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You see it every new edition, every new codex, every new model, every new everything. You have players who are so set in their ways or have found a favrite exploit/unintended loophole and dont want to see it change. You learn to make your own decisions instead of blindly listening to some guy spouting off his sour grapes.
Look at it and decide for yourself if you like it or not.

It's funny because, the people who decide for themselves that they don't like it are the ones who get labeled "set in their ways or have found a favrite exploit/unintended loophole and dont want to see it change."

Only when the shoe fits in terms of why and how they made the decision. You will notice that those are the ones who are always the most vocal and the ones who take the greatest pains to convince (read browbeat) others to agree with them or else.

The problems of the old codex, bar a couple, were issues of edition rather than ones of internal balance. A lot of things broke when sixth dropped (webway portals for instance) and a huge chunk of the army was rendered largely ineffective or relegated to unusual roles (see wyches and haywire grenades). The book has largely been hailed, and loved, by the Dark Eldar community as one of the most balanced books that games workshop has released to date.

The problem with the new book is that we were already suffering as a stand alone army. It has almost no buffs and a lot of unnecessary nerfs. Not sure what others have experienced, but the only reason I have found my army doing better is due to access to holo-fields, I mean disruption pods, I mean night-shields (all mechanically the same thing now). Power from Pain kind of helps, but it feels forced and cheap. You used to have to earn it.

They also took out a huge chunk of general options or split them up so that most are now only usable on a couple specific units. You using a power spear? Only swords. You want an electro-corrosive whip on your succubus? Not any more. Practically every character in the army could previously take a venom blade, one of the most popular options, but that is now relegated only to wracks and haemonculi.

The book works, but it feels cookie cutter and unsatisfying.

If its a new codex and you can't run what you use to it is awful until someone figures out something to do with it then its op.
In short people normally don't like change if they can't stay the same, and people normally are scared to adapt to new things that seem op (see fliers, imperial knights, super-heavy, apoc etc etc)

 EVIL INC wrote:
Only when the shoe fits in terms of why and how they made the decision. You will notice that those are the ones who are always the most vocal and the ones who take the greatest pains to convince (read browbeat) others to agree with them or else.

I haven't noticed that all, actually.

The complaints about the latest batch of codices that I've most frequently seen surround the nonsensical and arbitrary removal of flavor in the way of character/unit/special rules deletions because of a petty vindictiveness toward 3rd party modeling companies and a desire to force you to use their crappy LoW/Unbound game features, lazy and sometimes even counter-intuitive balancing and game design, and a general invalidating of the armies that people have spent money on and been using for years, all wrapped up as a product that's sold for a more inflated price despite having objectively less content then its previous incarnations.

I Completley get that people would be annoyed if they had built up an army that they can no longer use to the full extent it once was.. but alot of the hobby is collecting part of the range surely?

"Hey those wyches look awesome, and them hellions kick ass! imma get me some of them!" not all the time granted. But if you're an enthusiast of an army then isnt that what this hobby is about?? collecting, painting, and fighting with a force that you want? Just because some people specifically fight buy an army a certain way, to use exactly how its supposed to play, and then rules change? if they didnt hw boring would the game become after 20 years. You'd have a ridiculous power creep because rather then everything being overpowered, they'd be brought down to the same level and start again. (EVENTUALLY; INCLUDING TAU, ELDAR AND SPACE MARINES)

If you're playing the army from a brand new point of view, and have no models what so ever, and you're learning anew, which a relative knowledge of how the army is supposed to work, can you do it? Or are the gripes about how the previous edition has changed???

Like i stated earlier.. im going to be investing about £500.. $800 in an army this coming wednesday. The models ive always loved are Orks and Dark Eldar... but i prefer the idea how Dark eldar play. I just dont think I have the tactical prowess to play them. Can i learn it? If you dive in at the deep end do you think it would help you learn quicker??

Same boat Andy. Orks and dark eldar. I'm purchasing the entire carnival of pain formTion.

Just another question i want to ask, is it possible to play a dark eldar army without putting a damn farseer in every list!! -.-

In my opinion yes.. you just have no psychic phase. Then again neither does tau and they do just fine.

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
Same boat Andy. Orks and dark eldar. I'm purchasing the entire carnival of pain formTion.

How are you going about deciding?? I feel like Dark eldar are alot more tactical, But do you think that may come with rewards???

