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Av 13 and 14 defeat scstbikes alright. I feel terrible for eldar, that huge glaring weakness with no ways to deal with it. Surely 30 of them takes up 1850 points leaving them no choice but to concede when the field floods with battlewagon's and leman Russ tanks.

 Orock wrote:
Av 13 and 14 defeat scstbikes alright. I feel terrible for eldar, that huge glaring weakness with no ways to deal with it. Surely 30 of them takes up 1850 points leaving them no choice but to concede when the field floods with battlewagon's and leman Russ tanks.

I know, its like GW purposefully left that one glaring weakness in the codex.

If a player falls into the codex trap of spamming 65 scatter bikes they will be defeated by all the battle wagons and land raiders.


The one weakness of the eldar codex: AV 14... nothing to answer that, nope not a thing...not one thing at all...

 goblinzz wrote:

If there was true balance between codices, (qudos by the way for getting that one right!) then the tournament stats would show a relatively even W/L ratio for each faction.

Not necessarily. There could be a sociological reason for differences in W/L ratios between factions based on what kind of people are drawn to what kind of factions. Maybe orcs have a natural appeal to less intellectually endowed players. (Not saying this is the case, just an example of something that could explain variance in W/L other than "X codex is OP".) Sort of like professional wrestling draws specific demographics of viewers, perhaps particular factions are the same, appealing to specific demographics that, in turn, perform differently in tournament play.

In order to rule out such a situation, you'd have to basically run an extensive study using some sort of game that is perfectly balanced, that very few people, or no people have played previously. Then you'd take thousands and thousands of players of different factions and have them play hundreds of games against other players in this new game and check the results. If, at the end of the study, orc players scored equally well or better than other faction players WITHOUT eldar players excelling beyond the average, THEN, and only then, would your argument about W/L ratios in 40k tournaments hold any real substance. I eagerly await the results of your extensive study.

Look at history Aug 1999 Eldar got a new codex till it was replaced in Nov 2006. Their next codex was June 2013. Now this one.

Eldar had just 2 codexes over 14 years and they certainly did get kerb stomped for a fair bit of that time. Did everyone go "oh look he's taking Eldar I will just tone things down for him and go easy, poor wee space fairy".
I doubt it ... I won't deny Eldar their time in the sun it was along time coming. Nothing will be the same in 2 years time maybe less. As Eldar player I am happy to play with a strong book for a change. Its only for 2 out of the last 16 years. As to all the Eldar rage a lot is from people who don't play much anyway. A few years ago Space wolves had a mono build a 16 year old could win a national tournament with. Eldar have a huge variety of strong interesting builds. If your facing an Eldar list the same as your opponent fielded last time again its probably because the Eldar player doesn't want to play you any more.

the42up wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Av 13 and 14 defeat scstbikes alright. I feel terrible for eldar, that huge glaring weakness with no ways to deal with it. Surely 30 of them takes up 1850 points leaving them no choice but to concede when the field floods with battlewagon's and leman Russ tanks.

I know, its like GW purposefully left that one glaring weakness in the codex.

If a player falls into the codex trap of spamming 65 scatter bikes they will be defeated by all the battle wagons and land raiders.


The one weakness of the eldar codex: AV 14... nothing to answer that, nope not a thing...not one thing at all...

Wow way to selectively respond to my post. Good for you. Well, I know one thing that won't beat Eldar, lame ass attempts at sarcasm. Have fun taking your ball and going home. You want to be miserable and alone, that's exactly what you'll get. The rest of us have games to play.

Betrayeroftheworld, that would be a good way to settle things, but a sample portion of tournaments will give us a good enough idea of what kind of power each codex has. Pudding proof and all.

Besides, when someone sees a mathematically superior codex and jumps ship to it, does not mean the codex is somehow no longer magnetically superior.

Drunken Angel wrote:
Look at history Aug 1999 Eldar got a new codex till it was replaced in Nov 2006. Their next codex was June 2013. Now this one.

