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PenitentJake wrote:
I try not to let novels influence how I think about things that are a part of the actual game. The novels help me come up with scenarios, and they inspire me, but only material from a game book is actually cannon as far as I'm concerned. Opinions may vary, of course.

Separating exarchs has potential if tweaked, but it's hard to get right. As someone mentioned earlier, the squads are bad without the exarchs, so the exarch powers would have to become aura abilities. But even then...

I mean, the thing about separate Exarchs is that's kinda what a Phoenix Lord is, right? So if you dump exarchs into that design space, PL become superfluous.

I think the idea of re-tooling them as REAL elites would be my preference. They should all have 2 wounds and minimum strength and toughness of 4. If you don't like it because it's inconsistent with the Eldar species stat template, you just create a piece of gear or an ability that makes the model function as if it had S4 T4. And obviously, their costs can go up substantially to justify this.

Problem with Exarch aura abilities is the squad loses them if somehow the Exarch is eliminated first, unless it is specifically worded that the ability remains with the squad. This led for example in 3rd edition to things like a Scorpions forgetting how to move stealthily if their Exarch was picked off.

Scorpion chainswords are already worded to boost S, because enough people complained about Gav Thorpe's 3rd edition Codex having Scorpions with S4 in their base stateline, which might have mattered due to the possibility of special weapons requiring S tests.

T4 and W2 are supposed to be really far above normal human/Eldar levels of durability. Characters get extra W I suppose to represent plot armor.

The capping of to-hit modifiers in 9th edition however means that the Eldar way of protection via "not being hit" is not going to get much benefit, not without introducing yet some other rule like a dodge save.

PenitentJake wrote:
I try not to let novels influence how I think about things that are a part of the actual game. The novels help me come up with scenarios, and they inspire me, but only material from a game book is actually cannon as far as I'm concerned. Opinions may vary, of course.

Separating exarchs has potential if tweaked, but it's hard to get right. As someone mentioned earlier, the squads are bad without the exarchs, so the exarch powers would have to become aura abilities. But even then...

I mean, the thing about separate Exarchs is that's kinda what a Phoenix Lord is, right? So if you dump exarchs into that design space, PL become superfluous.

I think the idea of re-tooling them as REAL elites would be my preference. They should all have 2 wounds and minimum strength and toughness of 4. If you don't like it because it's inconsistent with the Eldar species stat template, you just create a piece of gear or an ability that makes the model function as if it had S4 T4. And obviously, their costs can go up substantially to justify this.

In regards to separate exarchs, they managed fine in 2nd alongside the Phoenix lords, as they represented path lost, not aspect fixated. because they could equip themselves much more flexibly because they were lost on the path of the warrior which encompassed all aspects, while Phoenix lords were the epitome of a single aspect of war.

And from a conceptual level, the Phoenix lords Occupy the same space as a primarch, while exarchs are captains or chapter masters of their 'chapter' of the Lord's 'legion'.

If captains, lieutenants, chapter masters and now a primarch can all exist in the same design space, exarchs can too.

Your ideas around making them elites, while effective, I think highlights the limitations on the game design these days. That is, if you don't look like a space marine, you suck.

It's why I think necrons have become GWs preferred xenos. They occupy the same space as marines and are much easier to balance and make interesting. If making aspects into Eldar marines is how you get them to the elite rules they need then absolutely. It's just sad that the rules are getting so restrictive that that's the only viable path to take.

It's a systems issue. Right now the 40K system has few ways to show survivability through any other means except toughness, armor, or Wounds. All of those are essentially about soaking the hit, rather than evasion. Evasion currently is lumped into invulnerable saves like what Harlequins have, or a FNP save like what Ulthwe has.

To boost Eldar infantry survivability now with the cap on to-hit modifiers, one would have to consider something like a 6++ or 6+++ save, but not sure whether that is really going to make a difference given the current high lethality environment with buckets of dice.

Iracundus wrote:
It's a systems issue. Right now the 40K system has few ways to show survivability through any other means except toughness, armor, or Wounds. All of those are essentially about soaking the hit, rather than evasion. Evasion currently is lumped into invulnerable saves like what Harlequins have, or a FNP save like what Ulthwe has.

