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An idea for contemplation.

Since 3rd edition I have literally hated what they did to the shuriken catapult.

The eldar are a dying race and they give their least trained units a 12" weapon ensuring high casualties.

Meanwhile armies like the Tau get super long range shooting.

For those who do NOT know....in the first 2 editions the Shuriken Catapult was the prized basic weapon used by characters, Rogue Traders and even Inquisitors.

It had a stat equal to the Storm Bolter but -2 saves vers the -1 for the bolter. It was technically the best range 24" weapon out there. (both had a chance at d3 shots and jamming)

Fast forward. I hate all the dice rolling in this edition. Then telling your opponent....these saves are at -3 or -4 and these are normal....just needless clutter.

At least I would like to see this suggested change. I want to know what other eldar players thought.

Make ALL shuriken catapults Assault 1 18" with a -1 AP.
Then give the Dire Avengers an ability called Bladestorm
In the hands of the Dire Avengers any roll of a 6+ to wound gives an auto additional wound.

This essentially keeps Guardians alive....are more versatile as they can stay at longer ranges. They will not do more damage but with the -1 AP there will be less dice rolling.

The Dire Avengers can show their superior training with the weapon...not just a longer carbine.

What would it do to Vehicles and Bikes with the twin linked cats? too strong or an improvement?

With Guide and Doom played they’re gross enough en masse. At least this is one area where Eldar have a downside, though lo and behold they have workarounds. Webway striking 20 Guardians into range is disgusting when paired with psychic powers. Let’s not buff the guns too!

While I get that, crunch wise, Guardians do best as a large WW bomb, I don't play them that way for fluff reasons.

I consider the Shuriken Catapault to be a sidearm. It's not their main armament. That's either the heavy weapon in the squad (all but Storm Guardians can take one), the Warlock in the squad (although no longer technically "in the squad" unfortunately), or the Specials they're toting (Storm Guardians). Each Guardian is there because it's a desperate fight - they need to be ready to man the weapon, and ensure the Craftworld holds the point.

With that viewpoint, the weapon makes sense; it's an oversized 'pistol', not intended for actual direct engagement. It's only there for immediate self defense (something getting in their face).

I get that that's not what it's used for in the meta these days, but I still build my armies that way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
All that said: please give us LasBlasters. Even if it's a 1ppm upgrade.

But the Shuriken Catapult is only given to Guardians. That's why it's short ranged, their job is to protect the weapon platform from anyone closing in. If you move Guardians in range of others that's not really a fluff way of playing them.

A Guardian is only there to defend a point.

But I like Bharrings idea. Or just bring Reavers back and make them Guardians with more options.

With the way 8E changed the core rules, I felt really certain the Shuriken weapon were going to be AP-1 instead of Ap-3 on a 6 to wound. But alas, some rules from prior editions are holding strong, in concept at least.

Personally, I'd like a change to Shuriken weapons as follows:
Catapult - 12" range, S3, Assault 3, AP-1
DA cat - Same as above but 18"
Shuricannon - 24", S5, Assault 4, AP-1

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Well as I stated earlier it used to be the best 24" range weapon in the game. … Standard rifle that is.

I understand the fluff of 3rd. They gave the gun to the novice guardians and they could shoot and not miss at close range.

To counter why they changed it to a lowly 12" gun:

First I would assume that many if not most eldar guardians would be the equal or better shots than Imperial guard.
The BS of 3+ does indicate that.
So they don't need an ork type of gun that cannot miss at close range.

Second we are talking about a projectile that weighs almost nothing since it is molecular thin. With gravitic propulsion there would be little if any meaningful resistance and the shurikens would have a range much longer than big bolter rounds, etc

Third there is no real good reason to give the Dire Avengers the longer range (the bigger gun makes little sense) They just figured that the 12+ gun was gak and had to try to fix it....they needed a whole overhaul.

 admironheart wrote:

Make ALL shuriken catapults Assault 1 18" with a -1 AP.
Then give the Dire Avengers an ability called Bladestorm
In the hands of the Dire Avengers any roll of a 6+ to wound gives an auto additional wound.

