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Hello I hope firstly this isn't a duplicate post, I did search but I didn't see anythin matching but if I missed please feel free to do as you must though I'd love to be directed to the right forum post first thanks and sorry .

So now onto the topic of my posting, I am recently returning to the welcoming embrace of the Dark city, and I thought to myself do we have everything we need to stand toe to to toe other armies in the land of 8th edition. I am not sure we seem pretty good from the index but who knows what our eventual codex could change or add, but i thought I would look to you the experts already playing in the trenches of this edition for what we need, what could change. I know I'd love to see more characters return to us, I really want Vect back he was one of my favorite characters with or without his ship.

First rule of Thumb for News & Rumors...

If your subject has a question mark in it then it probably isn't news or rumours.

Probably best to hit up to the specific subforum and check out there.

To General Discussion we go!

To answer the OP:

1) We need something to derail the absolute train wreck that could be our subfaction traits if we follow the same rules as everyone else. As they're currently written, to unlock a subfaction trait for <wych Cult> <Kabal> or <coven> you would have to construct a detachment with only a single troop choice, a single (bad, and worse if redundant, and now limited to HORRIBLE model-compliant monobuilds) HQ choice, and there would be no way to get any kind of benefit on almost half the codex which doesn't have any of those keywords (Mandrakes, Scourges, Beasts, Incubi, etc)

2) We need, desperately need, better HQs and HQs that can be repeated, because in 8th to get an appreciable number of command points you need either a half dozen hqs or a half dozen troops, and unless you fancy having six of either wyches, Kabalites, or Wracks, you're going for half a dozen HQs. The HQs you see a lot of from other races are the ones you can repeat and have a reason to repeat - Primaris Psykers, Commanders, Lieutenants and Captains, Spiritseers and Autarchs and Farseers, etc. As it currently stands, one of our HQs is more than enough because none of them are effective or efficient in combat and their buffs are kind of meh.

3) they need to fix the weapon options. Unit choices currently are fine, but for every choice between a set of weapons on any unit, there is pretty much one best answer. Scourge weapons? Lances. Wrack weapons? Electrocorrosive whip. Reaver weapons? Blaster. Simple math basically shows one to always be superior to every otehr choice, often goofily so. A blaster does a little more damage on average than a Heat Lance, and the Heat Lance costs like 18 more points.

We need efficient ranged anti infantry and melee anti tank.

One simple solution that I think would help a lot: Give the Succubus the ability to take a Reaver JetBike or a Skyboard.

Her buffs could then pass on to those units as they move.

But yes, better HQs would be great. HQs that can be as fast as the vehicles that Dark Eldar must almost always be inside of.

 Icculus wrote:
One simple solution that I think would help a lot: Give the Succubus the ability to take a Reaver JetBike or a Skyboard.

She can have the drug that increases her movement range though. One of the things that I cannot accept about the succubus is how the glaive makes her hit on 3s when she's always been one the characters with the highest WS in history. Se should hit always on 2s, no matter what.

 Blackie wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
One simple solution that I think would help a lot: Give the Succubus the ability to take a Reaver JetBike or a Skyboard.

She can have the drug that increases her movement range though. One of the things that I cannot accept about the succubus is how the glaive makes her hit on 3s when she's always been one the characters with the highest WS in history. Se should hit always on 2s, no matter what.

I totally agree with you on the -1 to hit thing. I mean cmooon, shes only T3. at least let her hit on 2s allll the time.

Also, I have tried the combat drug for extra movement. She still cant keep up. and then the group makes the charge, and she fails it and is left out flapping in the breeze.

With Advances and Reroll Charge on Turn 2 she really shouldn't.

the_scotsman has it right. If I was going to add to that I would say we are owed at least 1 SC and wyches need a slight buff.

What we really need is something to buff our troops so they are good. Let's assume price and armament stay the same, what would that look like? I'm thinking that we could have traits for Kabal/Coven/Cult that do this. For example:

Kabal of We Love Warriors

Kabal Tactic:
Splinter weapons in this army reroll 1s to hit, additionally on a roll of a 6 to wound (Except against vehicles) resolve the hit at AP -3.

