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 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.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 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...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 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:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 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.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 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.

Conversely, nerf Intercessors.

Lets not ignore that the Intercessors will win the combat vs Banshee's anyway.

Turns out 3 attacks each is pretty good.

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.

 Hellebore wrote:

 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.

 vipoid wrote:

 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.

 Nazrak wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 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.


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Iracundus wrote:

 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.

the_scotsman wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Iracundus wrote:

 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.

 Bosskelot wrote:
Lets not ignore that the Intercessors will win the combat vs Banshee's anyway.

Turns out 3 attacks each is pretty good.

That go to 2 attacks the next turn (and they don't win at equal points), but i'll leave it there.

the_scotsman wrote:

 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

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
Lets not ignore that the Intercessors will win the combat vs Banshee's anyway.

Turns out 3 attacks each is pretty good.

That go to 2 attacks the next turn.

Lets not pretend that's actually fair though. They're way too good for a turn then 'just' too good.

Iracundus wrote:

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.

Yes, 2nd had that moving fast modifier. It was really obnoxious.

 Nazrak wrote:

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.

Pilum wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

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.

Oh but it was a big deal on 8 pt hormagaunts.

Martel732 wrote:
Oh but it was a big deal on 8 pt hormagaunts.

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?