I haven't run the numbers, but I'm pretty sure this would make both avengers and guardians way worse in every scenario except shooting guardians at targets that are more than 12" and less than 18" away. For every 6 hits done by my avengers, I'll basically get 4 wounds against a marine. I'll need 9 avengers to get those 4 wounds. With "normal" avengers, I need 8 to-wound rolls = 12 shots = 6 avengers to get 4 wounds. At flat AP-1, your modified avengers' 4 wounds will make a marine in the open fail 2 saves. Normal avengers will average 1 AP-3 wound (.83 failed saves) + 3 normal saves (1 failed save) for a total of 1.83 failed saves. So you need about 9 modified avengers to do the work of 6 normal avengers. On guardians, the comparison is worse because they won't generate extra hits.

So I'm afraid I"m not a fan of this change. It makes avengers worse, and it makes guardians worse EXCEPT when shooting at things in a 12.1" - 18" range band. As someone who does use avengers and who frequently puts guardians in a wave serpent or the webway, that's a bad trade-off for me.

You seem to be coming at this from the perspective that guardian squads are all about the heavy weapon platforms, and I get that. Perhaps a better solution would be to make the minimum squad size on guardians 5 and allow them 1 heavy weapon platform at 5 bodies or two at 20? A 5 man guardian squad would be very close in cost to a squad of 9 guardsmen + a heavy weapon team. The guardians would have fewer bodies, but could tank on the heavy weapon if desired. The guardians would have better BS with better basic guns, but they'd be less likely to leverage the small arms fire due to the shuriken catapult being 12" range. Instead of feeling like you're paying for a mob of useless bodies awkwardly standing around a gun, it would feel like the unit exists to support the heavy weapon and that you have a couple of body guards helping to protect the main gunner.

Meanwhile, those of us who enjoy running large squads of guardians would still be free to do so without larger guardian units being any more cost-effective than they are currently.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:
With the way 8E changed the core rules, I felt really certain the Shuriken weapon were going to be AP-1 instead of Ap-3 on a 6 to wound. But alas, some rules from prior editions are holding strong, in concept at least.

Personally, I'd like a change to Shuriken weapons as follows:
Catapult - 12" range, S3, Assault 3, AP-1
DA cat - Same as above but 18"
Shuricannon - 24", S5, Assault 4, AP-1

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Interesting. What exactly does the math for that look like compared to the current rules? At a glance, shuriken weapons would "feel" more like a death by a thousand cuts gun, but I tend to shy away from most strength 3 guns. Sloppy math versus a marine says...
Current rules: 6 avengers = 12 shots = 8 hits = 4 wounds = ~2 dead marines
Your rules: 6 avengers = 18 shots = 12 hits = 4 wounds = 2 dead marines

So about the same in that scenario, but I'm not sure how it would look against a broader range of enemies. Certainly we'd be way worse against anything T6 or higher, and Doom currently makes shooting at T6 and T7 targets with shurikens not the worst idea.


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Bharring wrote:

All that said: please give us LasBlasters. Even if it's a 1ppm upgrade.

IIRC, lasblasters are currently 7 points per model. Considering that a guardian with a lasblaster would basically be shooting 2 rapid firing lasguns from 24" away with the ballistics skill of a veteran guardsman (rather than a troop guardsman), I suspect we'd end up paying more than 1ppm. But I agree. Lasblasters are cool on corsairs, and they'd be cool on guardians.

Wait...

Shuriken Catapults, right now, are S4 AP0 (AP-3 on 6s to-wound), meaning that for every 6 hits against Marines, they deal 2 wounds at AP0 and 1 at AP-3.
After saves, that's one and a half dead Marines.

Modified to be AP-1 all the time, they do 3 wounds at AP-1 to Marines.
After saves, that's one and a half dead Marines.

For Dire Avengers with the proposed Bladestorm, 6 hits does 4 wounds at AP-1.
After saves, that's two dead Marines.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Wait...

