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If I understand psykers correctly, then yes, there are no buffs for the paladin, or any IK.

There's an even greater comparison between the Paladin and the Renegade Knight; the Paladin (or indeed any IK) are restricted from ever taking two of the same weapons, despite everything they have being identical. The Renegade Knight, on the other hand, can take two of any arm weapons, which is a huge boon to it since doubling up on the same weapon is usually better than having to mix and match. As far as I know, the two costs the same.

That is a bigger issue for me, as it seems like aside from losing out on the few benefits the IK can muster from it's own faction (I think the only real benefit they have is being able to be repaired by enginseers from IG armies), the Renegade Knight gains a lot by being able to be allied with Chaos. Granted, the Renegade Knight has even less buffs that I can see (since, like the IK, it doesn't share that many faction keywords with Chaos) but being able to be put into an army with daemons and chaos marines, as well as being able to have two of the same weapons, is a huge boon for essentially 0 points.

Finally, people keep mentioning buffers should pay for the points on the units buffing others, not the unit being buffed. I've seen a lot of rules on anti-vehicle weapons and anti-vehicle units (like Tankbustas) saying that they get rerolls to wound against vehicles, but not Monsters. I am very certain that scenarios like this was factored into the cost of the Wraithknight as well, as in some circumstances it would be immune to an effect the IK would not be (the Fire Dragons affect both Vehicles and Monsters, but against Orks they would only affect Vehicles).

All of that again comes back to my point: judging two units in a complete vacuum is incorrect and inaccurate, as you cannot account for all of the possible variables that one might have against another. the WK isn't raised in cost in some attempt at "Punishing" eldar players for having an undercosted unit last edition, it's simply how they deemed this unit to be balanced within the game as a whole. If you really want to split hairs about it, an 80 point difference is just slightly above a 15% point increase for the WK over the IK. For that price they have 1/6th (so about 16%) survivability than the IK, due to being able to use the shield in one more phase than the IK. They also have about 10% less movement reduction when taking damage. Both of these for about 15% increase in cost and completely ignoring the buffs the WK can potentially get.

 Deathypoo wrote:
Is there nothing whatsoever that can provide buffs to the Paladin, whether in the form of psycher powers or support units or characters of some kind?

Every time someone has mentioned Eldar synergies I've been thinking it's silly that I'd pay for the potential for other models to buff me when I have to pay for those models themselves, but if Paladins literally have nothing that can buff them above their basic stats, I could see that being worth a discount in points for the Paladin. I'm not sure it's worth those 80+ points, but it'd be close enough that I wouldn't have started a thread over it...

Don't think of the synergies as just buffs being granted from psychics or characters - it is the overall strengths of the army as well.

Eldar are fast moving and hard hitting but their weakness is durability. If you give them a unit that is very durable then it directly addresses an army weakness. That gives more benefits to that army (more synergy) in that it absorbs more firepower from the opposition and frees up your fragile units to keep shooting/fighting.

Similarly Tau are shooty and not close combat oriented. If you give them a close combat specialist squad to protect their shooting units from being assaulted then, again, you should pay more for addressing that weakness.

Imperial knights' weakness is small model count. If they were given a meatshield/objective-holding unit to their codex I would expect it to be more expensive than the equivalent in an ork army.

I've no idea if the 80 points difference is justified in the real world. Only time and lots of games played will tell. I think it is possible they over-egged the points increase to make sure they weren't accused of still leaving WKs overpowered and under-costed, but that is a hunch rather than based on any experience.

WobblyGoblin wrote:
Imperial knights' weakness is small model count. If they were given a meatshield/objective-holding unit to their codex I would expect it to be more expensive than the equivalent in an ork army.

Well they do have access to say conscripts for 3pts/pop

 Deathypoo wrote:
Is there nothing whatsoever that can provide buffs to the Paladin, whether in the form of psycher powers or support units or characters of some kind?

