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-1 for Alaitoc

-1 Conceal power

-1 Drain power

-1 Lightning-Fast Reactions Stratagem

-1 Warp Spider Flickerjump/Flyer Hard to Hit/Shimmerplume/Shiftshroud/Cameleoline Cloaks/Banshee Exarch (Notice a pattern here?)

-1 Moving Heavy/Advancing Assault penalty

-1 wounded by Baharroth

-3 from night fighting at 36"

Combine that with the Ultramarines Chapter Tactic and you can theoretically have a model suffering -11 to their hit roll.

Does anyone else thing Eldar really need to have their -1 to hits toned down? Or at least make a 6 always hit?

That is a lot of setup to get there.

Only thing I agree with is that faction-wide traits like the Alaitoc one should be removed. Everything else you mention requires so much setup that it is kinda pointless to discuss it.

I also agree that 6 should always be a hit imo.

The Alaitoc trait is too good, and further, 6s should always hit.

 Eldarsif wrote:
That is a lot of setup to get there.

Only thing I agree with is that faction-wide traits like the Alaitoc one should be removed. Everything else you mention requires so much setup that it is kinda pointless to discuss it.

I also agree that 6 should always be a hit imo.

Yep.

Auto hitting on 6's is a bad idea it just leads to situations where their is no downside to taking a course of action.
Your also making out like stacking auch massive moddifiers is easy and ignoring the cost to bring all the individual units to achieve it.

IE a maniticore that always hits on a 6 is shooting at ghostkeel hiding behind shoe box A turn 1.
Ggostkeel is -1 drones are -1 so manticor is hitting on a 6, but their is now no penalty for moving and firing heavy so you've created a situation where their is no downside.

Also your post ignores the points cost and probability of being able to stack all of these modifiers. Should alitoc have got the always counts as cover if they didn't move instead of -1 to hit, probably. Does making 90 percent of the game effectively weak darkreapers like ignore anything over -2/3 to hit good for balance definataly not.

Hitting on 6's is being like dark reapers? Good one.

By that logic we should remove the always wound on a 6 too. After all, that also removes "downsides" to being a Knight. And look how that turned out.

The various penalties like 'moving and firing a heavy weapon' aren't an issue - they are the choice of the firer, circumstances of the game (nightfighting), etc.

Where GW have gone wrong is making the -1 buff untyped rather than just a generic 'shrouded' effect that doesn't stack with itself.

Ice_can wrote:
Auto hitting on 6's is a bad idea it just leads to situations where their is no downside to taking a course of action.
Your also making out like stacking auch massive moddifiers is easy and ignoring the cost to bring all the individual units to achieve it.

IE a maniticore that always hits on a 6 is shooting at ghostkeel hiding behind shoe box A turn 1.
Ggostkeel is -1 drones are -1 so manticor is hitting on a 6, but their is now no penalty for moving and firing heavy so you've created a situation where their is no downside.

Also your post ignores the points cost and probability of being able to stack all of these modifiers. Should alitoc have got the always counts as cover if they didn't move instead of -1 to hit, probably. Does making 90 percent of the game effectively weak darkreapers like ignore anything over -2/3 to hit good for balance definataly not.

Generally, when a game mechanic allows for the complete removal of the opponent's ability to play via one of the central mechanics of the game, there is some sort of counter-play that every army should be able to use to mitigate that defense.

Defense skew was a big deal in WM because the counter-play available to most factions was nigh nonexistent. Iron Flesh Kayazy were bordering on real cancer in the game before Wrath and Colossals hit and directly provided every faction some sort of counter to high defense to help maintain balance, and the game went on in a better form (not great, but better). Things like Stationary, knockdown, boosted trample effects, blasts, bounces, etc all provided players the tools to deal with the ability of some armies to present just about unhittable defense. Even there, a 12 (or 18 if you boost) always hits, which granted is a much higher ceiling of guaranteed success than hitting on a 6, but a guaranteed success nonetheless.

40k currently has no such counter-play outside mortal wounds. If you don't have a plentiful source of mortal wounds that don't need to hit or auto-hit weapons that aren't also trash, you literally can not succeed with any probability against a unit that forces a 7+ to hit threshold on you, which Eldar are capable of.

If GW is serious about not allowing an army to hit the table that is able to win at list selection, the hit modifier system and guaranteed success/failure needs to be corrected because 40k is too simple to allow complex counterplay like WM/H.

