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Haven't had a chance to play with the new book yet, and I'm still sort of absorbing it all. But the more I think on it, the more most of our army-wide rules feel like kind of a mess.

Power from Pain still has the awkward "battery charging" feel they introduced in 7th edition. Its benefits seem important to the point of being mandatory for some units (coven and to a lesser extent wych units for the advance + charge), but pretty minor/niche for others (kabalites, scourges). So to me, it's not really capturing the fluff that the 5th edition version did, being able to lose it when you take allies means that you should probably never take allies if you want to field reavers, hellions, or covens in general, and keeping track of a handful of different rules that pile up and morph over the course of the game seems like an inefficient use of the bookkeeping it generates. We've had some version of PfP since 5th edition, and it kind of feels like its execution gets a little worse each edition. Well, 8th probably did a better job than 7th...

Blade Artists is wonky. You have to break up your successful wounds into pools with different AP values, and then the difference in those AP values will only matter 1/6th of the time (when your opponent rolls a 3 but needed a 4+). Unless we're talking about blood brides of course. Not meant to be a dig, but given GW's past performance, I really doubt that someone crunched the numbers and decided that Blade Artists gave a bunch of units the exact statistical boost to damage output that they needed to be better balanced. You could ditch this rule entirely or make it blood-bride specific, and I don't think I'd miss it. It would just speed up the game.

Poison Weapons were a thing we talked about a lot before the new 'dex came out. We talked about how poison had gotten worse against its old intended targets (bikers and monsters) because its Damage value had remained at 1. We talked about how splinter rifles were basically worse than bolters because they wounded guardsmen on 4+ instead of 3+, wounded rhinos on 6+ instead of 5+, and never had bonus AP from doctrines. We pitched ideas for making poison weapons similar to special issue ammunition so that they could serve various debuff roles without needing to be more lethal than other basic guns.

I never saw a pitch for Poison Weapons that I totally loved, but they basically didn't see any change in the new 'dex. We can situationally make them more killy with the right chapter tactic. We have a strat that lets one squad use them to plink away at a tank more effectively. But I'm not sure I'm satisfied with these CP and faction-locked bandaids on the underlying problem. And that's coming from a Poisoned Tongue player. Admittedly, wounding on a 3+ is a nice boost.

And then we've got our army construction rules. I'm pretty okay with their rework, but it still feels like we're jumping through a lot of hoops to basically end up in the same place other armies are by default.

I don't know. I feel like I'm missing something. Is anyone out there loving the new (incarnation of these) rules? Are those of you who were worried about splinter weapons before happy with them now? Was there some other take on Power From Pain you were hoping to see implemented? Do you like the new Raiding Party rules? I don't mean to be a salty downer, but my inner game designer feels like these rules have a lot of trimmable fat.

Power from Pain is fairly meh, I agree.

Blade Artists is army-wide Rending, which is cool. Surely it's not so hard to say "6 at AP-1, 2 at AP-2"?

You're cherry-picking. Poison Weapons may be worse against Guardsmen and Vehicles than boltguns are, but they're better against Death Guard, Custodes, and every Monster in the game - would you rather have a boltgun wounding Mortarion on 6s, or a splinter rifle wound him on 4s/3s?

The army construction rules are so ridiculously flexible and rewarding (start game with +2 CP, having Archons or Drazhar leading Dark Technomancer Wracks...) that I can't imagine what problem you have with it.

9th edition Dark Eldar is a very rich and deep codex (and competitive!)

 MinMax wrote:

[b]Blade Artists is army-wide Rending, which is cool. Surely it's not so hard to say "6 at AP-1, 2 at AP-2"?

It's not really "hard," but it's mildly time-consuming and not all that meaningful. I don't mind the similar rule on shuriken weapons because Going from AP0 to AP-3 will matter more often than not (assuming you're facing an army with better than 6+ saves that aren't invuln saves.) It just seems fiddly, and on paper I'm not looking forward to having to bother with it. But maybe those who have actually used it find it enjoyable?

You're cherry-picking. Poison Weapons may be worse against Guardsmen and Vehicles than boltguns are, but they're better against Death Guard, Custodes, and every Monster in the game - would you rather have a boltgun wounding Mortarion on 6s, or a splinter rifle wound him on 4s/3s?

I'm cherry picking a little. DG and Custodes are two factions out of dozens(?). Splinters are probably better against monsters than bolters, but they're not actually very good against most monsters. It takes a lot of splinters to kill most MCs. . Against such targets, I'd probably still be better off peppering them with more dark light. They're better than bolters against monsters the same way a heavy flamer is better against vehicles than lasguns. Like, sure, but still not great. I want them to be good against gravis armor and bikes, but the good saves and multiple wounds of marines makes me feel like that's still basically not the case. I'd probably rather have shurikens than poison against bikes, gravis, and most monsters. Poison used to feel like a specialized tool that was highly efficient against its ideal target. That's no longer the case.