I've made a list with orks... and i pretty much like everything in the army, barr a couple of things. So when i wrote my list i was really excited!! i havent had chance with the new dark eldar yet so i dont quite know :( i love how all my favourite models seem to be the ones running the show. Scourges, Reavers, Talos, Kabalite warrs... Raiders... and i LOVE the flyers. I love the idea of massed shooting too

Speaking personally, it seems like they removed a lot of flavour from the book.

The new PfP mechanic is just boring. It's functional (just), but also very boring (player-interaction, what's that?) and seems to go against their theme a bit.

Many unique items/abilities got replaced with generic ones. To name a few:
- Urien's regeneration (which is a huge part of his fluff) is now just IWND. Yawn. Also, he lost his ability to increase the strength of Grotesques in the army.
- Night Shields are now just Stealth (I'll try to contain my excitement).
- Something like 3 different weapons had their unique effects changed to Concussive. Really? Concussive? I don't think I've seen that ability come into play since 4th. And why would we, one of the fastest races in terms of initiative values, care about making enemies strike at I1?
- Venom Blades are now unique to the two units that don't want them.
- There are no longer two kinds of Haemonculi (just the one no one ever used), nor can they be taken as 3-per-HQ Slot and they no longer make Wracks troops.
- Archons have no access whatsoever to AP2 weapons. "HAHAHAHA, yes, fear me mortals... oh... you're wearing armour... nevermind then."
- Not to worry though, GW did leave us the Djin Blade as an artefact. Remember that really bad item no one ever took? Well, obviously the best way to improve it would be to increase its cost by 50%. Wait, what problem were we fixing again?
- Wych weapons have lost their interesting effects in exchange for... well naff-all actually.
- And, of course, virtually all the SCs have now been removed. Presumably because most of them didn't have models. So, thank you GW for instead focussing on making an Archon model with the world's most boring pose and a Haemonculus model with an emo haircut. I look forward to never owning either. Also, why do I appear to be paying twice the price of the old book for less content?
- Our Warlord Table includes '+1WS' and 'Fear'. And, naturally, 2 of our 3 surviving special characters use those traits. Excuse me for a moment while I fantasise about ripping out all the 40k codex and rulebook pages that reference the Fear rule, scrunching them into a ball, and then ramming them down Kirby's word-hole.


Plus, a lot of the other changes just seem unnecessary:
- Splinter Cannon was nerfed to salvo (stupid idea, but whatever), which would be bad enough... except that it also got a price-hike. Why?
- Ravager lost its ability to move 12" and fire all 3 weapons, and went up in cost. Sorry, kids, but it's year 4 in our 8-year cycle so its the Ravager's turn to be crap for the next 4 years. Why not buy something else instead?
- Wyches lost their good weapons *and* their grenades... but got no point-drop (while our other, better,troop choice did), nor any other bonuses to actually make them worthwhile.
- Couldn't they have just made Shadowfield saves non-rerollable, rather than just jacking up the price?
- Did the Liquifier Gun really warrant a nerf?
- Not a change per se, but more a lack thereof - can we have one good anti-flier weapon for our ground troops/vehicles? Just one? Hell, I'll settle for a anti-vehicle gun with either TL or which isn't single-shot.

I get how these are all nerfs. Completely. But does anyone think they're needed? (Again I've been out of the game a while, I don't know the balance of the game)

Are dark eldar still a strong army, even with the changes??

People complain mostly because they are people.

Yea, some complaints are justified, but most are just overreactions, seeing the worst in everything or plain wrong.

Not even all units who people cry "nerfed" are ACTUALLY nerfed. some are possibly buffed (hard to tell without testing), or mere change with neither nerf or buff.


Yes, the DE is still strong.
It wont compete with Eldar, Codex Marines, or maxed-cheese tau/daemons, but these guys are the fault, not the DE.
They fare perfectly well with orks, AM, SW, GK, SoB, nids, CSM, DA and cheeseless tau/daemons.

 BoomWolf wrote:

Not even all units who people cry "nerfed" are ACTUALLY nerfed. some are possibly buffed (hard to tell without testing), or mere change with neither nerf or buff.

Would you care to name some of these units?

 Andy140491 wrote:
I Completley get that people would be annoyed if they had built up an army that they can no longer use to the full extent it once was.. but alot of the hobby is collecting part of the range surely?

