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I agree, give Kabalites the option of pistol/ccw.

Also, bring back 20 man units. I have fond memories of playing warrior spam. 100+ guys on the field, tons of infantry Dark Lances ripping up vehicles.

As for the splinter rifles themselves: yes, make them like Kroot rifles. +1 attack. Would assault 3 make them too OP?

I would like my Talos/Cronos units to be restored to units of 1-3.

cuda1179 wrote:I agree, give Kabalites the option of pistol/ccw.

Also, bring back 20 man units. I have fond memories of playing warrior spam. 100+ guys on the field, tons of infantry Dark Lances ripping up vehicles.

Hrm. I want to support both of these ideas, but I do wonder if we'd be better off splitting them up into different datasheets at that point. Give the melee kabalites their own rules to help them be something other than just a sidegrade/downgrade from wyches/wracks/incubi (melee build) or a rule to help explain what a 20-strong blob of warriors is doing on foot rather than riding in raiders in squads of 5-10.

On the note of melee kabalites, I'll point out that craftworlders have storm guardians (10 bodies, mostly melee+pistol loadouts with a handful of special weapons mixed in, sticky objective rule), and they'd drop their bad melee weapons in a heartbeat if they could take catapults instead.

I like the idea of being able to take the squad in different configurations, but they might need a bit more to help them find a niche.

As for the splinter rifles themselves: yes, make them like Kroot rifles. +1 attack. Would assault 3 make them too OP?

Probably not (scourges can take shardcarbines), but it might require they be a bit more expensive, which in turn means they'd be "worse" (point for point) at their current jobs because they're more of a special weapon + action monkey unit than a rifle unit. So you'd have to strike a good balance. I'd also worry that 20 shardcarbines in a single unit might be begging for some kind of wombo combo sillyness. Also also, trueborn used to have access to shardcarbines. This makes me feel even more like maybe we should just bring back trueborn in some form.

ccs wrote:I would like my Talos/Cronos units to be restored to units of 1-3.

Seconded.

Dudeface wrote:
This is a painfully reductive take though, maybe it should be possible for a kabalite force to be offensively useful? Maybe the bolter shouldn't be pillow fisted?

Any argument rooted in "why does it need to be viable because it isn't/wasn't previously", can immediately be thrown out imo.

Is it though? I mean complaining bolter weapons aren't good into targets X and Y when you have many other tools seems reductive.
Should an army composed purely of Intercessors be able to gun everything down? Or should you need some melta, some power fists, some whatever?

If splinter was bad into everything then sure - but anti-infantry 3+ is relatively good into infantry.

Vipoid's list looks extensive - but really Hellions are a melee unit (and a good one) while Reavers are an objective scoring unit with a special weapon and some token splinter fire.
Hand of the Archon is just "Kabalites+1" - so fair, but in practice you are probably taking all the special weapons over basic splinter rifles (same for Kabs).
Splinter Scourge are relevant I guess, but this version is arguably the best they've ever been. Does it really matter if they aren't good into certain targets?

"My characters's splinter pistols wound bikers on 6s - this is an outrage" feels like a reach. Its really not an issue with playing Dark Eldar.

As I understand the argument, the issue isn’t that Splinter Rifles are bad, so much that the wider rules create situation where Splinter Rifles struggle.

Against Infantry they remain pretty competent as side arms go. But there are things such as Bikes and Battlesuits where they just don’t get their perk.

And that extends to other toys that rely on Poison to do their jobs.

That leads to odd situations where against say, Marines, your Splinter weapons and other poisons work as intended. But against say, Tau? There are significant parts of your opponent’s army you just struggle against.

Yes, other toys like Blasters, Shredders, Blast Pistols will more than lend a hand. But there are so many of those to an army, and they don’t really balance it out when by dint of external rules anything normally reliant on Poison type rules are heavily neutered.

Hopefully it’s not too hyperbolic to draw some comparison with fighting against an Imperial Knight army in 7th Edition, where the vast majority of weapons just Did Sod All. That problem of course applied to most if not all armies other than Knight on Knight action. But even then, it felt bad.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As I understand the argument, the issue isn’t that Splinter Rifles are bad, so much that the wider rules create situation where Splinter Rifles struggle.

Against Infantry they remain pretty competent as side arms go. But there are things such as Bikes and Battlesuits where they just don’t get their perk.

And that extends to other toys that rely on Poison to do their jobs.

That leads to odd situations where against say, Marines, your Splinter weapons and other poisons work as intended. But against say, Tau? There are significant parts of your opponent’s army you just struggle against.

Yes, other toys like Blasters, Shredders, Blast Pistols will more than lend a hand. But there are so many of those to an army, and they don’t really balance it out when by dint of external rules anything normally reliant on Poison type rules are heavily neutered.

