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Avatar sucks. Its supposed to be a living God of the ELDAR but a couple lucky las cannon hits and its probably dead.

Make base armor save 2+
Toughness 8 (bumped up 2)
Invuln 4+

Wailing doom should wound on 2+
Wailing doom should be 3+d3 wounds.

Should give any eldar within 10" extra attack in close combat (encourage more ground combat troops to pour in alongside him)
Give any eldar within 10" a 6+ FNP save. Because fighting alongside the avatar would be so effing inspiring.

warpedpig wrote:
Avatar sucks. Its supposed to be a living God of the ELDAR but a couple lucky las cannon hits and its probably dead.

The Avatar is a little unimpressive at the moment. Better off than it has been for a long time, but still unimpressive. Ideally, I think it should be very comparable to a greater daemon. That said, I will point out that, as a character with less than 10 wounds, your avatar really shouldn't be getting targeted by lascannons very often.

Make base armor save 2+
Toughness 8 (bumped up 2)
Invuln 4+

Wailing doom should wound on 2+
Wailing doom should be 3+d3 wounds.

Should give any eldar within 10" extra attack in close combat (encourage more ground combat troops to pour in alongside him)

I'd be fine with most of that. Basically just gives it more raw power. You'd need to hike up its points some, but these changes probably make it feel more inline with its fluff. The wailing doom wounding on a 2+ feels a little bit greedy, but it also seems like it can be justified pretty easily given that we're talking about a war god who bleeds lava. Given that wounding on 2+ vs T8 functionally doubles his strength and going from T6 to T8 represents an increase across several important break points, what kind of price increase are you thinking? 70ish points?

Give any eldar within 10" a 6+ FNP save. Because fighting alongside the avatar would be so effing inspiring.

This part I don't love. I feel like the fearless aura he already has better represents the raging blood lust thing a bit better. 6+ FNP but still running away from the fight when your squad loses some dudes feels odd. Unless you meant to slap 6+ FNP on top of the fearless aura. In which case, I feel like you'd maybe be throwing one too many aura buffs onto a single unit. Plus, the Yncarne has a 6+ FNP aura to represent his power over death. I wouldn't want Khaine to step on Ynnead's toes.

But yeah. Overall, this seems fine. The current avatar isn't actually terrible for his points, but he does seem to occupy a lower weight class than you'd expect from basically a greater daemon. Your changes up his weight class in a pretty straight-forward way. Now we have to give him an updated points cost to match.

The avatar is in a better position than it's been since 2nd ed, but that's not really saying much.

When you compare its stats and and cost to bloodthirsters in 2nd ed (they were both 300pts - more than any other greater daemon), to its current stats and cost vs a current bloodthirster, you see a big difference.


An avatar was more resilient than other greater daemons, because it couldn't have its armour reduced to worse than 4+, and it ignored a huge range of weapon types.

Bloodthirsters had terminator armour, so against the wailing doom, they'd be able to make their save on a 7+, which is statistically the same as a 4+. Both did 1d3 damage. BTs got +1 Strength, so both would wound each other on a 3+.

The avatar was I10, which mean the BT needed to BEAT the avatar's attack score to hit it. While the avatar could equal or beat. At WS 10 each, they could both get a max of 16 with a 6 on an attack dice. The BT actually had a higher chance of multiple fumbles due to the number of attacks.

if you treat them as A6 and A12 respectively (which is relatively identical to their actual attack scores), then on average the avatar would roll one 6 and one 1, while the BT would roll two 1s and 2 6s.

This would mean the Avatar would be WS10+6+2 (for the BTs fumbles), while the BT would be WS10+6+1+1 (1 for the extra 6, 1 for the avatar's fumble). At I10 the avatar wins. So, on absolute average, the avatar would win a combat round with a BT (if the BT charged and got +1 WS, then it would be a draw on average - if the avatar charged, it would win by 2, hitting the BT twice and rolling to wound and damage twice).


So IMO, the Avatar should go back to something that could take on and beat a BT in the current game. As the Avatar had 70% of the wounds of a BT in 2nd ed, that would make it 11.2 currently (with BT's having 16). However that interacts with the shooting rules pretty poorly given the 10 wound threshold, so not sure on that.

Yeah. Given the current shooting rules and the small size of the model (he's about as tall as a dreadnaught), I'd be in clined to leave the avatar at less than 10 wounds. It makes him feel pretty different from other big daemons and gives him delivery systems despite his lack of wings or deepstrike.

