, and without context; my Venoms may be tricky to hit, but they can also be routinely destroyed by bolter fire.
harlokin wrote: I know where the 'rage' comes from, but it seems wrong headed.
Imagine explaining to a new player, who happens to have picked Eldar, that the reason it's ok that much of their codex sucks, is because several editions ago, they were too good.
I've never played Eldar, but my experience with Drukhari is that players often bemoan certain rules as unfun or broken in isolation, and without context; my Venoms may be tricky to hit, but they can also be routinely destroyed by bolter fire.
No, the explanation I give is its just GW being GW.
See, there you go again. T5 -1 hit is NOT routinely destroyed by bolter fire. It takes a large, large number of shots from bolters to do that. It's basically cost prohibitive.
harlokin wrote: I know where the 'rage' comes from, but it seems wrong headed.
Imagine explaining to a new player, who happens to have picked Eldar, that the reason it's ok that much of their codex sucks, is because several editions ago, they were too good.
I've never played Eldar, but my experience with Drukhari is that players often bemoan certain rules as unfun or broken in isolation, and without context; my Venoms may be tricky to hit, but they can also be routinely destroyed by bolter fire.
Just tell marine players to stop playing with Primaris in 9th and watch their heads explode in hypocrisy. Re-roll all with 100's of shots on units with more rules than anything i can play it WAY less fun than venoms.
Nazrak wrote: I really don't understand this "armies should have to take turns to be good/bad" mentality.
It turns out spite is the real secondary victory condition. It's like this in other games, too. I mean, I'd glady squat BA if I could take SW with me. That's how much I despise SW.
Nazrak wrote: I really don't understand this "armies should have to take turns to be good/bad" mentality.
Is there any mileage in the conspiracy theory that Eldar power level only dipped in 5th edition because GW wanted to drum up interest in all the new Dark Eldar models they were bringing out?
Nazrak wrote: I really don't understand this "armies should have to take turns to be good/bad" mentality.
Is there any mileage in the conspiracy theory that Eldar power level only dipped in 5th edition because GW wanted to drum up interest in all the new Dark Eldar models they were bringing out?
No. It was accidental, I'm sure. Eldar were still obnoxious with fortuned units in cover.
Nazrak wrote: I really don't understand this "armies should have to take turns to be good/bad" mentality.
Is there any mileage in the conspiracy theory that Eldar power level only dipped in 5th edition because GW wanted to drum up interest in all the new Dark Eldar models they were bringing out?
I suspect not, the bigger issue is that a lot of what made Eldar powerful (particularly the vehicles) changed from 4th to 5th, and Eldar simply never got a 5E codex update before 6th rolled around as that was back in the days when GW might only do 2 codex releases a year.
Is people really claiming that post nerfs space marines are competitively better than Eldar, Chaos or Grey Knights?
Marines are the most powerfull army in the game right now but not on the top-competitive scene. That means the top lists of the game aren't marine based but any mediocre marine army can wreck havoc in any other mediocre or even "good" army of many other factions.
And I don't understand people asking for eldar to not be dependant on Farseers (And warlocks). You want your eldars to not be dependant on psychic powers? Thats like, their whole thing. Is like asking for Grey Knights or Thousand Sons to not be reliant on their psychic powers or tau on markerlights.
Galas wrote: And I don't understand people asking for eldar to not be dependant on Farseers (And warlocks). You want your eldars to not be dependant on psychic powers? Thats like, their whole thing. Is like asking for Grey Knights or Thousand Sons to not be reliant on their psychic powers or tau on markerlights.
Farseers are rare gifted individuals, there's not enough of them to join every company level skirmish and they have other important stuff to be doing as well, there's all sorts of Eldar forces that wouldn't be led by a Farseer or have Psyker support. Autarch's are the dedicated military command officers of the Craftworld Eldar. they should really be capable of leading armies without a Farseer and not leaving the army crippled.
Galas wrote: And I don't understand people asking for eldar to not be dependant on Farseers (And warlocks). You want your eldars to not be dependant on psychic powers? Thats like, their whole thing. Is like asking for Grey Knights or Thousand Sons to not be reliant on their psychic powers or tau on markerlights.
Farseers are rare gifted individuals, there's not enough of them to join every company level skirmish and they have other important stuff to be doing as well, there's all sorts of Eldar forces that wouldn't be led by a Farseer or have Psyker support. Autarch's are the dedicated military command officers of the Craftworld Eldar. they should really be capable of leading armies without a Farseer and not leaving the army crippled.
The same can be said with space marine captains? And nearly everything. If you don't want farseers in your army you can use warlocks that have extremely good psychic powers but if you want to gimp yourself thats on you. Eldar Autarcs are a late developement to have a marine-captain equivalent, for starters.
We have Magnuses and Marneuses and Guillmauses in nearly every "skirmish level engagement". Thats the game we are playing, with imperial knights and 30 adeptus custodes and baneblades. That complaint TBH seems rather silly to me.
Galas wrote: Is people really claiming that post nerfs space marines are competitively better than Eldar, Chaos or Grey Knights?
Marines are the most powerfull army in the game right now but not on the top-competitive scene.
What's the evidence for this? A couple of tournaments that occurred in the few weeks post the Doctrine Nerf and before the tournament scene essentially ended almost everywhere due to Covid-19?
All the PA books that have been released - and of course 9th's imminent arrival - may change the meta dramatically, but I think at least as of 10th March or something, Marines were still the army to beat.
Galas wrote: And I don't understand people asking for eldar to not be dependant on Farseers (And warlocks). You want your eldars to not be dependant on psychic powers? Thats like, their whole thing. Is like asking for Grey Knights or Thousand Sons to not be reliant on their psychic powers or tau on markerlights.
Farseers are rare gifted individuals, there's not enough of them to join every company level skirmish and they have other important stuff to be doing as well, there's all sorts of Eldar forces that wouldn't be led by a Farseer or have Psyker support. Autarch's are the dedicated military command officers of the Craftworld Eldar. they should really be capable of leading armies without a Farseer and not leaving the army crippled.
The same can be said with space marine captains?
Except you can run a Space Marine army without a captain and still have it function far better than an Eldar army without a Farseer
And nearly everything. If you don't want farseers in your army you can use warlocks that have extremely good psychic powers but if you want to gimp yourself thats on you.
The point was that they shouldn't have to actively gimp the army simply by not taking a certain HQ option. I'm not sure why we're demanding all Eldar armies must include a Farseer to be competitive. I can run a Guard army with several different HQ's while not taking others and still have it work well enough to function. I can run a CSM army competitively (as much as can be) without a Daemon Prince. Why must Eldar be competitively tied to the Farseer so?
Eldar Autarcs are a late developement to have a marine-captain equivalent, for starters.
Autarch's originally go back to Epic, they've been in the codex since 4th edition as we're now going into 9th, that's the bulk of the game's meaningful existence.
We have Magnuses and Marneuses and Guillmauses in nearly every "skirmish level engagement". Thats the game we are playing, with imperial knights and 30 adeptus custodes and baneblades. That complaint TBH seems rather silly to me.
The game offers the option for that, but doesn't force it. Eldar should be able to function without being tied to a single HQ choice, no army in the game should be. I'm not sure why an Eldar army isn't allowed to be competitive just because it chose to take the dedicated military command officer HQ instead of running with the pysker suppot option.
Eldar can play with autarchs and warlocks and still be competitive, at least much more than many other armies if they don't take their mandatory HQs or characters, speaking about 8th.
You'll notice that, almost without exception, every time a new eldar dex is released and people 'hate' them, it's almost always because of a single unit (generally in association with a farseer), or a couple. Being able to abuse one or two units every edition might make them possible to win with, but it hides how terrible the army is and how impossible it is to play them in any other way than that one particular spam build flavour of the edition.
Giving eldar players the ability to use the whole dex isn't asking to make the whole dex as broken as those specific unit combos, it should actually reduce the broken nature of them.
I want to be able to play the army as they should play, not have to resort to crappy tricks that make people hate the army in order to get any kind of advantage.
At the moment the eldar army is the most gamiest, least representative army out there. That it can only really be competitive with unrealistic army compositions highlights this issue.
The hyperbole in this thread just makes me wince. I can totally understand why everyone hates us (and I'm an eldar player properly since 2007 and dabbled in early 90s, if any of that matters). Impossible? Terrible? Gamiest? Total nonsense.
If you want competitive - they are bloody competitive as has been pointed out. No army in the history of 40k has a longer track record at the top tables - they're the All Blacks of 40k. At GT level you can't quibble that the particular zeitgeist build isn't one you like, you'll just have to swallow that.
If you're not fussed about out right power but still moan that the 'whole dex' is rubbish, then actually the problem is you as a player. In my experience 90% of 40k games are played in an environment where both players are trying to win but not going all out to curb stomp with super optimised lists. They'll take some stuff for rule of cool, even if it's not the best; some stuff to give a bit of punch; generally trying to play in most phases of the game.
In that spirit, which craftworld units do you consider unplayable? I have had good mileage from pretty much everything. Scorpions are the 'worst' in my book but I still run them very frequently as I love the fluff - and you know what, I don't lose every game. Would I like them to be better? Yes of course, but I also want my Assault Marines to be better too or any other slightly left behind unit.
Will Banshees suffer fighting intercessors? Yes. Should you instead shoot intercessors with D Scythes/Starcannons in that particular matchup? Probably. Will those banshees murder other armies infantry? Yes they will. Honestly, the sky is not falling down, the craftworlders still have a HUGE range of high power tools. I think the new cover rules are also going to be amazing for them, and will mean I can play a more footslogging avatar list which I love.
Galas wrote: Eldar can play with autarchs and warlocks and still be competitive, at least much more than many other armies if they don't take their mandatory HQs or characters, speaking about 8th.
Again, is there any evidence of this? Also, Warlocks without Farseers don't function that well; without Seer Council you've got a 50/50 on getting the desirable powers off from the Runes of Battle tree. Yes, you can use that one power from Runes of Fortune that boosts casts, but the point stands; Warlock powers are more limited in usage and application. Plus, Warlock powers only can buff infantry which makes them far less universal in application in comparison to Farseers.
And autarchs post-Legends are really, really not good. Same thing with Warlocks unless you're looking at bikes or a conclave.
Eldar hate is a real thing......pretty sad really, but par for the course for wargamers I guess.
As already mentioned, most Eldar players want to use a larger portion of their codex rather than a few gimmicky units spammed as FOTM. This is not a cake and eat it too approach, this is about removing gimmicky, overpowered elements and allowing greater variety of units. It's not all doom and gloom, however. Mech Eldar is playing well (probably top build at this point in time). Wraith Eldar are also reasonable (although knight needs to be better, just not the ridiculous undercosted abomination it was in 7th). Players want Aspects (Biel Tan) to be viable again, they are not currently. Scorps, banshees, spiders, hawks, dragons just aren't great at what they do (although to be fair, dragons in a falcon/serpent can get the job done, it's just hard to compare the points cost of a dragon with melta vs a single wraithguard with cannon for a similar job, so you don't see them).
Eldar characters need some help, but mostly just the Phoenix Lords and Avatar. Farseers, warlocks, spiritseers, and autarchs all do their job fairly well (and Autarchs would be better if the relics/WTs were not hot garbage).
Guardians are not great, but if you are going to go with the guardian strong force, simply build it around Hail of Doom, Superior Shurikens, or Martial Citizenry etc. It makes them a little better.
You'll notice that, almost without exception, every time a new eldar dex is released and people 'hate' them, it's almost always because of a single unit (generally in association with a farseer), or a couple. Being able to abuse one or two units every edition might make them possible to win with, but it hides how terrible the army is and how impossible it is to play them in any other way than that one particular spam build flavour of the edition.
Giving eldar players the ability to use the whole dex isn't asking to make the whole dex as broken as those specific unit combos, it should actually reduce the broken nature of them.
I want to be able to play the army as they should play, not have to resort to crappy tricks that make people hate the army in order to get any kind of advantage.
At the moment the eldar army is the most gamiest, least representative army out there. That it can only really be competitive with unrealistic army compositions highlights this issue.
The hyperbole in this thread just makes me wince. I can totally understand why everyone hates us (and I'm an eldar player properly since 2007 and dabbled in early 90s, if any of that matters). Impossible? Terrible? Gamiest? Total nonsense.
If you want competitive - they are bloody competitive as has been pointed out. No army in the history of 40k has a longer track record at the top tables - they're the All Blacks of 40k. At GT level you can't quibble that the particular zeitgeist build isn't one you like, you'll just have to swallow that.
If you're not fussed about out right power but still moan that the 'whole dex' is rubbish, then actually the problem is you as a player. In my experience 90% of 40k games are played in an environment where both players are trying to win but not going all out to curb stomp with super optimised lists. They'll take some stuff for rule of cool, even if it's not the best; some stuff to give a bit of punch; generally trying to play in most phases of the game.
In that spirit, which craftworld units do you consider unplayable? I have had good mileage from pretty much everything. Scorpions are the 'worst' in my book but I still run them very frequently as I love the fluff - and you know what, I don't lose every game. Would I like them to be better? Yes of course, but I also want my Assault Marines to be better too or any other slightly left behind unit.
Will Banshees suffer fighting intercessors? Yes. Should you instead shoot intercessors with D Scythes/Starcannons in that particular matchup? Probably. Will those banshees murder other armies infantry? Yes they will. Honestly, the sky is not falling down, the craftworlders still have a HUGE range of high power tools. I think the new cover rules are also going to be amazing for them, and will mean I can play a more footslogging avatar list which I love.
Oh christ, Banshees don't "murder infantry", you don't have the volume of attacks or the strength to do that. And Warp Spiders? Fire Dragons? Swooping Hawks? Autarchs post-Legends? Basically all the named characters minus Eldrad and Maugan Ra? C'mon man. What is the use case where those units work or are efficient?
Yeah, it's hard to whine playing Eldar because you can always supplement your list with the good stuff to counterbalance the bad. And the crutch that is Expert Crafters made a lot of the naff units usable, for sure. But it's not like these complaints are illegitimate. The triple whammy of old models, expensive models (not sold in stores because no resin/finecast in stores), and crappy rules lifted in power by bargain basement pointings makes it pretty hard to swallow starting an "iconic" Eldar army today.
bullyboy wrote: Eldar hate is a real thing......pretty sad really, but par for the course for wargamers I guess.
As already mentioned, most Eldar players want to use a larger portion of their codex rather than a few gimmicky units spammed as FOTM. This is not a cake and eat it too approach, this is about removing gimmicky, overpowered elements and allowing greater variety of units.
If what you say about most eldar players was true. Then all those horror stories about the past, and the stories about 8th ed would not only have no impact on how people view eldar and eldar players, but also would never give birth to the hate in the first place. Because, as you said it, the most of eldar players wouldn't be using those unfun to play against eldar armies of past and present. But this does not seem to be the case. So either everyone, but the eldar players, is suffering from an understandable eldar hate syndrom, or those Inari, alaitoc +pre 8th ed top armies, were very much played by more then just a small minority of eldar players.
And just because eldar players would want to have more then one or two good builds, out of just one codex doesn't help here either. As there seem to be whole factions, according to players older then me, that went through editions without having a single good build. So of course people feel strange when after dominating a lot of 8th ed, they hear how eldar players claim that they were done wrong by GW.
Hard to feel sympathy to eldar when your own faction was bad for 2+ years, then became fixed a bit, but then corona hit, so you didn't even get to play the fixed version. And then hear that GW is putting out a new edition.
You'll notice that, almost without exception, every time a new eldar dex is released and people 'hate' them, it's almost always because of a single unit (generally in association with a farseer), or a couple. Being able to abuse one or two units every edition might make them possible to win with, but it hides how terrible the army is and how impossible it is to play them in any other way than that one particular spam build flavour of the edition.
