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Battle focus is an army-wide craftworld eldar rule. Currently, battle focus lets you shoot non-heavy weapons as though you hadn't advanced even when you did. This sounds nice on paper, but in practice, it means that it's...
A.) only useful when you're out of range with your gun.
B.) only useful if you happen to roll high enough to get into range with with your advance roll.
C.) only useful to melee units if you have the ability to charge after advancing (only banshees and bikes if you use a craftworld-specific stratagem).

So you have to be out of range of the enemy to benefit from it, but not more than 6" out of range (because then advancing doesn't help you). If you need to roll a 5 and only roll a 4, it doesn't help you. If you're a melee unit that wants to charge this turn, it doesn't help you. And even if you're a banshee unit, actually shooting your pistols at an enemy far enough to warrant using battle focus means that you risk making your charge more difficult.

Bike units get a bit more use out of it as they're guaranteed to advance 6", but that's a rather small number of units benefitting from an army-wide rule.

So, what if Battle Focus was changed to:
"Ranged to-hit rolls made against a unit with this rule suffer a -1 to hit if the unit advanced its controlling player's previous movement phase."

Eldar players would lose a highly situational offensive benefit, but they'd have a way of increasing their overall defense at the cost of their overall offense. A few things to consider:

* This would let troops like dire avengers and guardians advance across the field relatively safely without having to buy expensive transports for them.
* Eldar vehicles do not have battle focus (except maybe war walkers), so this wouldn't make wave serpents or flyers harder to hit.
* This would cause units advancing and firing assault weapons to hit less often as they'd no longer be immune to the -1 penalty for assault weapons.

Personally, I'd love to make my on-foot eldar units more viable. Dire avengers on foot are just an easy kill for your opponent. Dire avengers in a wave serpent are a big points investment (and the serpent could probably be better used transporting something else). But dire avengers lowering their offense in order to dash forward into better terrain? That strikes me as an interesting game mechanic.

What do you think? Maybe having that much access to to-hit penalties would be a problem? I feel like a -1 to hit with any of that unit's own shots would probably be a fair trade-off, plus it just feels fluffy. Outside of a single strat and a special rule on shining spears, there isn't a lot that nods to the agility of craftworlders these days.

Eldar haven't had their speed as defence since 2nd ed where moving 10"+ inflicted a -1 to hit, so Eldar could run and be hard to hit.

I am all for going back to that.

But I would also change the stats on the catapult and make it a 18" gun.

If There's a need for avengers to have a different weapon, happy to see them go to 24". If marines can have 24" assault 3 guns, surely the Eldar can go back to the ranges they had in 2nd ed
...

For most of the eldar book I don’t think this would be a huge problem. The main issue is the Altioc subfaction. Suddenly they have 20 man guardian squads that have easy access to a -2 to hit penalty. Armies at BS 4+ would really struggle against this since they’d have no good way to clear your cheap troops screen. A punisher cannon firing 40 shots with its double tap ability kills 3 guardians at 12.01”-24” range if the guardians have a -2 penalty. If minuses didn’t stack I think this ability would be perfect.

Hellebore wrote:Eldar haven't had their speed as defence since 2nd ed where moving 10"+ inflicted a -1 to hit, so Eldar could run and be hard to hit.

I am all for going back to that.

But I would also change the stats on the catapult and make it a 18" gun.

If There's a need for avengers to have a different weapon, happy to see them go to 24". If marines can have 24" assault 3 guns, surely the Eldar can go back to the ranges they had in 2nd ed
...

That's not entirely true. I started playing in 5th edition where moving a skimmer fast enough made it difficult to hit in melee and I think gave it a 4+ cover save iirc. it's just that moving that far meant you weren't disembarking troops or shooting guns that turn. And jink, despite its flaws, allowed various speedy units (including many eldar ones) to opt to improve their defense at the cost of their offense. Their actual movement in inches wasn't directly a factor, but jink was only available to units that tended to be speedy in the first place, so the connection was conveyed.

But glad that people seem to be onboard with a return to mobility-as-defense.

