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 Adrassil wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Transhuman to hit (ie no one can hit better than a 4+ against eldar).

Oooh, I like that idea a lot. I was thinking just making all the Eldar saves invulnerable (which you said) but that could be a lot better!

Im not sure I like it.
It just means eldar are easier to hit by dudes runing around carrying heavy weapons.. It is very good against elite shooting units(custodes) but against BS3 it makes little difference as its the same as if you were shot through cover. The fact that self imposed penalties don't stack with covers is already dumb. This would be the same. Only really effective against custodes. Bit like the slanesh thing we have in ur codex rules now.

I think simply increasing the cap to hit to -2 but retaining the 6 always hit solves the issue.
You can only get -2 realistically on on one or two units anyway. Alitoic aircraft is no longer an issue.

 Hellebore wrote:
Gw have progressively moved the game away from mechanically representing the things eldar are good at.

I'd argue that part of the issue is they've, they moved away from some things Marines were good at, like Morale and the Marines traditional discipline and replacing it with physical stat boosts. "Elite" now just means 'Tougher' and MOAR 'attacks' etc.

Transhuman to hit (ie no one can hit better than a 4+ against eldar).

That's a cool idea but you'd have to figure a way to make other hit modifiers still relevant, imo. We're already in the funny state where effects aren't cumulative, so there's already some funny situations where there's no downside for firing a Heavy weapon on the move.

The more interesting way to handle eldar survivability would be something close to what IDK get in AOS, where they can only be targeted with ranged attacks if they are the closest visible target. That's maybe too powerful a rule for 40k, but you could play with that sort of concept - maybe -1 to hit, -1 to wound, and +1 to saves (including invulns) if you shoot anything but the closest target, or something like that. Hand-waive it as some sort of psychic suppression that makes it difficult for the opponent to concentrate on anything but the closest threat. That then opens up all sorts of design space for tactical gameplay that boosts the resilience of the army by forcing the opponent to shoot at resilient stuff like wraith units because they've been deliberately placed in such a way that they draw the fire. This does a decent job of representing the way Eldar ought to play - not hordes of expendable chaff, but every life being treasured and protected by the collective.

It could be even something like the old requirement to pass a leadership test to shoot at something that isn't the closest target.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The more interesting way to handle eldar survivability would be something close to what IDK get in AOS, where they can only be targeted with ranged attacks if they are the closest visible target. That's maybe too powerful a rule for 40k, but you could play with that sort of concept - maybe -1 to hit, -1 to wound, and +1 to saves (including invulns) if you shoot anything but the closest target, or something like that. Hand-waive it as some sort of psychic suppression that makes it difficult for the opponent to concentrate on anything but the closest threat. That then opens up all sorts of design space for tactical gameplay that boosts the resilience of the army by forcing the opponent to shoot at resilient stuff like wraith units because they've been deliberately placed in such a way that they draw the fire. This does a decent job of representing the way Eldar ought to play - not hordes of expendable chaff, but every life being treasured and protected by the collective.

It could be even something like the old requirement to pass a leadership test to shoot at something that isn't the closest target.

Space marines have a way to negate the closest rule. It would work surprisingly well. Some factions would have harder times, but honestly eldar are already at the worst part of the spectrum and only are where they are currently because of the ineptitude of the rules.

As it is leadership is not as useful as it once was for space marines.

I have always been that the Eldar should have the best psychic powers, and every single Aspect Warrior Leader should have access to Some type of psychic powers. AS it would make a ton more sense. (like the lumineth)

But again probably not.

 Asherian Command wrote:

I have always been that the Eldar should have the best psychic powers, and every single Aspect Warrior Leader should have access to Some type of psychic powers. AS it would make a ton more sense. (like the lumineth)

But again probably not.

Actually, that's what exarch powers are described as being: relatively subtle psychic powers. Less shooting lightning bolts from their hands, more superhuman wuxia attacks and such. That's the justification briefly given for why the expanded exarch power options appeared in the Psychic Awakening book, but it also kind of works retroactively. If you read some of the BL novels featuring phoenix lords, they describe Karandras as changing position and moving like a jerky Japanese ghost because onlookers simply don't process his movements until after he's made them. The Stalker exarch powers that striking scorpions have access to is probably meant to be a toned down version of the same concept.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Adrassil wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Transhuman to hit (ie no one can hit better than a 4+ against eldar).