Giving eldar players the ability to use the whole dex isn't asking to make the whole dex as broken as those specific unit combos, it should actually reduce the broken nature of them.
I want to be able to play the army as they should play, not have to resort to crappy tricks that make people hate the army in order to get any kind of advantage.
At the moment the eldar army is the most gamiest, least representative army out there. That it can only really be competitive with unrealistic army compositions highlights this issue.
The hyperbole in this thread just makes me wince. I can totally understand why everyone hates us (and I'm an eldar player properly since 2007 and dabbled in early 90s, if any of that matters). Impossible? Terrible? Gamiest? Total nonsense.
If you want competitive - they are bloody competitive as has been pointed out. No army in the history of 40k has a longer track record at the top tables - they're the All Blacks of 40k. At GT level you can't quibble that the particular zeitgeist build isn't one you like, you'll just have to swallow that.
If you're not fussed about out right power but still moan that the 'whole dex' is rubbish, then actually the problem is you as a player. In my experience 90% of 40k games are played in an environment where both players are trying to win but not going all out to curb stomp with super optimised lists. They'll take some stuff for rule of cool, even if it's not the best; some stuff to give a bit of punch; generally trying to play in most phases of the game.
In that spirit, which craftworld units do you consider unplayable? I have had good mileage from pretty much everything. Scorpions are the 'worst' in my book but I still run them very frequently as I love the fluff - and you know what, I don't lose every game. Would I like them to be better? Yes of course, but I also want my Assault Marines to be better too or any other slightly left behind unit.
Will Banshees suffer fighting intercessors? Yes. Should you instead shoot intercessors with D Scythes/Starcannons in that particular matchup? Probably. Will those banshees murder other armies infantry? Yes they will. Honestly, the sky is not falling down, the craftworlders still have a HUGE range of high power tools. I think the new cover rules are also going to be amazing for them, and will mean I can play a more footslogging avatar list which I love.
Oh christ, Banshees don't "murder infantry", you don't have the volume of attacks or the strength to do that. And Warp Spiders? Fire Dragons? Swooping Hawks? Autarchs post-Legends? Basically all the named characters minus Eldrad and Maugan Ra? C'mon man. What is the use case where those units work or are efficient?
Yeah, it's hard to whine playing Eldar because you can always supplement your list with the good stuff to counterbalance the bad. And the crutch that is Expert Crafters made a lot of the naff units usable, for sure. But it's not like these complaints are illegitimate. The triple whammy of old models, expensive models (not sold in stores because no resin/finecast in stores), and crappy rules lifted in power by bargain basement pointings makes it pretty hard to swallow starting an "iconic" Eldar army today.
It's like you don't play missions or something!? Swooping hawks do fine in an objective grabbing role, same for spiders.Fire Dragons are still 6 melta guns who can be dropped in for anti tank. They still do this, you know? 20 guardians in the webway are another decent forward unit yet I hear eldar players describe them as unplayable, it's crazy.
Will those units do ok against a grey knight double paladin bomb? No, they won't. But they are still perfectly fine choices in garagehammer gaming.
Galas wrote: Eldar can play with autarchs and warlocks and still be competitive, at least much more than many other armies if they don't take their mandatory HQs or characters, speaking about 8th.
Again, is there any evidence of this? Also, Warlocks without Farseers don't function that well; without Seer Council you've got a 50/50 on getting the desirable powers off from the Runes of Battle tree. Yes, you can use that one power from Runes of Fortune that boosts casts, but the point stands; Warlock powers are more limited in usage and application. Plus, Warlock powers only can buff infantry which makes them far less universal in application in comparison to Farseers.
And autarchs post-Legends are really, really not good. Same thing with Warlocks unless you're looking at bikes or a conclave.
Vehicle heavy eldar lists with master crafters don't even need Farseers to work and have the job done.
As I said, Eldar are a psychic army , and even then you can play them without that much psychic, maybe not in others editions but you can right now.
Yeah it sucks 5 banshee can't kill 5 intercessors in meele (But TBH theres probably thousands of banshee for every space marine on the galaxy) . All this apologysm about eldar not being that good, just a couple broken combos is as absurd as when Tau players do it.
And I think many eldar players believe 40k is LOTR and eldars are those elves. Eldars in 40k are "good/elite" aliens, but a space marine is a space marine, not a normal human. I'm sorry in rogue trader or 2nd or the phaleolitic era did eat marines for breakfast. Back there 3 genestealer killed 10 marines in a turn without a sweat.
All Eldar aspect warriors are good and perfectly usable and that is proved in many WTC and ETC lists. The weakest ones are warp spiders and striking scorpions, but avengers, dragons, hawks and banshees all have their place and their very good uses.
Oh christ, Banshees don't "murder infantry", you don't have the volume of attacks or the strength to do that. And Warp Spiders? Fire Dragons? Swooping Hawks? Autarchs post-Legends? Basically all the named characters minus Eldrad and Maugan Ra? C'mon man. What is the use case where those units work or are efficient?
Yeah, it's hard to whine playing Eldar because you can always supplement your list with the good stuff to counterbalance the bad. And the crutch that is Expert Crafters made a lot of the naff units usable, for sure. But it's not like these complaints are illegitimate. The triple whammy of old models, expensive models (not sold in stores because no resin/finecast in stores), and crappy rules lifted in power by bargain basement pointings makes it pretty hard to swallow starting an "iconic" Eldar army today.
I understand that people want more elite units, but I find your assertion on Banshees to be incorrect. At least in the sense of efficiency of points, but in many cases also in raw wounds delivered.
They just don't "work", because people don't like taking the effort to get them to melee. Hopefully 9th changes that.
There is also a lot more in utility to the other aspects than tacking on some S4 attacks so I still find people's assessments of them misguided.
bullyboy wrote: Eldar hate is a real thing......pretty sad really, but par for the course for wargamers I guess.
As already mentioned, most Eldar players want to use a larger portion of their codex rather than a few gimmicky units spammed as FOTM. This is not a cake and eat it too approach, this is about removing gimmicky, overpowered elements and allowing greater variety of units.
If what you say about most eldar players was true. Then all those horror stories about the past, and the stories about 8th ed would not only have no impact on how people view eldar and eldar players, but also would never give birth to the hate in the first place. Because, as you said it, the most of eldar players wouldn't be using those unfun to play against eldar armies of past and present. But this does not seem to be the case. So either everyone, but the eldar players, is suffering from an understandable eldar hate syndrom, or those Inari, alaitoc +pre 8th ed top armies, were very much played by more then just a small minority of eldar players.
And just because eldar players would want to have more then one or two good builds, out of just one codex doesn't help here either. As there seem to be whole factions, according to players older then me, that went through editions without having a single good build. So of course people feel strange when after dominating a lot of 8th ed, they hear how eldar players claim that they were done wrong by GW.
Hard to feel sympathy to eldar when your own faction was bad for 2+ years, then became fixed a bit, but then corona hit, so you didn't even get to play the fixed version. And then hear that GW is putting out a new edition.
....A new edition that greatly buffs your army as far as we can tell while allowing you to build the army you've said in the past you wanted and not invalidating any of those rules you got?
you're gonna get to run a paladins-only list with (most likely) 10CP, 2 more than you'd originally have had with a battalion of tax troops. With buffed terrain rules that improve elites, particularly elites with access to something like an ignore-LOS spell for example.
I have as much symphaty for Eldar players (A codex that post PA, and theirs was the first one has a TON of viable builds and units) as I have for Tau players complaining about how our codex sucks (When theres a ton of good sinergy and good units there) and then not leaving home without 3 riptides.
The reality is that Eldars can have nearly any kind of lists with the units of their army and a minimun of sinergy compete in a semi-competitive scene agaisnt nearly every other army of the game with the exception of the most broken lists. And then, they can do a ton of high competitive armies to face the most competitive armies out there and win. So what exactly do they want? To have all of their medium-competitive armies go toe to toe with the most broken stuff out there?
It's like you don't play missions or something!? Swooping hawks do fine in an objective grabbing role, same for spiders.Fire Dragons are still 6 melta guns who can be dropped in for anti tank. They still do this, you know? 20 guardians in the webway are another decent forward unit yet I hear eldar players describe them as unplayable, it's crazy.
Will those units do ok against a grey knight double paladin bomb? No, they won't. But they are still perfectly fine choices in garagehammer gaming.
You're not wrong about Guardians, I'll definitely give you that. I'm not whining about those. But the whole point of this thread is that in the fluff (and in times in the past in the game), you could say more for Swooping Hawks than "they grab objectives". Lots of Eldar units do that (plus other things), so internally that's not a niche you satisfy. And externally, Hawks are completely outclassed by those stupid new Admech things. They're just lame.
ewar wrote: If you want competitive - they are bloody competitive as has been pointed out. No army in the history of 40k has a longer track record at the top tables - they're the All Blacks of 40k. At GT level you can't quibble that the particular zeitgeist build isn't one you like, you'll just have to swallow that.
Nobody has claimed anything different in the entire thread, only that the internal balance is terrible and that much of the codex routinely sits on the shelf most of the time. These problems can both be true.
Will Banshees suffer fighting intercessors? Yes. Should you instead shoot intercessors with D Scythes/Starcannons in that particular matchup? Probably. Will those banshees murder other armies infantry? Yes they will.
Hrm, with a mere two S3 attacks each and only T3 4+ resiliency? For a dedicated shock assault Elites unit, they're pretty pillow fisted, and units like basic Ork Boyz or Assault Marines will generally substantially outperform them once combat is joined.
Galas wrote: Eldar can play with autarchs and warlocks and still be competitive, at least much more than many other armies if they don't take their mandatory HQs or characters, speaking about 8th.
Hrm, at least in my experience, and looking at the army forum section and lists taken to events, this does not seem to be the case. They're practically nonexistent, and there's a reason for that, the Farseer just has way more utility than the other HQ options and too many units don't work without it. There certainly isn't the flexibility there is with most other armies and their competitive HQ options, again I can run an IG army competitively with several different kinds of HQ, I don't need to have a Daemon Prince leading my CSM's to be competitive, and there is a significantly greater proportion of SM armies making lists without a Captain work than there are Eldar lists that work without a Farseer.
Man, sure is a shame those Primaris forgot to bring ammo for their bolters. Keep picking those cherries...
Right, the same way this forum claims how awesome Intercessors are with their 30" guns, but then gushes over their "awesome melee profile". Which is it? Are they shooting at range or are they in melee?
I already mentioned the difficulties of getting to combat as a barrier.
Man, sure is a shame those Primaris forgot to bring ammo for their bolters. Keep picking those cherries...
Right, the same way this forum claims how awesome Intercessors are with their 30" guns, but then gushes over their "awesome melee profile". Which is it? Are they shooting at range or are they in melee?
I already mentioned the difficulties of getting to combat as a barrier.
They wreck at range, and in melee. A generalist muhreen needs to be better at everything, cos my Black Library lore says so.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it seems an awful bitter attitude to take. "I hope they get dragged down to our level" doesn't seem very constructive compared to "I hope my faction could get some improvements too."
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it seems an awful bitter attitude to take. "I hope they get dragged down to our level" doesn't seem very constructive compared to "I hope my faction could get some improvements too."
To be fair, I'd like to see EVERY army toned down, by varying amounts. Mostly in lethality.
Man, sure is a shame those Primaris forgot to bring ammo for their bolters. Keep picking those cherries...
Right, the same way this forum claims how awesome Intercessors are with their 30" guns, but then gushes over their "awesome melee profile". Which is it? Are they shooting at range or are they in melee?
I already mentioned the difficulties of getting to combat as a barrier.
Yes, that's a little schizophrenic, but you said:
I understand that people want more elite units, but I find your assertion on Banshees to be incorrect. At least in the sense of efficiency of points, but in many cases also in raw wounds delivered.
and
Banshees are better at killing IS than Primaris
And showed data that did not leverage the full capabilities of Primaris. So I don't care how close or far away you are, it's not true to say "Banshees are better at killing IS than Primaris". Additionally, the point that Scotsman has been making throughout this thread and in others is that the Banshee is a specialist and the Intercessor is a generalist, and yet the two are quite close when competing in the specialty area of the Banshee.
Galas wrote: I have as much symphaty for Eldar players (A codex that post PA, and theirs was the first one has a TON of viable builds and units) as I have for Tau players complaining about how our codex sucks (When theres a ton of good sinergy and good units there) and then not leaving home without 3 riptides.
The reality is that Eldars can have nearly any kind of lists with the units of their army and a minimun of sinergy compete in a semi-competitive scene agaisnt nearly every other army of the game with the exception of the most broken lists. And then, they can do a ton of high competitive armies to face the most competitive armies out there and win. So what exactly do they want? To have all of their medium-competitive armies go toe to toe with the most broken stuff out there?
People have been telling you over and over again in this thread what they want, and it isn't to be more powerful and roflstomp everybody. There are literally dozens of posts in this thread and I don't think a single one is "eldar are underpowered make them more powerful so I can win every game!" There's not much point to having a discussion if one side isn't reading what the other side is posting, is there?
People don't want eldar elite choices to be bargain-basement 9 point garbage. They hate the EC/MS spam lists as much as you do, more likely than not.
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JNAProductions wrote: To be fair, I'd like to see EVERY army toned down, by varying amounts. Mostly in lethality.
The game's too damn killy right now.
Sure, me too. I'd rather see lethality nerfed to the point where striking scorpions aren't a joke with their current profile, but we all know that primaris are here to stay and that isn't gonna happen, right?
I can emphatize with people not wanting eldar specialists to cost 9-13 points and be cheap units and feel elite.
Space Marines wanted it also for odd 20 years and they at last got their wished granted (From a monkey pawn). We know what needs to happen for a change like that to happen: A fantasy-aos conversion or being completely redone.
Actually I have found AoS rules writers much more open to do changes in stat lines (For example some kharadron units or saurus temple guards going from 1 wound to 2 wounds) than 40k ones. In 40k, they are much more constrained by tradition. Not something I believe is good but thats how they design their rules.
Insectum7 wrote: @Daedelus: Unless you are Primaris, where Peter and Paul rob Eldar.
See my post above about how despite being a CC specialist of similar points to the bikes, she barely makes it out alive despite the scenario being skewed in her favor by not giving the bikes the capability to shoot.
She blocks O/W and is a character. There are few scenarios where the bikes will shoot her. Kiting is not likely - and these bikes are not pointed to shoot.
Is Jain Zar pointed to shoot? The Bikes bring (I think) 16 S4 -1 shots at 30". 8 Intercessors worth of shooting on a much more mobile platform. Are we just waving that away?
If the bikes "are not pointed to shoot" I guess that's just free then.
Insectum7 wrote: @Daedelus: Unless you are Primaris, where Peter and Paul rob Eldar.
See my post above about how despite being a CC specialist of similar points to the bikes, she barely makes it out alive despite the scenario being skewed in her favor by not giving the bikes the capability to shoot.
She blocks O/W and is a character. There are few scenarios where the bikes will shoot her. Kiting is not likely - and these bikes are not pointed to shoot.
Is Jain Zar pointed to shoot? The Bikes bring (I think) 16 S4 -1 shots at 30". 8 Intercessors worth of shooting on a much more mobile platform. Are we just waving that away?
If the bikes "are not pointed to shoot" I guess that's just free then.
JZ is not pointed to shoot, but she shoots ok and does melee really well.