Hopefully it’s not too hyperbolic to draw some comparison with fighting against an Imperial Knight army in 7th Edition, where the vast majority of weapons just Did Sod All. That problem of course applied to most if not all armies other than Knight on Knight action. But even then, it felt bad.

The other element discussed was the fact that even into infantry targets an intercessor is sometimes just as good, if not better per point, then continues to be better into other targets too.

What if they went back to the formula of 2 heavies, two specials per 10 Kabalites? Duplicates allowed. That, with the leader's blast pistol, really does help against the heavier stuff.

Apply the same formula if they brought back 20 man squads. Blast pistol, 4 blasters, 4 Dark Lances. That could do damage to Terminators or vehicles.

Dudeface wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As I understand the argument, the issue isn’t that Splinter Rifles are bad, so much that the wider rules create situation where Splinter Rifles struggle.

Against Infantry they remain pretty competent as side arms go. But there are things such as Bikes and Battlesuits where they just don’t get their perk.

And that extends to other toys that rely on Poison to do their jobs.

That leads to odd situations where against say, Marines, your Splinter weapons and other poisons work as intended. But against say, Tau? There are significant parts of your opponent’s army you just struggle against.

Yes, other toys like Blasters, Shredders, Blast Pistols will more than lend a hand. But there are so many of those to an army, and they don’t really balance it out when by dint of external rules anything normally reliant on Poison type rules are heavily neutered.

Hopefully it’s not too hyperbolic to draw some comparison with fighting against an Imperial Knight army in 7th Edition, where the vast majority of weapons just Did Sod All. That problem of course applied to most if not all armies other than Knight on Knight action. But even then, it felt bad.

The other element discussed was the fact that even into infantry targets an intercessor is sometimes just as good, if not better per point, then continues to be better into other targets too.

Good summary from Mad Doc and good point from DudeFace.

Personally, my *main* issue with poison is just the weird interations with certain armies. Not being able to poison fenrisian wolves or necron scarabs, for instance.

Somewhat related to that is the way our offense has been broken up into tiers moreso than in previous editions (things like blasters now being more of an anti-heavy infantry/light vehicle weapon than an actual tank buster) means that each tier of weapon has to do more work on its own and is less able to pitch in against secondary targets. So for instance, my splinter weapons can no longer reliably whittle down enemy bikers the way they used to which means I need to call in more help bigger guns like lances. But my blasters can't help my lances finish tank busting as reliably as before, so it's harder to spare lances to shoot the bikers. Basically, it's harder for us to nickel and dime our way through enemies because we need relatively specific weapons shooting into relatively specific places. For comparison, craftworlders are supposed to be a faction with lots of specialized shooting, but they have enough forms of shooting that are good into a variety of targets (shuriken cannons, lethal hit hawk lasblasters, dark reapers, etc.) that they don't really have this same issue.

And then somewhat related to that last paragraph, as Dudeface reminded us, is the point that despite our shooting being more specialized, it's not necessarily more effective against our preferred targets. And personally, I don't really want it to be. I want it to simply be a bit more flexible instead. When I saw our weapon profiles being teased with Anti-Infantry 3+ instead of Poison 4+, I immediately went, "Oh no. They think they're buffing us, but they aren't." Poison weapons were pretty neat when they could trade efficiently into higher toughness infantry and bikes and could also be counted on to deal with swarms, etc. It was *weird* when they wounded T3 and lower targets less well than bolters, but poison weapons in general were more comfortable because you didn't have to worry about a unit *technically* not being specific infantry to be effective. You could toss a sybarite or hekatrix with an agonizer at a squad of bikes and give them decent odds of dragging one of the bikes down on their own. You could count on your splinters to help thin out anything that wasn't a vehicle. Whereas now you face necrons, see a bunch of wraiths and scarabs and realize your basic guns basically don't get to contribute in this game.


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 cuda1179 wrote:
What if they went back to the formula of 2 heavies, two specials per 10 Kabalites? Duplicates allowed. That, with the leader's blast pistol, really does help against the heavier stuff.

Apply the same formula if they brought back 20 man squads. Blast pistol, 4 blasters, 4 Dark Lances. That could do damage to Terminators or vehicles.

I don't think GW would like it because it goes against their newer paradigm of mainly letting you field what comes in the box (although they've applied that inconsistently.)

If you applied that pattern to the single default kabalite datasheet, you'd basically make it so that no one ever took splinter cannon kabalites again because lances are too much more valuable. If you made that it's own datasheet, you could probably balance it as needed, but I get nervous when the "point" of a proposed unit is just to create an even more points efficient version of an existing unit (because of the more concentrated anti-tank firepower).

As someone who has used 20-man warrior blobs as part of a webway bomb in the past, I find them slightly hard to justify in terms of fluff. They're pretty much the same as just taking 2x10 warriors except that there's more potential to wombo-combo a bunch of buffs in one place. And I don't particularly like wombo combo design. Nor do I particularly want kabalites to be an actual "horde" unit where the point is to spam 120 of them in a list. So if we're not wombo-comboing and we're not trying to turn them into a horde unit, what's the point of the extra large squad?

