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I would proffer fireteams. Every five guardians have the capacity to upgrade two members to a heavy weapons team.

Benefits:
*A significant range power upgrade without being overpowering.
*It makes guardians different from other basic troop types.
*Follows fluff. They are not going to get into the hurley burley. They are a last line of defense, or used only when tere aren’t enough aspects-aka a major action. They are going to avoid close range fire whenever possible. This allows them to move but put more fire downrange.
*Supports an Eldar landser type force. Combined with wraithlords and other ranged shooters this is the long range yang to the more common glass hammer aspect led ying. It supports an alternative method of play for Eldar, increasing diversity in lists.

Weaknesses.
*They are still vulnerable, as they should be, to heavy fire and short range assault.
*not as efficient as DA’s in what DA’s do. They are good for a landser type list but necessarily great for a fast aspect list.

jfrazell wrote:I would proffer fireteams. Every five guardians have the capacity to upgrade two members to a heavy weapons team.

Benefits:
*A significant range power upgrade without being overpowering.
*It makes guardians different from other basic troop types.
*Follows fluff. They are not going to get into the hurley burley. They are a last line of defense, or used only when tere aren’t enough aspects-aka a major action. They are going to avoid close range fire whenever possible. This allows them to move but put more fire downrange.
*Supports an Eldar landser type force. Combined with wraithlords and other ranged shooters this is the long range yang to the more common glass hammer aspect led ying. It supports an alternative method of play for Eldar, increasing diversity in lists.

Weaknesses.
*They are still vulnerable, as they should be, to heavy fire and short range assault.
*not as efficient as DA’s in what DA’s do. They are good for a landser type list but necessarily great for a fast aspect list.

This is very reasonable, but i would still like to see the return of black guardians and bs 4 for defenders and ws 4 for storm

I'm down with black guardians as well, but I like craftworld lists

Confusion-is there not a black guardian option now?

jfrazell wrote:I'm down with black guardians as well, but I like craftworld lists

Confusion-is there not a black guardian option now?

no after the new eldar codex, codex:craftworlds became obsolete :(

Lets not forget the BS4 Black Guardian Warwalkers.

Heck, at that rate, let's not forget the Death Jester War Walkers...

Why's it gotta be black, yo?

Lormax wrote:Why's it gotta be black, yo?

It is to do with the craftworld Ulthwe, who use black and white as their colour scheme, and plus black is so much cooler than other colours, thats why i collect ulthwe, but i have been informed that the craftworlds are irrelivant due to the new codex, and i hate it so much, why did codex: craftworlds become obsilete, i hate andy hall (or whoever the writter was, dont have the dex on, so please forgive me).
They are killing army character!!!! Why Eldar...why not marines!!!!

Squig_herder wrote:

jfrazell wrote:I'm down with black guardians as well, but I like craftworld lists

Confusion-is there not a black guardian option now?

no after the new eldar codex, codex:craftworlds became obsolete :(

Maybe I missed but I thought I saw an option for multiple flamers and two CC weaponed guardians in the current dex. Aren't those storm guardians (or a rough approximation?)

jfrazell wrote:

Maybe I missed but I thought I saw an option for multiple flamers and two CC weaponed guardians in the current dex. Aren't those storm guardians (or a rough approximation?)

They are storm guardians, but I think he was referring to black guardians which is a bit different.

Normal guardians:

Storm Guardians
Guardian Defenders

Black [Storm] Guardians -> as normal but had WS4
Black Guardians [Defender] -> as normal but had BS4

Normal guardians of both types were in both 3rd and 4th ed books, but Black Guardians were in the Craftword codex and the USF Eye of Terror list.

Squig_herder wrote:It is to do with the craftworld Ulthwe, who use black and white as their colour scheme, and plus black is so much cooler than other colours, thats why i collect ulthwe, but i have been informed that the craftworlds are irrelivant due to the new codex, and i hate it so much, why did codex: craftworlds become obsilete, i hate andy hall (or whoever the writter was, dont have the dex on, so please forgive me).
They are killing army character!!!! Why Eldar...why not marines!!!!

Hehe, my comment earlier was really just a joke

The Craftworld Codex was so full of broken crap, I'm glad it's gone. Sooo much worse than anything I saw out of a SM chapter codex in 3rd edition.

Daba wrote:

jfrazell wrote:

Maybe I missed but I thought I saw an option for multiple flamers and two CC weaponed guardians in the current dex. Aren't those storm guardians (or a rough approximation?)

They are storm guardians, but I think he was referring to black guardians which is a bit different.

Normal guardians:

Storm Guardians
Guardian Defenders

Black [Storm] Guardians -> as normal but had WS4
Black Guardians [Defender] -> as normal but had BS4

Normal guardians of both types were in both 3rd and 4th ed books, but Black Guardians were in the Craftword codex and the USF Eye of Terror list.

Thanks Daba. I thought storm guardians had the same stats as black guardians.

