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 Imateria wrote:

I'm Tyel with this one, most vehicles are T7, 3+ so the Dark Lance is definitely better there (I've seen enough 6's rolled for armour saves to know how valuable that extra point of AP is, stats be damned). Unless you regularly face Repulsers, Custodes Land Raiders or the bigger Nid beasts I can't really see much of an advantage for the Lascannon.

You might be right. Either way, I'm not pushing for the Dark Lance to be changed. It's currently the most effective its been since I started playing Dark Eldar, so it's really not the weapon I'm concerned about fiddling with at the moment.

The only thing that bugs me is that I feel infantry should get a small (5pts maybe) discount on it. It just seems weird that they pay the same points for them as vehicles, even though the latter treat them as Assault weapons.

- Archons MUST be our swiss army knife HQ and synergize with all unit types. His aura needs to be reworked so that its actually useful all game (as PfP and combat drugs both make his current aura redundant). As well, the abilities of our characters needs to jive with how the army actually plays. Deldar are not a hoard army and they never will be. They're an MSU army that heavily uses transports, and that neess to be taken into account when designing their rules.

Aura ability - Favor Seeker: All Drukhari fight harder when in the presence of their lord, desperate to earn his favor. For many, the shame of failure is worse then death itself. All units with the DRUKHARI keyword that are within 12" of an Archon must re-roll failed to-hits (overwatch does not trigger this ability). If the re-roll is also a failure, the unit suffers a -1 penalty to their leadership for the duration of the turn. This ability functions while the Archon is embarked within a transport (measure from the vehicle base).

- Splinter weapons need to be buffed across the board in either volume of fire or potency. Monstrous creatures were universally buffed in wound count yet splinter weapons received no compensations- to the contrary' they were nerfed with the removal of splinter racks.

Those are the two biggest peeves for me in regards to Deldar design. The rest are details.

 vipoid wrote:
Lilith now takes drugs and might as well hang herself at this point.

Nitpick/pet peeve of mine. Lelith has actually been in and out of the drug scene for a while n ow. She didn't have drugs in the original dark eldar codex, but then an FAQ came out saying, "Of course she uses drugs! Otherwise she'd be the only succubus in existence that doesn't use combat drugs. Then the 5th edition 'dex came out, and Lelith's publicist made a big deal about how she doesn't need no stinkin' drugs to be such a BAMF. Then 7th edition 'dex reversed it again. So really, we've broken a tradition by not having her flip flop back to being drug free in the index and then promptly falling in with a bad crowd once our codex comes around.


Regarding blasters: The thing about being damage d3 is that you're averaging a 2 and getting a measley 1 as often as you get a 3. So the weapon that has always been a short-ranged dark lance now only kills about a 5th of a rhino instead of the more respectable 1/3rd of a rhino the lance does. If they were a flat 3 damage, I could see them being solid enough. Chip away at vehicles reliably. Take out 3 wound models reliably. Currently, none of our guns are worth it against vehicles except dark lances.




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 BlaxicanX wrote:
- Archons MUST be our swiss army knife HQ and synergize with all unit types. His aura needs to be reworked so that its actually useful all game (as PfP and combat drugs both make his current aura redundant). As well, the abilities of our characters needs to jive with how the army actually plays. Deldar are not a hoard army and they never will be. They're an MSU army that heavily uses transports, and that neess to be taken into account when designing their rules.

Aura ability - Favor Seeker: All Drukhari fight harder when in the presence of their lord, desperate to earn his favor. For many, the shame of failure is worse then death itself. All units with the DRUKHARI keyword that are within 12" of an Archon must re-roll failed to-hits (overwatch does not trigger this ability). If the re-roll is also a failure, the unit suffers a -1 penalty to their leadership for the duration of the turn. This ability functions while the Archon is embarked within a transport (measure from the vehicle base).

- Splinter weapons need to be buffed across the board in either volume of fire or potency. Monstrous creatures were universally buffed in wound count yet splinter weapons received no compensations- to the contrary' they were nerfed with the removal of splinter racks.

Those are the two biggest peeves for me in regards to Deldar design. The rest are details.