To boost Eldar infantry survivability now with the cap on to-hit modifiers, one would have to consider something like a 6++ or 6+++ save, but not sure whether that is really going to make a difference given the current high lethality environment with buckets of dice.

Yes I bemoaned this when 9th announced the cap. The shrinking of design space. They've continued this route ever since 3rd ed. This is just the latest in a long line of changes that whether intentionally or not, hit the Eldar design concept squarely. The last one was the removal of initiative, a survival by going first approach.


There are other methods of imposing speed as protection, but they're gamey. Like 'eldar are so fast you cant hit them on better than 4+'. That means you can keep their stats relatively frail because they'll survive longer. Phoenix lords with rule wouldn't need an invulnerable save as badly as they do now...

Another one could be 'eldar are considered 6" further away when shooting at them, and 3" further away when charging them' because reflexes. This would give them more control over who got the charge first which would keep them alive longer.

 Hellebore wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
It's a systems issue. Right now the 40K system has few ways to show survivability through any other means except toughness, armor, or Wounds. All of those are essentially about soaking the hit, rather than evasion. Evasion currently is lumped into invulnerable saves like what Harlequins have, or a FNP save like what Ulthwe has.

To boost Eldar infantry survivability now with the cap on to-hit modifiers, one would have to consider something like a 6++ or 6+++ save, but not sure whether that is really going to make a difference given the current high lethality environment with buckets of dice.

Yes I bemoaned this when 9th announced the cap. The shrinking of design space. They've continued this route ever since 3rd ed. This is just the latest in a long line of changes that whether intentionally or not, hit the Eldar design concept squarely. The last one was the removal of initiative, a sit acted as a survival by going first approach.


There are other methods of imposing speed as protection, but they're gamey. Like 'eldar are so fast you cant hit them on better than 4+'. That means you can keep their stats relatively frail because they'll survive longer. Phoenix lords with rule wouldn't need an invulnerable save as badly as they do now...

That will create unstoppable force vs immovable object scenarios because I think there are already cases of "Always hit on X" or "Ignore modifiers". Is a limitation to 4+ hitting a modifier? and so on.

I think Phoenix Lords should have an invulnerable save to bring them up to par with other characters. A 4++ is practically a mandatory now for all major characters in any faction. This can easily be justified as due to their special Phoenix Lord skills such as Jain Zarr deflecting shots and blows with her Blade (as done in the Night Lords novels), Karandas having an aura of supernatural shadow/darkness (as in Gav Thorpe's novels), Fuegan outright tanking it, Baharroth flitting around and dodging, etc...

Iracundus wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
It's a systems issue. Right now the 40K system has few ways to show survivability through any other means except toughness, armor, or Wounds. All of those are essentially about soaking the hit, rather than evasion. Evasion currently is lumped into invulnerable saves like what Harlequins have, or a FNP save like what Ulthwe has.

To boost Eldar infantry survivability now with the cap on to-hit modifiers, one would have to consider something like a 6++ or 6+++ save, but not sure whether that is really going to make a difference given the current high lethality environment with buckets of dice.

Yes I bemoaned this when 9th announced the cap. The shrinking of design space. They've continued this route ever since 3rd ed. This is just the latest in a long line of changes that whether intentionally or not, hit the Eldar design concept squarely. The last one was the removal of initiative, a sit acted as a survival by going first approach.


There are other methods of imposing speed as protection, but they're gamey. Like 'eldar are so fast you cant hit them on better than 4+'. That means you can keep their stats relatively frail because they'll survive longer. Phoenix lords with rule wouldn't need an invulnerable save as badly as they do now...

That will create unstoppable force vs immovable object scenarios because I think there are already cases of "Always hit on X" or "Ignore modifiers". Is a limitation to 4+ hitting a modifier? and so on.

I think Phoenix Lords should have an invulnerable save to bring them up to par with other characters. A 4++ is practically a mandatory now for all major characters in any faction. This can easily be justified as due to their special Phoenix Lord skills such as Jain Zarr deflecting shots and blows with her Blade (as done in the Night Lords novels), Karandas having an aura of supernatural shadow/darkness (as in Gav Thorpe's novels), Fuegan outright tanking it, Baharroth flitting around and dodging, etc...

