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Went through it yesterday to see what had changed re my army that I fielded in our recent 1500pt 40K club tourney. My army structure is the fairly classic "Gun Line DE":

HQ - Dracon with Agoniser, Shadowfield, Haemy w Stinger, 8 warriors, 2 with Splinter cannon, in a Raider with Dark Lance
Elites - 9 Wyches, Succubus w/Agoniser
Elites - BeastMistress w/ 4 Warp Beasts
3 x Gun Squads - 14 Warriors each, incl 2 w/ DarkLances and 1 w/ Blaster
2 x Raider Squads - 9 Warriors, 1 w/Splinter Cannon, Raider w D/L
HW - 2 x Ravagers each w/ 3 D/L
HW - Talos

Overall in the new Codex the anti-tank shooting and killer characters have become more expensive, the combat infantry are a bit cheaper.

Thus it hurts my army structure quite badly, as my armywas designed to put in a hail of long distance firepower and then counter-attack with small but very powerful units, when I had hopefully KO'd enough enemy firepower to mitigate the DE's biggest weakness, ie they die like flies when shot at. To field my 1500pt army in the new Codex would cost c 1800pts (with direct equivalents) - 1900pts (with new higher minima in effect) iin this Codex, so initial impression it's like the new Eldar Codex - ie nerfing another army that had got too good at smacking Smurfs at a distance.

Specific changes are:

1. No more cheap Dracon Lord at 35 points, only the 60pt Archon
2. Haemonculus goes from 25 to 50 points
3, Lord's Retinue up from 8 to 12 points
4. Wyches are now 10, not 12 points
5. WarpBeasts etc are same price but the Codex is crocked here as the Beastmistress is now a Jump Infantry and her Beasts are Beasts, ie they move differently to each other how does that work in a game?
6. Warriors are now 9, not 8 points, the Dark Lance is now 25, not 10 pts and you have to take all 20 figures in a squad to get the 2nd Dark Lance. This raises the cost per lance from 50 points to
135 points. The Blaster is 50% more expensive but now has an 18" range.
7. Raider transports are now 60, not 55 points and get nothing new.
8. Ravager is unchanged
9. Talos gets twin linked Splinter cannon, which is better than the Splinter Rifle it had, and the Cannon's range goes up to 36" and now has 6 shots when mounted, 4 when moving as before (I like this, it differentiates between an MG in MMG or LMG mode) and counts as a poison weapon (like a Sniper weapon except it doesn't get the vehicle armour piercing)

Clearly the massively raised costs of the Dark Lance armed infantry makes them useless in their previous guise, so it is necessary to look at how to restructure the army.

There are 2 new freebies, - (i) if a unit wipes out an enemy unit it gets "Pain Tokens" that confer benefits like Feel no pain, and (with 2 tokens) Furious Charge. But bear in mind that the DE army hits hard but at S3 T3 5+ Save, it cannot deal with systained enemy firepower or even combat, so there are not likely to be many around to enjoy these benefits - except the really tough guys, who do not need them.

They also have Night Vision, which allows them to re-roll a range throw - stastically fairly useless unfortunately (I calculate c 1/4 of games need it, and chances of throwing 30" (typical early bound ranges) is now 45% not 33%. If I could have Warriors at 8 pts again....

There are a whole bunch of new special characters and special troops, new transports and heavy support stuff, but sadly - as with the 2nd edition codex - they still seem to be mostly overpriced toys that you wouldn't use in a gaming army.

3 examples - The new Venom 5 man transport skimmer is 55 points and can't field a Dark Lance - why would you not use a 60pt Raider? Or the new 145 point Razorwing jet fighter, lots of ordnance but 10/10/10 armour, vs the good old tank busting Ravager's 105 pt 11/11/10, 3 Dark Lances.

The things I can see that are useful for actual playing are:

(i) Cheaper Wyches - they die the same, but the unit is bigger and they get a 4+ Inv in CC
(ii) The Splinter Cannon at 6 shots, 36" range, hit on 4+ gives a very good ant-infantry weapon - I think the Warrior squads will shift to being anti infantry rather than Anti Tank.
(iii) The Incubi are now Fleet, so they can keep up with a Lord - so replace the Warriors in the Retinue with what are effectively fast SM with power weapons, but keep 3 warriors with 2 Splinter Cannon for long distance/assault shooting hurt

My approach has always been to shoot down as mch as I can first, then hit with counterattacking combat units, of which only really the Talos and the Lord can stay in a fight - Wyches and warp beasts are there to delay things and cause enough hurt so the the Warrior gun line can safely keep shooting it up at a distance.

The Lord goes up by 30 pts so the Haemy is out, the Retinue is repplaced with a few Incubi - smaller unit, less shooting hurt (I love bowlin along with 2 splinter cannon spitting as I go) but tough in combat.

The new Warrior Retinue are called warrior Trueborn and are elites, so you can get 2 units of 5 With 2 Dark Lances each at the same cost as the old Warrior D/L squad - same punch but more fragile.

Given the increased anti-infantry firepower I would probably start with 3 x Warrior Raider squads, all Splinter Cannon armed, and put all of them on Raiders.

I thus calculate I can still get a 15 Dark Lance army for the same price as my old gun line one - but its easier to take down as Trueborn and Raiders don't have the ablative coatings of lots of warriors

Hello and welcome to Dakka!
this should go in a different section probably.

Hello and welcome to Dakka, this should be put in the 40k General Discussion (i guess), don't see any other place for it.

Welcome to Dakka, glad to see another DE player

Sorry, when I signed up it just asked me to "write a post" - and then got stuck in Web jam. I then resubmiied in 40K Forum direct, so there are now 2 copies.... feel free to delete this one.

No biggie actually. Welcome to dak dak!

Epicly long introduction post!
Hey
Wecome to Dakka!

What ho!

Welcome.

As with every GW codex release, you will not be able to use your army in the same way, they want you to buy new models.

I do agree that there are alot of toning downs, but when given the effectiveness of mass raider armies, perhaps that is a good thing.