Oooh, I like that idea a lot. I was thinking just making all the Eldar saves invulnerable (which you said) but that could be a lot better!

We've discussed this a bit over in the Proposed Rules section. Personally, I don't like this solution as it weirdly doesn't impact BS4+ and worse units. You'd think that superhuman elf speed would be more effective against bog standard humans than against astartes and other aeldari, but this rule would actually accomplish the opposite; elite armies would have their shooting reduced to that of guardsmen while guardsmen would continue shooting just as well as ever.

Tying the defense to which unit is closest could be interesting, but as others have pointed out, any to-hit penalty ends up being kind of redundant if you have more than one of them.

If we can't just change the -1/+1 limit to -2/+2, then my preferred suggestion at the moment is probably to just give them a 5+ ward save provided they advanced or charged in their previous movement/charge phase. Probably ditching the current version of Battle Focus so that they functionally have to sacrifice some shooting offense to get more defense or else have to risk getting into melee.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Adrassil wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Transhuman to hit (ie no one can hit better than a 4+ against eldar).

Oooh, I like that idea a lot. I was thinking just making all the Eldar saves invulnerable (which you said) but that could be a lot better!

We've discussed this a bit over in the Proposed Rules section. Personally, I don't like this solution as it weirdly doesn't impact BS4+ and worse units. You'd think that superhuman elf speed would be more effective against bog standard humans than against astartes and other aeldari, but this rule would actually accomplish the opposite; elite armies would have their shooting reduced to that of guardsmen while guardsmen would continue shooting just as well as ever.

Tying the defense to which unit is closest could be interesting, but as others have pointed out, any to-hit penalty ends up being kind of redundant if you have more than one of them.

If we can't just change the -1/+1 limit to -2/+2, then my preferred suggestion at the moment is probably to just give them a 5+ ward save provided they advanced or charged in their previous movement/charge phase. Probably ditching the current version of Battle Focus so that they functionally have to sacrifice some shooting offense to get more defense or else have to risk getting into melee.

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm just thinking of that movement minus and maybe to show their agility in close combat they get to re-roll armour/invulnerable saves or re-roll 1's on their armour save/invulerable save? Could be OP but it's simple I guess.

 Adrassil wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Adrassil wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Transhuman to hit (ie no one can hit better than a 4+ against eldar).

Oooh, I like that idea a lot. I was thinking just making all the Eldar saves invulnerable (which you said) but that could be a lot better!

We've discussed this a bit over in the Proposed Rules section. Personally, I don't like this solution as it weirdly doesn't impact BS4+ and worse units. You'd think that superhuman elf speed would be more effective against bog standard humans than against astartes and other aeldari, but this rule would actually accomplish the opposite; elite armies would have their shooting reduced to that of guardsmen while guardsmen would continue shooting just as well as ever.

Tying the defense to which unit is closest could be interesting, but as others have pointed out, any to-hit penalty ends up being kind of redundant if you have more than one of them.

If we can't just change the -1/+1 limit to -2/+2, then my preferred suggestion at the moment is probably to just give them a 5+ ward save provided they advanced or charged in their previous movement/charge phase. Probably ditching the current version of Battle Focus so that they functionally have to sacrifice some shooting offense to get more defense or else have to risk getting into melee.

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm just thinking of that movement minus and maybe to show their agility in close combat they get to re-roll armour/invulnerable saves or re-roll 1's on their armour save/invulerable save? Could be OP but it's simple I guess.

Rerolling armor saves gets weird because it wouldn't help at all against weapons with sufficient AP. A power sword would cut straight through the 4+ armor of a swooping hawk, for instance, and they don't generally have an invul to benefit from that rule. And as the rule is meant to represent their dodging ability, it's weird that such an ability would be bypassed by a weapon's AP. You'd think dodging ability would be more effective against a power fist/klaw, for instance, not less.

That's why I like the ward save approach. It's just a straight up, "Ignore 1/3rd of the harm you would normally suffer because you're fast enough to avoid/mitigate harm." Plus, it works against both melee and shooting attacks, and you don't have weird interactions with the modern to-hit modifier rules.

I just want the Eldar to get a plastic Avatar worthy of the current Greater Daemons/Daemon Primarchs/upcoming Be'lakor mini.

That can't be too much to ask, can it?

