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Spear are good, but getting more than two units (one saim-hann one quickend) you can only reliably bring two units that do all thier damage.

Three if you make one of them Ynnari.

 Shadenuat wrote:

Spear are good, but getting more than two units (one saim-hann one quickend) you can only reliably bring two units that do all thier damage.

Three if you make one of them Ynnari.

Take two as Ynaari, make both saim-hann to use the strategem on the one that needs it.

I wouldn't write off big squads of spears.
The way buffs work and the alternating attack order a big squad has some advantages over multiple smaller ones.

If you can apply protect and fortune on a big squad with a potential Lighning-fast reactions strategem they are very durable.
Quicken to shove them into the enemies throat.

In addition you have less deployment picks and thus a better chance to go first.

On the other hand you lose out on damage and wounds compared to the smaller ones.

Guess it depends on the army composition but both ways to field spears are viable in general.

mmimzie wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
The most recent codex we know of which is getting updated is Death Guard. I think that after that was Guard and then Eldar? It's hard to believe that there's been enough time for them to have incorporated any feedback on the Eldar codex from actual players, but it's entirely possible that they'll have realized that there are still issues on their own. The early codices made some changes, after all, and that was entirely down to pre-8th playtesting. Chapter Approved benefits from at least another month of seeing how index 8th actually played out in the real world.

I don't know hwo to explain this to you, but there is a pro USA and EU(england included) community who have been playing iwth all the codexs (everything from space marines to daemons) since march or so. So they ahve gotten massive amounts of feed back.

Sure, this is what I meant by "pre-8th playtesting". Obviously a lot of these people are not actually very good at figuring out what's balanced. Like, I don't know to what extent this is incompetence vs weird boosterism, but the FLG guys were playtesters and yet their review of the Eldar codex was talking as if the Iyanden trait wasn't garbage. Their reviews are consistently way too optimistic about a bunch of things that turn out to be terrible options. Balancing a game is actually a difficult thing to do well and you need people who know how to do it. Simply getting people who are better than average at playing the game doesn't cut it.

Spectres just went from no-brainer to situational. They needed at least a 5 point increase, 7 was about right. At 33 I will still take them, just not 15 of them.

3-4 Hemlocks are great at crowd control. But MSU Spears just got a passive bump, imo.

Dionysodorus wrote:

mmimzie wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
The most recent codex we know of which is getting updated is Death Guard. I think that after that was Guard and then Eldar? It's hard to believe that there's been enough time for them to have incorporated any feedback on the Eldar codex from actual players, but it's entirely possible that they'll have realized that there are still issues on their own. The early codices made some changes, after all, and that was entirely down to pre-8th playtesting. Chapter Approved benefits from at least another month of seeing how index 8th actually played out in the real world.

I don't know hwo to explain this to you, but there is a pro USA and EU(england included) community who have been playing iwth all the codexs (everything from space marines to daemons) since march or so. So they ahve gotten massive amounts of feed back.

Sure, this is what I meant by "pre-8th playtesting". Obviously a lot of these people are not actually very good at figuring out what's balanced. Like, I don't know to what extent this is incompetence vs weird boosterism, but the FLG guys were playtesters and yet their review of the Eldar codex was talking as if the Iyanden trait wasn't garbage. Their reviews are consistently way too optimistic about a bunch of things that turn out to be terrible options. Balancing a game is actually a difficult thing to do well and you need people who know how to do it. Simply getting people who are better than average at playing the game doesn't cut it.

Nah I just think you don't understand how the frontline gaming look at thinfs and put out articles. They make article from a stand point of what does this due and what are the possibilities. Theybdont thumbs up or thumb down everything. They know that atleast hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people play this game, and in that maybe some one will make a god tier Lynden list. As such its best when writing any sort of guise to tale a mostly neutral stance and shine a positive light on everything. From there you can decide what actually looks goos to you or not. Look at the area imperium review the miniwargaming people did.

In that review the mountain literally only taller about what was good, and that was it. However, in using his own opinion he didn't really talk about what is the most used chapter tactics and relics right now. Basicly, it knowing you aren't the smartest person in the whole universe, and the whole teach a man to fish thing.

In light of the CA changes, there may be a decent gimmicky character spam army now, drawing from all the Eldar books. Sslyth are very cheap wounds and you can take huge numbers of them with Archons. Spiritseers are now the cheapest full Smite casters in the game (by 1 point). A Farseer with Executioner also puts out MWs pretty efficiently.

I'm not sure if any of the Harlequin characters cut it. Death Jesters still seem awful. But The Yncarne goes well with this -- he gives the Sslyth a 6+ FNP, which is especially nice since they don't have Power from Pain. The best WotP target is probably either Maugan Ra (can he shoot twice off of a Soulburst?) or Illic, though possibly neither is worth it.

