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Or just make them proper lethal, in the new normal of 9th would the mask doing MW on a 4+ be too much of a stretch ?

Oh and a strat like the admech one where they can just go back into reserves, proper hit and run rather than hit and get gunned

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I can’t remember which unit I’m thinking of (it may even be an old WHFB), but you could pick three terrain features, and place a “possible location” marker in each.

When you were ready to reveal the location, you picked one of the three, discarding the other two tokens.

Weren't they the original Mandrake rules?

It might very well be! Thank you!


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 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Or just make them proper lethal, in the new normal of 9th would the mask doing MW on a 4+ be too much of a stretch ?

Oh and a strat like the admech one where they can just go back into reserves, proper hit and run rather than hit and get gunned

Tangle Foot Grenades.

Should a unit wish to retreat from combat with the Striking Scorpions, roll a D6 for each model in the unit, for each 4+ It suffers a Mortal Wound before completing its retreat move

Something like that?

No actually going off the table, to prevent their fragile glitter filled bodies from getting dakka'd and being able to ds/strat reserve back on later,

a_typical_hero wrote:
Or add -1 to hit modifiers to everything Aspect.

I'm nervous about hit modifiers as a widespread solution to anything, because 40K just does not have a robust enough to-hit system to use that as a balancing lever. When there are no built-in ways to boost your hit value, and linear modifiers affect different armies disproportionately, it's very easy for a simple -1 to hit to hurt some armies (eg Guard) much more than others (eg Marines).

I think it's worth pointing out that even at 3+, a Dire Avenger would still be just a T3/W1 model. Double the durability of a Guardsman isn't saying much. And even an Exarch would still be easier to kill than a bog-standard Tactical Marine.

I would like to see Eldar be the army of nasty tricks and game control, making up for their innate fragility with abilities that let them dictate the flow of the battle. Deep strike (or other unconventional deployment methods), hit-and-run, preventing fallback, blinding, stuff like that. Make them feel hard to kill because they don't give you the opportunity to shoot or stab them, rather than making them tanky by virtue of being hard to hit.

Another thought from the uninformed.

When 8th Ed ditched Initiative ratings, it strikes me it particular hit Eldar of all stripes as traditionally they had higher than average ratings in that department.

How would you redress that?

You rarely saw eldar melee besides shining spears.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another thought from the uninformed.

When 8th Ed ditched Initiative ratings, it strikes me it particular hit Eldar of all stripes as traditionally they had higher than average ratings in that department.

How would you redress that?

Theoretically, Eldar initiative is represented by their higher movement, and therefore their higher likelihood of making the charge move and resolving their attacks first in the fight phase.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another thought from the uninformed.

When 8th Ed ditched Initiative ratings, it strikes me it particular hit Eldar of all stripes as traditionally they had higher than average ratings in that department.

How would you redress that?

Assorted 'fight first' abilitys, psykers wotsits or strats, although given that whole area is a swamp of rules confusion far more trixy than is this number higher complexity of I value im not sure it would quite work but it would be something


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Moorecox wrote:
You rarely saw eldar melee besides shining spears.

thats because they are the only one with a decent A score (even if its a fudge of counting the s-cats as melee)

 Dysartes wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I can’t remember which unit I’m thinking of (it may even be an old WHFB), but you could pick three terrain features, and place a “possible location” marker in each.

When you were ready to reveal the location, you picked one of the three, discarding the other two tokens.

Weren't they the original Mandrake rules?

What MDG described was a combo of the two. Lictors you had to literally mark down in secret on what terrain piece they were hiding in and the enemy could roll to detect them early on a 6, getting bonuses if they had a flamer weapon. Mandrakes you placed three marker Mandrakes, moving them up the board as normal, by a certain turn (3 IIRC) you had to reveal which was the "real" Mandrake unit.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
That's an excellent point. Eldar as a highly lethal force whose gameplay mechanic means they cannot suffer attrition is a very interesting concept.

Completely agree that trying to translate dying race into Victory Points is rather difficult in the current system. Also having it be faction specific also gets a bit weird.

One way I could see it working out would be if attrition VP were given based on points cost. So units like Space Marines, Custodes and other elites suffer greatly when they lose an expensive unit. If Eldar infantry improve in effectiveness and also points they'd fit in right here. While cheap chaff like Guardsmen, Boyz, Gaunts, etc. aren't affected.

Perhaps something like 1VP given for any Infantry unit that is wiped out and the base PPM is greater than XX. If TacMarines and Dire Avenger are 13ppm then make XX 12 for instance.

I admit it's not a very elegant solution but it's an example of trying to make the "any loss is tragedy" work for a few of the elite faction. It would also need to be tested to see how it stacks up against the chaff equivalents like thin their ranks.