"Hey those wyches look awesome, and them hellions kick ass! imma get me some of them!" not all the time granted. But if you're an enthusiast of an army then isnt that what this hobby is about?? collecting, painting, and fighting with a force that you want? Just because some people specifically fight buy an army a certain way, to use exactly how its supposed to play, and then rules change? if they didnt hw boring would the game become after 20 years. You'd have a ridiculous power creep because rather then everything being overpowered, they'd be brought down to the same level and start again. (EVENTUALLY; INCLUDING TAU, ELDAR AND SPACE MARINES)

If you're playing the army from a brand new point of view, and have no models what so ever, and you're learning anew, which a relative knowledge of how the army is supposed to work, can you do it? Or are the gripes about how the previous edition has changed???

Like i stated earlier.. im going to be investing about £500.. $800 in an army this coming wednesday. The models ive always loved are Orks and Dark Eldar... but i prefer the idea how Dark eldar play. I just dont think I have the tactical prowess to play them. Can i learn it? If you dive in at the deep end do you think it would help you learn quicker??

This actually highlights some of the biggest problems with the Dark Eldar book from the point of someone who does want to buy models because they look nice. Theres SO MANY wonderful miniatures available for Dark Eldar, but some of them are so much worse than other units in the book it is almost a waste of money if you want to use them on the tabletop.

The internal balance is horrible. Someone should be able to buy a boxed set of nearly anything and depending on the weapon load outs and upgrades or attached characters be able to make them work. Unfortunately that's not that case in a lot of instances in the DE book. And even for people who min/max and load up on the most effective units possible in a book, they still get shot off the table by wave serpents.

Reavers off the top of my heads.

how many eldar players wanted to play an all reavers army?And they are still our performed by taking eldar as ally .
On the other hand wrecks were run by a lot of people. Nerfing wychs is like making sm tacticals bad.

I hate the desing GW has for armies now. They give you a codex, but it ain't a full army. To play the real thing you either need to run ally, because your army doesn't have anti tank or strong msu units or counter units or you have to use a formation like tyranids.
It sucks that when playing DE you may not be sure which of the 2 HQs you will take, but your 100% sure you will be runing a farseer.

That is bad design and money grabing from people.

 BoomWolf wrote:

Not even all units who people cry "nerfed" are ACTUALLY nerfed. some are possibly buffed (hard to tell without testing), or mere change with neither nerf or buff.

The ones I can think of that might fit the descriptions are Mandrakes, maybe you could classify Incubi in that group, and the HQs.
Mandrakes did improve, just not enough I think.
Incubi aren't really buffed per say, but because they're now one of the only ways to get AP2 in CC their role has expanded. They did lose access to assault grenades though.
Generic HQs all had a role change. Not really CC beasts or used to change the force org or buff units anymore. Instead they are portal holders.
Beast packs maybe too? I never used beast packs though so can't say for sure. It is weird that a unit of just beast masters (without the beasts) is better than an equivalent unit of Hellions.
Technically Reavers could be classified that way too, ya they lost the cool blade vane mechanic, but hit they like a hammer now and are cheaper. I don't know anyone who thinks they got nerfed though.

Makumba wrote:
how many eldar players wanted to play an all reavers army?And they are still our performed by taking eldar as ally .
On the other hand wrecks were run by a lot of people. Nerfing wychs is like making sm tacticals bad.

I hate the desing GW has for armies now. They give you a codex, but it ain't a full army. To play the real thing you either need to run ally, because your army doesn't have anti tank or strong msu units or counter units or you have to use a formation like tyranids.
It sucks that when playing DE you may not be sure which of the 2 HQs you will take, but your 100% sure you will be runing a farseer.

That is bad design and money grabing from people.

Coulnt agree with you more. Why Should who loves Grey knights need to ally Space marines or inquisition. Why does someone who love Dark eldar feel they need to ally eldar. Its ridiculous. Bring back strong stand alone codices, with full background and FLAVOUR and stop making buyers and players mix and match with armies they feel they need to fill a gap with.