Two bolt rifles, so 12 @ 30" and then 3 pistols if I understand it correctly. The point being if you were concerned about having a platform that shoot well for the cost - the bikes aren't it. 6 to 7 Intercessors shoot just as well for very likely much less points and well as easily being in cover. Outriders are being dramatically over sold by the community who wants to throw a fit about them having more attacks than a character while NOT ignoring the source of attacks for bikes, but then ignoring the source of abilities for aspect warriors. It's totally disingenuous.
They wreck at range, and in melee. A generalist muhreen needs to be better at everything, cos my Black Library lore says so.
But the specialist melee unit does better than the generalist marine. People just don't like melee.
It does better when you completely leave out the guns!! Let's evaluate -- including just shooting, the Intercessors do vastly better. Including shooting and melee, the Intercessors do vastly better. Only when ignoring shooting do the Banshees eke out higher performance. And not by a lot, either! This has absolutely nothing to do with "not liking melee", whatever the feth that means.
And so JZ "shoots okay" and that's worth mentioning, but the Intercessors and Outriders didn't bring their guns to town. Boy.
Why is it always like this on these threads? Why can't people look at evidence and say, "hey, that person's got a point"?
And showed data that did not leverage the full capabilities of Primaris. So I don't care how close or far away you are, it's not true to say "Banshees are better at killing IS than Primaris". Additionally, the point that Scotsman has been making throughout this thread and in others is that the Banshee is a specialist and the Intercessor is a generalist, and yet the two are quite close when competing in the specialty area of the Banshee.
I think you're smart enough to understand the point I was making. Primaris are good at melee, but not as good as Banshees. Banshees are a melee specialist. People pretend that Primaris are getting full use of the 30" guns, but simultaneously also the melee profile - it doesn't work that way.
And showed data that did not leverage the full capabilities of Primaris. So I don't care how close or far away you are, it's not true to say "Banshees are better at killing IS than Primaris". Additionally, the point that Scotsman has been making throughout this thread and in others is that the Banshee is a specialist and the Intercessor is a generalist, and yet the two are quite close when competing in the specialty area of the Banshee.
I think you're smart enough to understand the point I was making. Primaris are good at melee, but not as good as Banshees. Banshees are a melee specialist. People pretend that Primaris are getting full use of the 30" guns, but simultaneously also the melee profile - it doesn't work that way.
Shoot something far away (a squad on an objective) then charge something nearby (Banshees who failed their charge).
It won't ALWAYS happen, but it's hardly impossible to use both.
I agree with the OP. 4th Ed. Eldar was the first codex I picked up, and while I haven't played them much, I've never found them to feel right. Part of why I haven't used them more, I think.
Eldar should be an army of unitaskers working in together as an orchestra. But they don't.
Most aspects are and have been bad since 4th.
Banshees should be terrifying for any infantry to engage with in melee.
Hawks and Spiders should be guerrillas. GW has consistently failed to implement "fast moving attack unit" correctly.
Scorpions........ hoo boy. Ambush predators? Not today.
Fire Dragons have been suicide anti-tank units when they should really be unleashing melta hell on all armor, and terminators, carnifexes, etc. IE, not dying after making one tank go boom.
8th is the first time I've heard of people playing Shining Spears.
Dire Avengers are supposed to be deadly shooters and swordspeople who can hold the line, countercharge, or dance around the battlefield baiting the enemy into disadvantageous positions- not more expensive Guardians.
Vypers are worse land speeders.
Jetbikes are either OP as fast scatter spam, or just bad.
6th ed. decided that Warlocks should be subject to perils, instead of their powers always being "on."
Wraith units need to be viable as a supplement for Guardians, Aspects, etc., just as much as shining in a Wraith Host.
Eldar identity suffers greatly from IGOUGO, the phases, the lack of a proper morale and suppression mechanic, and GW's obsession with keeping mechanics around "just because."
Eldar are precisely why 40k needs an Evasion stat to compare BS with. They should be tricky to hit, but lower armor and wounds. An agile, dynamic fighting force. Aspects need special actions that are not merely "move-shoot, shoot twice, etc. etc." nonsense. Vypers, Jetbikes, Hawks, Spiders, and Spears- maybe everything that hovers or flies- should have a Hit-and-Run rule. Something like:
HIT-AND-RUN
A Hit-and-Run is a Double Move. When a unit makes a Hit-And-Run, it either A) makes its normal shooting attack against an enemy unit within range and Line of Sight from any point it travels during its move or B) moves over an enemy unit, and makes its melee attacks against the unit. Every model in a unit that makes a Hit-and-Rin this way must end its move 1" or more away from the target unit.
Hawks could be great at suppressing the enemy with their grenade packs and lasblasters.
Spiders gotta get a Hit-and-Run rule so they can properly teleport in, wreak havoc, and poof away. Extra suppression on the death spinners, too.
Reapers would fit the army better if they were more mobile- they're still Eldar, after all.
Banshees need to be fast- double moves for "run" and charging would help a lot here- high Evasion, and with higher strength on their blades, or some special rule that negates their physical weakness.
Scorpions need way more attacks, and more ways to interact with terrain.
They wreck at range, and in melee. A generalist muhreen needs to be better at everything, cos my Black Library lore says so.
But the specialist melee unit does better than the generalist marine. People just don't like melee.
It does better when you completely leave out the guns!! Let's evaluate -- including just shooting, the Intercessors do vastly better. Including shooting and melee, the Intercessors do vastly better. Only when ignoring shooting do the Banshees eke out higher performance. And not by a lot, either! This has absolutely nothing to do with "not liking melee", whatever the feth that means.
And so JZ "shoots okay" and that's worth mentioning, but the Intercessors and Outriders didn't bring their guns to town. Boy.
Why is it always like this on these threads? Why can't people look at evidence and say, "hey, that person's got a point"?
And so you think that Banshees should gain the equivalent melee damage of the combined force of Primaris shooting and melee for the same cost. Is that what would make you happy here? Because that completely ignores any semblance of balance.
And the bikes DON'T get to shoot JZ, because 1) she's a character and 2) she ignores O/W. But otherwise, yes, you get 12 30" S4 AP1 shots against me. Scary.
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JNAProductions wrote: Shoot something far away (a squad on an objective) then charge something nearby (Banshees who failed their charge).
It won't ALWAYS happen, but it's hardly impossible to use both.
Yes, agreed, but I'm not in the business of simulating entire battles. Banshees have the legs to pick their combats. If they could +3 out of webway they'd be on the table all of the time, but they can't so they don't show up.
I don’t care about the rules all that much. I’m just hoping Eldar get a range refresh in 10th like necrons are about to for 9th. New guardians, replace the finecast stuff and some new stuff on top please.
11+3d6 means that, on average, they'd fail a charge from DZ to DZ. Meaning they eat at least one round of shooting.
6 Intercessors (102 points) versus 9 Banshees (one an Exarch with Executioner, 102 points) kill 2-3 Banshees each turn without buffs.
Add in Chapter Master and Lt. Buffs, and that increases to more than 4 Banshees a turn. And they can get buffed even more, with some Chapter Tactics, Chaplain Litanies, or even it just being T2 and them getting the Doctrine up.
Edit: Anydice says that they have just over a 1/4 chance (25.93%) to make a 24" charge.
SirGrotzalot wrote: I don’t care about the rules all that much. I’m just hoping Eldar get a range refresh in 10th like necrons are about to for 9th. New guardians, replace the finecast stuff and some new stuff on top please.
No more Citadel FailcastTM would be great, but I'm concerned they'll screw 'em up- new Eldrad, Jain and Banshees were so close........
Man, sure is a shame those Primaris forgot to bring ammo for their bolters. Keep picking those cherries...
Right, the same way this forum claims how awesome Intercessors are with their 30" guns, but then gushes over their "awesome melee profile". Which is it? Are they shooting at range or are they in melee?
I already mentioned the difficulties of getting to combat as a barrier.
The point of the complaints about intercessors in melee is that they CONTINUE to kick your fething ass even if you get them in melee, even though their preferred range of engagement is 30 fething inches...
The interesting thing about Eldar is most of their models have actually held up really well despite being so old. The biggest problem is, ironically, the ones they moved over to Failcast.
The plastic kits are fine, I don't see any reason they need to change. Just get rid of all the failcast and move anything that's still metal over to plastic and that's all that needs to be done.
It's the rules that are the issue. We've now got this janky situation where EC/MS cheese makes single entities extremely powerful in a very unsatisfying and gimmicky way, and then the rest of the codex's power comes from a very small number of units that combine powerfully with psychic buffs.
Martel732 wrote: I think it would be better to raise wound counts to get some granularity in the game.
This.
It does feel that GW is learning a bit more about vertical granularity in survivability and giving some units higher wounds. This is seen in AoS, but now also with the new Primaris range and the new Ad Mech birdmen.
Specialists should in general have a 2W rule or 1W higher than their generic units. Stock infantry like Scouts, Guardians and generic troops should have 1W, but anything more specialized should have 2W to indicate their elite value. So all Aspect Warriors should have 2W as a rule.
Banshee masks should prevent the charged unit from fighting back at all and they should have a +1 str -3 AP D3 damage power sword. As well as the second wound. So now you have to shoot them or go charge them yourself.
They wreck at range, and in melee. A generalist muhreen needs to be better at everything, cos my Black Library lore says so.
But the specialist melee unit does better than the generalist marine. People just don't like melee.
It does better when you completely leave out the guns!! Let's evaluate -- including just shooting, the Intercessors do vastly better. Including shooting and melee, the Intercessors do vastly better. Only when ignoring shooting do the Banshees eke out higher performance. And not by a lot, either! This has absolutely nothing to do with "not liking melee", whatever the feth that means.
And so JZ "shoots okay" and that's worth mentioning, but the Intercessors and Outriders didn't bring their guns to town. Boy.
Why is it always like this on these threads? Why can't people look at evidence and say, "hey, that person's got a point"?
And so you think that Banshees should gain the equivalent melee damage of the combined force of Primaris shooting and melee for the same cost. Is that what would make you happy here? Because that completely ignores any semblance of balance.
And the bikes DON'T get to shoot JZ, because 1) she's a character and 2) she ignores O/W. But otherwise, yes, you get 12 30" S4 AP1 shots against me. Scary.
The original math you did looks like 5 bikes, so 20 shots. An entire Intercessor squads worth. We don't know what the bikers will actually cost in points, but they have the same statline as Attack Bikes, and those are 25 base cost. 4ish for similar cost seems likely to me.
Jain Zar gets 4 attacks (along with a goofy rule your opponent can play around that might give you a few more in weird circumstances). Primaris bikers get 6. Primaris has become the punch line to every joke in 40k.
*sigh* We're really going to be comparing apples to oranges all edition, aren't we?
The only way this is apples to oranges is in the opposite direction. A melee phoenix lord should be vastly better in melee than a stock primaris biker. She is better, but not by nearly as much as she should be. A white scars stock primaris biker on turn 3 and beyond puts out 6 S4 -2AP 2 damage hits, probably with rerolls. A BA one has 7 attacks at +1 to wound.
It's just stupid. Eldar in general have been hugely left behind by the inflation in the number of attacks most other factions *cough* SPACE MARINES *cough* get. Primaris bikers are the worst, but they're not the only example.
This is just bad game design. The greatest warriors of a race that were ruling the galaxy when humans were still poking each other with sharpened sticks should not get totally dunked on by the Imperium in the way they are.
Turn. Three.
Let's make an assumption that they're 40 points each. JZ is 115. 3 to 1. gak, no. Let's do 5 bikes.
They charge. JZ fights first.
4 * .833 * .888 * .833 * 2 = 4.9 -- one bike dead; 4 remain
24 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 2 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 3 remain
18 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1.5 wounds to JZ
another bike dead; 2 remain
12 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 1 wound to JZ
another bike dead; 1 remains
6 * .5 * .5 * .333 = 0.5 wounds to JZ
JZ is sitting on one wound and killed five Outriders - and I didn't even make an expectation for damage to overflow onto other models between each round.
So what do you want? You want JZ to be able to kill the world? Sure, your White Scars are scary. So are Dark Reapers shooting them with Doom. You want rerolls for the bikes? JZ gets Protect or the bikes get Enervate. You want to kick those bikes up with WS doc? Then she doesn't need to fight 5 to 1. You want her to be an uber killy badass? Then double her points and get her more rules.
Man, sure is a shame those Primaris forgot to bring ammo for their bolters. Keep picking those cherries...
Right, the same way this forum claims how awesome Intercessors are with their 30" guns, but then gushes over their "awesome melee profile". Which is it? Are they shooting at range or are they in melee?
I already mentioned the difficulties of getting to combat as a barrier.
The point of the complaints about intercessors in melee is that they CONTINUE to kick your fething ass even if you get them in melee, even though their preferred range of engagement is 30 fething inches...
SirGrotzalot wrote: I don’t care about the rules all that much. I’m just hoping Eldar get a range refresh in 10th like necrons are about to for 9th. New guardians, replace the finecast stuff and some new stuff on top please.
Why wish for it in 10th instead of later in 9th?
All Xenos need updates, and all Xenos should get them in 9th. GSC and Orks got more new kits than any other Xeno faction during 8th, so they are probably the ones that will wait the longest. But there is no reason at all that all Xenos factions can't or shouldn't get meaningful updates to both rules and model ranges this edition.
I was intially very angry when GW announced 9th, but I've come around because Codex updates can do more good for Xenos than campaigned based drip releases. If there isn't a wave of new dexes, GW isn't getting as much mileage out of the new edition as it could. Print the data sheets for new Marine stuff in WD- as they kings of current meta, they don't need a codex overhaul. They should be content to let other factions play catch up for a while.
(I know that won't happen, BTW. It should, but it won't; the world will literally stop turning if marines don't get at least one new thing per quarter, because Marines! But one can hope.)
Insectum7 wrote: The original math you did looks like 5 bikes, so 20 shots. An entire Intercessor squads worth. We don't know what the bikers will actually cost in points, but they have the same statline as Attack Bikes, and those are 25 base cost. 4ish for similar cost seems likely to me.
Yes, I mentally switch between the reference unit and a min sized unit when talking in general terms. Sorry that I don't make that clear.
Attack Bike has downgraded bolters, half the attacks, no CS, and no heavy bolt pistol. Taking the Intercessor point rise applied to the Attack Bike they become 30 points. These guys will be 35 to 40 if that holds true.
yukishiro1 wrote: The interesting thing about Eldar is most of their models have actually held up really well despite being so old. The biggest problem is, ironically, the ones they moved over to Failcast.
The plastic kits are fine, I don't see any reason they need to change. Just get rid of all the failcast and move anything that's still metal over to plastic and that's all that needs to be done.
It's the rules that are the issue. We've now got this janky situation where EC/MS cheese makes single entities extremely powerful in a very unsatisfying and gimmicky way, and then the rest of the codex's power comes from a very small number of units that combine powerfully with psychic buffs.
This. The sculpts are still great, Failcast is just bad. I'd prefer characters in metal, though.
Rules that make aspects suck, and Eldar to never feel like Eldar.............
yukishiro1 wrote: The interesting thing about Eldar is most of their models have actually held up really well despite being so old. The biggest problem is, ironically, the ones they moved over to Failcast.
The plastic kits are fine, I don't see any reason they need to change. Just get rid of all the failcast and move anything that's still metal over to plastic and that's all that needs to be done.
It's the rules that are the issue. We've now got this janky situation where EC/MS cheese makes single entities extremely powerful in a very unsatisfying and gimmicky way, and then the rest of the codex's power comes from a very small number of units that combine powerfully with psychic buffs.
I'd prefer better plastic kits honestly. But that issue stems from GW's inability to design things like the Triskele. Should it replace the pistol as a range weapon upgrade? Nah, let's replace the sword so it doesn't work. Other things like guardians are just a bit eh. They're all samey and bland compared to other things imo.
