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BrianDavion wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Maybe some enemy targeting manipulation based on positioning like Alpha Legion or Deepkin in AoS. Aside from allowing neg stacking or the can only be hit on X ideas not sure how else they can represent resilience through speed and elusiveness in the current system.

6++ invul save, that improves to 5++ if the unit moved, and 4++ if the unit advanced?

I like that. Especially it's clear improvement with added speed. Would be happy to see that as part of the official update.

Regarding scorps, banshees, and incubi... The reason incubi have more attacks than scorps and banshees is that incubi used to be "dark mirrors" of scorpions. Once upon a time, both units had their own gun hats (mandiblasters and tormentor helms) that granted +1 Attacks. At some point, they started experimenting with mandiblasters eventually resulting in the mortal wound mechanic we have now while the incubi just had their +1 attack lumped into their profile rather than wargear (and then later gained a new gunhat rule in the form of their morale gimmick).

So incubi were basically scorpions that let the hate flow through them and invested in power swords (all the better to slice you with) while the scorpions had less killy gear and powers but more utility/nuance in the form of outflank mechanics.

If you'd asked an eldar player in 5th edition what the roles for banshees and scorpions were, they'd tell you banshees are a little better at killing heavy infantry, and scorpions are more durable and a little better at clearing hordes.

My disorganized wishlist:

* Battle Focus no longer lets us ignore the to-hit penalty with assault weapons. Instead, it gives us a 5+ "ward save" when we advance. Basically an invuln save that you take after failing saves but before any FNP rolls. This gives the eldar a durability boost that doesn't punish armies with good BS for paying for good BS. Making it a simple FNP would work less well because you shouldn't be worse at dodging a multi-damage krak missile than a single damage lasgun shot.

* Give scorpions a way to deepstrike closer to the enemy. Maybe let them land 6" away if they appear in terrain, or else just let them steal the Calidus's rule. You could even make it a stratagem, but they should probably be able to reliably charge a target out of deepstrike.

* Give scorpions a stratagem that lets them deepstrike at the end of their opponent's movement phase. Let them burst out of hiding to throw a wrench in your opponent's plans. Maybe the scorpions are blocking a charge now. Maybe they're not blocking anything, but they're suddenly in position to score points on an objective or go after one of your opponent's units unless he kills them this turn.

* Give fire dragons the Alpha Legion Sabotage strat (+/- 2 to Explodes rolls). Rather than giving them the raw (power creepy) offense of eradicators, let them use their superior skill and reflexes to target the important bits of the enemy unit. Turn every vehicle in your opponent's army into a potential source of mortal wounds. That said, I wouldn't mind just making fusion weapons 1d6+2 damage at all ranges as a nod to eldar tech being superior to imperial tech.

* Give Swooping Hawks the ability to impose a -1 to hit on units they target with their grenade packs representing the concussive or EMP nature of their grenades. Reinforces their role as the "harassment" unit.

* If all the models in a warp spiders unit target the same enemy in the shooting phase, said enemy cannot fall back or advance in their following turn.

* Autarchs lose the current Path of Command. Instead, let them do one of the following "orders" each command phase:
1.) Survey the battlefield. Gain a CP.
2.) Let a targeted friendly unit shoot or charge after falling back this turn.
3.) Let a targeted friendly unit move up to 7" after shooting this turn. It may not charge if it does so.

* Phoenix Lords. I'm reluctant to give units raw power boosts, but these guys really warrant it. Most of them hit less hard than a generic marine captain despite having the fluff gravitas of something closer to a primarch. You could also give them "orders" that benefit their own aspect.

* Bring back squad warlocks. I like the idea of giving them relatively minor buff psychic powers that are always active unless your opponent spends DtW attempts in the psychic phase to deny them (always count as having rolled a 7 on a psychic test for purposes of DtW).

* Give Dire Avengers some combination of overwatching like Tau, heroically intervening, or being allowed to make a charge attempt at the start of the enemy charge phase. Some or all of those might need to be stratagems. I want these guys to be the unit that has your other units' backs. You should want these guys protecting your other units from charges and giving your opponent reasons to shoot at them instead of your elites.