My problems with the new Codex

Took out interesting and flavourful characters and got............FA
Talk about who Wyches are awesoem CC fighters, a major part of the whole DE culture and kept them mediocre in CC and crap at actually killing stuff - awesome. They are WS 4 FFS. Happy to loose haywire grenades but why are they not WS5 or 6 and Poisoned Weapons -0 like the fluff - to help you forge that narrative.
Flickerfields - awesome fun - now we forgot hwo to put them on vehicles for....reasons.
Ravagers - everyone has one - so best screw them up.
Lots of cools stuff for Horm Covens - oh but f you want to use them at their best - oh thats another £30 and FU.
Archons - deadily CC adversary's guarded by the elite CC Incubi - cept thats not how they work - obviously. Of course you can't have a AP 2 weapon option - why would you need that?

Plus side:
Nice bomber kit..........thats about it I think

EDIT:mistake writing, delete.

 BoomWolf wrote:


Right here, Mr Morden just complained they got screwed up.

I don't see Reavers in the list Morden put up.

Unless you mean Ravagers, which are on the list.

 Andy140491 wrote:
I get how these are all nerfs. Completely. But does anyone think they're needed? (Again I've been out of the game a while, I don't know the balance of the game)

Are dark eldar still a strong army, even with the changes??

They're really in the same boat as they were before. Very competitive if you ally Eldar, and probably middle/low tier if not.
Otherwise, they are sort of a darkhorse army. They can steamroll through a tournament if they pull the right matchups. Or they can get a bad matchup or two and get tabled in 3 turns. Generally there isn't much middle ground with Dark Eldar, win big or lose big. Once us older players shift points away from HQ, troops and Heavies (unless you're coven) and into Fast Attack, then to me the power feels about the same.

The non allied list that seem to be the better of the bunch are either Coven lists, or Real Space Raiders taking as many Fast Attacks as possible (Fast Attacks = Reavers and Scourges). Add some slight variations depending on what your HQ portals are attached to.

 Blacksails wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:


Right here, Mr Morden just complained they got screwed up.

I don't see Reavers in the list Morden put up.

Unless you mean Ravagers, which are on the list.

Yea, misread that one XD

Seen plenty of "Reavers got ruined" posts though.

Happens, between Raiders, Ravagers, and Reavers, I get a little lost with DE.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:


Right here, Mr Morden just complained they got screwed up.

I don't see Reavers in the list Morden put up.

Unless you mean Ravagers, which are on the list.

Yea, misread that one XD

Seen plenty of "Reavers got ruined" posts though.

It depends on how you played them. For my the lists I played, Reavers see completely useless now. I have a bunch, so I'll be adjusting my play style once I get over my ennui. They still CAN be good, but it's a disappointing change. Kind of like someone boosting your Corvette and giving you a Vibe instead. And then everyone tells you not to complain, since the Vibe is so much "better." After all, it gets better mileage, is safer, and is much cheaper to maintain, so if you're disappointed, you're just a whiner. That's kind of how it feels.

Guys, i understand lots of people are upset and have every right to be, but complaining about the old codex won't help the OP. He is looking at starting the Dark Eldar RIGHT NOW, so, doesn't it only make sense if we can try give him tips on how to make a competitive army on the current codex. He won't know the so-called glory days of Venom Spam (Yawn), Triple Ravagers (Sigh) and being nothing more then an Eldar Supplement because all the rest of the 'flavor' was basically unplayable. What he wants to know is what can he do now, with the current codex that fit his theme of ''Fast Assault'' and ''Precise Strikes'', and that we can help him with.

The units he likes ARE the good units. Warriors in Raiders have gotten buffed in the extreme! 10 Warriors (No special weapons) in a Raider with Splinter Racks + Night Shields is 165pts. Around the same as the same unit last codex, except the Raider can jink for a 3+ Save making it much more reliable, and even when Jinking the Warriors fire unimpaired. Not to mention how the new PFP benefits exactly this kind of unit. Take 2-3 gun boats like these as a good starting force for any army.

Scourges used to be unusable, no one can deny that, plainly because they competed with Trueborn who where better at their job. Now 2 units Scourges make their way into most of my lists, Haywire Blasters & Heat Lances are some of the best anti-tank in the game and you get 4 of them for 120pts! Reavers used to be fun and flavorful, but ultimately useless because they did something the Dark Eldar already did, Anti Infantry. Now they are something legitimately useful, providing cheap, hard hitting and brutally fast assault units. Most importantly, the new detachment benefits these two units greatly, and an army with Scourges and Reavers working in concert is actually an effective counter to Serpent Spam. Speaking from experience, Reavers in assault wreck Wave Serpents and are resistant to their non-shield fire, and if he does fire them then the Scourges will have a field day.