Stratagem (2 CP) Poison them!:
Select a "We Love Warriors" Infantry unit at the start of the shooting phase. It's poison weapons wound on a 2+ until the end of the phase.

Relic: Agony Scope:
Select an enemy unit visible to this model at the start of the Shooting Phase. All friendly "We Love Warriors" units can reroll damage against this target until the end of the phase.

Warlord Trait:
Enemies do not gain the benefit of cover against the warlord or "We love warriors" units within 6".

Some HQ or unit should also have the ability to take 2 combat drugs.

Whether its a specific Wych Cult that can do it or its a pre-game strategem to allow one unit to benefit from 2 combat drugs.

Better HQ's - reroll hits aura or buff of some kind.

Some strategems - some point drops.

As other knowledgeable chaps have said, lets get an Archon and Succubus that is worth a damn.

Also, love and appreciation for the Cronos would be nice.

Oooh, and that new fangled webway assault ability for 1/3 CP I think.

Would be good to see a melee weapon with an AP value for the Talos. Look at what the other armies have available on their equivalents. Wraithlords/Carnifexes/Dreadnouhts all have much better choppy options and you can't tell me the Talos is meant to be a primary shooting platform. It's a hybrid like the rest.

Fix our weapons, at present we're limited to Dark Lances, Splinter, Dark Scythes and Disintegrators. Splinter Cannons nead to be cheaper and Assault 6, Disies actually need a points reduction (we pay considerably more for plasma than anyone else and it's S5), Shredders should probably become flamers, Heat Lances need extra strength and a points reduction (S7, 20pts would be my preference), Blasters need either a points reduction or a boost to D6 damage. Reowrking the missiles on our flyers so that either the Shatterfield or the Monoscythe is actually useful against other flyers would be nice.

Our HQ's are useless, oth their weapons and special rules are in depserate need of an overhaul.

Bring back the special characters.

Points reductions on Reavers and Hellions

Combat drugs for all! The injectors are molded onto the models after all and they make use of them in the fluff.

Castigators!

The Talos really needs some teeth, -1AP 2 damage is terrible for a unit that excelled at killing vehicles and monsters in the past.

Speaking of which, the Ichor injector is a joke.

There's a lot of small things that can be done to tweak units but I think thats the major stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As other knowledgeable chaps have said, lets get an Archon and Succubus that is worth a damn.

Also, love and appreciation for the Cronos would be nice.

Oooh, and that new fangled webway assault ability for 1/3 CP I think.

Agreed on the Cronos, a support unit really shoul be able to offer some support.

We got the Webway Assault strategem in CA, which is only useful for Clawed Fiends and Hellions at the moment because the rest of the army wants to be in vehicles instead. The Cloudstrike Strategem where you can Deep Strike vehicles would have been far more useful (which is probably why we didn't get it).

Tyranids had random, miscellaneous bits kicking around in their kits for whole editions that just recently got made into new options.

We've had weapon options that have been so terrible and unusable for so long that if you actually redesigned them into something cool, you'd make an interesting and varied army.

Shredder: I'm sorry GW, but a high strength, rerolling to wound, no AP, anti infantry weapon is just not going to work. It's a garbage Defiler of a concept and it has just been terrible forever. Give it more shots depending on the number of models in the unit maybe. That'd be very helpful.

Heat Lance/Blaster/Haywire Cannon: These three are generally on the same platforms and are now all trying to do the exact same thing, lets get some differentiation in there. Haywire Cannon, what if it was similar to the Forgeworld Prism Rifle (and no, I don't mean nerfed into oblivion :/ ) in that it had an anti tank and a slightly less efficient auto hitting anti infantry mode for when you need to unleash your UNLIMITED POWAH on some infantry. Heat Lance and Blaster are both high ap, high damage weapons - make the heat lance low AP but give it a very high damage ceiling to make it for chewing through lighter vehicles with worse saves.

All The Haemonculus Weapons: How. many. Freaking. Times. Can. You. Make. A. Low. Ap. One. Damage. Poison. Weapon. (for now, we shall see if Haemonculi the masters of individual customization and artisanship get crammed into one gakky monobuild with the codex when all the different melee options are right there in the wrack kit in plastic easy to convert...) Haemonculi have like six thousand melee options and they all do the same frickin' thing. Which means, obviously, one is best at it. make them different. For christs sake why does everything have to be poison 4+, 6+ vs vehicles. Why is a hand that is a giant scissors poisonous? Why is a "flesh gauntlet" poisonous? Why are tools poisonous?