Yeah, i hate the guardian sculpts. They've got everything I despise about old plastic - huge blatant mold lines, awful posing, zero customization, and wonky proportions. I'd have way more eldar if Guardians were not a basis of their design.The vyper and war walker also look like ass.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, i hate the guardian sculpts. They've got everything I despise about old plastic - huge blatant mold lines, awful posing, zero customization, and wonky proportions. I'd have way more eldar if Guardians were not a basis of their design.The vyper and war walker also look like ass.
The basic tanks are fine, as are wraithlords.
Woah, whoah, woah, vypers are beautiful! The kit could use some retooling, but those sculpts....*chef's kiss*........
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, i hate the guardian sculpts. They've got everything I despise about old plastic - huge blatant mold lines, awful posing, zero customization, and wonky proportions. I'd have way more eldar if Guardians were not a basis of their design.The vyper and war walker also look like ass.
The basic tanks are fine, as are wraithlords.
Woah, whoah, woah, vypers are beautiful! The kit could use some retooling, but those sculpts....*chef's kiss*........
Despise everything about the gun. The basic shape of the craft is fine, but the gunner is just awful IMO.
The point of the complaints about intercessors in melee is that they CONTINUE to kick your fething ass even if you get them in melee, even though their preferred range of engagement is 30 fething inches...
Except that they don't when you have an equal distribution of force. The problem you experience is putting 100 points into melee with a unit almost twice that and expecting to come out heroes. That will never go well. But even *if* you do that the Primaris kill 3 or 4 models to the 2 to 3 you would kill. Does that really qualify as "kicking their fething ass"?
See, I actually like the guardians. The mold lines aren't great, but other than that, I definitely prefer them to the New GW approach to plastic kits like you see with say Intercessors where everything is more or less fixed (even in the multi-part variants) and you have to cut them up to get more than 5 variations.
The point of the complaints about intercessors in melee is that they CONTINUE to kick your fething ass even if you get them in melee, even though their preferred range of engagement is 30 fething inches...
Except that they don't when you have an equal distribution of force. The problem you experience is putting 100 points into melee with a unit almost twice that and expecting to come out heroes. That will never go well. But even *if* you do that the Primaris kill 3 or 4 models to the 2 to 3 you would kill. Does that really qualify as "kicking their fething ass"?
We went over this. So many damn pages in that thread. We talked about banshees, harlequins, genestealers, daemonettes, equal points to equal points, ignoring doctrines, ignoring chapter tactics, teleported straight into melee with no overwatch allowed and given the first round of attacks. And Intercessors either beat them, or came damn, damn close, against units that basically zero of their points budget put into shooting versus a unit that out-shoots fire warriors at 30" (again, equal points vs equal points).
I really do not know what you have invested into continuously denying that these guys are negatively impacting the overall gameplay of 40k. Anyone with a brain can watch a batrep of how marines used to play back in the "mobile close range shooting" days versus the current "static gunball" setup and go "oh, that SUCKS to look at and play and watch."
All of the old eldar sculpts are beautiful and timeless. I'm probably in the minority when I say I'm really dreading what their new sculptors are going to do to my old eldar infantry models.
I painted up 5 of the new banshees a few months ago and every time I look at them I wish I could have just bought metal ones instead. The vibe of the new sculpts is just so... video game-y. I've spent a lot of time working with ZBrush artists for work and I just can't help but see the Zbrush aesthetic pervading all of the new releases.
But what can I say, times change, and people's aesthetic preferences evolve.
The point of the complaints about intercessors in melee is that they CONTINUE to kick your fething ass even if you get them in melee, even though their preferred range of engagement is 30 fething inches...
Except that they don't when you have an equal distribution of force. The problem you experience is putting 100 points into melee with a unit almost twice that and expecting to come out heroes. That will never go well. But even *if* you do that the Primaris kill 3 or 4 models to the 2 to 3 you would kill. Does that really qualify as "kicking their fething ass"?
Heaven´s forbid I expect a melee only elite to take out a basic shooty trooper. A unit with 30 inch guns that wreak havoc on most other troops does not deserve to also kick melee only units in the teeth in melee.
yukishiro1 wrote: See, I actually like the guardians. The mold lines aren't great, but other than that, I definitely prefer them to the New GW approach to plastic kits like you see with say Intercessors where everything is more or less fixed (even in the multi-part variants) and you have to cut them up to get more than 5 variations.
I challenge you to create more than five variations of an eldar guardian that look like anything but a bad joke. You're going to get
4) well let's see if I take the U-hand and I chop off the finger tips I can MAYBE jam a grenade in here and MAYBE create some kind of grenade-throwing thing....feth the grenade is molded on to that ammo banana bit, let me just try and clip this off without mangling it....
Oh they all look samey, no doubt. But not exactly the same. That's what I like about them. You can have a squad of 20 with no complete repeats, even if like 15 of them are basically similar.
That said, guardians are completely boned in 9th because the weapon platform brings them to 11 models, which is no-go land from everything we've seen. I don't think you'll ever see them on the table again unless they switch things around in the codex and integrate the weapon platform with the 10th model.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, i hate the guardian sculpts. They've got everything I despise about old plastic - huge blatant mold lines, awful posing, zero customization, and wonky proportions. I'd have way more eldar if Guardians were not a basis of their design.The vyper and war walker also look like ass.
The basic tanks are fine, as are wraithlords.
Woah, whoah, woah, vypers are beautiful! The kit could use some retooling, but those sculpts....*chef's kiss*........
Despise everything about the gun. The basic shape of the craft is fine, but the gunner is just awful IMO.
Personally my problem is the underslung gun. I like conversions but I shouldn't need to convert basic weapons.
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slave.entity wrote: All of the old eldar sculpts are beautiful and timeless. I'm probably in the minority when I say I'm really dreading what their new sculptors are going to do to my old eldar infantry models.
I painted up 5 of the new banshees a few months ago and every time I look at them I wish I could have just bought metal ones instead. The vibe of the new sculpts is just so... video game-y. I've spent a lot of time working with ZBrush artists for work and I just can't help but see the Zbrush aesthetic pervading all of the new releases.
But what can I say, times change, and people's aesthetic preferences evolve.
Sell me all of your pewter
Oh I want new models but I also don't want GW to do them. They'll all be standing on convenient rocks. I never expected the galaxy to be full of Drama Rocks. It's a rock and a hard place.
I always have liked the current version plastic guardians but have always wished for maybe a couple more leg/stance variations. I mean we currently have what, two options? Wide stance and wide stance leaning slightly in one direction?
shoot, just one new sprue with some leg variations (running, kneeling, narrow stance) would revitalize both Guardians and Avengers....
And to add, totally agree with pm713 - very tired of the posing on rock thing that is so popular now. In particular the "leaping off chunk of Eldar ruin" pose. I wonder if there are special eldar scouts that go in before battle to seed every battlefield with those chunks of ruins so that troops are more effective and can pose appropriately once the fight starts....
I think the Drukhari lucked out with the timing of their model refresh, the Kabalite and Wych sculpts are a great balance between detail and customisation.
Galas wrote:Eldar can play with autarchs and warlocks and still be competitive, at least much more than many other armies if they don't take their mandatory HQs or characters, speaking about 8th.
I disagree and dont think you have played much eldar this edition.
Show me one competitive lists that didint take 2 farseers + warlock or 1 farseer +1/2 warlocks.
What we were most hobbled by is taking mandatory troop choises because they suck.. One guardian bomb is the max you'd might WANT to take.
The entire edition Eldar relied on <Big bloob unit of choice> + doom + guide. Rinse. Repeat. And have under-pointed alitoic Crimson hunter exarchs flying overhead.
This was the only viable build really. Even at the heyday of Doom working with other edlari it was the same concept. Ynnari double tapping was a terrible rules design.
However that big blob of choice has NEVER been scorpions, banshees, hawks or warp spiders this edition. Wasting a key psychic power to buff up a max 10 man expensive T3 infantry unit which will evaporate nexct turn is just not efficient.
Any eldar player worth his salt knows what im talking about. ere As an eldar player I hated the fact that unless I took 3 crimson hunter exarchs + 2 farseers + warlock I was essentialy gimping my army.
PA has somewhat fixed this with EC but there clear abuse there. None of these things have made the aspect warrior better as he is still tied down to either being 5 or 10 man squad and I think thats where the issue is. Give me 3 man teams with exarchs or 15-20 man deathblobs and I can work with that.
Aspect warriors and Thier immortal demi god founders (ignoring the lackluster stats) have always been the most compelling and original concept in 40k for me. Complex philosophies of war embodying specific aspects of the war gods many forms.
They were far more interesting than space marines. I still love my space Wolves, but they're not really space marines. They're space barbarians that use marine equipment. The units are conceptually different.
But the philosophy-cum-fighting aspect, with shrines and those souls so lost on the path that their damnation grants them amazing fighting ability and special powers was just a really great concept.
They appear to be in a bit of financial limbo though. GW seems only interested in remaking units of they can do something new to justify the sale or I imagine they're afraid no one will buy the new models and just keep using the old.
Banshees took forever to appear and have nothing unique (except the triskele originating from the 4th ed list) on the sprue.
It boggles my mind that they don't just add one or two weapon options to them to justify the sale. Banshees taking mirror swords at the cost of their pistols for example.
They quadrupled the options available for wraithguard when they made them in plastic, but banshees got nothing.
It seems like they're not interested in them at all.
Id love to more details on the aspect shrines. What does an initiate look like compared to a warrior. What about those who keep treading the same path, how are they different to an aspect warrior that has only been on it once?
And of course all the a varieties of exarch that could exist within A shrine. Ancient ones that learned from the Phoenix themself, newer ones more consumed by unending war as the galaxy goes up in flames.
The aspect shrines have so much potential for interesting creative development which has been completely squandered. Marines now get to have Thier units duplicated, while aspects don't even have their independent exarchs any more and have mediocre squad leaders.
Argive wrote: I hated the fact that unless I took 3 crimson hunter exarchs + 2 farseers + warlock I was essentialy gimping my army.
Yeah, I found this to be true in all my eldar games in 8th. The Alaitoc CHE air wing + bikeseer/bikelock pretty consistently showed up in all of my competitive lists.
Aspect warrior and wraith infantry only showed up in casual games where my opponent and I explicitly agreed to bring fewer bleeding edge units. Didn't happen as often as I'd have liked since in my local meta most people seemed to prefer competitive.
in my day we had 1 and we was happy to prise off the lasguns when they finally remembered about s-cats, and we had to glue tuppence to each swooping hawk to keep it upright, but you try telling sproutlings that today
I think my decision to invest in sotrm guardians seems to have been the right call (8-24 squad size). 10 Man squads will be the sweet spots and thats why the storm guardian should hopefully come into his own. Unless of course hes now pointed as much as as a space marine..
Argive wrote: I hated the fact that unless I took 3 crimson hunter exarchs + 2 farseers + warlock I was essentialy gimping my army.
Yeah, I found this to be true in all my eldar games in 8th. The Alaitoc CHE air wing + bikeseer/bikelock pretty consistently showed up in all of my competitive lists.
Aspect warrior and wraith infantry only showed up in casual games where my opponent and I explicitly agreed to bring fewer bleeding edge units. Didn't happen as often as I'd have liked since in my local meta most people seemed to prefer competitive.
My shadow specters did appear in a bunch of "competitive" games. Pretty much took them as a staple before covid but they are really an outlier case and they were the fluff bunny cool unit option. Dropping them for something like a CHE or a spinner would have been a far more valid choice. The similarly functioning warp spiders only used twice. both times very mobile but extremely underwhelming and not resilient.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it seems an awful bitter attitude to take. "I hope they get dragged down to our level" doesn't seem very constructive compared to "I hope my faction could get some improvements too."
To be fair, I'd like to see EVERY army toned down, by varying amounts. Mostly in lethality.
The game's too damn killy right now.
Thing is that, in a vaccuum, I don't actually wanted Eldar to be dragged through the dirt.
I want Eldar to be left alone (relatively speaking). They've consistently been one of the most broken armies at a competitive level for multiple editions, and even in a casual non-optimized setting they've had strong viable lists which don't center around "Put 4 wraith knights on the table."
I want the focus to be on other armies. I want Orks, Nids, Crons, and the forgotten NPC races to be given love so that they can have more than one good unit in the entire dex - or in some cases, at least one good unit in their entire dex. Then, once those armies have at least one list that's competitive and strong (and won't be nerfed the next week) as well as a few units which are good in a casual setting, we can worry about the theme for Eldar. That's my ideal outcome.
But. When you then have Eldar players saying that it's not enough to have top-tier meta warping lists and other 'okay' lists, that frustrates me for obvious reasons. Especially when they behave like their faction's identity should take precedence over other armies being able to function at all.
Eldar having a mix of good and bad stuff every edition is probably as good as it gets for ANY faction in 40k. It sure as hell beats Tau shield drone spam or reanimation protocols or even space marines for the whole first half of 8th.
Not disagreeing with any of the complaints about eldar infantry in this thread btw, just saying that every faction has these same problems and just about all of them have it much worse than eldar.
I'm thrilled to see the Necron ruleset finally get some love in 9th edition.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it seems an awful bitter attitude to take. "I hope they get dragged down to our level" doesn't seem very constructive compared to "I hope my faction could get some improvements too."
To be fair, I'd like to see EVERY army toned down, by varying amounts. Mostly in lethality.
The game's too damn killy right now.
Thing is that, in a vaccuum, I don't actually wanted Eldar to be dragged through the dirt.
I want Eldar to be left alone (relatively speaking). They've consistently been one of the most broken armies at a competitive level for multiple editions, and even in a casual non-optimized setting they've had strong viable lists which don't center around "Put 4 wraith knights on the table."
I want the focus to be on other armies. I want Orks, Nids, Crons, and the forgotten NPC races to be given love so that they can have more than one good unit in the entire dex - or in some cases, at least one good unit in their entire dex. Then, once those armies have at least one list that's competitive and strong (and won't be nerfed the next week) as well as a few units which are good in a casual setting, we can worry about the theme for Eldar. That's my ideal outcome.
But. When you then have Eldar players saying that it's not enough to have top-tier meta warping lists and other 'okay' lists, that frustrates me for obvious reasons. Especially when they behave like their faction's identity should take precedence over other armies being able to function at all.
Dude, what codex doesn't have a good unit? Hell, even in 7th, I can't think of an army that didn't have literally *1* solid thing (Orks: Boyz, Nids: Flyrants, CSM: ...okay, gotta think about that one but I'm sure there's an example). That just seems like major hyperbole.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it seems an awful bitter attitude to take. "I hope they get dragged down to our level" doesn't seem very constructive compared to "I hope my faction could get some improvements too."
To be fair, I'd like to see EVERY army toned down, by varying amounts. Mostly in lethality.
The game's too damn killy right now.
Thing is that, in a vaccuum, I don't actually wanted Eldar to be dragged through the dirt.
I want Eldar to be left alone (relatively speaking). They've consistently been one of the most broken armies at a competitive level for multiple editions, and even in a casual non-optimized setting they've had strong viable lists which don't center around "Put 4 wraith knights on the table."
I want the focus to be on other armies. I want Orks, Nids, Crons, and the forgotten NPC races to be given love so that they can have more than one good unit in the entire dex - or in some cases, at least one good unit in their entire dex. Then, once those armies have at least one list that's competitive and strong (and won't be nerfed the next week) as well as a few units which are good in a casual setting, we can worry about the theme for Eldar. That's my ideal outcome.
But. When you then have Eldar players saying that it's not enough to have top-tier meta warping lists and other 'okay' lists, that frustrates me for obvious reasons. Especially when they behave like their faction's identity should take precedence over other armies being able to function at all.