Though to hit penalties being easily stackable and sixes being an autohit are not a good combo. It just magnifies the quantity over quality issue which is already prevalent in the game. An armywide -1 to hit has to go.

Except you can counter play, it has a 12 inch limitation, get within 12 inch.
Some of the modifiers listed are psychic powers, denie the witch is also a thing.
The eldar player can onlu use strategums one, force him to use them and then punish something else

Plenty of counterplays.
While i agree giving eldar a -1 to hit trait wasn't smart given their other acess to - hit modifiers.

Stop taking the GW break it for everyone to solve a one faction issue.

"spends 800pts to get -7.. QQs its op when you could just used the points to kill your opponent instead

Ice_can wrote:
Except you can counter play, it has a 12 inch limitation, get within 12 inch.
Some of the modifiers listed are psychic powers, denie the witch is also a thing.
The eldar player can onlu use strategums one, force him to use them and then punish something else

Plenty of counterplays.
While i agree giving eldar a -1 to hit trait wasn't smart given their other acess to - hit modifiers.

Stop taking the GW break it for everyone to solve a one faction issue.

Ah yes, -10 instead of -11. Clearly the counter-play of the millennium!

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Except you can counter play, it has a 12 inch limitation, get within 12 inch.
Some of the modifiers listed are psychic powers, denie the witch is also a thing.
The eldar player can onlu use strategums one, force him to use them and then punish something else

Plenty of counterplays.
While i agree giving eldar a -1 to hit trait wasn't smart given their other acess to - hit modifiers.

Stop taking the GW break it for everyone to solve a one faction issue.

Ah yes, -10 instead of -11. Clearly the counter-play of the millennium!

And then you charge them.
Or hit them with mortal wounds.
Or shoot at something else.

I mean... This isn't exactly wrecking any tournament tables ever, is it BCB? Sure Eldar are good, and Dark Reapers were OP, but it wasn't -11 to hit with shooting Dark Reapers that were the problem, like, ever.

This is a non issue.


Either that, or grab your Codex, write an unbeatable -11 to hit list, and go win some events.
Then we'll take you seriously.

To me the best thing would be to just make it so enemy -1 to hit modifiers don't stack.

Then the only way to get-2 or worse would be to cause the rest of it yourself, such as by moving with a heavy weapon, or falling back as ultramarines.

Ice_can wrote:
Except you can counter play, it has a 12 inch limitation, get within 12 inch.
Some of the modifiers listed are psychic powers, denie the witch is also a thing.
The eldar player can onlu use strategums one, force him to use them and then punish something else

Plenty of counterplays.
While i agree giving eldar a -1 to hit trait wasn't smart given their other acess to - hit modifiers.

Stop taking the GW break it for everyone to solve a one faction issue.

You are correct if the army has psykers of their own. You are also technically correct that you can target something else if they spend the stratagem on their mission critical model/unit, in which case the stratagem is then performing even better than the projected performance on paper since the protected unit isn't even being engaged at this point.

However, not every army has psykers that are capable of positioning aggresively and surviving the sniper fire to shut those powers down actively. Some don't even have psykers (like Tau? who are also in serious trouble when dealing with a -2 to hit which is child's play) to try to stop any psychic powers. The ease of negating the 12" limitation is a bit difficult for armies which have trouble surviving or even closing in to 12" range, which coincidentally is where forward elements of the Eldar want you to be anyway since that is where they are most effective.

I don't disagree that counterplay does exist for some armies. Gunline armies should have natural predators like this to help diversify the range of competitive builds. However, GW itself took the step to remove the hard counter phenomenon from the game via the wound table, and I find it counter-productive to remove one such mechanic and introduce another mechanic that reintroduces the exact same problem to other armies, which is especially egregious when considering armies that are unable to soup in solutions from other armies with more readily available solutions are hit the hardest.

