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 felixander wrote:

Note: I shuffled your post around to address the concerns they brought up in one cohesive section.

Hey, not here to hate but just share my feedback. I don't like the Fandex at all.
Not here to sound preachy, but good! Sometimes you need a pair of eyes that's highly critical to find the flaws in a system, and you have brought them.

It doesn't really improve the army, it just shuffles things slightly. I don't think any of the 3 slot changes you made make actual sense. Just because Warwalkers have Scout doesn't mean they should be fast attack. They have that to reposition themselves before the battle begins. After that they are ranged, slightly mobile weapons platforms. They've always been there for a reason.

Walkers were in Fast Attack in 3rd, and many people enjoyed them there, as they open up some strong fire-base options. They're not over-competing with Reapers and shooty Wraithlords anymore. They can definitely *be* Heavy Support, but one of the things I wanted in the Fandex was balanced slot numbers in addition to balanced slots. With the addition of the Nightspinner, Heavy was at 7, so needed a swap.

Now, here are some options for slot swaps to satisfy your concern: Wraiths back to Elite, drop Sentinels. Walkers back to Heavy. Bring in Hornets or some other Fast. But if I make all of these changes then I don't meet your other concern that the Codex now basically plays the same.

Just because Support Weapons would be good as scoring doesn't mean they should be. If they are outshined by other options within the HS slot then make them more useful or fill another roll. Give them a Skyfire/Interceptor Scatter Laser or something like that, perhaps?

This is a great idea! The initial swap to Troops was made back in 5th edition when Artillery wasn't that hot a commodity. Since the buffs to Artillery in 6th, I've had to manipulate the unit a bit to fit in Troops, when I should really just swap it back to Heavy since they're so good now.

Random Farseer powers? This seems like a terrible idea.
I am taking an educated guess, based on the 6th Edition rulebook. I believe that all Psychic Powers will eventually become randomized. This is a direction GW has gone, and I am embracing early, not exactly my idea, but I'm doing the best I can with the ruleset (see Runes of Power).

A lot of the wargear changes don't make sense (Direswords being AP2, Pulse Laser is AP1).
Direswords were AP2 up until 2 months ago.. Pulse Laser was buffed slightly to keep Falcons competitive in slot.

Fusion gun changes are pretty lame, we aren't Dark Eldar, we don't have Heat Lances nor do we need it.
Right now, the most overpowered unit in the Codex is Fire Dragons.. bar none. Every army in the game would take 16pt Meltas at BS4, no matter what defensive profile they had (within reason). They are too good at too many things. The nerf was designed to keep them good at one role: Tank Hunting, while nerfing their ability to instantly vapourize T6 Monstrous Creatures and T4 multi-wound. This is one thing the new Eldar codex must address, or Elite slots will *always* contain Fire Dragons. The other option is to increase their cost to closer to what they're worth.. 20-22pts. I rather liked the theme of all Elite Aspects costing the same pts.. so yeah.

Banshees got a lot better while only slightly going up in points.
Banshees are a joke right now and over-rely on Farseer support. Now they can actually do their job without forcing you to take a specific HQ.

And Shellguard Sentinels? A Slow and Purposeful Eldar Unit who is just a moving (or not) light energy wall? I don't think they fit the fluff of the Eldar or seem balanced for the game.
You're not the only one, trust me.. but this is a playstyle option. You say I don't change the way Eldar play below, then criticize the major new unit that allows Footdar to work consistently well... you confuse me

And while this is more of a personal part than an actual "problem" with your Fandex... I feel like it really is just played almost exactly the same way. Personally I was looking for something that varied the playstyle of Eldar and let you play them different ways, based on whatever your fluff is. Giving you options to slightly shuffle the FOC can go a long way... and almost every Codex has it but us in some place =( I know you offered something close to it in the Pheonix Lords... but I don't want to have to use up all my HQ slots on expensive ICs just to get a single unit to be scoring.
This Codex allows the following units to be Scoring at army selection: normal 6 Troops, any Aspect Warrior (via Phoenix Lord), up to 3 Harlequin units, full Wraithguard units OR any size Wraithguard units (via Iyanna). You can also use an Autarch and have a 50% chance of getting his attached unit to be scoring if you want it to. Then you have scoring Aspects with Court of the Young King. There are also slot changes for Saim-Hann allowing a 100% effective 100% all-jetbike army. If there's a playstyle that's missing, please let me know!