They've actually already answered that with the dark reapers FAQ, as they have a fixed hit roll. The attacker's fixed roll overrides the target's. So I don't think it's a problem.


I have a.lot of opinions on phoenix lords (as you've seen). Their psychic powered suit souls of the dead, swirling light in the suit concept imo means they should actually be very resistant to damage. As in, a Phoenix lord only takes half damage. They can't be flesh wounded, they don't sleep or eat or really breath. They don't take their helmets off.

Imo they should be more daemonic in ability given how long they've been absorbing souls. I still think they're conceptually more like daemon princes of khaine, but an equivalent rather than identical to chaos ones.

I would love to see aspects at war - a Phoenix host like maugan Ra created during the eye of terror campaign. An army of dark reapers lead by their founder.

You'd have the demigod lord with their many varied exarchs and the many varied squads with different teachings.


Speaking of, I would also take the whole squad effects from the exarch powers.list and make them squad teachings you can choose from. Leaving unique exarch abilities as the special powers they learn from fighting forever. This gets around the stupid ability disappears when the exarch does issues and also provides variety to the squads

 Hellebore wrote:

They've actually already answered that with the dark reapers FAQ, as they have a fixed hit roll. The attacker's fixed roll overrides the target's. So I don't think it's a problem.

Have they? I admittedly don't keep up to date on the rules FAQ, but a quick check seemed to show a specific interaction with the Culexus that altered BS to 6+ however the Reaper ability turned the to-hit rule to a 3+ irrespective of BS, so it wasn't so much attacker trumps target but rather both take effect, and the Reaper rule was not directly affected by the Culexus rule.

Im tellin ya'll..

We need powers that buff the squad and bigger squads. Like having 15-20 banshees is different beats to having 10 max.

Or having many exarchs running around with a small bodyguard I.e. having 3 man squads where you could field 3 exarchs with their exarch power buffing only them.

The squad size limitation is my biggest bug bears. If I had spare points id happily field the odd 3 fire dragons or 3 scorpion exarchs to strike from different directions and go charcter hunting.

Iracundus wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

They've actually already answered that with the dark reapers FAQ, as they have a fixed hit roll. The attacker's fixed roll overrides the target's. So I don't think it's a problem.

Have they? I admittedly don't keep up to date on the rules FAQ, but a quick check seemed to show a specific interaction with the Culexus that altered BS to 6+ however the Reaper ability turned the to-hit rule to a 3+ irrespective of BS, so it wasn't so much attacker trumps target but rather both take effect, and the Reaper rule was not directly affected by the Culexus rule.

Apologies you are right. I had read it and simply recalled that the reaper attack trumped the fixed hit. I would say it would be fairly simple to make the decision regardless, but it does highlight the kind of gamey requirements to represent the speed defence concept in the current design space.

Argive wrote:Im tellin ya'll..

We need powers that buff the squad and bigger squads. Like having 15-20 banshees is different beats to having 10 max.

Or having many exarchs running around with a small bodyguard I.e. having 3 man squads where you could field 3 exarchs with their exarch power buffing only them.

The squad size limitation is my biggest bug bears. If I had spare points id happily field the odd 3 fire dragons or 3 scorpion exarchs to strike from different directions and go charcter hunting.

Whole I'd love small sqauds of kinlost (the remainder of a squad that all got trapped together), I'm not a fan of 20 aspects in a squad, it's going in the opposite direction to the way the eldar and the aspects travel - dying race few in number hyper elite.

 Hellebore wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

They've actually already answered that with the dark reapers FAQ, as they have a fixed hit roll. The attacker's fixed roll overrides the target's. So I don't think it's a problem.

Have they? I admittedly don't keep up to date on the rules FAQ, but a quick check seemed to show a specific interaction with the Culexus that altered BS to 6+ however the Reaper ability turned the to-hit rule to a 3+ irrespective of BS, so it wasn't so much attacker trumps target but rather both take effect, and the Reaper rule was not directly affected by the Culexus rule.

Apologies you are right. I had read it and simply recalled that the reaper attack trumped the fixed hit. I would say it would be fairly simple to make the decision regardless, but it does highlight the kind of gamey requirements to represent the speed defence concept in the current design space.