VP for narrative aspects is taking the wrong approuch IMHO, this rather strikes me as something best used for a crusade agenda.

Moorecox wrote:
You rarely saw eldar melee besides shining spears.

Part of the reason for that was the shift from fixed strength melee weapons in 2nd ed to User's Strength weapons in 3rd - so while the energy field around a power weapon meant that Banshee's ignored armour, they no longer got a bonus to S that they had previously. I think power swords were S5 in 2nd, so going from hurting Marines on a 3 to doing so on a 5 crippled the unit.

Scorpions sometimes managed to work on volume of attacks (they were on, what, 3 + mandiblasters on the charge?), but the AP paradigm of 3rd through 7th meant that while they could get a number of wounds down, armour was still an issue for them.

Storm Guardians never really worked as a CC unit, but weren't a bad way to get special weapons on the board.

 catbarf wrote:
Just an idea to chew on: Improve all their saves by 1. Guardians become 4+, DA become 3+, and the really heavy armor becomes 2+.

They'd still be glassy compared to Marines, but on account of Toughness and Wounds (depending on unit), rather than their armor being worse.

True, they'd still be glassy compared to a T4 Marine, but if Flak is 4+ where does that leave Carapace armor? The limitations of d6 strike again! I'm a bit hesitant on shifting Eldar Armor Saves all up by 1, sure it's not too big of a deal with how common AP is and they're still delicate T3 flowers but I get a little concerned when we start shifting stats on iconic units. For the same reason that my Boyz becoming T5 while other weapons stay T4 concerns me, I like the idea of T5 Boyz but it has large ripple effects in a system where most iconic weapons are S4. We'll see what the future holds on that one.

As for houserules, we've tried giving all Eldar infantry the native 5++ lightning reflexes before. It wasn't too bad, no different than making them all Daemon's really, and at the time in 8th (and start of 9th) Eldar infantry weren't exactly cheap so the 5++ made the unit feel almost worth the points.

We've also tried a house rule in 8th to represent Eldar being full of dirty tricks. Essentially you can only target the nearest Eldar model. Making it infantry only is more balanced but we've tried it with vehicles too. Considering holo-fields, sneaky tactics and treachery are the Eldar's bread and butter we figured it wouldn't be too out there to have it apply to walkers and grav-tanks. Wraith Units, eh, probably not. It's a fun rule but hard to say from a few games if it's balanced or not.

I mean theres no justification in fluff for a unit with a full extremely advanced xeno body armour that is described as basically Black Panther suit for a race that is extremely concerned to the survival of his species like a Guardian to have the same save than a Imperial Guardsmen with basically a chest flak vest and a helmet.

I also don't think an improve in armor save is what eldar need. what they need are delivery mechanisms.

The Red Hobbit wrote:True, they'd still be glassy compared to a T4 Marine, but if Flak is 4+ where does that leave Carapace armor?

Galas wrote:I mean theres no justification in fluff for a unit with a full extremely advanced xeno body armour that is described as basically Black Panther suit for a race that is extremely concerned to the survival of his species like a Guardian to have the same save than a Imperial Guardsmen with basically a chest flak vest and a helmet.

What Galas said. I'm completely okay with saying that basic Guardian advanced armor is comparable to carapace, and the heavier stuff comparable to ceramite. Incubi have 3+ saves and they're not especially bulky either.

Yeah I mean Guardian armor certainly looks Carapace armor. I'd feel a bit bad to have my units suddenly get better compared to Guardsmen but then again they've got numbers on their size.

So we'd be looking at this?
Guardians: 4+
DA, Banshees, Swooping Hawks: 3+
Fire Dragons, Striking Scorpions, Dark Reapers, Warp Spiders: 2+

Rihgu wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another thought from the uninformed.

When 8th Ed ditched Initiative ratings, it strikes me it particular hit Eldar of all stripes as traditionally they had higher than average ratings in that department.

How would you redress that?

Theoretically, Eldar initiative is represented by their higher movement, and therefore their higher likelihood of making the charge move and resolving their attacks first in the fight phase.

Where this breaks down is that M7" is just not significant compared to M6", especially given that Movement is irrelevant for both Advance rolls and Charge rolls.

Plus of course, so many Imperial units are able to move considerably faster due to having Bikes, Jump Packs or other such. When initiative existed, a SM Biker might be faster on the table but he'd still be swinging after an Eldar guardian in combat, due to the latter's reflexes. But now the M14" SM Biker still has a vast movement advantage over the Guardian *and* can leverage that to strike first in melee.