Buff almost everything?

A bit of a ramble follows.

I think warriors are okay - and may become good with a half-decent chapter tactic. Especially if it were to boost their effectiveness against cheap T3 infantry. I thought when the Indexes dropped they were amongst the best basic troops but quite a few have had point reductions since then. Can't see us getting 6 point warriors though - and warrior spam doesn't feel very fluffy/isn't why most got into DE. The five man squad with a blaster is however very effective against most enemies.

But with that said I really feel transports are a trap. Yes you might think you need them - but they are very expensive for what you get. I am not convinced making the splinter cannon assault 6 would meaningfully change this. They just don't do the damage compared to what they used to.

The flyers are both okay, as is the ravager (with lances - disies are comically overpriced). Some points reductions, chapter tactics, stratagems etc and these would be bumped up to good.

Other than that... kind of drawing a blank. HQs are overcosted and largely useless. Barring a complete re-write I struggle to see that changing. Wyches and Wracks are both poor. Trueborn and Bloodbrides are gimmicks that really have had their day - but I guess some people still swear by blasterborn (with codex creep its increasingly expensive for what you get imo, but it can certainly do some damage).

Talos are bad - while the Chronus is arguably even worse.

I guess Incubi are okay - one of the few units potentially worth webwaying in and then using a command point to get a reroll on the turn 1 charge. That is however countered with an easy bubblewrap and then suddenly you have a very tasty target to shoot or assault.

Mandrakes are okay too but again not so much they are making a name for themselves. Might move up to good if they could target characters like snipers. Or got a price reduction akin to CE rangers.

I'd like to see some new stuff - but unfortunately I don't see it happening. Castigators would be nice - although really they could just release a grotesque kit (with a new datasheet). Dark Eldar "psykers" too (captured aliens, whatever). Its always been a fluff argument that they don't do psychic - but this was meant to be based on them being physically faster and stronger than their CE cousins. I think we can say that both in terms of fluff and gameplay that went out the window editions ago. I know people are going to say "if you want psychic just ally with Eldar, their's is good" but that has always been a cop out. Especially as every single Imperial faction gets their own snowflake roll out.

There's a long list of things we need:
Model Wise:
Astrubael Vect
Lady Malice
Drahzar (new model)
Lilith (because finecast is gak)
Urien Rakarth (because again, finecast is gak)
Baron Sathonyx
Duke Slicius
An Archon model with ACTUAL options that don't suck (Archons really really suck)
An Incubus Lord
A Jetbike Lord
A Skyboard Lord
A Winged Scourge Lord
A Haemonculus Lord
A Mandrake Lord
New Beastmaster Models (because finecast is gak)
New Incubi Models (because finecast is gak)
New Grotesques that come in 3's (because finecast is gak)
New Mandrake Models (because finecast is gak)
New Court of the Archon (because finecast is gak)
Actual Trueborn Models
Actual Blood Bride Models

Gamewise:

This is supposed to be the ultimate Glass Cannon army, it should hit like a tonne of bricks in shooting and close combat. Remove -1 on the Glaive for Succubi (like is that really whats breaking the game right now?)
Half of the army wants to get into combat, it would be great if they were actually good at it.
All our HQ's suck. Really badly. Archons and Succubi should be actually good in combat. Better Weapons and Wargear.
Trueborn should come with Ghost Plate armour and Shard Carbines standard.
Succubi, Blood Brides and Wyches should inflict mortal wounds or something on a roll of a 6 to wound
Reavers are terrible in combat now. Bring back their blade vane drive by attack again. And make Blade Vanes actually useful in combat.
Shredders should be 12" flamers that is -4 to armour save on a roll of 6 to wound. Also re-rolls to wound.
Make Talos faster
Give Chronos a purpose
Reduce Disintigrater and Splinter Cannon costs drastically.
Reduce cost of Venoms and Raiders
Figure out what the hell is going on with Haemonculus Weapons. Can we actually make any of them worth taking?