Argive wrote:Im tellin ya'll..

We need powers that buff the squad and bigger squads. Like having 15-20 banshees is different beats to having 10 max.

Or having many exarchs running around with a small bodyguard I.e. having 3 man squads where you could field 3 exarchs with their exarch power buffing only them.

The squad size limitation is my biggest bug bears. If I had spare points id happily field the odd 3 fire dragons or 3 scorpion exarchs to strike from different directions and go charcter hunting.

Whole I'd love small sqauds of kinlost (the remainder of a squad that all got trapped together), I'm not a fan of 20 aspects in a squad, it's going in the opposite direction to the way the eldar and the aspects travel - dying race few in number hyper elite.

In my head I justify that as a popular shrine or co-operative action between several shrines. Like if jain zar turned up to a bunch of craftworlds and told the banshees to grab their gear and follow her to a battlefield I cant imagine they would say no because we can only band in groups of 10 or 5

I think 20 might be too much but 15 doesn't seem that bad. 15 dark reapers would be scary but also very costly and very vulnerable. Im more interested in fielding like 3 exarchs gunning for the jugular of the enemies army or a fire dragon jumping out of a WS to back up some Dire avengers and an an autarch.

 Argive wrote:

In my head I justify that as a popular shrine or co-operative action between several shrines. Like if jain zar turned up to a bunch of craftworlds and told the banshees to grab their gear and follow her to a battlefield I cant imagine they would say no because we can only band in groups of 10 or 5

The old Apocalypse datasheets did have such examples of a Phoenix Lord showing up and leading off a bunch of their own Aspect Warriors. The Scorpion version was named the Shadow Cult of Karandras. It also showed some of the abilities of the Phoenix Lord. In the Shadow Cult case, the Scorpions if they were in like area terrain cover could vanish and deep strike again into another piece of area terrain, representing them fading into one set of shadows and emerging from another, without passing through the intervening space.

Iracundus wrote:

 Argive wrote:

In my head I justify that as a popular shrine or co-operative action between several shrines. Like if jain zar turned up to a bunch of craftworlds and told the banshees to grab their gear and follow her to a battlefield I cant imagine they would say no because we can only band in groups of 10 or 5

The old Apocalypse datasheets did have such examples of a Phoenix Lord showing up and leading off a bunch of their own Aspect Warriors. The Scorpion version was named the Shadow Cult of Karandras. It also showed some of the abilities of the Phoenix Lord. In the Shadow Cult case, the Scorpions if they were in like area terrain cover could vanish and deep strike again into another piece of area terrain, representing them fading into one set of shadows and emerging from another, without passing through the intervening space.

As problematic as those sheets were, there were some really cool fluff-centric ideas that came out I sure wish had been extended on rather than ignored completely.

The only other Phoenix Lord/Aspect formation was Baharroth's Tempest where he'd lead the Hawks to zoom in up and in front of an enemy flyer to drop their haywire grenades as aerial mines. Enemy flyer cannot stop, gets fried, and plummets like a brick. RIsk was a Hawk could mistime it and get plastered on the front of the flyer.

There were some Warp Spider formations but no Phoenix Lord. Then Apocalypse ended without getting round to the other Aspects.

 Galas wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Why? Theres many more banshee on the universe than scouts.

You keep making this assertion - what's your source?

Well. The amount of space marines on the galaxy is aprox 1 million. Theres much less scouts than that number. Lets put 400.000. A single Craftworld has a population much higher than that. Eldar are a Dying race at a galactic scale. That doesn't mean they are low in number, theres probably billions of eldars (Craftworlders, even more if you count dark eldar and exodites). Each Craftworld is nearly the size of a continent, and theres a bunch of them. Is just a matter of galactic squale and the ridiculous small canon numbers of space marines. Not only that, probably theres many Eldar that were banshee but stopped to become other things.

So, just to confirm - no source?

Let's look at Scout numbers first. We're told by the setting that there are 1,000 Chapters of Space Marines (whether this has gone up significantly since Guilliman's reappearance is unknown). If following the Codex Astartes - which most do - the 10th Company is the Scout Company. While the Scout Company doesn't represent all the trainee Marines, it reflects the senior recruits. Theoretically, the 10th Company should be roughly equal in size to the other ten companies, at ~100 Scouts plus command staff. 1,000 * 100 leaves us with roughly 100,000 Scouts in active service, though I accept that the actual number is probably lower than that.

