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Note: There are lots of these already, but here's my take. I see a lot of people upset with the new codex. We should have known the nerf bat was coming. After all it has been the trend of 7th ed. codices. Sure, a lot was taken away and generally nerfed, but a lot of this also looks pretty neat to me. Aside from losing characters, there are a few units that seem interesting that I really want to give a try in the upcoming 7th edition with my dark kin.

Here are my thoughts:

Units that were bleh in the previous book are now pretty interesting (I use the word "interesting" instead of good because I do not know what they will do on the battlefield until I can get some games in). Wracks now have stealth and shrouded, so a 4+ cover save! + infiltrate means you can probably get them into some kind of other cover for even beefier cover save.. their early arrival will keep the enemy dealing with them right off the bat and if they don't + properly drugged, they will have a semi-useful CC unit in their face early. This could draws some heat away from what you are really trying to do elsewhere on the tabletop. We will see if their points cost justifies this strategy.

Also Reavers seem ..well different now. I almost see them as light vehicle shredders, kind of filling the previous role of haywyches. With a unit of 9, thats a TON of s6 rending HoW hits (3d6!) plus their regular s4 attacks + combat drugs/PFP.. i think they will be pretty decent at popping armor and then of course hit and run shenanigans to either A) finish the job next round B) get into cover or C) make their way to their next victim. Plus the formation allows to have 6 FA choices and still be battleforged, not to mention giving your troops 5+ cover saves and everyone else 6+ cover saves.

Combine Reaver's new found strength against light vehicles with the sheer awesomeness of Scourges now (4 heavy weapons in a squad), and you got your new substitute for haywyches' former vehicle popping capabilities. 4 haywire blasters dropping down with a haywire pistol archon (can't remember the actual name of the pistol, forgive me) with WWP without scattering for some rear AV action sounds nasty as hell. Not to mention there is lots of access to dark lances across the codex. I don't think we will have too much trouble with armor, as everyone seems to bemoan because of the loss of wyches. Again, remember you can have 6 FA choices, so 6 squads of 4 heavy weapons each.

Grotesques will be CC machines and the new WWP can get them where they need to be, escorting your lord into battle, in no time. Just remember to pick your battles wisely.. AKA avoid 2+ armor as huskblades are now ap 3. if you drop a fat squad of grots + archon/succubus down next to something even halfway squishy, that unit will be absolutely fethed (and possibly first blood).

There are tons of cheesy ways to give all your units incredible buffs by being synergistic in your unit choices. Which brings me to my next interesting unit: talos and cronos. With the ability to buff everyone's FnP and also take a group of 3 (MC!) with high T and multiple wounds, I think we will see these guys on the tabletop more.

Also, one thing I realized in my 7th edition games, that I don't believe was a part of 6th edition. Determining who can shoot now takes place on a model to model basis. This has huge implications for footslogging kabalites (I know, I know they should have raiders, but it's gonna get popped eventually). Need some mobility? Perhaps to advance on an objective but would still like to fire your splinter cannon? Well leave him in the back and don't move him at all. Bam, now he can fire his salvo weapon with full shots at full BS. Same thing with Dark lances.

The new bomber. It got pretty good. For a high points cost of course. All those missile options are thoroughly nasty. Each may cost an arm and a leg + the high base cost of the thing, but I feel like they will be worth taking especially in high points games, easily capable of making its points back in a turn with all those high S, low AP missiles. Although its 10/10/10, it has access to a 3+ jink save and can still drop its missiles i believe (correct me if im wrong). So fly in, unleash mayhem on something, get shot at next turn, jink, and either A) fly off the board for another round of death when it returns or B) next victim


So I guess what I want to say is some things suck, some things seem like they could be cool. I have always loved the dark eldar. Things change. We gotta take the positive from the negative. I see it as a challenge to create new and exciting lists. Sure it sucks that the beaststar is no more and the baron, vect, duke, and krajaksdkfasdfbas (the mandrake guy), are all gone. We generally took a huge beating from the nerf bat but i think lots of codexes have. To some extent. i think we are seeing a dewardization of codices in the current edition and who knows.. if its not a good thing, it will at least encourage new ways to play the game that we all love. Lets face it, if we didn't love this game we wouldn't be sitting at a computer reading about it or griping about it on a website dedicated to it.

Well, anyways... I'm sure I'm missing some stuff but I'm tired and these are some things I have thought about surfing all the DE threads of late. Hope it was worth the read. Let me know your thoughts on the new codex.