What I'd like to see:

A Dark Eldar Assassin HQ
An Incubus Lord HQ
Larger Incubi Samurai style mech suits (about the size of crisis suits) with giant fething swords.
An Incubus Wraith Knight for a Lord of War
An Incubus Chariot
Incubus Jetbike Knights
Warp Spider style Assassin troupes that teleport in and out of reality through the webway
A Hellion floating torture rack/chariot with hellions on skyboards chained to the main structure.
Heavy Support Kabalite unit like devastators with cool new weapons.
Sonic Weaponry?

For the love of god, please give us actually useful relics. If I see 1 more god damn "special" pistol I'm going to lose it. No one wants special pistols. Can you just come up with something cool and interesting?

I see them adding more HQ choices for the DE army. You have your archons (similar to captain/chapter master), you have your haemonculous (similar to apothecary/techmarine).

Theres a need for a second in command but cheap HQ similar to the archon (truborn elite?), an incubus HQ, a mandrake HQ, a beastmaster HQ.

No psychers allowed for DE unfortunately, but some kind of artefact that can deny or weaken psychic powers (12" bubble of -2 to cast?).

I'd like to see a 5++ on all DE vehicles due to their speed and sleek profile, but only T7 and 10 wounds on everything but the really big and fancy stuff.

As for traits........ That should be based off your warlord. Whichever HQ you make your warlord determines your trait, and it effects all your army except for vehicles.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
I see them adding more HQ choices for the DE army. You have your archons (similar to captain/chapter master), you have your haemonculous (similar to apothecary/techmarine).

Theres a need for a second in command but cheap HQ similar to the archon (truborn elite?), an incubus HQ, a mandrake HQ, a beastmaster HQ.

No psychers allowed for DE unfortunately, but some kind of artefact that can deny or weaken psychic powers (12" bubble of -2 to cast?).

I'd like to see a 5++ on all DE vehicles due to their speed and sleek profile, but only T7 and 10 wounds on everything but the really big and fancy stuff.

As for traits........ That should be based off your warlord. Whichever HQ you make your warlord determines your trait, and it effects all your army except for vehicles.

The succubus is probably closer to being a captain than the archon as she grants rerolls on to-hit rolls. The archon is just a leadership buff and a 2+ invul save that can no longer be used to tank for a unit (and will more likely than not vanish within the first 4 save rolls you make). Our incubus HQ is covered by Drazhar (who works pretty well as a "Hierarch" mechanically), but I'd love to see Kheradruakh come back and some new beast master be introduced. Maybe that lady from the Conquest expansion? Though that wouldn't mesh with the "beast masters are dudes" fluff they introduced in the 5th edition codex.

For psyker defense, I'd like to see the crucible of malediction get buffed up enough to be scary. "If you're in range to smite me, I'm in range to do this to you." I wouldn't mind seeing the Helm of Spite return in some form as a relic either. Maybe a shorter-ranged version of shadows in the warp and/or an aura of "psykers perils on any doubles, not just double 1's and 6's." Both would force us to stand on the psyker's toes to shut him down, but aggressive use of mobility is what we're all about!

Being "only" T7 would actually increase the toughness of... literally every vehicle we have? Except maybe the tantalus? I kind of like our vehicles where they're at, but I'd love some Obsidian Rose chapter tactics to give us the option of making them a bit more durable. Or maybe a "Rapid Raider" chapter tactic that imposes a -1 to hit against <faction> vehicles that advanced in the previous phase? That would give us some nice incentives to advance and trade a point of ballistics skill for a little extra defense.

I probably wouldn't go that direction with warlord traits If you tie them directly to characters, then you take away the ability to customize your warlord (which is kind of the point of warlord traits). And requiring they all be army-wide effects limits design options unnecessarily. Especially when you consider that making an ability army-wide also means that it probably needs to be severely weaker than a trait with a more limited range. Craftworlders just got traits like, "You can't overwatch against this one model," and, "Gain a single wound and 6+ FNP for a single model". Both of which are fine but kind of minor. Spread out that level of awesome across about 50 more models, and you're not looking at a terribly appealing trait.