Flyers are cheap and can throw 4 Large Blasts on the turn they come on. Nothing more has to be said...

Pain Engines have been buffed also, being able to take Talos in units is great because you can swap the leading man to tank. Special mention goes to the Coven Formations, the Dark Artisan formation and Corpsethief formations both show how powerful Talosi/Chronus are.

Honestly, people shouldn't complain about losing flavor they never used competitively, and if you didn't play competitively then why should you be overly bothered by the nerf in rules. Winning is nice, but no unit in the codex is unusable, Yes, that includes Wyches. People never used Electrocorrosive whips, don't pretend they did. And Special characters come and go with the editions, just ask Nadu Fireheart or Doomrider.

So basically Andy, if you want any specific help on what Dark Eldar you'd have to buy for a certain type of army, send me a PM with what units you like, what themes you enjoy and a point cost and i'll do my best to make an army list for you that works to fit that.

Alex

Hmm I read first post, last post, and a couple in between, looks a lot like OP was asking why people dislike he new codex, not how to play Warhammer, but maybe I missed that somewhere in the thread,

Anyway, while the new dex is playable, and Courts are cool as gak and so are the new beastpacks, the main reason to dislike this is, is that it's a pretty terribly written entry into 7th. Almost every single competitive model from 6th ed was nerfed. By that i don't mean rebalanced, and brought in line with the rest of the dex, by that I mean nerfed into unplayability. So while the new dex does have cool new offerings, it's not so much about what we gained, but the cost of transition. It's not about "whining that my army got weaker" as some particularly narrow minded players like to label all negative feedback to poorly implemented changes. We now have a new codex, except the new one has just as many unplayable units as before. So while either book could be argued as inherently better than the other, and you WILL hear good arguments for both side, to me the real issue is the cost of transition ($70 before DLC over here) and the fact that I have to rebuy my entire army if I want it to playable like my last one was, just leads me to one big question - why? The book is no more balanced than the last. There is no new models at all to be excited about. A bunch of my favourite HQs have been nerfed. And my entire army just went from top tier to unplayable.

Exactly why anyone but a Dark Eldar player who owns absolutely every model in existence, and multiple copies (sorry, I don't own that kinda cash, and have to carefully plan every purchase for my army) would be anything but disappointed by what will likely be our only update from anywhere between 2-6 years to come, is hard for me to comprehend, Even if I did own the entire range I'd still be kinda bummed, it's like, meh, ok I can use some of my new models on he tabletop, would have been nice if they had left the excellent balance they had established with our troop choices (3 arguably 4 playable troops, limited to just warriors now), or the well balanced Ravager, and even well balanced Khymerae, who without the Baron are really quite fine and fun. Instead, every single model from our competitive core was nerfed beyond reason, and to anyone who thinks that to be a coincidence I envy your obliviousness to GWs manipulation of your wallet here. I now have 75 Khymerea, 9 Venoms, 18 Wracks, 3 Ravagers, a Duke Sliscus conversion, a Baron conversion, and a handful of gak like Trueborn & Reavers sitting on my shelf, so I guess for anytime in e foreseeable future, I am no longer a Dark Eldar player because my collection is now composed largely of the worst units in the dex.

Well, that's an exaggeration as I'm obviously just going to continue to use my 5E DE book. Which kinda supports my point. This release was useless. Happy for all the people who owned a bunched of clawed fiends and court of the archons however. Glad you are now forced to use some different models in competitive / sensible builds. Too bad for the rest of us whiners too stuck in our ways unable to make our own decisions and just listening to people blindly spouting off our grapes, aye. Because there's nothing worse than people who don't formulate opinions properly and just lump everything said from a certain perpestive into one category, am I right!

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
They neutred much of the faction's falvor by removing IC's for no reason other than greed and vindictiveness. They also removed many fluffy rules and interesting FoC-chart manipulations to coerce you into playing Unbound, and bumped certain characters into the LoW slot for no reason other than to force you to start using Unbound in your games. Again, for the sake of greed.

So basically, people dislike it for the same reason they've disliked every codex since Tyranids.

Not one character in this codex was made into a Lord of war..

FOC manipulations were replaced with the more open-ended formations detachments, not with unbound. I've never seen anyone run unbound.