Eh. Archons are impressive and all, but surely he shouldn't be better at commanding troops than an autarch. Plus, you'll frequently fail a reroll with at least one shot in a unit, so you end up keeping track of fiddly leadership penalties left and right. And measuring from the skimmers base when skimmers normally specifically ignore their own bases and measure from their hulls is weird. I'd rather see their wealth and maybe age played up. Give them a large armory to take toys from, and maybe give them some sort of aura reflecting their especially potent soul thirst.

Totally agree on splinter weapons though. I used to see them as a specialized gun that was good for forcing saves on high toughness targets. We stink at hurting gaunts and guardsmen, but we're great at hurting bikes and greater daemons. Now, the humble bolter is nearly as good against most MCs as our poison, but our ideal targets have all gained more wounds thus making splinters less effective overall at removing them.

I'd kind of like an HQ lhamean or <Coven> tactic to grant 3+ poison to nearbye units or something.

When I first started playing in 2001, there were two HQ's you wanted to avoid at all costs. The hive tyrant, and the Archon. Now the archon is a joke that even a SM Sergeant can slap around. Make him SCARY again. DE characters all need a ludicrous number of attacks and an "always strikes first" ability. Not to mention weapon options that don't suck. Jetbikes would also be nice.

Vect, we need him back and he needs to ride one amazing pimpmobile.

Yea, I hope we get some cool new models with our codex.

Honestly I haven't played my DE army since the beginning of 8th, I've been enjoying my harlequins too much. But after reading through this thread, and reassessing the DE index now after all these codexes have came out, I see there's a lot of work to be done to bring it up to speed.

It's going to require pretty much a complete overhaul of the index to get some sort of synergies going on or useful HQs. There's a lot of useless weapon options and units like people have mentioned. Reaver jetbikes have sadly fallen far from their former glory, which so have windriders so maybe that makes it balanced in a way?

I've always wanted the DE to have cool options for their hqs like CWE could, like giving them jetbikes or wings. That level of customization for your leading generic commander is just something that should be in the game for all factions. We should get jetbikes, scourge wings and hellion boards as options for archons and succubi.

Man, I was so hopeful for chapter approved, and what do we get? A handful of point changes to models that as best I can tell, nobody plays, one lousy stratagem, and some so-so warlord traits?

A+, GW. Keep up the good work or whatever.

A lot of the constructive stuff has been said already. What I really want to stress is SPEED. Where has it gone? Why can I not outrun a warptiming Berserker squad now? I have many gripes with 8th edition interactions with terrain.

I look back to the days in 5th, and these were great days, when my raiders would spend a turn repositioning 36" away from the enemy. At best, I can go 22" now. I shake my head in disbelief. We aren't designed to take hits! We harass and hide!

On splinter weapons - what about nicking a page from the Craftworlds and giving them another gimmick? Wounding on a 4+ always is fine, but really, guns that shoot poison spikes are pretty gimmicky anyway. How about adding "on a 6+ to wound, this weapon deals 2 damage instead of 1 against targets that lack the VEHICLE keyword"?

Also, I wouldn't be averse to making splinter rifles Assault 2 instead of Rapid-fire 1, and splinter cannons either Assault 6 or Rapid-fire 4.

We need to cause more wounds to basic troops, not to make poison better against multiwounds models. Splinter cannons should cost half the points or wound on 2s or be upgraded to something like rapid fire 6.

jade_angel wrote:
On splinter weapons - what about nicking a page from the Craftworlds and giving them another gimmick? Wounding on a 4+ always is fine, but really, guns that shoot poison spikes are pretty gimmicky anyway. How about adding "on a 6+ to wound, this weapon deals 2 damage instead of 1 against targets that lack the VEHICLE keyword"?

It's still kinda niche, honestly. Especially since Splinter weapons have no AP and the target still gets a normal save.

Look at it this way - prior to 8th edition, Splinter weapons wounded on a 4+ and Wraithlords had 3 wounds.

Now, Splinter weapons still wound on 4s, but Wraithlords have 10 wounds.

Splinter weapons could get Damage 3 on every shot (not just on 6s), and they'd still be worse against Wraithlords than they were in 7th.