* Wraith Lords. Just drop them to 9 Wounds and ditch the vehicle damage chart. They're actually pretty okay right now when they're not hitting on 5+.

* D-Weapons/Wraith Weapons. Good candidates for d6+2 damage? Make them hit harder than other anti tank weapons again, but being expensive and only available to certain platforms should keep them from being an autotake.

* Shining Spears. I kind of think ditch the invuln (especially with my proposed battle focus change) and just give them the Withdraw exarch power as a squad ability. It's always weird when bikers decide to stop moving so the enemy can spend two turns punching them.

* Banshees are actually pretty close to being good against non-marines right now. Strength 4 power swords really helped them out. Give them +1 Attacks, and I think you're golden. All of the melee aspects (and dire avengers) could probably stand to have +1 attacks, really.

* Change Ghost Helms to no longer ignore wound when casting. Instead, you can never lose your last wound to perils of the warp. Your opponent will be less annoyed that you're shrugging off wounds, and your millenia-old psyker will stop randomly exploding because this just happened to be his unlucky day. Oh, and give these modified Ghost Helms to warlocks.

* Change warlock councils to be made up of 1 or 2 wound models, and make them cheaper. A squad of jedi is fun, and weapons that wound on 2+ with no AP and decent damage have t heir place. They're just way too expensive at the moment. Fluff it as these guys being less experienced warlocks who can pull stuff off when working in tandem but struggle to do their job on their own.

* Reduce guardian squads' minimum sizes to 5. Spending nearly 100 points on ablative wounds for 1 missile launcher is awkward as heck, and 8 man storm guardian squads are obnoxious to fit inside their semi-mandatory wave serpents.

I could go on.

I was thinking the same thing with scorpions as far as deep striking in cover. Outside of 6" seems reasonable, and now that Deathwing have already broken the deepstrike inside 9" rule (plus a few others), it's not out of the realm of possibility.

It is time for Eldar infantry to have a serious redesign ruleswise, the rest of the codex (bikes, vehicles, artillery) works just fine (barring a few weapon redesigns). Tie that in with new infantry models and it could be a great time to be an Eldar player.

the main issue is just: we learned over the course of all of 8th that W1 marine infantry just DID NOT WORK at a 15ppm-ish price point with the lethality of 8th-9th. Once you get up to about 12ppm for basically any kind of W1 infantry with no other special defenses, things really start to fall apart because basically any anti-infantry weapon becomes hyper-efficient at killing them.

It seems like GW is leaning into the lethality route to try and make it so it doesn't matter if your gak dies to a stiff breeze, it makes its points back INSTANTLY if it gets just one round of attacks.

Honestly, I think that'll suck to play against. I don't like it when my opponents are just frustrated playing against eldar stuff, it's not ever a good time as an eldar player. but I'm concerned that that's the direction we're headed here having seen the stat block for incubi.

I think the elephant in the room is expert crafters.
Or more to the point, army wide traits.

We just don't have any...expert crafters is theonly thing that's letting us compete. Itslike a glue holding the codex together currently allowing us any kind of flexibility in terms of list building.

And some would argue its too powerful. But if you get rid of it, what then?

In the world of doctrinessuper doctrines and sacred rights, we certainly can expect something. But What?

 Argive wrote:
I think the elephant in the room is expert crafters.
Or more to the point, army wide traits.

We just don't have any...expert crafters is theonly thing that's letting us compete. Itslike a glue holding the codex together currently allowing us any kind of flexibility in terms of list building.

And some would argue its too powerful. But if you get rid of it, what then?

In the world of doctrinessuper doctrines and sacred rights, we certainly can expect something. But What?

It'll be called something like "the path of war" and it'll be a totally fixed doctrine-esque ability set but with no flexibility (because the eldar are so fixed in their strategies!) and it'll be something similar on the "heavy weapons - assault weapons - melee weapons" marine progression.

None of these rules have any real fluff basis, They're just pure manufactured discontent, like how in 7th your new codex meant you got a superformation and you got to play that superformation against opponents who hadn't gotten their codex yet and get a huge unfair advantage, and in 8th you got your relics traits strats and armywide rules and you got to play against index armies who didn't get gak, and now you get your oh-so-fluffy armywide bonus rule because "why not" and you'll use it against armies that don't have one yet because why the feth not, you've been forced to play against marines with their fething doctrines time after time after time. And THAT wasn't fair so screw it now YOU'RE going to get your free rule and you'll pretend theyll get theirs when their codex comes out and GW won't just pop a new edition and reset the clock and pick some faction+Space Marines to get their new special thing that nobody has an equivalent of.