Dude, what codex doesn't have a good unit? Hell, even in 7th, I can't think of an army that didn't have literally *1* solid thing (Orks: Boyz, Nids: Flyrants, CSM: ...okay, gotta think about that one but I'm sure there's an example). That just seems like major hyperbole.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it seems an awful bitter attitude to take. "I hope they get dragged down to our level" doesn't seem very constructive compared to "I hope my faction could get some improvements too."
To be fair, I'd like to see EVERY army toned down, by varying amounts. Mostly in lethality.
The game's too damn killy right now.
Thing is that, in a vaccuum, I don't actually wanted Eldar to be dragged through the dirt.
I want Eldar to be left alone (relatively speaking). They've consistently been one of the most broken armies at a competitive level for multiple editions, and even in a casual non-optimized setting they've had strong viable lists which don't center around "Put 4 wraith knights on the table."
I want the focus to be on other armies. I want Orks, Nids, Crons, and the forgotten NPC races to be given love so that they can have more than one good unit in the entire dex - or in some cases, at least one good unit in their entire dex. Then, once those armies have at least one list that's competitive and strong (and won't be nerfed the next week) as well as a few units which are good in a casual setting, we can worry about the theme for Eldar. That's my ideal outcome.
But. When you then have Eldar players saying that it's not enough to have top-tier meta warping lists and other 'okay' lists, that frustrates me for obvious reasons. Especially when they behave like their faction's identity should take precedence over other armies being able to function at all.
Dude, what codex doesn't have a good unit? Hell, even in 7th, I can't think of an army that didn't have literally *1* solid thing (Orks: Boyz, Nids: Flyrants, CSM: ...okay, gotta think about that one but I'm sure there's an example). That just seems like major hyperbole.
The point of the complaints about intercessors in melee is that they CONTINUE to kick your fething ass even if you get them in melee, even though their preferred range of engagement is 30 fething inches...
Except that they don't when you have an equal distribution of force. The problem you experience is putting 100 points into melee with a unit almost twice that and expecting to come out heroes. That will never go well. But even *if* you do that the Primaris kill 3 or 4 models to the 2 to 3 you would kill. Does that really qualify as "kicking their fething ass"?
We went over this. So many damn pages in that thread. We talked about banshees, harlequins, genestealers, daemonettes, equal points to equal points, ignoring doctrines, ignoring chapter tactics, teleported straight into melee with no overwatch allowed and given the first round of attacks. And Intercessors either beat them, or came damn, damn close, against units that basically zero of their points budget put into shooting versus a unit that out-shoots fire warriors at 30" (again, equal points vs equal points).
I really do not know what you have invested into continuously denying that these guys are negatively impacting the overall gameplay of 40k. Anyone with a brain can watch a batrep of how marines used to play back in the "mobile close range shooting" days versus the current "static gunball" setup and go "oh, that SUCKS to look at and play and watch."
I really do not know what you have invested
Hyperbole.
That's what rubs me the wrong way. In no bat rep or personal game have I played did someone express how devastating Intercessors were - save the one time the guy at LVO got a 1 in million roll with the TH. No, its the TFCs, Mortis Dreads, Levis, and so on that negatively impact the game.
Then we "discuss" how Outriders are super-super human, because they have 6 attacks. And like a man made from straw people hold up Scorpions and say, "See? Only two S4 attacks!". As if Mandiblasters do nothing all the while ignoring that Outriders get half their attacks from gear and that they're literally an Intercessor on a bike that loses half their attacks the next turn. It is just so exhausting to listen to the same, "hur hur muhreenz here we go again" while people consistently fail to look at the whole picture.
It's this ridiculous notion that somehow only attacks matter. As if Primaris who are 2A are unequivocally benefited by special rules. And what do they get?
+1A first round
Double Tap
Morale (which no one cares about)
An extra AP sometimes
It's as if we forget that Banshees, who have the same base attacks as Primaris have:
- Run and gun without penalty
- Advance & Charge
+3" Charge
-1 to be hit in melee
- Block O/W
- and the option for abilities like -2A to an enemy
Sure, we ignore marines traits. We also ignore that Aspect Warriors can get D+1 on 6s to wound and another +1 to charge. Does anyone do that? No, because it's a gak ton easier to zip some planes and bikes around.
Does this mean Banshees are bad? No, it means the melee system needs work.
If people think equal points of Banshees should win a decisive victory against equal points Intercessors. That's garbage, too. Most everything requires a concerted effort to remove when working in equal points. Anything otherwise breaks the game - and those units are out there (Centurions, Character Dreads, etc). But Intercessors aren't that. Even they can't win that decisive victory.
Does that mean marines are balanced? Frig, no. They're centered around the super doctrines and there was a reason before the FAQ that everyone tried to stay in Devastator, because Intercessors often weren't the tool doing the work. But look at what's happened already --
Iron Hands O/W isn't so special any more.
Everyone's non-Infantry ignores move penalties like UM in tactical or IH in devastator.
Everyone has access to the RG -1 to hit through dense cover.
The problem isn't that Intercessors are too good or that Banshees are bad. It's that melee isn't currently rewarding and some marine units have too many rule layers available to them.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah historically Eldar has been a problematic army. But that's even more reason to finally fix it in 9th instead of just making it problematic in some new way.
I can't speak for others, but what I want is not really for Eldar to be more powerful in a competitive sense, I want them to feel like an elite army of a proud, powerful, but dying race for which every one of their number matters and every death is a tragedy, not a bunch of bargain-basement weaklings who get dunked on my primaris intercessors but win through cheesy abuse of a handful of very powerful units.
And I want to be able to place literally any combination of my orks on the table and be close to as powerful as Eldar consistently have been each edition. I don't mean "any combination" as in a random hodge podge, I mean ANY kind of option which lets me be strong and competitive.
I want the same for Nids, Crons, or several other xenos races with players who would kill to have a a single edition half as powerful as Eldar consistently are.
Eldar aren't fine, but they're not in desperate need. Complaining about how they need to be reworked to live up to their lore is spitting in the face of anyone who plays legitimately weak armies. The army may not function the way you like but it's still counted amongst the "player character" factions. I legitimately hope Eldar find themselves tuned like one of the NPC factions this coming edition, so that Eldar players can have a taste of what others have been dealing with for the better part of a decade.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it seems an awful bitter attitude to take. "I hope they get dragged down to our level" doesn't seem very constructive compared to "I hope my faction could get some improvements too."
To be fair, I'd like to see EVERY army toned down, by varying amounts. Mostly in lethality.
The game's too damn killy right now.
Thing is that, in a vaccuum, I don't actually wanted Eldar to be dragged through the dirt.
I want Eldar to be left alone (relatively speaking). They've consistently been one of the most broken armies at a competitive level for multiple editions, and even in a casual non-optimized setting they've had strong viable lists which don't center around "Put 4 wraith knights on the table."
I want the focus to be on other armies. I want Orks, Nids, Crons, and the forgotten NPC races to be given love so that they can have more than one good unit in the entire dex - or in some cases, at least one good unit in their entire dex. Then, once those armies have at least one list that's competitive and strong (and won't be nerfed the next week) as well as a few units which are good in a casual setting, we can worry about the theme for Eldar. That's my ideal outcome.
But. When you then have Eldar players saying that it's not enough to have top-tier meta warping lists and other 'okay' lists, that frustrates me for obvious reasons. Especially when they behave like their faction's identity should take precedence over other armies being able to function at all.
Dude, what codex doesn't have a good unit? Hell, even in 7th, I can't think of an army that didn't have literally *1* solid thing (Orks: Boyz, Nids: Flyrants, CSM: ...okay, gotta think about that one but I'm sure there's an example). That just seems like major hyperbole.
Corsairs. R&H.
Neither of which were Codexes. And both of which were functional in 7th, so... strike 1, strike 2 (not that I don't agree they have issues in 8th, they most certainly do and I'm hoping the issues get a lot of attention).
7th ed BA only had ghetto bike capt.
BA were also quite bad in 7th, but again, they had 1 thing that at least sort of worked. I'm not promoting them out of the Nids-Orks-CSM ghetto but to say a codex was completely bereft of anything you could place on the table and not cringe at, as morganfreeman asserted, isn't true.
The point of the complaints about intercessors in melee is that they CONTINUE to kick your fething ass even if you get them in melee, even though their preferred range of engagement is 30 fething inches...
Except that they don't when you have an equal distribution of force. The problem you experience is putting 100 points into melee with a unit almost twice that and expecting to come out heroes. That will never go well. But even *if* you do that the Primaris kill 3 or 4 models to the 2 to 3 you would kill. Does that really qualify as "kicking their fething ass"?
We went over this. So many damn pages in that thread. We talked about banshees, harlequins, genestealers, daemonettes, equal points to equal points, ignoring doctrines, ignoring chapter tactics, teleported straight into melee with no overwatch allowed and given the first round of attacks. And Intercessors either beat them, or came damn, damn close, against units that basically zero of their points budget put into shooting versus a unit that out-shoots fire warriors at 30" (again, equal points vs equal points).
I really do not know what you have invested into continuously denying that these guys are negatively impacting the overall gameplay of 40k. Anyone with a brain can watch a batrep of how marines used to play back in the "mobile close range shooting" days versus the current "static gunball" setup and go "oh, that SUCKS to look at and play and watch."
I really do not know what you have invested
Hyperbole.
That's what rubs me the wrong way. In no bat rep or personal game have I played did someone express how devastating Intercessors were - save the one time the guy at LVO got a 1 in million roll with the TH. No, its the TFCs, Mortis Dreads, Levis, and so on that negatively impact the game.
Then we "discuss" how Outriders are super-super human, because they have 6 attacks. And like a man made from straw people hold up Scorpions and say, "See? Only two S4 attacks!". As if Mandiblasters do nothing all the while ignoring that Outriders get half their attacks from gear and that they're literally an Intercessor on a bike that loses half their attacks the next turn. It is just so exhausting to listen to the same, "hur hur muhreenz here we go again" while people consistently fail to look at the whole picture.
It's this ridiculous notion that somehow only attacks matter. As if Primaris who are 2A are unequivocally benefited by special rules. And what do they get?
+1A first round
Double Tap
Morale (which no one cares about)
An extra AP sometimes
It's as if we forget that Banshees, who have the same base attacks as Primaris have:
- Run and gun without penalty
- Advance & Charge
+3" Charge
-1 to be hit in melee
- Block O/W
- and the option for abilities like -2A to an enemy
Sure, we ignore marines traits. We also ignore that Aspect Warriors can get D+1 on 6s to wound and another +1 to charge. Does anyone do that? No, because it's a gak ton easier to zip some planes and bikes around.
Does this mean Banshees are bad? No, it means the melee system needs work.
If people think equal points of Banshees should win a decisive victory against equal points Intercessors. That's garbage, too. Most everything requires a concerted effort to remove when working in equal points. Anything otherwise breaks the game - and those units are out there (Centurions, Character Dreads, etc). But Intercessors aren't that. Even they can't win that decisive victory.
Does that mean marines are balanced? Frig, no. They're centered around the super doctrines and there was a reason before the FAQ that everyone tried to stay in Devastator, because Intercessors often weren't the tool doing the work. But look at what's happened already --
Iron Hands O/W isn't so special any more.
Everyone's non-Infantry ignores move penalties like UM in tactical or IH in devastator.
Everyone has access to the RG -1 to hit through dense cover.
The problem isn't that Intercessors are too good or that Banshees are bad. It's that melee isn't currently rewarding and some marine units have too many rule layers available to them.
Christ dude, proxy models, put the models on the table and run them. Lemme know if you see any good performance out of Banshees or Scorpions or any of the out-of-vogue Aspect Warriors. Because I sure haven't. Whereas, whenever I play Intercessors, I get way more than 85 points worth of value out of those fethers. Sure, they're not always or necessarily usually the stars of the show (though way more than you're indicating in your post). But just because they're not Thunderfire Cannons and obviously being OP doesn't mean they're not game-warpingly strong.
It's not like Eldar players are out here defending anything that's considered good or even passable. They're defending units the community completely regards as gak. So the whole "apples and oranges grown in one glorious CA orange field" comparisons you throw out here just don't move the needle for anybody.
Christ dude, proxy models, put the models on the table and run them. Lemme know if you see any good performance out of Banshees or Scorpions or any of the out-of-vogue Aspect Warriors. Because I sure haven't. Whereas, whenever I play Intercessors, I get way more than 85 points worth of value out of those fethers. Sure, they're not always or necessarily usually the stars of the show (though way more than you're indicating in your post). But just because they're not Thunderfire Cannons and obviously being OP doesn't mean they're not game-warpingly strong.
It's not like Eldar players are out here defending anything that's considered good or even passable. They're defending units the community completely regards as gak. So the whole "apples and oranges grown in one glorious CA orange field" comparisons you throw out here just don't move the needle for anybody.
I likely couldn't make them work. I recognize and agree there are issues with melee. I just don't think people are looking at the right things or arguing in equal terms.
If people think equal points of Banshees should win a decisive victory against equal points Intercessors. That's garbage, too. Most everything requires a concerted effort to remove when working in equal points. Anything otherwise breaks the game - and those units are out there (Centurions, Character Dreads, etc). But Intercessors aren't that. Even they can't win that decisive victory.
5 Intercessors can win a decisive victory against equal points Banshees though. All it takes is passive buffing via CM and Lt., or the Rapid Fire 2 Strat, plus Tac Doctrine. .666x.666x.83x20 = 7.3 Banshees dead at 30", leaving the squad neutered. Off the top of my head I can't think of an easy way to buff Banshees to do the same in reverse. Best available is Doom, which is far from passive.
5 Intercessors can RF and charge the 10 Banshees and kill 6.3 of them without any buff other than the automatically active Doctrine. 7 kills if using the Assault bolter thing. The 2+Exarch do 2.3 wounds in return. I'd call that decisive. The Intercessors have a spare couple points to spend on a Power Sword or something, too, which gets another dead Banshee. At -8 models the Banshees likely dissapear with morale, if I'm not mistaken.
And that's un-buffed. Intercessors are easier to passively buff, easier to actively buff, and start with the advantage that they don't have to get close to win the fight. Chapter Master, Lt, RF2 gets 11 odd wounds at 30".
Right - as I mentioned earlier - you don't often get to easily remove units when facing off with equal points. This example is 2 CP and 304 points killing 113. Yes, I understand the nature of bubbles and that this isn't the most correct comparison, but that point difference is nevertheless enough to drive almost two night spinners between them.
I'm actually pretty happy with my craftworlders at the moment. Some vehicles (falcons and vypers for instance) are really dependent on EC to work, but I've genuinely enjoyed using them since EC became an option.
I have plenty of little tweaks I'd like to see, but the only units I really, really struggle to use are storm guardians (as anything but a cheap troop tax that accomplishes nothing) and our elite slot aspect warriors.
* Banshees: I've fielded a lot this edition (I play Iybraesil). Currently, they're sort of useful for tying up non-flying shooty guns. It sounds like that won't really work in 9th (I don't want to turn them into a sacrifice for russ sponsons). They're advertised as a speedy, anti-heavy-infantry unit, and they really, really stink at that. If they're meant to chop up marines (even non-primaris ones), they should probably get an extra attack or something. I'd gladly take a 50% points hike if they could actually hurt something again.
*Scorpions: Also don't really hurt things. Can take a punch, but falling back means that they usually charge and then just get shot to death. I'd like them to either be better at charging out of deepstrike or else treat their mandiblasters as a strength 4 attack that hits on a 4+ or 3+ or whatever. The latter would make them much better at chopping up swarms. The mortal wounds on 6+ thing usually doesn't do much and also is more useful against elite infantry meaning they have weird overlap with the power sword wielding banshees. Make scorpions chop up orks. Make banshees chop up marines.
