Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Wyldhunt wrote:

For years, I've heard people say that they should be glass cannons, but that feels a bit weird for a technologically advanced species that puts a lot of value on the lives of their remaining population. Plus, other space elves are already doing the glass cannon thing, and making them all compete for that same role means that you're likely to make at least one faction basically worse at the job than the others. Some people say they're meant to be a mobile, shooty army, but that's theoretically the tau niche. When I first started playing, they were an elite force equipped with more-powerful-than-normal wargear that made them specialists with an edge over their counterparts... But primaris marines are kind of filling that niche now, and it feels inappropriate to one-up marines at the "individually powerful" game by making eldar tech absurdly strong.

Honestly, I think in many ways, this is the crux of the issue with Eldar. The Eldar haven't ever had a proper overhaul pretty much since they were released, and their niche's have been slowly taken by other factions. In addition to the ones mentioned, the Necrons have taken the "hyper-advanced race" niche, and chaos/marines have taken the pshycic race niche (sort of, the Thousand sons deserve it moreso than the others and Eldar have decent psychic still).

I think at this point, I see two ways forward. Shenanigans, allowing them certain tricks and abilities no one else can do (though this risks encroaching upon GSC).

Or, and this is my preferred idea, pre-battle divination and preperation. Personally, I'd do it like so:

Pre battle you get X amount of army structures to build the army around, which heavily push you down a given route and the idea is to represent pre-battle divination of the eldar, the seeing they do before they ever even engage. Then, when you begin the fight, you pick one of X amount of minor upgrades to represent a tailoring to a specific battle. I.E. -1AP on Shuriken weapons, +1S on Shuriken weapons, or +6"range to Shuriken weapons. Perhaps it's one flat bonus to everything, or it's several bonuses to specific units. If I had complete control of warhammer I'd just allow every unit a minor upgrade, but very under-powered if you don't pick

As others have kinda discussed already, there just isn't that much design space for the Eldar to take advantage of. Many armies are already blitzingly fast, carry powerful psychic phases, and run specialized squads that it feels difficult to give them an identity.
A bit of design space that has not yet been exploited is minor list tailoring, which makes the most sense with the prescient and farsighted Eldar. An implementation would be doable, but difficult.

A couple stabs at this vein of thinking -

1) Warlord bonuses. If the warlord is a Farseer/Warlock/Autarch they give the following bonuses.
- Farseer. The opposing player must choose and reveal their first secondary objective before the player controlling this model chooses any. Unlocks Strat to spend 1/2CP to force the opponent to also reveal their second/third secondary objectives. If both players have farseers as warlords then neither
may benefit from this ability

- Autarch. The player may choose to activate an Aspect for an additional battle round.

- Warlock. The player may choose to swap out one power on each psyker in their army.

Then follow it up by allowing the Eldar to shift warlords as long as they are in the army. This could be messy to implement, but I'd run it as a strategem that made another character the warlord for that game. It wouldn't give them a WLT though.
Basically by adding these your allowing the player to have a strategic level tailor to the army they're fighting.

2) Aspects. Aspects would make up the "Doctrine" level army wide rules that one can get only if their entire army is CWE. The player would choose to activate an Aspect at the start of the round. Each aspect would have a major and a minor benefit. An Aspect can only be activated once
- Major benefits would only affect those of that aspect (IE banshees would get a major benefit during the battle round with the aspect of the banshee active)
- Minor benefits would only affect models like guardians and warwalkers or other CWE 'militia'
- Aspect warriors from other shrines would gain no benefit.

I don't know what each aspect would actually do, but I feel this would encourage players to use a gamut of specialized infantry with guardians acting as a sort of glue for the entire army. At least that would be the hope. This would probably necessitate the expansion of aspects to somehow include vehicles and wraith units, but that might be disagreeable to some.

3)Webway Portalling. Allow the Eldar player to switch out units during the game. I feel there are two ways to do this:
- Modified Summoning: Give Eldar character summoning rules that allow them to summon aspect warriors/guardians from a reinforcement point pool. Maybe with a slight tweak to better increase mobility
- Unit Swapping: Let the Eldar spend CP to pull an infantry unit that is unengaged and replace them with a new unit of equal/lesser cost and equal lesser/models as they retreat into a webway portal and trade places with reinforcements more appropriately matched to the task. This would still be subject to the 9" deepstrike denial.