It's incredible to me that we're 3 editions into this cycle and people havent figured it out yet and just...decided not to play along. It's not like it's hard to spot the gimmick rules that GW is using for this purpose. They want to make sure an army is stronger after their codex than before it, so they're just like "eh screw it, give 'em a....I dunno, give 'em plus one strength on all their guns and an extra -1AP, army wide, just for buying the codex."

You seem to have totally missed the point of my post.

I don't think anyone at this stage is expecting not to get a doctrine style treatment.

The only real question is what ?

An interesting questions. We have three pure factions rules types. Will CWE use one of those models or something uniquely different. For review:

Space Marine Doctrines: Fixed temporary bonus for limited items with semi-fixed progression
Necron Command Protocols: One turn bonuses with flexible, but prearranged activation
Sisters of Battle Sacred Rights: Single (or two if you roll randomly) selected bonus for army for the game

Would any of these models even make sense for the CWE?

Making it a simple FNP would work less well because you shouldn't be worse at dodging a multi-damage krak missile than a single damage lasgun shot.

That is like saying there is no difference in avoiding a pencil thrown at your and a 50kg sack of flour. Maybe it shouldn't work on weapons with blast, or something. no fast moving should be able to save you when a plasma anihilator turns 100m around you in to super heated slag.

 alextroy wrote:
An interesting questions. We have three pure factions rules types. Will CWE use one of those models or something uniquely different. For review:

Space Marine Doctrines: Fixed temporary bonus for limited items with semi-fixed progression
Necron Command Protocols: One turn bonuses with flexible, but prearranged activation
Sisters of Battle Sacred Rights: Single (or two if you roll randomly) selected bonus for army for the game

Would any of these models even make sense for the CWE?

SoB-like would make the most sense to me. Fluff it as the Skein of fate, being manipulated by the seers to favor certain aspects.

I could see them going with battle field role.

For example

T1 - All <Vehicle> Fly get 3" movement bonus / Fats attack battlefield role units reroll hit rolls of 1 in the shooting phase.

T2 - <Wraith construct>; add 1 to damage characteristics of ranged weapons / Heavy support battlefield choice units re-roll wound roll of 1

T3 - <Aspect warrirors> Get 1+ wound roll/ Elite units re-roll hit rol and reroll wound roll (expert crafters aimed at exarchs)

Or something along those lines.
Would that be busted?

This would be somewhat fluffy as the eldar will use specific units at specific times to do specific jobs.

Hit hard targets with vehicles and get in key positions. Next use wraith constructs to hit hard key targets. Then use Aspects to deliver the coup de grâce.

Probably too limiting to army list diversity. Though after decades of writing rules expecting us to take a varied array of units instead of the unbalanced skew that is so prevalent they might start going down a route like that.

But if you could mix and match these abilities to suit your army ?

So the examples I gave you pick one on whatever turn and cycle through them but you have to pick 3. I think that could be fairly flexible.

There are so many ways you can slice it, it's hard to know exactly which way they will go.

I'd like to think they will do a massive update and release for them, given how old their units are, and thus do a complete rebuild of the army.

But that doesn't mean they will...


The eldar have also had some questionable fluff added to them over the years like the autarch.

We are discussing how specialised the eldar are, yet the autarch is supposed to be able to flexibly lead the army and undertake breathtaking strategies.

So on the one hand the army should be rigid and on the other it should also be flexible.

I still think that the army has 3 distinct strands within it, just like the dark eldar do:

Guardian Hosts
Wraith Hosts
Aspect Hosts

THis was how the army was built in various versions of EPIC, you bought specific hosts as detachments.

So IMO it would make sense that you could buy mini detachement groups around this concept and they came wiht their own special rules.

The autarchs and farseers then synergise the hosts with one another.

