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muwhe wrote:
Historically, when GW was releasing a 2-3 codices per year, Individual event organizers could make “reasonable” adjustments to the game as they saw fit. Generally, things had time to settle out and players had time to make adjustments to the changes in meta.

Currently, with Games Workshop’s rapid release schedules players and event organizers have very little time to digest releases before the next release is upon them. Nothing currently points to this trend slowing down anytime soon. As such, I assert that making changes to the game in this
type of environment can only lead to confusion and angst for players. Once a tournament’s rule-set diverges significantly from the main rules of the game it results in a constant state of reassessments, email barrages, endless debates. In the end, this leaves both the event organizers and players very little latitude to evaluate the effectiveness of the changes.

My recommendation remains to play the game as presented, and let it stand or fall on its own. Certainly events can develop multiple formats to appeal to different segments of the community and let attendees determine the formats they want to support. Wholesale changing/banning D, altering core rules, banning codex units outright, may provide some short term comfort but it is not a path for long term support of the game we all love.

Agreed. Play the game as it lays...and a lot of the BS goes away...or at best evens out. Or you can play Robotech. LOL.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:
I will come out and say the Eldar codex has pretty much reliably broken the meta and hilariously enough has ways to counter the 'counters' to the way in which they broke the meta.

Mass D-weapons negate the Mech Meta.
Mass Scatbikes will do a number on Hordes.

And if we switch to FMC and flyer spam? Well, every unit in the Eldar 'dex that can take an Eldar Missile Launcher gets the skyfire option now.

I am still undecided. I fully believe that jetbikes and wraithknights are just too good for their respective points costs - in terms of mobility, durability and damage output. I fully believe that the Aspect Host formation is disgustingly potent. Free +1 BS/WS depending on what you choose? That is just downright rude. The Seer Council is also disgustingly good for what it does. Warp Charges on a 3+? Throw Eldrad in there and giggle. The base Council already throws in 11 dice to the pool on its own so yeah, you can get a lot of utility out of that alone.

You're right about all of these strengths, but an Eldar player can't take them all at the same time. They can't have Skyfire AND D-Weapons AND scatter spam AND seer council, not to the degree where they matter. The eldar player needs to choose, and whatever he does with will leave vulnerabilities.

It is valid to say that Eldar have great options for nearly every type of play, and a counter for every type of army; it would not be correct to say that they can play all of these tools at the same time. So, unless the Eldar player gets to pick his list after seeing the opponent's every time, they're going to have weaknesses, just like everyone else.

At least they don't have 60" wave serpents, which were stupidly simple and predictable to play.

Well, to be fair, they can take most of them, and Scatterlasers aren't terrible AA at all in and of themselves. They can certainly pack D weapons, massed Scatterlasers, and Pyschic support fairly effectively into armies pretty easily.

Which is going to cause tournaments to see less players:
Having to play against the new eldar codex, or not being able to play the new eldar codex?

I don't have a real answer for that. I'm inclined to believe the latter, but I've got nothing but anecdotal evidence to back it up.

That said, I'd be willing to bet this is the big question on a TO's mind right now. Any ruling one way or another is going to cause consternation in part of the community.

We can blame GW for making it a hard decision all we want, but ultimately it's a done deal that can't be expected to change, as we've seen in the past.

Is it then the community's fault for being unable to reach a consensus? Maybe, but as with anything people are invested in, there are going to be conflicts and differences, and that's just reality. Players have every right to want the best out of the game, and not everyone is going to agree how that should be done.

It then falls to the tournaments themselves to be the arbiters. However this shakes down, there will be blood in the water. As a TO, it seems like it's no longer about how to make everybody happy, it's how do you minimize the damage? A sad state of affairs to be sure.

Do 40k tournaments just give up? I'd like to think not, but I personally don't see how this could be resolved without pissing off some appreciable amount of the player base.

The had more than 1 job, capture, contest (obsec in a CAD, many armies did not play strict CADS), and linebreaker.

And the most important job, 2 squads of 3 of them filled out your required troops for a total of 102pts (17pts a model)

and I know everyone is all excited over the new scatter laser/shuriken cannon on every bike option, but against toughness 7, 5 bikes with scatter lasers (135pts) fires 20 shots, averages 13.2 hits, which is 4-5 wounds with a save to the model, many high toughness models have a 3+ save so 1.32-1.6 wounds done.

8 bikes with no upgrades (136pts) fires 16 twin linked shots, averages 14 hits averages 2.24 wounds at AP2.