Eldar had just 2 codexes over 14 years and they certainly did get kerb stomped for a fair bit of that time. Did everyone go "oh look he's taking Eldar I will just tone things down for him and go easy, poor wee space fairy".
I doubt it ... I won't deny Eldar their time in the sun it was along time coming. Nothing will be the same in 2 years time maybe less. As Eldar player I am happy to play with a strong book for a change. Its only for 2 out of the last 16 years. As to all the Eldar rage a lot is from people who don't play much anyway. A few years ago Space wolves had a mono build a 16 year old could win a national tournament with. Eldar have a huge variety of strong interesting builds. If your facing an Eldar list the same as your opponent fielded last time again its probably because the Eldar player doesn't want to play you any more.

The 2006 codex was viable into 5th. The Eldar have had the consistently best codex in game for the entire history of the game! Don't forget the insanity of the 2nd ed codex.

Eldar have been amazing for much of the game, possibly even the best for most of the game. But it has certainly not been the best for the entire history of the game.

2-3 years ago, for over half of 6th edition, they were not even a good Codex. Much less the best.

Bharring wrote:
Eldar have been amazing for much of the game, possibly even the best for most of the game. But it has certainly not been the best for the entire history of the game.

2-3 years ago, for over half of 6th edition, they were not even a good Codex. Much less the best.

I was averaging it. CONSISTENTLY best. Basically, add up the time that all factions have spent at the top of the heap, and Eldar would dominate that stat hands down.

 PipeAlley wrote:

the42up wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Av 13 and 14 defeat scstbikes alright. I feel terrible for eldar, that huge glaring weakness with no ways to deal with it. Surely 30 of them takes up 1850 points leaving them no choice but to concede when the field floods with battlewagon's and leman Russ tanks.

I know, its like GW purposefully left that one glaring weakness in the codex.

If a player falls into the codex trap of spamming 65 scatter bikes they will be defeated by all the battle wagons and land raiders.


The one weakness of the eldar codex: AV 14... nothing to answer that, nope not a thing...not one thing at all...

Wow way to selectively respond to my post. Good for you. Well, I know one thing that won't beat Eldar, lame ass attempts at sarcasm. Have fun taking your ball and going home. You want to be miserable and alone, that's exactly what you'll get. The rest of us have games to play.

Sarcasm aside he's correct. Even with your jetbike spam you can EASILY deal with AV13/14, because that's only on the front, battlewagons and Leman Russ are almost all AV10 on the rear, occaisonnaly AV11. With 5+ units of jetbikes with S6, it will NOT take them long to get behind heavy vehicles and knock them out quickly afterwards.

And as for your other point, about playing unbound, fair enough, your meta appears to allow that. However, at tournaments, that is literally NEVEr allowed, so while yes, you probably can spam the hell out of units using unbound to deal with eldar, that isn't an option at tournaments.

FratHammer wrote:

Besides, when someone sees a mathematically superior codex and jumps ship to it, does not mean the codex is somehow no longer magnetically superior.

Not all nuances of codices can be given a numeric value, and so a purely mathematical evaluation of a codex is, itself, flawed.

Betrayeroftheworld, as it's a purely tested one with control groups. But your rational betrays you Eldar! Dun dun dun!

Personal opinion, but I dont think you can defend strength D weapons outside of Apoc, alot of armies dont even have access to it, or not ranged Str D anyway...

FratHammer wrote:
Betrayeroftheworld, that would be a good way to settle things, but a sample portion of tournaments will give us a good enough idea of what kind of power each codex has. Pudding proof and all.

Besides, when someone sees a mathematically superior codex and jumps ship to it, does not mean the codex is somehow no longer magnetically superior.

I can say without any doubt that all of the codexes are magnetically balanced against each other.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

FratHammer wrote:
Betrayeroftheworld, that would be a good way to settle things, but a sample portion of tournaments will give us a good enough idea of what kind of power each codex has. Pudding proof and all.

Besides, when someone sees a mathematically superior codex and jumps ship to it, does not mean the codex is somehow no longer magnetically superior.

I can say without any doubt that all of the codexes are magnetically balanced against each other.

One might even say they're... polar opposites.

Disclaimer: I'm an Eldar player, love the new codex, and not given to any form of spam. I'm much more of a fluff player (Ulthwe). Only use a Wraithknight over 2k pts as I think they belong in larger, more epic battles. Don't have the money to use multiple Wraithknights and prob wouldn't if I could.