Every time someone has mentioned Eldar synergies I've been thinking it's silly that I'd pay for the potential for other models to buff me when I have to pay for those models themselves, but if Paladins literally have nothing that can buff them above their basic stats, I could see that being worth a discount in points for the Paladin. I'm not sure it's worth those 80+ points, but it'd be close enough that I wouldn't have started a thread over it...

The Astra Militarum superheavy tanks are better than the Knights, partly, because of this reason. They benefit from the Astra Militarum keyword. A Stormlord can get re-rolls to hit for all of its 60 or so shots from Yarrick standing behind it. Likewise, the Stormlord can have psychic powers cast on it. A 40 point Primaris Psyker can buff the Stormlord's armour save to 2+, which in 99% of situations is better than 3+/5++ in the 8th edition.

Not that I think any of these big guys is worth the points, but regarding the topic of synergies, the superheavy tanks have it good and the Knights have it bad.

The Stormlord comes the closest to being good, because if you build a death star from it, buffing it with re-rolls and buffing the armour save, you can put 20 heavy weapons teams inside it and they can all shoot. HWS are very, very points efficient dakka, and the T8 2+ would address their vulnerability to shooting. Likewise, if the Stormlord is assaulted, it can just drive away and shoot with everything, including the 20 heavy weapons teams =) Split fire all over the field.

Dakka dakka dakka.

tneva82 wrote:

WobblyGoblin wrote:
Imperial knights' weakness is small model count. If they were given a meatshield/objective-holding unit to their codex I would expect it to be more expensive than the equivalent in an ork army.

Well they do have access to say conscripts for 3pts/pop

Fair point!

So far the Knight Households or Imperial Knight keywords don't seem to add a benefit so no real downside to taking conscripts in a knight army. However, wouldn't you still need Knights to be in a LOW detachment? Therefore to take the conscripts you need a smaller allied Imperial detachment with some HQ tax. So realistically you aren't going to get your meatshield that cheaply

It's not a tax when you take a 50 point Lord Commissar to make your Conscript horde basically immune to morale. He's 100% worth the points. Otherwise opponents only need to kill about 25 of your unit of 50 Conscripts in one turn and all the rest would explode immediately to morale. With a Commissar behind, 1 will die. The 50 point Commissar just saved you 72 points.

Wk and Ik seem to be in the same ballpark, if you want to see overcosted garbage compare both of them to the 977 point stompa

Looking at synergies and stuff, the WK can get reroll 1s to hit by standing next to an Autarch and rerolls to wound from a Farseer with Doom. These are force multipliers that have to be distributed in points cost on the models receiving not giving them. A reroll 1s aura that affects 1 WK is far less powerful than one that effects 3. Same for Doom.

2 Wraithcannon+Star Cannon Wraithknights with an Autarch and Skyrunner Farseer are 1360. 3 Knight Paladins are 1374 so this seems a worthwhile comparison.

In this matchup we see the Wraithknights putting 13.4 wounds on the Imperial Knights and the Imperial Knights putting 10 wounds on the Wraith Knights. That is an important difference as one is on one side of that magic 12 wound threshold and the other isn't.

This is without taking into account Fortune, the fact that the Autarch can be buffing other things at the same time and several other factors such as the shooting from the Farseer and the Autarch. I've not included combat here and that does make a difference, but assuming the WK player sets up as far away as possible (highly likely) we can assume 2-3 turns of exchanged missile fire before combat is reached.

this is still a simplistic example, but I think it illustrates the point people have been making. If I do the comparison with a dedicated shooting IK (the crusader) they are about equal in points to the WK and about tie. Once you add in the WK support it pulls ahead, but that obviously makes it an unfair comparison. Ther really isn't a way to give the Crusader the boost that the WK can enjoy though, so I think it is worth considering.

Also worth noting is that a combat fitted WK can benefit from the same buffs and outfight a combat fitted knight without them, so a mix of combat and none-combat WKs (if you take more than one) is likely to be strong. Alternately other units in the Eldar army are good at deterring closing.