4) Alongside these changes would be making each aspect focus on a specific profile or task.
For example, instead of making banshees be melee blenders make them melee disruptors.
- Change Banshee masks to the following - 'At the start of the fight phase a unit equipped with a banshee mask may target a single unit within engagement range. Roll 2d6, and if the amount equals or exceeds their leadership that unit may not benefit from any abilities that grant them obsec. In addition when determining who controls an objective that unit counts as half as many models as it normally would (rounding up) and any actions they are performing automatically fail. This effect lasts until the end of the next fight phase. A unit may not be targeted by more than one Banshee mask per phase.

I don't know how well this would play out in practice, but it makes banshees terrifying in certain matchups without being outright killy. (although they should still hit reasonable hard as well)


Basically changes 2-4 are focused on rewarding the player for specializing their troops, while mitigating the feels bad of showing up to a game with all the wrong models and autolosing. Give them an interesting tool kit that they can use, but require the right tool for the job.

I disagree with some of these ideas of making Craftworld units not able to do a decent job unless supported by other units/stratagems/psychic powers. That is the same mistake GW has made before. That is not synergy. That is under powering units and kneecapping the faction if units need babysitting or an inordinate amount of attention from the player just to do the job they are supposedly specialized in. Seriously, I don’t seem to see other people suggest melee specialized elite units from other factions be not killy in melee, yet this pops up for Banshees or even Scorpions. Is it too much to expect an Eldar unit do its role?

Nutshell: if you have to do more just to get the same result as others, that means you were playing with a handicap/disadvantage/weak unit.

ProfSrlojohn wrote:The Eldar haven't ever had a proper overhaul pretty much since they were released, and their niche's have been slowly taken by other factions.

Yeah. It almost feels like we've, in a roundabout way, traded the "fast specialists" gimmick for marines' "Mario army" niche. Marines can field squads full of special weapons that excel against specific targets or at specific jobs, can hope out of transports after they've moved, and can launch turn 1 charges with their faster units. Meanwhile eldar are fast but not *that* fast, can generally take a mix of weapons on a given unit that are good against a variety of targets, are well-armored but not *that* well-armored... Craftworlders almost seem like the xenos measuring post at the moment; not skewing far enough into any gimmick to really be considered "the fast ones," or "the glass cannons," or "the horde," or "the elite army."

I think at this point, I see two ways forward. Shenanigans, allowing them certain tricks and abilities no one else can do (though this risks encroaching upon GSC).

Or, and this is my preferred idea, pre-battle divination and preperation. Personally, I'd do it like so:

Pre battle you get X amount of army structures to build the army around, which heavily push you down a given route and the idea is to represent pre-battle divination of the eldar, the seeing they do before they ever even engage. Then, when you begin the fight, you pick one of X amount of minor upgrades to represent a tailoring to a specific battle. I.E. -1AP on Shuriken weapons, +1S on Shuriken weapons, or +6"range to Shuriken weapons. Perhaps it's one flat bonus to everything, or it's several bonuses to specific units. If I had complete control of warhammer I'd just allow every unit a minor upgrade, but very under-powered if you don't pick

I think either of those approaches could be workable. One or two army-wide buffs chosen at the time the battle starts representing a battle plan made with foreknowledge of the enemy. Maybe let exarchs choose their powers during deployment as they call out plays to their squads. Our redeploy and Forewarned strats do a decent job of leaning into their magnificent bastard gimmick. Maybe toss in an assassin-style strat to swap out an aspect squad, and you have force that can be changed to play significantly differently for each battle.

Vilehydra wrote:As others have kinda discussed already, there just isn't that much design space for the Eldar to take advantage of. Many armies are already blitzingly fast, carry powerful psychic phases, and run specialized squads that it feels difficult to give them an identity.
A bit of design space that has not yet been exploited is minor list tailoring, which makes the most sense with the prescient and farsighted Eldar. An implementation would be doable, but difficult.

Not sure about the specifics, but again, I can maybe get behind list-tailored eldar.

4) Alongside these changes would be making each aspect focus on a specific profile or task.
For example, instead of making banshees be melee blenders make them melee disruptors.
- Change Banshee masks to the following - 'At the start of the fight phase a unit equipped with a banshee mask may target a single unit within engagement range. Roll 2d6, and if the amount equals or exceeds their leadership that unit may not benefit from any abilities that grant them obsec. In addition when determining who controls an objective that unit counts as half as many models as it normally would (rounding up) and any actions they are performing automatically fail. This effect lasts until the end of the next fight phase. A unit may not be targeted by more than one Banshee mask per phase.

