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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You say Ressurection Protocols are trivial, but I disagree with your conclusion.

Sure, you wipe out the unit and, outside of army interactions and exclusions (thinking Res Orb) “there ain’t no comin’ back, man”.

But think on that. What does that mean for my opponent? Not just that wiping out my squads is desirable (doing such a thing is always desirable) but now necessary. Especially if they’re camping on an Objective, where I’ll get a minimum of 4 back in the game.

That creates a certain pressure on my opponent. That to some degree begins to dictate what they can realistically shoot at. Against any other opponent, you have the choice to spread your firepower somewhat, going for a more gradual erosion. Necrons need properly concentrated fire. If there’s even one left? You have to take it out.

Right now, it’s hard to say how irritating that might be for your opponent, as I don’t recall we’ve seen whether a squad can freely split fire anymore.

If we can’t? It’s a major, major pain in the arse, as you’ll have to overcommit if your initial salvos leave just one or two standing. If we can, it’s still yet more firepower you’ll need to dedicate. And if that doesn’t do the job, more and more and more.

That’s….that’s pretty damned useful.

RP being guaranteed if you're getting it at all is a major difference from 8th. It's hard to say how practical the rule will be. I'm skeptical personally but I hope I'm wrong. The main person I expect to play with has always played a Space Marine gunline so I will definitely get to see...

This is an interesting exercise. At an overall level, a Space Marine (Tactical/Intercessor) is a superior model to most models in the game. While many models will be capable of killing a Space Marine in the correct circumstances, they generally lack a Space Marines ability to operate in multiple fields of combat. My numbers are based around that Jack-of-All Trades capability while knowing many of the models will kill a Space Marine, sometimes easily, in the correct circumstances. These are also based around my current understanding the current play strength and keeping the game interesting and varied, with a dash of lore tossed in.

Hecaton wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

It doesn't. Guardians only got the WS/BS3+ because Kelly favoritism.

No, they are a port over of WHF elves which had WS/BS 4 on their basic troops.

I can't go infinitely far back - but WHF Elves were WS/BS 4 from at least the 4th edition Army Book (1993). Eldar Guardians by contrast were WS3/BS3 until the 6th edition codex (2013). Its a gap of almost 20 years.

I suspect the argument was more mechanics with a bit of favouritism thrown in. Eldar didn't have much need for a cheap chaff/bubble wrap unit. It also feels a bit weird in the fluff that the future of the species are being chucked out to die like guardsmen. But arguably that's still the case today.

Tyel wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

It doesn't. Guardians only got the WS/BS3+ because Kelly favoritism.

No, they are a port over of WHF elves which had WS/BS 4 on their basic troops.

I can't go infinitely far back - but WHF Elves were WS/BS 4 from at least the 4th edition Army Book (1993). Eldar Guardians by contrast were WS3/BS3 until the 6th edition codex (2013). Its a gap of almost 20 years.

I suspect the argument was more mechanics with a bit of favouritism thrown in. Eldar didn't have much need for a cheap chaff/bubble wrap unit. It also feels a bit weird in the fluff that the future of the species are being chucked out to die like guardsmen. But arguably that's still the case today.

The WS/BS wasn’t the only thing that got a bump- they went up to I5 (like WFB Elves) as well. And on the other side, Farseers dropped from T4 to T3.

At the same time, over in WFB they added the 40k ‘Slaanesh eats Eldar ’ souls’ thing to the elves.

For some reason in that period they really wanted to make the two more similar.

I would be surprised if sisters and guardians don't go to WS/BS 4+.
The fact that necrons were scaled back, means that they are trying to bring back the "normal" to 4+, with marines hitting on 3+ or even 2+ because they are elite models.

We may have even see guards hitting on 5+, which would explain why dense cover was removed.

Don’t forget Black Guardians from the Craftworld Codex.

Guardians are mostly a stuck in GW no minis hell.
They form a massive part of the Craftworlds military, but are mostly ignored by GW.
They also pilot a lot of the vehicles as well, and likely the major part of Eldar fleets would be personal drawn from them.
There just isn’t enough of any other part of the craftworlds military for them to be not able to pull significant weight when needed.

There is also 3 craftworlds that use them as a part of there theme.

Why they shouldn’t be at the marine level with good stats across the board, they should be closer to elite than hordes, as throwing lives away is against the craftworlds theme entirely.

