tldr; I mostly agree with vict.
Woo! Craftworlder topic. Always fun. Let's see here...
Hellebore wrote:
shuriken catapults: 24" S4 D1 AP0 Assault 2 on a 6 to hit, -2
AP
Avenger catapults: 20" S4 D2 AP0 Assault 2 on 6 to hit, -3
AP
Guardians should never have been put in pistol range of the enemy. Avengers on the other hand, should be an aggressive assault force, so their weapons should encourage closing with the enemy.
shuriken cannon: 34" S5 D2
AP-1 Assault 4 on 6 to hit, -2
AP
So first of all, I'm curious as to how you arrived at a lot of these ranges. Generally,
40k ranges are a multiple of 3". Using 20" instead of 18" isn't going to break the game, but it is an odd break with standard ranges that has me curious.
Given that you're looking to give guardians lasblasters, I'm concerned t hat the shuriken catapults you've proposed have too much overlap with those. I haven't run the math, but I feel like between 24" lasblasters and 24" catapults, either one is going to math out to be clearly the better option or else they're going to be so redundant that you may as well have stuck to a single weapon profile. I feel like you could keep normal shuriken catapults at 12". with their higher strength and rending on 6s, (I
think) they'll end up being the stronger of the two guns against most targets, but they'll need a webway or wave serpent delivery system. Lasblaster guardians will become your objective holders who sit back with the heavy weapons platform.
I'm reluctant to just straight up improve the damage of the avenger catapult. That feels like a direct response to marines gaining a wound. I'm reluctant to encourage an arms race that mitigates the durability boost for minimarines, and I'm not sure I think of shuriken weapons as being the sort of gun that one-shots a wulfen or other 2 wound models.
If your goal is to make the avenger catapult feel like a weapon that you want to get close with, how about giving it an optional 9" Assault 3 profile? Sort of a halfway point between what it is now and Rapid fire 2. That would reward you for getting close and give you a reason to consider the exarch's melee options without being an overt kick in the groin to the recent marine buffs. It's also a more versatile buff that will help you out against all targets in the game; not just multi-wound targets. You could even make that 12" Assault 3 if you want to encourage people to reserve their avengers.
The shuriken cannon seems like it's mostly a sidegrade that also happens to be aimed at nullifying the minimarines shiny new wound increase, and it makes the shuriken cannon feel more like it's ripping off the new heavy bolter. What's your goal with this change? I may be missing something.
scatter laser: 36" S6 D1 AP0 Assault 6
starcannon: 40" S7 D3 AP-3 Assault 3
death spinner: 16" S6 D1 AP0 Assault d3 - this weapon automatically hits the target. On 6s to wound, the target receives 1D3 wounds instead at -4 AP.
I'm always reluctant to go for a
raw power boost over a tweak to specialization, but these are all probably fine if pointed appropriately. The scatter laser seems like it's meant to be our "machinegun" option, and it currently competes too much with the shuriken cannon. Upping its number of shots (and points cost) probably lets it fill its niche better.
The starcannon seems to be intended to be our generalist heavy weapon comparable to plasma for imperial armies. Making it s7 helps it do that. A flat 3 damage seems pretty intense though. Currently, a starcannon is pretty analogous to a disintegrator. This is better than a disintegrator in several ways. A disintegrator just went up to 25 points
iirc. So are we looking at ~35 points for this? I'd probably rather reduce either the damage or the number of shots to 2.
The death spinner is a pretty major power boost compared to what spinners do now, but they are an interesting throwback to the way spinners used to work. I worry that turning spiders into a "flamer" unit causes them to compete more directly with shadow spectres (who are also fast, hard to hit, and have a strength 6 gun that can be a heavy flamer instead). Also, the
raw power boost this represents would have to come with a significant cost increase. Spiders
just became sort of useful as low cost, hard-to-hit objective grabbers, so I'm a little reluctant to price them out of their new niche.