I don't know how well this would play out in practice, but it makes banshees terrifying in certain matchups without being outright killy. (although they should still hit reasonable hard as well)

Iracundus wrote:I disagree with some of these ideas of making Craftworld units not able to do a decent job unless supported by other units/stratagems/psychic powers. That is the same mistake GW has made before. That is not synergy. That is under powering units and kneecapping the faction if units need babysitting or an inordinate amount of attention from the player just to do the job they are supposedly specialized in. Seriously, I don’t seem to see other people suggest melee specialized elite units from other factions be not killy in melee, yet this pops up for Banshees or even Scorpions. Is it too much to expect an Eldar unit do its role?

Nutshell: if you have to do more just to get the same result as others, that means you were playing with a handicap/disadvantage/weak unit.

Partially agree with both of you. Iracundus is right about eldar "synergy" in the past not really working out. It generally just boiled down to the army revolving around Doom, being scrwed if they ran into skew lists, and spamming the one or two units that were well-rounded and durable enough to deal with a wide variety of targets. That's partly why you saw seer councils in 5th-7th, scatbikes and spiders and wraith knights in 7th, and flyer spam and reaper castles in 8th. All of those units (at the time) were good at staying alive and hurting a wide variety of targets. So rather than relying on both dragons and banshees to kill a rhino and the marines inside, you could just have the aforementioned units blast both off the table while being hard to remove.

That said, I think Iracundus might be overlooking some of the merits of Vilehydra et. alls' angle. If craftworlders' "thing" is just packing more of a punch than comparable units, then they become kind of a bland stat-check army. This is basically what they did with drukhari, and while I'm glad my drukhari are strong right now, they also probably feel less fluffy than they ever have before. "Fluff levels" aside, drukhari are already trying to win by being glass cannons that trade well. If craftworlders try to play the same game, then you risk having one just be an inferior version of the other. Plus, you perpetuate the arms race and make everyone else's offense and defense look worse in comparison (thus making those factions "feel off.")

Leaning into crowd control, debuff, and cost-effective support abilities lets you add value to craftworlders without perpetuating the arms race or turning the army into a stat checker. So maybe my banshees don't hit as hard as assault intercessors or incubi, but they're better at temporarily shutting down enemy offense and tarpitting units. This means that they can still win a melee fight against many targets in the long run (so they still feel like competent melee combatants), but their methods for doing so don't devolve into a sword-measuring contest, and the rest of your army will have to keep killing and debuffing key enemy units so that the banshees don't just get wiped out the turn after they charge.

I kind of dig the idea of the eldar as a bruise deck army. Debuff this enemy, lock down that enemy, and then focus fire on scariest thing not being shut down yet. Make their lockdown abilities temporary, reliant on advancing and charging, etc. so that you have to coordinate a series of waves of debuffs to keep your opponent from getting loose and beating you in straight-forward fight.

Well said. Overall I agree with Icarundus point, if you have a unit that is generally worse than another unit unless it is buffed with a Psychic power then that is a design handicap. That unit doesn't necessarily need to be as killy as another unit in that role, but if that is the case then it needs some sort of utility or survivability to make up for that. If it has neither, and is still worse than someone else at its role then it's just a handicap and that's currently where Banshees, Scorpions, Fire Dragons reside.

Personal preference I would have Banshees be more survivable, Scorpions have more utility. Fire Dragons are fine as they are, they just need to be on the same level as other Melta units.

Iracundus wrote:
I disagree with some of these ideas of making Craftworld units not able to do a decent job unless supported by other units/stratagems/psychic powers. That is the same mistake GW has made before. That is not synergy. That is under powering units and kneecapping the faction if units need babysitting or an inordinate amount of attention from the player just to do the job they are supposedly specialized in. Seriously, I don’t seem to see other people suggest melee specialized elite units from other factions be not killy in melee, yet this pops up for Banshees or even Scorpions. Is it too much to expect an Eldar unit do its role?

Nutshell: if you have to do more just to get the same result as others, that means you were playing with a handicap/disadvantage/weak unit.

I agree that Eldar have been far too reliant on such things, particularly the Farseer unit above and beyond anything else. Eldar should need a diverse array of units working together to achieve victory, but being focused on lynchpin support HQ's and Gotcha abilities has had stupid game results in basically every edition.