Ok breaking it down a bit.
Alaitoc army wide - yep it's good
Conceal - affects 1 friendly unit
Drain - affects 1 enemy unit (and is the fourth warlock power to be taken behind quicken, jinx and conceal, which with the new points costs is not going to happen as warlocks are super expensive now)
Lightning fast reflexes - is a stratagem so can be used once per turn
-1 to hit units - not many are good enough tbh. Shadow spectres are great but super expensive, wave serpents with vectored engines work but can't be concealed.
Baharoth - only works til end of turn so doesn't affect enemy shooting
Moving heavy weapons- that's on you
Nightfight - doesn't really come into effect much

So while it is possible to get up to maybe -9 with night fight, the reality of the situation is at worst you will be looking at a concealed shadow spectre unit with lightning reflexes for -4. With one drained unit at -5.
But at that point you just shoot something else really. The rest of the army is only at -1. A good general would slit out its bonuses so you will have 3 units at -2 instead. Which is still strong but not overly powerful

People have been complaining about Eldar, in general, for a very long time. But let's just go back to sixth edition wave serpent spam, followed by 7th edition scat bike spam, to now all the myriad things people are complaining about with 8th edition Eldar. How many years spanning all of sixth, seventh, and now 8th? Never mind I just looked it up myself, June 23rd 2012. So we're approaching the six year mark. For near six years a contingent of the community have been having a collective psychotic breakdown over Eldar and what they get, or get to do, or cost, or WHATEVER, and for six years GW has heard this, and what has happened?.....(Crickets).....Essentially nothing. Yes things become stronger while other things get nerfed, but nevertheless, GW continues to design Eldar to do "things" that just really piss people off. After six years do you really think they are going to finally sit back and say, "man, they were right, let's fundamentally existentially change this core race of the game, and turn them into, oh I don't know, some watered down grotesque amalgamation of tau meets space marine, or something like that." It ain't gonna happen people. They clearly see Eldar as fundamentally being defined as having "tech" that is vastly different (some might just go ahead and call it superior), alien even (see what i did there), to everything else in the 40k universe - Hence what we all collectively understand as snowflake rules, or snowflake units or whatever you want to call it. It's not going to change, ever. Stop complaining about Eldar and throw all your effort into advocating appropriate improvements to your respective armies.

 Marmatag wrote:
The Alaitoc trait is too good, and further, 6s should always hit.

Totally agree.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 peteralmo wrote:
People have been complaining about Eldar, in general, for a very long time. But let's just go back to sixth edition wave serpent spam, followed by 7th edition scat bike spam, to now all the myriad things people are complaining about with 8th edition Eldar. How many years spanning all of sixth, seventh, and now 8th? Never mind I just looked it up myself, June 23rd 2012. So we're approaching the six year mark. For near six years a contingent of the community have been having a collective psychotic breakdown over Eldar and what they get, or get to do, or cost, or WHATEVER, and for six years GW has heard this, and what has happened?.....(Crickets).....Essentially nothing. Yes things become stronger while other things get nerfed, but nevertheless, GW continues to design Eldar to do "things" that just really piss people off. After six years do you really think they are going to finally sit back and say, "man, they were right, let's fundamentally existentially change this core race of the game, and turn them into, oh I don't know, some watered down grotesque amalgamation of tau meets space marine, or something like that." It ain't gonna happen people. They clearly see Eldar as fundamentally being defined as having "tech" that is vastly different (some might just go ahead and call it superior), alien even (see what i did there), to everything else in the 40k universe - Hence what we all collectively understand as snowflake rules, or snowflake units or whatever you want to call it. It's not going to change, ever. Stop complaining about Eldar and throw all your effort into advocating appropriate improvements to your respective armies.

I think -1 to hit just needs to be removed as an army trait. Aliotac should just become - always counts as in cover and if they are in cover the cover save can't be ignored.

Being wounded by Bahrarroth is a big problem in 40k. I'm glad someone's finally talking about it.

The easy solution honestly is just make the legion trait not apply to vehicles. I have no idea why eldar are the only race which get this bonus (I get not making all races the same but...)

 BaconCatBug wrote:

-1 for Alaitoc

-1 Conceal power

-1 Drain power

-1 Lightning-Fast Reactions Stratagem

-1 Warp Spider Flickerjump/Flyer Hard to Hit/Shimmerplume/Shiftshroud/Cameleoline Cloaks/Banshee Exarch (Notice a pattern here?)

-1 Moving Heavy/Advancing Assault penalty

-1 wounded by Baharroth

-3 from night fighting at 36"

Combine that with the Ultramarines Chapter Tactic and you can theoretically have a model suffering -11 to their hit roll.

Does anyone else thing Eldar really need to have their -1 to hits toned down? Or at least make a 6 always hit?

Oh come on.

So if I was in combat with Baharroth and a Banshee Exarch (Warp Spiders, Cloaks, Shiftshroud, Conceal, and Alaitoc are all shooting mods) and Baharroth has wounded me and I target the Exarch and you had already put Drain on my unit and spend 2CP I'll be at -4.

