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I want Alaitoc to be more Aspect Warrior centric and less OP. Biel-tan weren't meant to be the Shuriken spam army, also they should benefit as much if not more from Autarchs. Iyanden should be better for Wraithguard than Guardians. Ulthwe should be better for psychic-heavy armies and big blobs of Guardians. Changes in italics.

Craftworlds

Stratagem - TEARS OF ISHA (2CP)
Use this Stratagem at the start of any turn. Pick an ASURYANI WRAITH CONSTRUCT from your army. It regains D3 Wounds lost earlier in the battle and until the end of this turn, use the top row of that vehicle’s damage table, regardless of how many wounds it has left. This ends immediately if the model is reduced to 0 wounds.

Stratagem - VAUL’S MIGHT (2CP)
Use this Stratagem in your Shooting phase if a Support Weapon from your army is within 6" of another friendly <CRAFTWORLD> Support Weapon. You can re-roll failed wound rolls made for both Support Weapons for the rest of that phase.

Warlord Trait - 1: AMBUSH OF BLADES
Each time you make a hit roll of 6+ for a friendly <CRAFTWORLD> unit within 6" of your Warlord in the Fight phase, the Armour Penetration characteristic of that attack is increased by 3 (i.e. AP0 becomes AP-3, AP-1 becomes AP-4, and so on).

Warlord Trait - 2: AN EYE ON DISTANT EVENTS
Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at your Warlord. Enemy units suffer a -1 penalty to hit your Warlord in the Fight phase.

Warlord Trait - 3: FALCON’S SWIFTNESS
Add 2 to your Warlord’s Move characteristic. Your Warlord always fights first in the Fight phase, even if he didn’t charge. If your opponent has units that have charged, or that have a similar ability, then alternate choosing units to fight with, starting with the player whose turn is taking place.

Remnant of Glory - BLAZING STAR OF VAUL
Model with a shuriken pistol or twin shuriken catapult only. One shuriken weapon carried by the model is a Blazing Star of Vaul. Add 4 to the number of attacks that the weapon can make.

Remnant of Glory - FIRESABRE
WEAPON Firesabre
RANGE Melee
TYPE Melee
S +1
AP -4
D 1
Abilities: Each time you make a wound roll of 6+ for this weapon, it inflicts D3 mortal wounds on the target instead of the normal damage.

Remnant of Glory - KURNOUS’ BOW
WEAPON Kurnous’ Bow
RANGE 12"
TYPE Pistol 1
S 4
AP 0
D D6
Abilities: Each time you make a wound roll of 4+ for this weapon, that hit is resolved with an AP of -3 instead of 0.

Remnant of Glory - SHARD OF ANARIS
WEAPON Shard of Anaris
RANGE Melee
TYPE Melee
S 7
AP -3
D D3
Abilities: You can re-roll failed wound rolls for this weapon.

Windrider Host
Warlord Trait - WILD RIDER
Your Warlord, and any friendly WINDRIDER HOST units within 6" of your Warlord, can charge even if they Fell Back or Advanced this turn.

Remnant of Glory - HOWLING SKYSWORD OF GALALETH
Abilities: This weapon always wounds on a roll of 2+. In addition, enemy units within 6" of the bearer subtract 1 from their Leadership characteristic.

Wraith Host

Warlord Trait - REVERED BY THE DEAD
You can re-roll charge and advance rolls for friendly WRAITH HOST WRAITH CONSTRUCT units whilst they are within 6" of your Warlord.

Remnant of Glory - WARP-SPAWN BANE
Abilities: This weapon always wounds on a roll of 2+. In addition, ignore invulnerable saves for attacks made by this weapon that target enemy PSYKERS or DAEMONS. enemy PSYKERS and DAEMONS units within 3" of the bearer reduce their Toughness characteristic by 1.

Stratagem - SPIRIT SHIELD
2 CP 1 CP.

Alaitoc
Craftworld Attribute - WINDING PATHS
Add 1 to the Leadership characteristic of models with this attribute. Units with this attribute gain the benefit of cover against attacks made by units more than 12" away.

Biel-tan
Craftworld Attribute - SWORDWIND
Once per game at the start of your turn, you may issue a tempest of blades. Models with this attribute can re-roll Wound rolls of 1 on the turn you issue a tempest of blades. Units with this attribute add +1 to their Leadership characteristic for each enemy model they destroy.

Remnant of Glory - THE BURNISHED BLADE OF ELIARNA
WEAPON Burnished Blade of Eliarna
RANGE Melee
TYPE Melee
S 5
AP -3
D 2
Abilities: The bearer can make an additional 3 attacks with this weapon each time the bearer fights an ORK unit.

Iyanden
Craftworld Attribute - STOIC ENDURANCE
The last model in a unit with this attribute cannot flee due to a Morale test. In addition, if a unit with a damage chart has this attribute, double the number of wounds it actually has remaining whenever you are consulting the chart to determine its characteristics.

Warlord Trait - ENDURING RESOLVE
Halve all damage the bearer suffers (rounding up so D1 deals 1 damage, D5 deals 3 damage, MWs are unaffected). In addition, your Warlord can attempt to deny one psychic power in each enemy Psychic phase (if your Warlord is a PSYKER, they can attempt to deny one psychic power more than usual).

Saim-Hann
Craftworld Attribute - WILD HOST
You can re-roll failed charge rolls for units with this attribute. In addition, BIKER units with this attribute do not suffer the penalty to their hit rolls for moving and firing Heavy weapons.

Warlord Trait - WILD RIDER CHIEFTAINS
Add +1 to your Warlord's Attacks characteristic this turn if your Warlord Charged, was Charged or performed a Heroic Intervention this turn. If your Warlord is slain, you can immediately select another SAIM-HANN CHARACTER in your army to take their place, they now gain this Warlord trait. If the mission you are playing grants victory points for slaying the enemy Warlord, your opponent will only achieve that objective if all of the SAIM-HANN CHARACTERS in your army have been slain.

Ulthwé
Craftworld Attribute - FORESIGHT OF THE DAMNED
While within 12" of an enemy unit or 3" of an ULTHWE PSYKER, units with this attribute can only ever lose a single model each Morale phase and can roll a D6 each time they suffer a wound, on a roll of 6+ the wound is ignored. If the unit already has a similar ability (e.g. the Hemlock Wraithfighter's Spirit Stones ability, or the Farseer's Ghosthelm ability) add +1 to that roll instead of making a roll for this ability.

Warlord Trait - FATE READER
If your army is Battle-forged and your Warlord is on the battlefield, roll a D6 each time your opponent uses a Stratagem; on a 6+ you gain 1 Command Point and your opponent may pay 1 Command Point, if your opponent cannot or chooses not to pay the extra Command Point the Stratagem has no effect.

Remnant of Glory - GHOSTHELM OF ALISHAZIER
ULTHWÉ PSYKER only. The wearer adds 1 to any Psychic test when attempting to manifest the Smite power and adds 1 to the number of Mortal Wounds the Smite power inflicts when manifested by the wearer.

I like it. Hope counters probably won't be loved due to bookkeeping though. Wild rider cheiftains is excellent. Lots of morale boosting, is it going to be useful? Watch out for anything that can buff dark reapers.

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
I like it. Hope counters probably won't be loved due to bookkeeping though. Wild rider cheiftains is excellent. Lots of morale boosting, is it going to be useful? Watch out for anything that can buff dark reapers.

How do you feel about the balance of Biel-tan Tactic and Warlord triat? If they are too strong I could remove the Hope Counters and just have the WL trait carry the responsibility of making Biel-tan steadfast, if not I could change it up somehow. I originally thought about making them Fearless until they use the re-roll, but that might just lead to games where you never use the Swordwind. I think Biel-tan should be all about that initial push and then just sticking it out to the end, hopefully being carried by the Strength of their T1 or T2 with their Swordwind trigger, but it's also a very dangerous effect because if it the damage amp is too big it's just going to end the game too early. Hope counters were mainly to boost medium-sized elite units (10-man Aspect Warrior squads), I'm not sure how else that could be done.

I feel like Ulthwé needs a Morale boost otherwise they won't be the best Guardian blob option, you'd just take whichever sub-faction has the auto-pass Morale trait since the Ulthwé Strat is pretty meh. Alaitoc is all about strict rules and entering an Aspect, often for life, I thought their Tactic should benefit 5-man Aspect Squads the most since then you'll have a higher ratio of Exarchs. Iyanden could be something else, I just chose to stick with the tough it out theme they have going on, but changed it to benefit 5-man Wraith squads more than 20-man Guardian blobs. They also have a good amount of Dire Avengers so they need some kind of love as well and I think what I made does that pretty well.

I feel like maybe could be changed as well to:

SAIM-HANN - WILD HOST
You can re-roll failed hit rolls for units this attribute. Units with this Attribute do not suffer penalties to hit for moving and firing Heavy weapons and can re-roll hit rolls of 1 for Shuriken weapons. For the purpose of this ability Shuriken weapons are...

Sorry, but you've done absolutely nothing for Iyanden.

 vict0988 wrote:
I want Alaitoc to be more Aspect Warrior centric and less OP. Biel-tan weren't meant to be the Shuriken spam army, also they should benefit as much if not more from Autarchs. Iyanden should be better for Wraithguard than Guardians. Ulthwe should be better for psychic-heavy armies and big blobs of Guardians. Changes in italics.

BIEL-TAN: SWORDWIND
Models with this attribute can re-roll Wound rolls of 1 against targets within 12".


TEARS OF ISHA (2CP)
Use this Stratagem at the start of any turn. Pick an ASURYANI WRAITH CONSTRUCT from your army. It regains D3 Wounds lost earlier in the battle and until the end of this turn.


2: AN EYE ON DISTANT EVENTS
Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at your Warlord.

3: FALCON’S SWIFTNESS
Your Warlord always fights first in the Fight phase, even if he didn’t charge. If your opponent has units that have charged, or that have a similar ability, then alternate choosing units to fight with, starting with the player whose turn is taking place.

5: MARK OF THE INCOMPARABLE HUNTER
Your Warlord can target enemy CHARACTERS in the Shooting phase even if they are not the closest enemy model. how is this not strong enough for you???

