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Some tweaks I've been contemplating for aspect warriors. Most of these aren't because the aspect in question is bad, per se, but rather because I think they'd make the aspects more interesting to pilot or help them occupy more distinctive niches. Tell me what you think.

Dire Avengers:
* Can swap Defensive Tactics (better overwatch) for either Mag Dump or Defend.
* Bladestorm: When this unit shoots during your Shooting phase, you may declare that they are performing a Blade Storm. When they do so, you may reroll to-hit rolls until the end of the phase. A unit that performs a Blade Storm may not shoot in your next shooting phase.
* Defend: Enemy units within Engagement Range of this unit suffer -1 to to-hit rolls.
* Shimmer Shield: Changes to grant the whole squad a 4+ invuln.
* Dire Sword: Loses Devastating Wounds. Damage changes to 3. It's not especially good at overcoming defenses, but it is good at killing things once it lands a hit. Leaves the power glaive as the better all-rounder while the dire sword is specifically good at going after high Wounds targets.

Fire Dragons:
* When in melta range, add their Melta value to their guns' Strength. This would ideally be the case for all melta weapons.
* Can swap Assured Destruction for either Spectacular Destruction or Dragon's Bite.
* Spectacular Destruction: When this unit destroys an enemy monster or vehicle, add +2 to any Deadly Demise roll, and this unit gains Lone Operative until the start of the next asuryani turn.
* Dragon's Bite: This unit's ranged weapons gain the Pistol rule.

Striking Scorpions:
* Lose Infiltrators.
* Choose Stalker, Shadowstrike, or Hunter's Quarry.
* Stalker: Gain Infiltrators. Gain Stealth while benefitting from cover.
* Shadowstrike: Gain Deepstrike. Can arrive more than 6" away (instead of more than 9" away) provided they arrive wholly on or under a piece of terrain.
* Hunter's Vision: The exarch's melee weapons gain the Precision rule.
* Biting Blade becomes A4, D1 (instead of A5, D2). For each save after the first that a model takes against this weapon each phase, increase the AP and Damage of that attack by 1. (So first attack is AP-1, D1, second attack is AP-2, D2, then AP-3, D3, etc. Messy wording, but the idea is that the biting blade can really BZZZZZZ! into a single target until you're sawing through them. Mechanically, this helps make the biting blade better than the claw against high Wounds targets and makes the two weapons compete less directly.)
* Exarch can swap pistol and sword for Chain Sabres. Same profile as a chainsword but with 8 attacks. (This is the same treatment Mirror Swords got for banshees and is surprisingly effective with scorpions' sustained hits and mandiblasters. Makes chainsabres the clear horde-clearing option. )

Howling Banshees:
* Lose Fights First.
* Gain The Scream That Steals: Units that were charged by a unit with this rule in the previous charge phase may not Fall Back.
* Can swap Acrobatic out for Nerve-Shredding Shriek.
* Acrobatic: As-is (charge after fallback/advance), and attacks made against this unit while the attacker is within engagement range of this unit suffer -1 to-hit. (Mobile tarpit option.)
* Nerve-Shredding Shriek: This unit may not be targeted by Overwatch. This unit's attacks gain the Lance rule. (Brute-force shock-assault option.)

Swooping Hawks;
Tweaking what I posted in my other recent eldar thread...
* Can swap Skyleap for Haywire Assault or Laser Rain.
* Skyleap: As-is, but also let the unit use the Grenades stratagem out to 24" (instead of 8") on turns that they arrive from reserves.
* Haywire Assault: Gain Haywire Grenades: Melee, A1, WS 3+, S1, AP -1, D2, Anti-Vehicle 4+, Devastating Wounds.
* Laser Rain: When selecting targets for shooting attacks while at least 5" above the table, models in this unit may draw line of sight through ruins. (Sloppy wording. Basically, switch to True Line of Sight while you're standing on tall pieces of terrain. Meant to convey the idea that the hawks are either flying or just high enough in the air to see over other ruins.)
* Lasblasters lose lethal hits. It's weird that their machinegun-style weapons are able to bypass the toughness of tanks and monsters and such.
* 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.

Shining Spears:
* Change the Strength of the Laser/Star Lance melee profiles to match that of their shooting profiles. This gives spears' the extra oomph they need to be an effective shock assault unit. Which is what the spears should be, moreso than banshees or scorpions.

Dark Reapers:
* Lock the squad size in at 10 models; no option to go to 10. This prevents the reaper launcher buffs from getting out of hand when combined with Guide, fire and fade, etc. No return to the days of reaper castles.
* Starshot profile of the reaper launchers becomes S10, D3 instead of S8, D2. This allows the unit to return to being able to chip in meaningfully against vehicles at a distance without increasing their lethality against W2 marines. Eldar are surprisingly short on long-ranged anti-tank that doesn't cost ~100 points for the platform.
* No ideas really occurred to me for special rules to swap out Inescapable Accuracy for. The exarch's gun options already give the unit a surprising amount of versatility in how they play; they just really need to hit vehicles a little harder so that they can serve a roll other than marine killers (which is a job that plenty of other eldar units already do perfectly well.)

Shadow Spectres:
* Make the exarch a default part of the squad for no additional points.
* Squad size is locked in at 5.
* Exarch can swap his prism rifle for a Ghostlight or Haywire Launcher.
* Ghostlight: Range: 24", A1, BS3+, S6, AP-2, D2, Heavy, Assault. When the bearer's weapon shoots during your Shooting phase, you can opt not to shoot with any of the other models in the squad. For each model that doesn't shoot, improve the Ghostlight's Range by 6", Strength and Damage by 2, and AP by 1.
* Haywire Launcher: 24", A2, BS3+, S3, AP-1, D3, Anti-Vehicle 4+, Devastating Wounds. (More cost-effective at hurting vehicles than the ghostlight with the ability to bypass invulns, but with lower max damage and shorter reach.)