My wishlist:

*Improve our ranged anti-tank. Dark lances are fine, but they're also the only ranged Anti-tank we have that packs any kind of punch. I know people are enamored with blasters, and they work okay en masse, but a dedicated anti tank gun that kills about 1/5th of a rhino on average (after it hits, wounds, and gets through armor) and about 1/4th of a rhino if you happen to roll max damage just isn't very impressive. I always thought the lances and blast weapons felt about right packing the same punch but at dramatically different ranges. Let the blaster do d6 damage, says I. If we're close enough to shoot it, we're almost certainly close enough to get shot up and charged on the next turn. Diving in with a dedicated blasterborn unit to watch them remove about half their target's health just doesn't feel right on 40k's ultimate glass cannon army.

Darklight aside, the haywire weaponry this edition is laughably bad at its job. I'd be happy with tons of solutions. Improve its statline when targeting vehicles. Have the mortal wound thing be on all succesful wound rolls instead of 6s. Have each hit reduce a vehicle target's WS/BS/Movement until your next turn... Whatever. But the ultimate anti-vehicle weaponry I love is not doing its job at all this edition. Fishing for 6s to be slightly better than a blaster with a weapon that you can take at most 4 of per squad is meh.

Heat lances have just never really found their stride, and this edition's melta rule is simply not a good fit on a weapon that only hurts a rhino a third of the time. If you make haywire launchers a debuff gun, give this thing strength 7 or 8 so it can be the higher damage alternative to the blaster. I'd also love to see the range on this thing go up a measly 2" so that scourges can actually benefit from the melta effect after deepstriking.

Shredders as flamers would make a lot of sense. So would shredders as random shot# weapons that have a variable number of shots that scale well. Either of these would make them a fun, useful anti-infantry alternative to the blaster.

All of the above special weapons should be available to warriors and true born. I'd even love to see t hem mountable on raiders and venoms!

*Our HQs could use some tweaking. The archon would be fine if he just had a useful buff or special rule (regenerate command points?), but the thing that made me fall in love with them in the first place was their toybox. I'd love to see some sort of expanded armory for them again, but I'm not holding my breath. The succubus is odd in that she's a decent buffer, but she really doesn't pack much of a punch against most targets. Forget having the glaive lose its to-hit penalty (which doesn't matter after turn 3 anyway); I want it to grant more strength and/or improve her damage more. Pretty sure the new autarch star glaive is outperforming it right now. Drazhar's buff stops being relevant against most armies on turn 3. The haemonculus only really helps wracks out because going from T4 to T5 is great (helps against small arms fire and strength 8), but going from T5 to T6 with grotesques is meh (small arms still hurt you on 5s, big guns still hurt you on 3's, only really matters for strength 6 and 5 which most people don't have a ton of in this meta), and buffing Talos/Cronos toughness doesn't matter against lascannons. Also, let us put them on fething bikes and boards again! I know there was never an official model, but some of GW's most enduring fans are the one still playing that put haemonculi and archons and "archites" on bikes back in the day. It looks great, it would be fun to play, and it encourages people to do cool conversions. C'mon, Gee Dubs!

*I'd like to see the reuturn of lhameans as a squad. Maybe I'm the only one, but I was really enjoying fielding a raider full of super poison. The new lhamean is cool, but just promote her to a "High Lhamean" or "Daughter of Shaimesh" or something.

*Bring back personal drug dispensers for squad leaders and characters. I'v never stopped missing them since they went away.

*Fix reavers. They're no longer super durable, and they no longer hit hard in melee. As is, they're just a mediocre, overpriced jack of all trades unit. And please take another stab at the goofy caltrops vs blade vanes rules. Neither set of rules is great, but one is obviously inferior to the other, and they directly compete for ugprade slots.

*Give my hekatrix her gosh darn venom blade back. O_O

*Wyches in general need something. They've never actually been good at stabbing things to death. They used to be dedicated tarpits that tied enemies up until your incubi got there. They lost the ability to reduce enemy attacks in 5th edition, but they made up for it with dirt cheap haemonculi that gave them 4+ FNP on top of their invuls. Then the FNP they had access to went down to a 5+, then a 6+. I always say people wanting wyches to do a billion attacks or ignore saves on 6s. I just want them to go back to being half-decent tarpits. I'd love one of the chapter tactics to be "enemy models directing attacks at this unit suffer a -1 to hit" or "enemy models directing attacks at this unit reduce their Attacks by 1" or something. Maybe even a 3+ invul for that particular cult. They're experts at drawing out the suffering of their foes in the arena.

