Monday, April 20, 2015

Do You Suffer From ED?


Well the big boys have gotten bigger, and we are all about to suffer from ED, the Eldar Destroyer.  Rumors are pretty much 100% confirmed at this point, if you haven't heard, well go check them out.  The sad thing is, everything else but two things look great for eldar players.  If it hadn't been for two changes, this could have been an amazing release that would have rebalanced the codex and game, but alas, tis not to be and we shall suffer from ED.

What am I talking about?  Well eldar distortion weapons are now destroyer, with some rumored nerfs for the wraithguard versions.  Wraithknights are now gargantuan creatures, and really if there weapons were not D, it wouldn't be horrible, at just shy of 300pts, they would still be great, but its the D that makes them pretty crazy.  But this actually is not the worst thing.

The worst is really the jetbikes.  They are dirt cheap and still amazing, but to add to it, for a little bit of points, ten, they can get a scatter laser or shuriken cannon.  All of them.  No restrictions.  So I am looking forward to 4-5 man units zipping everywhere with more firepower than tanks, it'll be great.  So what there is a wraithknight with the D, waste your shots at it while it laughs at you while its making you hit yourself.  The bikes will be slicing and dicing you while you try and kill the knight, and the MSU squads won't be hard to kill per say, but there will be enough and their damage output will more than make up for losses.

But the long awaited wave serpent nerf happened! Hooray! 

Ok, a little negative.  Really though, the rest of the book looks to be quite balanced and has made a lot of the aspects playable but not crazy good, banshees finally can charge into cover for one.  Nearly every aspect has gotten the needed boost to take it off the shelves, without breaking anything.  But then you have bikes, and wraith, so yeah.  I hope that people will take advantage of a lot of the other good in the dex, but many won't. 

How to deal is going to be the big question, and really the hard part is waiting and seeing what armies start to form out of this.  Smart eldar players really only need one knight and some bikes as a base and then build from there.  My gut tells me to ignore the knight, just take that D, and kill the bikes at all cost and then kill everything else.  Tarpitting will be much harder with the knight as it has stomp, but a large enough blob can buy you a turn, maybe two if your lucky.

Tie it up and kill as much else as you can.  Hopefully spam won't rise to the top and players will take advantage of the fact that they actually have a lot of good units.  And lastly, relax, world isn't over.  Vent for a minute and move on.  Hopefully a blue pill will come along to help us all that now suffer from ED.

GG

23 comments:

  1. There will be spam but all is not lost, I believe there are still some armies out there that can handle them, so in the words of that great guards man don't panic

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  2. Oh boy, I'm starting to dread playing against Eldar......my Imperial Knights are going to die against them even though they cost almost over a hundred points more than the Wraithknights!!!!

    Well, I hope my Leman Russ Executioners can do something against them, failing which I'll turn to Vendettas.

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    1. the points disparity between wraithknights and Imperial Knights is my chief issue

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    2. Now you did it Brian. 250 point imperial knights when the codex gets refreshed!

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  3. Nova is already testing a -1 to the D table for "all non super heavy/garg creatures". First tournament test is sat!

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    1. Why don't they just revert the str d back to str 10 ap2 distortion. Not one elder player complained those units were to weak or needed to be boosted to str d. And it's not like wraiths weren't good popular choices before. So revert it back and it or str d until things become more balanced.

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    2. thing is D weapons by themselves aren't that bad, the bad thing is the 6 on the D chart. If you say like D6 instead of 6+D6 wounds/hull points without saves, then I would be fine with them.

      Wraithguard still need to get close and the D cannons aren't as bad because of their point cost. And if the stupid Wraithknight would be 400-450 points and jet bikes where 4-5 pts more i wouldn't say eldar are that broken.

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  4. I'm not so concerned about the Eldar and I'm actually relishing the challenge possibilities. I can see the concerns, but fortunately my gaming group govern themselves fairly well. So in that respect I am fortunate.

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  5. From the rumors, Eldar have a lot of potential to be a great army without spamming jetbikes and knights. Unfortunately, I think a large part of the population will push the easy button and spam the most points efficient units. I can't really blame them for using the tools that they were given. I think the jetbikes are going to be the real threat in an Eldar list. You know they're going to have psychic superiority in most cases so all of those jetbikes will be shrouded and thus a 2+ cover save when they jink. The scatter laser still gives them enough volume of fire to mitigate snap firing. On top of that they're objective secured so the Eldar will put pressure on you with the WK and other support units while the jetbikes zip all over the board grabbing objectives and sniping at you with scatter lasers. It will be a tough match up for most armies.