ALAITOC: PURITANICAL LEADER
At the start of your Shooting phase, pick a friendly ASPECT WARRIOR ALAITOC unit within 3" of your Warlord. You can re-roll all failed hit rolls for that unit in that phase. Said every dark reaper ever. Especially on alaitoc this is a bad move.

BIEL-TAN: NATURAL LEADER
Friendly BIEL-TAN units within 6" of your Warlord may re-roll a single wound roll each phase. fluffwise everyone is always fearless, let's stick to one thing done well.

SAIM-HANN: WILD RIDER CHIEFTAINS
Add +1 to your Warlord's Attacks characteristic this turn if your Warlord Charged, was Charged or performed a Heroic Intervention this turn. If your Warlord is slain, you can immediately select another SAIM-HANN CHARACTER in your army to take their place, they now gain this Warlord trait. If the mission you are playing grants victory points for slaying the enemy Warlord, your opponent will only achieve that objective if all of the SAIM-HANN CHARACTERS in your army have been slain.

ULTHWÉ: FATE READER
If your army is Battle-forged and your Warlord is on the battlefield, roll a D6 each time your opponent spends a Command Point to use a Stratagem; on a 6+ you gain 1 Command Point and your opponent may pay 1 Command Point, if your opponent cannot or chooses not to pay the extra Command Point the Stratagem has no effect. discount Vect isn't going to make you any friends

GHOSTHELM OF ALISHAZIER
ULTHWÉ PSYKER only. The wearer adds 1 to any Psychic test when attempting to manifest the Smite power adding to the wc already improves damage sometimes

My recommendations are made above with comments in red.

You've got some neat stuff here! Let's take a look...

 vict0988 wrote:

ALAITOC: WINDING PATHS
Add 1 to the Leadership characteristic of ASPECT WARRIOR models with this attribute. Units with this attribute gain the benefit of cover against attacks made by units more than 12" away.

BIEL-TAN: SWORDWIND
Once per game at the start of your turn, you may issue a tempest of blades. Models with this attribute can re-roll Wound rolls of 1 on the turn you issue a tempest of blades. Units with this attribute gain a single hope counter for each enemy model they destroy. When a model with this Attribute would flee as a result of a Morale test you may instead remove a single hope counter from that unit.

It feels a little weird to me that Alaitoc has benefits that specifically call out aspect warriors but Biel-Tan doesn't. I know that Alaitoc is big on their hardcore adherency to the path system and has a bunch of exarchs as a result, but when someone asks me which craftworld is known for its aspect warriors, Biel-Tan is the one that springs to mind. What with them being the craftworld that historically was able to field an above average number of aspect warrior squads. When I think Alaitoc, I think rangers and harlequin allies before I think aspect warriors.

I like the changes to Alaitoc's Fieldcraft rule. it's still very useful, but it's way less punitive than the much-hated -1 to hit rule.

Sword Wind being once per game feels a bit weird. It's probably not OP, but I'm not aware of any other chapter tactic equivalents that work quite like this. It feels a bit more like a stratagem. The morale tokens seem fine, but I wonder if bookkeeping extra counters (not that it's terribly difficult bookkeeping) just to ignore a few morale casualties might not be worth the extra complexity (limited as that complexity might be). You could basically give ATSKNF to aspect warriors to get a similar result without introducing the concept of counters.

That said, my pet preferred rule for Biel-Tan would be to let Aspect Warrior units rip off the Salamanders chapter tactic. A single reroll to hit and wound each time you shoot/fight would still synergize with an autarch being nearby (letting you reroll 2s) and would benefit all aspect warriors without being obscenely good. Granted, this would favor MSU rather than large units, but I feel that encouraging a large variety of small aspect squads might arguably be just as fluffy if not more so for Biel-Tan.

IYANDEN: STOIC ENDURANCE
The last model in a unit with this attribute cannot flee due to a Morale test. In addition, if a unit with a damage chart has this attribute, double the number of wounds it actually has remaining whenever you are consulting the chart to determine its characteristics.

This kind of feels like a downgrade for possibly the least powerful craftworld rule. I totally agree that encouraging fearless blobs of guardians isn't really fluffy for Iyanden, but this rule doesn't seem to give anything back for what it takes away. It also probably benefits wraith guard squads (for those noble few who field large squads of them) even less than the current Iyanden rules. If I lose 7 guys from a 10 man squad and roll a 6 for morale, I'd rather lose a single wraith guard to morale than lose 3 of the remaining guys and keep the last dude.

That said, I'm not entirely sure what to do with Iyanden. Giving them something akin to a ynnari rule would kind of capture the "cornered animal" thing they do so well, but ynnari don't need to be rendered even more niche. Maybe something like:

Desperate Determination: At the start of your turn, units with this trait may select a single model in their unit to regain a single lost wound. This rule may not increase a model's wounds beyond their original number nor may it restore models removed as casualties. In addition, if a unit with a damage chart has this attribute, double the number of wounds it actually has remaining whenever you are consulting the chart to determine its characteristics.

It benefits wraith units large and small as well as vehicles. The idea is that they're doing the "grit your teeth and get back in the fight" thing. It would basically make Iyanden the "tough" craftworld without relying on range (like Alaitoc) or psykers (like Ulthwe). That said, this would be two passive defensive benefits which might not be very exciting to most players, and it's double-dipping on defensive abilities (which I normally try to avoid).

ULTHWÉ: FORESIGHT OF THE DAMNED
While within 12" of an enemy unit or 3" of an ULTHWE PSYKER, units with this attribute can only ever lose a single model each Morale phase and can roll a D6 each time they suffer a wound, on a roll of 6+ the wound is ignored. If the unit already has a similar ability (e.g. the Hemlock Wraithfighter's Spirit Stones ability, or the Farseer's Ghosthelm ability) add +1 to that roll instead of making a roll for this ability.

I like this a lot! My only concern is that Fortune probably qualifies as a "similar ability," and 4+ FNP guardians may be just a tad much.

TEARS OF ISHA (2CP)
Use this Stratagem at the start of any turn. Pick an ASURYANI WRAITH CONSTRUCT from your army. It regains D3 Wounds lost earlier in the battle and until the end of this turn, use the top row of that vehicle’s damage table, regardless of how many wounds it has left. This ends immediately if the model is reduced to 0 wounds.

VAUL’S MIGHT (2CP)
Use this Stratagem in your Shooting phase if a Support Weapon from your army is within 6" of another friendly <CRAFTWORLD> Support Weapon. You can re-roll failed wound rolls made for both Support Weapons for the rest of that phase.

Sure. Seem fine.

Warlord Traits.

1: AMBUSH OF BLADES
Each time you make a hit roll of 6+ for a friendly <CRAFTWORLD> unit within 6" of your Warlord in the Fight phase, the Armour Penetration characteristic of that attack is increased by 3 (i.e. AP0 becomes AP-3, AP-1 becomes AP-4, and so on).

Feels about right. The current version of the warlord trait is just way too niche and limited to be attractive. Helping out some craftworlder melee units would change up how you can use your autarch and maybe push some bad units into "just killy enough" territory. Maybe have this trigger on to-wound rolls of 6 instead of to-hit rolls so that you don't have to split your dice pools up quite so much? This could get a little annoying when you've got several units and their exarchs all having to separate out dice that come up 6s when rolling to-hit.

2: AN EYE ON DISTANT EVENTS
Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at your Warlord. Enemy units suffer a -1 penalty to hit your Warlord in the Fight phase.

Mildly worried that this combined with the shimmer plume or other to-hit penalizing effects might be a bit much. A -1 to hit autarch or farseer is neat. A -3 to hit version of the same is how you get your opponent to glare at you.

3: FALCON’S SWIFTNESS
Add 2 to your Warlord’s Move characteristic. Your Warlord always fights first in the Fight phase, even if he didn’t charge. If your opponent has units that have charged, or that have a similar ability, then alternate choosing units to fight with, starting with the player whose turn is taking place.

Probably fine. I'm personally not excited by it, but I tend not to get excited about "swing first" rules.

5: MARK OF THE INCOMPARABLE HUNTER
Your Warlord can target enemy CHARACTERS in the Shooting phase even if they are not the closest enemy model. Add 1 to Wound rolls made by your Warlord against CHARACTERS.

I feel like the official version of this one is good-but-monobuild as-is. Your version makes that monobuild perhaps a bit too good. Specifically, this trait is mostly good for autarchs with reaper launchers or possibly fusion guns. A reaper launcher that wounds marine characters on 2s with the strength 5 profile feels perhaps too good. Honestly, not sure I'd change this trait. I feel like it has a place as-is. Just a very niche place.

ALAITOC: PURITANICAL LEADER
At the start of your Shooting phase, pick a friendly ASPECT WARRIOR ALAITOC unit within 3" of your Warlord. You can re-roll all failed hit rolls for that unit in that phase.

BIEL-TAN: NATURAL LEADER
Friendly BIEL-TAN units within 6" of your Warlord automatically pass Morale tests and may spend a Hope Counter to re-roll a single wound roll once each turn.

Yeah. You and I might just see Alaitoc and Biel-Tan differently. You've kind of just swapped the GW version of their traits around here. You've made Alaitoc the one with aspect warrior-specific rules and also made the trait weaker than the GW version of Natural Leader by restricting it to aspect warriors only. Your version of Natural Leader is basically just the GW version of Puritanical Leader with a change to the craftworld name and a Hope Counter add-on.

IYANDEN: ENDURING RESOLVE
All IYANDEN units within 12" add +1 to their Leadership characteristic. In addition, your Warlord can attempt to deny one psychic power in each enemy Psychic phase (if your Warlord is a PSYKER, they can attempt to deny one psychic power more than usual).

This is fine, mostly because it's such a minor change that I don't see it actually changing much.

SAIM-HANN: WILD RIDER CHIEFTAINS
Add +1 to your Warlord's Attacks characteristic this turn if your Warlord Charged, was Charged or performed a Heroic Intervention this turn. If your Warlord is slain, you can immediately select another SAIM-HANN CHARACTER in your army to take their place, they now gain this Warlord trait. If the mission you are playing grants victory points for slaying the enemy Warlord, your opponent will only achieve that objective if all of the SAIM-HANN CHARACTERS in your army have been slain.