Just picked up the codex today and had a skim through it so I can only give my preliminary thoughts as somebody who plays a wych army.

Nerf bat.

Like, I honestly don't get why you would take one of the already weaker builds in an already weak codex and decide you'll make it even worse than it already is.

Changing Leliths league apart rules to take away her extra attack ability means she can't kill anything being only str3 and having 6 attacks. Her re roll abilities only work in challenges which makes her even more pointless and over costed for a unit that almost never makes it into CC and is usually killed by overwatch anyway I really do suspect that this is an attempt to sell the newer succubus model which is better in every way for the points cost you pay..

Nerfing wych weapons. Why? How is a hydra gauntlet that gives you an extra d6 attacks game breaking? Were their honestly massive complaints about this in the prior codex? Instead they've just made a crappy unit even more crappy and now totally unable to win assaults against anything other than the most mediocre or half dead units.

Getting rid of haywire grenades. So now wyches have no counter against dreadnoughts? A single dreadnought can destroy an entire army of wyches single handedly? Not to mention how appaulingly bad DE long range AT is. The only reason people loaded up on wyches with haywire and suicide charged them at tanks is because it was the only option a DE player had to deal with armor. Dark Lances are horrible.

Utterly throwing away any opportunity to slash the points cost of wyches or lord forbid give them their invulnerable save against overwatch. Its ridiculous that you can succeed in getting a full ten squad intact to a unit and then have half of it die from instant flamer hits and lucky shots before any attacks are rolled. The old DE codex came out before that ability was introduced and it broke the rationale behind wyches ever since as it robs them of their strike first ability.

Ravagers can no longer move 6 and fire all of their guns. Again, why? Was their really such vocal objection to a paper thin tank with crappy weapons being able to do this? This means my supporting ravagers can't adequately back up my wyches and with the subsequent nerf bat to haywire they are now hopeless against tanks.

Again, if GW really does not want people to use wych armies then why bother supporting them in the first place or selling their models? Do they really think people will just keep bringing their Dark Eldar armies for target practice?

Reaver Jetbikes are a Wych unit, and they're apparently now very good against tanks according to the OP.

They just want you to buy more models, they have nothing against Wyches in particular.

Reavers are a specialist unit. Doesn't change the fact that everything else with the army got made much worse.

I disagree about everything getting worse.

Scourges are insanely better, as are grotesques, mandrakes, reavers, the razorwing jetfighter, and even our core kabalite warriors.

Some people have a tendency to only focus on the negatives, but I think there are a lot of positives here and some of them stem from indirect buffs like changes to power from pain (where we can now get 4+ fnp for example) or field even more venoms than before for less points since we don't have to put a unit of troops inside each one.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I disagree about everything getting worse.

Scourges are insanely better, as are grotesques, mandrakes, reavers, the razorwing jetfighter, and even our core kabalite warriors.

Some people have a tendency to only focus on the negatives, but I think there are a lot of positives here and some of them stem from indirect buffs like changes to power from pain (where we can now get 4+ fnp for example) or field even more venoms than before for less points since we don't have to put a unit of troops inside each one.

I am not saying everything got worse.

I am saying that wych cult armies got worse. Considering that they were already near useless its pretty stupid that GW hurls the nerf hammer at them.

Worst of all is the fact that the lore they wrote for wyches completely does not match the ruleset. "Elite shock troops"? ""Unmatched fighters"?"Lelith able to kill a hive tyrant? That's complete bull. Wyches are cannon fodder that can be killed as easily as gaunts and are about as dangerous as gaunts in CC.6 str3 power weapon attacks are not going to do anything to a hive tyrant. Considering the codex actively encourages you through the lore to field a full army of wyches (so don't go all "oh but a dark elder army is meant to be balanced with a mix of units" ) the new codex actually describesd each army separately to reinforce this distinction more so than the previous codex.

Paging though the book at home i get the strong impression that they have used the layout (big pictures, several pages with not much text and one piece of art but a lot of empty space) to avoid having to use content they could put in the DLC.

No new units is disappointing. I don't think a new codex has to have new units...that can lead to some wasted kits...but we lost stuff and have had kits wasted on stuff we really didn't need (plastic Archon and Succubus could have been the Baron and Malys). VRB and plastic Wracks are good.

And we have expensive DLC that should have been in the codex. It feels as if this book as pushed out either with a lack of care or because they didn't have anything else ready.