I hope this helps somewhat. Best of luck.
I will definitely be shuffling the Slots for Support Weapons, and Wraithguard, and there are some concerns that need to be addressed here, but I hope you see my justifications in the decisions that were made after this post .

I'll respond to some of these, the rest I'm just not going to bother with haha
Quotebox is the original statement, red is obviously you, and blues are recent

Squallish wrote:

Walkers were in Fast Attack in 3rd
But not 2nd or 4th... (Just a word of warning I skipped the 3rd edition Eldar Codex and 40k in general)

Random Farseer powers? This seems like a terrible idea.

I am taking an educated guess, based on the 6th Edition rulebook. I believe that all Psychic Powers will eventually become randomized. This is a direction GW has gone, and I am embracing early, not exactly my idea, but I'm doing the best I can with the ruleset (see Runes of Power).
I still think it's ridiculous, whether GW does it or not. Imagine if you had randomized Wargear how insane people would go "OH GREAT! MY sergeant ended up with 2 Storm Shields and a Bolt pistol..."

A lot of the wargear changes don't make sense (Direswords being AP2, Pulse Laser is AP1).

Direswords were AP2 up until 2 months ago.. Pulse Laser was buffed slightly to keep Falcons competitive in slot.
Yes but all power weapons were, that they magically stayed the same is silly. I know Eldar need AP2, but I just really don't think this is the place for it.

Fusion gun changes are pretty lame, we aren't Dark Eldar, we don't have Heat Lances nor do we need it.

Right now, the most overpowered unit in the Codex is Fire Dragons.. bar none. Every army in the game would take 16pt Meltas at BS4, no matter what defensive profile they had (within reason). They are too good at too many things. The nerf was designed to keep them good at one role: Tank Hunting, while nerfing their ability to instantly vapourize T6 Monstrous Creatures and T4 multi-wound. This is one thing the new Eldar codex must address, or Elite slots will *always* contain Fire Dragons. The other option is to increase their cost to closer to what they're worth.. 20-22pts. I rather liked the theme of all Elite Aspects costing the same pts.. so yeah.
I understand that and I know that it's terrible that Eldar Elites HAVE to be Fire Dragons, but you nerfed their tank killing ability. At +6" they can't do anything to AV 13+ and can only GLANCE AV12. That's a huge drop in usefulness. They've gone from a MUST HAVE to a DON"T WANT pretty quickly As far as not being an insta-kill tool, they're still pretty light when they get out of the tank so they have the tendency to be a one hit wonder, unless you're playing a low points value game and have enemy squads out by themselves they're probably gonna get thwomped back.

And Shellguard Sentinels? A Slow and Purposeful Eldar Unit who is just a moving (or not) light energy wall? I don't think they fit the fluff of the Eldar or seem balanced for the game.
You're not the only one, trust me.. but this is a playstyle option. You say I don't change the way Eldar play below, then criticize the major new unit that allows Footdar to work consistently well... you confuse me
I have problems with them being completely fluff breaking. They seem very counter-point to the Eldar ideal. I understand that defense is a part of war, however, that doesn't mean that they deal with it the same way. Evasion and speed seem to be more of their approach to defense