I feel like I'm missing a fluff thing here. Why are Saim-Hann characters Alpharius? Also, I'm always a little wary about rules that interact with Victory Points because the way missions handle VP varies so dramatically. In Eternal War, it might deny the tie-breaking secondary objective. In some variations of Maelstrom of War, it could not come up at all or could translate into denying your opponent a (perhaps too) significant portion of their VP for the game. In Open War, this might decide whether or not you double your VP or score the only critical objective.

ULTHWÉ: FATE READER
If your army is Battle-forged and your Warlord is on the battlefield, roll a D6 each time your opponent spends a Command Point to use a Stratagem; on a 6+ you gain 1 Command Point and your opponent may pay 1 Command Point, if your opponent cannot or chooses not to pay the extra Command Point the Stratagem has no effect.

Very fluffy. Perhaps change the enemy-impacting part to be more like the Calidus rule? Have it trigger on a 4+, but only on during the first game round? A streak of 6s could make this really annoying for your opponent, and not in a fun way. Also, I'm not sure the GW official version necessarily needed to be changed; it's pretty solid as-is.

Remnants of Glory...

No complaints here. Obviously you've powered a lot of things up, but they probably needed it, so... Yeah. I'd have to playtest these versions to see if they feel too strong. Can I assume anything not listed here (Faolchu's Wing, Phoenix Gem, etc.) is unchanged?

Overall, these seem like an improvement. My biggest criticism is how Alaitoc seems to be stealing Biel-Tan's shtick while doing relatively little to promote the use of its own iconic stuff (mostly Rangers).

Since when is alaitoc the Aspect Warrior craftworld? That's biel-tan's specialty. Alaitoc was always about rangers.

Sorry but it look terrible for balance prospective, since morale means based buffes means nothing for aeldar and are underwhelming this edition.
Maybe if there is something like battleshook rule and if they lower the LD on most basic troops.

All human basic troops -3 LD(including chaos, GSC)
Basic troops - 4 LD
Elite toppers -2 LD

Necrons - 2 LD

Aeldar - 2 LD

etc..

Fearless auras removed.

Battleshook - if your army loses 3 or units this turn every infantry troll d6:
1-2 - nothing happened
3-4 - half of your unit flee
5-6 - all your unit flee

Wyldhunt wrote:
It feels a little weird to me that Alaitoc has benefits that specifically call out aspect warriors but Biel-Tan doesn't. I know that Alaitoc is big on their hardcore adherency to the path system and has a bunch of exarchs as a result, but when someone asks me which craftworld is known for its aspect warriors, Biel-Tan is the one that springs to mind. What with them being the craftworld that historically was able to field an above average number of aspect warrior squads. When I think Alaitoc, I think rangers and harlequin allies before I think aspect warriors.

I like the changes to Alaitoc's Fieldcraft rule. it's still very useful, but it's way less punitive than the much-hated -1 to hit rule.

Sword Wind being once per game feels a bit weird. It's probably not OP, but I'm not aware of any other chapter tactic equivalents that work quite like this. It feels a bit more like a stratagem. The morale tokens seem fine, but I wonder if bookkeeping extra counters (not that it's terribly difficult bookkeeping) just to ignore a few morale casualties might not be worth the extra complexity (limited as that complexity might be). You could basically give ATSKNF to aspect warriors to get a similar result without introducing the concept of counters.

That said, my pet preferred rule for Biel-Tan would be to let Aspect Warrior units rip off the Salamanders chapter tactic. A single reroll to hit and wound each time you shoot/fight would still synergize with an autarch being nearby (letting you reroll 2s) and would benefit all aspect warriors without being obscenely good. Granted, this would favor MSU rather than large units, but I feel that encouraging a large variety of small aspect squads might arguably be just as fluffy if not more so for Biel-Tan.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with Iyanden. Giving them something akin to a ynnari rule would kind of capture the "cornered animal" thing they do so well, but ynnari don't need to be rendered even more niche. Maybe something like:

Desperate Determination: At the start of your turn, units with this trait may select a single model in their unit to regain a single lost wound. This rule may not increase a model's wounds beyond their original number nor may it restore models removed as casualties. In addition, if a unit with a damage chart has this attribute, double the number of wounds it actually has remaining whenever you are consulting the chart to determine its characteristics.

It benefits wraith units large and small as well as vehicles. The idea is that they're doing the "grit your teeth and get back in the fight" thing. It would basically make Iyanden the "tough" craftworld without relying on range (like Alaitoc) or psykers (like Ulthwe). That said, this would be two passive defensive benefits which might not be very exciting to most players, and it's double-dipping on defensive abilities (which I normally try to avoid).

ULTHWÉ: FORESIGHT OF THE DAMNED
While within 12" of an enemy unit or 3" of an ULTHWE PSYKER, units with this attribute can only ever lose a single model each Morale phase and can roll a D6 each time they suffer a wound, on a roll of 6+ the wound is ignored. If the unit already has a similar ability (e.g. the Hemlock Wraithfighter's Spirit Stones ability, or the Farseer's Ghosthelm ability) add +1 to that roll instead of making a roll for this ability.

I like this a lot! My only concern is that Fortune probably qualifies as a "similar ability," and 4+ FNP guardians may be just a tad much.

2: AN EYE ON DISTANT EVENTS
Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at your Warlord. Enemy units suffer a -1 penalty to hit your Warlord in the Fight phase.

Mildly worried that this combined with the shimmer plume or other to-hit penalizing effects might be a bit much. A -1 to hit autarch or farseer is neat. A -3 to hit version of the same is how you get your opponent to glare at you.

ALAITOC: PURITANICAL LEADER
At the start of your Shooting phase, pick a friendly ASPECT WARRIOR ALAITOC unit within 3" of your Warlord. You can re-roll all failed hit rolls for that unit in that phase.

BIEL-TAN: NATURAL LEADER
Friendly BIEL-TAN units within 6" of your Warlord automatically pass Morale tests and may spend a Hope Counter to re-roll a single wound roll once each turn.

Yeah. You and I might just see Alaitoc and Biel-Tan differently. You've kind of just swapped the GW version of their traits around here. You've made Alaitoc the one with aspect warrior-specific rules and also made the trait weaker than the GW version of Natural Leader by restricting it to aspect warriors only. Your version of Natural Leader is basically just the GW version of Puritanical Leader with a change to the craftworld name and a Hope Counter add-on.

IYANDEN: ENDURING RESOLVE
All IYANDEN units within 12" add +1 to their Leadership characteristic. In addition, your Warlord can attempt to deny one psychic power in each enemy Psychic phase (if your Warlord is a PSYKER, they can attempt to deny one psychic power more than usual).

This is fine, mostly because it's such a minor change that I don't see it actually changing much.

SAIM-HANN: WILD RIDER CHIEFTAINS
Add +1 to your Warlord's Attacks characteristic this turn if your Warlord Charged, was Charged or performed a Heroic Intervention this turn. If your Warlord is slain, you can immediately select another SAIM-HANN CHARACTER in your army to take their place, they now gain this Warlord trait. If the mission you are playing grants victory points for slaying the enemy Warlord, your opponent will only achieve that objective if all of the SAIM-HANN CHARACTERS in your army have been slain.

I feel like I'm missing a fluff thing here. Why are Saim-Hann characters Alpharius? Also, I'm always a little wary about rules that interact with Victory Points because the way missions handle VP varies so dramatically. In Eternal War, it might deny the tie-breaking secondary objective. In some variations of Maelstrom of War, it could not come up at all or could translate into denying your opponent a (perhaps too) significant portion of their VP for the game. In Open War, this might decide whether or not you double your VP or score the only critical objective.

ULTHWÉ: FATE READER
If your army is Battle-forged and your Warlord is on the battlefield, roll a D6 each time your opponent spends a Command Point to use a Stratagem; on a 6+ you gain 1 Command Point and your opponent may pay 1 Command Point, if your opponent cannot or chooses not to pay the extra Command Point the Stratagem has no effect.

Very fluffy. Perhaps change the enemy-impacting part to be more like the Calidus rule? Have it trigger on a 4+, but only on during the first game round? A streak of 6s could make this really annoying for your opponent, and not in a fun way. Also, I'm not sure the GW official version necessarily needed to be changed; it's pretty solid as-is.

Remnants of Glory...

No complaints here. Obviously you've powered a lot of things up, but they probably needed it, so... Yeah. I'd have to playtest these versions to see if they feel too strong. Can I assume anything not listed here (Faolchu's Wing, Phoenix Gem, etc.) is unchanged?

Overall, these seem like an improvement. My biggest criticism is how Alaitoc seems to be stealing Biel-Tan's shtick while doing relatively little to promote the use of its own iconic stuff (mostly Rangers).

I feel like Biel-tan should be able to field Guardians in a larger capacity than Alaitoc because they are less strict adherents to the paths, in the official codex I feel like the opposite is the case. I feel like what I've made here really promotes Aspect Warriors more than anything for Biel-tan since those are the most elite units that really suffer from Morale. But Alaitoc is definitely also supposed to be an Aspect-heavy list with their strict adherence to the paths, but they are quite a bit weaker for 10-man units I believe because as others have mentioned the +1 Ld is such a minuscule change. It helps 5-man units disproportionately and I think that's fitting because that means 20% of your Aspect Warriors will be Exarchs, while Biel-tan should sit somewhere around 10-15% Exarchs, with some big and some small units. Just because the rule isn't picking them out doesn't mean it doesn't support them, it's just done in a more round-about way.

You can't have a table-wide Stratagem, you could have them target one unit better with a Stratagem, but I don't feel like that's fitting and I feel like their current Strat speaks volumes of fluff. So, Tactic it is. Why just one turn? Because that's what Biel-tan is all about, doing a single decisive blow. I don't think any Necron Dynasties are similar, they quite like their drawn out wars due to their essentially infinite life-spans, but Biel-tan want to make the Aeldari great again right now. I hope I didn't just make anyone hate Biel-tan.

I really feel like Alaitoc needs to be the MSU Aspect Craftworld, while Biel-tan should be the more all-round for different sizes of Aspects. Something that I also want to repeat is the Biel-tan Stratagem, which specifically calls out Aspect Warriors and even if the Tactic no longer mentions them, they were in mind when I created the Tactic and they still have their Stratagem to support them.

I think your Iyanden Tactic is super weak and incredibly niche. It also works on vehicles, making it into a pure multi-wound sub-faction which isn't fitting since Iyanden fields a decent chunk of Dire Avengers.