Mortarion probably wrecks this, with his MW pulse, but otherwise it seems pretty solid.

Ioldar wrote:
I wouldn't write off big squads of spears.
The way buffs work and the alternating attack order a big squad has some advantages over multiple smaller ones.

If you can apply protect and fortune on a big squad with a potential Lighning-fast reactions strategem they are very durable.
Quicken to shove them into the enemies throat.

In addition you have less deployment picks and thus a better chance to go first.

On the other hand you lose out on damage and wounds compared to the smaller ones.

Guess it depends on the army composition but both ways to field spears are viable in general.

I don't think anyone has said spears aren't good. That being said a bigbunit of spears as anti horde is gonna struggle odds are you get 2 maaaaaaaaaaybe 3 infantry squad charged. That simply not enough damage. The big unit of spears is only good against the big unit of horde model, but AM right now doesn't use as many or any big horde squad. Instead they bring lots of infantry squads that are still super cheap and do decent damage for thier points.

mmimzie wrote:

Nah I just think you don't understand how the frontline gaming look at thinfs and put out articles. They make article from a stand point of what does this due and what are the possibilities. Theybdont thumbs up or thumb down everything. They know that atleast hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people play this game, and in that maybe some one will make a god tier Lynden list. As such its best when writing any sort of guise to tale a mostly neutral stance and shine a positive light on everything. From there you can decide what actually looks goos to you or not. Look at the area imperium review the miniwargaming people did.

In that review the mountain literally only taller about what was good, and that was it. However, in using his own opinion he didn't really talk about what is the most used chapter tactics and relics right now. Basicly, it knowing you aren't the smartest person in the whole universe, and the whole teach a man to fish thing.

I mean, I was explicit that maybe this was not incompetence and was instead "weird boosterism". I feel like you're not reading my posts. Obviously if they gave feedback to GW that looks like their articles, then their playtesting was basically worthless. Maybe you're right (and I also correctly identified this possibility) and they're giving more useful feedback to GW while then writing articles that don't actually help people figure out what's good.

Dionysodorus wrote:

mmimzie wrote:

Nah I just think you don't understand how the frontline gaming look at thinfs and put out articles. They make article from a stand point of what does this due and what are the possibilities. Theybdont thumbs up or thumb down everything. They know that atleast hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people play this game, and in that maybe some one will make a god tier Lynden list. As such its best when writing any sort of guise to tale a mostly neutral stance and shine a positive light on everything. From there you can decide what actually looks goos to you or not. Look at the area imperium review the miniwargaming people did.

In that review the mountain literally only taller about what was good, and that was it. However, in using his own opinion he didn't really talk about what is the most used chapter tactics and relics right now. Basicly, it knowing you aren't the smartest person in the whole universe, and the whole teach a man to fish thing.

I mean, I was explicit that maybe this was not incompetence and was instead "weird boosterism". I feel like you're not reading my posts. Obviously if they gave feedback to GW that looks like their articles, then their playtesting was basically worthless. Maybe you're right (and I also correctly identified this possibility) and they're giving more useful feedback to GW while then writing articles that don't actually help people figure out what's good.

With a constantly shifting meta that he is making. A article that says "what's good" will last about a month maybe 3 at best... before you need to rewrite it. An article that points at what every unit could be good for, and the best way to use each of those initial will still be true no matter how much the points change. If I were buying based on a guide in the current 40k format. I'd go for the even handed approach guides rather than... omg shadow spectre and shining spears are the best right now only buy that and paint them all aliatoc.... because we can see how long that would have lasted.

mmimzie wrote:

With a constantly shifting meta that he is making. A article that says "what's good" will last about a month maybe 3 at best... before you need to rewrite it. An article that points at what every unit could be good for, and the best way to use each of those initial will still be true no matter how much the points change. If I were buying based on a guide in the current 40k format. I'd go for the even handed approach guides rather than... omg shadow spectre and shining spears are the best right now only buy that and paint them all aliatoc.... because we can see how long that would have lasted.

Of course, this sort of guide is also not useful to anyone with half a brain. You could introduce a reasonably intelligent person to the game and then in a couple weeks they'd be just as capable of writing this kind of pap about the Iyanden Attribute: "This is an awesome trait and means you can run larger units without any morale control units. Guardians especially love this as you can take full sized units with impunity, but also full strength units of Aspect Warriors too, take very good advantage of this boost. And, obviously, any vehicle heavy or Wraith Construct heavy army." These reviews are useful to people who don't actually have the codex, because they show you all the rules, but the commentary is basically all pointless and they could save everyone a lot of time by just posting scans.