The guardian issue is entirely down to 3rd ed demoting them.

In 2nd ed they looked like this:

M5 ws3 bs3 s3 t3 w1 i4 A1 ld8 sv 5+

Catapult 24" s4 ap-2 D1 1 sustained fire dice

By contrast guard had a 6+ sv (5+ only against blast or template weapons)

At m5 they could get a -1 to be hit if they ran, reflecting their speed as defence.

But then in 3rd Ed they

Halved the catapults range
Reduce the effectiveness of their save and made guard saves the same

With a 12" range gun their chaff status was cemented because they had to perform suicidal actions to shoot people.

And so for several editions guardians were a bizarre unit concept, a militia designed to close with the enemy wearing paper armour. Not very dying race of them.

At least in 2nd you could plant them at the backfield and leave the close assualt to better armoured aspects. They took on static defensive roles which is much more in keeping with a militia.


Also at the same time the basic kabalite warrior was ws4 bs4 it, the same as an aspect, which was itself weird.


But gw refused to backtrack on the catapult, insisting on it being some kind of dumb shotgun. And so guardians continued to suck as anything other than a heavy weapon ablative shield.

So they standardised the two core Eldar stats, with low level troops being 445. The rationale being that each guardian could have walked many paths, have a lot of experience including the path of the warrior (their leaders are traditionally always ex aspects but that doesn't preclude other ex aspects in the squad).

Anything to make guardians useful again without changing their stupid 12" gun.

The increase to their armour now is another reaction to thier refusal to bend on other aspects of the army - they removed the one stat that reflected eldar speed - initiative, and they refuse to provide any kind of rule to make hitting them hard to reflect their reflexes as defence.

So they got a better save. And they gave aspects an invulnerable save.

Because they had to stay t3 w1 in an environment that was getting more dangerous.



You could bypass this with a rule like 'all eldar keyword units can't be hit on better than a 4+ regardless of skill', drop their armour and invulns and actually reflect their speed defence, but no.

Spoletta wrote:
I would be surprised if sisters and guardians don't go to WS/BS 4+.
The fact that necrons were scaled back, means that they are trying to bring back the "normal" to 4+, with marines hitting on 3+ or even 2+ because they are elite models.

We may have even see guards hitting on 5+, which would explain why dense cover was removed.

Its possible, but I suspect warriors were toned down due to the whole "+1 to hit if you put a character in with them". They presumably didn't want Necron Warriors running around hitting on 2s.

Tyel wrote:
Its possible, but I suspect warriors were toned down due to the whole "+1 to hit if you put a character in with them". They presumably didn't want Necron Warriors running around hitting on 2s.

"We made it that Necron Characters increase BS of units, so obviously we had to lower the BS of Necron units. There was no other way this problem could have been resolved."

 Hellebore wrote:

You could bypass this with a rule like 'all eldar keyword units can't be hit on better than a 4+ regardless of skill', drop their armour and invulns and actually reflect their speed defence, but no.

Alternatively, give units a dodge/evade stat and compare WS/BS to that (in the same way strength compares to toughness), rather than having them as flat rolls.

Spoletta wrote:
I would be surprised if sisters and guardians don't go to WS/BS 4+.
The fact that necrons were scaled back, means that they are trying to bring back the "normal" to 4+, with marines hitting on 3+ or even 2+ because they are elite models.

We may have even see guards hitting on 5+, which would explain why dense cover was removed.

We could also see Orks going to 4+ - I'm very interested in seeing their faction preview. The previews are fairly limited, only being a couple models they want to make the "face of the franchise" wombo combo (Legionaries and Abby and an objective giving the Legos Reroll all hit and wounds - Monolith warping in Warriors onto an objective for super regeneration, etc) - or at least it feels that way - but seeing the Boyz/Grotz datasheet could be enlightening. So far most of the datasheets teased have been minor changes until we got to Necrons


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Apple fox wrote:
Guardians are mostly a stuck in GW no minis hell.

Didn't they just get a new cast?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

Alternatively, give units a dodge/evade stat and compare WS/BS to that (in the same way strength compares to toughness), rather than having them as flat rolls.

I've wishcast for that for quite a while too - might solve some of the Tank Weapons on Non-Tank Targets issues too.

 Hellebore wrote:

Spoiler:

The guardian issue is entirely down to 3rd ed demoting them.