The Ulthwé thing is supposed to make 4+ FNP Guardians. Guardians and psychic powers are their whole shtick. I felt like it was strange that they had negative synergy with a psychic power so i changed it to positive synergy. If they don't have a psyker near you can always just step more than 12" away and then it goes down to a 5+.

The Rangers of Alaitoc flee the Craftworld because it is too restrictive, by giving Alaitoc this WL trait I'm showing that it is the leadership that is creating this oppressive atmosphere but they are still appreciated and work for the Craftworld, we see that with the Tactic and the Stratagem.

Necrons get Fearless +1 Deny from one of their WL traits, the +1 Ld could be nice once in a blue moon and I thought it was fitting that an Iyanden psyker has more mental fortitude and so would be better at inflicting damage with the Mind War psychic power.

Saim-Hann operates under a clan system led by various Chieftains, they also place value on honour. I feel like their system supports their values because even if the brave leader goes and gets himself killed another Chieftain will be ready to step up to the podium. Other Asuryani factions feel like this system is barbaric and I feel like this WL trait is a little bit barbaric, kind of ruthlessly throwing away your WL rather than intelligently keeping him in the back like any sane commander would.

The current WL trait for Ulthwé is laughably bad IMO. You are getting at most 3 CP over the course of the game, spread out in an inconvenient matter. Most CP generating WL traits give at most 7 CP, usually at least 1 T1 and 1 T2.

Yes everything not mentioned went unchanged.

 Threeshades wrote:
Since when is alaitoc the Aspect Warrior craftworld? That's biel-tan's specialty. Alaitoc was always about rangers.

That is in fact not the case. Alaitoc has a ton of Aspect Warriors because they are endlessly haunted by their community to enlist into the armed forces, but all the ones that might normally do more civic things don't want to deal with this community pressure and also don't want to enlist because of the strict nature of the military instead becoming nomadic Rangers. It's not like Alaitoc sends all their kids to Ranger school because they have to hold up the Ranger pride of the family, it's just all the people too rebellious to join a path and work under an Exarch. In times of need the Rangers that have left their Craftworld come back to aid the Craftworld, providing íntelligence and assasination services to the Craftworld.

Marin wrote:
Sorry but it look terrible for balance prospective, since morale means based buffes means nothing for aeldar and are underwhelming this edition.

I don't really see how your changes to Morale for this edition are relevant? The Alaitoc and Biel-tan morale buffs are just secondary effects included for fluff purposes, if you had specific things you wanted to point out are UP then I'd like to hear, your statement is a little too vague and your suggested changes don't really help me create something that could be used for an Asuryani 2.0 book, which is what I'm going for with this thread.

I also feel like you are underestimating the importance of Morale this edition, given that last edition a huge chunk of units were fearless. Even LD 9 units have a 1/6 chance of losing 20% more models after losing 4 models, that's on units that were probably Fearless last edition. Then look at Orks, from what I remember they basically auto-passed their Morale tests if they had 10 models, now they auto-die if you don't pay CP after losing 19 models. If you always shoot units until they are dead you are missing out on upwards of 25% of your damage against factions like Astra Militarum and Orks, if you can manage to get rid of all your opponents Synaptic creatures Tyranids also become very susceptible to Morale. I think being able to keep at least 1 model alive after Morale can be very important, but I play mainly Necrons were 1 model basically means 30-70% of models come back to life. I've only used an Alaitoc Wraithhost list (and isn't that sad) and a Biel-tan Dire Avengers list. Ideally, I would have played both those lists as Iyanden, but I don't want to give my pet Craftworld amazing rules, I feel like nerfing Alaitoc alone provides a big incentive to consider an Iyanden list. If Iyanden is weak as is making all IYANDEN WRAITHHOST models fearless might make big units of Wraithguard/blades as good when played as Iyanden as when they are played as what I suggested Ulthwé should be.

 vict0988 wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
It feels a little weird to me that Alaitoc has benefits that specifically call out aspect warriors but Biel-Tan doesn't. I know that Alaitoc is big on their hardcore adherency to the path system and has a bunch of exarchs as a result, but when someone asks me which craftworld is known for its aspect warriors, Biel-Tan is the one that springs to mind. What with them being the craftworld that historically was able to field an above average number of aspect warrior squads. When I think Alaitoc, I think rangers and harlequin allies before I think aspect warriors.

I like the changes to Alaitoc's Fieldcraft rule. it's still very useful, but it's way less punitive than the much-hated -1 to hit rule.

Sword Wind being once per game feels a bit weird. It's probably not OP, but I'm not aware of any other chapter tactic equivalents that work quite like this. It feels a bit more like a stratagem. The morale tokens seem fine, but I wonder if bookkeeping extra counters (not that it's terribly difficult bookkeeping) just to ignore a few morale casualties might not be worth the extra complexity (limited as that complexity might be). You could basically give ATSKNF to aspect warriors to get a similar result without introducing the concept of counters.

That said, my pet preferred rule for Biel-Tan would be to let Aspect Warrior units rip off the Salamanders chapter tactic. A single reroll to hit and wound each time you shoot/fight would still synergize with an autarch being nearby (letting you reroll 2s) and would benefit all aspect warriors without being obscenely good. Granted, this would favor MSU rather than large units, but I feel that encouraging a large variety of small aspect squads might arguably be just as fluffy if not more so for Biel-Tan.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with Iyanden. Giving them something akin to a ynnari rule would kind of capture the "cornered animal" thing they do so well, but ynnari don't need to be rendered even more niche. Maybe something like:

Desperate Determination: At the start of your turn, units with this trait may select a single model in their unit to regain a single lost wound. This rule may not increase a model's wounds beyond their original number nor may it restore models removed as casualties. In addition, if a unit with a damage chart has this attribute, double the number of wounds it actually has remaining whenever you are consulting the chart to determine its characteristics.

It benefits wraith units large and small as well as vehicles. The idea is that they're doing the "grit your teeth and get back in the fight" thing. It would basically make Iyanden the "tough" craftworld without relying on range (like Alaitoc) or psykers (like Ulthwe). That said, this would be two passive defensive benefits which might not be very exciting to most players, and it's double-dipping on defensive abilities (which I normally try to avoid).

ULTHWÉ: FORESIGHT OF THE DAMNED
While within 12" of an enemy unit or 3" of an ULTHWE PSYKER, units with this attribute can only ever lose a single model each Morale phase and can roll a D6 each time they suffer a wound, on a roll of 6+ the wound is ignored. If the unit already has a similar ability (e.g. the Hemlock Wraithfighter's Spirit Stones ability, or the Farseer's Ghosthelm ability) add +1 to that roll instead of making a roll for this ability.

I like this a lot! My only concern is that Fortune probably qualifies as a "similar ability," and 4+ FNP guardians may be just a tad much.

2: AN EYE ON DISTANT EVENTS
Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at your Warlord. Enemy units suffer a -1 penalty to hit your Warlord in the Fight phase.

Mildly worried that this combined with the shimmer plume or other to-hit penalizing effects might be a bit much. A -1 to hit autarch or farseer is neat. A -3 to hit version of the same is how you get your opponent to glare at you.

ALAITOC: PURITANICAL LEADER
At the start of your Shooting phase, pick a friendly ASPECT WARRIOR ALAITOC unit within 3" of your Warlord. You can re-roll all failed hit rolls for that unit in that phase.

BIEL-TAN: NATURAL LEADER
Friendly BIEL-TAN units within 6" of your Warlord automatically pass Morale tests and may spend a Hope Counter to re-roll a single wound roll once each turn.

Yeah. You and I might just see Alaitoc and Biel-Tan differently. You've kind of just swapped the GW version of their traits around here. You've made Alaitoc the one with aspect warrior-specific rules and also made the trait weaker than the GW version of Natural Leader by restricting it to aspect warriors only. Your version of Natural Leader is basically just the GW version of Puritanical Leader with a change to the craftworld name and a Hope Counter add-on.

IYANDEN: ENDURING RESOLVE
All IYANDEN units within 12" add +1 to their Leadership characteristic. In addition, your Warlord can attempt to deny one psychic power in each enemy Psychic phase (if your Warlord is a PSYKER, they can attempt to deny one psychic power more than usual).

This is fine, mostly because it's such a minor change that I don't see it actually changing much.

SAIM-HANN: WILD RIDER CHIEFTAINS
Add +1 to your Warlord's Attacks characteristic this turn if your Warlord Charged, was Charged or performed a Heroic Intervention this turn. If your Warlord is slain, you can immediately select another SAIM-HANN CHARACTER in your army to take their place, they now gain this Warlord trait. If the mission you are playing grants victory points for slaying the enemy Warlord, your opponent will only achieve that objective if all of the SAIM-HANN CHARACTERS in your army have been slain.

I feel like I'm missing a fluff thing here. Why are Saim-Hann characters Alpharius? Also, I'm always a little wary about rules that interact with Victory Points because the way missions handle VP varies so dramatically. In Eternal War, it might deny the tie-breaking secondary objective. In some variations of Maelstrom of War, it could not come up at all or could translate into denying your opponent a (perhaps too) significant portion of their VP for the game. In Open War, this might decide whether or not you double your VP or score the only critical objective.

ULTHWÉ: FATE READER
If your army is Battle-forged and your Warlord is on the battlefield, roll a D6 each time your opponent spends a Command Point to use a Stratagem; on a 6+ you gain 1 Command Point and your opponent may pay 1 Command Point, if your opponent cannot or chooses not to pay the extra Command Point the Stratagem has no effect.

Very fluffy. Perhaps change the enemy-impacting part to be more like the Calidus rule? Have it trigger on a 4+, but only on during the first game round? A streak of 6s could make this really annoying for your opponent, and not in a fun way. Also, I'm not sure the GW official version necessarily needed to be changed; it's pretty solid as-is.

Remnants of Glory...

No complaints here. Obviously you've powered a lot of things up, but they probably needed it, so... Yeah. I'd have to playtest these versions to see if they feel too strong. Can I assume anything not listed here (Faolchu's Wing, Phoenix Gem, etc.) is unchanged?

Overall, these seem like an improvement. My biggest criticism is how Alaitoc seems to be stealing Biel-Tan's shtick while doing relatively little to promote the use of its own iconic stuff (mostly Rangers).

