Bosskelot wrote:
So, with Aeldari, and like a lot of armies, many issues are core rules related and so it's almost impossible to talk about fixing things without that also in mind. It's also hard not just to say "go back to the 9th version of the rules" but uh, on that note:

1. Strands of Fate. Just make it the 9th ed rule. It worked, it was strong, but not too exploitative and that's held up by how it managed to avoid any real major mechanical changes throughout dataslates or FAQs. New Strands was changed after a month and made almost an irrelevant mechanic outside of a handful of units that still abuse it. Because no real psychic test now exists make just change that one to Battleshock instead idk

2. Following on from that the Farseer rules now copy their 9th versions when it comes to fate dice. You get to re-roll one dice for each Farseer when making your Strands roll. Eldrad allows you to retain an extra one, just like the Ulthwe warlord trait used to. It's crazy how the first implementation of this rule worked and it's successor just doesn't. Incredible stuff. Both of these changes also majorly cut down on certain aspects of reliability that the army has access to now; you aren't guaranteed to be getting at least one Save Dice for your Yncarne, WK, Avatar etc in an enemy's shooting phase anymore which has a big knock on effect.

3. Unparalleled Foresight. A boring but very strong detachment ability. After realizing both were too strong in 8th they wisely decided to go with hit OR wound roll in 9th with these kinds of abilities, only to change their mind and return to the bad old 8th idea in 10th. Outside of just changing this to "or" instead of both, ideally this should be another more interesting mechanic entirely. The rest of the detachment is so heavily about Fate Dice, and apparently it's meant to be the "Ulthwe" detachment, so maybe something extra to do with fate dice?

4. Guardians would need to be changed. Giving them one of the "re-roll abilities if they're on an obj" might work, but they'd still fall into the hole that CSM Legionaries do where they still get outclassed by the more elite specialized units. However it would still give more incentive to run Guardian-themed lists and have them be somewhat effective, if someone wanted to lean into an Ulthwe playstyle. Not everything needs to be hyper comp optimal, and stuff like CSM Legionaries are outclassed in that realm but still a perfectly solid unit.

5. Fire and Fade goes to 1cp and is an up to 7" move, and triggered after a unit has shot, not at the end of the phase. Phantasm either goes to 2cp or just becomes a redeploy strat again. Look; more stuff that worked better previously. There should be an addendum to the core rules disallowing extra moves in the turn you enter from deepstrike too. There are some useless strats otherwise, Matchless Agility I'm looking at you, so maybe replacing one with a strat that allows you to re-roll a psychic roll or pass one or something. This is meant to be the fate/psyker focused detachment after all.

6. Wraiths, D-Weaponry, Indirect, Blast weapons with indirect and dev wounds. Okay so these are the things that need core rules changes realistically. Just going back to old blast and old indirect solves D-Cannons almost immediately, and making dev wounds "X mortals on a wound roll of 6 in addition" addresses every other D-related weapon too. Again; this is how all these things worked in 9th and they were fine; Wraithguard and the Knight were underpowered actually, or at least being charged too many points. Giving Guard with cannons better base damage values on their guns, and allowing for 1 mortal in addition if they roll a 6, keeps them in their intended role as vehicle and very heavy infantry busters and stops them from being an efficient horde or elite infantry killer. Again, within the context of 10th would any of the 9th rules for these weapons actually be problems? 31ppm actually seems perfectly reasonable for a WG with those rules, unlike the 45ppm you were being asked for in 9th.

Same with the Knight. The intersection of all these different problematic core rules, combined with current fate dice, just makes it absurd. If it's shooting at a 20-strong unit it can get up to 14 shots with its HWC. That is an absurdity, and combined with being able to just do AT LEAST 2d6 mortals every attack round, turns it into being good against every conceivable target in the game. Double HWC in 9th made it strong vs vehicles, monsters and with the d3 mortals elite heavy infantry. Again; IT WORKED IN 9TH. It was just too expensive and could maybe die too quickly.

7. Wraiths continued. Make them all 3+ BS base. Spiritseers lose the +1 to hit, and can either choose to give them like, Lethal Hits or RR1's to hit or something like that in the command phase instead. Change Tears of Isha to be like Necron RP where you add wounds back into the unit. WG certainly took a hit with the nerfs, but they're still a little cracked while also still being overly reliable on the Seer to do anything which is an issue all the Wraith Infantry and Lords face. A spiritseer should be a viable addition to them, but not feel necessary to function while also paradoxically making them too strong + but also having un-synergistic rules at the same time. Also, Wraithblades with swords should get Twin-Linked.

8. Yncarne needs to lose the charge after teleporting. It was actually a skill-based unit in 9th because you had to plan around the teleport and how best to use it; it's now an auto-win button.

9. Fire Prisms are in an awkward spot because their datasheet rule lines up with how similar types of units work; getting re-rolls. But obviously you add the detachment rule on top and it becomes too many re-rolls. But when the codex comes out there will be different detachments, so just removing CTM from Prisms runs the risk of making them only worth taking in the UF detachment, which is not really ideal. It's another example of the UF rule probably needing to change, but for the moment I guess you could just say the Prism can ignore any and all modifiers to its hit rolls or ballistic skill instead.