And while this is more of a personal part than an actual "problem" with your Fandex... I feel like it really is just played almost exactly the same way. Personally I was looking for something that varied the playstyle of Eldar and let you play them different ways, based on whatever your fluff is. Giving you options to slightly shuffle the FOC can go a long way... and almost every Codex has it but us in some place =( I know you offered something close to it in the Pheonix Lords... but I don't want to have to use up all my HQ slots on expensive ICs just to get a single unit to be scoring.
This Codex allows the following units to be Scoring at army selection: normal 6 Troops, any Aspect Warrior (via Phoenix Lord), up to 3 Harlequin units, full Wraithguard units OR any size Wraithguard units (via Iyanna). You can also use an Autarch and have a 50% chance of getting his attached unit to be scoring if you want it to. Then you have scoring Aspects with Court of the Young King. There are also slot changes for Saim-Hann allowing a 100% effective 100% all-jetbike army. If there's a playstyle that's missing, please let me know!
Yes and you have to take a Pheonix Lord to make those squads scoring. OK well there's 200 points and an HQ slot down for a single scoring unit. Errrr that doesn't seem like a plausible option, to be honest, though the idea is one that is kind of an obvious addition.
Court of the High King seems ridiculous to me, I know that they go with the Avatar to get him lit up, but that's that. I haven't seen anywhere even suggesting they go into battle with him. Maybe I'm wrong?
I, and most other players, don't have the money to make a real Wraithguard unit let alone a full army. For those who do thats great, but Iyanna might be great, but we've always had troop Wraithguard with a spiritseer.
Saim-Hann seems solid to me! I have to admit that I do like how you did this. It's like the DA Landspeeders, but I'm curious... do they run with the squad or automatically break off, pairing up with each other if you have 2 from a squad or something else?
Harlequins are the second good point you have, but once again that's a very particular example. Eldar players seem to usually either want a Harlequin Codex or are generally disinterested.
I'll admit that if I used this Codex (which I won't) I would definitely lean on getting some more Jetbikes and enjoy the troop vypers, but I'm not a huge fan of Saim-hann, those many others are.

Oh gosh, all those colors ...

Anyways, the local Eldar player decided to give a shot to your fandex, and I guess he was pretty... fruitful with Just Dave's Eldar fandex too (what he currently uses) so I think I'll have some big mass of feedbacks tomorrow!

I'm a BIG fan of JustDave's and am currently editing it so that my local gaming friends will allow me to use it. There are a lot of things that are great in that codex when it comes to building lists, playing lists, and just being fluffy.

No offense, Squallish, but I think his Fandex is as close to a solid Codex as you can get, with a few minor changes. And once he updates it for 6th edition haha

Send a thanks to your friend, AtoMaki!

felixander, if you prefer his Codex, by all means feel free to use it. I believe he stated in his thread he had no intentions of updating it at this time. I personally, don't like a lot of the wargear he added, as it just overflows a lot of units with confusing or underused options, and I need to look things up a lot when using his Codex.. but if you've used it a lot, then you're probably used to it, so by all means.

None of these playstyle/flexibility concerns you have are even addressed in Just Dave's, from my quick re-perusal of it.

Court was also from 3rd Edition, btw.

So, three games down (1750 points, one versus Tau, one versus CSM and one versus Orks), and here are the consensus on the fandex:

- Well for first, we kinda' agreed that it isn't a really good fandex (so to say). Sorry . And by "good" we mostly mean "strong". Only one unit was improved noticeably (the Howling Banshees) and one good selection was added (the Nightwing) but everything else pretty much remained the same or was made worse (Fire Dragons). The fandex simply lacks the "Oh my good, so many excellent choices! I want them all! Twice!" feel. Stuff is just mediocre without any "edge".
- Most of the new special rules are surplus. They don't add so much that would justify their presence. Focused Mind, Grace of the Eldar, Hatred (Slaanesh), all the new Exarch abilities and Tactical Withdraw are abilities that really don't have so much effect on the tabletop.
- The nerf of the Monofilament rule is unnecessary.
- The change of the D-Weapons are kinda' odd... Especially the "remove from play on a to-wound/armour penetration of 6" and Armourbane. So 10 Wraithguard shoots at a random vehicle, they score 7 hits and then roll 14 dice for armour penetration - if they roll a 6 with any of those dice, then the vehicle is GG no RE...
- Crystal Targeting Matrix is a strange animal. A simple +1 BS would be much better. Strafing Run is way too Flyer-y.
- Holo-field should give Shrouded without any restrictions.
- Okay, here comes the biggest rage material: our player said a BIG no to random psychic powers. And we agreed with him. It is ridiculous.
- In the HQ section, the Far Seer rules. The War seer is only interesting, the Autarch is crappy, and the Avatar is just an Avatar.
- Stuff around the Elites Aspects are getting messy. The roles are pretty unclear: it seems that Fire Dragons became a generic all-rounder shooty unit, Banshees are melee shock infantry and Scorpions are dedicated alpha strikers. So their use on the tabletop is kinda' contrary with their fluff (and often with their wargear/special rules too).
- We couldn't get the conception behind the Shellguard. Are they some sort of bubblewarp unit? Anyway, we don't think that their "slow and steady" nature is OK for the Eldar.
- We haven't really discussed the Wraithguard yet, because of the D-Weapons/Armourbane problem. They look promising, but again, nothing extra, just the fun to remove a Land Raider (and all its passengers) with a single salvo .
- The new Bladestrom is pretty cool.
- The heavy weapons for the Guardian defenders are very expensive. 20 points for a single Shuriken Cannon? That's a lot! The 20 points cost for the operators really hurt the unit.
- We liked the Swift Dragon.
- The Fast Attack selection is still pretty weak. Only the War Walkers (another thing we liked a lot) and the Nightwing (this Flyer is deadly like hell, and mostly rules the FA selection just as the Far Seer rules the HQ).
- Vypers as jetbikes... We found this pretty strange, like, a Vyper doesn't really look like a vehicle that could do jetbike stuff (like close-combat).
- We liked the Dedicated Transport Falcons.
- But we said no for vehicle squadrons for the tanks. Tank squadrons are sooooo IG.
That's all I guess. And now, the suggestions on changes:
- Instead of all those unique special rules, just make Hit and Run an army wide special rule.
- Purchasable psychic powers.
- The Autarch should have his own big Autarch Trait Table with all sorts of nasty abilities instead of the normal Warlord Trait Table. This guys should be a highly versatile powerhouse.
- Fire Dragons are good as they are now in the original Eldar Codex. Howling Banshees are kinda' good as you made them. Scorpions need some re-thinking though. Maybe +1 A or something.
- Platform Gunners should be, like, 5 points each and not 10.
- Shining Spears should have AP2 and/or some sort of special HoW attack.
- Swooping Hawks should be "Flying Infantry" and their grenade packs could be Bombs.
- Shadow Spectres are good as they are now with their FW rules.
- Vypers should be vehicles.
- Some FMC (a flying Wraith construct) would be super-cool!
- Can we wish for Warp Hunters and Fire Storms? They are pretty cool (the Fire Storm needs a point cost fix though).
- You should rethink the Exarch abilities. As it now stands, Exarches are pretty pointless.
- Some revamp of the Shuriken Weapons would be also cool: like -1S, +1 RoF and Shred (Just Dave style).
- Fusion weapons should be normal melta weapons, and these semi-melta/semi-lance weapons.
- Some more "normal" weapons would be cool. Like new weapons for the support batteries, a fusion cannon (multi-melta) heavy weapon option and/or some sort of "close-combat arsenal" (so Eldar models with normal close-combat weapons could choose between different types of weapons with different bonuses, like sword (normal), axe (+1 S, Unwieldy) and spear (+2 I, Two-Handed)).

Uh, I think that is all we had. We gave the fandex an overall score of 6.5/10 (current Eldar Codex is 5/10, JD's Eldar fandex is 8.2/10). So not bad, but simply not good enough. Kinda' like "It needs more steroids.".

Well at least it's better than the current codex! Thanks for playtesting it and listing your concerns. I will address it Monday, most likely, in the Google Doc.

A couple comments in the meantime:
- Monofilament was nerfed slightly due to Warp Spiders having it
- the Armourbane on D-Weapons wasn't really thought through with the 6 to pen rule; also not meant to vapourize passengers, I'll fix it
- the models with access CTM are all very fast (Skimmers or Jetbikes), so Strafing Run felt like it could apply well, also the ability to get more Skyfire to deal with Flyers was appealing
- I can get rid of Random powers.. but I have a very STRONG feeling, these will be the norm, so people should get used to them.. also, did he buy Runes of Power..? chance of Fortune/X is very high,( which is all I run on my Farseer now anyway)
- I recently removed Shellguard and replaced them with a Fortification borrowing their rule
- I'm going to do a recosting and full revaluation of the Elites, for sure
- I disagree a bit with your dismissal of Fast, I think it's my most balanced slot (except for the Flyers who are a little too cheap pts-wise)
- I'll be going through Just Dave's a little closer and updating what I think he did well

Did you use the pdf or the google doc, btw? I haven't updated the pdf in 3 weeks

Squallish wrote:

Did you use the pdf or the google doc, btw? I haven't updated the pdf in 3 weeks

He used the Google doc.

