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 Imateria wrote:
Really hard to gage the changes to Wyches as their unique weapons all relied on special rules. The blade getting AP-1 is very nice but does it still give +1A or was that just incorporated into the main stat line. Doe Hydra Gauntles still reroll wounds (would be amazing now they're +2, -2), do you still get D3 extra attacks and reroll hits from the Razorflail and does the Shardnet still boost No Escape (is No Escape still a thing?)?

Those are all good points.

Will also be interesting to see what Combat Drugs are like, too.

Voss wrote:
Its out of their scope for the game as it currently works. S3 T3 models standing on objective and punching means jack and squat when they're getting a pile of attacks back (or first) that actually kill them.
It solves zero issues that currently plague the army.

If it came with a point increase I'd agree, but as it is likely free there is no downside to improving your effectiveness.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
If it came with a point increase I'd agree, but as it is likely free there is no downside to improving your effectiveness.

I mean, Kabalites already went up in points at the beginning of the edition. So it's possible they just got the increase before the benefit, if you see what I mean.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Voss wrote:
Its out of their scope for the game as it currently works. S3 T3 models standing on objective and punching means jack and squat when they're getting a pile of attacks back (or first) that actually kill them.
It solves zero issues that currently plague the army.

If it came with a point increase I'd agree, but as it is likely free there is no downside to improving your effectiveness.

A benefit that doesn't actually help do your job, isn't actually an improvement. If you're throwing your warriors into close combat, you're doing it wrong.
They're the shooty guys, and they basically got no better at it, beyond the big guns nailing their feet to the floor.

Wyches, on the other hand, with a bonus attack and AP on their basic weapon (and lots of other stat changes that I can't bother to track) actually _are_ better at their jobs. There is a big, visible difference in how they changed the two units. Every basic wych with a basic weapon got a buff to do their job better. The warriors didn't.

Now if you don't mind, I think I hear Admiral Ackbar calling in the background. Something about a flap? Minding the gap? Something like that.

 vipoid wrote:

Meanwhile, the basic weapons, basic pistols, blasters, and blast pistols - i.e. the weapons used by infantry (rather than vehicles) - have received no improvements.

But sure, let's just ignore that fact and pretend that it's good game design for weapons that require you to get within 6" of an enemy to have a worse payoff than those that can be fired from 36" away.

The basics don't need upgrades. The blast pistol won't show the new melta rule on this sheet. You gotta chill out, man.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

A benefit that doesn't actually help do your job, isn't actually an improvement. If you're throwing your warriors into close combat, you're doing it wrong.
They're the shooty guys, and they basically got no better at it, beyond the big guns nailing their feet to the floor.

Wyches, on the other hand, with a bonus attack and AP on their basic weapon (and lots of other stat changes that I can't bother to track) actually _are_ better at their jobs. There is a big, visible difference in how they changed the two units. Every basic wych with a basic weapon got a buff to do their job better. The warriors didn't.

Now if you don't mind, I think I hear Admiral Ackbar calling in the background. Something about a flap? Minding the gap? Something like that.

That's not how this edition works. You're not "throwing" them into combat. They're helping to hold objective and the enemy comes to them or they're running past in venoms for line breaker and better at absorbing that incidental damage better.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
The basics don't need upgrades.

They absolutely do. The Splinter Rifle in particular is absolute garbage. It is in dire need of an upgrade and clearly hasn't received one.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
The blast pistol won't show the new melta rule on this sheet. You gotta chill out, man.

Why would it have the new melta rule? It was never a melta weapon.

Whats the problem with the splinter rifle? With the amount of T4 and T5 infantry in the game they are great weapons wounding both on 4+.


And I believe people undersells the relevance of meele attacks on shooting units.

I mean... don't people complaint about intercessors in meele? And they hit with basic S4 ap0 attacks.

 Galas wrote:
Whats the problem with the splinter rifle? With the amount of T4 and T5 infantry in the game they are great weapons wounding both on 4+.

And I believe people undersells the relevance of meele attacks on shooting units.

I mean... don't people complaint about intercessors in meele? And they hit with basic S4 ap0 attacks.

Wounding Gravis on a 4+ is nice. But without any AP and at D1, they're no more effective than a Bolt Rifle shot per shot against them, and worse against T4 and especially T3 models.

And the difference is that Intercessors can, point for point, beat Orks and Genestealers in melee.
Kabalites... Let me run the math. 80 points of Kabalites versus 80 points of Orks or 75 points of Stealers.