A wasted opportunity, IMO.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Reaver Jetbikes are a Wych unit, and they're apparently now very good against tanks according to the OP.

They just want you to buy more models, they have nothing against Wyches in particular.

Killing vehicles with charging them with bladevanes sounds bit risky tactic as your unit will stay clumped together and is a nice magnet for every template weapon the opponent has.

Whats the dlc? Im mostly into fantasy now but I've been waiting for the DE since theyre my favorite army but as it stands it seems like they got nothing new.

My mandrakes are now allegedly useful but a lot of our special characters got axed.

I know haemonculi are a supplement but is there anything else?

As it stands i may "accquire" a digital copy to peruse but I'm not hearing any exciting news that makes me want to go buy the uth ed rulebook and the new codex. Especially when fantasy gets new stuff, characters without modelz, and not to mention the end times stuff. I guess I'm hoping someone can give me something in the new DE dex that will get me interested in 40k again

Welcome to 7th edition codex writing. The new method is to make rules that make more sense with the fluff. Wyches with anti-tank wargear made zero sense seeing as how they were gladiators. Seems the DE focus is now on speed and picking off isolated units. They should have little trouble eliminating squads that hang out in the backfield, such as heavy weapon squads and artillery. Still trying to figure out how dark lances suck as so many say.

Kind of stupid that DE lost all AP2 assault wargear though, given how much AP2 their craft world brethren have.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Welcome to 7th edition codex writing. The new method is to make rules that make more sense with the fluff. Wyches with anti-tank wargear made zero sense seeing as how they were gladiators. Seems the DE focus is now on speed and picking off isolated units. They should have little trouble eliminating squads that hang out in the backfield, such as heavy weapon squads and artillery. Still trying to figure out how dark lances suck as so many say.

Kind of stupid that DE lost all AP2 assault wargear though, given how much AP2 their craft world brethren have.

Don't worry craft world Eldar will get the bat soon enough.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Welcome to 7th edition codex writing. The new method is to make rules that make more sense with the fluff. Wyches with anti-tank wargear made zero sense seeing as how they were gladiators. Seems the DE focus is now on speed and picking off isolated units. They should have little trouble eliminating squads that hang out in the backfield, such as heavy weapon squads and artillery. Still trying to figure out how dark lances suck as so many say.

Kind of stupid that DE lost all AP2 assault wargear though, given how much AP2 their craft world brethren have.

Like the fluff of wyches being elite close combat specilaists = as hard as hormagaunts in close combat Poisoned weapons or rending would have made sense and could have made them worth the points, but well, what can you do...

Ultimately the DE codex use to have a weakness for massed medium armor.

Now the DE codex has a more acute weakness for massed light and medium armor.


In a world full of land raiders, DE are still king.

 Exergy wrote:
Ultimately the DE codex use to have a weakness for massed medium armor.

Now the DE codex has a more acute weakness for massed light and medium armor.


In a world full of land raiders, DE are still king.

Considering you need 9+ Dark lances to take down a land raider in a single turn, I'm not exactly sure that's to their benefit.

I think 6 haywire blasters would be a better bet than the Lances.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Exergy wrote:
Ultimately the DE codex use to have a weakness for massed medium armor.

Now the DE codex has a more acute weakness for massed light and medium armor.


In a world full of land raiders, DE are still king.

Considering you need 9+ Dark lances to take down a land raider in a single turn, I'm not exactly sure that's to their benefit.

As opposed to the 12+ Lascannons needed by Imperial armies? What's your point?

Dark and Bright Lances are the equivalent to S10 to anything AV14. What more do you need???? Lance weapons are perfectly suited for popping Land Raiders. Why do people think that because their army can't easily destroy a 250 point tank in a single turn, they suddenly have no anti-armour ability. The bigger problem (and its really not that big of a problem) for Lance weapons is AV12. Anything more, and they gain an advantage with Lance, anything less, and their high strength negates any loss of the Lance ability.

Personally, I think most of the grumbling about lack of anti-armour is about wytches losing haywire grenades (which having them made no sense from a fluff perspective). Mass haywire in any unit is broken IMO, and I can only hope that Necrons lose their cryptek weapons that given them large volumes of haywire fire. Now if we could just get rid of them on Swooping Hawks, all would be right with the world

The Succubus can have an AP2 weapon that gives her +1S but that and Lelith#s attacks seem to be our only armour save ignoring assault attacks.

