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The wait is killing me, GW threw a bone and made us starve for a week

 Denegaar wrote:
The wait is killing me, GW threw a bone and made us starve for a week

Yeah I keep hoping someone will get the new statlines from the instruction kits, but it looks like Thedarkcity.net is down, so I'm guessing nobody cares enough to seek them out.

Are the new boxes on the shelves already in the UK?

Honestly guys I doubt most of our poison weapons will get ap-1 or better. Basic weapons on basic troops and smg weapons (like shard carbines) tend not to get an ap value. I’m hoping I’m wrong but I think splinter cannons only got it because it’s a heavy bolter equivalent. Here’s hoping wracks gets armor piercing -1 on their melee weapons though.

I'm going to be honest. I have very, very low expectations for this Codex.

Literally the only two things I want are for us to be able to build an army from all 3 sub-factions in the codex without having to separate them into detachments, and for them to increase transport capacity of Raiders and Venoms to 12 and 6 respectively.

I doubt very highly that the later will happen. In which case my disappointment will continue and my expectations will be met.

Anything else is a bonus.

I fully expect roughly 50% of this codex to be boarder line unplayable.

Yeah honestly considering how gw treats dark eldar I'm sorta ready to shelve them. The new codex will make or break the army for me....possibly forever. I'd probably just make the switch to admech because I hear gsc are super low tier right now. Also admech has a couple similar units to dark eldar like the hover tank. The scourge esque units they have seem a lot like scourge too.

Yeah I'm in the same boat Brutus. I've been playing Drukhari since 7th and I'm getting really tired of being an afterthought NPC army.

After what we've seen thus far I'm not holding much hope that this codex will address the fundamental flaws in our army (pathetic HQ choices, transport capacity on our transports, underwhelming units such as hellions and scourges, poison as a rule being antiquated and in need of an overhaul).

If this codex doesn't address some of the issues in our army and make us fun and competitive to play I think I'll also be shelving them for 9th and re-evaluating my time in the hobby. My other army is Tempestus Scions so I guess I'll see what happens with them when the guard dex drops.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I'm going to be honest. I have very, very low expectations for this Codex.

Literally the only two things I want are for us to be able to build an army from all 3 sub-factions in the codex without having to separate them into detachments, and for them to increase transport capacity of Raiders and Venoms to 12 and 6 respectively.

I doubt very highly that the later will happen. In which case my disappointment will continue and my expectations will be met.

Anything else is a bonus.

I fully expect roughly 50% of this codex to be boarder line unplayable.

I am trying to be positive, but deep down fear that you are right.

The Raider and Venom capacity thing would actually be a great quality of life improvement, but I'm less convinced than you are that it will be done.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Splinter weapons will get some additional effect on a '6', similar to Shuriken.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Yeah honestly considering how gw treats dark eldar I'm sorta ready to shelve them. The new codex will make or break the army for me....possibly forever. I'd probably just make the switch to admech because I hear gsc are super low tier right now. Also admech has a couple similar units to dark eldar like the hover tank. The scourge esque units they have seem a lot like scourge too.

When the admech were released either myself or my brother were going to pick them up. Ultimately I decided to pass on them as they seemed to play VERY similar to DE. As the years have gone on we even joke that every unit DE players dream of or want fixed they listen to by adding it to the admech. It's actually pretty hilarious and depressing if you go down the list


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 harlokin wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I'm going to be honest. I have very, very low expectations for this Codex.

Literally the only two things I want are for us to be able to build an army from all 3 sub-factions in the codex without having to separate them into detachments, and for them to increase transport capacity of Raiders and Venoms to 12 and 6 respectively.

I doubt very highly that the later will happen. In which case my disappointment will continue and my expectations will be met.

Anything else is a bonus.



I have a sneaking suspicion that Splinter weapons will get some additional effect on a '6', similar to Shuriken.

Again, speaking of admech, both their basic troops have guns that would have been perfect for splinter weapons. One is longer ranges s4 with ap -1 on a 6 the other is assault 3 s3 damage 2 on a roll of a 6 to wound.

I wouldn't be surprised if basic splinter weapons are ap -1 on a wound roll of 6, or they spike to damage 2. The canon however kind of makes that awkward. It already has the garbage poison 4+ in parenthesis which writes splinter weapons into a corner. So it's looking more and more like they are unchanged besides the canon. Maybe rifles will be assault so it's even more of a mismatch with the canon

Maybe rifles will be assault so it's even more of a mismatch with the canon

This is exactly the kind nonsensical BS that I expect from the GW development team.

Its like they've never played their own game sometimes.

I could see D2 on 6's also. Might be actually decent if splinter racks give you an additional hit on a 6 as well.

There will probably be some strat to up the poisoned wound chance of weapons by 1 or something.