Shuriken Catapults, right now, are S4 AP0 (AP-3 on 6s to-wound), meaning that for every 6 hits against Marines, they deal 2 wounds at AP0 and 1 at AP-3.
After saves, that's one and a half dead Marines.

Modified to be AP-1 all the time, they do 3 wounds at AP-1 to Marines.
After saves, that's one and a half dead Marines.

For Dire Avengers with the proposed Bladestorm, 6 hits does 4 wounds at AP-1.
After saves, that's two dead Marines.

Sounds about right, but note that Galef's proposal (AP-1 at all times) also makes them strength 3, meaning 6 hits will result in 2 wounds rather than 3.

Those are two separate proposals, though, aren't they?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Those are two separate proposals, though, aren't they?

Are they? I might have skipped over someone (sorry!). I was looking at...

* Current official rules
* OP's suggestion (AP-1, 1 shot apiece, to-wound rolls of 6 generate an extra wound)
* Galef's suggestion (AP-1, 2 shots, S3)

Edit: Of course, all of those suggestions would result in a different number of hits for the same number of dire avengers, so...

Thanks JNA

My main beef is not with the rules...it is with the fluff.

Knowing that the Shuriken was the greatest rifle in the game til the Tau showed up and now it is the greatest pistol in the game sadly.

The GOAL is to find a way to make it 18" or 24" range again!!!
And keep it close to the costs of current units.

I would love the average eldar to be few in numbers but oh so deadly...but GW marketing wont have that on their bottom dollar.

So what ideas are there to tweek this?

-2 AP like 2nd ed would make everyone hate the Eldar all over again.
24" range + move with Battle Focus and Fire and Fade would be open to abuse I am sure if someone was mindful to figure it out.
Remember it has to work on bikes and Tanks as well since most have the twin linked version.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, I almost never run Platforms in any edition. Sometimes with a webway bomb I will throw in a Shuriken cannon.

I run a lot of Dire Avenger Units.....I have like 50 models.

I am tending to fit Storm Guardians over Defender Guardians of late.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldehunt I imagine 20 Defenders running up + Advance move...Shooting 18" away and using Fire and Fade to fall back to a safer distance. Would that be something you would think was a good tradeoff?

 admironheart wrote:
Thanks JNA

My main beef is not with the rules...it is with the fluff.

Knowing that the Shuriken was the greatest rifle in the game til the Tau showed up and now it is the greatest pistol in the game sadly.

The GOAL is to find a way to make it 18" or 24" range again!!!
And keep it close to the costs of current units.

I would love the average eldar to be few in numbers but oh so deadly...but GW marketing wont have that on their bottom dollar.

Those sound like two semi-distinct objectives.
Objective A is to make individual guardians have longer-ranged guns.
Objective B is to make eldar "few in numbers but oh so deadly".

For A in isolation, perhaps you'd be comfortable using avenger rules? You say that you don't really use platforms. Guardians with longer ranged shuriken shots and no heavy weapons sounds a lot like avengers to me, and avengers are reasonably balanced where they're at.

For objective B, we might be talking about a complete overhaul of the faction. Sort of a primaris facelift. Currently, eldar sort of straddle the elite/non-elite divide. If you want to significantly improve the abilities of the humble guardian, we might have to start looking at fairly dramatic changes to the faction as a whole. Which could be an interesting discussion, but probably outside the scope of shuriken catapults alone.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldehunt I imagine 20 Defenders running up + Advance move...Shooting 18" away and using Fire and Fade to fall back to a safer distance. Would that be something you would think was a good tradeoff?

Wyldhunt wrote:


Fire and Fade as in the stratagem? Using the rules proposed in your opening post? Eh... I'd be getting about half the damage output of normal guardian using the official rule.

I think JNA showed the math that you would get the same. GW just made everyone a big fangirl with rolling lots of dice. In the past editions weapons were quite deadly with a lot less dice. The rules just need to get rid of the fangirl hype about throwing 48 dice and killing 10 when you can throw 15 dice and still kill 10 if the rules were written that way.