Now let's look at Banshees. We know that they're one of a number of major Aspect paths, which appear with enough frequency to merit a unit entry (and a Phoenix Lord, in the form of Jain Zar). However, the Path of the Warrior is one of a host of paths than a Craftworld Eldar may choose to follow at a given time, and that's before they are drawn to (or assigned to?) a given Aspect Shrine. We do know that during the course of their lives, most Craftworlds will walk the Path of the Warrior, but obviously they don't all do so at the same time, even on Biel-Tan.

There are four limiting factors we can't estimate, as I don't believe we've ever been given numbers for these - a deliberate move, and one I kind of agree with. In order to truly estimate the number of Banshees in the galaxy, we'd need to know:
- How many Craftworlds are there?
- What's the average population size of a Craftworld, give the whole "dying race" malarky?
- Roughly what proportion of the population is on the Path of the Warrior at a given moment?
- What proportion of those on the Path are getting a really sore throat from screaming at people?

Depending on these variables, there may be more Banshees than Scouts in active service, or there may be more Scouts than Banshees - the point here is that we don't have the data to even provide an appropriate estimate on the Eldar side of things.

If you asked me to guess, I'd say with confidence that there are more Aspect Warriors in the Milky Way than there are Scouts. I couldn't, however, make a claim in good conscience that there are more of a given Aspect in the galaxy than there are Scouts.

Iracundus wrote:
The only other Phoenix Lord/Aspect formation was Baharroth's Tempest where he'd lead the Hawks to zoom in up and in front of an enemy flyer to drop their haywire grenades as aerial mines. Enemy flyer cannot stop, gets fried, and plummets like a brick. RIsk was a Hawk could mistime it and get plastered on the front of the flyer.

So rather than firing a frozen turkey at a plane's cockpit when testing them in 40k, you have to fire a frozen Swooping Hawk at them? Hardcore...

An idea I had was to make the exarchs individual Force org slots, but make the squads free.

Ie, a banshee exarch is independent model and for each one you buy, you can take up to say 2-3 banshee squads.

Exarchs will be in every war that the eldar fight as that's their soul purpose. If their students come or not is not necessarily related.

It means you can also just take an exarch as a single slot if you want.

 Hellebore wrote:

It means you can also just take an exarch as a single slot if you want.

Given the current meta, can't see why anyone would want that. High lethality environment, no general auras boosting other units, and general lack of invulnerable saves for any Exarchs aside from Avengers, means easily killed Exarch. Also don't want things to degenerate towards Herohammer, which was what 2nd edition became in the end, with troops just being a tax for the hero blenders. So that means there should be a ceiling to how individually powerful an Exarch or any other character should be.

Personally, I don't really want standard exarchs running around on their own. While they do arguably warrant a power (and cost) increase, having them attached to a squad makes plenty of sense and is just way less messy than having what essentially a squad leader running around on his own.

That said, I don't hate the idea of shrineless exarchs as character units. The idea being that this exarch doesn't have any or enough students to be an active shrine, but that doesn't mean they want to pass up an excuse to shed some blood. So you deploy them, sans a squad, and let them run wild.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

Argive wrote:Im tellin ya'll..

We need powers that buff the squad and bigger squads. Like having 15-20 banshees is different beats to having 10 max.

Or having many exarchs running around with a small bodyguard I.e. having 3 man squads where you could field 3 exarchs with their exarch power buffing only them.

The squad size limitation is my biggest bug bears. If I had spare points id happily field the odd 3 fire dragons or 3 scorpion exarchs to strike from different directions and go charcter hunting.

Whole I'd love small sqauds of kinlost (the remainder of a squad that all got trapped together), I'm not a fan of 20 aspects in a squad, it's going in the opposite direction to the way the eldar and the aspects travel - dying race few in number hyper elite.

Agreed. I don't really want to see bigger aspect squads except maybe for avengers. I'm sure that there at least 20 banshees on a given craftworld, but if you're fielding as many banshees as your opponent is fielding termagaunts, your armies are conveying a different story than the fluff is.