What's more, with Dark Lances and Disintegrators actually being good now, there's even less need for poison against high-toughness targets.

I think poison needs to be scrapped entirely and replaced by something that's meaningful against infantry.

Just give up and give the freakin' archon the reroll 1s to hit aura that everyone else gets. Just have it work on only <kabal> units and hes already more limited than everyone else's captain equivalents.

The whole "oh they're selfish" theory doesn't make any sense when Realspace Raids are meticulously planned, thought out operations orchestrated by the archon themself. They're not a bellowing ork warboss, they should at the very least be considered to have the command acumen of a slavering chaos space marine lord of Khorne or a regular human dooder yelling orders. GW wants them to be some kind of close combat badass...but theyre not willing to give them any kind of appreciable combat effectiveness over an autarch.


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AnFéasógMór wrote:
Man, I was so hopeful for chapter approved, and what do we get? A handful of point changes to models that as best I can tell, nobody plays, one lousy stratagem, and some so-so warlord traits?

A+, GW. Keep up the good work or whatever.

You're giving those warlord traits a lot more credit than they're due in my eyes.

 cuda1179 wrote:
When I first started playing in 2001, there were two HQ's you wanted to avoid at all costs. The hive tyrant, and the Archon. Now the archon is a joke that even a SM Sergeant can slap around. Make him SCARY again. DE characters all need a ludicrous number of attacks and an "always strikes first" ability. Not to mention weapon options that don't suck. Jetbikes would also be nice.

Vect, we need him back and he needs to ride one amazing pimpmobile.

This right here! When I started teaching my friends how to play back then they were always afraid of the archon. He could wipe almost anything out single handedly and seemed impossible to kill with that shadow field. He was a beast. We need that back. That feeling they are the glass cannons of glass cannons.

From a purely selfish 'i want our army to work as a whole" standpoint I'd rather the archon be a vanilla buffer but someone you can take multiples of.

Unless GW gives us a special system, remember, to gain any detachment benefits we will have to make detachments limited to a single HQ choice (with a single mono-build loadout because hurr durr 2 impossible for players to convert plastic kits!! what oh no finecast is fine its cool for us to expect new players to use greenstuff and mold line removers and pins and heat to fix swords and stuff....) and a single troop choice.

You want a battalion with Kabal benefits? Youd best not include any wyches, beastmasters, pain engines, wracks, grotesques, haemonculi, etc, etc, etc. Want a Brigade with Wych Cult benefits? Well F you, you can't have one because you don't get a heavy support choice. Suck on that, people who want wyches to be a remotely reasonable choice!

Don't get me wrong, I am desperately praying for the ability to mix kabal and wych cult and haemonculus covens in a detachment, or even the ability to mix and just claim the benefit from one, but I am not expecting it by any means. Minimum Battalion is going to be 3 wych squads and 2 succubi, or 3 wrack squads and 2 haemonculi, or 3 kabalite squads and 2 archons, efficiency and usability be damned.

Azuza001 wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
When I first started playing in 2001, there were two HQ's you wanted to avoid at all costs. The hive tyrant, and the Archon. Now the archon is a joke that even a SM Sergeant can slap around. Make him SCARY again. DE characters all need a ludicrous number of attacks and an "always strikes first" ability. Not to mention weapon options that don't suck. Jetbikes would also be nice.

Vect, we need him back and he needs to ride one amazing pimpmobile.

This right here! When I started teaching my friends how to play back then they were always afraid of the archon. He could wipe almost anything out single handedly and seemed impossible to kill with that shadow field. He was a beast. We need that back. That feeling they are the glass cannons of glass cannons.

You had a very different experience with the shadowfield than I did.
If anything ever survived long enough to hit back it almost always seemed to be strength 6 and I'd roll a
In fact I only recall 3 times of using a shadowfield where he didn't die on the first saving throw he had to make in the game.
Once he got ran over by a hammerhead gunship,
Once he lost the shadowfield to Shuriken catapult fire.
And once he fought off an entire Tyranid army single handedly because he wouldn't fail his save (Which was a nice change of pace)

Jbz` wrote:

Azuza001 wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
When I first started playing in 2001, there were two HQ's you wanted to avoid at all costs. The hive tyrant, and the Archon. Now the archon is a joke that even a SM Sergeant can slap around. Make him SCARY again. DE characters all need a ludicrous number of attacks and an "always strikes first" ability. Not to mention weapon options that don't suck. Jetbikes would also be nice.