Now that said, I'm not sure it would be unreasonable to have a separate stat block for the forgeworld version of the model (much bigger). Fluff one as being the relatively focused (I don't want to say "calm" ) version while the other is more lost to its own passions. Or maybe the big one is "going critical", burning out the young king's soul for one big, final battle before literally melting down.

You could make the smaller one less lethal but easier to hide and with better buffs while the bigger one is tough enough to take a punch and give one back. Sort of a daemon prince vs greater daemon thing.

Hes a similar size to a demon Prince and this has a statline based around a demon Prince.

Bloodthirsters are currently like 3x the avatars size. When he inevitably gets a big centerpiece model with rules for both aos and 40k im sure hell get new uber powerful centerpiece stats.

I've thought that the Void Dragon stats would be a good starting point for an Avatar remake.

 Valkyrie wrote:
I've thought that the Void Dragon stats would be a good starting point for an Avatar remake.

Interesting. What specifically did you have in mind? A per-phase damage cap could be a good way to keep the avatar from getting chumped in one round. A counterpart to Powers of the C'Tan would be fun to design but might be a bit out-of-character for the avatar and probably too clunky for a single model. You could probably let the avatar's aura use up the rules budget that would be taken by such powers.

But yeah. I see it. Similar statline. A mechanic for not getting one-rounded by lascannons. Some weaker bonus attacks to help avoid getting tarpitted. The avatar might even be easier to balance than the Void Dragon by virtue of not having a healing mechanic to exacerbate the damage cap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:
Hes a similar size to a demon Prince and this has a statline based around a demon Prince.

Bloodthirsters are currently like 3x the avatars size. When he inevitably gets a big centerpiece model with rules for both aos and 40k im sure hell get new uber powerful centerpiece stats.

Woo! New avatar rules coming in 2031!

His forgeworld model is comparable to the current bloodthirster if I'm not mistaken. Isn't he about the same height just without as dynamic a pose or wings? So if GW really wanted to, they could probably just declare the FW sculpt is the new official model. Being comparable to a daemon prince is mostly fine except that:
A.) In the context of an eldar army and fluff, he feels like he should have a bit more gravitas. Being objectively weaker than his greater daemon counterparts kind of diminishes his cool factor. Personally, I don't think he's awful for his points; I just think it might be more appropriate to raise his points and give him stronger rules so that he can match his fluff a bit better.
B.) He suffers a bit from not really fitting into conventional eldar army compositions. Most eldar infantry don't want to be walking across the table on foot, and your vehicles would have to avoid using their mobility (radically changing their play style) in order to avoid outpacing him. So unless you happen to be fielding an elfzilla list, he has some kind of invisible drawbacks that he has to overcome.

I miss the old rules where you also had units that inspired fear or terror. The avatar should inspire terror and give some leadership penalties to any enemy units within range.

@Wyldhunt:

True. Back in 3rd Eldar had an Ulthwe list which allowed specific units to carry webway portals. Once placed on the board they became fixed entry points for units in reserve including the Eldar Avatar. This would drastically reduce his march time towards the opponent.

warpedpig wrote:I miss the old rules where you also had units that inspired fear or terror. The avatar should inspire terror and give some leadership penalties to any enemy units within range.

I'm not opposed to that, but wouldn't every daemon MC along with probably the C'tan and some tyranids all warrant the same treatment? At which point, you've got this ability that's probably worth some number of points but maybe isn't critical to those units' identities.

Strg Alt wrote:@Wyldhunt:

True. Back in 3rd Eldar had an Ulthwe list which allowed specific units to carry webway portals. Once placed on the board they became fixed entry points for units in reserve including the Eldar Avatar. This would drastically reduce his march time towards the opponent.

Yeah. The avatar is one of the few units that can actually get some use out of the webway gate fortification. But even then, you have to field harlequins so you can use their strat to gate in a second unit to screen him. He's just a bit of an odd duck. He'd feel right at home in a foot horde army, but that's not really craftworlders' thing.

I haven't faced the avatar since 5th Ed.
Is it still immune to flame and melta weapons?

 Giantwalkingchair wrote:
I haven't faced the avatar since 5th Ed.
Is it still immune to flame and melta weapons?

I am also curious about this.

Jarms48 wrote:

 Giantwalkingchair wrote:
I haven't faced the avatar since 5th Ed.
Is it still immune to flame and melta weapons?

I am also curious about this.

No. 8th ed avatars only have, a 5++ and a 5+++

FWIW, the flamer/melta immunity was always cute but almost never came up. Not to imply that you're suggesting we bring that rule back, but flamer/melta immunity probably doesn't address the avatar's main issues.