I think people underestimate the size of Craftworld populations consistently.

For example, Iyanden had billions because they lost billions in the fight against the Tyranids (p. 5, Iyanden supplement). How many billions is not exactly given but even at the minimum of 2 billion (in order to qualify for the plural of billions):

2,000,000,000 Eldar
Assuming a 0.5% militarization as Aspect Warriors yields 10 million Aspect Warriors
Assuming that the Aspects with existing Phoenix Lord models are the most common Aspects (which seems to be Gav Thorpe's view as well from his blog), and assuming an even division among these common Aspects:
1000000/6 = 1.66 million Banshees

Even if that is an overestimate by an order of magnitude, we are still talking about 166,000 Banshees.

They do. Because "dying race" is on a galactic scale. Marines don't exist in a galactically relevant scale no matter how many special ops they do. They mainly matter b/c GW can't stop making kits for them.

Yeah. Thats what I said earlier. And many people believes 40k Eldar are LOTR elves. And they are not.

Is like imperial guardsmen. By our standards, they would be extremely elite and harded soldiers with top notch equipement, but in Warhammer they are trash.

The same happens with Eldar. Yeah they live centuries and they are fast as feth and obssessed with what they do... but so are space marines, with the point of being actual super soldiers trained from young that can live centuries and that are physically superior to eldar in every respect with the exception of the top bracket of agility and speed.

A 300 year old banshee has no advantage over a 300 year old assault marine by fluff. Actually (Yeah I know that who wins depends in context and who whants the author to win), but the assault marine should have the advantage. Hes not as fast but is pretty fast, much stronger, much more resilient, with better armor (It doesnt matter because the banshee weapons ignore it but) and even with a chainsword he would not have a problem killing the banshee in a single blow, the same can't be said about the banshee.

And this happens with other things. For example Tyranid Warriors are nearly infinite and one single tyranid warrior would win agaisnt a normal space marine in 1vs1 combat. Other common duality is the Terminator agaisnt the Genestealer. Up front a genestealer has a fair chance of killing a terminator 1vs1 but their actual advantage is the context were they fight, attacking from the shadows, etc... but the moment the terminator has the range advantage he can kill dozens or hundreds of genestealers (Just like in our world a guy with a assault rifle can kill hundreds of unarmed people)

 Galas wrote:
Yeah. Thats what I said earlier. And many people believes 40k Eldar are LOTR elves. And they are not.

Is like imperial guardsmen. By our standards, they would be extremely elite and harded soldiers with top notch equipement, but in Warhammer they are trash.

The same happens with Eldar. Yeah they live centuries and they are fast as feth and obssessed with what they do... but so are space marines, with the point of being actual super soldiers trained from young that can live centuries and that are physically superior to eldar in every respect with the exception of the top bracket of agility and speed.

A 300 year old banshee has no advantage over a 300 year old assault marine by fluff. Actually (Yeah I know that who wins depends in context and who whants the author to win), but the assault marine should have the advantage. Hes not as fast but is pretty fast, much stronger, much more resilient, with better armor (It doesnt matter because the banshee weapons ignore it but) and even with a chainsword he would not have a problem killing the banshee in a single blow, the same can't be said about the banshee.

And this happens with other things. For example Tyranid Warriors are nearly infinite and one single tyranid warrior would win agaisnt a normal space marine in 1vs1 combat. Other common duality is the Terminator agaisnt the Genestealer. Up front a genestealer has a fair chance of killing a terminator 1vs1 but their actual advantage is the context were they fight, attacking from the shadows, etc... but the moment the terminator has the range advantage he can kill dozens or hundreds of genestealers (Just like in our world a guy with a assault rifle can kill hundreds of unarmed people)

Comparing Eldar to Guardsmen? C'mon man. I agree with the general gist of your point (i.e. every faction gets talked up in their own fluff and significantly up-gunned/up-hyped) but you're basically taking the Marine fluff hook, line, and sinker, and trivializing Eldar and Tyranids here. You've done a lot of "I assert it's true so it must be so" in this thread, but you've got to back it up with something more than that.

I'm not saying an Eldar is the same as a guardsmen.