Vect, we need him back and he needs to ride one amazing pimpmobile.

This right here! When I started teaching my friends how to play back then they were always afraid of the archon. He could wipe almost anything out single handedly and seemed impossible to kill with that shadow field. He was a beast. We need that back. That feeling they are the glass cannons of glass cannons.

You had a very different experience with the shadowfield than I did.
If anything ever survived long enough to hit back it almost always seemed to be strength 6 and I'd roll a
In fact I only recall 3 times of using a shadowfield where he didn't die on the first saving throw he had to make in the game.
Once he got ran over by a hammerhead gunship,
Once he lost the shadowfield to Shuriken catapult fire.
And once he fought off an entire Tyranid army single handedly because he wouldn't fail his save (Which was a nice change of pace)

To be fair, you were usually able to cripple whatever you were fighting before they got to you back in the day. I started playing in 5th edition using the original codex. Incubi and archons (and "archites" which were basically modern succubi) hit hard and felt great when you got them into melee. My whole strategy generally boiled down to, "Cripple the transports with lance spam. Then tie up the chaff with wyches. The incubi and archon will take out a unit per turn."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
Just give up and give the freakin' archon the reroll 1s to hit aura that everyone else gets. Just have it work on only <kabal> units and hes already more limited than everyone else's captain equivalents.

The whole "oh they're selfish" theory doesn't make any sense when Realspace Raids are meticulously planned, thought out operations orchestrated by the archon themself. They're not a bellowing ork warboss, they should at the very least be considered to have the command acumen of a slavering chaos space marine lord of Khorne or a regular human dooder yelling orders. GW wants them to be some kind of close combat badass...but theyre not willing to give them any kind of appreciable combat effectiveness over an autarch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AnFéasógMór wrote:
Man, I was so hopeful for chapter approved, and what do we get? A handful of point changes to models that as best I can tell, nobody plays, one lousy stratagem, and some so-so warlord traits?

A+, GW. Keep up the good work or whatever.

You're giving those warlord traits a lot more credit than they're due in my eyes.

Hmmm. I'd be okay with the general "reroll 1s" aura, except that we wouldn't actually benefit from it most of the time unless we stranded our archon outside of the various gun boats surrounding him. Though I suppose that just encourages you to play aggressively and charge in fast. Which is very appropriate. Part of me would prefer archons not get "shoot at that guy over there" auras though, if only because it sort of cheapens it for other units where it feels more appropriate. Autarchs and marine captains are all about shouting orders. It's their thing. Archons strike me as being a bit more about strategy than tactics. Maybe turn them into command point recyclers instead? They have plans within plans. Recycled command points reflect parts of their plan going right over the course of the battle, opening up new opportunities to deliver the next blow.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Jbz` wrote:

Azuza001 wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
When I first started playing in 2001, there were two HQ's you wanted to avoid at all costs. The hive tyrant, and the Archon. Now the archon is a joke that even a SM Sergeant can slap around. Make him SCARY again. DE characters all need a ludicrous number of attacks and an "always strikes first" ability. Not to mention weapon options that don't suck. Jetbikes would also be nice.

Vect, we need him back and he needs to ride one amazing pimpmobile.

This right here! When I started teaching my friends how to play back then they were always afraid of the archon. He could wipe almost anything out single handedly and seemed impossible to kill with that shadow field. He was a beast. We need that back. That feeling they are the glass cannons of glass cannons.