Warp Spiders and Crimson Hunters:
No pitches for these, but I feel like someone would ask about them if I left them unaddressed.

I've not been playing 10th so I don't have much to say about the suggested rules particularly with regard to effectiveness or balance. I do have a couple of fluff oriented comments though.

Dire Avengers, Bladestorm. Why does the bladestorm increase accuracy especially since you are characterizing it as a mag dump? I would think an increase in the number of shots would be more thematic ala 4th edition. I don't know what right looks like here. If straight up doubling shots is too much you could double the shots, but make them BS4+. That nets about 50% more hits. Or maybe instead of double shots you could go to A5 at BS3+ for 67% more hits.

Striking Scorpions. Hunter's Quarry. The name bothers me. Like it doesn't fit with the other too. Makes me think the exarch is the quarry. I'd change it to something like Hunter's Vision.

You already can only attack with one melee weapon, unless one has Extra Attacks. So the Haywire Grenades don't need anything special there.

Arschbombe wrote:I've not been playing 10th so I don't have much to say about the suggested rules particularly with regard to effectiveness or balance. I do have a couple of fluff oriented comments though.

Dire Avengers, Bladestorm. Why does the bladestorm increase accuracy especially since you are characterizing it as a mag dump? I would think an increase in the number of shots would be more thematic ala 4th edition. I don't know what right looks like here. If straight up doubling shots is too much you could double the shots, but make them BS4+. That nets about 50% more hits. Or maybe instead of double shots you could go to A5 at BS3+ for 67% more hits.

My first thought was to give them A5 for the turn, but a couple of things felt off about it. The 4th edition version meant that, over the course of two turns, you would end up with 3 shots using Bladestorm instead of the usual 4. Making it A5 for this version would mean that you'd end up with 5 shots over the course of two turns instead of 6, which is a much less significant trade-off than the old version. Additionally, Sustained Hits + the possibility of getting rerolls from something like Guide seemed like it had the potential to wombo-combo harder than I was comfortable with (50 shots from 10 avengers resulting in about 8 bonus hits from sustained for an average of 41 hits from 10 models. A smidge more if you give the exarch a second shuripult.) Compare that to the average 20 + 3 or 4 hits they'd get in the current rules. It would *almost* be doubling their output for a turn meaning you don't get that satisfying choice of trading a significant number of shots in the long term for a burst of offense in the short term.

And trying to reign that in by making it A4 instead of A5 just seemed like too small of a boost to make the choice interesting (especially on smaller squads.)

So instead I ended up going with the reroll. This prevents *extra* synergy from Guide or detachment rerolls and is fairly potent thanks to sustained hits, but doesn't raise the maximum damage output of the unit. While I get what you mean about it "increasing accuracy", rerolling to-hit rolls when you have ammo to spare in a mechanic that 40k has seen before (consider splinter racks), and it ultimately has the same end result as increasing shots while also keeping the max damage output of the unit the same. So it lets your avengers shoot harder and likely results in picking up some extra sustained hits, but it doesn't let them go crazy with their damage output.

Striking Scorpions. Hunter's Quarry. The name bothers me. Like it doesn't fit with the other too. Makes me think the exarch is the quarry. I'd change it to something like Hunter's Vision.

Fair enough. I'm not married to the name. I was trying to evoke their lore about Karandras reigning in the aspects murderousness with Kurnous's patience, waiting for the right opening to go after the key target. It's also a bit of a nod to Drazhar's special rule.

JNAProductions wrote:You already can only attack with one melee weapon, unless one has Extra Attacks. So the Haywire Grenades don't need anything special there.

Oh duh. Good catch.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

My first thought was to give them A5 for the turn, but a couple of things felt off about it. The 4th edition version meant that, over the course of two turns, you would end up with 3 shots using Bladestorm instead of the usual 4. Making it A5 for this version would mean that you'd end up with 5 shots over the course of two turns instead of 6, which is a much less significant trade-off than the old version. Additionally, Sustained Hits + the possibility of getting rerolls from something like Guide seemed like it had the potential to wombo-combo harder than I was comfortable with (50 shots from 10 avengers resulting in about 8 bonus hits from sustained for an average of 41 hits from 10 models. A smidge more if you give the exarch a second shuripult.) Compare that to the average 20 + 3 or 4 hits they'd get in the current rules. It would *almost* be doubling their output for a turn meaning you don't get that satisfying choice of trading a significant number of shots in the long term for a burst of offense in the short term.

And trying to reign that in by making it A4 instead of A5 just seemed like too small of a boost to make the choice interesting (especially on smaller squads.)

So instead I ended up going with the reroll. This prevents *extra* synergy from Guide or detachment rerolls and is fairly potent thanks to sustained hits, but doesn't raise the maximum damage output of the unit. While I get what you mean about it "increasing accuracy", rerolling to-hit rolls when you have ammo to spare in a mechanic that 40k has seen before (consider splinter racks), and it ultimately has the same end result as increasing shots while also keeping the max damage output of the unit the same. So it lets your avengers shoot harder and likely results in picking up some extra sustained hits, but it doesn't let them go crazy with their damage output.

That's fair. Ultimately the result is what matters and not the path to get there.