I feel like Biel-tan should be able to field Guardians in a larger capacity than Alaitoc because they are less strict adherents to the paths, in the official codex I feel like the opposite is the case. I feel like what I've made here really promotes Aspect Warriors more than anything for Biel-tan since those are the most elite units that really suffer from Morale. But Alaitoc is definitely also supposed to be an Aspect-heavy list with their strict adherence to the paths, but they are quite a bit weaker for 10-man units I believe because as others have mentioned the +1 Ld is such a minuscule change. It helps 5-man units disproportionately and I think that's fitting because that means 20% of your Aspect Warriors will be Exarchs, while Biel-tan should sit somewhere around 10-15% Exarchs, with some big and some small units. Just because the rule isn't picking them out doesn't mean it doesn't support them, it's just done in a more round-about way.

You can't have a table-wide Stratagem, you could have them target one unit better with a Stratagem, but I don't feel like that's fitting and I feel like their current Strat speaks volumes of fluff. So, Tactic it is. Why just one turn? Because that's what Biel-tan is all about, doing a single decisive blow. I don't think any Necron Dynasties are similar, they quite like their drawn out wars due to their essentially infinite life-spans, but Biel-tan want to make the Aeldari great again right now. I hope I didn't just make anyone hate Biel-tan.

I really feel like Alaitoc needs to be the MSU Aspect Craftworld, while Biel-tan should be the more all-round for different sizes of Aspects. Something that I also want to repeat is the Biel-tan Stratagem, which specifically calls out Aspect Warriors and even if the Tactic no longer mentions them, they were in mind when I created the Tactic and they still have their Stratagem to support them.

I think your Iyanden Tactic is super weak and incredibly niche. It also works on vehicles, making it into a pure multi-wound sub-faction which isn't fitting since Iyanden fields a decent chunk of Dire Avengers.

The Ulthwé thing is supposed to make 4+ FNP Guardians. Guardians and psychic powers are their whole shtick. I felt like it was strange that they had negative synergy with a psychic power so i changed it to positive synergy. If they don't have a psyker near you can always just step more than 12" away and then it goes down to a 5+.

The Rangers of Alaitoc flee the Craftworld because it is too restrictive, by giving Alaitoc this WL trait I'm showing that it is the leadership that is creating this oppressive atmosphere but they are still appreciated and work for the Craftworld, we see that with the Tactic and the Stratagem.

Necrons get Fearless +1 Deny from one of their WL traits, the +1 Ld could be nice once in a blue moon and I thought it was fitting that an Iyanden psyker has more mental fortitude and so would be better at inflicting damage with the Mind War psychic power.

Saim-Hann operates under a clan system led by various Chieftains, they also place value on honour. I feel like their system supports their values because even if the brave leader goes and gets himself killed another Chieftain will be ready to step up to the podium. Other Asuryani factions feel like this system is barbaric and I feel like this WL trait is a little bit barbaric, kind of ruthlessly throwing away your WL rather than intelligently keeping him in the back like any sane commander would.

The current WL trait for Ulthwé is laughably bad IMO. You are getting at most 3 CP over the course of the game, spread out in an inconvenient matter. Most CP generating WL traits give at most 7 CP, usually at least 1 T1 and 1 T2.

Yes everything not mentioned went unchanged.

 Threeshades wrote:
Since when is alaitoc the Aspect Warrior craftworld? That's biel-tan's specialty. Alaitoc was always about rangers.

That is in fact not the case. Alaitoc has a ton of Aspect Warriors because they are endlessly haunted by their community to enlist into the armed forces, but all the ones that might normally do more civic things don't want to deal with this community pressure and also don't want to enlist because of the strict nature of the military instead becoming nomadic Rangers. It's not like Alaitoc sends all their kids to Ranger school because they have to hold up the Ranger pride of the family, it's just all the people too rebellious to join a path and work under an Exarch. In times of need the Rangers that have left their Craftworld come back to aid the Craftworld, providing íntelligence and assasination services to the Craftworld.

Marin wrote:
Sorry but it look terrible for balance prospective, since morale means based buffes means nothing for aeldar and are underwhelming this edition.

I don't really see how your changes to Morale for this edition are relevant? The Alaitoc and Biel-tan morale buffs are just secondary effects included for fluff purposes, if you had specific things you wanted to point out are UP then I'd like to hear, your statement is a little too vague and your suggested changes don't really help me create something that could be used for an Asuryani 2.0 book, which is what I'm going for with this thread.

I also feel like you are underestimating the importance of Morale this edition, given that last edition a huge chunk of units were fearless. Even LD 9 units have a 1/6 chance of losing 20% more models after losing 4 models, that's on units that were probably Fearless last edition. Then look at Orks, from what I remember they basically auto-passed their Morale tests if they had 10 models, now they auto-die if you don't pay CP after losing 19 models. If you always shoot units until they are dead you are missing out on upwards of 25% of your damage against factions like Astra Militarum and Orks, if you can manage to get rid of all your opponents Synaptic creatures Tyranids also become very susceptible to Morale. I think being able to keep at least 1 model alive after Morale can be very important, but I play mainly Necrons were 1 model basically means 30-70% of models come back to life. I've only used an Alaitoc Wraithhost list (and isn't that sad) and a Biel-tan Dire Avengers list. Ideally, I would have played both those lists as Iyanden, but I don't want to give my pet Craftworld amazing rules, I feel like nerfing Alaitoc alone provides a big incentive to consider an Iyanden list. If Iyanden is weak as is making all IYANDEN WRAITHHOST models fearless might make big units of Wraithguard/blades as good when played as Iyanden as when they are played as what I suggested Ulthwé should be.

If morale was important people were going to run Yanden more than the others and space marines would have been good.
Most armies have to many tricks to elude morale problems and you can always spend CP to auto pass it.
AM would have taken commissars and so on. Morale should impact more battle than currently it is.

The problem i think is that far away shooting is to powerful and it make melee armies take a hit. That is the reason terrain is such big topic, because the game don`t have other mechanics that the minus to hit and wound to disallow you to lose the game in first turn.

Removing -1 to hit from Allaitoc will really kill CWE since that is the only think making them good.
I really think that rule can be removed only with new edition when all the things are changed.

Marin wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
I also feel like you are underestimating the importance of Morale this edition, given that last edition a huge chunk of units were fearless. Even LD 9 units have a 1/6 chance of losing 20% more models after losing 4 models, that's on units that were probably Fearless last edition. Then look at Orks, from what I remember they basically auto-passed their Morale tests if they had 10 models, now they auto-die if you don't pay CP after losing 19 models. If you always shoot units until they are dead you are missing out on upwards of 25% of your damage against factions like Astra Militarum and Orks, if you can manage to get rid of all your opponents Synaptic creatures Tyranids also become very susceptible to Morale. I think being able to keep at least 1 model alive after Morale can be very important, but I play mainly Necrons were 1 model basically means 30-70% of models come back to life. I've only used an Alaitoc Wraithhost list (and isn't that sad) and a Biel-tan Dire Avengers list. Ideally, I would have played both those lists as Iyanden, but I don't want to give my pet Craftworld amazing rules, I feel like nerfing Alaitoc alone provides a big incentive to consider an Iyanden list. If Iyanden is weak as is making all IYANDEN WRAITHHOST models fearless might make big units of Wraithguard/blades as good when played as Iyanden as when they are played as what I suggested Ulthwé should be.

If morale was important people were going to run Yanden more than the others and space marines would have been good.
Most armies have to many tricks to elude morale problems and you can always spend CP to auto pass it.
AM would have taken commissars and so on. Morale should impact more battle than currently it is.

The problem i think is that far away shooting is to powerful and it make melee armies take a hit. That is the reason terrain is such big topic, because the game don`t have other mechanics that the minus to hit and wound to disallow you to lose the game in first turn.

Removing -1 to hit from Allaitoc will really kill CWE since that is the only think making them good.
I really think that rule can be removed only with new edition when all the things are changed.

People don't run Iyanden because Alaitoc is OP. AM did run Commissars, they were actually too good so they had to be nerfed. I don't know how much morale should impact, if 40% of your enemies are running away have you really even beaten your opponent? I remember losing a squad of 20 Warriors after my opponent killed 4 in melee, that wasn't fun.

Melee armies are hard to play, shooting armies the opposite, it's a question of most people not being good enough to pilot melee lists. It's also a question of there being too little LOS-breaking terrain pieces on most tables. Put a magic box(TM) on 50% of your tables and suddenly a ton of melee units become much better.

We can see from tournament stats that Ulthwé are great as well. Aeldari are a great faction, they definitely don't need the crutch of Alaitoc being stupidly good against certain match-ups. Ideally, I'd see AM and Knights changed as well, but that's for other threads to discuss.

 vict0988 wrote:

Marin wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
I also feel like you are underestimating the importance of Morale this edition, given that last edition a huge chunk of units were fearless. Even LD 9 units have a 1/6 chance of losing 20% more models after losing 4 models, that's on units that were probably Fearless last edition. Then look at Orks, from what I remember they basically auto-passed their Morale tests if they had 10 models, now they auto-die if you don't pay CP after losing 19 models. If you always shoot units until they are dead you are missing out on upwards of 25% of your damage against factions like Astra Militarum and Orks, if you can manage to get rid of all your opponents Synaptic creatures Tyranids also become very susceptible to Morale. I think being able to keep at least 1 model alive after Morale can be very important, but I play mainly Necrons were 1 model basically means 30-70% of models come back to life. I've only used an Alaitoc Wraithhost list (and isn't that sad) and a Biel-tan Dire Avengers list. Ideally, I would have played both those lists as Iyanden, but I don't want to give my pet Craftworld amazing rules, I feel like nerfing Alaitoc alone provides a big incentive to consider an Iyanden list. If Iyanden is weak as is making all IYANDEN WRAITHHOST models fearless might make big units of Wraithguard/blades as good when played as Iyanden as when they are played as what I suggested Ulthwé should be.

If morale was important people were going to run Yanden more than the others and space marines would have been good.
Most armies have to many tricks to elude morale problems and you can always spend CP to auto pass it.
AM would have taken commissars and so on. Morale should impact more battle than currently it is.

The problem i think is that far away shooting is to powerful and it make melee armies take a hit. That is the reason terrain is such big topic, because the game don`t have other mechanics that the minus to hit and wound to disallow you to lose the game in first turn.

