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In reading through the Codex a few times now, there are many many powerful things. And there are certain attributes that definitely benefit vehicles in general. But I can't help but feel that the near-complete moratorium on vehicle re-rolls is just atrocious, and either an unintended oversight or perhaps a Nerf gone way way to far. Prisms, nightspinners, platforms, wave serpents, falcons, vypers, war walkers, hornets, etc etc etc, all don't have core and thus cannot benefit from the Autarch re-roll 1's or Guide/Doom, even things like Natural Leader are core only. Not only that, things like the linked-fire stratagem that used to include full re-rolls to hits and wounds now includes no re-rolls at all. Does anyone else agree this probably is a Nerf gone too far, similarly, does this basically render Eldar vehicles dead in competitive tournament settings?

In earlier editions Eldar vehicles were very strong.
I remember in the German GT 2008, there were 5 Eldar players among the top 7 all with Falcons (me the only one without Eldrad) which were nearly indestructable at that time.
Then GW removed the ''Falcon rule'' and I played Serpent spam (and then switched to Necrons). Five Serpents loaded with Aspects approaching slowly the enemy front ranks were often rather effective to whittle down enemy units before the Aspects went for the enemy's throat.

I appreciate that trip to the past, and I agree that Eldar vehicles have been dominant in the past, but you just didn’t really elaborate into the present. I’m just guessing, but are you saying that because they were so good in the past, it’s OK that they’ve been nerfed heavily now? That’s fine to feel that way, but that also somewhat confirms my original question, they are currently kind of dead as competitive options.

 peteralmo wrote:
I appreciate that trip to the past, and I agree that Eldar vehicles have been dominant in the past, but you just didn’t really elaborate into the present. I’m just guessing, but are you saying that because they were so good in the past, it’s OK that they’ve been nerfed heavily now? That’s fine to feel that way, but that also somewhat confirms my original question, they are currently kind of dead as competitive options.

It was not my intention to say that ''because they were so good in the past, it’s OK that they’ve been nerfed heavily now".
A vehicle heavy Eldar army is only viable when the pt costs are moderate, and here I'm just talking about Serpents and Falcons (Warwalkers aside) and not about Prisms and Spinners which have never contributed to top Eldar lists.

Auspex Tactics vid on the first few placing lists seen from the new codex, all 3 lists feature multiple grav tanks (2, 4, 5 units respectively):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhgwsDbb7qI

I'm not so sure the standard issue lack of core keyword is going to hurt much at all, pretty much all vehicle weapons have gone up considerably in power, Falcons and Serpents have nice new abilities locked in, and surprisingly few stratagems in the codex are core/infantry locked. War Walkers and Fire Prisms are a bit underwhelming to me - but certainly not unplayable.

vehicles are not dead. You can always skirt by some of the rerolls with use of fate dice or multiple rerolls through Autarch rule (though latter cost CP). Nightspinners are probably going to have the CTM to make sure they're hitting on 3s (while healthy).
I think they'll do just fine.

This is something that's pretty consistent though for most 9th ed codices. In 8th, one of the issues was that reroll auras and abilities disproportionately benefited vehicles compared to infantry and so there were mass parking lots of things like Stormravens circling around Roboute Guilliman while twin asscannons razorbacks did donuts shooting everything with rerolls. To address this, GW implemented the core rule to limit what had access to rerolls. Now I do think they went too far the other way, and vehicles in general aren't doing that hot unless they are pushed price-wise (e.g. Squigbuggies on initial release pre-nerf) but I also don't think they should have access to easy rerolls like CORE outside of very limited and specific instances. As far as I can tell right now, Eldar are generally on the expensive or overpriced side for most of their units, so that means its just more pronounced for them than usual since it's already hard enough to fit enough of your core units into the army.

Shadowweavers look very strong to me with their ability to ignore LoS, as do the Falcons with their new Drop Pod ability.

Vehicles in general need more wounds and less reliance on invuln saves while GW needs to scale back on AP and damage creep and actually go past the T8 cap corner they've put themselves into.

Thanks for all the feedback. It's a relief that we're seeing some show up in tournaments. I definitely agree with Grimskul that despite how good many of our units are, rules wise, they clearly costed us at the ceiling of reasonable plausibility. Perhaps the rules are fine, and that included essentially no re rolls to vehicles. But we either need Eldar points to come down, or Tau/Custodes points to go up, if we're to have somewhat level playing fields at the top tables.