I'm in the camp that the new changes are powerful but not OP. I think there are counters out there and that some players have gotten lazy and relied on deathstars and using the same rigid tactic and list over and over. Time to adapt.

I say all of this with the confidence that the Eldar codex, and possibly the Necron codex, were the start of something new and more epic. The new Astartes codex will be out soon which will notch things up for them so many of these issues aren't as bad, and as the majority of players play Astartes I think these threads will quieten down afterwards. I think we just need a bit of patience.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:


Maybe orcs have a natural appeal to less intellectually endowed players.

Hmmm. Maybe Eldar appeals to deluded peri-pubescent shut-ins who think they're the reincarnation of Bobby Fischer, Erwin Rommel, George Patton and Napolean rolled into one. Not saying that's the case. But you know it's just social Darwinism. It makes sense. Eldar players are all intellectually superior.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and you misspelled C L A M O R I N G.

Oh, it's like tabletop racism, right?

All eldar players are pedant snobs who wear white gloves, treat other players as lesser beings and move models holding them with 2 fingers and little finger sticking out. They can move miniatures and run or run and move miniatures.

All ork players are stupid brutes that move models stomping them with fists than run around the table screaming WAAAAAAGH! When there is more than one ork player of ~ the same size in flgs, they start kicking each other to find out who's orkier.

All ig players wear helmets and die for the emperor from stiff breeze. They move models with bayonettes. They start moving models faster when there's a comissar nearby.

You obviously didn't read his post. His point on is along the lines of: if top players all think that X army is the best, and X army wins the most tournament games this could be the result of X army being the best, or it could be the result of a lot of top players playing army X, or a mixture of the two. This is a perfectly valid point. I guess some people feel better about themselves by finding excuses to insult others.

I find it amusing that WKs appear to be the main concern. A lot of tournaments outright ban LoWs or limit you to one. That however is not your only problem. Crimson death, dual hemlocks, scouting d-cannons (using Eldrad who casts eldritch storm with a possible 10" pie plate) and a bunch of bikers can all be fit in one list. I saw a list like that hurt centstar. There were just too many dangerous units and invisibility was toned down in this scenario as well.

I think the issue is that Eldar have too many under costed units. Seriously - 55 points for a T7 d-weapon platform. Wraith flyers now Lvl2? You have a unit that flys on turn 2 and even with a scatter can hurt most anything on the table in pairs. All their flyers are vector dancing too and the crimson death is just silly.

I'm not saying there are no counters. I played an eldar air list against a very good Nid list and lost (barely but lost) in a test match. Now Eldar is not my go to army - I prefer playing my 30k but I have the models and use them on occasion. Of course I'll be making changes to the eldar list but flyrants/mawlocs and lictors with malenthrope and void shields still works against Eldar. Flyrants can handle crimson death formation.

Eldar have been powerful for awhile. There has only been a small window where they were not top of the pile in the years that I've played 40k. We all adjusted to that. This codex, however, just seems outright abusive. In the hands of top players ( I don't pretend to be one) it is going to be in the top five at every event even without WK. Even if they ban all d weapon units, the codex is still strong (although I do not see banning WG and Wraith flyers and vaul's d cannons being fair. That is just too many units from a single codex).

Go ahead and ban all D weapons. You still have:
9 special characters
4 HQ's
5 Troops
4 Elites
6 Fast Attack
7 Heavy support (vaul batteries do have 2 other options)
1 Lord of War

That's on par with space marines, and far more options than most other armies.
And what units do eldar get that are loser choices?
Storm Guardians, Vibro cannons and wraith lords. Seriously, Eldar have 30 normal units, of which 27 of them are good. That's pretty amazing.

 goblinzz wrote:

 PipeAlley wrote:

the42up wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Av 13 and 14 defeat scstbikes alright. I feel terrible for eldar, that huge glaring weakness with no ways to deal with it. Surely 30 of them takes up 1850 points leaving them no choice but to concede when the field floods with battlewagon's and leman Russ tanks.

I know, its like GW purposefully left that one glaring weakness in the codex.

If a player falls into the codex trap of spamming 65 scatter bikes they will be defeated by all the battle wagons and land raiders.


The one weakness of the eldar codex: AV 14... nothing to answer that, nope not a thing...not one thing at all...

