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I laughed at this article when I got to the incubi and wyches part especially. Wyches are one of the top three most improved units for 8th? And to prove that point you mention three things that wyches already had in 7th, if not better?

We don't need to see the rest of the rules for them if these are some of the best examples of how they are better or this is supposed to some how reassure us they aren't trash still.

Maybe there's still some rule unveiled that makes melee more viable. Cause I'm only seeing it get worse in relation to shooting. Especially Eldar losing it's advantage of high WS and initiative.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
who cares what they did prior editions

Games Workshop and Frankie apparently, since it was he who made the assertion that Wyches are " one of the top 3 most improved units in the edition".

 Rippy wrote:
Is it pronounced "Druk" like a duck, or "Drook" like a rook?
The real questions, coming to you live from Rippy.

I feel you. But I'm thinking it's "drook". Specifically, something like drew-KAR-ee.

Tetsu0 wrote:
I laughed at this article when I got to the incubi and wyches part especially. Wyches are one of the top three most improved units for 8th? And to prove that point you mention three things that wyches already had in 7th, if not better?

We don't need to see the rest of the rules for them if these are some of the best examples of how they are better or this is supposed to some how reassure us they aren't trash still.

Maybe there's still some rule unveiled that makes melee more viable. Cause I'm only seeing it get worse in relation to shooting. Especially Eldar losing it's advantage of high WS and initiative.

Eldar are ALSO however getting a high movement speed. that means a well played eldar army is proably initating melee more often then not

Wyches will be one of the only units about to pin things down, they will most assuredly be hitting on a 3+ instead of 4 against most units they will be fast on foot with options for very fast transportation, their invul gives them an edge against most serious melee threats.

All in all their purpose seems to be to tie up a unit and slowly wear it down. A perfect example of how gladiators who prolong combat for the thrill of the crowd should act in war.

As for their capability with pistols, all basic pistols in the game are now basically ap- so an assault marine is actually equalling out on damage from the loss of a single attack. Wyches however are starting a single str3 melee attack for a poison attack with their pistol. Their extra attack actually received a significant no us to damage output comparatively.

Since the weapon loadings don't matter in regard to powerlessly, there is a small chance the bloodbride statline may supercede the standard wych. Any current standard wyches are simply a less upgraded unit. (Unless of course they i.prlve all of the wych abilities on the bloodbrides to give them a legit reason for different power levels)

There are units in AOS that decide bonuses for units fleeing during the battle shock phase. I could see this as a serious possibility for dark eldar as well. Hunting fleeing does for slaves sounds right up their alley!

 Galef wrote:
They still can't get through enemy Overwatch, which is worse now that A) twin-linked is twice the shots and B) since everyone gets unlimited overwatch, you can't use expendable unit to absorb it.

-

a. Re-rollable 6+ produces 0.028 less hits than 2 x 6+. So, it's close to no difference. You also get your 6+ armor save vs shooting now.
b. That's why you might want a larger squad. So that you can spread out and help your mellee army to not be left in the open and not suffer from overwatch too much. Also, there might be multiple roll-offs vs multiple witch units. And don't forget that witches deal more damage with pistols rather than with s3 ccw now.

You guyz are kinda forgetting that bolter-drilling and heavy-boltering raiders to death is also not likely to be a thing.

The only thing i dislike is the 'new' elf faction names. Drakhr...drudhr...dradudhr...feth it. Dark elves.

 Rippy wrote:
Is it pronounced "Druk" like a duck, or "Drook" like a rook?
The real questions, coming to you live from Rippy.

I think it's pronounced Drew Carey.

About overwatch, there's a small possibility that transports will be the best thing to assault with first. They are unlikely to loose a wound against most infantry units and make it into combat, so that the next units can assault without getting overwatched.

Pistols in melee are actually not very useful for assaulting units. My guess is that you'll still be able to shoot during your shooting phase only, which means that you can only shoot after two whole fight phases (the one on the turn you charge, then the one on the opponent's turn). Not that many combats will drag on that long.
It's more useful for defending units, because they just need to survive the initial assault before they can shoot in their own turn. So durable units with pistols gain the most. Wyches or harlequins, not so much.