Phoenix Rising had a Banshee Exarch power called Graceful Avoidance which gave the unit a 5+++. Of course from a story and logic point of view, it meant that it was harder to fully avoid a higher Damage weapon even though there might not be any actual in-universe reason why. Why they didn't just give a 5++ I don't know.

On -X to hit?

I understand the core rules now cap that. But sure they can break that for their Codex?

After all, Codexes are the home of Core Rule Caveats.

Example? Resurrection Protocols. Core rules explain that once your last wound is gone, the model is removed as a casualty. And so it is, except for Necrons. The Morale rules are core rules, until a Codex provides an exception for an army.

Even capping it out at -2/+2 would help, no?

I agree. They could even have had more than one category of penalty, and simply stopped stacking within a category. So a Venom's defensive -1 to hit would be different to the -1 to hit incurred by an infantryman moving and firing a heavy weapon.

Will if you want to go that way you can do this:

War mask
The Eldar possess a liquid grace and preternatural speed unlike any other race, flowing across the battlefield like ghosts.
Any unit attacking an Eldar unit treats it's WS and BS as 1 as lower than it is. This has no effect on hit modifiers.

 Hellebore wrote:
Will if you want to go that way you can do this:

War mask
The Eldar possess a liquid grace and preternatural speed unlike any other race, flowing across the battlefield like ghosts.
Any unit attacking an Eldar unit treats it's WS and BS as 1 as lower than it is. This has no effect on hit modifiers.

I'd try that out.

Certainly one option

Certainly it would help replicate the grace they’re known for in-universe.

I also wonder if they could poach a rule from the Lumineth? This requires a quick primer for AoS.

AoS combat - player who’s turn it is picks a unit to fight with, then players alternate. Unlike 40K, charging doesn’t change that.

Lumineth however can choose two units to fight. This of course allows for pretty efficient ganking in a system where ganging up carries a bit of a risk.

As a straight port it looses some of its oomph of course, because 40K allows chargers to fight first. But I dare say more knowledgeable folk could hammer it into shape.

Or to go really wild? When an enemy unit declares a charge, any Craftworld unit can fall back D3” as a reaction. Bloody useful, and forces your opponent to forgo the riskier charges, at the expense of you potentially giving up control of objectives.

It’s speedy, and it’s frustrating, but it’s not foolproof. Seems rather Craftworldy to my mind?

Edited - four sentences ending in a question mark in a row. Eurgh! There. That’s better.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Certainly one option

Certainly it would help replicate the grace they’re known for in-universe.

I also wonder if they could poach a rule from the Lumineth? This requires a quick primer for AoS.

AoS combat - player who’s turn it is picks a unit to fight with, then players alternate. Unlike 40K, charging doesn’t change that.

Lumineth however can choose two units to fight. This of course allows for pretty efficient ganking in a system where ganging up carries a bit of a risk.

As a straight port it looses some of its oomph of course, because 40K allows chargers to fight first. But I dare say more knowledgeable folk could hammer it into shape.

Or to go really wild? When an enemy unit declares a charge, any Craftworld unit can fall back D3” as a reaction. Bloody useful, and forces your opponent to forgo the riskier charges, at the expense of you potentially giving up control of objectives.

It’s speedy, and it’s frustrating, but it’s not foolproof. Seems rather Craftworldy to my mind?

Edited - four sentences ending in a question mark in a row. Eurgh! There. That’s better.

That wont protect us from the unholy fire that the likes of eradicators can rise

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Or to go really wild? When an enemy unit declares a charge, any Craftworld unit can fall back D3” as a reaction. Bloody useful, and forces your opponent to forgo the riskier charges, at the expense of you potentially giving up control of objectives.

It’s speedy, and it’s frustrating, but it’s not foolproof. Seems rather Craftworldy to my mind?
.

It would make charges out of deep strike practicaly impossible, which would mean that melee armies that don't have fast moving units would lose the only option to actualy get in to melee with eldar

 Hellebore wrote:
There's not much else you can do to reflect their strengths.

Give them a second move, redeployment, or some other strength the ability to switch out their own objective

Things like 'never better than 4+ to hit', vetos on scoring, blanket penalties on swathes of enemy movement and so on have similarities with the stacking hit modifiers and other bad game design like invisibility - they don't give the eldar new toys, they just take other players toys away.

 Hellebore wrote:
Will if you want to go that way you can do this:

War mask
The Eldar possess a liquid grace and preternatural speed unlike any other race, flowing across the battlefield like ghosts.
Any unit attacking an Eldar unit treats it's WS and BS as 1 as lower than it is. This has no effect on hit modifiers.