I agree that on paper Wyches seem a bit limp for 10ppm. they aren't paying for armour, can't Dodge shooting and will spend a lot of time ineffectually slapping at Power Armour. I don't mind them losing access to Haywire Grenades (as my Wyches clearly didn't know how to use theirs ) but I was expecting them to get a little more peppy in assault.

Orkhead wrote:

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Welcome to 7th edition codex writing. The new method is to make rules that make more sense with the fluff. Wyches with anti-tank wargear made zero sense seeing as how they were gladiators. Seems the DE focus is now on speed and picking off isolated units. They should have little trouble eliminating squads that hang out in the backfield, such as heavy weapon squads and artillery. Still trying to figure out how dark lances suck as so many say.

Kind of stupid that DE lost all AP2 assault wargear though, given how much AP2 their craft world brethren have.

Don't worry craft world Eldar will get the bat soon enough.

3 more years isn't soon enough.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Exergy wrote:
Ultimately the DE codex use to have a weakness for massed medium armor.

Now the DE codex has a more acute weakness for massed light and medium armor.
In a world full of land raiders, DE are still king.

Considering you need 9+ Dark lances to take down a land raider in a single turn, I'm not exactly sure that's to their benefit.

I was speaking about scourges. 36" threat range, 120 points. Will handily kill a land raider in 2 turns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orock wrote:

Orkhead wrote:

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Welcome to 7th edition codex writing. The new method is to make rules that make more sense with the fluff. Wyches with anti-tank wargear made zero sense seeing as how they were gladiators. Seems the DE focus is now on speed and picking off isolated units. They should have little trouble eliminating squads that hang out in the backfield, such as heavy weapon squads and artillery. Still trying to figure out how dark lances suck as so many say.

Kind of stupid that DE lost all AP2 assault wargear though, given how much AP2 their craft world brethren have.

Don't worry craft world Eldar will get the bat soon enough.

3 more years isn't soon enough.

maybe after that DE will get an update...

Well I like the new codex its about the best of the new codex type (ork and sw)
Wyches arnt great but you pay for the 4invun save in cc but there weapons are crap now.

To me it seems that de are now a bit more durable infantry wise with the new boosts per turn but it is so so easy to have your HQ go nuts pts wise

But I could be biased because I like de and never like wyches any way lol

I really loved the old shardnet and impaler. It made them so much better at tarpitting. New one is very meh

Taking away the wych grenades is fine. But at least give them something to make them able to actually fight in CC rather than be an over costed hormagaunt.

Harlequins are no longer in....

If GW continues down this line, we actually have to pay money to get worse codexes than the hardcover ones we already possess...perhaps only DA and CSM players will shrug since their codexes arent holding up to well in the first place

I am now leaning towards into the Robotech arena...

Jihadin just come to the fantasy side. No supplements, plenty of characters, mostly balanced army books. At least until GW points their 40k death beam at us. Seriously most fantasy players i know are hoping GW just gives us our occasional armybook and leaves us alone.

The deal is that GW seems to be bringing more "balance" to the game via toning everything down. When things were going haywire (punny, I know) back in 6th and especially 5th with horribly OP units/rules/exploitation of poorly written rules, everyone complained about how imbalanced the game had become. Now they seem to be responding to it by "streamlining" codices at the expense of some peoples beloved units/characters/conversions. It sucks for sure, but we gotta stop being surprised. This has been the trend since the tyranid codex arguably but especially orks/GK/SW.

We obviously like this game and it would just be better for everyone if they would just accept that things change. This is the current state of 40k. It's still the game we know and love. Use the new rules as a challenge to build new and interesting lists instead of the one you have used a thousand times and you just might find yourself having some fun with the game.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Welcome to 7th edition codex writing. The new method is to make rules that make more sense with the fluff. Wyches with anti-tank wargear made zero sense seeing as how they were gladiators. Seems the DE focus is now on speed and picking off isolated units. They should have little trouble eliminating squads that hang out in the backfield, such as heavy weapon squads and artillery. Still trying to figure out how dark lances suck as so many say.

Kind of stupid that DE lost all AP2 assault wargear though, given how much AP2 their craft world brethren have.

They didn't lose all of their AP2. The only thing I can think off that did lose it was the Huskblade.