(If anything, I'd like the option to go back to taking them in 5-man squads so I can use them as scoring pieces/action monkeys without having to invest in an extra venom.)

What I love about 20 man units is that they just might have enough volume of fire to get something done. A lone 10-man unit is barely a threat to anything that's not Guard/ork boys. Look at us, we killed a single marine! With 20 ,and all the heavies/specials, you might be able to cripple a vehicle while also slightly annoying an infantry unit of convenience.

Yes, this unit is prime target for the Wombo Combo, but it's somewhat balanced by not being able to mount a Raider. So mobility is lower, no deepatrike.

Saying a Kabalite is worth 11.5 points and they therefore lose to an Intercessor is just wrong to my mind.

Kabalites are that price because you are taking a dark lance, a blaster, a splinter cannon, a shredder and probably a blast pistol (ymmv on that I guess if they are backfield objective camping - but I think its a no brainer).

In "old money" basic Kabalites are about 7~ points. Say 70 for the squad then 10 points for the specials and 5 for the pistol. (Whether the grenade launcher/icon is worth anything is a further debate - if yes the individuals go down more) Obviously modern 40k doesn't work that way - but there's no way you can say the scrubs with splinter rifles are worth 1/10th of the unit. How do splinter rifle guys fare against Intercessors at 8 points? 7? 6?

Tyel wrote:
Saying a Kabalite is worth 11.5 points and they therefore lose to an Intercessor is just wrong to my mind.

Kabalites are that price because you are taking a dark lance, a blaster, a splinter cannon, a shredder and probably a blast pistol (ymmv on that I guess if they are backfield objective camping - but I think its a no brainer).

In "old money" basic Kabalites are about 7~ points. Say 70 for the squad then 10 points for the specials and 5 for the pistol. (Whether the grenade launcher/icon is worth anything is a further debate - if yes the individuals go down more) Obviously modern 40k doesn't work that way - but there's no way you can say the scrubs with splinter rifles are worth 1/10th of the unit. How do splinter rifle guys fare against Intercessors at 8 points? 7? 6?

At 8 PPM (exactly half of an Intercessor) their damage is equal into TEQ, worse into MEQ, point for point.

Can’t really look at units in isolation like that. Need to look at the wider context of the army, what else is competing for your points within your Codex, and what your options are for playing the objectives game.

Thats not to therefore argue all are therefore appropriately and fairly pointed.

But straight off the bat? Intercessors only get their Bolt Rifles and I believe a couple of auxiliary Grenade Launchers.

Kaballite Warriors get a spread of heavy/special weapons, which whilst hardly a win button, does give them options beyond menacing enemy infantry.

Is a Kaballite squad going to drop a tank, monster or Dread in a single volley? Almost certainly not, no. But. They may be the very dab to take off the final wounds, or drop them low enough to start degrading that unit.

And. If memory serves? As you can freely split your fire, that’s a further suite of options open to Kaballites (splinter up some infantry, dark lance a tank or transport or a passing hippo) that the Intercessors don’t enjoy.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

On the note of melee kabalites, I'll point out that craftworlders have storm guardians (10 bodies, mostly melee+pistol loadouts with a handful of special weapons mixed in, sticky objective rule), and they'd drop their bad melee weapons in a heartbeat if they could take catapults instead.

I think storm guardians needs to get the options they had in 2nd edition, possibly with some expansion. Every member should be able to have combat weapon, and swap it out for chainsword, power sword, power axe, or power fist. And all should have shuriken pistol with option to swap out for plasma pistol (or star pistol), fusion pistol, flame pistol, etc.

BanjoJohn wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

On the note of melee kabalites, I'll point out that craftworlders have storm guardians (10 bodies, mostly melee+pistol loadouts with a handful of special weapons mixed in, sticky objective rule), and they'd drop their bad melee weapons in a heartbeat if they could take catapults instead.

I think storm guardians needs to get the options they had in 2nd edition, possibly with some expansion. Every member should be able to have combat weapon, and swap it out for chainsword, power sword, power axe, or power fist. And all should have shuriken pistol with option to swap out for plasma pistol (or star pistol), fusion pistol, flame pistol, etc.

That would make them a LOT more expensive-not something generally desirable on an objective grabber.

 cuda1179 wrote:
What I love about 20 man units is that they just might have enough volume of fire to get something done. A lone 10-man unit is barely a threat to anything that's not Guard/ork boys. Look at us, we killed a single marine! With 20 ,and all the heavies/specials, you might be able to cripple a vehicle while also slightly annoying an infantry unit of convenience.