I've been thinking about the changes to warriors recently too. They got the extra attack, and better armour. But they've always been armed with daggers that have never had any rules. What are the odds of getting some kind of combat dagger for an additional attack too? Certainly a possibility.

Two poisoned CC attacks would be great already if they could use the daggers.

They are also equipped with plasma grenades.

The are also equipped with plasma grenades.

Yeah, I was just looking at their unit entry. Where the hell are the grenades?

Just had a crusade game last night. My 50pl DE vs Salamanders.

Incubi crushed it again. They are so absurdly lethal now, just gotta make sure you know when to apply them or they’ll get shot to pieces. Fortunately they lived this time.

The additional armour save on the kabalites helped out a bit for sitting on objectives. Coupled with the strat to increase their cover save, they can get a 2+ now which is not bad at all. Their extra attacks allowed me to put 2 wounds on his librarian before the unit melted to assault intercessors.

I’m not liking the new Heavy Splinter Cannon. It managed to kill one marine, but the -1 AP was negated by his Salamanders trait. I’d like to see it’s potential against other types of marines.

I ended up winning the game, but it was a little shaky in the middle. Fortunately his melta weapons kept missing or doing 1 damage. I also rolled a lot of 5/6’s for Invulnerable saves on my vehicles.

Killing those eradicators early is key (says captain obvious)

@red corsair: Don't shuriken weapons have a ridiculous armor penetration on 6's to wound or something? Seriously they're probably infinitely better at killing monsters than we are. That said i'm willing to bet stormtroopers sort of are as well.

Yes, shuriken weapons become AP -3 on a 6 to wound. Doom really makes this seem more devastating then it is at times but it is a nice perk.

Looks like we will be getting a peak next week. I am really hoping they fix the wargear and the unit entries that have been left in the dirt forever, I'm looking at you wyches, hellions and cronos lol.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Yes, shuriken weapons become AP -3 on a 6 to wound. Doom really makes this seem more devastating then it is at times but it is a nice perk.

Looks like we will be getting a peak next week. I am really hoping they fix the wargear and the unit entries that have been left in the dirt forever, I'm looking at you wyches, hellions and cronos lol.

I'm sure stuff will be fixed but it will be made blander and more generic like always. I understand that it'd be easier to balance but poison and similar always sucks anyway and a lot of other factions get ridiculous crap we could only dream of getting. I'm kind of remembering to a Sisters player that said space marine legit took their items and made em better. Actually i've heard the same about chaos marines and dark eldar too. GW has made Space Marines parasites of any fun things other factions might have. Even their primaris landspeeders are as fast as our venoms. Yeah the fastest faction in the universe and space marines are as fast as them. I'm being reminded of why i left 40k for whfb but when whfb was killed off i had to migrate somewhere. Starting to feel like Kings of War would've been the better alternative.

-----

I know this is gonna devolve into more GW hate but i just don't know if i can stand GW anymore. It's not just the absurd prices (it used to be 600 USD for 1k army dark eldar and all the rules and i'm sure that went up), the absolute crap treatment of long term players, the poor balance between factions, the obvious faction preferential treatment over other army factions, soup lists, poor paint pots that pop open or the gear (carrying cases and model supplies) that is overpriced and used to break easily (that one may have been fixed). One of my biggest issues is GW's treatment of whfb players when they killed off whfb for AoS and that was the big announcement. Yeah i get people like aos now but it was bare bones then and if you felt like you threw away over a thousand dollars you'd be pretty pissed too. They then blame this on the poor sales (instead of a failure to capitalize on the market with stuff like total war warhammer and vermintide), toxic fans and if you didn't like it you could just leave. Then another incident happened and GW said this again with fans just leaving.

Couldn't GW at least have tried to appease all their fans or have a pure togetherness message for either or both incidents? Maybe say there's enough room for everybody and if you try the new thing you might like it? Instead the message was if you don't like it you can leave for both times. That's just not a message that sits right with me.

Not to mention all this is going on while corona is around. You'd think GW would try to bridge gaps when companies everywhere have been struggling for multiple reasons (possibly brexit too) but nope.

Anyway sorry for the rant but i had to get that off my chest. I know it's just more GW hate but i feel it's legitimate.

Trying to be as outrageously positive as I can manage, I can categorically say that....

Splinter weapons will do 1 MW on a 6 to wound
Venoms will be able to carry 6, Raiders 11
Kabalites in an open-topped transport will be able to fire into close combat
Wyches will be able to charge out of an open-topped transport after it has moved
Hellions will get a 4++
Scourges will get Fire and Fade as a free ability
Reavers will get Eviscerating Fly-by as a free ability
The Cronos will be good....somehow

Splinter weapons causing a mw on a 6 would be amazing (and fluffy), and yes please improve the transport capacity of venoms and raiders

 harlokin wrote:
Trying to be as outrageously positive as I can manage, I can categorically say that....