Yeah, Kabalites get WRECKED in close combat by Orks or Genestealers. If they're a big enough squad, they can maybe kill enough Stealers to win, if they get the charge, but they'll be hurting, and the Genestealers are faster and can advance and charge.

If Intercessors were a fragile shooting unit, their melee wouldn't be as big a deal. But they're NOT fragile, so they can do real well in close combat as well. Plus their attacks go to AP-1 Turn Three or Four.

 Galas wrote:
Whats the problem with the splinter rifle? With the amount of T4 and T5 infantry in the game they are great weapons wounding both on 4+.

When poison was first introduced, Monstrous Creatures had - at most - 6 wounds. Most had just 4. 2+ armour saves on monsters were almost unheard of, with most relying on toughness for protection.

Back then, the Splinter Rifle was Rapid Fire S* AP5 Poison 4+


Now, monsters have doubled or even tripled in wounds, and far more of them have 2+ saves, FNP, and/or other defences. e.g. a Carnifex went from 4 wounds to 8. A Hive Tyrant went from 8 wounds to 12.

Meanwhile the Splinter Rifle is Rapid Fire S* AP- D1 Poison 4+.

Oh, and now most infantry in the game have had their wounds characteristic doubled. But that's okay because the Splinter Rifle has been compensated with a new profile:

Meanwhile the Splinter Rifle is Rapid Fire S2 AP- D1 Poison 4+.

Are you beginning to see the problem?

What's more, this is in an edition where toughness matters far less to begin with. It used to be that bolters needed 6s to wound T6-7, and couldn't wound T8 at all. Now, though, they can wound T6-7 on 5s - even against vehicles (which splinter weapons are stuck wounding on 6s). And this is in addition to bolters also being better against low-toughness troops.

In other words, the advantages Splinter Weapons had over conventional weapons have been drastically reduced, whilst monsters (the targets they used to be most effective agaisnt) have increased in durability to such an extent that splinter weapons just aren't effective or efficient against them.


"But," I hear you say "Bolters and other basic weapons haven't improved either."

This is true. The difference is that SMs, for example, get an absolute ton of other rules to increase the power of bolters. They have Doctrines, they have the abillity to double their shots if they didn't move, they have all manner of auras, psychic powers and other buffs.

Meanwhile, Dark Eldar have almost no buffs or force-multipliers to speak of. So while Bolters and such may be significantly stronger than they appear on paper, the Splinter Rifle is generally going to be every bit as crap as it looks.

And apparently the new codex has maintained this depressing trend.

But Kabalites should get wrecked by Orks and Genestealers in combat. Thats not where they belong.

They are a shooting unit that got an extra attack to fend off small time units that would try to come and shift them off of an objective.

Yes, they will die if a close combat unit comes and assaults them.

The extra attacks are more of a side-grade. They won't contribute to most games, but might make the difference in the odd battle.

Yes, the Splinter Rifle is pretty bad right now. But in total fairness we haven't seen what the new poisoned rules are. What kind of auras HQ's will bring, what Splinter Racks will do, what kind of Strats we will have or what changes will be made to Obsessions.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
But Kabalites should get wrecked by Orks and Genestealers in combat. Thats not where they belong.

Agreed.

The issue is, Marines shouldn't win, point for point, against those units too. They should make a good showing for themselves (they're a generalist unit, after all) but they shouldn't be winning that fight.

Kabalites getting dunked on by melee specialists is fine.
Marines getting dunked on by those same units might be a lil' much, but they shouldn't WIN against them in their area of expertise.

Only one of those things is true at the moment.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Yes, the Splinter Rifle is pretty bad right now. But in total fairness we haven't seen what the new poisoned rules are. What kind of auras HQ's will bring, what Splinter Racks will do, what kind of Strats we will have or what changes will be made to Obsessions.

That's true. But I was merely arguing the point as to why the Splinter Rifle needs a buff of some kind. If it comes in the form of better Poison rules, improved army-wide rules or better HQ support, fine.

I'm just very wary of pinning my hopes on such things when I've seen nothing thus far to suggest we'll be getting anything of the sort.

 vipoid wrote:


This is true. The difference is that SMs, for example, get an absolute ton of other rules to increase the power of bolters. They have Doctrines, they have the abillity to double their shots if they didn't move, they have all manner of auras, psychic powers and other buffs.

Meanwhile, Dark Eldar have almost no buffs or force-multipliers to speak of. So while Bolters and such may be significantly stronger than they appear on paper, the Splinter Rifle is generally going to be every bit as crap as it looks.

And apparently the new codex has maintained this depressing trend.