The numbers for scatter lasers drop even lower at Toughness 8, of course some high toughness models have an INV save, or cover, but there are not so rare situations where the standard bike outperforms scatter laser bikes, and you get more models so they will stay around longer. Being able to move 12" to shoot offsets the 12" range of the shuriken catapults a bit.

It should only affect the way people build their armies. GW is moving from the Force Org Chart to the Decurion/ Formation army list. Don't like the amount of D Weapons, make smaller less juicy targets. Don't like the amount of shots a jetbike squad can make, don't give them a large target to shoot at. Jetbikes are fragile - they will not be able to hold objectives so when they strike, you need to make sure you can counter strike them. Also going forward, you'll only see one Wraithknight

I feel all this Codex does is frustrate people using a large Deathstar style army. I'm sure when Codex: Adeptus Astartes is released, you will see a change in how Space Marines build their army and all will be right with the world.

 Jambles wrote:
Which is going to cause tournaments to see less players:
Having to play against the new eldar codex, or not being able to play the new eldar codex?

I don't have a real answer for that. I'm inclined to believe the latter, but I've got nothing but anecdotal evidence to back it up.

That said, I'd be willing to bet this is the big question on a TO's mind right now. Any ruling one way or another is going to cause consternation in part of the community.

We can blame GW for making it a hard decision all we want, but ultimately it's a done deal that can't be expected to change, as we've seen in the past.

Is it then the community's fault for being unable to reach a consensus? Maybe, but as with anything people are invested in, there are going to be conflicts and differences, and that's just reality. Players have every right to want the best out of the game, and not everyone is going to agree how that should be done.

It then falls to the tournaments themselves to be the arbiters. However this shakes down, there will be blood in the water. As a TO, it seems like it's no longer about how to make everybody happy, it's how do you minimize the damage? A sad state of affairs to be sure.

Do 40k tournaments just give up? I'd like to think not, but I personally don't see how this could be resolved without pissing off some appreciable amount of the player base.

Excellent summary.

TO's will want to do whatever keeps the tourney scene most healthy, and the tourney scene's health is measured by player attendance. I would say it's a pretty obvious choice between angering 5 eldar players or discouraging all the players from all the other books from showing up, knowing that they are just competing for the "best non-eldar" title.

We've been testing them a number of times now. Even had a game where we tried to run the eldar really badly. (We discussed what the worst "not stupid" move was and had the eldar do it. Basically they just did obvious things like move on objectives and shoot the closest enemy they could hurt.) That game STILL saw an eldar victory, by both points and near tabling. They have such an advantage going into games that I wouldn't be surprised to see decent eldar players able to rock out in 1500 vs 2k matches as long as their dice don't betray them.

Maybe they can start doing "weight classes" in tourneys. Heavyweights would be anything. Middleweights would drop ranged D, 2+ reroll saves, invis, and limit some key ridic units like WK's, riptides, and scatbikes.
Lightweight would just be the bottom half of the codices: chaos marines, BA, DA, SW, orks, and so on.

It would need a lot of analysis to pick where the line would be drawn between weight classes would be, but I bet you could determine it by say...examining a full season of the ITC and doing average placement for each race etc. each year.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

boyd wrote:
It should only affect the way people build their armies. GW is moving from the Force Org Chart to the Decurion/ Formation army list. Don't like the amount of D Weapons, make smaller less juicy targets. Don't like the amount of shots a jetbike squad can make, don't give them a large target to shoot at. Jetbikes are fragile - they will not be able to hold objectives so when they strike, you need to make sure you can counter strike them. Also going forward, you'll only see one Wraithknight

I feel all this Codex does is frustrate people using a large Deathstar style army. I'm sure when Codex: Adeptus Astartes is released, you will see a change in how Space Marines build their army and all will be right with the world.

I've thought about having like a crazy 25-30 unit army to counter eldar, but there are issues with that.
A. Wargear such as a melta bomb to make each squad at least marginally relevant will cost you more to fit everywhere, and each one is less protected.
B. You auto-lose purge the alien, and pretty much always give up first blood and warlord. Also many maelstrom missions want you to kill units.
C. It's now incredibly easy for the eldar to pick out what they consider to be high threat and kill it.

niv-mizzet wrote:

TO's will want to do whatever keeps the tourney scene most healthy, and the tourney scene's health is measured by player attendance. I would say it's a pretty obvious choice between angering 5 eldar players or discouraging all the players from all the other books from showing up, knowing that they are just competing for the "best non-eldar" title.

And those eldar players will be upset that they're being subjected to the tyranny of the majority. And how many non-eldar players are going to feel the meta has been adversely affected by removing a codex from the game?