I'm saying the problem of perception is the same: A Guardsmen would be a extremely good soldier , a super soldier, by today standards. Just look at Cadians, training since they are children. But in the warhammer 40k scale they are some of the weakest things on the galaxy.

Eldars, are also a super advanced alien race that thinks and moves faster than most humans can even process what they are seeing, and a Eldar baker shoots better than a trained human soldier.
But a single, humble Eldar compared with the horrors of the galaxy, even a veteran one like an aspect warrior isnt really that impressive compared with most of what others factions and races have.

And that also applies to Space Marines. I have always said that the numbers of space marines are absurds because it doesnt matter that a space marine is actually quite good, and superior to things like necrons warriors, tyranids hordes, normal eldars, ork boyz... when theres many more tyranid warriorss or tyrand guard, necron inmortals and lych guard, or even ork nobz than space marines.


Space Marines are always written as Comic Book protagonists, were giant invasions can be destroyed because casually theres always a bad guy separated from the main force, or theres a ship that if you destroy is core, the battle is won or other nonsense to make them incoherently effective.

And I apologize for not presenting sources like Iracundus. I have read a ton of warhammer 40k background but I'm horrible to remember where each piece of information comes from, specially when I have read those in spanish with spanish titles and names, and years ago.


My point is: I know people want eldar to feel elite, etc... but by their fluff, having an Eldar Specialist being equal to a tactical marine (Remember, tacticals are actually more veteran than devastators and assault marines and normally have at least a century of battlefield experience), a genestealer, a necron inmortal, etc... is actually how they should be.
Yeah we all know Intercessors have generated a problem with stat creep. I mean. Just look at those primaris bikes, having the same wounds and more attacks than a Adeptus Custodes Jetbike.

Problem being, if the Intercessor is the "new marine standard" as the Tactical Marine has been for decades, then that's what gets compared to.

The problem is the standard of comparison. Way back in the old days, the standard was (at least in theory) the Guardsmen rather than the MEQ standard. Against that, the old Guardian statline was meant to show how an Eldar civilian who only trains part-time can still perform at the same standard as a full-time normal human soldier, with WS BS 3. The human equivalent of an Eldar Guardian would have been WS BS 2. The Eldar equivalent of a Guardsman would be the Dire Avenger. In the 2nd edition Codex Imperialis, it even says the Aspect Warriors show what level of focus the Eldar mind is capable of. WS BS 4 is supposed to be a level of skill beyond professional human soldiers and I 5 was supposed to be blurringly fast. The extra Ld the Eldar had at both Guardian and Avenger levels was again also +1 over the normal human, supposedly to show the greater resiliency and determination of the average Eldar over the average human.

The problem unfortunately is over the editions the standard has shifted towards MEQ, and the various rules have led to a decrease in the importance of I and Ld. Ironically that has led to the situation opposite that of the original fluff, with Eldar more likely to fail Ld tests and break than Guardsmen, who at the price of one executed Guardsman get to either auto-pass or re-roll Ld tests depending on the edition.

Now that's for the average Eldar. Exarchs though can be the anime ninja heroes because of their powers. One could argue Warlocks and Farseers achieve their levels of skill through maybe some abstracted low level prescience, with powers like Guide being a sharpening of the predictive ability to the point of allowing re-rolls.

The removal of initiative, the cap in modifiers and the shift to fixed hit rolls has taken most of the design room the Eldar exist in away.

A higher WS would allow them to offset their low toughness, as would a high initiative.

A penalty to hit due to speed would offset their fragility to shooting.

None of these things are possible anymore.


They're already 3+ to hit minimum. This reflects the better than a Guardsman Perspective, but it squashes the aspects into 'slightly better than guardians' rather than the Eldar elite equivalent of a Marine.

They've also got tau battlesuits to compete with in the field, which they don't really do.

I think the most important issue they have is maintaining 'elven fragility' while also being able to survive the game to do their job. The melee aspects suck at attack, but they all suck at survivability.

And GW have pretty much only given you 4 options - toughness, wounds, saves or some kind of special rule which in most armies turns out to be a form of save anyway...

Ask the protoss about "elven fragility". Speaking of which, the Eldar could get extra wounds in the form of energy shields just like the Protoss.