*Blood brides have never really had a role either. I could see them working if they were allowed to take a melee weapon per girl instead of just allowing a handful to be sprinkeld throughout the squad. It would give them better parody with basically every other customizable elite melee unit out there. I also like the idea of <Cult> tactic focused on wych weapons that grants additional benefits to blood brides wielding such weapons.

*I've tried to make the Cronos work every edition since it's been out. it lost a lot of flavor in the 7th edition codex, but it was usable. The 5th edition incarnation wasn't powerful, but it felt really good to throw pain tokens around after killing something. Maybe let it toss "pain tokens" around when it kills things? Each model killed lets you toss a pain token on a unit with Power From Pain within 12". For each pain token on a unit, add +1 to its Power From Pain FNP. Pain Tokens evaporate at the start of your turn.

*Give us our Incubi options back please. I miss blood stones, but I also sort of miss gun hats and klaivex powers. Even incubi blasters are sort of neat, though I'm not sure those are still inkeeping with the fluff.

*Khymarae could use a tweak. I love my flayed hyenas as much as the next guy, but they don't seem to have much of a role these days. The nerf to their invul they took last book means they don't soak up weapons with AP very well. Clawed fiends hit harder. Razorwings have better wounds and offense. Right now, I just use mine as cheap screens. Maybe give them their 4++ back and let them tank shots for other beasts like a shield drone?

*Hellions need deepstrike back. Their stats are finally half-decent for their points. Now let them drop in and be our turn 2 backfield harassment units!

*I want my SCs back. All of them. Even Kruellagh. Well... maybe Kruellagh. Kruellagh with an updated model. And I would really like to see Malys come back, being a Poisoned Tongue player. She basically even has a model now! Just paint up Yvraine in Poisoned Tongue colors, and don't put the Gyrinx on the base. XD

What we really need is for GW to hire someone who actually knows anything about dark eldar to write the rules.

Currently, in-index we have:

-A base haemonculus model whose loadout is illegal (he has three weapons, which makes sense as he has four arms, but there is no way for the haemonculus to take three weapons because reasons)

-A warlord trait created solely for the succubus that does nothing until turn 3 with her default, and most efficient, melee weapon

-An Archon who is essentially a copy/pasta of the Eldar Autarch except for the fact that he has no mobility options, no access to the buff that makes the autarch good, no ability to take multi-damage weaponry, and the reason why he doesn't get those abilities is because someone at GW said "oh he's selfish obviously so he's got to be a solo combatant!" and then forgot that he's a T3 S3 model with a couple attacks that kills less than one MEQ on the charge. A khornate slaughter-lord grants a reroll hit bubble to his slavering legion of mindless murder-cultists, but an Archon personally orchestrating a meticulously planned realspace raid with soldiers he bought and paid for himself is too dumb to direct his troops.

-A webway portal stratagem that is a copy/pasta from the eldar codex except that ours doesn't work on vehicles, despite our vehicles having historically always had deep strike because our whole army is supposed to attack from the webway.

-Transports, which are supposedly stripped down from Eldar designs in order to achieve maximum reckless speed to be the fastest in the galaxy, which move 2" slower than an Eldar heavy artillery tank.

-Transports with 5 and 10 transport capacity, and all units which previously were able to be taken in minimum groups of 3 upped to 5 for no reason, meaning there is no way to take one of our inefficient HQs without making your army even more inefficient by wasting 4 transport slots. There's a reason pretty much every army has 12 and 6 slots in their basic transports. Its called "Characters". You have to have somewhere to put them in your high-speed mechanized army if you're not going to allow them any mobility options.