This is what I mean - it just seems like a no-win situation, for everyone involved.

Personally, I think you're probably right: that banning or at least house-ruling some of the new codex will appease the most players. But is it the right thing to do, to sacrifice a subset of players and a part of the game just to potentially keep some people happy? To draw the line here, rather than at some other brand of cheese?

Or is it the only way to salvage a broken set of rules and keep the competitive side of the hobby legitimate?

It's a decision to be made by someone much braver than I.

The big issue here is that 40k is absolutely nothing near a balanced, competitive game. It doesn't even make the pretense anymore, and GW will be the first to say as much, and they have. This is not a tournament ready game, and increasingly is less and less of a game at all and more simply a storytelling device for playing with toy soldiers from the way GW tells it (though I don't think it's worse for that now than ever too, but that's another topic).

What this means is that In many ways I think the idea of a 40k "tournament" is increasingly pointless and absurd if you're not willing to change units and rules in order to adapt it to function as a tournament style game.

Space Marines have skyfire missiles. What's the S and AP of the eldar version ?

Str 7 Ap 4 for Skyfire on the Eldar Missile Launcher.

Same as Astartes... It's not a big threat to fmc or flyers. Still hate the ranged D.

 Silent_Tempest wrote:

 Wilson wrote:

 Silent_Tempest wrote:


Jetbikes are a good model now. I don't think anyone can try and argue they're not. They needed some kind of boost becaue they were awful in the last codex.

Lol, yeah OKAY.

Is this the part where you convince me you're afraid of jetbike with shuriken catapults? 2 shots at range 12". LD 8. 17 points. Go ahead I'm waiting. They literally had one job capture objectives. 12" range on shuriken catapults is pretty silly.

I heard this rumour once that elder jetbikes can move pretty far and still shoot... I think it was just a joke because as you said jetbikes w catapults only shoot 12".

There have been LOTS of play testing since this codex release and the one thing so far is clear elder are horribly overpowered right now. So really all this anecdotal bull by eldar players saying "naw it's cool you just need to learn 2 play" is not only dismissive but outright lies compared to every test game and play test being posted online and being done at private clubs. The one thing is clear tournament organizers need to adjust this codex if they want anything resembling a fair game. winning with eldar does not take skill quit trying to convince yourself you are a good player because you play eldar. You're playing with a stacked deck.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Same as Astartes... It's not a big threat to fmc or flyers. Still hate the ranged D.

C'mon, DB. The "Ranged" Destroyer is not hate-able. Destroyer *is* better than Distort (which was great at STR max, AP2), but not broken, given Destroyer only is worse on bugs, ICs, and vehicles ... worse/more powerful than Distort had been.

WK = 2 shots at 36" of 'ranged' Destroyer. As Distort guns they were fearsome 16% of the time to Bugs & ICs. Now, bugs and ICs are in jeopardy on rolls 2-5 and 6. Worse, but not game breaking. And, granted, vehicles poop their drawers. These are not templates. But. Two. Single. Shots.

WG = 12 range, and we though discussed how to get them in range, they still aren't good, WraithGuard, that is. Getting them in range with WWP and Wave Serpents is still rather poopy kaka.
Hemlock = Flier with 18" range, 2 small blasts. I really don't see the mad rush to buy these things.

Wanna hate? I suggest hating the formations; It's the two formations, allowing pretty much 3 units of Dire Avengers, and 3 units of the other aspect warriors to have BS5. That's the super I'd be ticked off aobut. And, what I'll be playing.

- - - - - - - - - - -
And again, kids, casual games, play what you want. Tell the 4 WraithKnight guy to cram it, legal or not. Don't like formations? Tell your eldar buddy to go standard FoC or to suck eggs.
Tourneys: We know a bunch are already regulating formations and such. So ...
are we done looking for Falling Sky pieces?

If every or most every army had access to ranged D it'd be a different story.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
If every or most every army had access to ranged D it'd be a different story.

I will accede that since not every army had Distort either, then yeah ...

Distort is a shadow compared to the big D.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Distort is a shadow compared to the big D.

I don't understand the use of adjectives that are interpretive, claims without data.

The mathhammer I looked at/posted shows Destroyer *is* more powerful than Distort, but only in 3 cases, MCs, ICs and vehicles. All other single wound footers are still in the same boat. No hyperbole. No invective. Just percentages and numbers.

Anything else is consulting a thesaurus for synonyms.

Those three effected is huge in terms of how it affects the game overall.