In 2nd ed they looked like this:

M5 ws3 bs3 s3 t3 w1 i4 A1 ld8 sv 5+

Catapult 24" s4 ap-2 D1 1 sustained fire dice

By contrast guard had a 6+ sv (5+ only against blast or template weapons)

At m5 they could get a -1 to be hit if they ran, reflecting their speed as defence.

But then in 3rd Ed they

Halved the catapults range
Reduce the effectiveness of their save and made guard saves the same

With a 12" range gun their chaff status was cemented because they had to perform suicidal actions to shoot people.

And so for several editions guardians were a bizarre unit concept, a militia designed to close with the enemy wearing paper armour. Not very dying race of them.

At least in 2nd you could plant them at the backfield and leave the close assualt to better armoured aspects. They took on static defensive roles which is much more in keeping with a militia.


Also at the same time the basic kabalite warrior was ws4 bs4 it, the same as an aspect, which was itself weird.


But gw refused to backtrack on the catapult, insisting on it being some kind of dumb shotgun. And so guardians continued to suck as anything other than a heavy weapon ablative shield.

So they standardised the two core Eldar stats, with low level troops being 445. The rationale being that each guardian could have walked many paths, have a lot of experience including the path of the warrior (their leaders are traditionally always ex aspects but that doesn't preclude other ex aspects in the squad).

Anything to make guardians useful again without changing their stupid 12" gun.

The increase to their armour now is another reaction to thier refusal to bend on other aspects of the army - they removed the one stat that reflected eldar speed - initiative, and they refuse to provide any kind of rule to make hitting them hard to reflect their reflexes as defence.

So they got a better save. And they gave aspects an invulnerable save.

Because they had to stay t3 w1 in an environment that was getting more dangerous.



You could bypass this with a rule like 'all eldar keyword units can't be hit on better than a 4+ regardless of skill', drop their armour and invulns and actually reflect their speed defence, but no.

They did finally update the Catapult to 18" range. But not before the advent of Intercessors and a 30" ranged Bolt Rifle that they could shoot twice. :/

It's all borked.

Daemons
Lesser Daemon Infantry (Bloodletters, Plaguebearers, Daemonettes, Pink Horrors): 50, inferior to a Marine overall but superior in certain contexts, i.e. a Bloodletter is more killy in melee.
Herald: 500 on average probably, capable of crushing Terminators.
Daemon Prince: 1,000 on average maybe.
Greater Daemons: 10,000, world ending events that doom entire systems.

Chaos Marines
Legionnaire: Like 120 to reflect generally being enhanced ore more seasoned.
Cultist: 5, trash fodder
Chosen: 200+

Eldar
Guardian: 20, pretty gud and can kill Marines but heavily disadvantaged.
Aspect Warrior: 100, with the caveat that they are superior to an average Marine at their specialty. A Howling Banshee will beat your average TacMarine in a sword fight very easily.

Dark Eldar
Kabalite Warrior: 50
Wych: 50, with maybe a slight advantage in melee
Wrack: 50ish
Incubus: 120 overall, but far more dangerous in melee

Necrons
Warrior: 40, fairly durable but ultimately these guys are chaff who die by the hundreds.
Immortal: 100, with the advantage in firepower and durability but losing out in melee ability and mobility
Lychguard: 300, these guys kill terminators and are very tough.

Orks
Boy: 20 at best, this is a chaff unit but who can potentially punch up particularly in melee.
Nob: Heavily varies depending on equipment. On average probably on par at 100, with pure shooting gear probably like 80 because they can't shoot, if leaning heavily into melee maybe like 120.

Tau
Fire Warrior: 30, less disciplined and skilled at ranged and especially melee combat and with lower durability but their firepower is no joke.
Stealth Suit: tbh idk lol
Crisis Suit: Like 200 overall simply because they are still clumsy in melee, if just looking at mobility, durability, and firepower maybe like 300

Tyranids
Gaunts and Gants: Maybe like a 5, 10 at best.
Warriors: 120ish, tougher in some ways and more deadly in melee.
Genestealer: 20, sorry but despite being dangerous in melee and fast these guys die in droves and have no shooting options. Do you see a squad of terminators clearing out an entire space hulk filled with thousands of Space Marines like what happens in the lore with such regularity there is an entire game centered around it? I personally don't.