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Problem #1: A lot of players don't understand what a fantastic weapon the scatter laser really is. It's easily better than any Imperial heavy weapon and the Eldar already had good platforms for it.

The scatterlaser is so good that in the so-called "down years" of Eldar in 5th, they could still pull upsets by drowning careless GK players in S6 shots and watching save failure commence. It turned out that the Eldar codex in 5th was better against the GK in some ways than BA or SW by just not engaging them and shooting them.

But now we have this. The Eldar were already very hard to beat. This isn't a scrub army getting these bikes. This is just adding diesel fuel the problem of balance.

niv-mizzet wrote:
Hypothetical: eldar really do start completely dominating (even more than now.). First place at every event is an eldar army. The books that follow don't introduce anything that would threaten their reign.
Event turnout wanes as non-eldar players slowly realize the truth of the awful situation and stop going just to be fodder for their eldar overlords.

What do you think your local tourney's response would be? What about big tourneys and the ITC?

Would they actually attempt to go in scalpel-like and "fix" things? Is banning the whole eldar codex the only recourse? Maybe go to highlander format for all events?

I don't think it will get that bad. But that's mostly because ITC already banned ranged D and they'll probably stick to it.

Eldar will do well, but the jetbikes won't be enough to make them win every single game.

How was the 7th Fantasy Daemons book dealt with in tournaments? That is the last book which I can remember that was just mind-bogglingly out of touch with the rest of them.

Poly Ranger wrote:

confoo22 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Math is not tactics, it gives you an average if all things were equal. A good general will make sure you're not on equal footing."

The magical tactics argument. And if a good general takes on a good general, we are back to math.

Hardly a magical argument, good general versus a good general will come down to who makes the first mistake and gives up the advantage. Math makes assumptions about all sorts of things that may not show up on the tabletop. If it were all math all the time then there would be no point to playing any tabletop game with dice ever.

Not taking the maths into account for 40k is like trying to play poker without thinking about the odds. The best poker players don't go all in on a high card because they use the maths to influence their decisions. They may not win a hand that had good odds but they know they did the right thing calling it. Much the same in 40k, you use your mathmatical knowledge to influence you decisions if you are a good general.

And the maths here is screaming broken beyond all belief.

The math said the same thing about TWC, Summoning spam, Admantium Lance, etc etc, ad nauseoum. And then a SM scout army made it to the top table at LVO and lost to Lictors. Math is important and gives you an idea of the strength of units, but it's not the whole story and there are intangibles in this game that people tend to ignore in favor of focusing solely on math.

confoo22 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Math is not tactics, it gives you an average if all things were equal. A good general will make sure you're not on equal footing."

The magical tactics argument. And if a good general takes on a good general, we are back to math.

Hardly a magical argument, good general versus a good general will come down to who makes the first mistake and gives up the advantage. Math makes assumptions about all sorts of things that may not show up on the tabletop. If it were all math all the time then there would be no point to playing any tabletop game with dice ever.

If I have an army of longbowmen, spear men, and the like, and I face an army of 40000 AD future tech that somehow gets way more than my guys for the same points, how on earth would he ever make a mistake big enough for me to win?
If he has a pulse, he's already on a very drastic advantage. Maybe I can poison his drink before the game?

I don't think I've ever seen a normal troop unit have this much of a quality gap between it and other units in the history of the game.

I'm still waiting for my BA intangibles to come in the mail....

confoo22 wrote:
The math said the same thing about TWC, Summoning spam, Admantium Lance, etc etc, ad nauseoum. And then a SM scout army made it to the top table at LVO and lost to Lictors. Math is important and gives you an idea of the strength of units, but it's not the whole story and there are intangibles in this game that people tend to ignore in favor of focusing solely on math.

No one is debating that player skill has more to do with winning than any other factor. When you combine player skill with overpowered units though...

If these bikes had been around 6 months ago we wouldn't be hearing about lictor and scout armies at tournaments. These bikes make those armies entierly unplayable. That is not a good thing.

confoo22 wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:

confoo22 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Math is not tactics, it gives you an average if all things were equal. A good general will make sure you're not on equal footing."

The magical tactics argument. And if a good general takes on a good general, we are back to math.