Not opposed to 18" catapults, but that's probably its own discussion.

evil_kiwi_60 wrote:For most of the eldar book I don’t think this would be a huge problem. The main issue is the Altioc subfaction. Suddenly they have 20 man guardian squads that have easy access to a -2 to hit penalty. Armies at BS 4+ would really struggle against this since they’d have no good way to clear your cheap troops screen. A punisher cannon firing 40 shots with its double tap ability kills 3 guardians at 12.01”-24” range if the guardians have a -2 penalty. If minuses didn’t stack I think this ability would be perfect.

Thanks! You're absolutely right. -2 to hit on all advancing Alaitoc units would be an issue, even factoring in decreased offense. I imagine Alaitoc will get the Raven Guard treatment or some similar change eventually, but maybe just explicitly not allowing it to stack with Battle focus would be reasonable? So an Alaitoc unit can either battle focus for a -1 to hit or stay more than 12" away form the enemy for a -1 to hit, but they can't get a -2 to hit by doing both.Battle Focus would remain useful for when the enemy gets closer (or when you get closer with your short-ranged units), but Battle Focus wouldn't become an easy way to get a -2.

There was a brief time when vehicles could get jink, but infantry never could (ravenguard bikers did though).

My reason for mentioning the catapults is that battle focus IMO was added specifically to retain the 12" ranged catapult for guardians.

Since 3rd they've maintained a weird obsession with catapults having a pistol's range (avengers didn't get special guns until 5th edition, so for 3rd and 4th ed they ran around with pistols...).

Battle focus is a work around for them to give eldar stupidly short ranged guns. If they had sensible ranges on the main weapons that rule would be completely pointless (as they wouldn't need to be Advancing to get into range in the first place).

So my reason for bringing it up is that they've sunk rules into maintaining that short range and removing it would have big knock on effects.


So while I am all for representing eldar speed with a to hit modifier, i'm just pointing out that there are other aspects to the eldar that would have to change as a result.

IMO I think it should be a racial trait that all eldar get, rather than just the craftworlds (harlequins are much faster and more acrobatic).

The 12” is a bit nuts at this point and needs to change for sure. If we don’t want to rebalance the catapults, what if you could chose which option to use? You either can advance and shoot without penalty or you get a non stacking -1 to hit. It could represent weather they eldar are moving to avoid fire or moving to get into position.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Battle focus is an army-wide craftworld eldar rule. Currently, battle focus lets you shoot non-heavy weapons as though you hadn't advanced even when you did. This sounds nice on paper, but in practice, it means that it's...
A.) only useful when you're out of range with your gun.
B.) only useful if you happen to roll high enough to get into range with with your advance roll.
C.) only useful to melee units if you have the ability to charge after advancing (only banshees and bikes if you use a craftworld-specific stratagem).

On one hand, your analysis is limited. Battle Focus is also useful when you just want to move farther with a unit you have no intention of charging with. Who doesn't want to be d6" closer to an objective while still firing at full effectiveness?

On another, you still need to advance for your suggested change, so it becomes useless for melee units you cannot charge after advancing. I'd think those are the units you'd want to gain this bonus the most.

Finally, just because a unit has a rules doesn't mean it should always be useful. Space Marine Combat Doctrines don't do a lot for a model in the wrong doctrine for it's weapon. Sister of Battle Shield of Faith doesn't do anything if the incoming attacking doesn't have enough AP to make the Invulnerable Save useful.

 alextroy wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Battle focus is an army-wide craftworld eldar rule. Currently, battle focus lets you shoot non-heavy weapons as though you hadn't advanced even when you did. This sounds nice on paper, but in practice, it means that it's...
A.) only useful when you're out of range with your gun.
B.) only useful if you happen to roll high enough to get into range with with your advance roll.
C.) only useful to melee units if you have the ability to charge after advancing (only banshees and bikes if you use a craftworld-specific stratagem).

On one hand, your analysis is limited. Battle Focus is also useful when you just want to move farther with a unit you have no intention of charging with. Who doesn't want to be d6" closer to an objective while still firing at full effectiveness?

On another, you still need to advance for your suggested change, so it becomes useless for melee units you cannot charge after advancing. I'd think those are the units you'd want to gain this bonus the most.