I'd be more exposed to enemy fire if I don't get the first turn and on subsequent turns if my opponent keeps his distance.

I am not sure how this affects this at all?

Fire and Fade is a handy strat, but hiding 20 guardians behind terrain is a big ask. Plus, other, more expensive units (dark reapers for instance) probably need it more than the guardians do. Plus, Fire and Fade would only benefit a single unit per turn meaning I'd be discouraged from fielding multiple units of avengers, guardians, etc.

I agree....my point was a 20 guardian blob...instead of being with in rapid fire range at the end of their shooting would now be up to 24 " away....forcing the enemy to move if they want to engage the lowly guardian

I love the idea of dropping the "On a 6" rule from Shuriken. Everyone hates it, and it just bloats.

Giving DAs a special effect on 6s would be fluffy, and putting special rules on a special unit, and taking it away from the baseline weapon streamlines the faction.

The crunch would have to be done carefully, but I support that direction.

Just to clarify, my proposal is to:
Trade 1 Str (4 --> 3; 6 --> 5) in favor of 1 additional shot
Trade AP-3 on 6s, to AP-1 all the time.

Those are very small changes, but I think make them feel way closer to a "death by a thousand cuts" weapon as Wyldhunt puts it.
Which is my goal. Make the weapon "feel" like it's decribed in the fluff, not necessarily make it better in-game.
In-game, however, this will make Shuriken weapons sliiiiighly better against T3/4 because of the extra shot, definitely better vs T5/8 because the to-wound rolls would be the same and just slightly worse vs T6/7. But with AP-1 all the time, they'd be far more reliable. And Shurikens should be an anti-infantry gun, not an anti-vehicle/monster gun.

Now that GW is using more "non-standard" ranges that aren't increments of 6", I feel it wouldn't be too much to make Catapults 15", Avenger Cat 20" and Cannons 30"
With M7" on the Infantry with these weapons, getting in range shouldn't be an issue.

But I think GW has the right of it by not making them have the same kind of range other Factions weapons. Just compare a Bolt weapon, which has a traditional projectile that spins from rifling to increase its accuracy over distance.
Shurikens, but contrast spin horizontally and if you have ever played with one of those foam disc shooters, or played Paintball, who will know those "projectiles" spin off wildly after a short distance once they lose a bit of velocity.

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 admironheart wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:


Fire and Fade as in the stratagem? Using the rules proposed in your opening post? Eh... I'd be getting about half the damage output of normal guardian using the official rule.

I think JNA showed the math that you would get the same.

I don't believe so. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, JNA showed that the damage for every 6 shots would be about the same, but your proposal means that you'd need more models to land those 6 shots. And that was with avengers and your proposed Bladestorm rule. Guardians would be even worse off.

GW just made everyone a big fangirl with rolling lots of dice. In the past editions weapons were quite deadly with a lot less dice. The rules just need to get rid of the fangirl hype about throwing 48 dice and killing 10 when you can throw 15 dice and still kill 10 if the rules were written that way.

I mean, sure. But your rules don't let me kill the same number of enemies with fewer dice; they let me kill fewer enemies with fewer dice. Again, something might just be sailing right over my head.

Also, there's something to be said for the "feel" various weapons provide. Galef's suggestion is roughly as lethal as the current rules, but rolling more dice makes shuriken weapons feel like they're firing a hail of relatively weak shots. If guardians fired, for the sake of hyperbole, one shot apiece at strength 6 AP -4, their weapons would feel powerful, but they'd also feel more like hefty, slow rate of fire guns. There's something to be said for aesthetics.

I'd be more exposed to enemy fire if I don't get the first turn and on subsequent turns if my opponent keeps his distance.

I am not sure how this affects this at all?

My understanding, based on your previous post and the following part of this one, is that you were pointing out that a greater weapon range combined with Fire & Fade would add to the durability of the guardians. Using a webway portal to show up instead means that I"m more exposed on subsequent turns, but it also means that I can get 20 guys in range to fire unscathed. The 18" guardians not webway portaling would be susceptible to enemy fire before they could use their guns, and they'd pack less of a punch when they did get into range than the 2 shot 12" guardians.