I think what's especially weird is that Eldar and Dark Eldar also lost the Fleet rule (which would have helped give their units an additional edge over Imperial ones). This used to be a core rule for all Eldar units but then in 8th it became a Harlequin rule instead. Dark Eldar have kind of got it back (except that it's through PfP - so if they take any allies at all then their movement drops significantly ), but I think Eldar only have it on one or two units.

Initiative meant that eldar increased survivability by reducing return attacks against them, simply by killing some models first.

Most eldar struck before most other armies.

You could make 'battlefocus' includes 'always strikes first' and it would change very little about the army.


The game is currently focused on T, W and Sv as the main methods of survivability. Only Sv can arguably be given to the eldar, as their tech is so advanced.

without invulnerable save shenanigans, there is no mechanic 9th ed has that represents the eldar's speed=defence background.

GW have claimed the eldar use speed as defence for decades, but the only time it actually had a mechanical effect, was in 2nd ed...


You could take the current eldar army list and do the following:

Always strikes first
All damage against living eldar reduced to 1 (dodge and weave)
guardians 4+ sv
Aspects 3+ sv (give heavy aspect armour +1W or T if you need to)

And despite how it appears, that won't do a great deal to their survivability, but it will do something.

 Hellebore wrote:
...GW have claimed the eldar use speed as defence for decades, but the only time it actually had a mechanical effect, was in 2nd ed...

Jink (cover save for moving fast) in 6th/7th, and Flickerjump (Warp Spiders' move in response to being attacked) in 7th were kind of speed as defense.

I liked the concept of Jink but hated seeing it in action.

Agreed completely with Hellebore. A lot of those bonuses would be insanely good in other factions, throw them on all on Eldar infantry and they're mostly mediocre with a few standouts.

Always strike first added onto Battlefocus is a simple and clean rule that I like quite a bit. Will have to try in the future.

IMHO they should apply a -1 to hit any unit that advanced. this would, with battle focus allow eldar to really use speed as their defence.

Or maybe get a +1 to their armor save if moving/advancing. Then you won't run into the issue that your enemy can't make their own hit rolls worse anymore.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Or maybe get a +1 to their armor save if moving/advancing. Then you won't run into the issue that your enemy can't make their own hit rolls worse anymore.

keep in mind the reduction to armor if advancing is something I'm suggesting as a new game rule not a eldar codex specific rule (so this is a fix that would need a new edition to be applied and thus they could add in some exceptions for the -1 cap) eldar would benifit greatly from this but other armies would be able to situationally benifit and it'd proably make manuver a liiiitle more important

I remember in 5th edition space marine players would literally run their infantry away from my howling banshees and scorpions as if they got caught in combat it would be rough for them. they could still deal with them via shooting them so it was somewhat balanced as the eldar player needing to reach the line before being able to do damage. now i feel like marines admech and the dark brethren(and most armies) outshoot, outlast and out fight craftworlds in basically every way.

The whole thing about eldar combat was getting to hit first, adding the strike first rule to them would reprecent them being lighting quick and actually being a melee threat with melee units. but still pretty inadequite compared to other units

assuming all eldar got was strike first lets say you had your 5 howling banshees (75 points) get charged by 5 assault interceptors (95 points). 11 attacks str 4 AP-3 D1 so 7.3 hits, 3.6 wounds or 3 unsaved wounds. basically one dead assault interceptor.

assault interceptors hit back 4 left 17 attacks hitting on 4's due to banshees exarch. 8.5 hits, 5.6 wounds, saving on 5's so 3.73 wounds, basically only the exarch survives.

looks to me like even going first would be pretty paltry in the current rules. combine with a 3+ armor and that would go down to 2.8 wounds so an exarch and 1 banshee survives so seems a bit more balanced, but its still now 4 marines vs 2 banshees when the banshees are supposed to be hyper specialized melee.

also of note both have a gun but the banshees have 12" str 4 ap0 1 dmg (-3ap on 6 to wound) no grenades vs assault intercessors 18" str 4 ap-1 damage 1 pistol and grenades

As Banshees are supposed to be anti heavy infantry, I hope they at least get D2 swords. They need quality attacks to set them clearly apart from Scorpions (and to do their job).

I'd give Banshees D2 phase swords that ignore invulns. Eldar are supposed to have tech after all and invulns need more counters than just MOAR shots. I'd probably give them a second wound from a force field or something too. Splash in a little Protoss.

Banshees really should've had a "Banshee Blade" (or something like that) with a fixed S value years ago, rather than continuing to use a standard power sword/weapon.

 T800Necron wrote:
I'd give Banshees D2 phase swords that ignore invulns.

They're not fething phase blades!

Talk about escalation... sheesh!

Zephyrim have shown that is easy to make power swords work in S3 models. Nothing makes Banshee impossible to balance with just power swords.