Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Just some loose thoughts rattling around in my head. These changes are less an attempt to balance eldar and more a matter of personal preference. That said, I still welcome discussion about balance, flavor, etc.

Strands of Fate: Removed. It's not super flavorful, and people hate playing against it. Plus they've changed it so much at this point that it's starting to make some of the rules that support it feel weird.

Battle Focus: Replaces Strands of Fate. Infantry (except wraithguard and wraith blades), war walkers, and models with the Fly keyword may move 3" immediately after shooting during the shooting phase provided they did not advance during the previous movement phase.

Guardians
*Storm guardians lose their datasheet and get rolled into defenders.
* Can be taken in squad of 5 or 10.
* New price: 65 points for 5, or 130 for 10.
* Each model is equipped with a shuriken catapult and may replace their catapult with a guardian close combat weapon and shuriken pistol. (Tempted to make all guardian ccws into aeldari power swords, but it doesn't fit the models and may step on banshees' toes.)
* For every 5 guardians in the unit, you may do one of the following:
---Add a heavy weapon platform to the unit.
---Add a serpent scale platform to the unit. (Serpent scale loses its current rule. Instead, ranged attacks made against friendly infantry and mounted units wholly within 6" one or more serpent scale platforms have their strength reduced by 1.)
--The unit may be equipped with Psi Markers (Grants the sticky objectives rule. If this unit controls an objective at the start of your command phase, you control it until the enemy takes it, etc.)
---Up to two models may replace their shuriken catapults with a flamer, fusion gun, or aeldari power sword.

Farseers and Eldrad
* Ditch their Strands of Fate rules.
* Instead, once per phase (per seer), you may reroll a to-hit roll, to-wound roll, or save for a single friendly unit within 12".

Troupe Master
*Honestly, I'd rather overhaul harlies entirely, but as a quick fix for breaking Cegorach's Favor, change it to a free use of the command reroll strat for the Troupe Master or his unit once per player turn.

Swooping Hawks
* Lasblasters lose lethal hits. It's weird that their machinegun-style weapons are able to bypass the toughness of tanks and monsters and such.
* Gain Haywire Grenades: Melee, A1, WS 3+, S1, AP -1, D2, Anti-Vehicle 4+, Devastating Wounds, models that use this weapon during the Fight phase may not attack with any other melee weapons during that phase.
* Hawk's Talon becomes S6 (so that it's relevant against both T4 and T3 armies.
* Exarch gains the option to take a sun rifle in place of his blaster/talon: A3, S3, AP0, D1, An enemy unit hit by this weapon may not target unit's more than 12" away during its next shooting phase.

Wraith Guard
* Lose the War Constructs rule. It has proven to be a problem, and getting bonus shots when attacked doesn't scream "relatively sluggishly zombie golem" to me.
* Give their guns Pistol. Because while getting bonus attacks doesn't feel appropriate, being too dead/wraith-sighted to freak out when the enemy is trying to stab you makes sense for these guys. Pistol means you can't shut down their offense by tarpitting them, but you *can* force them to put their shots into whatever charged them.
* Tempted to make dscythes Ad3, Torrent, and maybe blast, but to also replace War Constructs with a rule that says they can't overwatch.

Windriders
* Replace Swift Demise with a rule that grants them the benefits of cover until their next turn if they advance or charge. This gets rid of a kill-more-better rule with a rule that gives them some speed-as-defense. Minor nerf for shuricannon and scatlaser bikes.

Support Weapons:
* Tweak the Artillery Barrage rule slightly. Let monsters and vehicle be suppressed if the attack came from a vibro cannon. Makes sense with the whole sonic vibration thing. Makes the vibro cannon more useful as something other than just a marine killer.

Spirit Seer:
* No longer joins wraith lords. That's awkward and leads to weird interactions like being able to Phantasm the wraith lord.
* Spirit Mark no longer grants Lethal Hits. This is mostly redundant for the high-strength weapons of wraiths anyway.
* Spirit Mark becomes a 12" aura. I know, auras aren't in vogue, but this is one of the cases where it actually makes a fair bit of sense. It also makes it easier to field Iyanden armies without half your expensive units hitting on 4+.