Wow way to selectively respond to my post. Good for you. Well, I know one thing that won't beat Eldar, lame ass attempts at sarcasm. Have fun taking your ball and going home. You want to be miserable and alone, that's exactly what you'll get. The rest of us have games to play.

Sarcasm aside he's correct. Even with your jetbike spam you can EASILY deal with AV13/14, because that's only on the front, battlewagons and Leman Russ are almost all AV10 on the rear, occaisonnaly AV11. With 5+ units of jetbikes with S6, it will NOT take them long to get behind heavy vehicles and knock them out quickly afterwards.

And as for your other point, about playing unbound, fair enough, your meta appears to allow that. However, at tournaments, that is literally NEVEr allowed, so while yes, you probably can spam the hell out of units using unbound to deal with eldar, that isn't an option at tournaments.

Your statements about Tounamnets are sad but true. If I play in two a year, that's a lot for me. I play almost all my games in a Thursday night FLGS league. Tournaments have all sorts of crazy house rules, way more than any league I've been in. The last one I attended had a 3 equal part score: overall score in games, sportsmanship, and painting. If a single model didn't have at least 3 colors you got a zero for the entire painting score. Naked bases also set people back a lot. I've got some models from the 90's not painted yet. Of course the Stompa isnt painted yet. Oh well, knew that going in and still was at top table for the final game. Played 3 games in one day? That's a good day.

Scatterbikes can glance AV 12 sides that is true but they'll be going through 4+ cover and/or 5++ inv and while they're shooting the BW's, the Boyz are whittling them down as well. Tanks will die, Boyz will die, Eldar will die. Fun will be had.

Oh man kooai I LOLd hard!

 doktor_g wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:


Maybe orcs have a natural appeal to less intellectually endowed players.

Hmmm. Maybe Eldar appeals to deluded peri-pubescent shut-ins who think they're the reincarnation of Bobby Fischer, Erwin Rommel, George Patton and Napolean rolled into one. Not saying that's the case. But you know it's just social Darwinism. It makes sense. Eldar players are all intellectually superior.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and you misspelled C L A M O R I N G.

OMG I literally laughed out loud. "you misspelled C L A M O R I N G"... hahaha... whew... <wipes away a single tear> Somebody got owned and it doesn't look like it was an ork player.

 doktor_g wrote:

Hmmm. Maybe Eldar appeals to deluded peri-pubescent shut-ins who think they're the reincarnation of Bobby Fischer, Erwin Rommel, George Patton and Napolean rolled into one. Not saying that's the case. But you know it's just social Darwinism. It makes sense. Eldar players are all intellectually superior.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and you misspelled C L A M O R I N G.

Haha, love you too!

But he was right. You missed the point and lost the battle while scouring the thread for spelling errors. Silly ork.

I don't need to "scour" when its in the title. I like eldar BTW. They taste like chicken.

Kidding and jabs aside. There WAS some give and take in CW. We (ghetto codecies) are mainly jealous, truth be told.

 doktor_g wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:


Maybe orcs have a natural appeal to less intellectually endowed players.

Hmmm. Maybe Eldar appeals to deluded peri-pubescent shut-ins who think they're the reincarnation of Bobby Fischer, Erwin Rommel, George Patton and Napolean rolled into one. Not saying that's the case. But you know it's just social Darwinism. It makes sense. Eldar players are all intellectually superior.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and you misspelled C L A M O R I N G.

C L A M O U R I N G

For those of us from the nation of tea-drinkers over the pond

Anyway, I may have a chance to see how bust the space-elves are on sunday - playing my housemate's heavily proxied grey knights (they kicked my necron butt last weekend). He's trying to decide whether to invest in them, but given how much I got savaged, it's likely.

His list is along the lines of:

Inquisitor x2, cyberskulls
2 units of acolytes? (can't remember really, they died very quickly and were just there for warp charge)
2 units of 8 Terminators w/ML3 librarian
2 dreadknights
purifiers in a storm raven

I have the following models:

Farseer skyrunner
Farseer
Autarch with wings
Avatar
2 Warlocks
18 jetbikes
15 dire avengers
24 guardians plus assorted weapon platforms
5 wave serpents
3 falcons
1 fire prism
4 war walkers
1 crimson hunter
6 dark reapers
10 striking scorpions
10 banshees
10 fire dragons
5 wraithguard
2 wraithlords (really wish these were good... sigh).