-Laughably horrible option pricing, like 12 points for a weapon with a base 1/3 chance of causing a single mortal wound to a vehicle in an edition where most vehicles have 10 wounds minimum. Yeah let me just spend 360 points for enough of these to kill a Rhino from the safe, safe range of 24". Oh, and they didn't bother fixing any of it in CA, even when they fixed units that were almost identical (7 points for a Corsair Skyreaver who is T3 5+ 1W with 16" move and D6 poison shots base, 17 points for a Hellion with the same stats except for 2 poison shots instead of D6. 17 points for a Sky Dancer or a Windrider with T4 2W 16" move and a basic gun that's 4 rending S4 shots, 30 points for a Reaver with the same stats and a basic gun that's Rapid Fire 1 poison 4+)

Dark Eldar are awful. And if we're one of the next three codexes, I'll eat my hat, so it's at least 3 months before we'll be seeing anything. Orks, Necrons, and Tau bare minimum will come before us.

Off the top of my head:

- Don't split up Coven, Kabal and Cult units into 3 separate armies that can't benefit from one another's buffs and such. We're short enough on options as it it, without having what little we have cut into thirds. Less than thirds, in fact, since some pillock on the design team decided that Incubi and Mandrakes should be entirely on their own and unable to benefit from anything ever.

- Is it mandated somewhere that at least half of our weapons have to be complete garbage? Because we have maybe 1 decent melee weapon in our entire arsenal. The Agoniser is pathetic, the Huskblade would be a joke even if we hadn't also lost the only piece of wargear that made it worthwhile, and the Succubus' Glaive is literally the worst Power Fist in the entire game. Every other Power Fist (or -1 to-hit weapon, if you prefer) doubles the model's strength, has at least AP-3 and has at least d3 damage. What does the Succubus get? +2Str, AP-3 D1. Apparently this weapon is so powerful that it requires a -1 penalty to hit. That should tell you all you need to know about Dark Eldar.

- Could we maybe have HQs that aren't complete garbage? Their auras are crap, they've got no other force-multiplier abilities, they've basically got no abilities whatsoever and their combat stats are a joke - with the worst one of all being the dedicated-melee character. Our Special Characters are, if anything, even worse. Urien is slightly harder to kill . . . in an edition where characters are basically untargetable anyway. However, he's completely abysmal in melee (worse even than a regular Haemonculus), and brings no extra buffs for his extortionate cost. Drazhar is marginally better than the Incubus sergeant (but he costs more than an entire squad) and his buff does literally nothing from turn 3 onwards. Lilith now takes drugs and might as well hang herself at this point.

- Continuing with HQs, first off, is it really too much to ask that they be allowed to ride in our transports? You've upped the minimum squad size on virtually every unit to 5. And the Venom has a transport capacity of 5. Do you even read your own damn fluff? The Venom is supposed to be an Archon's personal transport, which he rides in on with his Incubi or Trueborn - which is now literally impossible. Now, this might be bearable if our HQs didn't have no other means of transport. Why do we - a supposedly fast army - have some of the slowest HQs in the game? We have access to jetbikes, wings and skyboards? Why are our HQs still not allowed to take any of those? I don't even care if they don't have models. I will happily convert my own models. All I want is the rules.

- Our ranged weapons seem either garbage, overpriced or both. The Dark Lance is okay. I mean, it's still objectively worse than a Lascannon for the same price, but this is still the best its been in years (again, this should tell you a lot about DE). However, why does the Blaster only do d3 damage? It's supposed to have the same stats as a Dark Lance, aside from being 18" Assault. And if we're not allowed d6 damage (because God forbid out melta-equivalent actually be effective), could we at least have 5pts knocked off its cost? Speaking of, Blast Pistols are worse than Inferno Pistols in every way yet cost twice as much. Why did you even put them in the codex? Also, the Shredder is still abysmal, because apparently 3 editions isn't enough to work out what's wrong with it (here's a hint - it's an anti-infantry weapon that sucks at killing infantry). Also, the Heat Lance is severely overpriced (on top of just being generally awful), and the Haywire Blaster is terrible even against its intended target.

- Wyches of all kinds are still awful (they don't need bonuses to hit - they need to be able to inflict meaningful damage when they do). Though I suppose they do accurately represent a bunch of women who eschew armour and brought knives to a gunfight. So they've got that going for them.

- Out transports are laughably overpriced, but special mention here goes to the Venom - which got a 50% increase in cost, in spite of both its weapons being nerfed to oblivion.