Hardly a magical argument, good general versus a good general will come down to who makes the first mistake and gives up the advantage. Math makes assumptions about all sorts of things that may not show up on the tabletop. If it were all math all the time then there would be no point to playing any tabletop game with dice ever.

Not taking the maths into account for 40k is like trying to play poker without thinking about the odds. The best poker players don't go all in on a high card because they use the maths to influence their decisions. They may not win a hand that had good odds but they know they did the right thing calling it. Much the same in 40k, you use your mathmatical knowledge to influence you decisions if you are a good general.

And the maths here is screaming broken beyond all belief.

The math said the same thing about TWC, Summoning spam, Admantium Lance, etc etc, ad nauseoum. And then a SM scout army made it to the top table at LVO and lost to Lictors. Math is important and gives you an idea of the strength of units, but it's not the whole story and there are intangibles in this game that people tend to ignore in favor of focusing solely on math.

No, summoning spam can't be used effectively in a timed tournament, otherwise it would be very powerful, (seriously, try some untimed matches with an experienced daemon player sometime.). And the top match of lvo wasn't lictors and scouts. It was flyrants and mawlocs vs. centurions plus a psyker/Lysander deathstar. The scouts, swarms, and lictors were really more of the sideshow. The reason he took scouts is fairly obvious. They can outflank near objectives, and they're as durable as tac marines, since everyone has tons of ap3 or better anyway, for less points.
I've been using close combat scouts over assault marines in my BA for a while now for the same reasons. Accomplish the same stuff, die just as easily, and cost less.

 pretre wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
drop the Errant for an Aecheron and watch the Eldar player cry and spend all his shooting ignoring the rest of your army trying to bring it down because it would wipe out all of the bikes by itself....

As long as the only thing he brought was jetbikes, sure.

True, then all you have to worry about is 850 pts of Strength D shooting.

That guy at the LVO wrote a fantastic list w/ reserve manipulation; he didn't take the brute force method, but he also saw the potential in the Flesh Tearers formation.

As for Eldar... I'm just going to pretend that in this new millennium the Eldar succumbed to She Who Thirsts and now are extinct. Only the Dark Eldar and the mysterious Harlequins continue to elude her.

I'm just not going to accept the fact I pay 20ppm for a troop that is so much worse than a 17ppm one. Or that the 27ppm one in theory will kill my terminator in 1 round of shooting.... AND THEN I'm digging the Skitarii so I'm tossing a force together for them, S6... kinda hurts them. Just isn't going to be fun fighting Eldar when you can't catch them with assault OR 24'' shooting.

drop 3 pods of 10 sternguard. unload "wounds on 2", use ultramarine tactical doctrine for lovely reroll 1s.

That should be 3 crippled units of bikes... 3+ armor or not.

add in more pod goodness with marines with plas/combi plas for the others. 6 pods T1 wouldn't be hard to do.

6 5 man tac squads w/ plas combi-plas -780
3 10 man sternguard bare bones. -765

thats 1545 pts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
combat squading the sternguards ofc. T1 drop the tac marines, T2 drop the sterns :p

10 sterngurad with 2+ ammo and rerolling 1's to hit cause 4.3 unsaved wounds against jetbikes in rapid fire range. 30 cause 12.9 unsaved wounds. The jet bikes then turbo out of 24" range. That cost 765pts to take down 351pts of jet bikes - the rest of which the sternguard now can't catch. The remaining squads being 5-6 strong still makes them very dangerous. Each one still putting out more than a tank commander punisher with hb sidesponsoons at greater range, maneuverability and strength.
That's not counting the cost of 2 more squads required to make the sternguard all come down T1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still better than most other options.

Poly Ranger wrote:
10 sterngurad with 2+ ammo and rerolling 1's to hit cause 4.3 unsaved wounds against jetbikes in rapid fire range. 30 cause 12.9 unsaved wounds. The jet bikes then turbo out of 24" range. That cost 765pts to take down 351pts of jet bikes - the rest of which the sternguard now can't catch. The remaining squads being 5-6 strong still makes them very dangerous. Each one still putting out more than a tank commander punisher with hb sidesponsoons at greater range, maneuverability and strength.
That's not counting the cost of 2 more squads required to make the sternguard all come down T1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still better than most other options.

k, after they turbo boost, (and don't shoot), I drop the other half of my army on them with plasma forcing them to jink.