* Fire dragons. Making vehicles more durable this edition was a reasonable move, but the dragons have really lost their groove. Five of them don't reliably kill a tank. Ten of them do, but also cost a fortune. If you put them in a serpent, you're looking at an almost 400 point unit. If you deepstrike them, you're partly at the mercy of your opponent's positioning. Even if you do kill a decent target with them, they'll almost always die the turn after arriving on the table. Not sure what to do with these guys though. It's hard to justify making them much cheaper, but it's also tough to give them even more offense on top of a meltagun and a special rule to improve their meltaguning.
*Shadow Spectres: These guys kind of work, but they could really stand to ditch the ynnari tax they received in one of the early FAQs. Giving them built-in deepstrike wouldn't go amiss either.
Oh And I guess I'd throw Dire Avengers on this list too. In a vacuum, I actually really like where avengers are. Exarch powers and gear let you make them either reasonably shooty or reasonably good at absorbing a charge. The thing is that 8th edition is so lethal, it's really hard to keep them alive long enough to do anything. If you deploy them on foot, they evaporate. If you put them in a serpent or deepstrike them, you'd probably get similar results from a guardian squad for cheaper.
Right - as I mentioned earlier - you don't often get to easily remove units when facing off with equal points. This example is 2 CP and 304 points killing 113. Yes, I understand the nature of bubbles and that this isn't the most correct comparison, but that point difference is nevertheless enough to drive almost two night spinners between them.
That's nice. Did you read the rest of the post? Specifically the part where unsupported Intercessors of equal points average 8 dead Banshees before the Banshees do anything?
And no, counting the Intercessors as 304 points isnt going to fly.
Insectum7 wrote: hat's nice. Did you read the rest of the post? Specifically the part where unsupported Intercessors of equal points average 8 dead Banshees before the Banshees do anything?
Sure, if you presume I don't know how to play and I'd just leave a Banshee squad out in the open to get shot and charged.
Insectum7 wrote: hat's nice. Did you read the rest of the post? Specifically the part where unsupported Intercessors of equal points average 8 dead Banshees before the Banshees do anything?
Sure, if you presume I don't know how to play and I'd just leave a Banshee squad out in the open to get shot and charged.
Here's the problem, they could have simply failed their charge. A problem the Intercessors don't face because they have ranged superiority.
Alitoic CHE spam, shooting twice dark reapers/fighting twice shining spears are what 8th edition eldar sins will be known and remembered forr as these are what dominated competitive play. Even if these are a ynnari thing... And so the cycle continues that Eldar are broken because of these two builds until nerfed. I saw the ynnari gimmick as OP and CHE as OP coz under priced and refused to use these personally and I get where people are coming from on these builds. It annoyed the hell out of me also.
Even though we rarely if ever saw a single vyper, wraithlord, falcoln, aspect warrior or any PL (outside of one Mugun Ra list) grace any of the top lists the entire edition.
Ive been harping on how the aliotic flier wing guide + doom blob is the alpha crutch/gimmick the faction relies on and poor internal balance for ages..
For this edition I just want the warp spiders to be "decent" and to get to put my wraith units on the table without feeling like I'm about to handicap myself. Also I hope the warlock to have more than 2W for gods sake.. The amount of warlocks perilling on the battlefield should mean there should no longer be any eldar as they couldn't possibly reproduce fats enough...
Insectum7 wrote: hat's nice. Did you read the rest of the post? Specifically the part where unsupported Intercessors of equal points average 8 dead Banshees before the Banshees do anything?
Sure, if you presume I don't know how to play and I'd just leave a Banshee squad out in the open to get shot and charged.
Here's the problem, they could have simply failed their charge. A problem the Intercessors don't face because they have ranged superiority.
Yes the banshees have to charge to fulfill their role or sit behind a wall and do nothing. The intercessor does not have this problem.
To deny the tactical superiority is strange... Yes mathammer says in a vacum banshees eek out a bit more damage if they charge. But cmon.. that's not representative at all int he context of the game.
Insectum7 wrote: hat's nice. Did you read the rest of the post? Specifically the part where unsupported Intercessors of equal points average 8 dead Banshees before the Banshees do anything?
Sure, if you presume I don't know how to play and I'd just leave a Banshee squad out in the open to get shot and charged.
Here's the problem, they could have simply failed their charge. A problem the Intercessors don't face because they have ranged superiority.
Yes, but that's the advantage of banshees. You have to try really hard to fail their charge. Your point stands and I agree there are issues with melee. I just don't agree there's issues with Banshees or wider issues with Outriders/Intercessors.
Insectum7 wrote: hat's nice. Did you read the rest of the post? Specifically the part where unsupported Intercessors of equal points average 8 dead Banshees before the Banshees do anything?
Sure, if you presume I don't know how to play and I'd just leave a Banshee squad out in the open to get shot and charged.
Here's the problem, they could have simply failed their charge. A problem the Intercessors don't face because they have ranged superiority.
Yes, but that's the advantage of banshees. You have to try really hard to fail their charge. Your point stands and I agree there are issues with melee. I just don't agree there's issues with Banshees or wider issues with Outriders/Intercessors.
Myess. . . The advantage of Banshees is that they have to put in more effort at greater risk in order to connect and do comparable damage to Intercessors that can just sit there and fire from a distance.
"Intercessors and Banshees are fine, man, it's just a problem with the game. . ."
Or. . . We could boost Banshees in a way that makes them more viable vs. one of the most common/expected toops on the table. It's really not that big an ask. Personally? I like greater strength or 2D on their swords, possibly with them having a 2+ to hit. Exarchs should be a 2+ WS.
If banshees were all armed with +2 strength executioners they would actually do their job. great at killing meq's and teq's, weak to hordes. though since banshees recently got a new kit so we know that is never going to happen.
decapitating strikes (from psychic awakening) if it worked on the squad could be a somewhat ok change to make banshees somewhat better. their banshee helm change to deny overwatch became pretty much useless with the changes to overwatch.
Power swords have always been nice, S3 power swords have always been weak to ok. Giving a banshee more attacks pushes them more towards anti-horde which should be the scorpions job (hense scorpions should get more attacks) where as the solution imo is to increase the strength value of banshees.
Or as an alternative stop gap measure they could be Master Crafted power swords and be D2, with points adjusted accordingly for all changes proprosed.
warmaster21 wrote: If banshees were all armed with +2 strength executioners they would actually do their job. great at killing meq's and teq's, weak to hordes. though since banshees recently got a new kit so we know that is never going to happen.
decapitating strikes (from psychic awakening) if it worked on the squad could be a somewhat ok change to make banshees somewhat better. their banshee helm change to deny overwatch became pretty much useless with the changes to overwatch.
Power swords have always been nice, S3 power swords have always been weak to ok. Giving a banshee more attacks pushes them more towards anti-horde which should be the scorpions job (hense scorpions should get more attacks) where as the solution imo is to increase the strength value of banshees.
Or as an alternative stop gap measure they could be Master Crafted power swords and be D2, with points adjusted accordingly for all changes proprosed.
I don't think GW understands what the aspects are for.
Jain zar lost her disarm ability to gain a weirdly underpowered horde killing rule, which makes no sense. I would expect that kind of rule on karandras' chainsword, not on Jain's blade of destruction....
GW can slice marine units a million ways with all sorts of weapon options, yet this eludes them.
You can clearly see why shining spears do well - they're using marine profiles and carrying anti Marine weapons. Similarly dark reapers are carrying anti Marine weapons and standing an anti Marine distance away.
The closest army in terms of stats to aspects is sisters of battle. And the amount of extra rules they need for melee units to be effective is crazy...
The Jain Zar change makes no sense since she's had this "Ultra skilled Duelist" theme going on with her since forever.
I think the design philosophy with some Eldar stuff isn't just "GW doesn't know what to do with Eldar" because it's clear to anyone that the new Jain Zar rule sucks and is a massive weakening and it also makes no sense that a presumably close combat monster would only have 4 attacks base. It literally just feels that they're scared to give Eldar anything immediately powerful because they're mindful of the army's reputation and current competitive standing, yet they completely underestimate a trait like Expert Crafters which absolutely put CWE back near the top of the pile in a meta dominated by Marines. With a lot of other armies it feels like GW starts from the bottom and tries to design upwards, but they often go to slow and don't really go far enough. Meanwhile with 2.0 Marines they started at the absolute top and didn't go back down until the Feb FAQ.
Necrons also have this same issue in 8th. GW were so scared of potentially breaking the game they just overdesigned (if that's the right term) the 8th Codex to basically make RP as useless as possible the higher points you go and just made one of the least synergistic armies that the edition has currently that is just a random mishmash of ideas, many of which are interesting and flavourful, but which never add up to a cohesive whole. With Marines however they just threw a bunch of incredibly powerful and fluffy rules in there and made sure that everything synergized incredibly well (including stuff that they didn't forsee because the designers forgot that Centurions have the Infantry keyword whoopsie!) In fact I'd almost say that codex is an overreaction to what marines were for most of 8th, whereas a lot of extra added rules in PA for some of the "strong" races have been really underwhelming or just plain gakky.
ALSO Banshees could easily be given a rule that allows them to re-roll failed wounds in CC. They did it for Zephyrim because the people designing that book knew that s3 isn't great and hey look, with Bloody Rose the Zephyrim are actually a decent unit.
warmaster21 wrote: Power swords have always been nice, S3 power swords have always been weak to ok. Giving a banshee more attacks pushes them more towards anti-horde which should be the scorpions job (hense scorpions should get more attacks) where as the solution imo is to increase the strength value of banshees.
GW always seems weirdly reluctant to give Eldar/DE significant strength-boosting weapons or abilities. Usually when they do, it's just +1S (putting them on the same level as standard, unbuffed Marines, which really isn't impressive for melee units).
Now I could get behind this design philosophy, if Eldar/DE units were given other abilities to compensate for this. For example, a lower-strength attack that rerolls wounds, or which gets +1 to the wound roll, can be of comparable ability to an attack that simply has higher strength.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to happen. Eldar do have Empower and Doom, but this puts a strict limit on the number of units with low-strength weapons your army can realistically support. What's more, even with these bonuses, you're probably still better off buffing units that are already effective, rather than just trying to bring sub-standard units up to par.
DE are even worse off, having almost no weapons that reroll wounds or get bonuses to the wound-roll, but also no psychic support or the like, so they're just left with a host of melee weapons that are completely ineffective against almost every target.
warmaster21 wrote: If banshees were all armed with +2 strength executioners they would actually do their job. great at killing meq's and teq's, weak to hordes. though since banshees recently got a new kit so we know that is never going to happen.
decapitating strikes (from psychic awakening) if it worked on the squad could be a somewhat ok change to make banshees somewhat better. their banshee helm change to deny overwatch became pretty much useless with the changes to overwatch.
Power swords have always been nice, S3 power swords have always been weak to ok. Giving a banshee more attacks pushes them more towards anti-horde which should be the scorpions job (hense scorpions should get more attacks) where as the solution imo is to increase the strength value of banshees.
Or as an alternative stop gap measure they could be Master Crafted power swords and be D2, with points adjusted accordingly for all changes proprosed.
I don't think GW understands what the aspects are for.
Jain zar lost her disarm ability to gain a weirdly underpowered horde killing rule, which makes no sense. I would expect that kind of rule on karandras' chainsword, not on Jain's blade of destruction....
GW can slice marine units a million ways with all sorts of weapon options, yet this eludes them.
You can clearly see why shining spears do well - they're using marine profiles and carrying anti Marine weapons. Similarly dark reapers are carrying anti Marine weapons and standing an anti Marine distance away.
The closest army in terms of stats to aspects is sisters of battle. And the amount of extra rules they need for melee units to be effective is crazy...
Yes, I found it odd to give Jain Zarr a horde rule when in 2nd edition and Epic, the Banshees were meant to be the shock CC that had their big bonus only the charge, while Scorpions were the horde killers that had their mandiblasters every round of close combat.
Similarly I see the cleaving to S3 and fighting first, as a relic of 3rd edition just like 12" catapults. GW made that change and have stuck to it since, with no willingness to change again. I personally wouldn't mind increased bonuses for the Banshees and their masks at the trade off of this only being for the first time they fight if and only if they charge. Like maybe -1A down to a minimum of 0 (yes 0), or maybe like their new Exarch power, roll for a chance to do a MW on the charge, representing either their enemy being paralyzed or their brains oozing out their ears from the sonic scream. So like in the old days, they would get a big spike in performance against the enemy they charge but would wilt in sustained melees or if they are the ones that receive a charge.
warmaster21 wrote: Power swords have always been nice, S3 power swords have always been weak to ok. Giving a banshee more attacks pushes them more towards anti-horde which should be the scorpions job (hense scorpions should get more attacks) where as the solution imo is to increase the strength value of banshees.
GW always seems weirdly reluctant to give Eldar/DE significant strength-boosting weapons or abilities. Usually when they do, it's just +1S (putting them on the same level as standard, unbuffed Marines, which really isn't impressive for melee units).
Now I could get behind this design philosophy, if Eldar/DE units were given other abilities to compensate for this. For example, a lower-strength attack that rerolls wounds, or which gets +1 to the wound roll, can be of comparable ability to an attack that simply has higher strength.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to happen. Eldar do have Empower and Doom, but this puts a strict limit on the number of units with low-strength weapons your army can realistically support. What's more, even with these bonuses, you're probably still better off buffing units that are already effective, rather than just trying to bring sub-standard units up to par.
DE are even worse off, having almost no weapons that reroll wounds or get bonuses to the wound-roll, but also no psychic support or the like, so they're just left with a host of melee weapons that are completely ineffective against almost every target.
Yeah, it's weird that nobody seems to have deemed it necessary for key Eldar units to be adjusted for the inflation of output other armies have seen over the various editions – the changes to Rapid Fire, Guard getting auto-Orders, Ork Boyz' straight-up Strength boost plus extra attacks for big mobs, and Bolter Drill plus Shock Assault spring immediately to mind. Meanwhile, for example, Shuriken Catapults are still basically where they were in 3rd ed., and Banshees are getting two attacks; fewer than they had with the old Pistol rules.
warmaster21 wrote: Power swords have always been nice, S3 power swords have always been weak to ok. Giving a banshee more attacks pushes them more towards anti-horde which should be the scorpions job (hense scorpions should get more attacks) where as the solution imo is to increase the strength value of banshees.
GW always seems weirdly reluctant to give Eldar/DE significant strength-boosting weapons or abilities. Usually when they do, it's just +1S (putting them on the same level as standard, unbuffed Marines, which really isn't impressive for melee units).
Now I could get behind this design philosophy, if Eldar/DE units were given other abilities to compensate for this. For example, a lower-strength attack that rerolls wounds, or which gets +1 to the wound roll, can be of comparable ability to an attack that simply has higher strength.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to happen. Eldar do have Empower and Doom, but this puts a strict limit on the number of units with low-strength weapons your army can realistically support. What's more, even with these bonuses, you're probably still better off buffing units that are already effective, rather than just trying to bring sub-standard units up to par.
DE are even worse off, having almost no weapons that reroll wounds or get bonuses to the wound-roll, but also no psychic support or the like, so they're just left with a host of melee weapons that are completely ineffective against almost every target.
Yeah, it's weird that nobody seems to have deemed it necessary for key Eldar units to be adjusted for the inflation of output other armies have seen over the various editions – the changes to Rapid Fire, Guard getting auto-Orders, Ork Boyz' straight-up Strength boost plus extra attacks for big mobs, and Bolter Drill plus Shock Assault spring immediately to mind. Meanwhile, for example, Shuriken Catapults are still basically where they were in 3rd ed., and Banshees are getting two attacks; fewer than they had with the old Pistol rules.