But that means you've got:

Supreme Command (across all 3 hosts)
Farseers, Autarchs, Avatar

Auxiliary (across all 3 hosts)
Warlocks, wraith fighters, wraith knights


guardian command staff (autarchs in training?) Demiarchs

Guardian hosts - defenders, storm, support weapons, jetbikes, war walkers, tanks, vypers, etc


Senior Exarch war council (shrine leaders, oldest exarchs etc)

Aspect hosts - all the aspect squads and transports


Ghost seers (the spirit seers of various seniority)

Spirit hosts - wraithguard, wraithlords, transports



You buy your hosts in whatever combination you like and the supreme command offers different synergy bonuses between them.

Or you go pure Host and you get special bonuses (eg Aspects of Khaine - an aspect host gets +1 to wound) with the options to add Supreme command and Auxiliary units to any of them.


That reflects how their armies actually form better, and how they fight together or separately.

Sometimes only guardians are deployed, sometimes the battle is just aspects. Given that the guardians are militia they would normally only be deployed for battles where extra bodies are needed.

I have a feeling it will be none of the things we are discussing an not a single model...

Once we start getting DE leaks we might get a slightly better idea of what could or could not be a thing.

I'm sure there will be model(s) with the release of the new codex. So far, no Codex this edition has been released without some accompanying models (SM Supplements are getting general SM releases). We know the Death Guard have at least 2 models coming and we know they have shown what appears to be a new plastic Leith Hesperax that should come out with Drukhari.

This mostly seem to indicate that CWE are a ways off with the Ork, Sisters of Battle, and Adeptus Mechanicus models spoiled still needing to be released.

Karol wrote:

Making it a simple FNP would work less well because you shouldn't be worse at dodging a multi-damage krak missile than a single damage lasgun shot.

That is like saying there is no difference in avoiding a pencil thrown at your and a 50kg sack of flour.

I'll be sure to factor that in once "projectile circumference" is a stat. ;D My point was more that speed-based defense probably shouldn't care about the damage stat of the weapon they're defending against. A basketball and a bowling ball are roughly the same size and shape. If you throw both at me at roughly the same speed, the bowling ball will hurt me more than the basketball. But you'll have a harder time hitting me with either of them if I'm zig-zagging and doing ninja flips.

Maybe it shouldn't work on weapons with blast, or something. no fast moving should be able to save you when a plasma anihilator turns 100m around you in to super heated slag.

That's probably reasonable. Toss in a line saying you can't take the ward save against blasts or weapons that auto-hit. Some lists might have more of those than others, but most armies will have a decent number of guns that the 5+ ward save would help against. Meanwhile, the eldar player will be trading a little offense for that extra defense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

I still think that the army has 3 distinct strands within it, just like the dark eldar do:

Guardian Hosts
Wraith Hosts
Aspect Hosts

Ranger Hosts. Jetbike Hosts. Oh look, we just covered the 5 main craftworlds.

You have good taste, Hellebore, but I personally wouldn't want the army to be handled that way. It was novel when the drukhari first did it, but I honestly kind of miss the good old days of being able to shove a cheap haemonculus in a raider with some wyches and have him up their durability. I'd be fine with just having a craftworld trait that encourages or expands the use of certain units. I don't want a splashed-in wraith or guardian unit to suddenly muck up my aspect-centric list building, and I don't want to jump through hoops just to have access to my whole codex.

Actually I'd add rangers to the auxiliary list as they sit outside the craftworld command structure.

Jetbikes are guardian units so are within the guardian host.


I doubt they'd do anything like that, but I can see it as almost a chapter doctrine type thing - if you only take aspect and transport marked units you get an aspect host special rule and so on.

IMO the problem is GW doesn't want to do anything with eldar while they have old models. They only do interesting things with new models, as evinced by the fact that new eldar plastics generally got new stuff (wraithguard/blade, jetbike scatter lasers) excepting howling banshees.

So we won't see anything interesting happen to the eldar until GW decides to release updates or new units.

While giving Eldar invun saves for movement would be nice, as people have already pointed out T3 1W is cripplingly fragile and an Invun save does not help that. Currently if a Harlequin unit gets caught out it just dies. Your Dire Avengers nearby Asurmen? They just die. The sorts of weapons shooting at these types of units are usually S4 AP0 so an Invun does very little to help them.