Yes, this unit is prime target for the Wombo Combo, but it's somewhat balanced by not being able to mount a Raider. So mobility is lower, no deepatrike.

Is wombo-combo'ing the goal though? Because if not, why not just take a second squad of 10? They'd be more flexible and less vulnerable to blasts. And if wombo-combo'ing *is* the goal, I'm probably against it because it means the unit is designed with the combo in mind and tends not to work well unless you're stacking the intended buffs together in one place.


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BanjoJohn wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

On the note of melee kabalites, I'll point out that craftworlders have storm guardians (10 bodies, mostly melee+pistol loadouts with a handful of special weapons mixed in, sticky objective rule), and they'd drop their bad melee weapons in a heartbeat if they could take catapults instead.

I think storm guardians needs to get the options they had in 2nd edition, possibly with some expansion. Every member should be able to have combat weapon, and swap it out for chainsword, power sword, power axe, or power fist. And all should have shuriken pistol with option to swap out for plasma pistol (or star pistol), fusion pistol, flame pistol, etc.

They'd be a very different unit at that point, but my point wasn't to complain about the state of storm guardians. My goal was to point out that the hypothetical melee + pistol kabalite unit would theoretically end up looking very similar to a modern storm guardian unit. So if storm guardians would gladly swap their swords for guns, our hypothetical kabalites probably would too. There's something to be said for customization and variety for its own sake, but I don't think a unit of kabalites with stormy-style melee weapons would be considered particularly useful. I think people would just take the guns instead so they can do damage to the enemy at a distance rather than having to get up close.

Which is why I said earlier that a hypothetical melee kabalite unit should maybe be its own datasheet so you can give them a different special rule or some different wargear options or *something* so that people have a reason to *want* to take melee weapons over guns other than the aesthetic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
Saying a Kabalite is worth 11.5 points and they therefore lose to an Intercessor is just wrong to my mind.

Honestly, I think warriors are fine as an overall package as they are now. They just have a few annoying quirks that would be welcome areas for improvement.

* The splinter rifle guys feel very meh. There's the poison weirdness we've covered pretty well at this point, but basically they just feel both kind of limited in the variety of units they can go after and not *great* against those units in general. We used to be able to make these feel pretty good either through a lhamean's buffs or splinter racks or by simply being able to point their rifles at something like a bike or wraith or whatever. Right now, these guys are just kind of meh on their own.

* They have like 5 weapon profiles to resolve in the shooting phase. Which is annoying and just the result of 10th edition not wanting to put points on wargear. They knew that the splinter cannon (and probably shredder) would be never takes next to the dark lance (and probably blaster), and they didn't want you taking a 5-man dark lance squad, so they locked you in at 10 models and gave you all the special weapons in one place even though they have wildly different jobs.

* The unit is *really* designed to be split up into 5 man squads using venoms. So instead of just taking a 5-man squad like you used to and being happy with a cheap little blaster or shredder dude and his sybarite running around and doing action monkey stuff, you instead have to invest in a twice as expensive squad (making them harder to splash into lists) and then ensure you're fielding the right number of venoms to break those 10-man units up into much more flexible/efficient 5-man squads. Which is just annoying and feels like a consequence, again, of the no-points-for-wargear thing.

* Realistically, they don't have the durability for you to be shoving a bunch of them all over the board and trying to sticky everything. Generally you're just stickying home base and your natural extension objective. So they're a utility unit that you get less use out of the more of them you take meaning you're sort of dissuaded from taking more than 1 or 2 of your battleline kabalite unit.

On Kaballites, a proposed main unit weapon option. Stats offered are just suggestions rather than anything I’ve thought through particularly well.

R 18”, S3, AP-2, D1, Assault 2.

Concept is a lower yield, faster firing Blast weapon variant.

Not sure on the S3. I still consider that a fairly average side arm strength, but as ever my knowledge of the game is woefully out of date.

The intent is something with more reliable AP punch, without it becoming the obvious option over Splinter Rifles - hence the modest Strength. Just not sure if it’s too modest.

 JNAProductions wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

On the note of melee kabalites, I'll point out that craftworlders have storm guardians (10 bodies, mostly melee+pistol loadouts with a handful of special weapons mixed in, sticky objective rule), and they'd drop their bad melee weapons in a heartbeat if they could take catapults instead.

I think storm guardians needs to get the options they had in 2nd edition, possibly with some expansion. Every member should be able to have combat weapon, and swap it out for chainsword, power sword, power axe, or power fist. And all should have shuriken pistol with option to swap out for plasma pistol (or star pistol), fusion pistol, flame pistol, etc.

That would make them a LOT more expensive-not something generally desirable on an objective grabber.

Why would they be an objective grabber? that's the job of guardian defender squads, storm guardians with power weapons should be ripping up units in melee.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:On Kaballites, a proposed main unit weapon option. Stats offered are just suggestions rather than anything I’ve thought through particularly well.