Aren't witches supposed to 'prolong' combats? If hordes are going to be a thing and rows upon rows of retreating and shooting enemies as a result, the ability to lock down a squad or two is way more important than the ability to kill 'em all.

 koooaei wrote:
Aren't witches supposed to 'prolong' combats? If hordes are going to be a thing and rows upon rows of retreating and shooting enemies as a result, the ability to lock down a squad or two is way more important than the ability to kill 'em all.

That's a good point, they could be useful for tar pitting if cheap enough.

Saw this image this morning, and now I can't unsee it every time I say "Drukhari"

I don't really understand the appeal of having wyches be a "tarpit" unit. I can understand crowd pleasing, but I'd really greatly prefer them to function more like a melee version of the standard tactical troop squad: As a generalist damage-dealer, with weapon options that allow them to specialize against different target types.

I'd much rather be paying 10-15pts for a wych weapon rather than 5, and have them be much more impactful and specialized. Make the Hydra Gauntlets a higher strength, multi-damage weapon for hunting heavy targets, give Razorflails extra attacks to scythe through numerous light enemies, and give Shardnets disarming abilities to deal with dangerous specialist infantry.

IMO, if you want tanky tarpits, that should be the role of the Wracks and the Grotesques, and Wyches should be an alternate melee version of Kabalite Warriors.

Not just tarpits - retreat preventers. Different role. Remember how you want to stick in cc for 2 phases to not get shot to bits? Well, with the retreat rules of 8 it won't be possible unless you're fielding a squad of witches or two. So, i think it's possible that they will be used as a supporting unit for more killy mellee units. Isn't it great that they HAVE a place now?

 koooaei wrote:
Not just tarpits - retreat preventers. Different role. Remember how you want to stick in cc for 2 phases to not get shot to bits? Well, with the retreat rules of 8 it won't be possible unless you're fielding a squad of witches or two. So, i think it's possible that they will be used as a supporting unit for more killy mellee units. Isn't it great that they HAVE a place now?

Maybe. But I'd rather not have the basic TROOP assault squad be a support/gimmick unit. That sounds like more of a job for a supporting elite unit, like maybe one of the animals in the beast pack, hellions, or Mandrakes.

Again, we can make no judgement as of yet. All we know is one rule isn't changing, one rule is being added, and one stat value from 2 weapons. It's laughably dumb to be making judgements on wyches' overall quality based on that.

I'm excited.

I look forward to mowing down these new fancy chadmarines with my 3rd edition Dark Eldar... now called Drew Carey.

I'm building my lists to destroy MEQ.

Incubi, Disintegrators, Talos (did the job in the past), Drazhar.

Gonna be great

 koooaei wrote:
Aren't witches supposed to 'prolong' combats? If hordes are going to be a thing and rows upon rows of retreating and shooting enemies as a result, the ability to lock down a squad or two is way more important than the ability to kill 'em all.

Yeah. Wouldn't it have been nice if they could reliably do that, locking down units, instead of being at the mercy of a "DUDE FORGE THE NARRATIVE LOL" dice roll?

"B-but they might have wargear that gives them bonuses on the r-"

Why is there a roll at all? I want someone to justify No Escape being a roll-off instead of a flat "units in combat with wyches may not disengage unless the wych unit is destroyed."

I see very little here to get excited about. Dark Lances and Disintegrators seem less crap now, so there's that i suppose.

However, when I look at Incubi and Wytches . . . ugh. Incubi melee weapons actually appear marginally worse than they were before (unless I'm mistaken, they no longer fully ignore 2+ saves). And it's not like their old weapons were particularly good to begin with (for S3 glass-cannons, S+1 AP2 Two-handed just wasn't enough, especially with all the escalation). What's more, Incubi had many other problems - particularly their high cost, inability to damage vehicles and fragile frames. The moment they were out of combat, you might as well just remove them from the table and save some time.

So, not only do GW think that a weapon *downgrade* is a point in their favour, but indeed that this is apparently the best thing they could find to put on the Incubi marketing blurb.