The idea should be more "Where Space Marines bring 3 generalist tac squads to secure a flank, Eldar should have some Dire Avengers, a unit of Banshees, and a squad of Fire Dragons for the same task", and not "Banshees require a Farseer to work" as has often been the case.

Definitely agree. The over-reliance on a few (or ONE) HQ to make the army function is terrible.

It doesn't help that GW usually over- or under-estimates the value of the buffs, but never manners to zero in with an accurate estimate of what works.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
Fire Dragons are fine as they are, they just need to be on the same level as other Melta units.

Upgrading the Firepike is a must. Rare artifact that only Exarchs can wield...yet entire Primaris squads carry weapons just as good and a more compact too.

Currently the Firepike does not work with the rest of the squad either. If the extra range on the Firepike is making a difference, it means the rest of the squad is not in range to shoot.

Anyway, the larger point remains too that if the Eldar player has to coordinate and bring together different units or otherwise pull off some combination, it should be rewarded for that additional risk of failure if things don’t come together. That should be how synergy should work. Do more and run the risk and get rewarded. Not do more, run the risk, and get just an equivalent result to some other faction that can just “no brainer” brute force it (or at least be at no greater vulnerability from things not coming together)

Voss wrote:

It doesn't help that GW usually over- or under-estimates the value of the buffs, but never manners to zero in with an accurate estimate of what works.

GW tends to value a buff as if it were always active, without taking into account how likely it is to actually be active. They also seem to get incredibly conservative when it comes to xenos factions compared to SM factions (at least that's my impression), giving out minor buffs that require convoluted conditions to be met but then giving SM broad buffs or ones with easy to meet conditions so that they are more likely to be "on".

Wyldhunt wrote:
So maybe my banshees don't hit as hard as assault intercessors or incubi, but they're better at temporarily shutting down enemy offense and tarpitting units.

How is temporarily shutting down or tarpitting an enemy unit comparable to permanently shutting them down by eliminating them in the first place? This is what I mean. If this at best means a convoluted path towards achieving the same result as a more straightforward faction accomplishes by just outright deleting the enemy, then that is more work for the same result meaning underpowered.

In 2nd edition 40K, and Epic, the main thing for Banshees for example was about getting the charge off. If they did, the effects were devastating, whereas if they didn't, they were decent melee fighters still but their mask did nothing. The idea was a big reward if they were able to pull off the charge. That was the right paradigm: effort + risk of failure vs. big reward if successful, but not dependent on others to do a decent job.

Iracundus wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
So maybe my banshees don't hit as hard as assault intercessors or incubi, but they're better at temporarily shutting down enemy offense and tarpitting units.

How is temporarily shutting down or tarpitting an enemy unit comparable to permanently shutting them down by eliminating them in the first place?

The comparison is that temporarily shutting down a unit (while still being moderately killy) is:
A.) Less obviously powerful. Which is a feature, not a bug. We can give our banshees more tricks and tools for a relatively low points cost if we're not also making them as killy as incubi.
B.) Depending on how good their shutdown abilities are, you can potentially use a relatively small, cheap squad to temporarily neutralize a much more powerful unit, buying the heavy hitters of your army time to deal with their first priority target before getting around to whatever your banshees have locked down. Ex: I have enough dark reapers to kill either the enemy eliminators or the enemy centurions, but not both. My banshees make the centurions hit on 6+ for a turn (or whatever) so that the reapers can shoot the eliminators. On my opponent's turn, my banshees stay alive because of their "only hit me on 6+ because I charged last turn" power. On my turn, my reapers kill the centurions. Banshees are cheaper than reapers, so simply taking twice the reapers isn't an option.

So basically, the theory is that we're trading raw power for a more flexible bag of tricks. One of the upsides of this being that we gain a distinctive playstyle rather than just overpowering our opponents with codex creep.

This is what I mean. If this at best means a convoluted path towards achieving the same result as a more straightforward faction accomplishes by just outright deleting the enemy, then that is more work for the same result meaning underpowered.

In 2nd edition 40K, and Epic, the main thing for Banshees for example was about getting the charge off. If they did, the effects were devastating, whereas if they didn't, they were decent melee fighters still but their mask did nothing. The idea was a big reward if they were able to pull off the charge. That was the right paradigm: effort + risk of failure vs. big reward if successful, but not dependent on others to do a decent job.