Space Marines are also over twice the cost of the individual Dark Eldar troop. The Splinter rifle competes against the hot-shot lasgun and the Adepta Sororitas' bolter, not with the Space Marine bolter,

Obviously we'll have to see how the Codex pans out, but I would have thought armies like the various space elves should have gotten lots of mechanics based around denying obsec and enemy primary points to account for their own lack of it.

Turning off obsec is a cool ability concept, but it's not something that, in my opinion, armies like Space Marines or Necrons should get. They already play the primary very well, especially with the ability to get extra obsec themselves. They don't also need to turn off their opponents at the same time. That's a mechanic I'd expect in an army like Craftworlds or Drukhari, where narratively and gameplay-wise the army really shouldn't be focused on holding ground.

This isn't to say DE or CWE won't get their own abilities like that, but just from a design space perspective that's how I would have constructed them, rather than trying to turn these fast, elusive, fragile armies into ones that can defend objectives super well.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see several ways to improve poisoned weapons to make them wound on 3+ or give them D2 and I'm not only thinking stratagems. The basic profile doesn't mean that much in 9th edition.

Denying obsec is just GW designers being GW designers.

design a mechanic > Securing Objectives.
Then design an exception > Obsec
then design ways around the exception > deny obsec.

Now we only need a super special Obsec that can't be removed by remove obsec abilities and the trifecta is complete.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Whats the problem with the splinter rifle? With the amount of T4 and T5 infantry in the game they are great weapons wounding both on 4+.

And I believe people undersells the relevance of meele attacks on shooting units.

I mean... don't people complaint about intercessors in meele? And they hit with basic S4 ap0 attacks.

Wounding Gravis on a 4+ is nice. But without any AP and at D1, they're no more effective than a Bolt Rifle shot per shot against them, and worse against T4 and especially T3 models.

And the difference is that Intercessors can, point for point, beat Orks and Genestealers in melee.
Kabalites... Let me run the math. 80 points of Kabalites versus 80 points of Orks or 75 points of Stealers.

Spoiler:

Kabalites T1
21 attacks
14 hits
14/3 wounds
70/18 or 35/9 or just about 4 wounds against Orks
28/9 or about 3 wounds against Stealers

Orks T1
30 attacks
20 hits
40/3 wounds
20/3 failed saves or 6-7 dead Kabalites

Stealers T1
15 attacks
10 hits
15/3 wounds at AP-1, 5/3 at AP-3
30/6 or 5 plus 5/3 failed saves, for 6-7 dead Kabalites

Yeah, Kabalites get WRECKED in close combat by Orks or Genestealers. If they're a big enough squad, they can maybe kill enough Stealers to win, if they get the charge, but they'll be hurting, and the Genestealers are faster and can advance and charge.

If Intercessors were a fragile shooting unit, their melee wouldn't be as big a deal. But they're NOT fragile, so they can do real well in close combat as well. Plus their attacks go to AP-1 Turn Three or Four.

While I agree with everything you've said, can I just say how much I hate the way you display probabilities in fractions for a game that is based entirely on whole numbers where it's physically impossible to get a fraction an a dice, it makes my head hurt.

As for various other abilities that can be used to improve splinter fire, GW would have to go seriously out of there way to write rules for them to get around the fact that Drukhari are largely a mechanised army with infantry in transports and the game makes it verly clear it does not want interaction between the abilities of embarked units and other units on the field or vice versa. Powerful HQ auras and strats aren't worth much when half your army can't interact with them. Whilst it's entirely possible that GW will put the thought and effort in to making this work, the last 10 years worth of streamlining the army does not provide much hope.

 Ordana wrote:
Denying obsec is just GW designers being GW designers.

design a mechanic > Securing Objectives.
Then design an exception > Obsec
then design ways around the exception > deny obsec.

Now we only need a super special Obsec that can't be removed by remove obsec abilities and the trifecta is complete.

I don't see a problem with this.

 Tyran wrote:
Space Marines are also over twice the cost of the individual Dark Eldar troop. The Splinter rifle competes against the hot-shot lasgun and the Adepta Sororitas' bolter, not with the Space Marine bolter,

This really.

Its an 8 point troop's rifle. There's the usual argument that you might prefer a bolt gun although whether you'd get it for 8 points is unclear.

Shooting Intercessors.
2*2/3*1/2*1/3=0.22. *10=2.2 points. Divided by 8=27% return. Quite reasonable really before applying any buffs.
Shooting Orks.
2*2/3*1/2*5/6=0.55. *8=4.4 points. Divided by 8=55% return.
Shooting Plague Marines.
2*2/3*1/2*1/3=0.22*10.5=2.33 points. Divided by 8=29.16% return.
Shooting Guardsmen.
2*2/3*1/2*2/3=0.44. *5.5=2.44. Divided by 8=30.5% return.