R 18”, S3, AP-2, D1, Assault 2.

Concept is a lower yield, faster firing Blast weapon variant.

Not sure on the S3. I still consider that a fairly average side arm strength, but as ever my knowledge of the game is woefully out of date.

The intent is something with more reliable AP punch, without it becoming the obvious option over Splinter Rifles - hence the modest Strength. Just not sure if it’s too modest.

The disintegrator might be a better comparison. Blasters are meant to be more like our meltaguns. *Ignoring that heat lances exist.)

As usual, I'm too lazy to crunch numbers. That said, against a meq profile, this is basically translating to -2 on the to-wound roll and a 2 point improvement on the save roll. (From the drukhari player's perspective.) Given that the attack resolution process is basically a funnel where the dice pool normally gets smaller at each step, this makes me think that this profile would be a net negative against any infantry that are T4 or higher. It would be a straight up improvement against any non-infantry, but you'd be fishing for 5s and 6s against most of those, so limited overall effect with either this profile or splinter rifles.

If you upped the Strength to 4, it probably becomes the clearly better weapon against most things if not everything. But again, I'm not sure kabalites really *need* a lethality boost, and if they did, we could just buff splinter rifles. But just replacing "anti-infantry" with "Poison(X+)" on most/all of our poison weapons would do a lot to make things like splinter weapons more broadly useful without actually upping their lethality against any infantry targets.

BanjoJohn wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

On the note of melee kabalites, I'll point out that craftworlders have storm guardians (10 bodies, mostly melee+pistol loadouts with a handful of special weapons mixed in, sticky objective rule), and they'd drop their bad melee weapons in a heartbeat if they could take catapults instead.

I think storm guardians needs to get the options they had in 2nd edition, possibly with some expansion. Every member should be able to have combat weapon, and swap it out for chainsword, power sword, power axe, or power fist. And all should have shuriken pistol with option to swap out for plasma pistol (or star pistol), fusion pistol, flame pistol, etc.

That would make them a LOT more expensive-not something generally desirable on an objective grabber.

Why would they be an objective grabber? that's the job of guardian defender squads, storm guardians with power weapons should be ripping up units in melee.

I started playing in 5th , but storm guardians have never actually been good in melee in the the time that I've been playing. The swords are a trick to make you think the unit isn't just a special weapon delivery system with the sticky rule. In 10th, stormies are very much an objective grabber unit.

Totally get wanting a badass stormy squad with cool melee weapons for the aesthetic of it. But in terms of mechanical niches, trying to turn them into an actual melee unit means that they're competing with scorpions, banshees, wraith blades, and power weapon anhrathe units. And frankly you can't really push their melee offense very high because it gets weird from a fluff perspective if these guys are suddenly outperforming banshees and wraith blades in melee. Plus, adding decent melee performance (which they don't really have currently) on top of their special weapon loadouts and sticky objectives would mean they'd have to be more expensive, which as JNA pointed out would then make them less cost effective at the jobs they're already doing (and doing well).

And hypothethical melee kabalites would run into a lot of the same problems. You'd be asking them to add a job to their resume that they don't currently do particularly well, which would mean upping their cost if you gave them good enough melee weapons for them to actually be effective. Which makes them less good at their current job of objective grabbing because they become too expensive to be good, disposable action monkeys and objective grabbers. And then at that point, they're competing with wyches, incubi, mandrakes, even wracks for melee unit duty, and it becomes weird if you have your kabalites looking too good next to dedicated melee specialists.

If we want "melee kabalites," I would either:
A.) Just make it a very mild boost so that they don't actually become "good" at melee but are good enough that you're comfortable using them more aggressively. Maybe change the banner to granting +1 Strength on the charge or something. That turns a never-take (the banner) into a viable side-grade compared to the grenade launcher and maybe pushes the squad over the edge into being good enough (if you take a melee sybarite) to actually win a few fights against non-melee units. It changes up how the unit plays and makes them useful in melee, but not so useful that their points need to increase or they start competing with wyches, etc.
B.) Create a new datasheet without the baggage of the current datasheet's role, special rule, special weapons, etc. Maybe a melee-oriented trueborn unit whose shtick is having access to fancy toys. Maybe make them untargetable while within 3" of a kabalite warrior unit to reflect the idea that they're the rich kids showing off at the cost of their employees. Now you have a melee unit that doesn't have to outperform incubi or wyches in terms of sheer offense but offers you a weird form of "durability" while also giving you more of a reason to field more basic kabalites.

Melee Kabalites could be okay-ish. Just give their CCW's a little more punch. +1 attack and AP -1 would be fine.

I think the modern detachment system allows for wide factions like Eldar to have units that notionally step on each others toes.

Storm Guardians are a light assault unit with special weapons. In an Aspect or Wraith Host they probably don't have a place compared with say Banshees or Wraith Blades. But in other detachments the rules may justify it.