Other Stuff I'd Like to See:
* Detachments that do more of a Rites of Battle thing in that they change how some units can be built (warlock sergeants for guardians, battle windriders if they limit their heavy weapons, etc.) and act.
* Options for aspects. Specifically, bringing back exarch powers; possibly as a rules swap for aspects' current rules.
* Harlequin overhaul.

In general, I like the look of these changes.
Am phone posting, but I do want to say that much.

Well, that's not what I was expecting when I clicked on the thread. I thought you would be proposing different levels of Warlocks and fully loaded Exarchs a la 2nd edition.

I am not immersed in 10th edition so I can't really comment about how each of these changes might actually play out.

Oh, and warlocks should be able to join more than just guardians. LOL.

I'm working on some Necrons fan Detachments, what are your desires when it comes to Stratagems and Relics? Do you think kill more Stratagems have any place in your future codex as perhaps a weak option among a selection of more powerful niche Stratagems or is it just bad design? I originally really liked the Necron index Detachment because it has a focus on characters which is a kind of army I like to field, but I've realised it doesn't actually change how you play. So maybe your army is better or worse played as Annihilation Legion or the basic Awakened Dynasty but you're not playing pick off weaker units with one and protect the king with the other one.

 Arschbombe wrote:
Well, that's not what I was expecting when I clicked on the thread. I thought you would be proposing different levels of Warlocks and fully loaded Exarchs a la 2nd edition.

I am not immersed in 10th edition so I can't really comment about how each of these changes might actually play out.

Oh, and warlocks should be able to join more than just guardians. LOL.

When where they last able to join Dire Avengers? Or is it just a thing you think would fit?

 vict0988 wrote:

When where they last able to join Dire Avengers? Or is it just a thing you think would fit?

Actually, I don't know that they ever could. They could join Wraithguard and there was an upgrade to Spiritseer they could take to better counter the Wraithsight rule in 4th. The role has since been taken by the dedicated Spiritseer that came out in 6th.

But given the fluff, I think Warlocks should be able to join aspect squads. They used to be warriors after all. Their helmets are kept in the aspect shrines. But GW has never quite figured out what to do with them. From the beginning Eldar armies were led by Farseers and the Avatar. In 4th, they added the Autarch as the genius military leader. In the DOW1 series the leaders Macha and Taldeer were beatstick Farseers because DOW originally came out in 2004. The Autarch didn't show up until 2006.

Given that Farseers and Warlocks are both on the path of the seer, why are Eldar armies led by the seers who lack military experience? The fluff has been fairly consistent that Warlocks are Seers that had walked one or more warrior paths before taking up the path of the seer. This strongly implies that Seers who have not been warriors are the ones who are Farseers. This makes me think the roles could be inverted. Put the Warlocks in charge and have the Farseers in support. Let a beatstick Warlock join some aspects up front and have the Farseers hang back in a conclave doing their magic.

JNAProductions wrote:In general, I like the look of these changes.
Am phone posting, but I do want to say that much.

Thanks!

vict0988 wrote:I'm working on some Necrons fan Detachments, what are your desires when it comes to Stratagems and Relics? Do you think kill more Stratagems have any place in your future codex as perhaps a weak option among a selection of more powerful niche Stratagems or is it just bad design?

I think kill-more strats can work, but that they should do more than simply increase lethality at the cost of a CP or two. For instance, I'm forever in love with the 4th/5th edition version of Bladestorm. It was a Dire Avengers exarch power that allowed the squad to fire an extra shot with their catapults (3 shots instead of 2), BUT they couldn't shoot at all on the following turn. So you were actually losing a shot over the course of 2 shooting phases, but you could up your damage output on a critical turn. Something like that could work as a kill-more strat. Or alternatively, you could maybe get away with strats that increase lethality but require some challenging/risky positioning to pull off. Ex: Maybe you let a shooty unit improve the killing power of their weapons, but only while they're danger-close to an enemy (just off the top of my head). Basically, you just don't want kill-more strats to be the sort of thing you'd use every turn if you had the CP. That approach risks taking you towards double-tapping Slaaneshi obliterator territory.