I mean, there's no there there. They just point out the most obvious of rules interactions. Yes, a rule that helps with morale and damage tables is good for units which are vulnerable to morale or which have damage tables. But how good is it in context? Who can say!

You're going after a straw man when you talk like I want them to say "only buy shadow spectres and paint them Alatoic". That'd be bad advice, so of course I don't want them to say that. But any reasonable review would have pointed out that Shadow Spectres outshone all of the other Elite choices, many of which are pretty lackluster. It should probably also stress that things could change in the future given GW's expressed commitment to frequent balance updates, but it seems kind of silly to say that a rules review should not review the rules in front of it because maybe there will be different rules later. Likewise any reasonable review should point out that Alatoic is head and shoulders above the other Craftworlds for most units and lists, and that you basically never want Iyanden over Alatoic or Ulthwe. You can contextualize this, sure. Maybe you say "it's too bad that Alatoic is so much better than the others for now; hopefully Iyanden will get a buff later because it has some fun rules". But as-is their review is misleading, although it's so over-the-top in places that most experienced players probably don't give its statements about what's powerful or good any credence.

Dionysodorus wrote:

mmimzie wrote:

With a constantly shifting meta that he is making. A article that says "what's good" will last about a month maybe 3 at best... before you need to rewrite it. An article that points at what every unit could be good for, and the best way to use each of those initial will still be true no matter how much the points change. If I were buying based on a guide in the current 40k format. I'd go for the even handed approach guides rather than... omg shadow spectre and shining spears are the best right now only buy that and paint them all aliatoc.... because we can see how long that would have lasted.

Of course, this sort of guide is also not useful to anyone with half a brain. You could introduce a reasonably intelligent person to the game and then in a couple weeks they'd be just as capable of writing this kind of pap about the Iyanden Attribute: "This is an awesome trait and means you can run larger units without any morale control units. Guardians especially love this as you can take full sized units with impunity, but also full strength units of Aspect Warriors too, take very good advantage of this boost. And, obviously, any vehicle heavy or Wraith Construct heavy army." These reviews are useful to people who don't actually have the codex, because they show you all the rules, but the commentary is basically all pointless and they could save everyone a lot of time by just posting scans.

I mean, there's no there there. They just point out the most obvious of rules interactions. Yes, a rule that helps with morale and damage tables is good for units which are vulnerable to morale or which have damage tables. But how good is it in context? Who can say!

You're going after a straw man when you talk like I want them to say "only buy shadow spectres and paint them Alatoic". That'd be bad advice, so of course I don't want them to say that. But any reasonable review would have pointed out that Shadow Spectres outshone all of the other Elite choices, many of which are pretty lackluster. It should probably also stress that things could change in the future given GW's expressed commitment to frequent balance updates, but it seems kind of silly to say that a rules review should not review the rules in front of it because maybe there will be different rules later. Likewise any reasonable review should point out that Alatoic is head and shoulders above the other Craftworlds for most units and lists, and that you basically never want Iyanden over Alatoic or Ulthwe. You can contextualize this, sure. Maybe you say "it's too bad that Alatoic is so much better than the others for now; hopefully Iyanden will get a buff later because it has some fun rules". But as-is their review is misleading, although it's so over-the-top in places that most experienced players probably don't give its statements about what's powerful or good any credence.

Well for one I maintain aliatoc is pretty meh as well when you place it in the games current meta, and the craftworld all are along the same power level ad the other chapter tactics type things that have been released.

From there, if that's what you want. That's what you want. I think your wrong, but I've said thing.

Just got back from the open day and checked their copy of chapter approved, went straight to the eldar section and noticed shadow spectres havnt changed in points (yay...), bought some, then realised just now i didnt look at the weapons, looked at the leaks and was really disappointed...looks there going back next time im down at WW. Im such an idiot.

anyone knows Eldar points changes from Chapter Approved book?

FarseerReborn wrote:
anyone knows Eldar points changes from Chapter Approved book?

From what I seen leaked so far, none of the Codex points changed, which makes sense because the Codex just came out. It's a shame they did drop the points for the WK, but oh well

Forge World stuff did change though. Many of the super heavies went up in cost, including an 800 pt increase (an over 60% jump) for the Revenant. No one was taking it before, they almost certainly won't be taking it now.
Prism rifles for the Shadow Spectres also went up by 10ppm.
The Skathach WK Deathshroud cannons went down by 35pts each though, which makes a Deathshroud cannon/Shield WK only 45pts more than a Suncannon/Shield WK, but has the ability to drop in.