Martel732 wrote:
Ask the protoss about "elven fragility". Speaking of which, the Eldar could get extra wounds in the form of energy shields just like the Protoss.

It would have made sense to give eldar protoss shields back in the day, but we're several decades into accepting that most eldar don't have such shields. Handing them out now would be about as elegant a fluff change as adding primaris.

You could maybe say that their speed and training translates into multiple wounds with the underestanding that losing a wound might just mean you suffered a narrow miss or a graze rather than a direct hit. Obviously, you'd probably want to increase the wounds on a lot of units throughout the game if you took this approach to keep eldar feeling fragile, DG feeling durable, etc. Of course, some people struggle with the abstraction of rolling saves after to-wound rolls, so...

I think part of the problem with aspects is just the scale creep of the game. Avengers currently do have certain advantages over guardsmen, but those advantages are really hard to leverage when your opponent has multiple mortar teams and spare sponsons just waiting for a target. I look forward to seeing how aspects behave in smaller games of 9th. Maybe dire avengers will do alright when your opponent only has a handful of units and most of them are focused on killing your wave serpent. Maybe fire dragons will contribute more meaningfully with their single sucker punch out of reserves if that sucker punch nearly kills the only vehicle in your opponent's army. Maybe banshees doing almost no damage won't matter if the one unit they tangle up represents a large percentage of your opponent's total army.

Martel732 wrote:
Ask the protoss about "elven fragility". Speaking of which, the Eldar could get extra wounds in the form of energy shields just like the Protoss.

true but those trixy pooter forces have the advantage that they and their war besties can be tweaked in far finer lumps than the 16.6% 40k is broadly bound to,

Wyldhunt wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Ask the protoss about "elven fragility". Speaking of which, the Eldar could get extra wounds in the form of energy shields just like the Protoss.

It would have made sense to give eldar protoss shields back in the day, but we're several decades into accepting that most eldar don't have such shields. Handing them out now would be about as elegant a fluff change as adding primaris.

You could maybe say that their speed and training translates into multiple wounds with the underestanding that losing a wound might just mean you suffered a narrow miss or a graze rather than a direct hit. Obviously, you'd probably want to increase the wounds on a lot of units throughout the game if you took this approach to keep eldar feeling fragile, DG feeling durable, etc. Of course, some people struggle with the abstraction of rolling saves after to-wound rolls, so...

I think part of the problem with aspects is just the scale creep of the game. Avengers currently do have certain advantages over guardsmen, but those advantages are really hard to leverage when your opponent has multiple mortar teams and spare sponsons just waiting for a target. I look forward to seeing how aspects behave in smaller games of 9th. Maybe dire avengers will do alright when your opponent only has a handful of units and most of them are focused on killing your wave serpent. Maybe fire dragons will contribute more meaningfully with their single sucker punch out of reserves if that sucker punch nearly kills the only vehicle in your opponent's army. Maybe banshees doing almost no damage won't matter if the one unit they tangle up represents a large percentage of your opponent's total army.

Just do it. Shields are badass. What's another retcon? They've already shown there's nothing they can do to drive people away except maybe formations.


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 Turnip Jedi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Ask the protoss about "elven fragility". Speaking of which, the Eldar could get extra wounds in the form of energy shields just like the Protoss.

true but those trixy pooter forces have the advantage that they and their war besties can be tweaked in far finer lumps than the 16.6% 40k is broadly bound to,

It's almost like computers are a better medium for wargames.

You can certainly provide a blanket invulnerable - or even make their basic save invulnerable. With low wounds and T this will keep them alive for a little bit longer. Despite how crazy it sounds, they still aren't going to last long. T3 3+ invulnerable is still pretty fragile.

GW have also given almost every army with subfaction options one where they either get FNP or an invulnerable to represent, well anything from bionics, to BDSM enjoyment, to being able to predict the future.


To me it just seems a bit tepid that they've shrunk the design space so much that the invulnerable save/FNP is the only real way to reflect this.


You end up with a huge range of armies that all function very similarly while representing very different things.

Personally I think I'd rather see them messing with people's to hit rolls. You can get around the modifier cap by just saying you can't hit Eldar on better than 4+. I reckon the current army would play more like they're supposed to without any unit changes with that one rule