I originally really liked the Necron index Detachment because it has a focus on characters which is a kind of army I like to field, but I've realised it doesn't actually change how you play. So maybe your army is better or worse played as Annihilation Legion or the basic Awakened Dynasty but you're not playing pick off weaker units with one and protect the king with the other one.

Personally, the entire appeal of detachments to me is that they have the potential to change how an army plays/behaves. If a detachment is basically just a bunch of lethality boosts for a subset of units, that's probably boring (and more likely to risk introducing something OP or auto-take.) Of the 'cron detachments, I really like the Hyperphase Crypt because even without a monolith, it really changes how the army behaves; going from a slow, plodding army to a tricky, mobile force.

Arschbombe wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

When where they last able to join Dire Avengers? Or is it just a thing you think would fit?

Actually, I don't know that they ever could. They could join Wraithguard and there was an upgrade to Spiritseer they could take to better counter the Wraithsight rule in 4th. The role has since been taken by the dedicated Spiritseer that came out in 6th.

Warlocks were able to join aspect squads as recently as 9th edition. If memory serves, they were able to join aspect squads as early as 6th edition when they first became independent characters. Prior to that, they were only available as their own squad of multiple warlocks or as sergeants for guardians (or wraithguard if you took a squad of 10). They may have been capable of joining units in 2nd edition, but I'm not sure.

Warlocks are just a tiny bit weird when it comes to putting them in units. On one hand, it absolutely makes fluffy sense for them to join aspect squads. They're former aspect warriors themselves, and frankly there's not really anything stopping them from jogging near dire avengers while shooting lightning at things. Mechanically, there are a few odd challenges with them:

1. Warlocks can potentially be former members of any aspect, but half the aspect warriors have mobility/deployment considerations that a warlock could interfere with. Banshees can advance + charge, so you'd have to decide whether the warlock functionally gains that rule or takes it from the banshees. Scorpions can infiltrate. Hawks and spiders have special forms of mobility. You could stick a warlock in a squad of avengers, dragons, or reapers without issue, but then it's a little odd that they can only join *some* aspects and not others.

2. Warlock powers have been prone to resulting in broken combos in the last few editions, and I get the impression that GW is trying to make life easier for their designers by limiting those possible interactions. For instance, the Quicken power (currently auto-advance 6" rather than rolling to advance) is pretty tame on a squad of avengers or dragons, but it's much more powerful if you could use it on a squad of banshees who can advance and charge (functionally giving them an average charge threat range of 21"). Or the conceal power on the bike-lock (grants stealth) could potentially make a unit of bikers more durable than intended. Those probably aren't actually game breaking at the moment in 10th, but you can see how easy it is for an unforseen combo to slip into the mix if you let warlocks join anything from fire dragons to banshees to reapers.

All that said, I do think it probably makes sense to let warlocks join aspects. Maybe go so far as to change up their psychic powers based on which squad they join if the designers really want to avoid unforseen interactions. Heck, that could help address one of the complaints of 10th that psykers are locked into specific powers.

Given that Farseers and Warlocks are both on the path of the seer, why are Eldar armies led by the seers who lack military experience? The fluff has been fairly consistent that Warlocks are Seers that had walked one or more warrior paths before taking up the path of the seer. This strongly implies that Seers who have not been warriors are the ones who are Farseers. This makes me think the roles could be inverted. Put the Warlocks in charge and have the Farseers in support. Let a beatstick Warlock join some aspects up front and have the Farseers hang back in a conclave doing their magic.