"Melee Kabalites" would likewise only seem to make sense compared with Wyches or Wracks with detachment support. Although it the option was say basic melee guys and two blasters/shredders/agonizers I could maybe see it over the current load out. Which as you say arguably wants to be split in two.

cuda1179 wrote:Melee Kabalites could be okay-ish. Just give their CCW's a little more punch. +1 attack and AP -1 would be fine.

I'm just not sure they have much of a niche at that point. Even if you just want to spam lots of warriors for thematic purposes, they'd probably be less useful in the kabal cartel detachment than rifle warriors (assuming we're talking about using the current warriors datasheet just with the option of swapping rifles with ccw + pistols). And generally speaking, if you want a melee unit you're probably better off spending the points on one of the many melee units we have access to. Including incubi who are also pretty thematic for a kabal-themed list (and also receive benefits in the cartel detachment.) Or heck, the hand of the archon squad can probably be roughly as effective as a melee unit if you want it to be. (I've only given it a brief skim.)

Again, I get wanting the option purely for the aesthetic, but given that we'd kind of need a new kit to support this unit without kitbashing anyway, I think I'd rather just give them their own datasheet so we can more easily give them their own role and identityt.

Tyel wrote:I think the modern detachment system allows for wide factions like Eldar to have units that notionally step on each others toes.

Storm Guardians are a light assault unit with special weapons. In an Aspect or Wraith Host they probably don't have a place compared with say Banshees or Wraith Blades. But in other detachments the rules may justify it.

"Melee Kabalites" would likewise only seem to make sense compared with Wyches or Wracks with detachment support. Although it the option was say basic melee guys and two blasters/shredders/agonizers I could maybe see it over the current load out. Which as you say arguably wants to be split in two.

I'm out of the competitive loop, but my understanding is that stormies are considered worth splashing into most lists at the moment. Because their offense is okay, but their main role is just as a squad that stickies objectives near your home base and then denies scoring for a turn by standing on an enemy-contested objective with OC2 before dying.

But yeah, no one takes stormies for their swords (or even their power swords), and kabalites who swap their rifles for mediocre melee weapons would basically be stormies without the serpent scale platform or the potential warlock support wombo combo.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm out of the competitive loop, but my understanding is that stormies are considered worth splashing into most lists at the moment. Because their offense is okay, but their main role is just as a squad that stickies objectives near your home base and then denies scoring for a turn by standing on an enemy-contested objective with OC2 before dying.

But yeah, no one takes stormies for their swords (or even their power swords), and kabalites who swap their rifles for mediocre melee weapons would basically be stormies without the serpent scale platform or the potential warlock support wombo combo.

I agree - but melee Kabs could likewise get sticky objectives, a 5++, some more character support etc.

The problem is always going to be in a kabal/cult/coven agnostic world, its hard to come up with a unit that isn't explicitly stepping on Wyches and Wracks. Dark Eldar already have two battleline light assault units. Its hard to see what "melee kabs" bring that these aren't theoretically already doing.

I mean a unit of Lhamaeans could be interesting. But is this just "Wyches but you get lethal hits and lose the 4++"? Seems a bit redundant. Where in the sort of assault food chain are they meant to sit? If they aren't meant to do damage but just grab objectives, is this a utility that DE really need, as they arguably have many fast units that are fairly capable of this sort of thing.

Melee kabalites could have poisoned blades, wound anything on 4+ no matter its toughness

 cuda1179 wrote:
What if they went back to the formula of 2 heavies, two specials per 10 Kabalites? Duplicates allowed. That, with the leader's blast pistol, really does help against the heavier stuff.

Apply the same formula if they brought back 20 man squads. Blast pistol, 4 blasters, 4 Dark Lances. That could do damage to Terminators or vehicles.

Because things like Lance Spam tends to tweak people who have to play against it. The better idea is to balance the other stuff, instead of just having two good extremes spammed into the middle.

BanjoJohn wrote:Melee kabalites could have poisoned blades, wound anything on 4+ no matter its toughness

That's just melee wracks with an armor save instead of twin-linked.

Tyel wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm out of the competitive loop, but my understanding is that stormies are considered worth splashing into most lists at the moment. Because their offense is okay, but their main role is just as a squad that stickies objectives near your home base and then denies scoring for a turn by standing on an enemy-contested objective with OC2 before dying.

But yeah, no one takes stormies for their swords (or even their power swords), and kabalites who swap their rifles for mediocre melee weapons would basically be stormies without the serpent scale platform or the potential warlock support wombo combo.

I agree - but melee Kabs could likewise get sticky objectives, a 5++, some more character support etc.

The problem is always going to be in a kabal/cult/coven agnostic world, its hard to come up with a unit that isn't explicitly stepping on Wyches and Wracks. Dark Eldar already have two battleline light assault units. Its hard to see what "melee kabs" bring that these aren't theoretically already doing.

