First Thoughts on the New Codex

I know there's lots of folks poking at the new codex here but here's my thoughts on it:

Overall:
There appears to have been a concentrated effort to remove almost all of the whacky "if-then-this" kind of rules. The biggest example? Power from Pain. It's no longer dependent upon how many units have been destroyed. It's now largely based on the turn number. Much easier to manage. A few other special rules and war gear have been slotted into the core special rule system as well: night shields give stealth; Reavers auxiliary weapons now modify hammer of wrath; clone field is now just an invul. save. Wych weapons are another example.

This also means some stuff has disappeared: a bunch of special characters, some of the more odd war gear (like the one that summoned tentacles from the warp) and some of the unit upgrades.

The major out come? I think the Dark Eldar are easier to play and easier to play against. There's very few rules in the new codex that folks familiar with the 40k core rules will be unfamiliar with. I kinda think this is a bad thing. A lot of the character of the army has been stripped in order to facilitate standardized rules. It also guts one of the major advantages that Dark Eldar have had: surprise. There's nothing shocking in the codex. Nothing to surprise an opponent with. That's not to my liking to be sure.

That's not to say that I'm so irritated by the codex that I'm frothing. Yeah, there's some stuff that annoys me but there's good stuff too. I'm still going to be a devoted Archon forever and ever and ever and I'll try to play apologist 'cause there's ostensibly good reason for the changes. In any case, here's my pros/cons list:

The Good
Scourges are back to 4 special weapons without squad size limitations
Lots more good AP weapons
Razor wings are now fast attack (yay!)
Mandrakes might actually be useful now. Or at least not quite as useless.
Some units are cheaper.
Talos and Chronos packs.
Some anti psyker options
Court of the archon is more approachable
The formations are cool.

The Bad
No haywire grenades on wyches
Upgrade costs for dark lances
Loss of the Duke and The Baron (and lady malys - finally found a model for her).
The simplification of some of the war gear makes it useless: night shields for example.
Still no decent anti air option

I'm sure there's more to both lists but well have to try it out with the models I've got and see how it goes.

Any other thoughts?

- See more at: http://itoysoldiers.com/blog/initial-thoughts-dark-eldar-codex#sthash.MRbO08nx.dpuf

In general I agree with much of what you said. It's a shame GW is moving towards standardizing all rules - not just for DE but for all codexes. The game is losing a lot of the interesting rules for each army and everyone is just getting slightly different variations of the same set of special rules, usually with a lot of overlap and a few less common universal rules. I think this is a bad thing to, mainly because it makes things boring. What's the point in buying, assembling and painting a dark eldar army if all my weapons and gear give the exact same rules as a space marine army, just with different names? I'm not a fan of the simplification of the game.

Overall though, I have to say I'm liking most of the codex. I think there is a lot of potential for most of the units, and I'm liking the alternate FOCs available to us in the codex (and in the upcoming supplement). It's fluffy and actually makes the army unique and give us a lot of options in list building.

Wyches got hit hard for really no reason - they were not really any good in assault before. I have to disagree that them losing haywire was a bad thing though. They aren't supposed to be tank hunters. I think they should have had a price drop like a lot of the other units, and I also think their wych weapons were fine as is. I really disappointed in the changes to the wych weapons. You can get a max of three, and only in a unit of 10+ models. the rerolls they grant went downhill as well, only granting rerolls to either hits or wounds, or both but only on ones. Those rerolls are largely useless on a unit with base 1 attack. In a 10 model unit on the charge - you only get the rerolls if the models equipped with the weapon fail the roll, so at max it's only 9 dice - and that's if every wych with a special weapon whiffs all their rolls. I think the old abilities were perfectly fine and should have been left as they were.

Aside from wyches being total trash and more useless than pyrovores I think the codex is alright and will have some very interesting options when combined with the coven supplement (or any other future ones).

You forgot to mention that Ravager got nerfed pretty hard.

Old Ravager :

Aerial Assault ( move 12" fire all weapon at full bs ) Lost
Flickerfield ( 5+ invu ) Lost
3 dark lance - you now have to pay for them.
Night shield - cost more and I think it got worst dpending on how you played.
105 pts - now 110

In the end the new Ravager cost more and do less.

I think this vehicle was hit harder than the wysches. Why ? Because he was used a lot.

I agree with removing HWG from Wyches. As people have mentioned elsewhere, they're supposed to be hand-to-hand gladiators, suicidal vehicle-bombers. However by removing the HWG without buffing anything else GW have created a unit that can't really do anything any more - they have trouble even getting into assault because of the strength of overwatch.

And yeah, the Ravager got destroyed. With changes to jink since last edition and the removal of Flickerfield they have created a vehicle that will do best sat in cover and shooting, rather than zooming about the battlefield for lightning strikes.

Plastikente wrote:

I agree with removing HWG from Wyches.  As people have mentioned elsewhere, they're supposed to be hand-to-hand gladiators, suicidal vehicle-bombers.  However by removing the HWG without buffing anything else GW have created a unit that can't really do anything any more - they have trouble even getting into assault because of the strength of overwatch.

And yeah, the Ravager got destroyed. With changes to jink since last edition and the removal of Flickerfield they have created a vehicle that will do best sat in cover and shooting, rather than zooming about the battlefield for lightning strikes.

there are 2 options for wyches surviving overwatch:

1. Charge a unit that's already in combat (eg, charge an archon with shadowfield in first, then charge the wyches in separately, this can be done just be separating the archon when they disembark from the raider.
2. Charge units that can't fire overwatch. The downside here is anything with that rule tends to be quite tough, so you might need to wait for furious charge (which you perhaps should anyways, it's only turn 4 after all and I'd see using them to clear reduced units off objectives, or at least tying the objective up in combat) or hope for +1S with their drugs.

only thing wyches have got going for them is the fact that they are troops.
Every other combat unit is now distinctly better at combat than they are unfortunately