Removing -1 to hit from Allaitoc will really kill CWE since that is the only think making them good.
I really think that rule can be removed only with new edition when all the things are changed.

People don't run Iyanden because Alaitoc is OP. AM did run Commissars, they were actually too good so they had to be nerfed. I don't know how much morale should impact, if 40% of your enemies are running away have you really even beaten your opponent? I remember losing a squad of 20 Warriors after my opponent killed 4 in melee, that wasn't fun.

Melee armies are hard to play, shooting armies the opposite, it's a question of most people not being good enough to pilot melee lists. It's also a question of there being too little LOS-breaking terrain pieces on most tables. Put a magic box(TM) on 50% of your tables and suddenly a ton of melee units become much better.

We can see from tournament stats that Ulthwé are great as well. Aeldari are a great faction, they definitely don't need the crutch of Alaitoc being stupidly good against certain match-ups. Ideally, I'd see AM and Knights changed as well, but that's for other threads to discuss.

Players don`t run commissars because they don`t need them and why would they when they have better ways to do it and without paying extra points ?
Yea cheap infantry should be super susceptible to morale, if you want this mechanic to do something.
People don`t use Yanden because its bad and gives you nothing, brackets don`t mean anything for death units and because it don`t give anything to wraithblades and wraithguard who need it desperately.
And grey knights won big tournament in Australia probably they are also performing great. Ultwe is used mainly because of Eldrad and guardian bomb, 6++ is nothing in this game when there are units with integrated 4+ and 5++.
Magic boxes don`t exist in the core rules, they and LOT are created by players to allow the game to be player or else Tao or AM will delete you in first turn.

That is negative modifiers can be removed only with big game change, because shooting is too strong. Maybe they can half the range of most weapons or implement negative modifier depending on range:
Over 48 inches -3 to hit
Over 24 inches -2 to hit
Over 12 inches -1 to hit

Marin wrote:
Players don`t run commissars because they don`t need them and why would they when they have better ways to do it and without paying extra points ?
Yea cheap infantry should be super susceptible to morale, if you want this mechanic to do something.
People don`t use Yanden because its bad and gives you nothing, brackets don`t mean anything for death units and because it don`t give anything to wraithblades and wraithguard who need it desperately.
And grey knights won big tournament in Australia probably they are also performing great. Ultwe is used mainly because of Eldrad and guardian bomb, 6++ is nothing in this game when there are units with integrated 4+ and 5++.
Magic boxes don`t exist in the core rules, they and LOT are created by players to allow the game to be player or else Tao or AM will delete you in first turn.

That is negative modifiers can be removed only with big game change, because shooting is too strong. Maybe they can half the range of most weapons or implement negative modifier depending on range:
Over 48 inches -3 to hit
Over 24 inches -2 to hit
Over 12 inches -1 to hit

Nobody uses Commissars any longer because they do more damage than they prevent after the nerf. But you are ignoring the fact that they were used and they were so amazing they had to be nerfed. Look at the Sloppity Bilepiper, he grants +1 A, yes, but he also grants a Leadership buff that synergizes with the Icon ability for Plaguebearers. House Hawkshroud was pretty popular when Knights first came out, that's exactly the same as Iyanden is for big models. Instead of posting wishings about how they'd change the core rules I'd appreciate if you commented on how you feel the rules of the Craftworlds codex should be changed. If units get -1/-2/-3 to hit depending on the range they are shooting from it's going to change the whole game and everything has to be re-balanced, a lot of long-ranged units are UP ATM, you are burying them so deep that no matter how low you set the pts they'll never be viable and even the most OP long-ranged units would become unplayable. I think we should instead discuss the small changes that could make every Craftworld, Relic and Stratagem balanced and fluffy.

Iyanden could provide Fearless Wraithblades and Wraithguard, but you probably think it's useless, I just don't feel like a damage or mobility amp fits Iyanden, I guess you could give them another durability amp outside of Morale, but I'm not sure what form that could take. I play Necrons most of the time, when my opponent playing a casual Night Lords list he was quite let down by the fact my entire army was fearless because of a WL trait. Another option is making WRAITHHOST or Wraithguard and Wraithblade units ObSec. The way I changed Ulthwé is going to make them the go-to for big blobs/deathstars and I don't really mind that even for Wraithhost stars. I think there is room for Iyanden to be the go-to option for Wraithguard in Wave Serpents or MSU Wraith lists. The last one being Fearless is essentially as good as the entire squad being Fearless if you are bringing squads of 5, bring Squads of 7 and you are still almost Fearless if you go with the +1 Ld WL trait. If you bring a Squad of 10 you are still better off with the new Tactic because with the original tactic how many Wraithguard die is reliable, you can rely on the fact that one Wraithguard will die, if you kill 9 the squad is dead, it just doesn't know it yet. With my suggested change the Wraithguard are reliable in your favour, you might lose more on average after losing 7/8 (0,5 extra Wraithguard flee on average), but if you lose 5/6 (0,08 extra flee) it's a wash and if you lose 9 you get to keep your Wraithguard alive instead of automatically losing him (-1 Wraithguard flee). With the +1 Ld change to the WL trait I suggested things move even further the direction of the new Tactic being better, with losing 6/7 only being a little better in the favour of the old tactic (0,25 extra flee), 8 being a wash and 9 still being quite a lot in the favour of the new Tactic (-0,83 extra flee).

Wyldhunt wrote:

2: AN EYE ON DISTANT EVENTS
Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at your Warlord. Enemy units suffer a -1 penalty to hit your Warlord in the Fight phase.

Mildly worried that this combined with the shimmer plume or other to-hit penalizing effects might be a bit much. A -1 to hit autarch or farseer is neat. A -3 to hit version of the same is how you get your opponent to glare at you.

I've fought a -2 to hit Solitaire with the MW daggers so each time I rolled 1-3 against him I suffered a MW on a 2+, I might even also have been at a further -1 to hit from a debuff on my unit. It hurt that my elite Lychguard were useless against this one character, but at the same time stacking combos is fair enough on so many units, why shouldn't Solitaires and in this case Autarchs be any different from stacking buffs on Magnus. While it kind of sucked, it also felt good to see that Aeldar can be untouchable badasses as well. Look at someone like Legolas, he probably has a -3 to hit modifier and it's awesome. It's not like all these stacking buffs are free, you are using reflexes on your HQ instead of on your battleline units, that seems like a mistake, even if it isn't I can't say that it's super unfair that you get a nigh-unkillable character. Trigger reflexes twice each turn and your opponent will run out of CP fast, not to mention he'll only be -2 to hit in the Shooting phase. I don't think it's the sort of stuff that's going to win tournaments, it might make Timmys mad when their Knight flails around and fails to kill an Autarch, but that just makes it better.

 vict0988 wrote:

I feel like Biel-tan should be able to field Guardians in a larger capacity than Alaitoc because they are less strict adherents to the paths, in the official codex I feel like the opposite is the case.

My take has always been that Biel-Tan should actually have proportionately fewer guardians than other craftworlders. To my mind, guardians are typically the guys you call on when the craftworld absolutely needs raw bodies. Because Biel-Tan is all about aspect warriors, it would have a relatively large number of non-guardians to call upon. So if you need some dudes with shuriken catapults to guard your flanks, you'll call on dire avengers for the task until you run out of dire avengers. And Biel-Tan has more dire avengers than the next guy.

I feel like what I've made here really promotes Aspect Warriors more than anything for Biel-tan since those are the most elite units that really suffer from Morale. But Alaitoc is definitely also supposed to be an Aspect-heavy list with their strict adherence to the paths, but they are quite a bit weaker for 10-man units I believe because as others have mentioned the +1 Ld is such a minuscule change. It helps 5-man units disproportionately and I think that's fitting because that means 20% of your Aspect Warriors will be Exarchs, while Biel-tan should sit somewhere around 10-15% Exarchs, with some big and some small units. Just because the rule isn't picking them out doesn't mean it doesn't support them, it's just done in a more round-about way.

Personally, I've never found morale to be that big a deal for aspect warriors. So morale bonuses don't really strike me as a huge deal for them. The Sword Wind helps aspect warriors, sure, but it helps anything in your army that does damage. So it's roughly as useful for, say, Saim-Hann windriders or Ulthwe Guardians as it is for banshees and fire dragons. You don't have to specifically call aspect warrior units out, but I feel like your Biel-Tan rules don't really do anything to make me want to field aspect warriors more than usual either. The fluff is that Biel-Tan is the aspect warrior craftworld. Your rules seem most useful for some sort of shooting heavy gunline that wants to alpha strike as hard as possible. Which doesn't make me want to field avengers over rangers or add a squad of dragons to my list. Meanwhile, your Alaitoc rules specifically benefit aspect warriors. It's like giving White Scars a rule that makes flamers better (making them more appropriate for Salamanders), and then going, "You know. Because you can give flamers to bikes."

You can't have a table-wide Stratagem, you could have them target one unit better with a Stratagem, but I don't feel like that's fitting and I feel like their current Strat speaks volumes of fluff.

I mean, table-wide strats exist. Off the top of my head, there's that generic one they FAQ'd into existence that gives the second player's entire army cover on the first turn and the ynnari one that lets your whole army count as soul bursting for the rest of the game once the overlord gets killed. I'm not totally opposed to a limited use sub-faction wide ability as a chapter tactic equivalent. I"m just saying that it's structurally more similar to a stratagem.

I really feel like Alaitoc needs to be the MSU Aspect Craftworld, while Biel-tan should be the more all-round for different sizes of Aspects. Something that I also want to repeat is the Biel-tan Stratagem, which specifically calls out Aspect Warriors and even if the Tactic no longer mentions them, they were in mind when I created the Tactic and they still have their Stratagem to support them.

I feel like "small aspect squad" versus "small OR BIG aspect squad" might not be the distinction that the majority of Alaitoc/Biel-Tan players want to see. At the risk of supporting flanderization, Alaitoc is the "ranger craftworld" while Biel-Tan is the "aspect warrior craftworld." Also, I may be missing it, but I can't seem to find the Biel-Tan strat you're referring to. Unless you just mean the as-is one from the book. In which case, spending CP for a bonus to charge rolls is nice but not something I'd want to build a list around.