Some possible alternatives:
* Leave spinners as-is, and give spiders a new rule: if all spiders in the unit target the same infantry/beast/bike unit in the shooting phase, the enemy unit can only fall back on a 4+ in the following movement phase (the monomolecular wires make abrupt movements too dangerous). If the spiders unit contains 6+ models, the enemy unit can only fall back on a 6+ instead.
*Do what you're proposing, but lower the strength of the spinners to 4. This cements the warp spiders' role as an anti-infantry unit that specializes in hitting hard-to-hit things.
fusion gun: 18" S9 AP-4 Dd6+2 Assault 1
fire pike: 24" S10 AP-4 Dd6+3 Assault 2
First thing that jumps out at me is that the fire pike really doesn't look like an assault 2 weapon for the same reason a ranger's sniper rifle doesn't. The 24" range alone gives it more of a use as it's suddenly in melta range when the dragons arrive from deepstrike.
The bonus damage on both weapons is inkeeping with the marine changes, but I'd probably only let the bonus damage apply while within melta range. Going strength 9 instead of 8 is nice because it helps expensive dragon units wound their high-value Toughness 8 targets. Strength 10, however, feels odd. If your goal there is to let the exarch wound a T5 target on 2s, I feel like all the guns should probably be S10. If it's just to one-up his squad, it's an inoffensive but mildly odd choice.
I'm pretty iffy about changing the range of the fusion guns to 18". On one hand, it makes sense that craftworlders would try to stay out of explosion range and would like their shooty aspects to be able to engage at a distance. On the other hand, "get close and hit hard" has always been the way that dragons play. I've never had trouble getting dragons into range out of a serpent, and 18" doesn't put them in melta range out of deepstrike. So I'm just not sure what the goal of the increased range is. I feel like their guns may be losing a bit of personality by increasing their range.
Also, the drukhari heat lance is 18", but it pays for that extra range by going down to strength 6. Now, strength 6 is pretty bad at hunting vehicles, but it seems odd that drukhari would make that trade if craftworlders have a common gun template that is straight up better than the heat lance. I know that aspects train to get the most out of their weapons, but a fusion gun's use isn't especially complicated.
wraithcannon: 16" S- Dd3 AP-5 Assault 1 hits wound on a 2+. On a 6+ to hit the target receives 1D3 mortal wounds instead.
d-scythe: 12" S- D1 AP-5 Assault d3 auto hits and wounds on a 3+. on a 6+ the target receives a mortal wound instead.
d-cannon: 30" S- Dd3 AP-5 Heavy d6, blast, wound on 2+. 6+ to hit traget receives 1d3 mortal wounds instead.
This is a minor thing, but why not just give them a really high strength (16 or 18) instead of creating a rule that says they wound on a 2+? I don't have my codex in front of me, but isn't the d-scythe currently strength 10? If so, that would mean that the "always wound on a 3+" rule would actually be a situational downgrade for d-scythes against T5 and lower targets (though the mortal wounds might make up for that somewhat against certain targets).
all aspects have the following stats (no difference in armour saves - aspect armour is just 3+)
M7 3+ 3+ 3 3 1 2 8 3+
Exarchs (whether as a separate character, or as a squad leader):
M7 2+ 2+ 4 4 4 4 8 3+
scorpion chainsword: +2 S, -1 AP
banshee blades: +1S, -3 AP
mirror blades: user, -3 AP, +2 attacks
executioner: user, +2S, -2AP D2
scorpion claw: x2, -3 AP, D1D3, -1Attack
biting blade: +2, -2AP, D2, +1 attack
chainsabres: user, -1AP, +3 attacks
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of giving all aspects 3+ save. Having hawks and banshees trade armor for light-weight and mobility gives those units a bit of character. Just straight up improving all of our armor saves to mimic marines feels like kind of an inelegant
raw power boost that also goes against the fragility that (used to be) part of our army's feel. Let's not make ourselves chunkier just because it makes us more durable; let sisters and marines feel more special for having their 3+ saves all over the place.