10. Autarchs should be able to join more units, just like Warlocks. The Wayleaper can be a Lone Operative but also have the option of joining Spiders or Hawks. Farseers at least make a little sense being restricted to Guardians.

11. Aspects in general are just, kind of in a weird place. Regardless of pumping their stats up they will continually be in this horrible 10th ed world where new Overwatch exists which will basically always put a ceiling on their effectiveness. However:

- Scorpions just need their S or AP back. Changing dev wounds to be a mortal in addition to damage again would be a nice boost for them too, but even then give them fething AP on their ultra-advanced Xenos chainswords AT LEAST.
- Banshees need +1 to wound on the charge back, or they need to go to +1 damage on the charge. They're an anti-elite shock troop that currently loses combats to basic Tactical Marines, just like 8th. Pathetic unit. Fights First is also somewhat useless on something that will be charging all the time, but fight last doesn't exist anymore, battleshock is useless and ignoring Overwatch would be strange with the new way it works, so I'm not sure how else to represent the mask.
- Really have no idea what to do with Spiders. Currently they actually do less damage than 9th despite having dev wound flamers, but it feels worse to get hit by mortals rather than being able to take saves. Maybe some kind of compromise middle ground between 9th and 10th would work, going to S5 ap1 but no dev wounds or something. And then there's Flickerjump which is just a crazy ability. Maybe making it a reactive move again is the play; once per turn when this unit is selected as a target for a shooting attack or a charge it can move up to 6" etc etc. Still obnoxious and tricksy, but the 24" move infantry that can just insta-snipe lone characters might be a bigger feelsbad than that.
- Reapers got actively worse but are now super cheap, which just turns them into an indirect unit where the rest of the squad is just ablative wounds for an Exarch hiding behind a wall. How's about uhhhh just giving them their old gun stats back, fulfilling their role as an ranged anti-elite unit, and bumping their points up a little to compensate. Crazy idea I know.
- Dire Avengers are actually mostly sort of fine? Their issue is return Overwatch sort of makes it pointless to try and set them up as an Overwatch unit themselves, and we live in a power armour game so despite the Lethal Hits, a S4 ap1 D1 gun just doesn't have a large role. If melee only Aeldari infantry spam, Guard melee infantry spam, Tyranid melee infantry spam etc were the most popular and standard ways to play then yeah, this unit has a place. But that's not how the game is.
- Dragons are on the cusp of being good but suffer similar melta issues like everyone else does. I have had people swear up and down to me that these from a rapid ingress'ing Falcon are legit so who knows really. Also give them their T4 back.
- Shining spears need to go on cavalry bases first and foremost, but ultimately they need to not cost 40ppm. Losing 2ap on their important weapons, the exarch powers and halving the shots on their catapults is a brutal set of nerfs regardless so realistically these things need to be like 30ppm.
- Hawks are actually A-OK, which is a crazy thing to say after 9th.
- Spectres just need to not be able to stack their JSJ ability with F&F. And go up in points.

12. Phoenix Lords need to go to T4 at least (T5 Fuegan too). I know it doesn't make a huge different but it would satisfy my mind goblins. Outside of that though PL's just really need to have most of their actual aspect abilities on their datasheets; again a mind goblin thing. Yeah okay Jain Zar just forgot how to AAC despite being the one who invented the concept of a Howling Banshee. It would be nice to give them some more direct durability back too; they're absolute monsters lorewise and are now back to being glorified space marine captains... or actively worse than them. Give 'em half incoming damage or something at least.

13. Scatter Lasers need to go back to S6. Currently on every platform that can take a shuricannon or laser, the cannon wins out every time and vs every target, including hordes. The drop in S combined with sussy hits on the cannon makes it actively better in comparison even into the intended target of the scatter laser.

14. Why do Hemlocks hit on 4's. 3+. Who wrote this gak. cruddace delenda est

15. Assuming other blast and indirect nerfs the Night Spinner really needs something done about its pinning ability. I hate how in 10th every unit needs its own super unique special snowflake rule because we get gak like this. It can't just be a long range artillery unit; it also needs to do something extra too. Same applies to whirlwinds, TFC etc. Maybe just changing it to the TFC/Basilisk style of pinning would work, but they probably need to be changed too. Regardless; start at -2" to move and advances and go from there. Turning off advances completely is brutal. Oh and like the Spiders I'd just much rather have a stronger base weapon that doesn't need to get devastating wounds through to do damage. It was ap0 in 8th, with ap4 on 6's to wound which is similar to how it and Spiders work now; struggling to do damage unless you roll 6's. I just hate that kind of design and would prefer no dev wounds and just some ap on its gun.

16. Vypers go back to Squadrons again. With changes to indirect and above D-weaponry support weapons could be units again. War Walkers are ultra tanky for their points so maybe keep them as single models.

17. Storm Guardians. feth if I know.

18. This would probably happen in the codex, but just for future proofing sake add the <GUARDIAN> and <ASPECT WARRIOR> keywords to relevant units.

19. Remove Harlequins, give them their own index, re-do most of their units (Troupes especially) so that they're actually somewhat threatening.

Also goes without saying that granular points should be re-added back in or every major weapon swap would be its own datasheet. I'm never putting a scatter laser or shuricannon on a 75 point Vyper, so I guess you gotta either give me a proper points system back or you better be making 5 datasheets for this one dumb unit.