Finally, just because a unit has a rules doesn't mean it should always be useful. Space Marine Combat Doctrines don't do a lot for a model in the wrong doctrine for it's weapon. Sister of Battle Shield of Faith doesn't do anything if the incoming attacking doesn't have enough AP to make the Invulnerable Save useful.

It also ignores moving to gain line of sight rather than out and out range, using the advance move to climb a floor in a ruin to avoid assault from units unable to enter ruins, and other small but potent uses of this rule.

Additional good points. Battle Focus is about enchanted positioning via extra speed without the cost of ranged firepower.

While the idea of Eldar having a negative to-Hit modifier as their defensive edge is a thematic idea, it just doesn't fit well into a system with already enough negative Hit Modifiers and a faction that has a 5+ BS on a large number of units.

Lots of good points, everyone. There are more situational uses for BF than I was taking into consideration, however, I still don't love the current version of the rule. Maybe this is a location thing, but most of the line of sight blocking terrain we play with around here uses the rules for ruins, and I only end up playing with "boarded up window" rules half the time. As a result, my infantry can generally parkour through terrain to attack the enemy; I just don't have a lot of BLOS corners that I can't walk through meaning it's pretty rare that an advance roll will make the difference between whether or not I can shoot. I also don't find climbing ruins to be a useful way to avoid melee most of the time as the melee units that reach me usually do so by deepstriking (meaning they can measure the 9.1" from wherever I am while I"m in ruins.

Obviously, your experiences might differ from my own.

Regarding melee units not benefitting, I don't think I agree. Melee units can't generally benefit from the -1 to hit on the turn that they're charging, but they can benefit from it when they're moving into position. Striking scorpions or banshees that can get a -1 to hit penalty as they run up the field would make me feel a lot more comfortable fielding such units without a wave serpent. By the time you're charging, your tactics for protecting those units switch to tripointing and -1 to-hit penalties from other sources.

Giving an almost -1 to hit penalty is a big deal, but we also already have that in the form of Alaitoc's Fieldcraft rule. What I'm pitching would give the same (non-stacking) benefit, but it would come with a penalty to offense. I don't mean to come across as entrenched in the defense of my pet idea, but I think the increased utility, expansion of viable playstyles, and arguably better representation of the the faction's fluff all make my idea an appealing one. Now, if Alaitoc got nerfed to something less potent, I'd be really reluctant to reintroduce a source of -1 to-hit penalties to the army, but even we'd be talking about a -1 to hit on infantry and bikes rather than on wave serpents or dark reapers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hellebore wrote:
There was a brief time when vehicles could get jink, but infantry never could (ravenguard bikers did though).

My reason for mentioning the catapults is that battle focus IMO was added specifically to retain the 12" ranged catapult for guardians.

Since 3rd they've maintained a weird obsession with catapults having a pistol's range (avengers didn't get special guns until 5th edition, so for 3rd and 4th ed they ran around with pistols...).

Battle focus is a work around for them to give eldar stupidly short ranged guns. If they had sensible ranges on the main weapons that rule would be completely pointless (as they wouldn't need to be Advancing to get into range in the first place).

So my reason for bringing it up is that they've sunk rules into maintaining that short range and removing it would have big knock on effects.

Ah. See, I didn't see extra range as the real point of Battle Focus in previous editions. Sure, you'd occassionally be just a couple inches out of range, but the primary way I used it last edition was a version of jump-shoot-jump. Dire Avengers and swooping hawks could poke their heads out around corners, take their shots, and then run back behind a BLOS wall. Ditto war walkers. Even guardian heavy weapon platforms could benefit from it iirc. Maybe I'm biased because that's how I was using the rule last edition, but I got the impression that the designers either didn't understand that use of the rule when they translated it to 8th or simply opted to leave it toned down as part of the "punishment phase" craftworlders kind of went through.

So while I am all for representing eldar speed with a to hit modifier, i'm just pointing out that there are other aspects to the eldar that would have to change as a result.

IMO I think it should be a racial trait that all eldar get, rather than just the craftworlds (harlequins are much faster and more acrobatic).

I'm all for other aeldari getting some form of speed-related defense. I'm pitching the idea as a variation on battle focus because I feel that BF is situational enough to be worth changing. I felt like there was an "open slot," basically.