Splinter weapons will do 1 MW on a 6 to wound
Venoms will be able to carry 6, Raiders 11
Kabalites in an open-topped transport will be able to fire into close combat
Wyches will be able to charge out of an open-topped transport after it has moved
Hellions will get a 4++
Scourges will get Fire and Fade as a free ability
Reavers will get Eviscerating Fly-by as a free ability
The Cronos will be good....somehow

God i wish. Splinter racks on raiders should do something good. Honestly -1 to hit on our reavers should've been something we got sooner as well as -1 to hit and an invulnerable save on our hellions.

Fire and Fade won't save scourge sadly but they could use range boosts to their weapons to make heat lances good again for the one turn they're alive for. For that matter all lance weapons need some good damage to them. d3+3 maybe at the very least with +1 to wound? Also if we're not going to have trueborn and warriors stay at 8 pts a piece then at least make shredders better to make up for it.

Considering some of the other abilities that became free in the admech book or admech psychic awakening book the Fly By ability should be base and have possible improvements to it.

You know what's a crazy wish? Make beasts something worth taking again. They never seem to get abilities or boosts to make them worth it and then give them plastic models so we don't have to buy them 1 or 2 per pack and spend an insane amount.

Seriously the plastic packs we always really wanted and needed were grotesques and beast models and yet we never get em.

Finally bring back vect, trueborn, duke sliscus and jetbike, scourge wing and hellion hq's. Even vehicle based hq's or hq's in open topped transports throwing out auras would be nice. The idea that a dude in a transport in the far future with space travel can't boost his own dudes just outside a transport or in one he shares with another squad is stupid.

With the number of players screaming for better DE HQ's they better come through. I remember the days when people would be scared to go near an Archon. Space marine Captains would get shredded by them. Heck, even Hive Tyrants weren't a sure thing. Now, well, you'd have a decent chance with a Primaris sergeant.

 cuda1179 wrote:
With the number of players screaming for better DE HQ's they better come through. I remember the days when people would be scared to go near an Archon. Space marine Captains would get shredded by them. Heck, even Hive Tyrants weren't a sure thing. Now, well, you'd have a decent chance with a Primaris sergeant.

Yeah. Shadowfields should really be something like... I dunno, 4+ Invuln and -1 to-hit? Definitely NOT a 2++ that you lose the first time it's failed.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
With the number of players screaming for better DE HQ's they better come through. I remember the days when people would be scared to go near an Archon. Space marine Captains would get shredded by them. Heck, even Hive Tyrants weren't a sure thing. Now, well, you'd have a decent chance with a Primaris sergeant.

Yeah. Shadowfields should really be something like... I dunno, 4+ Invuln and -1 to-hit? Definitely NOT a 2++ that you lose the first time it's failed.

Shadowfields are terrible, but they have a bit of a flavour of Drukhari 'underhandedness'....maybe if we'd had a strat to bring the Shadowfield back.

A straight up 4++ would obviously be better, but is a bit...bland.

Splinter weapons will do 1 MW on a 6 to wound
Venoms will be able to carry 6, Raiders 11
Kabalites in an open-topped transport will be able to fire into close combat
Wyches will be able to charge out of an open-topped transport after it has moved
Hellions will get a 4++
Scourges will get Fire and Fade as a free ability
Reavers will get Eviscerating Fly-by as a free ability
The Cronos will be good....somehow

This is some wild wishlisting man, lol.

I wish this would happen.

I can see Eviscerating Fly-by happening and thats about it unfortunately.

The ability to charge out of a transport might be a strat.

They might change the Profits of Flesh obsession do the Deathwing one where they can't be wounded on less than a 4+. Just spitballing here.

Even if the Shadowfield didn't short out on a 1, I still don't think it would be OP given how terrible the Archon is at fighting.

Still, 4++ with -1 to hit and -1 Damage. Might not be terrible.

They should just bring back the Clone Field so we have some options too.

I think the worst part about our HQ options is that you need to give them a relic in order for them to be useful. By themselves they do almost nothing. They need a relic to even compete on the same level as other races.

The haemonculus and the archon aren't...horrible with their default setup (blast pistol/husk on the archon, ec whip on the haemonculus). They're your standard anti-elite armed HQ choice with the mid strength good AP multidamage melee weapon.

succubi are abysmal, no doubt about that though.

I did notice that the haemonculus stock build is at least armed with a Scissorhand as well as an injector. Thank god he's not going to be limited to just haemie tools in the new 'dex lol.

the_scotsman wrote:
The haemonculus and the archon aren't...horrible with their default setup (blast pistol/husk on the archon, ec whip on the haemonculus). They're your standard anti-elite armed HQ choice with the mid strength good AP multidamage melee weapon.

succubi are abysmal, no doubt about that though.