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  6. To be honest as an eldar player with only 2.5k I'm looking forward to some buss to guardians, taking 3 squads in serpents dropping them off and bladestorming something, my usual list includes dragons spiders and Hawks as a default and only 1 knight. I never spammed serpents and rarely fired the shield. People need to remember serpents die to krak grenades, avengers due to bolters as easily as guard and their fliers fall out the sky in a stiff breeze. I played a truk tide army with a full wraith list and got stomped by multiple claws to the face, knight lords and wraiths all went down. It's not impossible to beat them but the first time you play them is rather urgh. At my flgs you tend to know what your playing so if your playing eldar you know what to bring, pask in a punisher tends to work

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    1. Serpents are pretty reasonable now, no laser lock and the shield is only one use. Honestly not worried about it now, plus change to holofields. I do like most of the changes, will make for some very interesting armies. Just see the D as a bit much

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    2. There's not much of a functional change with the D weapons, they just hurt more now.

      Big winners are the Wraith Guard, but they run into points issues because of the Eld-curion. They're pricey bastards, and with only 5-6 units on the table are liable to be focussed down relatively easily.

      I'm actually not concerned at all.

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  7. The sturm und drang around this release is eclipsing even "Daemonology will break the game!" levels. If you don't want to play against an overpowered Eldar army, then don't. It's that easy. Eventually, if your wicked local Eldar player wants to actually get a game in, he or she will temper their list and take it easy on the cheese.

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    1. Unless its not that easy for you like if the only other 40k players at your club are Eldar, or your regular gaming opponent decides to start Eldar or you go to a tournament and draw a Eldar players, guess its not as easy to avoid Eldar players as you thought...

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    2. Fair enough, it does matter what your local meta situation is. But even if they want to stick with Eldar, they can make a list that doesn't include the offending cheese. Here's hoping they aren't so unsporting as to refuse any compromise!

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  8. Do Tau and Eldar players wounder why people call there army's cheese. When they bring all battle suites or Wraithknights and so on just because you can don't mean you should. The game is meant to be fun when i played at my local shop when ever i saw Tau or Eldar i always thought oh piss here we go again. It just gets under my skin not all do it its just the try-hards that's why i love IG no one ever calls you a try hard even if you spam tanks or 50 man squads. ;)

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    1. The point about the guard is, power doesn't grow exponentially, just linear. Units don't have a considerable number of special abilities, the only thing used regularly are orders, and they have enough drawbacks and limitations.

      Tau and Eldar are famous for having lots of special rules already, plus the easiest access to further force multipliers (tech systems / psykers), leading to near-invincible or uber-destructive units. Rerollable 2+ cover (seerstar), BS5 ignore cover-tank hunter-split fire (battlesuits), that's nothing you'll ever see in the guard. You can only give one rule per order (ignore cover or tank hunter), the BS is still crappy, and the base unit won't have special rules for starters. Also, no unit is near-invincible, there's nothing you couldn't kill with a reasonable amount of bolters or krak grenades...

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    2. Don't forget that the Guard do have access to psychic powers. Although they're not cheap, the ability to re-roll to hit through Prescience is huge.

      Eldar lost their laser lock rule, which will be one of the biggest changes in this codex, I can almost guarantee you.

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  9. We guard have armor 14, and it's plentiful without LoW units. Go armor double tank commanders HQ, then bubble wrap with cheap guard, add psykers (even more psykers with inquisition), and there's nothing you can't destroy.

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  10. Eldar D weapon spam is real. And it wipes us out instantly. All their shit is reroll able. Saves, shots, and all psyker powers.
    Honestly, not a damn thing we can do. Then formations giving bs5 to all eldar.
    It's very frustrating turn one they win in just the psyker and shooting phase, and they can all run again.
    They get FREE Destroyer Weapons. FREE at bs5.
    Don't even play Eldar.

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    1. All our units are T3 verse all their weapons S6 and up.
      Question, if your heavy weapon team gets one wound from a S6 weapon, do you lose both models in the team?

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    2. due to a heavy weapon team being a 2 W model, any S6 or higher weapon will remove it if it causes one wound.

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    3. Thanks for the quick answer. Note to self, never bring heavy weapons ever.

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