Fire and Fade is a handy strat, but hiding 20 guardians behind terrain is a big ask. Plus, other, more expensive units (dark reapers for instance) probably need it more than the guardians do. Plus, Fire and Fade would only benefit a single unit per turn meaning I'd be discouraged from fielding multiple units of avengers, guardians, etc.

I agree....my point was a 20 guardian blob...instead of being with in rapid fire range at the end of their shooting would now be up to 24 " away....forcing the enemy to move if they want to engage the lowly guardian

Look...as you say big guardian blob can be quite good if you doom/guide etc. But listen, that's a LOOOOT of set up and investment to make a basic troop unit effective for one round of shooting then very likely die or be out of range.

They are range 12". 12...!! Unless you WW them they just don't do anything. Intercessors/bolter drills just turn turn them into mash. So you have to put them into a wave serpent. which means you then have to take a wave serpent...

They need to be bumped up to 16/18" DA cats 22" and Shurikenn cannons can be 26 or stay at 24"".

No other changes needed stat wise. -3 on 6s is nice but not reliable. (I would much rather have a static -1 tbh but hey).

 Argive wrote:
Look...as you say big guardian blob can be quite good if you doom/guide etc. But listen, that's a LOOOOT of set up and investment to make a basic troop unit effective for one round of shooting then very likely die or be out of range.

They are range 12". 12...!! Unless you WW them they just don't do anything. Intercessors/bolter drills just turn turn them into mash. So you have to put them into a wave serpent. which means you then have to take a wave serpent...

Eh. Not that much of an investment, and also not that necessarry of an investment. If you want guardians to kill something, you do need to deepstrike them or put them in a wave serpent. Fortunately, deepstriking a single guardian blob is only 1CP, and wave serpents are highly competitive. Guide is one way to go to help their offense, but you can also get away with making them Ulthwe and spending 1CP to bump them to BS 2+ and/or cast Ancestor's Grace on them (if you're playing ynnari) to let them reroll 1's. Or you can just go Biel-Tan and given a respectable BS3+ with rerolling 1's to hit. Lots of ways to help them land lots of shots.

If you're sending them after an expensive, durable target, then Doom is definitely a huge help. But if you're trying to kill a durable, expensive unit, you were probably going to doom it anyway. Doom is so good, aeldari armies of all stripes are often tempted to splash in a farseer for doom alone. So you're not exactly investing into a gimmick by including Doom in your army.

If you're just using the blob to movement block something, crowd an objective, and/or kill that not-super-intimidating unit that you just want to get around to murdering at some point, their 36-40 shuriken shots (of which 24+ will hit before any sort of buffs are applied) can do a respectable amount of damage on their own.

I usually spend 1 or 2CP on guardians over the course of a game, maybe 3 if I'm fielding them as ulthwe. They're very cost effective, and they're a way smaller overall investment than, for instance, ynnari dark reapers.

They need to be bumped up to 16/18" DA cats 22" and Shurikenn cannons can be 26 or stay at 24"".

I'm really not opposed to increasing the range on their guns, but I also don't feel that 4" will make or break them as a unit. Battle Focus means that a guardian defenders unit that advances will have an effective range of between 20" and 25" (average 22.5"). Dire avengers are between 26" and 31" (average 28.5"). That's a pretty significant chunk of the table, especially if you're not making them march all the way across the table.

Increasing their range would be neat in that it feels fluffy for craftworlders, but it doesn't seem like their current range gets in the way of them being a solid pick. I'd argue that if you're not putting them in a serpent, deepstriking them, or having them stay still to shoot their weapon platforms, you're probably not really use them as efficiently as you could be.