And then we get to wyches. Often considered one of the absolute worst units in the game in 6th-7th, second only to their "elite" cousins. They were overpriced, ludicrously fragile even with their 4++, and hit like wet paper bags. So, what was GW's solution? Their weapons now have AP-1. Christmas has come early. Oh, and they might be able to lock units in combat. Because when I buy an overpriced tarpit, I really want one which has a ~50% chance of completely failing at its only job.

The point is, these units had a ton of issues in 7th and 8th has brought yet more to worry about (like the removal of initiative - which was the only thing keeping Incubi from being utterly worthless in every way). However. not only have we seen nothing to replace the loss of initiative on these DE units, we've seen nothing to indicate that any of the problems they had in 7th have been fixed.

Now, granted, we still don't know their full stats and costs. However, let's be honest here - GW does not have a good track record as far as balance is concerned. Nor do they have a history of fixing the problems of previous editions - usually they just add new, bigger ones that overshadow the old ones. Hence, I'm not going to be blindly optimistic that the stuff we haven't seen will fix DE's many issues and turn them into a great faction.

BrianDavion wrote:
Eldar are ALSO however getting a high movement speed. that means a well played eldar army is proably initating melee more often then not

As I've said before, "high movement speed" could be 7" for all we know. When you consider random charge distances and other factors, it's a pretty minor bonus.

More importantly though, you're forgetting that other races have access to bikes, jump packs and the like. Who cares if an Archon can move 7", when a marine captain with a thunderhammer on a bike can move 12"?

Making initiative effectively equate to movement speed is going to hurt DE far more than it helps them.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Secondary show of hands, does anyone actually use the stupid copyright-names? Seriously. I have yet to hear anyone who wasn't a GW employee use "Astra Militarum", let alone all the contortions that they've replaced "elf" with.

Are you kidding? I don't think I can even pronounce the new name for Dark Eldar.

I get the Drew Carey jokes, but are people really thinking that's how it's pronounced? Where/when is "khar" pronounced like "care"?

 Yarium wrote:
Saw this image this morning, and now I can't unsee it every time I say "Drukhari"

Spoiler:

"Welcome to 'Who's Webway is it Anyway!' Where the Raids are made up and the Slaves' lives don't matter"

-

 Galef wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Saw this image this morning, and now I can't unsee it every time I say "Drukhari"

Spoiler:

"Welcome to 'Who's Webway is it Anyway!' Where the Raiders are made up and the Slaves' lives don't matter"

-

Have an exalt sir, I laughed out loud at work!

 koooaei wrote:
You guyz are kinda forgetting that bolter-drilling and heavy-boltering raiders to death is also not likely to be a thing.

72 bolter shots to take down a annihilation barge. Now, I'm gonna guess a raider will be around that total, based on the idea that the barge was tougher last edition but I'm assuming some of that is in special rules that weren't posted.

So roughly as many shots as it'd take to kill 26~ wyches, or 16 tau fire warriors.

the_scotsman wrote:
I don't really understand the appeal of having wyches be a "tarpit" unit. I can understand crowd pleasing, but I'd really greatly prefer them to function more like a melee version of the standard tactical troop squad: As a generalist damage-dealer, with weapon options that allow them to specialize against different target types.

I'd much rather be paying 10-15pts for a wych weapon rather than 5, and have them be much more impactful and specialized. Make the Hydra Gauntlets a higher strength, multi-damage weapon for hunting heavy targets, give Razorflails extra attacks to scythe through numerous light enemies, and give Shardnets disarming abilities to deal with dangerous specialist infantry.

IMO, if you want tanky tarpits, that should be the role of the Wracks and the Grotesques, and Wyches should be an alternate melee version of Kabalite Warriors.

The problem is, they likely won't be that. A dangerous but fragile melee unit is going to struggle in the first place, given how shooty this edition looks to be (at least as bad as last edition). Consider what happens when you do kill a unit, a combat squad of nearby tacticals without special weapons could move to rapid fire range and cut down 3-4 of your wyches. A full unit would be 7-8. That's why expensive and killy wyches just don't work. You'd lose half of your squad to a single salvo of bolter fire, factoring in a round of overwatch or two and you'd basically be done. Sure, transports, cover, or deepstriking can get you into your first combat, but you'll likely have to weather at least one round of shooting to get your second. Wyches are so fragile outside of combat that they can't really be expected to do much.