Lormax wrote:The Craftworld Codex was so full of broken crap, I'm glad it's gone.

At least it was competitive and allowed for interesting armies.

If you don't think the current Eldar codex is competitive, well, I don't know what to tell you.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Lormax wrote:The Craftworld Codex was so full of broken crap, I'm glad it's gone.

At least it was competitive and allowed for interesting armies.

The Kraftworld Codex was one of the worst books GW ever made (right up there with the 3rd edition blood angles and the Armageddon codex). Just about every expansion codex they did in 3rd edition was crap. They either were so chocked full of broken crap that they obsoleted the main codex or they were so lame that no one used them. Why take regular marines when you can take red marines that cost the same and get +1 S and +1 I on the charge for the same price. Why play normal eldar when you can play black eldar that get guardians with +1 BS for no extra point cost and get access to one of the more broken psy powers (augment) that normal eldar don't get. Why play green marines that get -1 I (and slightly cheaper terminator armor) when you could just play normal marines (or better yet, red, black, or gray marines). There is a reason that by the end of 3rd edition, when I heard that someone played marines, I would ask them if they had Red, Gray, or Black marines. I can't think of a time when someone didn't respond with an answer that included one of the choices I gave them. Same thing went for eldar. I was the only one I ever ran into that didn't use one of the Kraftworld lists.

What really irked me about the Kraftworld Codex was that there was basically nothing you could reasonably do with the lists in there that you couldn't do with the basic eldar codex. Want a ghost world army? Take 2 small guardian or scout squads and then load up on dreadnaughts and wraithguard. Want a scout army, then just take a bunch of scouts and back them up with war walkers or something similar. Want an aspect army? Take some dire avengers (yes i know they sucked but whatever) for your troops and then fill up the rest of your army with banshees and scorpions or whatever else you wanted to take. The only things you could do that were "interesting" that you couldn't do with the regular codex where things that were totaly broken. Things like the all dark reaper army, 4+ squads of banshees/scorpions, 30 man seer councils and other things that were just straight abuses.

Regardless, the 3rd edition eldar codex had plenty of things in it to make competitive list (for the most part, they were the same things used to make competitive lists with the sub codex too). The only problem was that there were lots of units that were just not worth using for one reason or another (jet bikes, shining spears, swooping hawks, wraithguard, etc.). The 4th edition codex has gone a ways to help some of those units become more useful and so has 5th edition. Both editions have seen the eldar go a long ways from being either star cannon spam or hand to hand overload to actually having lots of viable builds to work with. There was some stagnation in 4th with mech builds but that's starting to clear up now.

The Craftworld Codex wasn't appreciably worse than anything else out there - it was a high-power and a high-MEQ environment.

I agree that all-Reapers were broken. But no moreso than full-gun quad-pie Iron Warriors. Supersize Seer Councils were a tough nut, but then compare with 20 MoN Termies.

But all-CC Aspect Troops? They're *not* broken at all. 16-pt Scorpions as Troops compare very fairly with Black Templars, who are tougher and can take larger squads. And Banshees are still only T3 Sv4+ - they whiff a lot of their hits.

And point-for-point, Blood Angels easily out-performed any Eldar build.

The Iron Warrior list you speak of, gone.

The Blood Angels codex you speak of, gone. (I'm only assuming you aren't talking about the current one)

Templars have large squads, but they are hurting in other places.

Fear of the Darkness bullcrap is going away in a matter of weeks.

Yeah, it may have taken awhile, but it's not like Eldar weren't dominating the major tournaments in 4th edition anyway...

Personally I like how Guardians are in the game as is...

Things I'd like to see changed (which would effect guardians) is all Shuriken Catapults standardized to be 18" range (because 12" is just ridiculously short). I'd then like to see Swooping Hawks gain Shuriken Catapluts :-)

Might also be interesting if Warlocks had a power that could increase the squads BS by 1... much like Enhance but maybe it would only cost 10 points instead of 15.

JohnHwangDD wrote:The Craftworld Codex wasn't appreciably worse than anything else out there - it was a high-power and a high-MEQ environment.

I agree that all-Reapers were broken. But no moreso than full-gun quad-pie Iron Warriors. Supersize Seer Councils were a tough nut, but then compare with 20 MoN Termies.

But all-CC Aspect Troops? They're *not* broken at all. 16-pt Scorpions as Troops compare very fairly with Black Templars, who are tougher and can take larger squads. And Banshees are still only T3 Sv4+ - they whiff a lot of their hits.

And point-for-point, Blood Angels easily out-performed any Eldar build.