Now that said, it does feel weird to have 9 dudes protecting the 1 guy firing a heavy weapon. Guardsmen do that, sure, but they're also half the price as a unit and can start chipping in small arms fire at double the range of a stationary guardian squad. Which is why I kind of like the idea of reducing the max squad size to 5 and allowing a heavy weapon platform to be taken at 5 models. Feels like fewer bodies are being wasted. Comes out to a similar cost to to the guardsmen squad with 1 heavy weapon. Makes it easier to fill out a batallion with guardian defenders.

As far as i know, the reason catapults are short ranged is legacy. In previous edition eldar could move after they shoot, so they decreased the range for balance purpose.
This edition they removed the rule but did not fix the range, there is no real reason that we have gun with 12 inch range other than flamers and pistols.
You need to have 24 inches to be able to protect your platforms, or else you are just getting killed by small arms fire and guardians are 2x price of the normal conscript/guard, they are more expensive than fire warriors, kabalite, cultist, pink horror.

I find they endure firepower better than DAs. Not per model, but per point. So if my opponent dumps a bunch of firepower into a midfield Guardian squad because it's potshotting with a Brightlance, that's firepower not going into other squads.

That said, a single Brightlance for 100-ish points with basically the durability of an IG squad isn't great.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Marin wrote:
As far as i know, the reason catapults are short ranged is legacy. In previous edition eldar could move after they shoot, so they decreased the range for balance purpose.
This edition they removed the rule but did not fix the range, there is no real reason that we have gun with 12 inch range other than flamers and pistols.
You need to have 24 inches to be able to protect your platforms, or else you are just getting killed by small arms fire and guardians are 2x price of the normal conscript/guard, they are more expensive than fire warriors, kabalite, cultist, pink horror.

Move-shoot-move became a thing in the 6E Codex, but Shuriken Catapaults were 12" before then.

They were actually 12" A2 S4Ap5 - basically Space Marine Shotguns - for most of 6E. No Bladestorm or Battlefocus.

Bharring wrote:


That said, a single Brightlance for 100-ish points with basically the durability of an IG squad isn't great.

60ish points for a squad of 5 guys and a bright lance, however, seems pretty alright.

Yeah that's kind of what I mean. I agree there are ways to make them efficient but they are very inefficient on their own without that support. A guide would most likely go on reapers/some heavy guns to go after high value targets if it goes off. Celestial shield is nice but then you will most likely have to burn another 2cp to keep them from fleeing after taking an inevitable pasting. I personally think they are a bit of a trap.

A big blob of 20 in the webway with discipline of black guardians is the only way to field them efficiently I think Anything else is bit of a sink if you don't get first turn. I use my WS for wraithguard/blades. Think guardians are a waste for a WS cos you can only fit 10

A direct translation of 2nd edition to 8th edition would be:
A) 24" rapid fire 2, S4 AP -1
Or
B) 24" assault 3, S4, AP -1

That's what I want to see. Along with BS 4+ like they used to have.
Giving Dire Avengers a different version was only necessary because they messed up in 3rd edition and decided to double down on the mistake instead of fixing it.
The game is riddled with weird rules that stem from the oversimplification in 3rd edition. 8th got rid of some (instant death) and brought others back (nothing better than BS 5/2+).

The most conservative, simple change I'd like would be:

Catapult- 18" Assault 3, S3, AP-1
Avenger Cat- 18" Assault 3, S4, AP-1
Cannon- 24" Assault 4, S5, AP-1

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I'd be a little concerned with Guardians at 8ppm being OP. They wound anything on a 6, get 3 shots, and have built-in AP-1. At 18" range, they might be able to go leafblower on a lot of other armies.

Bharring wrote:
I'd be a little concerned with Guardians at 8ppm being OP. They wound anything on a 6, get 3 shots, and have built-in AP-1. At 18" range, they might be able to go leafblower on a lot of other armies.

Agreed. I'll amend my suggestion back to what I originally suggested:

Catapult- 12" Assault 3, S3, AP-1
Avenger Cat- 18" Assault 3, S3, AP-1
Cannon- 24" Assault 4, S5, AP-1

With Battlefocus and M7" is this should still mean some good dakka, if risky for getting so close

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