SilverAlien wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
You guyz are kinda forgetting that bolter-drilling and heavy-boltering raiders to death is also not likely to be a thing.

72 bolter shots to take down a annihilation barge. Now, I'm gonna guess a raider will be around that total, based on the idea that the barge was tougher last edition but I'm assuming some of that is in special rules that weren't posted.

So roughly as many shots as it'd take to kill 26~ wyches, or 16 tau fire warriors.

I'm glad they are making vehicles this way now. No more lucky bolter glances to kill a vehicle in one round of shooting. It makes heavy weapon teams very viable

Another small bonus for wyches is they can shoot there pistols in combat even when on an open top transport if the transport is charged.

I know all pistols can do it but still a little slice thing for wyches to use. Yes they will prob still be overpriced garbage but i am hopeful failing in that give hellions a boost an i am happy.

mfranks985 wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Saw this image this morning, and now I can't unsee it every time I say "Drukhari"

Spoiler:

"Welcome to 'Who's Webway is it Anyway!' Where the Raiders are made up and the Slaves' lives don't matter"

-

Have an exalt sir, I laughed out loud at work!

Ha! Me too! Exalt x2

I'm pretty sure "Drukhari" is an evolved form of "Druchii" (I think I read somwhere it was intended to be pronounced "Drukai").

Druchii is what the Dark Elves in Warhammer Fantasy used to call themselves. I think this is an obvious throwback.

99% sure Drukhari is pronounced "Drew-car-ee"

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Aren't witches supposed to 'prolong' combats? If hordes are going to be a thing and rows upon rows of retreating and shooting enemies as a result, the ability to lock down a squad or two is way more important than the ability to kill 'em all.

Yeah. Wouldn't it have been nice if they could reliably do that, locking down units, instead of being at the mercy of a "DUDE FORGE THE NARRATIVE LOL" dice roll?

"B-but they might have wargear that gives them bonuses on the r-"

Why is there a roll at all? I want someone to justify No Escape being a roll-off instead of a flat "units in combat with wyches may not disengage unless the wych unit is destroyed."

I mean, the obvious reason is that GW didn't want it to be an absolute certainty that you can't retreat.

Well at least on the plus side dark eldar aren't being written off. I just hope we stay the fastest army and the most hit and run of all armies.

 Roknar wrote:
The no escape rule is interesting. I wonder if anybody else gets that. I hope dark eldar work out. I almost started a dark eldar army when they got their revamp, but I wasn't in a hurry and then they got their other codex and it turned out to me kinda meh.

Reaver jetbikes are currently decent but they're mostly for melee with some small AT and t4 multi-wound insta-death potential but mostly for the cluster caltrops. Scourge are ok. Venoms are either good to meh depending on what you face (all vehicles, flyers and great armor or cover saves make them cry but vs necrons and mechanicus they're good), ravagers just suck, covens are supposed to be decent, incubi are either above average or crap (basically the reverse of poisoned weapons in that tough units like necrons and mechanicus are mostly invulnerable to em). Ravagers suck and cost too much (though the armor is durable for dark eldar anyway) but they can pull funny shenanigans in area terrain and woods getting cover without needing to jink. All wych units sucked. Mandrakes seemed fun but only at 3 pts per model less and got to be troops (provided you run bound but that doesn't really benefit dark eldar) but then they'd be viable. I've never run hq retinue or the beast packs. Never saw a point to taking medusae because when you moved more than 6" you couldn't fire templates so that made you either do webway portal drop or baiting the enemy to assault the unit which i never found good. Usually if you want to deal with enemies in cover you take the good melee units (grotesques, incubi, talos and reavers) and leave all the other anti-cover options at home. That was legit the way i did it and it works best for DE.