The extra attack also means charging in is a reasonable choice if you want to claim an objective from lightish units.

I mean 10 kabalites would expect to inflict 10 wounds on Boys from shooting and charging, leaving the Nob there looking a bit nervous. Now you could say Boyz have issues, getting silly returns versus them doesn't prove much - but I'm not sure how much better an 8 point guy is meant to be.

T3 W1 eldar with a splinter rifle need more than a stat bump on a basic weapon to have a purpose in 9th edition. Not sure what people are expecting. The upside will be determined by the synergies of special rules, strats etc., not whether a S2 poisoned weapon is great against space marines.
And besides, my wraithguard/wraithlords fething hate your poisoned weapons, so again, tell me how weak they are?

Couple of things I'd like to see for Drukhari (without adding new units which I think is not happening at this stage, although I think we might see a Dracon statline...since it does not require a model. If Deathwing can get a Lt equivalent without a model, so can Drukhari).

Auras work within transports.
Increase in capacity of raider and venom by 1.

Vipoid is right, in short the durability of most units has increased 2 to 3 times over, 2 wounds marines are everywhere and more multi-wound elites keep popping up. I like this as it generally makes the scale of the game feel more right, marines should be able to absorb more damage than a guardsman after all. This is all before considering the boost to armour saves a lot of targets have and especially with the new cover rules boosting armour instead of a flat 4++ invuln as it used to we are seeing 2+ armour marines with 2 wounds reasonably often. Durabilty has far outpaced the old poison weapons ability to keep up with the game and as such a weapon that used to feel fine just feels more and more inadequate with each edition.

Meanwhile other basic rifles in most other armies just feel like they work. AP1 on gauss is good all the time against any target you shoot, S5 pulse weaponry wounds more reliably on everyone and can threaten tougher targets easier, hell it even wounds T8 tanks and monsters on 5+. Tau may have other problems but a S5 basic rifle isn't one of them. Marine bolters seem underwhelming on paper but with a swathe of rules such as bolter discipline and combat doctrines they can perform fine, not to mention it's on a platform that can take some hits and is generally going to be on the table longer, a Kabalite needs to do his damage fast because next round he's going to be dust in a crater. Hell I'd say a good comparison unit for Drukhari is a tempestus scion, 9 points, and I'm sure if given the option every Drukhari player would swap their splinter weaponry for AP2 S3 (S4 on the cannons) guns any day.

Kabalites are not guardsman or gaunts, cheap disposable chaff to throw to the meat grinder. They may be vat-born but they still are a semi-elite unit of ancient (by human standards) sadistic, space elves with advanced technology. Kabalites should be scary, they should have damage potential to offset their fragility and if anyone thinks that 8 points is too cheap for for that then fine lets bump up the points to match their lethality but for the love of Vect lets actually allow the murder elves to actually, you know, murder things.

On a side note: Splinter wracks, obsessions and HQ support should not be used to compensate for weak poison rules. Splinter wracks are on exactly one transport and if they are the only way to make poison work then foot Kabalites (or webway drop) will never be viable and splinter wracks won't help the vast swathe of other units in our army that use poison (hellions, reavers, wyches, venoms, talos, scourges). Obsessions to fix poison would shoehorn you in specific builds to leverage them and likely only help Kabals so it still doesn't fix the mechanic. Stratagems are non-scalable and only benefit one unit for one turn and once again only likely be useful on Kabalites since you wont waste it on wych pistols or reaver guns or maybe even hellions. Poison is too liberally used in our army on so many units that stratagem bandaids aren't viable. Stratagems fix also doesn't help MSU one lick. Also why should we have to pay CP to make our basic weapons function when other armies just, you know, work. HQ support also suffers from scaleability and how transport rules work. Not to mention coverage since we will have reavers pushed up and kabalites in middle or back with wyches also pushed up, our poison is too decentralized to properly leverage HQ auras.

Splinter weapons need to stand on their own as a viable standard weapon mechanic.

I mean, sure, at 8 points per Splinter Rifle body, they might be powerful. (Doubt it, unless there's some real good bonuses we don't know about yet.) But...

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I guess things will be awkward if DE turn out good.

It’s not even necessarily the power of the codex.

If the codex is basically the same as right now, but they cut the price of everything in half, it’d stomp the competitive scene-because even if something is 150% of what it should be now, it’d be 75% of what it should be after halving.