At which point my sternguard (in units of 5) can begin pegging the wraithknights on 2+ if its around/was brought.

Alternatively... Librarian who gets lucky on the Divination rolls Perfect Timing and is attached to the Sternguard who then uses the AP3 rounds.

Should be 6 wounds (what T are Jetbikes again? 4?)

 raiden wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
10 sterngurad with 2+ ammo and rerolling 1's to hit cause 4.3 unsaved wounds against jetbikes in rapid fire range. 30 cause 12.9 unsaved wounds. The jet bikes then turbo out of 24" range. That cost 765pts to take down 351pts of jet bikes - the rest of which the sternguard now can't catch. The remaining squads being 5-6 strong still makes them very dangerous. Each one still putting out more than a tank commander punisher with hb sidesponsoons at greater range, maneuverability and strength.
That's not counting the cost of 2 more squads required to make the sternguard all come down T1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still better than most other options.

k, after they turbo boost, (and don't shoot), I drop the other half of my army on them with plasma forcing them to jink.

At which point my sternguard (in units of 5) can begin pegging the wraithknights on 2+ if its around/was brought.

It's worth noting that the bikes now have the Battle Focus rule. The details aren't out yet, but I'll bet it lets them turbo boost and shoot.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
And who randomly brought in that Elves needed soulstones to stop slaanesh eating their souls, despite it never being mentioned before.

Uh, what do you think the Waystones on Ulthuan have been for?

That's not new, at all.

Except there are no waystones in Naggaroth, nor had this particular piece of fluff been mentioned in either of the two previous dark elf army books.

I think the best option is to try and down 3 bikes from each squad on t1 and hope they NOPE 3d6 off their board edge. If they pass morale, concede and start game 2.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
And who randomly brought in that Elves needed soulstones to stop slaanesh eating their souls, despite it never being mentioned before.

Uh, what do you think the Waystones on Ulthuan have been for?

That's not new, at all.

Except there are no waystones in Naggaroth, nor had this particular piece of fluff been mentioned in either of the two previous dark elf army books.

So what? The Dark Elves have had Slaanesh cults growing within Naggaroth for centuries.
There are Waystones in Athel Loren and the Old World near Elven ruins, dating back pre-Sundering.

So that's two Elven nations with Waystones.

 raiden wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
10 sterngurad with 2+ ammo and rerolling 1's to hit cause 4.3 unsaved wounds against jetbikes in rapid fire range. 30 cause 12.9 unsaved wounds. The jet bikes then turbo out of 24" range. That cost 765pts to take down 351pts of jet bikes - the rest of which the sternguard now can't catch. The remaining squads being 5-6 strong still makes them very dangerous. Each one still putting out more than a tank commander punisher with hb sidesponsoons at greater range, maneuverability and strength.
That's not counting the cost of 2 more squads required to make the sternguard all come down T1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still better than most other options.

k, after they turbo boost, (and don't shoot), I drop the other half of my army on them with plasma forcing them to jink.

At which point my sternguard (in units of 5) can begin pegging the wraithknights on 2+ if its around/was brought.

You can't 2+ poison wk's now. They're gargantuan. That comes with an in-built poison resistance.

And so you have this highly tailored army for the eldar bikes...and then you draw necrons round 1 and lose. Now all the eldar players advance to upper tables while you stay at the lower? Good plan.

(And as I mentioned, the wraithknight laughs at your poison 2+, so you would probably die to the eldar too.)

Yeh not too bad. If you get perfect timing. Tiggy in pod with sternies sounds promising.
But all the eldar player then needs to do is charge a sternguard squad with the wraithknight and wipe out a sternguard squad with the 3 5 man squads that didn't turbo boost. Whilst focusing everything else on the remaining sternguard squad (which will most likely do them severe damage if not wiping them out). Means the squads that turbo boosted (most likely the 2 10 man squads as that will be your top priority) will jink against your new pods. And the eldar player will still have 3 squads of 5 unaffected jet bikes and the rest of his army to deal with the new arrivals next turn.