You had a very different experience with the shadowfield than I did.
If anything ever survived long enough to hit back it almost always seemed to be strength 6 and I'd roll a
In fact I only recall 3 times of using a shadowfield where he didn't die on the first saving throw he had to make in the game.
Once he got ran over by a hammerhead gunship,
Once he lost the shadowfield to Shuriken catapult fire.
And once he fought off an entire Tyranid army single handedly because he wouldn't fail his save (Which was a nice change of pace)

To be fair, you were usually able to cripple whatever you were fighting before they got to you back in the day. I started playing in 5th edition using the original codex. Incubi and archons (and "archites" which were basically modern succubi) hit hard and felt great when you got them into melee. My whole strategy generally boiled down to, "Cripple the transports with lance spam. Then tie up the chaff with wyches. The incubi and archon will take out a unit per turn."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
Just give up and give the freakin' archon the reroll 1s to hit aura that everyone else gets. Just have it work on only <kabal> units and hes already more limited than everyone else's captain equivalents.

The whole "oh they're selfish" theory doesn't make any sense when Realspace Raids are meticulously planned, thought out operations orchestrated by the archon themself. They're not a bellowing ork warboss, they should at the very least be considered to have the command acumen of a slavering chaos space marine lord of Khorne or a regular human dooder yelling orders. GW wants them to be some kind of close combat badass...but theyre not willing to give them any kind of appreciable combat effectiveness over an autarch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AnFéasógMór wrote:
Man, I was so hopeful for chapter approved, and what do we get? A handful of point changes to models that as best I can tell, nobody plays, one lousy stratagem, and some so-so warlord traits?

A+, GW. Keep up the good work or whatever.

You're giving those warlord traits a lot more credit than they're due in my eyes.

Hmmm. I'd be okay with the general "reroll 1s" aura, except that we wouldn't actually benefit from it most of the time unless we stranded our archon outside of the various gun boats surrounding him. Though I suppose that just encourages you to play aggressively and charge in fast. Which is very appropriate. Part of me would prefer archons not get "shoot at that guy over there" auras though, if only because it sort of cheapens it for other units where it feels more appropriate. Autarchs and marine captains are all about shouting orders. It's their thing. Archons strike me as being a bit more about strategy than tactics. Maybe turn them into command point recyclers instead? They have plans within plans. Recycled command points reflect parts of their plan going right over the course of the battle, opening up new opportunities to deliver the next blow.

Yeah, my experience with the archon was it was a distraction carnifex that was actually effective. Anything super scarry that could kill it in one blow (ah, instant death rules) seemed to bounce off the field. Only times I usually lost it was to mass bolter fire. (Opponents learned that you had to put as many shots into it as possible to make those ones show up) but by then I never cared, the incubi and warriors in the Raiders took care of the rest.

I don't mind the idea of the archon giving reroll on ones or anything like that. I would just like our options to open up. If you want an archon (or dracon back then too) to be a support unit that should be an option. If you want to make them close combat monsters that should also be an option. But most of all I want them to feel different. Dark eldar and their relationship to eldar is not the same as chaos marines to loyalist marines. Dark eldar are the criminal syndicate, the seedy under belly, the guys who will slit your throught for Pocket change. They are the Raiders that appear from no where, and leave no bodies.

I remember a story long ago, can't remember if it was in a white dwarf or codex, but it dealt with a commisar and some guard responding to a mayday from an outer colony. When they got there, only an hour or so after getting the distress call, they found the place a war zone. Completely destroyed, blood everywhere, but no bodies. As they looked for evidence of what happened they realized whatever happened here happened days ago, not hours. That's when the dark eldar struck again. They sent the mayday to lure more body's to that location, they needed more slaves for whatever reason. That's the kind of feeling I want dark eldar to have. You place them down across the table from your opponent they know that win or lose there is going to be a blood bath.

Dark eldar are glass hammers to the extreme. Steep learning curve. In order to win they should be able to dictate when and where 90% of their confrontations take place. Any time they don't dictate confrontations they pay a hue price.

To that end, splinter rifles need to be assault 2, splinter cannons assault 6, and they need army wide assault after advancing. Also weapons that hit HARD, at least for the close combat specialists. Every encounter with the enemy needs to be a gamble. Cripple the enemy to the point they can't fight back, or get crippled in return.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also DE need to be the reposition kings. Perhaps a stratagem that allows them to reposition D3 units after the enemy is done deploying. Add to that the speed (vehicles) to get to objectives or victims before they can muster their own offence.