freecloud wrote:Went through it yesterday to see what had changed re my army that I fielded in our recent 1500pt 40K club tourney. My army structure is the fairly classic "Gun Line DE":

HQ - Dracon with Agoniser, Shadowfield, Haemy w Stinger, 8 warriors, 2 with Splinter cannon, in a Raider with Dark Lance
Elites - 9 Wyches, Succubus w/Agoniser
Elites - BeastMistress w/ 4 Warp Beasts
3 x Gun Squads - 14 Warriors each, incl 2 w/ DarkLances and 1 w/ Blaster
2 x Raider Squads - 9 Warriors, 1 w/Splinter Cannon, Raider w D/L
HW - 2 x Ravagers each w/ 3 D/L
HW - Talos

Overall in the new Codex the anti-tank shooting and killer characters have become more expensive, the combat infantry are a bit cheaper.
You were too focused on a boring gunline Darklance Spam army. If you want to play like that, just go and play Tau.

Thus it hurts my army structure quite badly, as my armywas designed to put in a hail of long distance firepower and then counter-attack with small but very powerful units, when I had hopefully KO'd enough enemy firepower to mitigate the DE's biggest weakness, ie they die like flies when shot at. To field my 1500pt army in the new Codex would cost c 1800pts (with direct equivalents) - 1900pts (with new higher minima in effect) iin this Codex, so initial impression it's like the new Eldar Codex - ie nerfing another army that had got too good at smacking Smurfs at a distance.

Specific changes are:

1. No more cheap Dracon Lord at 35 points, only the 60pt Archon
You dont need a Dracon. Archon is much better and Haemys are even better than that, and not for that much more expencive.
2. Haemonculus goes from 25 to 50 points
Did you not see what it offers? For 65 points you get a free pain token, 4 attacks on charge with poison(2+) from a venom blade, and a Liquifier Gun.
3, Lord's Retinue up from 8 to 12 points
You dont need a retinue. Trueborn are not for retinues, they are fire platforms. 4 Blasters will pop anything but a monolith.
4. Wyches are now 10, not 12 points
And yet now they have better combat drugs and easy access to FNP, making them very tough to kill
5. WarpBeasts etc are same price but the Codex is crocked here, as the Beastmistress is now a Jump Infantry and her Beasts are Beasts, ie they move differently to each other - how does that work in a game?
Reading the codex would be nice. The beastmaster's board counts as a beast instead of Jump.
6. Warriors are now 9, not 8 points, the Dark Lance is now 25, not 10 pts and you have to take all 20 figures in a squad to get the 2nd Dark Lance. This raises the cost per lance from 50 points to 135 points. The Blaster is 50% more expensive but now has an 18" range.
You are way to focused on gunline. Dark Lance Spam is over. Sorry, you're going to actually have to use tactics in your games. Sure they're one point more expenive, but they have easy access to Defencive and assault grenades for 10 points, and all their guns are poison 4+ instead of S3. Are you saying you don't enjoy wounding hive guard on (4+'s)?
7. Raider transports are now 60, not 55 points and get nothing new.
Except access to much better upgrades, like 10 points for a 5+ Invunerable Save, and the units it transports are now much better.
8. Ravager is unchanged
Yes.
9. Talos gets twin linked Splinter cannon, which is better than the Splinter Rifle it had, and the Cannon's range goes up to 36" and now has 6 shots when mounted, 4 when moving as before (I like this, it differentiates between an MG in MMG or LMG mode) and counts as a poison weapon (like a Sniper weapon except it doesn't get the vehicle armour piercing)
Have you seen the Cronos? 110 Points for a pain token spreading machine.

Clearly the massively raised costs of the Dark Lance armed infantry makes them useless in their previous guise, so it is necessary to look at how to restructure the army.
Boo Hoo...

There are 2 new freebies, - (i) if a unit wipes out an enemy unit it gets "Pain Tokens" that confer benefits like Feel no pain, and (with 2 tokens) Furious Charge. But bear in mind that the DE army hits hard but at S3 T3 5+ Save, it cannot deal with systained enemy firepower or even combat, so there are not likely to be many around to enjoy these benefits - except the really tough guys, who do not need them. And you get harlequins....but this army has Wyches at 40% of the cost....
Dont forget that haemies confer pain points for free, and the cronos can distribute up to 3 per turn to units within 12". Plus you need to get this in your head: Warriors are for shooting. Wyches and Wracks are for close combat. Dont get warriors into close combat, unless you can deal with the threat.

They also have Night Vision, which allows them to re-roll a range throw - stastically fairly useless unfortunately (I calculate c 1/4 of games need it, and chances of throwing 30" (typical early bound ranges) is now 45% not 33%. If I could have Warriors at 8 pts again....
Its a free ability that helps in 1 out of the 3 standard games in the main rule book - dawn of war. Don't complain.

There are a whole bunch of new special characters and special troops, new transports and heavy support stuff, but sadly they still seem to be mostly overpriced toys that you wouldn't use in a gaming army.
Every codex is like this. However several of the toys are incredible powerhouses.