 Silent_Tempest wrote:

 Wilson wrote:

 Silent_Tempest wrote:


Jetbikes are a good model now. I don't think anyone can try and argue they're not. They needed some kind of boost becaue they were awful in the last codex.

Lol, yeah OKAY.

Is this the part where you convince me you're afraid of jetbike with shuriken catapults? 2 shots at range 12". LD 8. 17 points. Go ahead I'm waiting. They literally had one job capture objectives. 12" range on shuriken catapults is pretty silly.

And with ObSec and Turbo they could score an objective on the other side of the board. They were better at their role than most other armies troop units. Most armies treat troops as a tax that will barely make back its points. Eldar had a unit that would score enough points to win the game. So what if it isn't killy.

Mavnas wrote:

 Silent_Tempest wrote:

 Wilson wrote:

 Silent_Tempest wrote:


Jetbikes are a good model now. I don't think anyone can try and argue they're not. They needed some kind of boost becaue they were awful in the last codex.

Lol, yeah OKAY.

Is this the part where you convince me you're afraid of jetbike with shuriken catapults? 2 shots at range 12". LD 8. 17 points. Go ahead I'm waiting. They literally had one job capture objectives. 12" range on shuriken catapults is pretty silly.

And with ObSec and Turbo they could score an objective on the other side of the board. They were better at their role than most other armies troop units. Most armies treat troops as a tax that will barely make back its points. Eldar had a unit that would score enough points to win the game. So what if it isn't killy.

They aren't fun models to play with??? Isn't that the point of 40K? Is for me.

I heard this rumour once that elder jetbikes can move pretty far and still shoot... I think it was just a joke because as you said jetbikes w catapults only shoot 12".

There have been LOTS of play testing since this codex release and the one thing so far is clear elder are horribly overpowered right now. So really all this anecdotal bull by eldar players saying "naw it's cool you just need to learn 2 play" is not only dismissive but outright lies compared to every test game and play test being posted online and being done at private clubs. The one thing is clear tournament organizers need to adjust this codex if they want anything resembling a fair game. winning with eldar does not take skill quit trying to convince yourself you are a good player because you play eldar. You're playing with a stacked deck.

This is a "The sky is falling post". Every codex is viewed in this way until the next book is out. Were you complaing about how broke necrons were 2 weeks ago?

Adjusting the codex is a terrible idea. Adjustments could be made to every codex in the game right now. Where do you draw the line? Good luck figuring that out. The only thing I see the "D weapons" actually affecting in game are death stars armies. And for that good riddance.

Where were those posts ranting about how OP the BA dex was? And the orks? The dark eldar?

boyd wrote:
It should only affect the way people build their armies. GW is moving from the Force Org Chart to the Decurion/ Formation army list. Don't like the amount of D Weapons, make smaller less juicy targets. Don't like the amount of shots a jetbike squad can make, don't give them a large target to shoot at. Jetbikes are fragile - they will not be able to hold objectives so when they strike, you need to make sure you can counter strike them. Also going forward, you'll only see one Wraithknight

I feel all this Codex does is frustrate people using a large Deathstar style army. I'm sure when Codex: Adeptus Astartes is released, you will see a change in how Space Marines build their army and all will be right with the world.

Yeah, 80 S6 shots in no way frustrates a marine player because with a 3+ save, he's only losing 17-18 models a turn, but it's OK, because the eldar player had to pay 540 points to make that much firepower happen and that leaves him with only 1310 points to buy his WK and other filler.

And those eldar players will be upset that they're being subjected to the tyranny of the majority. And how many non-eldar players are going to feel the meta has been adversely affected by removing a codex from the game?

This is what I mean - it just seems like a no-win situation, for everyone involved.

If the eldar codex is around in its present form, many marginal codices go to being totally useless.

The mathhammer I looked at/posted shows Destroyer *is* more powerful than Distort, but only in 3 cases, MCs, ICs and vehicles. All other single wound footers are still in the same boat. No hyperbole. No invective. Just percentages and numbers.

Yeah, only the things that have a chance to stand up to scat bikers should worry about D...

I'm noticing a trend here. Eldar players pick one unit at a time, point out that it can be countered then ignore the fact that the other side of their army hard-counters the counter and both are cheaper in their codex. The worst part is some armies just got their 7th codex which was more or less balanced with some OP things that will neither make nor break the game. Now they'll be waiting a long time in the shadow of the eldar. I guess at least Tau and Vanilla SM players can hope that they get an equally broken codex in the near future.