- Open-topped is a fantastic rule. Pity we have all of 2 units that can make good use of it. Given that we're a predominantly melee army, we really needed to keep the part that helped those units get into combat faster.

- Poison weapons have been declining in value since 5th. I'm not sure they're advantageous at this point. Could we maybe have some AP on them? Or some better poison values?

- A lot of our stuff is really overcosted, lacking the resilience (Hellions, Mandrakes etc.) or the offensive output (Reaver Jetbikes) to be worth their current cost.

- By far the worst thing though is the complete lack of flavour. Most of our fun and flavourful rules and wargear were stripped away in 7th, and 8th has basically taken what little was left. There's just nothing to us anymore.

The Scotsman and vipoid hit the nail on the head.

Is it too much to ask for a codex written by someone who likes Dark Eldar and even knows how to play the game?

The Glaive penalty, sucubus warlord trait and the transport size reduction are to me the most egregious offenders. These show you just how little GW understands or cares about dark Eldar.

I don’t play DE, but looking at your index convinced me that your HQ section needs a rewrite. As-is most of them don’t do anything, so even point cost drops are only going to have them become cheap ways to unlock detachments. You need them to have defined roles.

In addition to what others have said, I would like an eqivalent to the Hellpit Abomination for Covens.

Maybe a heretical position, but dark lances and blasters are fine.

This is the first edition I can think of where lances are typically better than lascannons - because there are plenty of T6/T7 3+ amour save targets. At 20 points versus 25 they seem... just better. Maybe you face a lot of T8 but I don't see it.

Blasters are okay already - and would be incredible if they did d6 damage.

I'd like to see Darklight weapons be more reliable than their Craftworld equivalents. Maybe make blasters do 3 damage, and d3+3 for dark lances? At this point it'd be worth making them cost more, maybe.

Tyel wrote:
Maybe a heretical position, but dark lances and blasters are fine.

This is the first edition I can think of where lances are typically better than lascannons - because there are plenty of T6/T7 3+ amour save targets. At 20 points versus 25 they seem... just better. Maybe you face a lot of T8 but I don't see it.

Well, Lascannons also have +12" range and wound T8 vehicles on 3s rather than 4s. Maybe I just see an unusually high number of T8 vehicles, but I find wounding them on 3s far more helpful than reduing their save from 6+ to -.

Tyel wrote:
Blasters are okay already

By what possible measure?

They're an overpriced, single-shot weapon with crap damage. If they're going to do d3 damage, then they need to cost 10pts, not 15. If they're going to cost 15pts, then they need to do d6 damage.

Otherwise, can we maybe just get access to plasmaguns? i.e. non-heavy weapons that are actually worth a damn.

 vipoid wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Maybe a heretical position, but dark lances and blasters are fine.

This is the first edition I can think of where lances are typically better than lascannons - because there are plenty of T6/T7 3+ amour save targets. At 20 points versus 25 they seem... just better. Maybe you face a lot of T8 but I don't see it.

Well, Lascannons also have +12" range and wound T8 vehicles on 3s rather than 4s. Maybe I just see an unusually high number of T8 vehicles, but I find wounding them on 3s far more helpful than reduing their save from 6+ to -.

Tyel wrote:
Blasters are okay already

By what possible measure?

They're an overpriced, single-shot weapon with crap damage. If they're going to do d3 damage, then they need to cost 10pts, not 15. If they're going to cost 15pts, then they need to do d6 damage.

Otherwise, can we maybe just get access to plasmaguns? i.e. non-heavy weapons that are actually worth a damn.

I'm Tyel with this one, most vehicles are T7, 3+ so the Dark Lance is definitely better there (I've seen enough 6's rolled for armour saves to know how valuable that extra point of AP is, stats be damned). Unless you regularly face Repulsers, Custodes Land Raiders or the bigger Nid beasts I can't really see much of an advantage for the Lascannon.

As for the Blaster, I agree on the price drop but I think it would be good to keep it at D3 damage, puts it in the region of elite infantry hunter and keeps it seperat from the Haywire Blaster and Heat Lance which are both firmly anti-tank (or at least should be....).