Generally I like the 7th edition writing style. Sure, nothing jumps off the page and slaps you so hard that you can see your long dead ancestors from the Stone Age with how poorly balanced it is compared to the rest of the army and how much you need to spam the crap out of it, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut that's a good thing. The armies are feeling more internally balanced and the books so far feel appropriately balanced with each other. If Tau and Eldar can be appropriately nerfed down to fit in with the rest of the 7th Edition books we may end up with the best balanced edition to date, even if it's not the most exciting in terms of things that everyone feels they need to field en masse.

Sure, nothing jumps off the page and slaps you so hard that you can see your long dead ancestors from the Stone Age with how poorly balanced it is compared to the rest of the army and how much you need to spam the crap out of it,

Am sorry which codex does that, because it aint the nids with their 3+tyrant per list , SW spaming pods with ally centurions, GK spaming NDKs, terminators and SW ally pods full of centurions or purifires. Am almost sure ork players spam the lobbas to.

I don't have a problem with weaker codex, if they updated all books at the same time or at least started with the most powerful one. Nerfing other armies while eldar play the same codex they did in 6th is stupid. But what realy makes me angry is the fact that they make it realy hard to impossible to play an army with one book. The multi cad thing was stupid enough in 6th , but avoidable. Not multi cad is in even in 1k point games and the books look as if they were design to force people to buy multiple books. Your army is slow and has no MSU units to do storm missions, let me show you the wonderful world of marines. If DE army has problems with anti tank, load up on those eldar ally . Three serpents some fire dragons, some DA and a WK or a prism will fix you up.

Makumba wrote:

Sure, nothing jumps off the page and slaps you so hard that you can see your long dead ancestors from the Stone Age with how poorly balanced it is compared to the rest of the army and how much you need to spam the crap out of it,

Am sorry which codex does that, because it aint the nids with their 3+tyrant per list , SW spaming pods with ally centurions, GK spaming NDKs, terminators and SW ally pods full of centurions or purifires. Am almost sure ork players spam the lobbas to.

Nids are a 6th edition book, not a 7th and thus excluded from this basis. Also are you really saying that Nids are really a game breaking threat with 3+ Tyrants? SW spamming a 6th edition unit via allies? Again, 6th edition unit. Doesn't count for the purposes of the game generally being toned down this edition.

The only people I see jumping up and down saying that NDK are the only way to play GK are people on the internet. We have a couple of local GK players, and they definitely disagree with that idea. About the only true misses in the GK book are the non-Librarian HQs, PAGK (mostly due to the Psycannon change) and the Purgitation Squad (who really needs a longer range weapon). That's two weak units and two HQs with the stronger units not feeling overpowered, just not feeling as crap.

And Purifiers can Deep Strike without drop pods, so I'm not really seeing the huge advantage there. Is it the reduced scatter?

Makumba wrote:
I don't have a problem with weaker codex, if they updated all books at the same time or at least started with the most powerful one. Nerfing other armies while eldar play the same codex they did in 6th is stupid. But what realy makes me angry is the fact that they make it realy hard to impossible to play an army with one book. The multi cad thing was stupid enough in 6th , but avoidable. Not multi cad is in even in 1k point games and the books look as if they were design to force people to buy multiple books. Your army is slow and has no MSU units to do storm missions, let me show you the wonderful world of marines. If DE army has problems with anti tank, load up on those eldar ally . Three serpents some fire dragons, some DA and a WK or a prism will fix you up.

Most of the armies who got updated so far are the oldest armies who had codexes from 5th. And I'm fine with that because they were left to lag for a long while and needed an update. Yes, Eldar and Tau need their nerfs, and soon, but I don't think it's wrong to start with the older books, or not having all the books at the same time.

And it's not impossible to play with a single book. The supplement books are alternate ways to play an army (just like FW army lists are optional ways to play armies, some of which rely on you having the core codex on hand for certain units and options). They bring variety for those who really want to specialize with a specific force instead of something more general. Many of them really force you into specific army builds too.

As for allies, any feeling you have of needing allies is in your head more than anywhere else. The ally system is there to sell you an army, but not by making it a manditory gap filler (remember, GW is designing a narrative, not a tournament, based game. It's core concept is more based on playing a campaign with friends to tell some kind of story, than to play a tournament for a prize), but as a way to make it easier to branch off into other armies. Really want to start Guard but don't have the money to play them right now? There's a system to make it possible to play them as allies without shooting yourself in the foot or needing to wait 3+ months to have scraped together a full army.

So yes, it's to sell stuff, but no, not in the way you think.