The idea of defensive buffs based on movement is a cool idea, but there would need to be more to it. You could even have different buffs depending on the type of unit. Like, say Infantry units fully advancing get a 4++ and a -1 to wound (thereby helping them not immediately fold to small arms fire) however a -1 to wound on a T7 Vehicle is probably a little too strong so that could be changed to something else.

Karol wrote:

Making it a simple FNP would work less well because you shouldn't be worse at dodging a multi-damage krak missile than a single damage lasgun shot.

That is like saying there is no difference in avoiding a pencil thrown at your and a 50kg sack of flour. Maybe it shouldn't work on weapons with blast, or something. no fast moving should be able to save you when a plasma anihilator turns 100m around you in to super heated slag.

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball"

No, that doesn't work like that, maybe if you do the dodging in vacum. But there is a huge difference between being shot by a 2cm in diameter beam of light and be in a area just hit by a clustering projectile. A RL doesn't have to hit, to kill something t3 . If it explodes 2 m away from you and that creates a shower of fast moving and hot metal and stone parts, on top of a blast wave the effect is going to be just as good as a direct hit happened, although not as spectacular visualy.

Karol wrote:
No, that doesn't work like that, maybe if you do the dodging in vacum. But there is a huge difference between being shot by a 2cm in diameter beam of light and be in a area just hit by a clustering projectile. A RL doesn't have to hit, to kill something t3 . If it explodes 2 m away from you and that creates a shower of fast moving and hot metal and stone parts, on top of a blast wave the effect is going to be just as good as a direct hit happened, although not as spectacular visualy.

Karol, if you think dodging a LASER BEAM is easier then dodging a metal projectile (explosive or not) you proably need to pay more attention in your science classes...

A "dodge" invulnerable save doesn't have to necessarily mean dodging the actual projectile or beam after it is fired. It can also mean the actions of the firer telegraph where they are going to fire so the dodger is already out of the way by the time the trigger is pulled, or the firer cannot track the target fast enough to even place the target within their sights. One doesn't have to dodge lightspeed.

The 3rd edition Dark Eldar Codex described Wyches kicking grenades back at their thrower or out of the way, so that could also represent a successful dodge save against a grenade.

Phoenix Lords could also have invulnerable saves be more supernatural martial arts feat, such as how Jain Zar is described in the Night Lords novel as blocking heavy bolter shots by spinning her Blade of Destruction and chopping or prematurely detonating the shells against the Blade's power field.

Jain zar should absolutely be able to slice tank shell/shells multiple in half..

All the while doing a backflip.

 Argive wrote:
Jain zar should absolutely be able to slice tank shell/shells multiple in half..

All the while doing a backflip.

Nahhhh dude, she can never get more than 4 attacks, she'd be way too OP and there is no world where non-SM are allowed to have rules that reflect their lore.
JainZar SHOULD lose to Ragnar in a 1v1 melee fight.

/s

I guess you could technically use the Eldar paths as a guide for customizing the force ala doctrines.

So this would be in addition to your Chapter trait of course..

Path of Command
Path of the Seer
Path of the Warrior

I'm not sure if there is one that really fits with communing with the dead, but there should be. It could technically be the Path of Awakening but not really the Path of Grief.

I don't think there is design space for Path of the Outcast, unless they planned to reintroduce Corsairs. I mean, Yriel's cohort would be pretty damn cool.

To unlock these paths, your warlord must be either an Autarch (Command), Farseer (Seer), Exarch commander (needs new name for this new unit entry) for Warriior, and Spiritseer (Awakening). Named characters would have specific paths, with Phoenix Lords obviously leading to warrior.

Path of Command would be the generalist one (not sure on specific buffs at the moment but would revolve around Guardians)
Path of Seer would boost psychic tests, denials etc.
Path of the Warrior boosts for Aspect squads.
Path of Awakening would boost wraith constructs (including specific strat to make 1 wraithlord or wraithseer a character)

Because of Alaitoc, i would be tempted to do an outcast path, but would really like corsairs involved and I don't see that happening.