What am I saying? Why on earth would they turbo boost away? You just caused 13 casualties. That means there are still 27 jetbikes whoch coincidentally kills exactly 20meq. The wraithknight charging the other sternguard squad. The rest of the list will have to make do with destroying the 3 pods until the rest comes in. So you will have lost 30 sternguard and 3 pods for the cost of 13 jetbikes.

 Oestergaard wrote:

I had the same Simpsons quote going through my head since last night when I first read this junk.

All hail eldar, our lords and masters.

niv-mizzet wrote:

 raiden wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
10 sterngurad with 2+ ammo and rerolling 1's to hit cause 4.3 unsaved wounds against jetbikes in rapid fire range. 30 cause 12.9 unsaved wounds. The jet bikes then turbo out of 24" range. That cost 765pts to take down 351pts of jet bikes - the rest of which the sternguard now can't catch. The remaining squads being 5-6 strong still makes them very dangerous. Each one still putting out more than a tank commander punisher with hb sidesponsoons at greater range, maneuverability and strength.
That's not counting the cost of 2 more squads required to make the sternguard all come down T1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still better than most other options.

k, after they turbo boost, (and don't shoot), I drop the other half of my army on them with plasma forcing them to jink.

At which point my sternguard (in units of 5) can begin pegging the wraithknights on 2+ if its around/was brought.

You can't 2+ poison wk's now. They're gargantuan. That comes with an in-built poison resistance.

And so you have this highly tailored army for the eldar bikes...and then you draw necrons round 1 and lose. Now all the eldar players advance to upper tables while you stay at the lower? Good plan.

(And as I mentioned, the wraithknight laughs at your poison 2+, so you would probably die to the eldar too.)

its just as effective vs necrons, IDC how many saves you get, I'm either wounding on 2+ or 4+ ignoring half your army armor saves, with plently of plas to go around. with 140 pts left over after taking tiggy as an HQ.

I remember back in 3rd edition when people complained about the necron destroyer being OP, in that it was a jet bike with 36" range with a str6 weapon with 3 shots for only 50pts.

This is ludicrous 27pts for a jetbike with 36" range str6 4 shots, and you give it objective secured too, is that a joke dafaq. Destroyers were nerfed due to their power level how the feth did something just like them for half the cost with more dakka sneak into the eldar codex.

If the upgrade was for 1 model in the unit that would be one thing, sort of like a special weapon for marines or guard, but no you can give it to every one. Just when I thought assault was finally working it's way back into the game GW introduces the unit you can't catch and can shoot you from most the board, to boot if you can actually get in range of it with low ap weapons it can jink for a good cover save. How these things don't at least cost 40 points per model is beyond me.

 raiden wrote:

niv-mizzet wrote:

 raiden wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
10 sterngurad with 2+ ammo and rerolling 1's to hit cause 4.3 unsaved wounds against jetbikes in rapid fire range. 30 cause 12.9 unsaved wounds. The jet bikes then turbo out of 24" range. That cost 765pts to take down 351pts of jet bikes - the rest of which the sternguard now can't catch. The remaining squads being 5-6 strong still makes them very dangerous. Each one still putting out more than a tank commander punisher with hb sidesponsoons at greater range, maneuverability and strength.
That's not counting the cost of 2 more squads required to make the sternguard all come down T1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still better than most other options.

k, after they turbo boost, (and don't shoot), I drop the other half of my army on them with plasma forcing them to jink.

At which point my sternguard (in units of 5) can begin pegging the wraithknights on 2+ if its around/was brought.

You can't 2+ poison wk's now. They're gargantuan. That comes with an in-built poison resistance.

And so you have this highly tailored army for the eldar bikes...and then you draw necrons round 1 and lose. Now all the eldar players advance to upper tables while you stay at the lower? Good plan.

(And as I mentioned, the wraithknight laughs at your poison 2+, so you would probably die to the eldar too.)

its just as effective vs necrons, IDC how many saves you get, I'm either wounding on 2+ or 4+ ignoring half your army armor saves, with plently of plas to go around. with 140 pts left over after taking tiggy as an HQ.

Got any batreps? I'd love to see the ones where you win with that so I can be amused at how badly the cron player played.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Punisher wrote:
I remember back in 3rd edition when people complained about the necron destroyer being OP, in that it was a jet bike with 36" range with a str6 weapon with 3 shots for only 50pts.