And just about everything you mentioned there was in my list of overly broken crap that came from sub codexes. I will admit that I missed calling out Iron warriors (and night lords should be chocked in there too). Still in 3rd all of these things were just broken. Banshees and scorpions as troops was broken. The reason they were broken was because it made them troops. It made them deploy as troops, so in missions where you start with your 1 hq and 2 troops on the table, the player with the real eldar codex starts off with his farseer, a squad of guardians and a squad of scouts. Mean while, the kraftworld player get a farseer, a squad of banshees in a wave serpent and a squad of scropions in a serpent. Everything else is in reserves...BROKEN. And again, it was totaly unnecessary. You could just use the normal codex and get 3 units of banshees/scorpions as elite choices anway...why the need for a sub codex? And if you have access to the kraftworld codex, why would you ever use the regular codex? Why be forced to take unless troop choices when you can load up on elite choices that all of a sudden count as troops for no good reason? There just wasn't any reason to use the basic codex anymore because all the expansion codexes got lots of goodies and special powers for no cost. They were broken.

Only Alaitoc was broken.

Beil-Tan was powerful, but not broken.

I don't think I ever saw a complaint about Saim-Hann, Ulthwe, USF or Iyanden.

BYE

GW is an English company and it is about flavor and fluff. The problem of guardians is that they are too costly for their effect on the game... As are other troops. You can play anything you like but if you ignore the power granted by your codex, too bad.
I would expect the orc, CSM, DA codexes are the beginning of the new trend.

4th Ed Orc Cost 8 or 9 pts. 5th Ed Orc Cost 6 pts
DA Tac Cost 15 Cost 15pts but now with Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak... 19 pts and the bolt pistol add wasn't allowed.

If GW wants to balance things it would do it by mathhammer.


10 Imperial Guard - 60 pts... 8 for GL 5 for heavy bolter 73 pts

8 S3 24" shots 1 S4 blast 24" shot 3 S5 36" shots

10 Orks with Shoots - 60 pts + 5 for Big Shoota 65 pts

18 S4 18" shots 3 S5 36" shots

10 Guardians 80 pts + 15 for Scatter Laser 95 pts

18 S4 12" shots 4 S6 3" shots

10 DE Warriors 80 pts +10 blaster + 10 Splinter Cannon 100 pts

8 S3 24" shots 1 S8 12" shot 4 S4 24"shots

10 Firewarriors 100 pts
10 S5 30" shots

The Firewarriors and Orcs are the more survivable due to their 4+ armor or 4 toughness. Guardians, IG and DE Warriors are all cannon fodder survival wise.

From a firepower standpoint the DE with WS 4 and the tau Pulse Rifles make them better at shooting.

Melee wise It goes Orc, DE Warrior, Guardian, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Tau

On a simple scale.
Range
Survival Firepower Melee Mobility
Orc 1 2 5 2 10
DE 0 3 4 3 10
IG 0 2 3 1 6
Tau 1 4 1 1 7
Guardian 0 2 2 3 7
Dire Av 1 4 4 3 12

I am not suggesting these points costs but in a world filled with 6 point orcs... a guardian is overmatched. If you try the 3rd ed all guardian army in a 5th edition world you will be eaten alive.

I would argue give them the 18" range but make them true warrior-poets and lower their ROF to 1. It would actually give a guardian a shot outside of charge range. The current 12" range means they are a one shot wonder if they ever get left on their own.
I do use them as a meat shield or objective holder. In 5th ed. They are my cheapest unit so front rank of guardians with a warlock with conceal. No they provide the real strength of the army a 4+ cover save.

Otherwise if I were the GW sales department, lower them to 6pts each and they are valuable without a stat change.

BTW anyone catch a guided 20-guardian shot when they doomed you? IF you can get it off, it is the best points for effect the eldar can throw at an opponent.

BTW anyone catch a guided 20-guardian shot when they doomed you? IF you can get it off, it is the best points for effect the eldar can throw at an opponent.

Thanks to almost 150 points of Farseer! Against T4 though, Guide and Doom makes the most difference as the 50% chance increased to 75% is a slightly bigger jump than 33%->56% or 66%->89%

I honestly think it's mostly down to people not using them terribly effectively.

Read the Fluff on them. The Aspect Warriors do the bulk of the fighting. The Guardians, as the name suggests, are used to hold a position once the Aspect Warriors have wrested it from enemy control.

Thus, use them that way. Send them in once the objective has been seized. With the cover save, and Shuriken Catapults, they become quite daunting to shift despite their short range. As others have said, bung in some Psychic Powers and they become downright murderous.

No need to give them more Heavy Weapons.

Read the Fluff on them. The Aspect Warriors do the bulk of the fighting. The Guardians, as the name suggests, are used to hold a position once the Aspect Warriors have wrested it from enemy control.

Thus, use them that way. Send them in once the objective has been seized. With the cover save, and Shuriken Catapults, they become quite daunting to shift despite their short range. As others have said, bung in some Psychic Powers and they become downright murderous.

The problem is they crumple in assault faster than Dire Avengers, and they die to shooting more easily than Pathfinders and are less mobile for actually moving in than Jetbikes. They are not even an 'all round' choice in all of these cases either.