I can proxy stuff up as needed, but would prefer to play with actual models. Can anyone suggest a good list? Some tactical advice?

I am guessing I can limit his psychic phase if I go with Eldrad+ Council, and then use dire avenger shrine or guardians to bladestorm his terminators/dreadknights to death. I might want to take shuricannons on the jetbikes rather than scatterlasers for that purpose too.

I'd really like to try out the falcon deepstrike ... I guess with fire dragons and dire avengers or reapers that would be good against the terminators?

Oh, 1850 pts. There will be plenty of terrain.

 Orock wrote:
Av 13 and 14 defeat scstbikes alright. I feel terrible for eldar, that huge glaring weakness with no ways to deal with it. Surely 30 of them takes up 1850 points leaving them no choice but to concede when the field floods with battlewagon's and leman Russ tanks.

or knights...


not to mention the butt load of str 6, ap3, ignores cover shooting that ad mech can put out....

I think charlie from Elite 40k made a good comparison post regarding the D-weapon changes.

Charlie from Elite 40k wrote: Wraiths and D
Many tears have been cried over the change to Distort weapons, upgrading them to the 'dreaded D' that so many players still irrationally fear. But how much of a difference is there really between S10 and D?

Let's start with the much-maligned Wraithknight and its pair of Heavy Wraithcannon. These were S10 AP2 with Instant Death on a 6. In other words, they were already:

Wounding everything on 2+
Always one-shotting T5 and lower
One-shotting T6+ on a 6 (except Gargantuans and Eternal Warriors)
Taking a HP automatically from AV10 and AV11
Taking a HP on a 2+ from the very common AV12
Taking a HP on a 3+ or 4+ against the rarer AV13 and AV14

With the change to D, the Heavy Wraithcannon is now:

Still wounding everything on a 2+
Still always one-shotting T5 and lower
Still one-shotting T6+ on a 6 (now including most Gargantuans and Eternal Warriors)
Taking D3 HP on a 2+ regardless of AV
One-shotting vehicles on a 6 (except the most expensive Super Heavies)
Ignoring cover and invulnerable saves on a 6

Yes, things changed. But the sky is not falling. They were buffed in several ways, and nerfed in several others. Did they come out slightly stronger than before? I don't think so. I think, with the normal tournament rules regarding LoWs and Gargantuan creatures that have been in place since before their codex released, they are likely a weaker codex now with the loss of the spamable twin-linked wave serpents. That said, I still think they're a good, powerful codex, which is something I think should be able to be said for any codex that's released. All codices should have a "Wow" factor, where when you read it for the first time, at several points you should say to yourself, "Wow, that's awesome."

If whatever faction you play didn't give you that feeling, or you feel like you can't compete with other codices, that is GW's failing in writing your codex, not a failure of everyone else's. Like DE. They got proper F'ed in the A. Their codex is so mediocre at everything that it makes them a chore to use. All the interesting fluff and special characters that gave them flair in last edition whittled down to a cast of underperforming characters that are a shadow of their former selves, as if DE were overpowered and needed less options. They didn't. I feel like DE would have been better served by not getting an update at all. Their most recent codex release seemed like an underpowered rehash of their old codex, that served no purpose other than to suck the fun out of the faction and give them an excuse to release the covens supplement and related models. It was a cash grab that hurt the faction, and the game as a whole. Don't blame eldar players because GW makes choices like these, stranding their loyal fanbases with crappy codices for multiple years. Perhaps the latest codices of necrons and eldar are signs of the future direction of GW's creation philosophy for core factions, where every faction will be awesome. One may hope.

I think all the eldar changes are reasonable in comparison to the imperial knights who roll insane amounts of dice have (basically) a sort of titan void shield..or the insane buff of white scars chapter tactics.

The only change I think that wasn't that "normalised" properly was troop jetbikes all with heavy weapons, but they took out target lock, so I do understand why.

For those that doubt the logic of this let me explain: Eldar were an awesome str6/7 avoids cover army that could *hit* 50 or 60 shots at that str a turn reliably.

Now they have about 25-35 str 6 hits with little avoids cover. In place of that they got extra abilities vs high wound targets and heavy armour