This is ludicrous 27pts for a jetbike with 36" range str6 4 shots, and you give it objective secured too, is that a joke dafaq. Destroyers were nerfed due to their power level how the feth did something just like them for half the cost with more dakka sneak into the eldar codex.

If the upgrade was for 1 model in the unit that would be one thing, sort of like a special weapon for marines or guard, but no you can give it to every one. Just when I thought assault was finally working it's way back into the game GW introduces the unit you can't catch and can shoot you from most the board, to boot if you can actually get in range of it with low ap weapons it can jink for a good cover save. How these things don't at least cost 40 points per model is beyond me.

Eldar are like the in-game example of "the rich get richer."

My counter to the bikes is 4 death jesters. If he shoots them, I have only lost a 60 point model, if I shoot him, his unit will run 3d6" to the nearest board edge.

Also, a drop pod marine list with nothing but tacticals combat squading would ruin the bikes because they can only kill one unit at a time. The bikes are nonsense,but only because they can laugh at the fluffy counters to them (auto cannons, assault cannons, and heavy bolters/flamers) my bikes have always been 4+ armor, and they will continue to be. The added firepower doesn't really affect me because I have 15 bikes assembled, and I don't plan on breaking them apart to add scatter lasers.

When I updated the V.D.R., I noticed that to upgrade a str10 gun to strD, you added 30 points per shot. With the D weapons losing the old distort property, and gaining strD, I would guess at a 20-25 point increase per shot fired. Another 15 for the flamer option. So a base wraith guard would be 50-55 points per model.

That new Plasma fortification, man it with a Vindicare. Essentially no scatter and since he has ignore cover, precision shots, and -2 to LoS! we have a good chance of deleting a squad a turn. The problem becomes ranged D weapons then and how fast they murder the building.

 Eldarain wrote:
How was the 7th Fantasy Daemons book dealt with in tournaments? That is the last book which I can remember that was just mind-bogglingly out of touch with the rest of them.

In the short term, different regions dealt with the issues created by that book differently. The daemon book wasn't the only problem army book released in late 7th edition; the vampire counts, dark elf, and skaven army books were also extremely powerful. Vampire counts and dark elves came out in the same year as daemons, similar to how necrons just got decurion party time in their recent book. While daemons were probably the strongest of the broken 7th edition army books, all 4 armies had a chance to do well and win major events. High elves could occasionally still do well too because of ws5 s6 always strikes first stubborn white lions.

As a result of the fact that daemons were one flavor of bonkers broken that was available in late 7th, many American events did very little to deal with the situation. In Europe, by the end of 7th edition, comp had become almost universal, usually in the form of hard limits and army size adjustments based on the old ETC system.

In the medium to long term...
When 8th edition rolled around, most non-Waac players in the US had pretty much put fantasy on hold since getting a pick up game was a sketchy thing. Many of the Waac players, angered at the thought of buying more models to adapt to a new edition when they had only just finished their OP tournament lists in 2008 or 2009 jumped ship to magic the gathering (I have always wondering how much this effect contributed to the spike in North American mtg sales around this time) or war machine hordes. Non-Waac players were turned off and initially terrified by the overpowered spells in some of the lores of magic in the core rule book (sound familiar?) and what was seen as a shameless attempt to get people to buy more models using the steadfast and horde rules. (Interestingly, the horde rule has a minimal impact on competitive fantasy today, and steadfast is the only thing making many units usable at all). After having already declined because of general brokenness and the daemon book in particular, fantasy falls further down in early 8th before rallying later in the edition. If I had to pinpoint when, I would say around when the high elf or daemon books got updated.

In Europe, because TOs and most groups already had well tested and thought out comp regimens in place, they adapted better to the broken of late 7th and the huge rules shake up of 8th. Premeasuring and the new magic system angered Europeans more than Americans in general though so fantasy didn't get by with its popularity unscathed even in Europe.

In the long long term from the release of Mat Ward, our Spiritual Liege's 7th edition fantasy Daemons book?






The world blew up and fantasy is dead.

Even us orks with our lootas(now in heavy support *groan*) can't put out such a stupid amount of high strength dakka while maintaining FOC. You might as well call it cheating unless your army averages AV13 (necron cheese) or can fly (necron cheese) you are pretty damn screwed.