 Galef wrote:

The Skathach WK Deathshroud cannons went down by 35pts each though, which makes a Deathshroud cannon/Shield WK only 45pts more than a Suncannon/Shield WK, but has the ability to drop in.

It also retains the ability to completely blow.

Dionysodorus wrote:

Flg stuff.

I agree, it is this "Everything is awesome" narrative that quickly stopped me from reading their stuff.

More importantly/on topic though, does anyone know if the corsair troops gained any deployment/transport options? The price drop is welcome, now I just need a way to get them where I want them to go!

No new units or options.

pilchard8 wrote:
Just got back from the open day and checked their copy of chapter approved, went straight to the eldar section and noticed shadow spectres havnt changed in points (yay...), bought some, then realised just now i didnt look at the weapons, looked at the leaks and was really disappointed...looks there going back next time im down at WW. Im such an idiot.

I feel you. I just ordered a unit of specters three days ago. They haven’t even arrived yet, and they’ve already been nerfed.

Am I reading this right? Did the Warp Hunter really get a 50 point INCREASE?

When is Chapter Approved due to hit stores? and the price?

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 Galef wrote:

The Skathach WK Deathshroud cannons went down by 35pts each though, which makes a Deathshroud cannon/Shield WK only 45pts more than a Suncannon/Shield WK, but has the ability to drop in.

It also retains the ability to completely blow.

Indeed, but at least it's a step closer to being playable in casual games. There are plenty of Marine players in my area that do not use Guiliman or Razorbacks. A deepstriking WK with a 5++ could at least be fun in those games.

Raulengrin wrote:
Am I reading this right? Did the Warp Hunter really get a 50 point INCREASE?

You’re reading it right :(
The only way I can rationalize increasing the cost of the Warp Hunter is if they’ve also increased the damage output.. maybe 2D3 or D6 shots on the longer ranged attack? That’d keep it still (point per wound) in the same ballpark as other vehicles without being a standout. If not, it’s wayyy too expensive now.
Might be wishful thinking.

Raulengrin wrote:
Am I reading this right? Did the Warp Hunter really get a 50 point INCREASE?

Yeah it’s weird. A lot of the forgeworld stuff is just not viable.
It’s understandable for the titans and super heavies.
But the other “normal” options make no sense.
The warp hunter seemed overpriced and now is more expensive.
The Phoenix bomber was something worth considering. With the crimson hunter getting a points drop I had hopes for that to also get a slight decrease plus points drop for cannons. Instead the price went up making it strictly worse than the crimson hunter.
It’s all good to balance stuff, but what are they actually balancing them to?

It's all just an assassination of Forgeworld, really. If Guilliman, Celestine, Primaris Psykers, and Spiritseers faced similar treatment, I could understand it being a legitimate attempt at balance. If it was only the superheavies, I could see it as being a legitimate attempt to separate Apocalypse as its own thing (as it rightfully should have always been). But as things are, it's very clear that this is GW saying that they don't want people buying or using Forgeworld models in games, in any context.

It's for this reason that, short of a team tournament that I've already committed myself to (that I bought a bunch of Shadow Spectres for!), and only for the sake of my teammate, I won't be playing any games or entering into any events that use the current Chapter Approved rules. All they do is centralize the meta further down Imperial Soup hole that it has been spiralling for so long (the same meta that CA was supposed to fix).

I think I'm preaching to the choir, but Chapter Approved was pretty clearly a resounding disappointment. The community didn't want massively nerfed titans, but just fixes for units that could use them.

We didn't see any substantial fixes to Guileman or Celestine, Tau/Necrons didn't get *any* points adjustments, WK/Ynnari (post major nerf) went ignored...and that's just what I have off the top of my head now.

I can't speak for you all, but I went from a solid "will buy day 1" on the book to a hard no.

I rescind my opinion of the unviability of Shadow Specters after playing some games.

They are expensive, but they are still a requirement. Craftworld simply cannot compete without them.

Scorpion still looks p. hot to me.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
I rescind my opinion of the unviability of Shadow Specters after playing some games.

They are expensive, but they are still a requirement. Craftworld simply cannot compete without them.

I'm wondering what your reasoning for that is. They're no longer nearly point-efficient enough to be an anti-horde solution, and while their guns are solid, at their new cost, they have a hard time offering firepower that can be found cheaper elsewhere. And as far as durability goes, 33 points for a T3 W1 model is just way too much, no matter how many gimmicks you give them for survivability.

Objectively: The Scorpion is fine.

Realistically: The Scorpion is redundant and sub-optimal.

Craftworld is able to kill one big thing in a variety of ways. Most of those methods are also vastly better at killing many medium things or small things.

For example, 26 Dark Reapers is always better.