So currently you have Ulthwe who would probably want either Command or Seer, Saim Hann (Command), Biel Tan (Warrior), Iyanden (Awakening), and Alaitoc (?), but the choice should be for any depending on how you built your force.

edit: As a caveat, I'd rather them remove Exarchs from aspect squads and make them HQ choices similar to Lts (where 2 takes up one slot), They are so much more than sergeants and this should be represented in the game by giving them far better stats. That way, Autarchs could become the leader/buffers they are supposed to be and leave Exarchs for the real fighting. Aspects could still retain a single Aspect form for each squad (one of the current Exarch powers, not sure which) but having a particular Exarch as an HQ on the table would allow you to take a second one from a list (similar to what we have now but not requiring CP). The Aspect kits can make regular models so you're not stuck with having to make Exarchs (similar to Harlequin Troupes and Troupe Masters)

BrianDavion 794111 10994182 wrote:

Karol, if you think dodging a LASER BEAM is easier then dodging a metal projectile (explosive or not) you proably need to pay more attention in your science classes...

Tell one friend to take a laser pointer and 20 other to start throwing stones at you, then come back and tell us what was easier to dodge. Of course anything that fragments is harder to dodge, that is why we have fragmentation grenades, barrages, mines etc

It will be unpopular, but I'd prefer the general primarisification of expensive models.

Harlequins suggest that yes, you can balance reasonably expensive but fragile models by having minuses to hit and wound and solid invuls. But I sort of feel that's their gimmick. I don't think Eldar should just get get a 5++ "cos their fast". Calling it a dodge save doesn't really change the mechanics of it.

I just think going "yeah, Aspect warriors are basically Space Marines, they get 2 wounds, Exarchs can have 3" will allow a much easier balancing of 40k over all, rather than this rather awkward scenario of "Marines get 2 wounds, the Xenos factions will have to sort of simulate that with high toughness, invuls, FNPs, minuses to hit etc to recognise the fact they have models in the teens (or more) of points with just one wound".

Maybe a bold take but I think they should take the whole craftworld eldar book and throw it out. Then get some designers who have never read any eldar rulebook to start designing a new one. Give them the lore just not the rules. The current rules feel so out of whack with the lore.

Dieing race that goes to extremes to save eachother souls since they are all eternally damned by the sins of their predecessors.

K base unit will be 3 toughness 5 up save 12" gun. The are cheap and die in droves.

Eldar have Super advanced technology, and once ruled the galaxy.

Terrible armor. Most guns are duplicates of imperium stuff. Our unique guns ignore armor occasionally.

I like eldar lore, but I don't think it comes through in gameplay. I don't think any small changes to the codex are going to fix that. It needs a whole redo.

Karol wrote:

BrianDavion 794111 10994182 wrote:

Karol, if you think dodging a LASER BEAM is easier then dodging a metal projectile (explosive or not) you proably need to pay more attention in your science classes...

Tell one friend to take a laser pointer and 20 other to start throwing stones at you, then come back and tell us what was easier to dodge. Of course anything that fragments is harder to dodge, that is why we have fragmentation grenades, barrages, mines etc

Uh... it'd definitely be the stones. You can't dodge light that moves at the fastest speed possible. Again, a basic science education might help; you come from a country that has produced many scientists of great fame, I'd expect more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 coblen wrote:
Maybe a bold take but I think they should take the whole craftworld eldar book and throw it out. Then get some designers who have never read any eldar rulebook to start designing a new one. Give them the lore just not the rules. The current rules feel so out of whack with the lore.

Dieing race that goes to extremes to save eachother souls since they are all eternally damned by the sins of their predecessors.

K base unit will be 3 toughness 5 up save 12" gun. The are cheap and die in droves.

Eldar have Super advanced technology, and once ruled the galaxy.

Terrible armor. Most guns are duplicates of imperium stuff. Our unique guns ignore armor occasionally.

I like eldar lore, but I don't think it comes through in gameplay. I don't think any small changes to the codex are going to fix that. It needs a whole redo.

The issue is that the people who design the Eldar codex (and indeed any codex) are trying to design them in terms of "how does it feel when they get beaten by Astartes. Does it feel right?"

Slaughtering an ancient, dying race en masse is an incredible power fantasy for Astartes players, that's why it's a thing.