Unless you're facing tyranids or daemons, there's a good chance your opponent's army won't contain any monsters at all either. And if you are facing tyranids or daemons, I worry that our basic weapons become unpleasantly annoying to play against. (But maybe I'm mistaken.)

The army construction rules are so ridiculously flexible and rewarding (start game with +2 CP, having Archons or Drazhar leading Dark Technomancer Wracks...) that I can't imagine what problem you have with it.

9th edition Dark Eldar is a very rich and deep codex (and competitive!)

Fair enough. I'm encouraged to hear that you're enjoying it.

Most factions have at least one character that can be included in any faction without costing them their benefits, so Drazhar, though good, doesn't seem special in that regard. Having archons buffing coven units doesn't seem all that special to me; it's basically the same as a marine captain being able to buff both terminators and tacticals, except that we have to jump through a couple extra hoops to get there. As an eldar player, I wasn't wow'd by my ability to buff both rangers and dire avengers with the same autarch. I mean, it's nice that we have the option of getting back to par with how other factions' buff auras work, but it feels more like an awkwardly patched bug than feature you brag about. The +2CP really seems like something that's unintentional and going to get FAQ'd away eventually.

The usefullness of power from pain really depends on the unit yes but giving everything an invulnerable save is a surprisingly big thing. Even the 6++ can save models from powerful weapons.

Blade artists is kinda fun, I do like it. But that being said it may not be necessary but it does no harm for my units.

In 8th when I played kabals (I played mostly wyches) I used 10 man poisoned tongue squads in raiders with splinter racks. The toxin crafters from the custom obsessions was not bad either. Poison only felt a little underwhelming against T3 or lower (ever shot gretchin with splinter rifles?) But against T4+ it is actually quite good. Sure there is no AP but shooting at high T monsters with good invulnerable saves (riptides can do that) is usually a good alternative to using actual AT guns.

Overall... I'm not complaining.

I cannot understand how people keeps downplaying the uselfulness of shooting with poison weapons at hard stuff.

Nobody is talking about killing a 18 wound 2+SV monster with splinter rifles but taking 1-4 wounds of big stuff is extremely easy.

Hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+, is extremely easy to force saves and with a little bit of bad luck you can do a ton of damage over the course of the game.

Or maybe it is me that keeps failing all of his 3+ saves.

Im loving my Deldar army wide rules.

I feel I can take a list of a mix of units and do well and not resort to spamming the same like... 4 because they're good and the rest is bad in comparison or an outright detriment.

(A reminder a sporemine is 10 pts to buy in my Nid codex, or free if you just shoot them.)

 Galas wrote:
I cannot understand how people keeps downplaying the uselfulness of shooting with poison weapons at hard stuff.

Nobody is talking about killing a 18 wound 2+SV monster with splinter rifles but taking 1-4 wounds of big stuff is extremely easy.

Hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+, is extremely easy to force saves and with a little bit of bad luck you can do a ton of damage over the course of the game.

Or maybe it is me that keeps failing all of his 3+ saves.

This is what I do! You force them to make saves. Enough massed fire and something will die. Especially with poisoned tongue now as it changes the poisoned 4+ to 3+. Vehicles and low toughness models are another thing completely.

Don't collect DE but was seriously considering it before the new book dropped. Have had a good look through it and I can't see what the issue is. The previously-crap unit such as Hellions have a much needed boost.

Blade Artists isn't difficult at all, can be very nasty given the number of attacks, and you have to separate your rolls? So what? Marines had to do that with Storm of Fire, less so now but would you rather scrap it to save a few rolls?

Poison weapons? Again what's the issue? They work well against all targets, you have the strat to wound vehicles on 4+, can get a default 3+ through a Kabal rule(?).

If I had a gripe with the book it's that certain aspects such as relics and traits seem a bit too generic, but that's an issue I'm having with most of the GW books these days, but would be nice to see some unique effects rather than just "this does a Mortal Wound", "this model has -1 to hit", or "get a 5++ FNP".

PfP seems fine to me, a nice little bonus you get during the battle. If it's hard to keep track of sometimes, well... that's 40k. Every model seems to have 15 rules each these days.

The Blade artist gripe is a non-issue: loads of armies get rend or similar abilities where something special happens on a 6 and needs to be dealt with seperately.

Poison is supposed to be worse against T3 and vehicle targets, that's the trade off: you can wound stuff that other armies struggle to wound but you aren't as good against other things. If you're worried about hordes and/or vehicles, do what every player in the game has to do and make a balanced list with different units that make up for the weaknesses of others.


If it seems like Drukhari are "jumping through hoops" to get to equal grounding with say Space Marines and Death Guard, I'm afraid that's the direction GW is taking. All the codices released so far are crammed with rules: rules for units, rules for characters, rules for detachments, rules for armies, rules for specialist detachments, rules that activate on incrementing turns, rules from stratagems, etc. Dark Eldar aren't getting a raw deal, they are the picture of what GW wants a Codex to look like in 9th it would seem.