So elite armies would be hiting them on +5 in melee and shoting. This means that any eldar units with an inv save would become practically indestructible, specially if the -d3" to charge range became a thing too.

That's why I like the ward save approach. It's just a straight up, "Ignore 1/3rd of the harm you would normally suffer because you're fast enough to avoid/mitigate harm." Plus, it works against both melee and shooting attacks, and you don't have weird interactions with the modern to-hit modifier rules.

But it has a ton of interactions with one shot weapons or armies that are build around less numerous number of stronger attacks. Any army that wouldn't be able to spam melta weapons, and uses 1-2 shot heavy weapons for anti tank would not be able to destroy an eldar vehicles with a cumulative -2 to hit and a ++5 sv in melee and shoting.

Karol wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Or to go really wild? When an enemy unit declares a charge, any Craftworld unit can fall back D3” as a reaction. Bloody useful, and forces your opponent to forgo the riskier charges, at the expense of you potentially giving up control of objectives.

It’s speedy, and it’s frustrating, but it’s not foolproof. Seems rather Craftworldy to my mind?
.

It would make charges out of deep strike practicaly impossible, which would mean that melee armies that don't have fast moving units would lose the only option to actualy get in to melee with eldar

Easy way to solve that would be to enable it only from a charge from 6'' or closer. Or make it only happen on a 4+. Or simply make it a strat.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Karol wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Or to go really wild? When an enemy unit declares a charge, any Craftworld unit can fall back D3” as a reaction. Bloody useful, and forces your opponent to forgo the riskier charges, at the expense of you potentially giving up control of objectives.

It’s speedy, and it’s frustrating, but it’s not foolproof. Seems rather Craftworldy to my mind?
.

It would make charges out of deep strike practicaly impossible, which would mean that melee armies that don't have fast moving units would lose the only option to actualy get in to melee with eldar

Easy way to solve that would be to enable it only from a charge from 6'' or closer. Or make it only happen on a 4+. Or simply make it a strat.

Then it will be useless cosidering you get a 9" charge at best

Problem is, eldar should hit so hard you could not hit back, that is the definition of glass cannon, and with a good banshee charge you can kill 3 marine at best, and when they hit back they will oblitered the squad

Long story short, its fine eldar die fast, but they should hit like an absolute truck

Sgt. Cortez 796763 11075018 wrote:

Easy way to solve that would be to enable it only from a charge from 6'' or closer. Or make it only happen on a 4+. Or simply make it a strat.

That could work. I just worry that it being a strate would make it as useful as smoke on vehicles. Good when you have one huge vehicle, but not so much for the entire army. Could force eldar in to running some gigantic unit of doom that stacks -X to hit, the not FnP and charge debuffers with invs etc.

Problem is, eldar should hit so hard you could not hit back, that is the definition of glass cannon, and with a good banshee charge you can kill 3 marine at best, and when they hit back they will oblitered the squad

Which means that if eldar had the anti being shot option and the anti charge option build in, and would be killing multiple meq per charge per model. Against any elite marine army, they would be doing a one turn charge and it would be GG. That is not very fun or intereactive to play against, and would feel a lot like playing vs harlequins right now.

Karol wrote:

Sgt. Cortez 796763 11075018 wrote:

Easy way to solve that would be to enable it only from a charge from 6'' or closer. Or make it only happen on a 4+. Or simply make it a strat.

That could work. I just worry that it being a strate would make it as useful as smoke on vehicles. Good when you have one huge vehicle, but not so much for the entire army. Could force eldar in to running some gigantic unit of doom that stacks -X to hit, the not FnP and charge debuffers with invs etc.

Problem is, eldar should hit so hard you could not hit back, that is the definition of glass cannon, and with a good banshee charge you can kill 3 marine at best, and when they hit back they will oblitered the squad

Which means that if eldar had the anti being shot option and the anti charge option build in, and would be killing multiple meq per charge per model. Against any elite marine army, they would be doing a one turn charge and it would be GG. That is not very fun or intereactive to play against, and would feel a lot like playing vs harlequins right now.