Respectfully, several of us seem to agree that you're pushing aspect warriors as an Alaitoc thing to too great of an extent. If you value our feedback, that seems to be the most consistent criticism in this thread.

I think your Iyanden Tactic is super weak and incredibly niche. It also works on vehicles, making it into a pure multi-wound sub-faction which isn't fitting since Iyanden fields a decent chunk of Dire Avengers.

That's fair. I was just spitballing. Still, your changes to morale seem like a nerf to an already meh rule, and they don't seem to do anything to support the wraith-heavy theme. Also, I'm not sure where the Dire Avenger connection is coming from. I feel like I'm pretty on top of my eldar lore, and avengers have never jumped out at me as part of Iyanden's "thing." Is it just because of the "Flame of Asuryan" thing?

But yeah. Just like Biel-Tan is the aspect warrior craftworld, Iyanden is the wraith guard craftworld. I think most long-term Iyanden fans would like to see rules that help out wraith guard/blades and wraith lords.

The Ulthwé thing is supposed to make 4+ FNP Guardians. Guardians and psychic powers are their whole shtick. I felt like it was strange that they had negative synergy with a psychic power so i changed it to positive synergy. If they don't have a psyker near you can always just step more than 12" away and then it goes down to a 5+.

The anti-synergy is weird, I agree. However, the Celestial Shield strat and standing near a psyker combine to let guardians ignore 75% of the Damage 1 wounds thrown at them under your rules. Shaking off 3/4ths of enemy fire and pseudo-fearless for standing near a powerful psyker that the Ulthwe player wanted to field anyway seems likely to be unpopular among your opponents.

The Rangers of Alaitoc flee the Craftworld because it is too restrictive, by giving Alaitoc this WL trait I'm showing that it is the leadership that is creating this oppressive atmosphere but they are still appreciated and work for the Craftworld, we see that with the Tactic and the Stratagem.

I can explain away to-hit rerolls for any of the craftworlds. Iyanden rerolls to-hit because they're so gosh darned determined and desperate that they strive for greater martial feats. Saim-Hann is so used to high-speed coordinated attacks that landing hits on the slow-moving enemy is nothing. Ulthwe rerolls to hits thanks to psychic aid from a nearby seer council speaking through the character within 3". The fluff justification is fine. The weird thing is the repeated changes that seem to emphasize aspect warriors for Alaitoc instead of Biel-Tan. Here, you've literally taken a rule from Biel-Tan and given it to Alaitoc and then tweaked it so that it's beneficial for aspect warriors (which again, is sort of Biel-Tan's main focus).

Necrons get Fearless +1 Deny from one of their WL traits, the +1 Ld could be nice once in a blue moon and I thought it was fitting that an Iyanden psyker has more mental fortitude and so would be better at inflicting damage with the Mind War psychic power.

Sure sure. I'm not really opposed to it. It just seems like a minor enough change to make me wonder if it's actually a useful or necessary change.

Saim-Hann operates under a clan system led by various Chieftains, they also place value on honour. I feel like their system supports their values because even if the brave leader goes and gets himself killed another Chieftain will be ready to step up to the podium. Other Asuryani factions feel like this system is barbaric and I feel like this WL trait is a little bit barbaric, kind of ruthlessly throwing away your WL rather than intelligently keeping him in the back like any sane commander would.

Saim-Hann are still craftworlders concerned with life. Based on codexes and the recent Wild Rider novel, I don't get the impression that Saim-Hann leaders are dying in droves during every conflict nor that their command structure is especially durable compared to, say, the seer council of Ulthwe or a bunch of coordinated Autarchs. So I'm not necessarily opposed to this rule, but it also doesn't make me go, "Oh man! That's totally the lore of Saim-Hann in rules form!"

The current WL trait for Ulthwé is laughably bad IMO. You are getting at most 3 CP over the course of the game, spread out in an inconvenient matter. Most CP generating WL traits give at most 7 CP, usually at least 1 T1 and 1 T2.

I've anecdotally found it to be just fine, but to each their own. Maybe rip off the Prophets of Flesh warlord trait and just make it 1d3 extra CP generated pregame? That way, you eliminate the potential for especially good or bad luck and remove the troll factor when you shut down an opponent's critical strat by rolling a 6.

That is in fact not the case. Alaitoc has a ton of Aspect Warriors because they are endlessly haunted by their community to enlist into the armed forces, but all the ones that might normally do more civic things don't want to deal with this community pressure and also don't want to enlist because of the strict nature of the military instead becoming nomadic Rangers. It's not like Alaitoc sends all their kids to Ranger school because they have to hold up the Ranger pride of the family, it's just all the people too rebellious to join a path and work under an Exarch. In times of need the Rangers that have left their Craftworld come back to aid the Craftworld, providing íntelligence and assasination services to the Craftworld.

Going mainly off of the Path of the Eldar novels and the codexes, I'm not sure there's a ton of pressure for eldar to join the path of the warrior. The large number of rangers isn't so much that eldar are trying to avoid military service specifically; it's that they find the path system suffocating because of all the non-rangers pushing the path in general so hard. Aradryan in Path of the Outcast isn't fretting over whether or not to join an aspect shrine any more than he's fretting over whether or not to join the path of service or something. I only harp on this point because I feel it may be related to your rules above and may be creating a view of Alaitoc not commonly shared by others.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

2: AN EYE ON DISTANT EVENTS
Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at your Warlord. Enemy units suffer a -1 penalty to hit your Warlord in the Fight phase.

Mildly worried that this combined with the shimmer plume or other to-hit penalizing effects might be a bit much. A -1 to hit autarch or farseer is neat. A -3 to hit version of the same is how you get your opponent to glare at you.

I've fought a -2 to hit Solitaire with the MW daggers so each time I rolled 1-3 against him I suffered a MW on a 2+, I might even also have been at a further -1 to hit from a debuff on my unit. It hurt that my elite Lychguard were useless against this one character, but at the same time stacking combos is fair enough on so many units, why shouldn't Solitaires and in this case Autarchs be any different from stacking buffs on Magnus. While it kind of sucked, it also felt good to see that Aeldar can be untouchable badasses as well. Look at someone like Legolas, he probably has a -3 to hit modifier and it's awesome. It's not like all these stacking buffs are free, you are using reflexes on your HQ instead of on your battleline units, that seems like a mistake, even if it isn't I can't say that it's super unfair that you get a nigh-unkillable character. Trigger reflexes twice each turn and your opponent will run out of CP fast, not to mention he'll only be -2 to hit in the Shooting phase. I don't think it's the sort of stuff that's going to win tournaments, it might make Timmys mad when their Knight flails around and fails to kill an Autarch, but that just makes it better.

Fair points. Just be aware that, "See, it's okay that I'm untouchable in melee because Legolas is an anime ninja, and backflips are rad," might not be convincing for your opponents if they do feel frustrated by your character's durability. But generally I agree that getting more than a -2 would be a rather costly investment.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Respectfully, several of us seem to agree that you're pushing aspect warriors as an Alaitoc thing to too great of an extent. If you value our feedback, that seems to be the most consistent criticism in this thread. Aradryan in Path of the Outcast isn't fretting over whether or not to join an aspect shrine any more than he's fretting over whether or not to join the path of service or something. I only harp on this point because I feel it may be related to your rules above and may be creating a view of Alaitoc not commonly shared by others.

It's not a democratic system, I'm just making suggestions for what I feel like would make the rules more balanced and fluffy. I have not read any of the Black Library books, you can find tonnes of conflicting stuff not only in past and present codices but even more so on the fanwikis for 40k, I knew what I posted wasn't directly quoted in any of what I wrote, but it was the feeling I was getting. Part of it was just a short blurb about Alaitoc sending in a veritable rainbow of aspects after harrying their enemy with their Rangers. Anyway, thank you for trying to inform me, I still don't agree with you 100%, I still feel like it is important to show that Alaitoc is a stifling place to be for the Rangers and that is why they left, this is why I switched around the Biel-tan and Alaitoc, I don't feel like the whole working alone and without any of their less strict brethren makes sense if they work with the corsairs and rangers that left their Craftworld in times of need. But showing how they shun them by having the new WL trait only affect Aspect Warriors is perfectly fine I believe. Do you think all traces of Aspect Warrior support needs to be removed from Alaitoc or would it be good enough if the +1 Ld buff just became universal, I think that fits the fluff pretty well since even the Rangers of Alaitoc are very loyal to their Craftworld.

Personally, I've never found morale to be that big a deal for aspect warriors. So morale bonuses don't really strike me as a huge deal for them. The Sword Wind helps aspect warriors, sure, but it helps anything in your army that does damage. So it's roughly as useful for, say, Saim-Hann windriders or Ulthwe Guardians as it is for banshees and fire dragons. You don't have to specifically call aspect warrior units out, but I feel like your Biel-Tan rules don't really do anything to make me want to field aspect warriors more than usual either. The fluff is that Biel-Tan is the aspect warrior craftworld. Your rules seem most useful for some sort of shooting heavy gunline that wants to alpha strike as hard as possible. Which doesn't make me want to field avengers over rangers or add a squad of dragons to my list. Meanwhile, your Alaitoc rules specifically benefit aspect warriors. It's like giving White Scars a rule that makes flamers better (making them more appropriate for Salamanders), and then going, "You know. Because you can give flamers to bikes."

It might help Windriders or Guardians as much as it does Aspect Warriors, but it helps Windriders less than Saim-Hann does and it helps Guardians less than Ulthwé does. I don't see what Craftworld would be better for Fire Dragons than Biel-tan, certainly what I've made is more useful than what they currently get. I think why you would rather run the lists you mentioned is because those units are relatively strong ATM, I don't think Biel-tan should be OP to make up for the bad Aspects, you'll still just only take the good Aspects even if I gave all Aspects some special sauce to be OP. Perhaps it's a question of my Biel-tan tactic just being too weak? Re-roll 1s and 2s to wound on the turn you call the Swordwind? Alternatively, it could add 1 to wound rolls, but then it starts affecting different units differently.

I may be missing it, but I can't seem to find the Biel-Tan strat you're referring to. Unless you just mean the as-is one from the book. In which case, spending CP for a bonus to charge rolls is nice but not something I'd want to build a list around.

See this is another problem, if the Aspect Strat is way too weak to build a list around it then maybe it needs to be buffed as well. If instead of affecting one unit it affected up to three different Aspects maybe that promote the army I'm going for.