Shadowweavers look very strong to me with their ability to ignore LoS, as do the Falcons with their new Drop Pod ability.

With Shadow Weavers you have a point.
But not sure about the Falcon with said DP ability since as an Eldar player you want to hold the enemy at arm's length.

 peteralmo wrote:
In reading through the Codex a few times now, there are many many powerful things. And there are certain attributes that definitely benefit vehicles in general. But I can't help but feel that the near-complete moratorium on vehicle re-rolls is just atrocious, and either an unintended oversight or perhaps a Nerf gone way way to far. Prisms, nightspinners, platforms, wave serpents, falcons, vypers, war walkers, hornets, etc etc etc, all don't have core and thus cannot benefit from the Autarch re-roll 1's or Guide/Doom, even things like Natural Leader are core only. Not only that, things like the linked-fire stratagem that used to include full re-rolls to hits and wounds now includes no re-rolls at all. Does anyone else agree this probably is a Nerf gone too far, similarly, does this basically render Eldar vehicles dead in competitive tournament settings?

Them not core? Welcome to 9th ed. This was what all vehicles should have been from day 1 but thanks to GW release schedule some are still playing with 8e rules

I think they range from very good to decent but maybe overcoated.
The good are nightspinners, shadow weavers, falcons and wave serpents. Not every list is going to spam them but most lists will probably have some.
The decent are war walkers, fire prisms, vibro cannons and vypers. These ones I see as useable in some cases but possibly not your first choices.
Vehicles tend to be supplementary now, they're not the stars of the show but they often help your stars shine brighter.

 kingheff wrote:
I think they range from very good to decent but maybe overcoated.
The good are nightspinners, shadow weavers, falcons and wave serpents. Not every list is going to spam them but most lists will probably have some.
The decent are war walkers, fire prisms, vibro cannons and vypers. These ones I see as useable in some cases but possibly not your first choices.
Vehicles tend to be supplementary now, they're not the stars of the show but they often help your stars shine brighter.

I'm starting to think Vibro Cannons might be a serious sleeper, by running three they become auto-hitting and +1 to wound, that's like bonkers good.

The only issue with vibros is their lack of speed and terrain density. If you are on a fairly open board I think they'll work very well, if it's a tight board with lots of obscuring I think they might struggle. On paper, they're very good but I'd want to play a few games with them. I do have 9 of the old metal vibros so hopefully they're great!

 wuestenfux wrote:

Shadowweavers look very strong to me with their ability to ignore LoS, as do the Falcons with their new Drop Pod ability.

With Shadow Weavers you have a point.
But not sure about the Falcon with said DP ability since as an Eldar player you want to hold the enemy at arm's length.

You're not forced to put Fire Dragons inside and come down within charge distance!

Put a cheap obsec unit in to drop near an objective (if not central board), or just drop further away and use range of guns (pulse laser/brightlance). The drop pod rule means you are immune to alpha strike and will at least get a turn or two of shooting before dying, at no CP cost whatseover. You can also dump out a unit of infantry to perform RND in that quarter since it's tough for aeldari infantry to stay alive in open with the amount of decent ignore LOS out there.

What? lol no, Spinners, Serpents, and Falcons are all very good in the new book.

I think prisms are almost certainly overcosted. Probably not by a huge amount - but the package just isn't there.

Nightspinners are fine. I think some people are getting upset with the randomness that is 2d6 shots. You will have games where they really let you down - which I think for a tournament is kind of annoying.

I'm sort of convinced *on theory* Falcons/WS are a touch overcosted - but people are using them to great success, so I suspect I'm just wrong there. I think its the issue that you need some point-shooting in your list, and they can simultaneously tick that box while facilitating what would otherwise be footslogging aspect warriors.

But then if you are going to take say 2 WS and a Falcon that's a quarter of your list, and sort of dictates your build choices. But then if guys outside transports would just be insta-gibbed by say Tau shooting (and they kind of are), it may be competitively necessary.

I think war walkers are fine - but not obviously desirable given other things in the book. Support weapons are definitely fine, but *I feel* the average punter doesn't have many sitting around. I don't anyway.