I did notice that the haemonculus stock build is at least armed with a Scissorhand as well as an injector. Thank god he's not going to be limited to just haemie tools in the new 'dex lol.

Yeah, the fact that the Succubus is our worst close combat character is ridiculous.

I would really love it if they turned the current Archon datasheet into a Dracon, and gave us the option of a 'SM Captain-level' Archon.

 harlokin wrote:

Shadowfields are terrible, but they have a bit of a flavour of Drukhari 'underhandedness'....maybe if we'd had a strat to bring the Shadowfield back.

The thing is, though, a 2++ that's lost the first time it's failed doesn't come across as underhanded. It just comes across as being low-tech garbage.

Maybe it was underhanded in 3rd, back when Invulnerable saves were rare and tended to max out at 5+. But in the current era it's the sort of thing I'd expect Orks to run around with. "Dis 'ere is the best protection teeth can buy! It works great until it don't!"

If you want something underhanded, I'd suggest something more akin to Mindshackle Scarabs (from the 5th edition necron codex) - which could force a character to direct his attacks against his own unit.

Or maybe a way for the Archon to attack and then move/teleport away before the opponent can retaliate. Now that would be underhanded.

 cuda1179 wrote:
With the number of players screaming for better DE HQ's they better come through.

Oh please. If GW gave a damn about DE HQs they'd have taken the opportunity to give us some. Instead, all we're getting is Marbo-in-a-wig.

Sadly, they've been turning a huge profit in 8th, so as far as they're concerned their entire playerbase wants them to do nothing but endlessly churn out Marines.

 harlokin wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
The haemonculus and the archon aren't...horrible with their default setup (blast pistol/husk on the archon, ec whip on the haemonculus). They're your standard anti-elite armed HQ choice with the mid strength good AP multidamage melee weapon.

succubi are abysmal, no doubt about that though.

I did notice that the haemonculus stock build is at least armed with a Scissorhand as well as an injector. Thank god he's not going to be limited to just haemie tools in the new 'dex lol.

Yeah, the fact the the Succubus is our worst close combat character is ridiculous.

I would really love it if they turned the current Archon datasheet into a Dracon, and gave us the option of a 'SM Captain-level' Archon.

Honestly the Archon isn't that far off of the general statline of a space marine captain. The main difference is that he's limited to the Huskblade and Blast Pistol as his best wargear, limiting his strength in melee to 4 while the SM captain can be S7 or S8 with weapon upgrades, and he's got A5 all the time while the captain is A5 round 1 and A4 every round after that. The shadowfield is wonky to model statistically but the archon has a fairly good chance of beating your standard storm shield/relic blade captain in melee while being 30pts cheaper.

Assuming he's equipped with a relic blade, the ideal weapon to be fighting the archon with (thunder hammers being less useful due to hitting on 3s) the captain puts out 3.47 wounds before saves, and the odds of getting a 1 on 3.47 die rolls is still under 50% using compound probability. So regardless of whether he gets the charge or the archon gets the charge, the marine captain has to survive a blast pistol shot and 2 rounds of melee from the archon before he's able to start working on the archon's actual woundcount. On average the captain takes 6.28 unsaved wounds from those attacks.

Obviously, the archon's performance is much 'spikier' than the captain's - he could very well fail his first save and get flattened, or he could make all of them. Really the biggest potential spike against the captain is the blast pistol shot, which has the potential to absolutely demolish the captain if it gets through his save.

the real problem is, you can tailor the captain usign his massive wargear options to give him perfect ideal wargear setups against the archon - like equipping him with a combiflamer that has a great chance to chew up the shadowfield before getting into combat at all, or double lightning claws so he puts out an obscene number of attacks to try and get through the field that way. But typical TH/SS or Relic Blade/SS captain builds the archon is generally fairly good against.

The Shadowfield of the Archon could be changed to a 5++ invulnerable save (4++ vs shooting) that allows you to consolidate 3" in whatever direction you want after attacking with him, representing the... shadows... strike and fade, roguelike etc....

I like the idea of quantum shifting the Archon, but I think it should be relegated to a Strat or Relic Shadowfield.

A 5++ is just too little IMO. He'll get smoked regardless of where he shifts to. Anything less than a 3++ isn't worth it IMO.

I would like to see a huge boost from the Huskblade Personally. Strength 5 or 6 with D3 damage I don't think is unreasonable.

Or at least make the extra 2 attacks from the Relic Huskblade standard on all of them.

In fact "Djinn" weapons could be a cool idea that they add to the codex. A bit like the way they did Frost weapons and Plague Weapons.

This will obviously never happen because nobody at GW plays or cares about DE but it could be an idea.

From a narrative perspective the shadow field is delightfully evil. 2+ until it fails means the best option is to mass many bad attacks at it. But get one on one with a hero or monster with few quality attacks and it is very good. Combine with re-roll stratagem to que evil mustach twirling laugh.