I think your Iyanden Tactic is super weak and incredibly niche. It also works on vehicles, making it into a pure multi-wound sub-faction which isn't fitting since Iyanden fields a decent chunk of Dire Avengers.

That's fair. I was just spitballing. Still, your changes to morale seem like a nerf to an already meh rule, and they don't seem to do anything to support the wraith-heavy theme. Also, I'm not sure where the Dire Avenger connection is coming from. I feel like I'm pretty on top of my eldar lore, and avengers have never jumped out at me as part of Iyanden's "thing." Is it just because of the "Flame of Asuryan" thing?

But yeah. Just like Biel-Tan is the aspect warrior craftworld, Iyanden is the wraith guard craftworld. I think most long-term Iyanden fans would like to see rules that help out wraith guard/blades and wraith lords.

I already posted the math for why I think the new rule is superior, even for 10-man Squads, especially for 8-9 man squads or in the case you use the changed Iyanden WL trait. I think there was something about Dire Avengers in the 4th edition Eldar codex. I already posted an idea that Iyanden could get ObSec Wraithhost units.

The Ulthwé thing is supposed to make 4+ FNP Guardians. Guardians and psychic powers are their whole shtick. I felt like it was strange that they had negative synergy with a psychic power so i changed it to positive synergy. If they don't have a psyker near you can always just step more than 12" away and then it goes down to a 5+.

The anti-synergy is weird, I agree. However, the Celestial Shield strat and standing near a psyker combine to let guardians ignore 75% of the Damage 1 wounds thrown at them under your rules. Shaking off 3/4ths of enemy fire and pseudo-fearless for standing near a powerful psyker that the Ulthwe player wanted to field anyway seems likely to be unpopular among your opponents.

I'm killing off -3 Flyers, I think that makes up for making Ulthwé better. While you technically multiply a units toughness with each buff, you also start seeing a lessening return on investment as your unit gets closer and closer to immortality, your opponent might just ignore it if he has better things to shoot/fight. Once your opponent triggers Celestial Shield he can just ignore that one unit of Guardians, hopefully there are more than one unit of Guardians.

Saim-Hann are still craftworlders concerned with life. Based on codexes and the recent Wild Rider novel, I don't get the impression that Saim-Hann leaders are dying in droves during every conflict nor that their command structure is especially durable compared to, say, the seer council of Ulthwe or a bunch of coordinated Autarchs. So I'm not necessarily opposed to this rule, but it also doesn't make me go, "Oh man! That's totally the lore of Saim-Hann in rules form!"

I think it makes sense to me because Saim-Hann work on a smaller scale, in a solar-system spanning empire you are going to see redundancy in the command structure, how about on the scale of 30-60 warriors? I wasn't trying to say they don't care about life at all, just in comparison with the regular Craftworlders that treat the loss of a Craftworlder as a huge deal and place more emphasis on duty than glory.

The current WL trait for Ulthwé is laughably bad IMO. You are getting at most 3 CP over the course of the game, spread out in an inconvenient matter. Most CP generating WL traits give at most 7 CP, usually at least 1 T1 and 1 T2.

I've anecdotally found it to be just fine, but to each their own. Maybe rip off the Prophets of Flesh warlord trait and just make it 1d3 extra CP generated pregame? That way, you eliminate the potential for especially good or bad luck and remove the troll factor when you shut down an opponent's critical strat by rolling a 6.

The troll factor is intentional, in any case your opponents can just pay to have their important Stratagems work. I'd say that the option of not paying paired with the automatic negation if your opponent has run out of CP cancel each other out.

 vict0988 wrote:

It's not a democratic system, I'm just making suggestions for what I feel like would make the rules more balanced and fluffy. I have not read any of the Black Library books, you can find tonnes of conflicting stuff not only in past and present codices but even more so on the fanwikis for 40k, I knew what I posted wasn't directly quoted in any of what I wrote, but it was the feeling I was getting. Part of it was just a short blurb about Alaitoc sending in a veritable rainbow of aspects after harrying their enemy with their Rangers. Anyway, thank you for trying to inform me, I still don't agree with you 100%, I still feel like it is important to show that Alaitoc is a stifling place to be for the Rangers and that is why they left, this is why I switched around the Biel-tan and Alaitoc, I don't feel like the whole working alone and without any of their less strict brethren makes sense if they work with the corsairs and rangers that left their Craftworld in times of need. But showing how they shun them by having the new WL trait only affect Aspect Warriors is perfectly fine I believe. Do you think all traces of Aspect Warrior support needs to be removed from Alaitoc or would it be good enough if the +1 Ld buff just became universal, I think that fits the fluff pretty well since even the Rangers of Alaitoc are very loyal to their Craftworld.

If you want to go with a leadership buff for Alaitoc instead of the fearless warlord trait for them, I'd make it universal. After all, guardians and seers and so forth are all a part of the path system too. And not specifically calling out aspect warriors would at least reduce some of the weirdness of Biel-Tan not calling out aspects while Alaitoc does. Like, if this thread were about space marines and you gave white scars a chapter tactic to boost flamers and gave salamanders a chapter tactic to boost bikes "because they're independent and have to operate away from the other guys," it would be a weird fit, right?

It might help Windriders or Guardians as much as it does Aspect Warriors, but it helps Windriders less than Saim-Hann does and it helps Guardians less than Ulthwé does. I don't see what Craftworld would be better for Fire Dragons than Biel-tan, certainly what I've made is more useful than what they currently get. I think why you would rather run the lists you mentioned is because those units are relatively strong ATM, I don't think Biel-tan should be OP to make up for the bad Aspects, you'll still just only take the good Aspects even if I gave all Aspects some special sauce to be OP. Perhaps it's a question of my Biel-tan tactic just being too weak? Re-roll 1s and 2s to wound on the turn you call the Swordwind? Alternatively, it could add 1 to wound rolls, but then it starts affecting different units differently.

It's not that the sword wind rule is too weak. It's structured kind of like a stratagem, and it doesn't really promote aspect warriors over, say tank spam or wraith units, but it's reasonably powerful. Perhaps it's a difference in design goals. If you want rules that communicate Biel-Tan's high number of aspect warriors, your sword wind doesn't really push me to look at aspects any more than I normally would. If you just want to convey the crescendo of violence that is the bahzekhain, it's fine. As I mentioned before, the sword wind rule doesn't scream Biel-Tan to me; it would look right at home on basically any of the craftworlds. But it's probably within acceptable levels of potency.

See this is another problem, if the Aspect Strat is way too weak to build a list around it then maybe it needs to be buffed as well. If instead of affecting one unit it affected up to three different Aspects maybe that promote the army I'm going for.

Well, the codex version of the Biel-Tan strat is useful for scorpions, spears, and banshees (to a lesser extent as they already move so fast) and encourages you to field an Avatar. The weird thing about the GW Biel-Tan rules is that the shuriken buff is really only good on two aspects (spears and avengers) but is also good on lots of non-aspect units, and the strat is only kind of good for the aspects mentioned above. So you leave a bunch of aspects without any reason to be Biel-Tan (spiders, hawks, dragons, reapers, spectres).

I already posted the math for why I think the new rule is superior, even for 10-man Squads, especially for 8-9 man squads or in the case you use the changed Iyanden WL trait. I think there was something about Dire Avengers in the 4th edition Eldar codex. I already posted an idea that Iyanden could get ObSec Wraithhost units.

I apologize for sounding negative, but bonus leadership and even obsec wraith units just doesn't really hold a lot of appeal. In order for your proposed Iyanden rule to matter for a unit of wraith guard, I'd have to...

1.) Lose enough models in a single turn to roll morale.
2.) Lose just enough models to morale to wipe out the unit.
3.) Not lose more than 1 model (because then the codex version is better).

So your version is really only better if I was going to have my unit destroyed by losing exactly 1 guy to morale. If I was going to lose the unit by losing 2+ guys to morale, the codex version would drop that down to 1 morale casualty and save the unit anyway. If I wasn't going to lose enough guys to morale to lose the unit, your version wouldn't kick in at all, but the codex version might have saved some guys. So really, your version only comes out ahead if I'm taking exactly 5 wraith guard, lose 4 of them in a single turn (or have some leadership debuffs going on), and then roll a 6 on my morale test. It's really, really situational (moreso even than the codex version). It's fluffier in that it doesn't lend itself to guardian blobs, but you're still just making a bad craftworld trait worse rather than making it more desirable for Iyanden players to take it.

Obsec wraith host is a thing that I see thrown around when discussions like this come up, but I'm not a fan. Wraith units are too expensive and short-ranged to park on an objective most of the time, and they'll generally want to focus on moving towards expensive targets rather than charging troops on objectives. Do you really want to give up your wraith guard shots against a knight or your wraith blade attacks against a leman russ to charge some guardsmen on an objective?

But again, Iyanden is a tough one to write rules for.

I'm killing off -3 Flyers, I think that makes up for making Ulthwé better. While you technically multiply a units toughness with each buff, you also start seeing a lessening return on investment as your unit gets closer and closer to immortality, your opponent might just ignore it if he has better things to shoot/fight. Once your opponent triggers Celestial Shield he can just ignore that one unit of Guardians, hopefully there are more than one unit of Guardians.

Fair. I'm just going off the fact that my opponents get cranky when I tank a bunch of bolter or lasgun shots on a heavy weapon platform or a celestial shield as-is. Going from a 6+ FNP to a 5+ or 4+ FNP on top of that might be irksome.

I think it makes sense to me because Saim-Hann work on a smaller scale, in a solar-system spanning empire you are going to see redundancy in the command structure, how about on the scale of 30-60 warriors? I wasn't trying to say they don't care about life at all, just in comparison with the regular Craftworlders that treat the loss of a Craftworlder as a huge deal and place more emphasis on duty than glory.

Work on a smaller scale? How do you mean? As far as I'm aware, Saim-Hann has about as much presence and population as any of the other craftworlds with rules (other than Iyanden or, recently, Biel-Tan who both canonically have a lower population these days). I'm not necessarily opposed to this one from a balance perspective; it doesn't seem broken. It's just another rule that doesn't make me go, "Yeah, I see what lore they're representing with this rule." Especially having recently read a novel with a scene where half the cast bends over backwards to keep a Saim-Hann chieftain from getting ganked.