I like the idea of giving exarchs an improved statline (and making them pay points for it). However, the strength and toughness boosts seem like they create some issues to me. I forget how mixed Toughness works now, but the T4 will either only rarely matter (when you're down to the last guy or two), or will force you to slow down attack resolution (if attacks are technically supposed to be resolved one at a time). Again, I'm sketchy on exactly how that works this edition, but either way it's probably not a stat that I want to pay points for on a sergeant.
The Strength boost, combined with some of those weapon profiles, does weird things. For instance, a banshee exarch becomes strength 5
AP-3 with a power sword and strength 6
AP-2 with an executioner. The extra strength will mostly only matter against T3 and T5 targets, but the weaker
AP means that any bonus you're getting against a heavily armored T5 target is reduced somewhat by the worse
AP, and the Damage 2 is probably wasted against most T3 targets. So whether the executioner is actually an upgrade over the sword or not becomes sort of a gamble; the more expensive of the two might be wasted points depending on what your opponent happens to bring. Compare that to the current sword vs executioner dynamic where going from strength 3 to strength 4 makes you wound better against anything Toughness 2 through Toughness 7. And then there's that exarch power that makes the executioner strength 7 so that you would T6 and 7 targets even better and do more damage on average.
Similarly, the scorpion's claw and biting blade seem to be creeping into each others' niches quite a bit. Maybe I just need to math out the performance of all these weapons on a strength 4 exarch, but I get the impression that they're going to overlap with each other quite a bit, and
that will mean that one of them is probably going to end up being the clear best pick against most target. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
Strength 4 power swords do great things for banshees and are probably a solid change.
I'm not sure I want to pay for a second attack on aspects that don't already have it. Giving a spider or hawk or dragon 2 attacks doesn't suddenly convince me to charge things where I wouldn't have before. Sometimes I charge a spider or hawk exarch in to silence guns or get a couple extra kills with the exarch, but the exarch statline is its own thing. The only possible exception is maybe avengers because part of me really wants to play up their generalist/countercharge angle, but 8 strength 3 attacks from the non-exarchs really isn't much better than 4 strength 3 attacks. And I can say that with confidence because I've been using the Hunters of Ancient Treasures craftworld trait lately. XD
So I don't want to pay points for the extra attack because it wouldn't really change how my units behave, and I wouldn't want to have it for free because that would just be one more thing for non-eldar to complain about.
How do you intend to price the exarch changes? Higher Strength and Attacks is a much bigger deal on a banshee exarch than a dark reaper exarch, and it's somewhere in the middle for a warp spider or hawk exarch.
banshee mask: always -1 to hit in melee, no overwatch
mandiblasters: before combat, roll 1d6 per model. On a 5+ target takes a mortal wound if it is infantry. 6+ for everything else.
The banshee mask change makes the War Shout exarch power useless and (if non-legends autarchs can still take masks) makes certain relics less useful on autarchs. So make of that what you will.
I propose going a different direction with mandiblasters. Instead of rolling to see if they do mortal wounds, have them automatically land a single Strength 4
AP 0 D1 hit at the start of the fight phase. Mortal wounds are more efficient the more points your target pays for each wound meaning mandiblasters are more efficient against things like power armor and terminators than against termagaunts and boyz. Automatic hits at strength 4 will do a wound on either a 3+ or 4+ against a T3 or T4 target meaning each mandiblaster is more likely to do something against a lightly-armored low-toughness target. So basically, I'm pitching that we make scorpions a little better at clearing hordes and a little worse against the banshees' preferred target: heavy infantry.
Las blasters: 24" S3 AP0 D1 Assault 4 (corsairs and guardians option)
Hawk blasters: 24" S4 AP0 D1 Assault 4
I use hawks often. Lasblasters are plenty good at strength 3. Hawks already have enough special equipment between their wings and grenades to distinguish themselves from lasblaster guardians.