3 examples - The new Venom 5 man transport skimmer is 55 points and can't field a Dark Lance - why would you not use a 60pt Raider?
Because the Venom can take 2 splinter cannons, comes with a 5+ invulnerable for free (flickerfield), and is about the size of a vyper, making it very easy to hide behind terrain.

Or the new 145 point Razorwing jet fighter, lots of ordnance but 10/10/10 armour, vs the good old tank busting Ravager's 105 pt 11/11/10, 3 Dark Lances.
But the razorwing already comes with 2 Dark Lances, and 4 Large Blast Missiles for free. I personally prefer a voidraven, but the Razorwing is not at all useless.

And there are a plethora of new (relatively weak, expensive) guns, but they essentially highlight the fact one no longer gets the superb 36" S7 AP 3 Disintegrator, buster of Smurf heads supreme....
Such as? You do know that not everything in the game has a 3+ Armor save right? Find ways around not having them anymore its not the end of the world.

So Wjhat can one do now? The things I can see that are useful for playing the army are:

(i) Cheaper Wyches - they die the same at range, but the unit is bigger for the points and they get a 4+ Inv in CC, and are now troops so don't hog the Elite slots
Like you said, they are cheaper and troops. Plus they DONT die as much to long range. I'm sure a 4+ Cover Save and a 4+ FNP will leave most of the wyches with dust in their eyes at worst.
(ii) The Splinter Cannon at 6 shots, 36" range, hit on 4+ gives a very good ant-infantry weapon - I think the Warrior squads will shift to being anti infantry rather than Anti Tank.
There you go, finally realizing something.
(iii) The Incubi are now Fleet, so they can keep up with a Lord - so replace the Warriors in the Retinue with what are effectively fast SM with power weapons, but keep 3 warriors with 2 Splinter Cannon for long distance/assault shooting hurt
??? There is no more retinue. Just the court.

My most successful approach has always been to shoot down as much as I can first, then hit with counterattacking combat units, of which only really the Talos and the Lord can stay in a fight - Wyches and Warp Beasts are there to delay things and cause enough hurt so the the Warrior gun line can safely keep shooting it up at a distance. This means 15 dark lances in a 1500 pt army, which i would be reluctant to lose.

So, unit by unit:

HQ- The Lord goes up by 30 pts so the Haemy is out, the Retinue is replaced with a few Incubi - smaller unit, less shooting hurt (I love bowlin along with 2 splinter cannon spitting as I go) but tough in combat.

Elites - keep the BeastMistresss and assume that GW will sort out the broken movement rules. As you now have to pay for an agonser, drop he Beasts (now called Khymera) and use Razor flocks instead - slightly weaker but have more wounds so hopefully similar buying time capability.

The new Warrior Retinue are called warrior Trueborn and are elites, so you can get 2 units of 5 With 2 Dark Lances each at the same cost as the old Warrior D/L squad - same punch but more fragile.

Wyches are no longer Elites, keep the unit and add a few more to get to the same points.

Troops - Given the increased anti-infantry firepower I would probably start with 3 x Warrior Raider squads, all Splinter Cannon armed, and put all of them on Raiders.

I thus calculate I can still get a 15 Dark Lance army for the same price as my old gun line one - but its easier to take down as Trueborn and Raiders don't have the ablative coatings of lots of warriors. The Beasts are sligtly less tough, but the the Lord and Talos are a bit better
Stop clinging to the past. DE can do so much more now than just DL spam.

agnosto wrote:

Iur_tae_mont wrote:I call the first "TAU WAZ NERFED" thread when the codex comes out.

Awwww, man! Of course they were already nerfed by 5th edition.

I don't know what the OP is crying about, at least his basic troops can hit what they shoot at and don't die when someone breaths on the table....not heavily, I think a slight sigh is enough to knock my firewarriors over.

zeekill wrote:Stop clinging to the past. DE can do so much more now than just DL spam.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Yes, have used reavers. Yes the kill stuff, mainly by popping over the top.

It is tried and tested in the OLD CODEX. Sticking to old tactics when you have a new army? Well, you can if you want. You wont be playing to the strengths of the codex, however.

zeekill wrote:
Stop clinging to the past. DE can do so much more now than just DL spam.

MagicJuggler wrote: An Arena Champion with Venom Blade is nice and cheap and helps the unit deal with the MSU units that tend to get taken for mech armies...

Daemon-Archon Ren wrote:

MagicJuggler wrote: An Arena Champion with Venom Blade is nice and cheap and helps the unit deal with the MSU units that tend to get taken for mech armies...

I don't know about that... 37 points for a 1 wound model with 4 attacks on the charge? not the best of options tbh... Sure the 36" move is nice

Also, they were classified as "Eldar jetbikes" in the 5th edition rulebook... so they already had that advantage. Caltrops are the only real "eye-opener" (as well as the 36" move obviously). I find it hard to decide when I will be taking Reavers over Hellions tho. (obviously, barring baron)