 Silent_Tempest wrote:

Mavnas wrote:

 Silent_Tempest wrote:

 Wilson wrote:

 Silent_Tempest wrote:


Jetbikes are a good model now. I don't think anyone can try and argue they're not. They needed some kind of boost becaue they were awful in the last codex.

Lol, yeah OKAY.

Is this the part where you convince me you're afraid of jetbike with shuriken catapults? 2 shots at range 12". LD 8. 17 points. Go ahead I'm waiting. They literally had one job capture objectives. 12" range on shuriken catapults is pretty silly.

And with ObSec and Turbo they could score an objective on the other side of the board. They were better at their role than most other armies troop units. Most armies treat troops as a tax that will barely make back its points. Eldar had a unit that would score enough points to win the game. So what if it isn't killy.

They aren't fun models to play with??? Isn't that the point of 40K? Is for me.

Leaving out the part where your answer has nothing to do with the statement it's replying to, saying "But FUN lol" is an empty statement, because fun is subjective. Some people might not find it fun to play against a force they can't touch, or to play against / with an army that appears to have an unfair advantage.

Mavnas wrote:
I guess at least Tau and Vanilla SM players can hope that they get an equally broken codex in the near future.

I don't want a broken codex, but if GW can stick with this new design philosophy and stop changing horses mid race, then I'll feel less bad about it because then we'll have something kinda resembling parity for once between armies.

That's if they fething stick with it, though.

Yeah, I'm torn. I think I could put up a fight if I had about 100-150 more guardsmen; however, there's considerably less effort and expense involved in painting a couple WM armies instead and just playing 40K casually. If not for the thousands of points/dollars in already bought but unpainted 40K models I have sitting on my to paint list, I might just make the switch.

So far my win loss draw with the new Eldar is 1-1-1. True I'm not spamming jetbikes, only have enough for three min squads, and I'm not using the warhost, I am still using good things, the list being good at the very least*.My win was against two players who aren't the greatest, to put it nicely, drawed once versus space marines who killed both my knight and scythe guard before turn 3, and lost versus IG.

In the case of the space marine player the knight didn't kill a single thing, taking off the last wound of a centurion and only dealing 1 HP to a vindicator and the Scythe Guard killed a min tac squad and their drop pod before biting it.

Versus the Imperial Guard both did marginally better, killing things that were higher in points, but not in number. Both succeeded in dropping a single leman russ, one vanquisher and one demolisher.

Sorry I cannot give full battle reports, and even still its only my personal experience, but its still something.


*My list is as follows currently.

Combined Arms Detachment
Lord of War
Wraightknight, two heavy Wraithcannons

HQ
Autarch with Fusiongun

Elities
5*Wraithguard, D-Scythes, Waveserpent with starcannon and catapult

Troops
Min Windriders
Min Windriders
Min Windriders

Heavy Support
Fire Prism
Fire Prism
2*Falcons with Pulsar and Brightlance

Formation Detachment
Aspect Host, chose +1 BS
Min Squad of Fire Dragons
Min Squad of Fire Dragons
9 man squad of Warp Spiders

 Sidstyler wrote:

Mavnas wrote:
I guess at least Tau and Vanilla SM players can hope that they get an equally broken codex in the near future.

I don't want a broken codex, but if GW can stick with this new design philosophy and stop changing horses mid race, then I'll feel less bad about it because then we'll have something kinda resembling parity for once between armies.

That's if they fething stick with it, though.

This is a comment i could accept if this was the first 7E codex released, but fact is that it is not.

As it stands we have Orks, BA, SW, GK, Skiitari, DE, Harlequins, Khorne, IG and probably some more that i'm forgetting already with a 7E dress. None of those codices is even close to that power level.
Then we have Necrons, which could be argued that are around midway between 7E power level and Eldar power level.

So do you wanna say to the players of 9 Codices "Sorry, wait for 8E" or correctly consider the Eldar codex the anomaly and treat it as such.
And this isn't even taking 6E codices into consideration.

Mavnas wrote:
I guess at least Tau and Vanilla SM players can hope that they get an equally broken codex in the near future.

Maybe if I'm a good boy this year, next year GW will forget about the Sins of Haines and give me a Chaos Codex that is worthwhile?

Spoletta wrote:
As it stands we have Orks, BA, SW, GK, Skiitari, DE, Harlequins, Khorne, IG and probably some more that i'm forgetting already with a 7E dress. None of those codices is even close to that power level.
Then we have Necrons, which could be argued that are around midway between 7E power level and Eldar power level.

Hence my "changing horses mid race" comment.