You're missing a couple key pieces of lore. Farseers are trapped on the path of the seer in the same way that an exarch is trapped on the path of the warrior. Farseers are significantly better at using their psychic powers (at least their precognitive ones) than warlocks and other seers. So farseers "outrank" warlocks purely because they're better with the psychic skills that warrant them making decisions in the first place. Also, a farseer could potentially have just as much experience being an aspect warrior as a warlock. When figuring out each seer's job when the craftworld goes to war, it works something like this:

* Seers with no experience as aspect warriors stay safe back at base. They serve as the "central computer" using their powers to get a picture of the enemy's movements, the outcomes of possible actions, etc. They are often serving as "extra processing power" for farseers (helping to pick through the skein) and relaying psychic communications between front-line seers, autarchs, etc.

* Seers with experience as aspects put on the warlock gear and serve as front-line combatants/squad leaders/psychic vox units.

* Farseers are the leaders of the seer community by virtue of being able to see farther, faster, and more accurately than non-farseers. In tech terms, they're like senior developers, either helping coordinate the newbies or else tackling the more difficult tasks personally. If an autarch isn't available, these guys are generally considered the ones you look to for orders given that they simply know more about what's happening/going to happen than you do.

* Autarchs. Not seers, but they work closely with the seer council, relying on them (as well as units in the field) to provide information about the enemy, their tactics, and how various battle plans are predicted to play out. Conventionally, an autarch is the one making the tactical and strategic decisions for an army. However, there are only so many autarchs to go around, and seers/exarchs are usually expected to manage themselves if there isn't a psychic voice in their heads giving them step-by-step instructions.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Warlocks were able to join aspect squads as recently as 9th edition. If memory serves, they were able to join aspect squads as early as 6th edition when they first became independent characters. Prior to that, they were only available as their own squad of multiple warlocks or as sergeants for guardians (or wraithguard if you took a squad of 10). They may have been capable of joining units in 2nd edition, but I'm not sure.

In 2nd Warlocks were characters and you could take as many as you wanted. They also came in three flavors: regular, champion, and master ranging from 51 to 152 points. In 4th and 5th they could be purchased with Guardians and Wraithguard. The spiritseer thing was if the Wraithguard squad had 10 Wraithguard in it and you upgraded your Warlock to Spiritseer, then you could take that squad as elites or troops. You didn't have to have 10 Wraithguard in order to take the Warlock.

Warlocks are just a tiny bit weird when it comes to putting them in units. On one hand, it absolutely makes fluffy sense for them to join aspect squads. They're former aspect warriors themselves, and frankly there's not really anything stopping them from jogging near dire avengers while shooting lightning at things. Mechanically, there are a few odd challenges with them:

1. Warlocks can potentially be former members of any aspect, but half the aspect warriors have mobility/deployment considerations that a warlock could interfere with. Banshees can advance + charge, so you'd have to decide whether the warlock functionally gains that rule or takes it from the banshees. Scorpions can infiltrate. Hawks and spiders have special forms of mobility. You could stick a warlock in a squad of avengers, dragons, or reapers without issue, but then it's a little odd that they can only join *some* aspects and not others.

Ideally, those squad abilities would be worded to say things like "This unit and any attached characters can" do whatever the ability is. I know in past editions there were lots of weird little interactions with the timing of adding characters to units and what that meant for things like deep striking, infiltration etc. Sometimes an ability worked with one guy spreading it to his unit and in other cases the whole squad had to have the ability for it to work. Like right now the Autarch has a Banshee Mask rule that allows his unit to strike first, but Banshee just have Fights First as a core rule. They don't even have masks. LOL.

What I'd really like to see are like aspect runes that Warlocks could take so they could join a squad of that aspect without holding them back. Because of the path system and that we are told that Warlocks were aspect warriors at one time I find that I would really like for a little RPG-lite flavor to express that on the tabletop. Really we're only talking about the Scorpions and Banshees here. I think it would be too much to have Warlocks with wings or jump generators.