If i'm moving with a heavy weapon and shooting an alaitoc flyer and it has conceal and you spend 2 CP I'll be at -5.

Of course I could always choose NOT to shoot the concealed alaitoc flyer after I just moved...

Bring flamers duh.

Ice_can wrote:
Auto hitting on 6's is a bad idea it just leads to situations where their is no downside to taking a course of action.
Your also making out like stacking auch massive moddifiers is easy and ignoring the cost to bring all the individual units to achieve it.

IE a maniticore that always hits on a 6 is shooting at ghostkeel hiding behind shoe box A turn 1.
Ggostkeel is -1 drones are -1 so manticor is hitting on a 6, but their is now no penalty for moving and firing heavy so you've created a situation where their is no downside.

Also your post ignores the points cost and probability of being able to stack all of these modifiers. Should alitoc have got the always counts as cover if they didn't move instead of -1 to hit, probably. Does making 90 percent of the game effectively weak darkreapers like ignore anything over -2/3 to hit good for balance definataly not.

But nothing should be 100% immune. That's just bad game design(which doesn't make it surprising it exists in GW game)

Auto hit weapons...

 meleti wrote:
Being wounded by Bahrarroth is a big problem in 40k. I'm glad someone's finally talking about it.

Solid snark.

While people love to complain about the massive to-hit penalties eldar can stack, you're realistically usually looking at a -2 or maybe -3 if they're really investing powers and CP into it. Sure, Alaitoc spectres can run around with a -2 to being hit while they're more than 12" away. They also have 18" and 8" guns and a hefty price tag, so... have fun spending 55 points on a conceal warlock to get a really objective T 3 4+ save objective sitter I guess. Similarly, Baharroth and Banshees are ruining anyone's day. Vectored engines mean you aren't shooting anything but shuriken cannons. Warp spiders are just kind of meh this edition now that they wound marines on 3" and can't run away from melee (no fly keyword or hit & run rule). The worst you tend to see are concealed alaitoc reapears that maybe splurge to give themselves an extra -1 with a command point, but the issue there is still more with the reapers than with them being difficult to shooty.

I"m not opposed to Alaitoc losing their -1 to being hit, though giving them a duplicate of Jormungandr's rule seems iffy to me. For one thing, I'm sure people would be quick to complain about 2+ armor save dragons/wraiths/reapers. For another, those rules tend to discourage mobility in some fashion, which seems un-eldary. Just changing it to only work on our bikes and infantry (like AL and RG rules) would probably do the trick.

Letting things always hit on a 6+ is probably a good rule. People say it creates situations where there's no downside to moving or whatever, but I don't see that as an issue. If you're hitting on 6s, you're not doing much damage without a fair bit of luck. Sure, you can move your tank before you shoot at my spectres if you want to, but I'll still probably be grinning at you for opting to try to hit something on 6s. On the other hand, not being allowed to shoot at all stinks. So the cons are that in relatively rare situations, there won't be a downside to moving a model. The pros are that people will always have a chance of hitting something at a range if they want to fish for sixes. I don't see a problem here. Let the heavy weapons team jog forward before shooting at some rangers if they really want to.

I mean, -7 or -10 or whatever to hit seems pretty irrelevant, really.

But then, I don't think it's acceptable that they can even stack -2 to hit.

BCB, sometimes I wonder myself.

Do you even play the game, or for you, playing is just reading books (Legal books of course ) and looking for strange things like this?

The elder are flimsy....where other factions have way better toughness on certain units, or way better saves on certain units...the elder have harder to tag on certain units.

Get rid of Nurgles toughness bonus or Custodes saves would be the akin of calls to remove elder penalties to hit.

Go play a game of 2nd ed and you will see -3, -4, -6 don't really matter much....those Eldar Exarchs will still die to that ML that finally connect....you just have to roll enough dice to hit......

....WAIT IS THIS THE EDITION THAT ALLOWS AN ABSURD AMOUNT OF DICE ROLLING?

Allow me to introduce you to my friend the BaconAbsurdBug.

Welcome to ignore.

I'm not sure if my thinking about how they should change the rule is achievable because it's too muddy/complex but here goes. Your opponent can never stack more than-1 to hit you, doesn't matter what combo they throw at you. You can still however be worse off if your own unit advanced/ fired both profiles. Meaning you could theoretically be at a -2/-3 but at that point it was a tactical decision and it's on you.