Sure. I agree with you in the abstract. Per my points above, "crowd control" eldar executed will would have that risk/reward element. We take a risk by having slightly less lethal/durable units that need to manage their lockdown resources. We are rewarded by being able to keep our opponent's overall lethality lower on a given turn than a direct offense list could.

Example: My drukhari lean heavily into offense. They alpha strike the enemy top of turn 1, kill 20% of his army, and leave him with 80% with which to retaliate. In contrast, my crowd control eldar might only kill 15% of his army but also render an additional 15% useless for a turn effectively leaving him with only 70% with which to retaliate despite inflicting lighter casualties.

If every army tries to win the game by having better raw stats than the others, then you end up with one faction just being the clear best faction. And that's boring, right?

Cheap cannon fodder tarpit is not how I or perhaps most people envision Eldar Aspect Warriors.
While it all sounds nice in theory, I don't think that is how it will work out in practice, and will be basically melee units that cannot kill anything and need to be bailed out by others, leading to their replacement in armies by things that can kill and delete things. The uncertain benefit of tying down or debuffing the enemy is not as valuable IMO than what you are suggesting.

I see this as perhaps similar to what happened with Guardian catapults between 2nd and 3rd edition (and which was first done in the transition from 2nd edition Epic to Epic 40K). The idea of halving the range and of taking fire without being able to return fire, was supposedly to be compensated for by a more rapid rate of fire at the shorter range. Except as it turned out, the value of that additional shot was nowhere near as valuable as what GW seemed to think it was, and which led to the end of the Guardian being used for anything more than ablative shielding.

Eldar are commonly and repeatedly described as glass cannons, but melee units that cannot melee and which can only tarpit until killed off or bailed out by others is not in keeping with that idea of hitting hard. It would lead or perpetuate the current situation of Banshees being rarely seen because they cannot cost effectively kill stuff reliably. Having to be boosted or bailed out by others means they are not cost effective in either points or time/effort.


I don't agree with the idea of making Eldar units weak but maybe mediocre or slightly good if <insert conditions>. The uncertain value of it means historically the masses of players will not use. Players as a whole I think will gravitate something with more consistent performance. Eldar units should be decent/good on their own but even excellent if <insert conditions>.

The idea of them being glass cannons just doesn't really make much sense though. Even basic Mesh Armour is described as being superior to Imperial Carapace Armour and most Aspect Warrior suits are just as resistant to damage as Marine Power Armour. Added to this you'll have various shield protections like holo-fields. As for the vehicles well they're all pretty much made of Wraithbone which is itself an absurdly durable material and easily more damage resistant than a multitude of Imperial and other Xenos ones.

Obviously none of this needs to make them tanky chonks and it's not like Tempestus Scions (with their 4+ saves) are particularly resilient right now. But the idea of Craftworld units not being able to take any sort of return punch doesn't really make a lot of sense. Drukhari? Sure; they have units which explicitly under-dress in terms of protection and have less regard for the lives of their species as a whole (and the numbers to waste lives if they need to).

If there's an obvious design space comparison it would be to High Elves in WHFB; actually very, very well armoured, but they would be routinely forced to make a lot of armour saves because of their low toughness across the board.

The “fragile” thing came in at the same time (Epic 40k and 3rd edition) possibly due to the perception that a trade off or vulnerability was needed. In 2nd edition Epic, Phantom Titans were faster, more maneuverable, and just as well armored and durable as Imperial Warlord Titans. In Epic 40K Phantoms got made fragile, taking critical hits more easily. The same sort of thing happened in BFG, with low Armor values and easier critical hits against them.

Mesh was better than flak, worse than carapace. It was 5+, when flak was 6+/5+ vs blasts and templates. The perception of fragility is possibly due to MEQ becoming the standard whereas originally GEQ was meant to be the standard. A Guardian with 2nd edition mesh and 2nd edition catapult was objectively superior to a Guardsman.

Iracundus wrote:
The “fragile” thing came in at the same time (Epic 40k and 3rd edition) possibly due to the perception that a trade off or vulnerability was needed.

Eldar toughness didn't particularly change between 2nd and 3rd edition. The all or nothing rules of 3e and the focus on core units rather than hero units just put a bit more focus on it.
Of course 3e was also the era of starcannon spam so Eldar fragility was relative.