What level of power would you like to see in a Fandex? I was aiming for Dark Eldar (#3-5, imo), trying not to break the power creep entirely.

If I make it an obvious #1-3 army, opponents will be less likely to adopt a Fandex, especially if they're playing an old army as well.

The goal of a Fandex shouldn't be to make it powerful, but to make it more FUN to play.

Squallish wrote:What level of power would you like to see in a Fandex? I was aiming for Dark Eldar (#3-5, imo), trying not to break the power creep entirely.

If I make it an obvious #1-3 army, opponents will be less likely to adopt a Fandex, especially if they're playing an old army as well.

Personally, I would say that you should start at "top tier" level, because it is the optimal codex strength. Just remember that you write a fande for all the Eldar players, and thus you should provide an equal power level to all of them, no matter what kind of army they play. In a good codex, a wacky, fluffy army should have the same power than a min/maxed one.

felixander wrote:The goal of a Fandex shouldn't be to make it powerful, but to make it more FUN to play.

I think the two things is essentially the same. Fun comes easily if your codex is full with strong units: you can just pick and choose, take any unit you want and/or like and still have a good chance to win.

Ok, I have loosened the reins on my creative freedom a little to include some units I've had conceptualized for a long time, as well as bring in some of the Corsair flavour from IA11.

This is a new direction for the book. Where before I was essentially trying to make an "official-feeling" version of the Codex, this is closer to a real Fandex.

I also restructured a lot of the book Force Org chart back to the old one, and tweaked some unit costs. Double-check points costs as I may not have had the forethought to highlight that they changed.

Thanks to everyone for their comments, ideas, and criticisms, especially those who take the time to play with the book.

I was thinking that it might be a good fix on the aircraft to make one or more of the weapons twin linked instead of dopple.

I like the idea of eldar having very strong airforce, because their table position and scoring units tend to be pretty airy, so you wouldn't really feel comfortable just ramming as many as possible into a list. I also keep forgetting that they are 1 less av and don't have the vendetta's transport ability. It makes sense to me for eldar to have a good vector dancer flier.

I was looking at Just dave's codex and I'm liking the way he did his guardian squads and warlock loadouts, though I might do some things differently vs their weapons and points costs.

I think sixth has also changed the game enough that I might have to start thinking more about what can be done for foot dar/ various special deployment tricks perhaps webway based. I especially like the idea of being able to fit a lot of sorts of eldar army into the book (aspect, corsairish, seers+good guardians, hussars, mech) and have little bonuses worked in throughout the dex. I'm not sure how much I like the thought of having HQ unlocks doing all the work, but I like how fluid eldar can be, and I'd like to give them the options to represent it.

Having maiden world stuff would also be pretty bad ass.

Did you see celtic's eldar codex?

The Vyper mount should be a chariot, now they have rules. The Chariot rules almost seem to be referring to the Vyper Chariot you could take in 2nd edition...

I loooooove the idea of eldar chariot spearheads and vanguards.

Think of all the damage a powerful floater could do when your lame dudes become a tarpit or a grabber for something.

Wraithlords now S8?
For me, that's one big NO.

-Farseer Tahril

 Farseer Tahril wrote:
Wraithlords now S8?
For me, that's one big NO.

-Farseer Tahril

With Smash, they are still S10, 2 Attacks. They now have 4 S8 Attacks to deal with Hordes or T4 multi-wound.. Look a little deeper before you just say NO, when it's nothing but a buff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daba wrote:
The Vyper mount should be a chariot, now they have rules. The Chariot rules almost seem to be referring to the Vyper Chariot you could take in 2nd edition...

I have a Vyper-like Chariot called the Swift Dragon to differentiate it from the Vyper Jetbikes we all know and love.

I love your battle seer, great fan dex and i wish gw actually created one. Maybe in a bieltan supplement.