I see it as perhaps a conservatism over the last several editions, as a sort of backlash response to the good or overpowered stuff slipping through. Maybe it's also due to their fixation of S3 for the Eldar as Space Elves, and thus GW is loathe to give too much in the way of high S melee weapons. Similarly, I see that as maybe a reason that I got the sense in past editions that xenos factions would get these very specific minor bonuses that only come into play if the stars and moon align, while Marines get more generally applicable bonuses usable in a wider range of situations.
I wouldn't really like to see a S boost for Banshees; it seems wrong, "feel"-wise. I'd much prefer a different solution like, say, more Attacks, which feels like it's more about speed than raw power.
I think with the banshee pheonix lord they wanted to make her a copy of Lillith and be somehow even shittier.
GW definately doesnt seem to understand the identity of xenos armies. after the insulting PA book for my dark eldar they were pretty much shelved immediately in 8th, it was already annoying you couldnt fit characters in raiders and then venoms became a thing and i never liked venoms or venom spam. and half the codex getting removed.....
Iv personally never played eldar but my friend has been a die hard elder player since 3rd who has since swapped to deathguard as of latel... its just sad what has happened to eldar over the years, sure they are constantly top tier but the overall codex outside of its fringe abuse cases have been garbage. Farseers are a definately a large part of the problem in general.
Nazrak wrote: I wouldn't really like to see a S boost for Banshees; it seems wrong, "feel"-wise. I'd much prefer a different solution like, say, more Attacks, which feels like it's more about speed than raw power.
It only feels wrong if your view of Banshees dates from 3rd edition or later. 2nd edition Banshees struck with S5 -3 power swords. In 2nd edition and Epic, the differentiation was Banshees were dependent on the charge for their special abilities, while Scorpions and their mandiblasters dished out more potential hits and thus were better at fighting hordes.
In 3rd edition, GW tried to shift the role differentiation to Banshees low S and good AP while Scorpions had the reverse. But then the Exarchs in both Aspects blurred this because they had weapons that had higher S and good AP.
harlokin wrote: I think the Drukhari lucked out with the timing of their model refresh, the Kabalite and Wych sculpts are a great balance between detail and customisation.
I built a massive drukhari army and recently, built a pretty big Idoneth Deepkin army I got all at once in a trade.
Pretty much the only thing (WRT Customization) i missed about the drukhari was that every bit was purposefully built with the same joints, like the new Admech and GSC stuff, rather than being designed around the specific kit it was going to. That resulted in me having to cut more plastic than I would have normally.
But, the upside to that, was that I was able to get vastly more different and vastly more dynamic poses out of my Idoneth than I was out of my Drukhari. Besides the fish themselves (which are pretty much monopose because it's a big chunk of plastic and what bits would you swap with it) the infantry posing let me do some incredibly interesting stuff as a modeler that I would have had a much more difficult time doing had the minis all been designed around a similar pose to allow for the old style ball-and-flat joint design.
The basic idoneth infantry out of the box have 8 miniatures that you can build in two specific ways, two that can be built in one way, and swappable heads and accessories. Without cutting any plastic. The cavalry and crew from the bigger fish have monopose bodies and legs and swappable arms and heads (pretty much the same as Raider crew. In fact I would go so far as to say having built 2 turtles and 5 raiders in my lifetime that the 110$ leviadon and 35$ raider are SUSPICIOUSLY IDENTICAL in terms of bits and sprues and overall size.... :/ )
Being able to put my bitz in a bag and use them for kitbashes without any modification at all is extremely cool. 100% agreed there. But I think there's also something to be said for the variety you can obtain by being able to start from a pose of "holding sword up above head looking sideways in a sort of ninja pose" that allows you to create "looking to the other side, sweeping sword down with free hand raised back in a fencing pose"
No matter what I do, 9 out of 10 models from a wych kit HAVE to be running. I can mix in standing by adding kabalite bits and I can do some hanging off stuff type poses by using spare raider bodies. If you gave me unlimited Wych kits and unlimited Namarti Thrall kits, clippers, glue and unlimited time, I could definitely make more poses out of the thralls than the wyches.
Nazrak wrote: I wouldn't really like to see a S boost for Banshees; it seems wrong, "feel"-wise. I'd much prefer a different solution like, say, more Attacks, which feels like it's more about speed than raw power.
It only feels wrong if your view of Banshees dates from 3rd edition or later. 2nd edition Banshees struck with S5 -3 power swords. In 2nd edition and Epic, the differentiation was Banshees were dependent on the charge for their special abilities, while Scorpions and their mandiblasters dished out more potential hits and thus were better at fighting hordes.
In 3rd edition, GW tried to shift the role differentiation to Banshees low S and good AP while Scorpions had the reverse. But then the Exarchs in both Aspects blurred this because they had weapons that had higher S and good AP.
And now the distinction is meaningless because the scale of the game has moved wayyyyyyyyy past the distinction between the "Fast" banshees and the """""""""""strong"""""""""""" scorpions.
Nazrak wrote: I wouldn't really like to see a S boost for Banshees; it seems wrong, "feel"-wise. I'd much prefer a different solution like, say, more Attacks, which feels like it's more about speed than raw power.
It only feels wrong if your view of Banshees dates from 3rd edition or later. 2nd edition Banshees struck with S5 -3 power swords. In 2nd edition and Epic, the differentiation was Banshees were dependent on the charge for their special abilities, while Scorpions and their mandiblasters dished out more potential hits and thus were better at fighting hordes.
In 3rd edition, GW tried to shift the role differentiation to Banshees low S and good AP while Scorpions had the reverse. But then the Exarchs in both Aspects blurred this because they had weapons that had higher S and good AP.
And now the distinction is meaningless because the scale of the game has moved wayyyyyyyyy past the distinction between the "Fast" banshees and the """""""""""strong"""""""""""" scorpions.
If GW wanted, Banshees could be given stuff so that they hit like a freight train if and only if they charge, so sort of like 2nd edition, or have better than just D1 swords to keep them in the role of shock assault or elite armored unit killers. Scorpions can be more in the role of more A to reflect an anti-horde role. Of course the devil is in the details but I think thematically if GW wanted to do the old differentiation theme between these two Aspects, there are ways to do so. The problem is I am not sure GW really knows what they really want out of these Aspects any more.
Can we just ditch the intercessor argument? They were trash and now they are the best troop in the game. Theres no point in discussing that ad nauseam.
Also, if you want to see whats needed to make banshee usable and good at killing stuff just look at SoB Zephyrim.
yukishiro1 wrote: Oh they all look samey, no doubt. But not exactly the same. That's what I like about them. You can have a squad of 20 with no complete repeats, even if like 15 of them are basically similar.
That said, guardians are completely boned in 9th because the weapon platform brings them to 11 models, which is no-go land from everything we've seen. I don't think you'll ever see them on the table again unless they switch things around in the codex and integrate the weapon platform with the 10th model.
Good God, I haven't even thought about that yet. well, i guess it's Guardians without platforms or you just suck it up and make 20 of them and put in deep strike.
harlokin wrote: I think the Drukhari lucked out with the timing of their model refresh, the Kabalite and Wych sculpts are a great balance between detail and customisation.
I built a massive drukhari army and recently, built a pretty big Idoneth Deepkin army I got all at once in a trade.
Thanks....now you have me looking at a Deepkin project....who needs savings
It only feels wrong if your view of Banshees dates from 3rd edition or later. 2nd edition Banshees struck with S5 -3 power swords. In
Putting this into context for young'uns: at the time of their introduction (late RT) Marines were still, I think, T3 4+ save. So on a 2+ the marine was dead. Even later on when marines got boosted to their modern profile, that's a 3+ to wound, 6 to save. Hitting was also harder in RT; equal WS meant you hit on a 5+ rather than the 4+ it would become, though I'm not sure if Banshees were just high enough in terms of WS that they actually hit that marine on a 4+ while only getting that 5+ back in return - or it was damned close to it.
Scorps, by contrast, may have had mandiblaster shenanigans but 'only' S4 -1 save - so useful, but not as 'surprise you're dead' as the Banshees.
One other thing being forgotten is that RT (and possibly 2nd) had an often-forgotten 'to hit' modifier; -1 if the target moved more than 10" per turn (hence the modern Reapers special rule; they ignored this). Now most Eldar had a base 5" move, but again IIRC (I really need to dig out WD127 again) the girls had M6. So a double move had them moving 12" - i.e., they got that speed protection.
Yeah, it's weird that nobody seems to have deemed it necessary for key Eldar units to be adjusted for the inflation of output other armies have seen over the various editions – the changes to Rapid Fire, Guard getting auto-Orders, Ork Boyz' straight-up Strength boost plus extra attacks for big mobs, and Bolter Drill plus Shock Assault spring immediately to mind. Meanwhile, for example, Shuriken Catapults are still basically where they were in 3rd ed., and Banshees are getting two attacks; fewer than they had with the old Pistol rules.
Pretty much, yeah.
It seems like the same deal with the Archon's Shadowfield. Back in 3rd, invulnerable saves were almost nonexistant. Most units that could get them either had to take them as one-per-army relics or else (in the case of some monsters) had a 5++ in lieu of any actual armour save. Hence, it made a lot of sense for a 2++ save to come with a hefty downside.
However, in an edition where everyone and his dog gets a 4++, and where even 3++ saves on powerful models are fairly commonplace, it seems rather nonsensical for Archons to still have the exact same penalty on their 2++.
Iracundus wrote: I see it as perhaps a conservatism over the last several editions, as a sort of backlash response to the good or overpowered stuff slipping through.
I mean, I could maybe see that being the case for Eldar, but haven't Dark Eldar spent almost every edition on the bottom of the tier list?
Iracundus wrote: Maybe it's also due to their fixation of S3 for the Eldar as Space Elves, and thus GW is loathe to give too much in the way of high S melee weapons.
This is my assumption, too, but then I still don't see why they can't give them rerolls or +1 to wound or anything along those lines. That way you could still keep the Eldar factions as low-strength, without also making their weapons bounce of their targets at least 66% of the time.
the_scotsman wrote: I built a massive drukhari army and recently, built a pretty big Idoneth Deepkin army I got all at once in a trade.
Pretty much the only thing (WRT Customization) i missed about the drukhari was that every bit was purposefully built with the same joints, like the new Admech and GSC stuff, rather than being designed around the specific kit it was going to. That resulted in me having to cut more plastic than I would have normally.
But, the upside to that, was that I was able to get vastly more different and vastly more dynamic poses out of my Idoneth than I was out of my Drukhari. Besides the fish themselves (which are pretty much monopose because it's a big chunk of plastic and what bits would you swap with it) the infantry posing let me do some incredibly interesting stuff as a modeler that I would have had a much more difficult time doing had the minis all been designed around a similar pose to allow for the old style ball-and-flat joint design.
The basic idoneth infantry out of the box have 8 miniatures that you can build in two specific ways, two that can be built in one way, and swappable heads and accessories. Without cutting any plastic. The cavalry and crew from the bigger fish have monopose bodies and legs and swappable arms and heads (pretty much the same as Raider crew. In fact I would go so far as to say having built 2 turtles and 5 raiders in my lifetime that the 110$ leviadon and 35$ raider are SUSPICIOUSLY IDENTICAL in terms of bits and sprues and overall size.... :/ )
Being able to put my bitz in a bag and use them for kitbashes without any modification at all is extremely cool. 100% agreed there. But I think there's also something to be said for the variety you can obtain by being able to start from a pose of "holding sword up above head looking sideways in a sort of ninja pose" that allows you to create "looking to the other side, sweeping sword down with free hand raised back in a fencing pose"
No matter what I do, 9 out of 10 models from a wych kit HAVE to be running. I can mix in standing by adding kabalite bits and I can do some hanging off stuff type poses by using spare raider bodies. If you gave me unlimited Wych kits and unlimited Namarti Thrall kits, clippers, glue and unlimited time, I could definitely make more poses out of the thralls than the wyches.
That's an interesting take.
As an aside, this might sound silly but one of the things I liked about the 5th edition DE kits was actually the lack of detail. Don't get me wrong - they looked fine and had a few nice details. But there wasn't an overabundance of details or extra bits that all needed to be painted. As someone who doesn't like painting a ton of details outside of characters, this was something I very much appreciated.
That aside, you definitely raise an interesting point with regard to customisation.
I suppose on the one hand it depends how much of a set you're willing to count at any one time.
For example, if I wanted a more static Wych, I'd be tempted to substitute a pair of Kabalite legs instead (I know they're not identical, but I think they're close enough for it to be reasonable). Similarly, I've found Scourge legs to be unmatched for when I want a model to have a dynamic pose.
But yeah, if you only take the kits individually then you are more limited with regard to the number of poses available. e.g. you can't build a Scourge who's just chilling on the ground - he has to be mid-takeoff or mid-landing.
It only feels wrong if your view of Banshees dates from 3rd edition or later. 2nd edition Banshees struck with S5 -3 power swords. In
Putting this into context for young'uns: at the time of their introduction (late RT) Marines were still, I think, T3 4+ save. So on a 2+ the marine was dead. Even later on when marines got boosted to their modern profile, that's a 3+ to wound, 6 to save. Hitting was also harder in RT; equal WS meant you hit on a 5+ rather than the 4+ it would become, though I'm not sure if Banshees were just high enough in terms of WS that they actually hit that marine on a 4+ while only getting that 5+ back in return - or it was damned close to it.
Scorps, by contrast, may have had mandiblaster shenanigans but 'only' S4 -1 save - so useful, but not as 'surprise you're dead' as the Banshees.
One other thing being forgotten is that RT (and possibly 2nd) had an often-forgotten 'to hit' modifier; -1 if the target moved more than 10" per turn (hence the modern Reapers special rule; they ignored this). Now most Eldar had a base 5" move, but again IIRC (I really need to dig out WD127 again) the girls had M6. So a double move had them moving 12" - i.e., they got that speed protection.
The cutoff for 2nd edition was 10" or more to get -1. I think to get the -2 was 20" or more. Eldar had M 5, humans M 4. Howling Banshees had M 6. So any shooting at any running or charging Eldar had a -1 to hit. Now that was not quite as big a deal though back then because many units had targeters, which gave +1 to hit.
Not really. Nearly all Imperial heavy weapons had targeters, as did all Eldar heavy weapons, so these effects just cancelled each other out. The main factions affected were Orks, Tyranids, and Chaos, but these were all CC leaning armies anyway. Orks also had their weird Orky artillery that didn't really rely on to hit rolls in the first place.
And most basic weapons had a +1 at short range too. But in a more 'soft' perspective - and this is no way measurable, I admit - people seemed a lot more willing to put random walls, hedges, woods and what have you around the table, so there was a fair bit of -1 or -2 hit mods to 'leapfrog' with. And, of course, generally smaller forces to begin with.
Also a model's 'facing' was a thing too; they could only shoot (or fight!) 90 degrees to the front; it was rare to matter, but it WAS possible to outflank a model, and I think turning counted as movement so no heavy weapons fire.
Have we bored everyone enough with 'memory lane' yet?
Nazrak wrote: I wouldn't really like to see a S boost for Banshees; it seems wrong, "feel"-wise. I'd much prefer a different solution like, say, more Attacks, which feels like it's more about speed than raw power.
It only feels wrong if your view of Banshees dates from 3rd edition or later. 2nd edition Banshees struck with S5 -3 power swords.
But everyone was getting high-S power swords back then (weren't they? having trouble remembering that far back now) – everything got kinda rolled back for everyone come 3rd. Problem is, everyone else got rolled forward and all my Eldar faves stayed where they were.