But that wouldn’t be a GOOD codex. It’d be powerful, but bland and unfluffy.

See what I wrote earlier. A Kabalite doesn't have to be as good as an ordinary Marine, but they shouldn't be 8 points to a Marine's 20. They're not Joe Schmoe Guardsmen. They're supernaturally fast space elves.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Whats the problem with the splinter rifle? With the amount of T4 and T5 infantry in the game they are great weapons wounding both on 4+.

And I believe people undersells the relevance of meele attacks on shooting units.

I mean... don't people complaint about intercessors in meele? And they hit with basic S4 ap0 attacks.

Wounding Gravis on a 4+ is nice. But without any AP and at D1, they're no more effective than a Bolt Rifle shot per shot against them, and worse against T4 and especially T3 models.

You already forget you're getting 2-4 shots for two Kalabites compared to the one Intercessor?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Whats the problem with the splinter rifle? With the amount of T4 and T5 infantry in the game they are great weapons wounding both on 4+.

And I believe people undersells the relevance of meele attacks on shooting units.

I mean... don't people complaint about intercessors in meele? And they hit with basic S4 ap0 attacks.

Wounding Gravis on a 4+ is nice. But without any AP and at D1, they're no more effective than a Bolt Rifle shot per shot against them, and worse against T4 and especially T3 models.

You already forget you're getting 2-4 shots for two Kalabites compared to the one Intercessor?

You did notice I explicitly said "Per shot", right? I know Kabalites are cheaper than Intercessors. You get five Kabalites per two Intercessors, assuming no upgrades.

And I don't like that. If Marines are 20 points, Kabalites should be 15 or so, and worth it.

 JNAProductions wrote:
And I don't like that. If Marines are 20 points, Kabalites should be 15 or so, and worth it.

That is just not a workable concept, because the only way you could conceivably do that is by giving them incredible guns. And then everyone would offset their extreme glass cannon nature by sticking them in venoms.

In 5th edition marines were 18 and kabalites were 9 - so almost exactly the same as it is now. Old marines picked up a wound and Kabalites picked up armor and an attack.


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 vipoid wrote:
Why would it have the new melta rule? It was never a melta weapon.

Sorry - let me rephrase. You won't see the bespoke rules here like with melta. So whether they stay 2 dice rr1 or something else is unknown.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
And I don't like that. If Marines are 20 points, Kabalites should be 15 or so, and worth it.

That is just not a workable concept, because the only way you could conceivably do that is by giving them incredible guns. And then everyone would offset their extreme glass cannon nature by sticking them in venoms.

In 5th edition marines were 18 and kabalites were 9 - so almost exactly the same as it is now. Old marines picked up a wound and Kabalites picked up armor and an attack.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:
Why would it have the new melta rule? It was never a melta weapon.

Sorry - let me rephrase. You won't see the bespoke rules here like with melta. So whether they stay 2 dice rr1 or something else is unknown.

Give them durability through evasion.
Give them abilities that restrict or hamper the foe without outright killing them.
Give them something interesting.

Don't just make them cheap.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Sorry - let me rephrase. You won't see the bespoke rules here like with melta. So whether they stay 2 dice rr1 or something else is unknown.

I wonder if you're familiar with the Blast Pistol's history?

It's spent most of its life being an outright inferior version of the Fusion/Inferno Pistol - having the same stats but without the Melta rule (or any other rule that would make up for it), and often being more expensive as an added insult.

I mean, I'd very much like for you to be right. I just hope you can understand why I'm not particularly hopeful at this point.

In 5th edition marines were 18 and kabalites were 9 - so almost exactly the same as it is now

16 points. They were 16 points in 5th edition. With a sarge tax of about 26 to make them 90 for 5 with an additional 16 per. Because 5th edition had plenty of taxes from the Sarge to boost things to make it so you'd want to buy out rather then more squads.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Give them durability through evasion.
Give them abilities that restrict or hamper the foe without outright killing them.
Give them something interesting.

Don't just make them cheap.

You haven't seen the faction rules, army stratagems, and unit rules yet, so it feels very early to be whining that they don't have anything going for them.

Heck, even without those things they seem like a solid unit at 8ppm. They get good returns against a lot of common target profiles, can be a credible melee threat on the charge, they're a very good baseline unit to build an army around, and doubly so now that the big gun on their transport got a massive buff. I could easily see a DE list built around warriors in raiders bringing lances while witches in Venoms pressure the mid-field.

You can't really argue with "I think Kabalites should be 15 points".

Okay. But they aren't. They won't be. That ship - if such ever existed - has sailed. In this case - unlike say Necrons it never even existed.