Agreed. (Kabs already have sticky objective, by the way, so giving the same special rule to melee kabs would feel slightly weird.)

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of just changing the banner to make them S4 on the charge. It doesn't make them *good* at melee, but it's a side-grade in place of grenades that changes up how you'd be comfortable using them.

I mean a unit of Lhamaeans could be interesting. But is this just "Wyches but you get lethal hits and lose the 4++"? Seems a bit redundant. Where in the sort of assault food chain are they meant to sit? If they aren't meant to do damage but just grab objectives, is this a utility that DE really need, as they arguably have many fast units that are fairly capable of this sort of thing.

Back in the day, I enjoyed running large squads of just lhameans because it felt weirdly good to roll that many attacks wounding on a 2+ as drukhari. I feel like doing something similar in 10e would work reasonably well. Let incubi be the "kabalite" (not really kabalite, but you get it) melee unit that cuts through armor efficiently, and let lhameans be a less durable midling melee unit that just gets to force a million saves on whatever they get into melee with. I also love the idea of letting a few members of the squad upgrade to use some whacky venom tech. Nerve toxin gas spewers that impose fights last on a charging enemy if you overwatch in the charge phase, some sort of "catalyst grenade" they can throw that somehow makes other units poison weapons more effective against the target for the rest of the turn. Poisonous blood that hurts the enemy when they kill lhameans in melee. That sort of thing.

Or just make lhameans characters. Give them some of the aforementioned gear options, and just make them cheap lieutenants for kabalites. The index did some interesting things with lhameans, but it was held back by the limited kabalite squad size and the limitations of transports. Giving that same rule to a single model character would let them buff whole squads of splinter weapons; especially if you let their buffs work while they're embarked on a vehicle.

That's an idea. Perhaps the way to "Make Kabalites Great Again" isn't so much boosting their stats or dropping their points. Perhaps it's just character attachment.

First: Make Raiders Transport 12 models

Second: Change the Squad size of Kabalites to 5-10-20

Third: make more Lieutenant level leaders for the Dark Eldar.

Then you may attach Courts of the Archon (or whatever they rename them) (with any/all of the types of individuals) to said character. That character (whether full on Archon or the Lieutenant) can then be attached to a Kabalite squad. They gain the Leader abilities, and the abilities of any/all of the Court.


With Mounted units, this would limit the squad to either two leader buffs, or you'd have to use a minimum size squad with up to 5 attached guys.

Foot sloggers could be max sized with A LOT of Character buffs, and be pretty darn strong.
Assault 2 weapons with reroll 1's to wound (assuming you spend a pain token), Poinson 3+, and ignores cover isn't horrible. Then add in whatever the Lieutenant buff would be, reroll 1's to hit maybe?

Most of the buffs of the Court come in in Close Combat though, and getting Strikes First, Lethal Hits, -1 to be hit could be incentive enough to justify a pistol/ccw route. Yes,yes, I know this is the "wombo-combo" thing that was mentioned, but many armies already do this, so is it really that bad?

 cuda1179 wrote:
That's an idea. Perhaps the way to "Make Kabalites Great Again" isn't so much boosting their stats or dropping their points. Perhaps it's just character attachment.

First: Make Raiders Transport 12 models

Second: Change the Squad size of Kabalites to 5-10-20

Third: make more Lieutenant level leaders for the Dark Eldar.

Then you may attach Courts of the Archon (or whatever they rename them) (with any/all of the types of individuals) to said character. That character (whether full on Archon or the Lieutenant) can then be attached to a Kabalite squad. They gain the Leader abilities, and the abilities of any/all of the Court.

I could get behind that. Even without the expanded sitting area on raiders. Dracons, lhameans, and medusae would all work well as lieutenant type characters for kabalites. Do something like:
* Lhamean: Buffs the squad's poison (preferably even while embarked).
* Medusae: Basically just an extra bit of shooting for the squad. *Maybe* do something with the whole "make fruits out of moments of suffering that they observe" thing to give the squad bonus pain tokens or something.
* Dracons: Could just be decent little beatsticks. Maybe a free reroll each time you shoot or fight to represent their personal entourage having better gear or being composed of the more talented kabalites.

Foot sloggers could be max sized with A LOT of Character buffs, and be pretty darn strong.
Assault 2 weapons with reroll 1's to wound (assuming you spend a pain token), Poinson 3+, and ignores cover isn't horrible. Then add in whatever the Lieutenant buff would be, reroll 1's to hit maybe?

Most of the buffs of the Court come in in Close Combat though, and getting Strikes First, Lethal Hits, -1 to be hit could be incentive enough to justify a pistol/ccw route. Yes,yes, I know this is the "wombo-combo" thing that was mentioned, but many armies already do this, so is it really that bad?