Not really. Nearly all Imperial heavy weapons had targeters, as did all Eldar heavy weapons, so these effects just cancelled each other out. The main factions affected were Orks, Tyranids, and Chaos, but these were all CC leaning armies anyway. Orks also had their weird Orky artillery that didn't really rely on to hit rolls in the first place.
Yeah, it was. Heavy bolters missed on 1 and 2 instead of just 1. When there were 120 of these things on a 2nd ed table, it was a big deal.
But everyone was getting high-S power swords back then (weren't they? having trouble remembering that far back now) – everything got kinda rolled back for everyone come 3rd. Problem is, everyone else got rolled forward and all my Eldar faves stayed where they were.
Sort of - a weapon's strength overwrote your own (unless yours was higher of course, but not many Ogryns got trusted with a power sword!) but again IIRC the point of Banshees was that it was a squad of power swords - for everyone else it was a character (or at best squad leader) weapon, which fed into Eldar tech superiority. So in the same way we have that modern meme about the Fire Dragons being "melta go fwoosh", Banshees were about delivering a whole lot of "near-guaranteed wounds with no saves for you" straight to the face.
You're right that the problem is that 3rd got rid of the first part of that sentence and they've never recovered in a MEQ world.
But everyone was getting high-S power swords back then (weren't they? having trouble remembering that far back now) – everything got kinda rolled back for everyone come 3rd. Problem is, everyone else got rolled forward and all my Eldar faves stayed where they were.
Sort of - a weapon's strength overwrote your own (unless yours was higher of course, but not many Ogryns got trusted with a power sword!) but again IIRC the point of Banshees was that it was a squad of power swords - for everyone else it was a character (or at best squad leader) weapon, which fed into Eldar tech superiority. So in the same way we have that modern meme about the Fire Dragons being "melta go fwoosh", Banshees were about delivering a whole lot of "near-guaranteed wounds with no saves for you" straight to the face.
You're right that the problem is that 3rd got rid of the first part of that sentence and they've never recovered in a MEQ world.
Ahhhh yeah of course – fixed S values on CC weapons had somehow disappeared right down the old memory hole.
Pretty much all my Eldar knowledge derives from those 1st-ed.-era WD articles that ended up in the 40K Compilation; but as I understand it, none of the units from that have really had any of the fluff around them changed; it's just a case of their rules failing to keep up, right?
Automatically Appended Next Post: It may just be nostalgia but if I could put together an Eldar army which worked in a way that evoked all the old stuff I read in like 1991, I'd be all over it in a flash.
Yeah, Eldar squad fluff is essentially unchanged since then. Which suits me, it's why they grabbed my imagination so much, and when I finally got into a position to get into them I did, albeit years later. It's also why seeing Eldar army advice that's best summarised as "take as few (classic) Aspects as you can" hurts.
Galas wrote: Can we just ditch the intercessor argument?
No. Marines have been held up as the 'standard' to compare against for decades now. If all the clamoring has finally turned the 'standard marine' into an Intercessor, than Intercessors are what people will naturally compare units against. Esp. since Intercessors, and Primaris infantry in general, are so commonly fielded.
Speaking as someone who's taken 3x5 banshees to a tournament, I rate them quite highly in the right kind of list. Ditto Striking Scorpions. I think that people are sleeping on the impact of their exarch powers.
My Banshee Exarchs now *always* take piercing strike in an EC custom CWE detachment. Why? well, now your MSU Banshee squad has the teeth to punk characters, aggressors, cents and light vehicles: 2 S7 -3 D3 attacks, with a reroll to hit and wound is a lethal spike of damage and will often make up the unit's cost on its own.
Scorpion Exarchs have two variations for me: Biting Blade and Scorpion's Sting for a bargain unit that can occassionally spit mortal wounds on a backfield target, or Claw and Crushing Blow to drop some S10 attacks on something. Both are very well costed at 46 or 54pts respectively for an MSU harrasment unit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As to the wider question of what will become of CWE, well, I'm actually of the opinion that they're one of the most enjoyable, powerful, wide rosters in the game. Whenever I go back to Imperium or Chaos lists I feel a bit cheated.
Speed, redeployment, excellent psychic phase, highly customisable cheap units, precise AT, good board control - what's not to like? Troops are a bit wafer thin, but we still have four viable options in the slot - how many armies can say the same?
grouchoben wrote: Speaking as someone who's taken 3x5 banshees to a tournament, I rate them quite highly in the right kind of list. Ditto Striking Scorpions. I think that people are sleeping on the impact of their exarch powers.
My Banshee Exarchs now *always* take piercing strike in an EC custom CWE detachment. Why? well, now your MSU Banshee squad has the teeth to punk characters, aggressors, cents and light vehicles: 2 S7 -3 D3 attacks, with a reroll to hit and wound is a lethal spike of damage and will often make up the unit's cost on its own.
Scorpion Exarchs have two variations for me: Biting Blade and Scorpion's Sting for a bargain unit that can occassionally spit mortal wounds on a backfield target, or Claw and Crushing Blow to drop some S10 attacks on something. Both are very well costed at 46 or 54pts respectively for an MSU harrasment unit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As to the wider question of what will become of CWE, well, I'm actually of the opinion that they're one of the most enjoyable, powerful, wide rosters in the game. Whenever I go back to Imperium or Chaos lists I feel a bit cheated.
Speed, redeployment, excellent psychic phase, highly customisable cheap units, precise AT, good board control - what's not to like? Troops are a bit wafer thin, but we still have four viable options in the slot - how many armies can say the same?
Congrats for getting some good value out of them. I'm not familiar with EC, is that the Expert Crafted thing? And that's a Psychic awakening thing, too right? (I'm here as a marine player in support of old-school style Eldar.)
I'm also here as a Tyranid player, and they have . . . five viable troop choices. Hormagaunts, Termagants, Genestealers, Warriors, Rippers.
grouchoben wrote: Speaking as someone who's taken 3x5 banshees to a tournament, I rate them quite highly in the right kind of list. Ditto Striking Scorpions. I think that people are sleeping on the impact of their exarch powers.
My Banshee Exarchs now *always* take piercing strike in an EC custom CWE detachment. Why? well, now your MSU Banshee squad has the teeth to punk characters, aggressors, cents and light vehicles: 2 S7 -3 D3 attacks, with a reroll to hit and wound is a lethal spike of damage and will often make up the unit's cost on its own.
Scorpion Exarchs have two variations for me: Biting Blade and Scorpion's Sting for a bargain unit that can occassionally spit mortal wounds on a backfield target, or Claw and Crushing Blow to drop some S10 attacks on something. Both are very well costed at 46 or 54pts respectively for an MSU harrasment unit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As to the wider question of what will become of CWE, well, I'm actually of the opinion that they're one of the most enjoyable, powerful, wide rosters in the game. Whenever I go back to Imperium or Chaos lists I feel a bit cheated.
Speed, redeployment, excellent psychic phase, highly customisable cheap units, precise AT, good board control - what's not to like? Troops are a bit wafer thin, but we still have four viable options in the slot - how many armies can say the same?
Congrats for getting some good value out of them. I'm not familiar with EC, is that the Expert Crafted thing? And that's a Psychic awakening thing, too right? (I'm here as a marine player in support of old-school style Eldar.)
I'm also here as a Tyranid player, and they have . . . five viable troop choices. Hormagaunts, Termagants, Genestealers, Warriors, Rippers.
I just find something not quite right when the Exarch can deliver higher S blows than the Phoenix Lord. Also if the purpose of the Aspect Warrior squad itself becomes just a delivery system or ablative shield for the Exarch then I still think there is something wrong. The whole theme of the Eldar as a dying race is that there shouldn't be deliberate ablative Eldar shields (except possibly Wraith units).
Martel732 wrote: Eldar have never seemed like a dying race. Just sayin.
It's relative. Compared to the masses of humanity (I have estimated the upper limit of the Imperium's population based on known data is in the quadrillions), a few billion or hundred billion Eldar is nothing. The theme though is there. The Imperium doesn't really care about expending Guardsmen and thus also doesn't care about equipment that may injure or kill the user. The Eldar should care about losing any Eldar, so ablative chaff in any living Eldar form isn't in keeping with that theme.
Expert Crafters is the Salamader thing when each unit gets to re-roll one hit and one wound per turn, due to a rules quirk its really good with the heavy support weapons that can be bought as units of 3 at list building but deploy as single units of 1, I suspect as a hedge against psykik buffs being to potent on units of 3, also smooths output lower shot/high str pewpew suspect itll go away come 9e codex because of the no fun for xenos law
grouchoben wrote: Speaking as someone who's taken 3x5 banshees to a tournament, I rate them quite highly in the right kind of list. Ditto Striking Scorpions. I think that people are sleeping on the impact of their exarch powers.
My Banshee Exarchs now *always* take piercing strike in an EC custom CWE detachment. Why? well, now your MSU Banshee squad has the teeth to punk characters, aggressors, cents and light vehicles: 2 S7 -3 D3 attacks, with a reroll to hit and wound is a lethal spike of damage and will often make up the unit's cost on its own.
Scorpion Exarchs have two variations for me: Biting Blade and Scorpion's Sting for a bargain unit that can occassionally spit mortal wounds on a backfield target, or Claw and Crushing Blow to drop some S10 attacks on something. Both are very well costed at 46 or 54pts respectively for an MSU harrasment unit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As to the wider question of what will become of CWE, well, I'm actually of the opinion that they're one of the most enjoyable, powerful, wide rosters in the game. Whenever I go back to Imperium or Chaos lists I feel a bit cheated.
Speed, redeployment, excellent psychic phase, highly customisable cheap units, precise AT, good board control - what's not to like? Troops are a bit wafer thin, but we still have four viable options in the slot - how many armies can say the same?
Congrats for getting some good value out of them. I'm not familiar with EC, is that the Expert Crafted thing? And that's a Psychic awakening thing, too right? (I'm here as a marine player in support of old-school style Eldar.)
I'm also here as a Tyranid player, and they have . . . five viable troop choices. Hormagaunts, Termagants, Genestealers, Warriors, Rippers.
I just find something not quite right when the Exarch can deliver higher S blows than the Phoenix Lord. Also if the purpose of the Aspect Warrior squad itself becomes just a delivery system or ablative shield for the Exarch then I still think there is something wrong. The whole theme of the Eldar as a dying race is that there shouldn't be deliberate ablative Eldar shields (except possibly Wraith units).
I agree with that as well. While I'd like Exarchs to be strong I'd also like the squad members to be highly competent.
grouchoben wrote: Speaking as someone who's taken 3x5 banshees to a tournament, I rate them quite highly in the right kind of list. Ditto Striking Scorpions. I think that people are sleeping on the impact of their exarch powers.
My Banshee Exarchs now *always* take piercing strike in an EC custom CWE detachment. Why? well, now your MSU Banshee squad has the teeth to punk characters, aggressors, cents and light vehicles: 2 S7 -3 D3 attacks, with a reroll to hit and wound is a lethal spike of damage and will often make up the unit's cost on its own.
Scorpion Exarchs have two variations for me: Biting Blade and Scorpion's Sting for a bargain unit that can occassionally spit mortal wounds on a backfield target, or Claw and Crushing Blow to drop some S10 attacks on something. Both are very well costed at 46 or 54pts respectively for an MSU harrasment unit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As to the wider question of what will become of CWE, well, I'm actually of the opinion that they're one of the most enjoyable, powerful, wide rosters in the game. Whenever I go back to Imperium or Chaos lists I feel a bit cheated.
Speed, redeployment, excellent psychic phase, highly customisable cheap units, precise AT, good board control - what's not to like? Troops are a bit wafer thin, but we still have four viable options in the slot - how many armies can say the same?
Congrats for getting some good value out of them. I'm not familiar with EC, is that the Expert Crafted thing? And that's a Psychic awakening thing, too right? (I'm here as a marine player in support of old-school style Eldar.)
I'm also here as a Tyranid player, and they have . . . five viable troop choices. Hormagaunts, Termagants, Genestealers, Warriors, Rippers.
I just find something not quite right when the Exarch can deliver higher S blows than the Phoenix Lord. Also if the purpose of the Aspect Warrior squad itself becomes just a delivery system or ablative shield for the Exarch then I still think there is something wrong. The whole theme of the Eldar as a dying race is that there shouldn't be deliberate ablative Eldar shields (except possibly Wraith units).
Bolter marines have always been ablative wounds for the special/heavy weapons guys. Heck in devastators even the sargeant is the first to go. Theres nothing wrong with that. Someone has to die first.
Bolter marines have always been ablative wounds for the special/heavy weapons guys. Heck in devastators even the sargeant is the first to go. Theres nothing wrong with that. Someone has to die first.
Disagree. The members of Aspect squads should be pretty competent themselves, esp. as this was their original design and legacy.
Also, the basic Bolter guy is pretty solid these days. With the ability so split fire and use of Doctrines, they're doing great. They sure seem to fare better than the Aspect Warriors that they used to be in the same league as.
Banshees should be worth more, and cost more, than Scouts.
Random thought, given a lot of the Exarch powers in PA book dont stretch to the squad, and its a lot of rules for effectively sergents were they also meant to apply to Autarch rules a tin foil theory too far ? You can even skip the no model issue by changing the existing entries with this model can pick from x,y,z aspect similar we saw later with the harlie hq roles rules ( my fluff-fu is still correct that they are too far gone to change off the warrior path ?)
Bolter marines have always been ablative wounds for the special/heavy weapons guys. Heck in devastators even the sargeant is the first to go. Theres nothing wrong with that. Someone has to die first.
Disagree. The members of Aspect squads should be pretty competent themselves, esp. as this was their original design and legacy.
Also, the basic Bolter guy is pretty solid these days. With the ability so split fire and use of Doctrines, they're doing great. They sure seem to fare better than the Aspect Warriors that they used to be in the same league as.
Banshees should be worth more, and cost more, than Scouts.
Why? Theres many more banshee on the universe than scouts.
Bolter marines have always been ablative wounds for the special/heavy weapons guys. Heck in devastators even the sargeant is the first to go. Theres nothing wrong with that. Someone has to die first.
Disagree. The members of Aspect squads should be pretty competent themselves, esp. as this was their original design and legacy.
Also, the basic Bolter guy is pretty solid these days. With the ability so split fire and use of Doctrines, they're doing great. They sure seem to fare better than the Aspect Warriors that they used to be in the same league as.
Banshees should be worth more, and cost more, than Scouts.
Why? Theres many more banshee on the universe than scouts.
That doesn't have any bearing on anything.
There are FAR more Tyranid Warriors than Space Marines. Magnitudes more. That doesn't mean they have to be worse.
Bolter marines have always been ablative wounds for the special/heavy weapons guys. Heck in devastators even the sargeant is the first to go. Theres nothing wrong with that. Someone has to die first.
Disagree. The members of Aspect squads should be pretty competent themselves, esp. as this was their original design and legacy.
Also, the basic Bolter guy is pretty solid these days. With the ability so split fire and use of Doctrines, they're doing great. They sure seem to fare better than the Aspect Warriors that they used to be in the same league as.
Banshees should be worth more, and cost more, than Scouts.
Why? Theres many more banshee on the universe than scouts.
Unlikely to be true, but even if it is, so what?
The lore of aspect warriors is they are the epitome of their particular way of waging war. They're all supposed to be highly specialized elites who are the exemplars of a particular way of fighting, evolved over countless aeons by a race of borderline psychopathic perfectionists with lifespans and aptitudes far beyond the average human.
And then on the tabletop they're mostly bargain basement trash that gets absolutely dunked on by any actual combat specialists.