The point is you're supposed to learn that the Banshee are a deadly Glass Cannon. So you avoid them or shoot them before they reach close combat. If they reach close combat they slaughter your forces, if you gun them down before they get there then they don't. The Eldar players tactic is thus to hide them (eg in a transport or behind terrain) or otherwise give you too many targets or distract you so that you don't shoot them.
In reality you might shoot some of them. It's a huge folly with people who do math/dice theory in that they often consider a full unit's worth of attacks (esp for close combat) whilst in reality you will often lose many of those models before they reach combat range.

Of course with GW favouring making close combat more viable against more shooty armies by making first turn close combat possible in some instances that can mess with that angle of theory.

 InVerno wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Certainly one option

Certainly it would help replicate the grace they’re known for in-universe.

I also wonder if they could poach a rule from the Lumineth? This requires a quick primer for AoS.

AoS combat - player who’s turn it is picks a unit to fight with, then players alternate. Unlike 40K, charging doesn’t change that.

Lumineth however can choose two units to fight. This of course allows for pretty efficient ganking in a system where ganging up carries a bit of a risk.

As a straight port it looses some of its oomph of course, because 40K allows chargers to fight first. But I dare say more knowledgeable folk could hammer it into shape.

Or to go really wild? When an enemy unit declares a charge, any Craftworld unit can fall back D3” as a reaction. Bloody useful, and forces your opponent to forgo the riskier charges, at the expense of you potentially giving up control of objectives.

It’s speedy, and it’s frustrating, but it’s not foolproof. Seems rather Craftworldy to my mind?

Edited - four sentences ending in a question mark in a row. Eurgh! There. That’s better.

That wont protect us from the unholy fire that the likes of eradicators can rise

Can’t have a counter to everything my friend.

You can take off and nuke the site from orbit

Not if your shuttle crew all get deded and eaten to deth!

 Flinty wrote:
You can take off and nuke the site from orbit

It's the only way to be sure.

 InVerno wrote:
Problem is, eldar should hit so hard you could not hit back, that is the definition of glass cannon, and with a good banshee charge you can kill 3 marine at best, and when they hit back they will oblitered the squad

But all of the suggestions so far have been about making the eldar hard to hit, harder to wound, harder to charge, better saves.

To be a glass cannon you need the glass as well as the cannon. But that has never exactly been the eldars style.

Lets face it if you ask fans of a faction to design their own faction stats they nearly always end up hitting hard and being very hard to kill. Fewer people are aware enough of the need to build in weakness and in a large group the area weakness should be varies a lot based on opinion.

Especially once you try to emulate the lore because that nearly always fails. Esp since in the lore you'd have more guardians on the battlefield compared to marines yet in tabletop they might have quite comparable numbers.

That's because glass cannons don't work in 9th; the requirement to hold an objective through your opponent's turn means that every army needs to have significant resilience.

Glass cannons are also problematic for other reasons (e.x. they exacerbate alpha-strike advantages), but really a glass cannon faction just doesn't work in 9th. The objective design just doesn't allow it. The way 9th is set up requires all armies to have a certain level of homogeneity; some can be tougher than others, certainly, but every army has to have units capable of sitting on objectives and surviving, even if they aren't quite as good at is as some other armies. There are different ways to be resilient - hordes can be resilient through numbers, for example - but I don't think anyone thinks it fits the way Eldar should play to swarm objectives with tons of expendable bodies, it's so totally counter to the idea of what the faction is supposed to be. So that leaves some other kind of resilience.

Indeed. True glass hammer is more Dark Eldar.

Craftworld Eldar are trickier to pigeon hole for me. Yes, they suffer horribly if it becomes a game of pure attrition. But, their background is about them stacking the odds in their favour, so that there’s little to resist them after their strike.

That doesn’t mean Banshees should be able to carve through a squad of Marines in a single turn for instance. More so that the various parts of the army can mass gank a certain army - or hit and fade.

Consider Eldar in BFG. Their ships weren’t terribly heavily armed, but their Pulsars were reliable. The key to success was the death of thousand cuts whilst you outflew your opponent.

In 2nd Ed Epic, any unit within range of a Warlock could choose their orders after the enemy had revealed their intent, an ability unique to them, which thanks to the wider game mechanics gave them an edge. Same with pop-up attacks for Grav Tanks. Park behind a building, go on First Fire, and enjoy raining down destruction with little fear of reprisals (until Titan Legion and Snap Fire becoming a thing)

At the moment, 40K just doesn’t seem to reflect those ways of war. Beyond their psychic shenanigans, Craftworlds are just painfully....standard.