I have this 4 archon build with shadowfields, blast pistols and huskblades that does really well. Shadow fields are one of the only things that got boosted in the current codex. I've made at least a couple opponents (including tau) curse at how durable those shadow fields are and when you fail one it lasts the rest of the phase so you just do the switcharoo and throw another shadow field archon in the place of the previous to take the next shooting phase then rinse and repeat. Seriously it's hilarious vs guard and tau. It costs like 500 points or more though. Sadly when 8th hits it'll be completely useless.

Wondering if i should play 8th and if i do should i continue dark eldar or go for genestealer cults.

There's too much we haven't seen to say whether Wyches are any good or not. No Escape is nice and it's disappointing to see Dodge is unchanged but if their now WS3+ and A2 that alone will make for a notable buff. Will still need a points drop. We still need to see what their weapons do as well.

Incubi have had a significant buff through changes to the core rules, their only real weakness was a lack of Assault Grenades but thats no longer a problem as chargers always strike first, and frankly with assault vehicles and Fleet I never had a problem of getting off the charge first in 7th, making us faster means it's going to be even more of a shoe in in 8th.

Ravagers are going to be amazing, Dark Lances have been buffed thanks to the core rules changes aimed at giving high strength single shot weapons their anti tank/monster role back again and the fact that we seem to be one of the few vehicles in the game to ignore the -1 BS after moving with a Heavy weapon is gold. The Dissi looks like it's still going to be excellent at removing elite infantry but with D2 will probably be pretty good at dealing with light vehicles as well,

It sounds like all of our vehicles gained Flickerfields as standard rather than only the Venom having it, I hope we still have Nightshields as it will be interesting to see how they work in 8th. Speaking of our vehicles, they could be pretty nasty in combat. All three could take Shock Prows and Chain Snares, I can see these doing a lot of damage on the charge, soaking up overwatch thats unlikely to do much damage to them before our real close combat units get into battle as well.

It was also mentioned yesterday that Power From Pain gives us effectively a 6+ FnP, it remaines to be seen if it does anything else.

One thing that is nice for Wyches is that we now know that the 'defender'/owning player allocates wounds. So even though Wyches will undoubtedly take casualties from Overwatch, they don't have to be from the front of the unit.
I can't tell you how many times I have failed charges with melee unit because of Overwatch.

The downside, however is that those casualties will cause a Morale test, regardless of "winning" combat or not (unless I am forgetting something about being in melee)

-

 Galef wrote:
One thing that is nice for Wyches is that we now know that the 'defender'/owning player allocates wounds. So even though Wyches will undoubtedly take casualties from Overwatch, they don't have to be from the front of the unit.
I can't tell you how many times I have failed charges with melee unit because of Overwatch.

The downside, however is that those casualties will cause a Morale test, regardless of "winning" combat or not (unless I am forgetting something about being in melee)
-

Yes, I think every unit that suffered losses during the turn must take a bravery test at the end. I think the concept of winning combat is gone and won't affect the bravery test.
What could be cool though, is if Power from pain also gave +1 bravery per model killed in the turn: for each model your unit kills, you "save" one of your own from the bravery phase. The more a unit kills, the less likely it is to fall back. I think that would make sense for DE, and wouldn't be too overpowered (as most bravery test will be to shooting, during the enemy turn, when your guys don't kill anything anyway).

Anyway, I think the saddest part is the special/gladatorial weapons not getting a significant buff. Most troop units can buy special/heavy weapons that are pretty strong, and really give a special role to the unit. Wyhch could have gotten a lot a flavor if their weapon move to something better than just +1S or the like. Being able to kit a unit for MC hunting, one for horde hunting etc. would be interesting imo. Especially with the way we remove casualties now: paying a special model 3 times as much as a basic one is less of a problem when you can keep it alive until the end.

Personally, I hope that Trueborn and Bloodbrides no longer exist and that Warriors and Wyches will just be able to take more weapon options.
Like Warriors being able to take 2 weapons per 5 (1 heavy and 1 special) and Wyches taking 1 Wych weapon per 3.
Maybe also allow their unit "champion" take a weapon choice in addition to this limit.