This is essentially how the court worked in the index, right?

Being anti wombo combo might be my own personal bias. I've seen too many such units where it's only good when it's too good, and then it gets nerfed to the point of not really being worthwhile, and all the constiuent parts of the combo end up being less good than they should be because they were designed with the wombo combo in mind. Or said womb-combo involves a strat of some sort, and you just end up spamming the same special move turn after turn effectively reducing the overall number of interesting tactics you end up using.

Also, my dirty secret is that while I love the court, I haven't loved the specific way it has been handled since like, 7th edition. Lhameans are cool enough that I always wanted to see them get expanded out into a full unit with wargear upgrades that show off more of their lore. Ditto sslyth, plus sslyth always felt more comfortable being the majority toughness of their unit. An Ur-Ghul as a quirky pet for an archon here and there is fine, but having a feral little naked guy be the default pet for *all* archons always felt weird; the ghuls seem like they'd be more at-home in a beast pack. Medusae are pretty comfortable in a court setup, but they also work pretty well spread around your army, and it arguably makes more sense for them to be spread out like that so your archon has more brain fruits to snack on later. Plus, customizing the number and type of courtiers your archon has lets you say something about your archon's personality and gimmick. A guy who goes all ghuls might fancy himself some sort of hunter. A poisoned Tongue leader leaning into the poison thing might make a point of contracting the services of a bunch of lhameans at once. Etc.

Basically, I love the wider concepts that the court hints at more than I Like the idea of having all the oddballs sitting together in the same venom.

I really do hope they do something cool with Lhamaeans. I have a bunch of Dream Forge Shadowkesh models I converted up for them and I only ever got to use them once.

A lot of rules proposals for the units that were moved to Legends (Court, Beastmaster, Grotesques).

It's worth noting that they do have rules as Legends, and some of them are pretty decent. Worth taking a look before getting too attached to your own personal work-around for those who haven't done so already.

 PenitentJake wrote:
A lot of rules proposals for the units that were moved to Legends (Court, Beastmaster, Grotesques).

It's worth noting that they do have rules as Legends, and some of them are pretty decent. Worth taking a look before getting too attached to your own personal work-around for those who haven't done so already.

That's a very good point, and I will say that the legends rules for the court, beasts, and grotesques don't look bad.

That said, I seem to enjoy overly complicated versions of some units. I have pet ideas about each of them that none of them are fulfilling.

Court: As mentioned earlier, while each component part of the court is really cool, I just don't love them all hanging out in one place. Frankensteining a warrior squad into a weird off-brand melee unit that struggles with transports just feels so counter-intuitive to me. I'd much rather break this unit up into separate datasheets or at least make the court more customizable so you could tailor it to your needs a bit more.

Beasts: I have a ton of warp beasts (khymarae), only a single clawed fiend, and no GW official razorwings. Part of the appeal of this unit back in the day was that it was showcasing all these different and unique types of grimdark pokemon and the idea that you could sort of customize your beast master's personality based on which beasts he favored. Now they're all clumped together into a single unit, and they're all just variations on straight-forward melee blending. Don't hate it, but would love it a lot more if, like the court, they got broken out into separate units again. Make razorwings excellent distractions that fly ahead to tangle up enemy units in melee. Maybe even having them prevent nearby enemies from shooting at far away drukhari. Let khymarae be your general work horses with decent invuln saves to make them slightly durable for their points and just okay melee. Maybe let them regenerate lost models when enemies fail battleshock (because the khymarae are nourished by fear.) Let clawed fiends be properly scary bruisers with surge moves. You'd have to hide them behind walls on the approach, and the enemy will usually kill them before they get to do much, but they should be unnerving enough to serve as a solid distraction carnifex that actually hits pretty hard if your opponent makes the mistake of letting them reach melee. Have beastmasters be lone-op or even untargetable while within X inches of a beast unit. Let them activate those optional abilities for free as they direct their charges. (Make the optional abilities pain abiliites, and let the beast master hand out a free empowerment to a beast unit once per turn?)

Grotesques: Seem like a decent value, but GW seems to have just made them cheap, relatively easy to kill chunks of meat. In the past, the thing that made them fun was that they were a rare durable unit in an otherwise squishy army. You could hurl a brick of these guys forward, and they'd shrug off enough punishment to be a serious menace. They shouldn't be cheap. They should be expensive and significantly harder to kill. Maybe something closer to T7 W 6 with a 5+++ and/or some kind of defensive support from haemonculi. Rather than just T5 W4. It would also be nice if they had some kind of wargear option to make them feel more like freakshow lab experiments. Being brutish brawlers is fine and all, but these guys could have creepy envenomed limbs, uncanny jumping or skittering movement abilities, acid blood, be hives for gnarly little gribblies, be equipped with bio-explosive devices, have healing factors... These guys should be the test beds for their haemi's mad science experiments.