Played against New SM book..... Im done with DE for now.

I love my dark Eldar and I stomped imperial guard only using the codex. Not even the coven supplement!

And against Imperial Fists, I added a Farseer. Why? Because of that ultimate "I ignore your soulfright weaponry" rule. Why are they immune to that but not chaos Marines? So I wanted to give my army additional punch. Maybe I will even use it against the Eldar player because he recently got a wraith knight.

Is it to fill gaps? Absolutely. Does that invalidate my dark Eldar? No. I only spend a tiny fraction on points on the Farseer, it's still a true Eldar army. And the Eldar guys are built to look like dark Eldar.

I like the idea of using pathfinders, they would fit the fluff and dark Eldar renegade theme even better, so maybe I will take them in addition to the Farseer. Convert them too, of course.

Does it make me feel bad? No. Do I wish I could use my tricks against gargantuan creatures and Space Marines too? Absolutely! But I refuse to start crying and whining and want to keep having fun by not paying against certain units I've got a massive disadvantage against.

I generally like the idea of allies.  Imperial guard, inquisition, and space marines all working together makes perfect sense and brings a lot of character to the table.  Demons, chaos marines, and renegades mixing also makes perfect sense and is generally awesome.  Xenos on the other hand, stick out in my mind as stand alone armies (except maybe those already incorporated into the tau).

When it comes to dark eldar though, allies are something of a necessity, and THAT at the very least is a slippery slope.

When I came back to 40k after a couple years break, I wanted something different than the eldar I'd played for more than a decade.  The dark kin seemed new and exciting and the models were generally great.

The reality is though that after the 7th edition books dropped I began mixing in my old eldar jetbikes, fire dragons, etc out of necessity.  Before I knew it my army lists (like many others) basically evolved back into a Craftworlders list with either a Real Space Raiders taxi fleet or a grotesquerie/dark artisan attached.  That's not what I wanted, and I have debated dropping the eldar altogether depending on how the new corsairs list shakes out.

flakmonkey wrote:

This is starting to sound like the discussions I have with a CSM player. Although in those he and his poor CSM are the center of the universe.

Weak/poorly written codexs are not isolated to the DE. Several factions suffer.

It's an issue caused by GW design/writers/whatever.

The difference I see here (and I am a CSM player occasionally), is that CSM have 3 effective armies their models can be fielded in.  The Crimson Slaughter CSM supplement is actually pretty decent, and I have had a lot of fun playing that.  Khorne Demonkin, although initially panned by fans, has proven to be pretty good as well.  I haven't played that myself though as I don't have any greater demons of khorne or bloodletters.  Finally, the renegades and heretics from imperial armor 13 allows you to field cultists by the boatload along with plague or noise marines as elites, while both IA13 and the newer nurgle/khorne only vraks list also allow you to field CSM units like blood slaughterers, defilers, and chaos spawn.

Edit: I forgot the hellbrutes data-slate, which alone brings nearly as much functionality as our covens book.  Also Tzeentch deamonkin is expected sometime before the end of this year, however CSM have not yet had a proper codex in the 7th edition (which will likely see all kinds of improvements).

The 1 dark eldar supplement on the other hand pretty much gave us... a better PFP table on 3 units, and a few formations that have pretty limited use.

If you mix in too much Craftworld Eldar, it's nothing you couldn't change. We aren't that competitive compared to Craftworld Eldar? In terms of just spam scatter bikes and Farseer, yes. That's true. But do I care? No.

I get the feeling that games workshop might be right with "competitive gameplay ruins the fun".

And maybe... just maybe, Dark Eldar are more complicated to play than Eldar or gods forbit, even space Marines? Maybe that's the reason why so many play those factions. They are more point and click style.

Double post merged. Please use the Edit function instead. Thanks - Count Adhemar

CptMetal wrote:

I get the feeling that games workshop might be right with "competitive gameplay ruins the fun".

I disagree. Poor rules and severely imbalanced codexes ruin the fun. Imagine someone brought out a supplement for Chess that gave Black Rooks the ability to move diagonally. I'm guessing that would ruin the fun!

Don't forget that you can't compare those games due to the random effect called dice and the several (12?14?) different armies that also enable different kind of builds. It's quite impossible to achieve total balance.

And no, it doesn't ruin the fun. At least not for me. As I already mentioned, I do fine with my army. But I must admit, my friends and I aren't, list optimization freaks.

Someone once said: if the Horus Heresy would be done by tournament players, one side would've fielded only Knights and the other grav centurion while Horus and the Emperor sat on bikes and cast invisibility onto themselves.

Quote :

Don't forget that you can't compare those games due to the random effect called dice

"Random2 has a much smaller impact as you would like to believe. Yes you can have huge outliers now and then but that does not make an army better or worse in general.
Also nobody is askling for total balance.
But if you compare DE and E you will finde not even the slightest attempt of external balance.
If you compare Hellions and Reavers you will not find the slightest attempt of internal balance.

Space Marines are big sellers for GW, simple to play as they're forgiving of tactical errors (thanks to T4 and 3+ save) that's without adding in the ton of vehicles and exotic units. I started 40k back in 1988 and boy have things changed! Centurions? WTF? Anyway, Marines sell so make an ideal starter army.

DE are by far the more complicated army to field, you have to be a perfect Archon; cunning with your precious units and ruthlessly dismissive of casualties to standard squads.

It's been said in other threads that we suffer in certain areas and need allies to cover those deficiencies. I play against Super Heavies and it does my head in sometimes just how hard they are to deal with. We have no psychic phase, no heavy armour but you know what? I LOVE DARK ELDAR. It's more satisfying to whittle an opponent down who is a clumsy player who does well with tough units, big guns and no tactics. Bleed them slowly or go for the killing strike immediately (expecting all my Dark Lances to go after various armour, imagine the surprise when they all target the command squad and annihilate it...)

anyway... my point is that waiting for GW to right things is like riding a rocking horse; it gives you something to do but won't get you anywhere. Speak to other DE players about facing various enemies and discuss the best way to take them down (as has been done here). Remember K'lthrael Aht'Ynris Khlave Tailor the toxin to the blade!

Rathian wrote:

It's more satisfying to whittle an opponent down who is a clumsy player who does well with tough units, big guns and no tactics.

The problem of course comes when you face a player who isn't an idiot and doesn't have a handicapped codex.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Rathian wrote:

It's more satisfying to whittle an opponent down who is a clumsy player who does well with tough units, big guns and no tactics.

The problem of course comes when you face a player who isn't an idiot and doesn't have a handicapped codex.

This is a very good point...

So how do you make up for underpowered elements?

Massaen wrote:

As for D - the void mine should have been a D IMO and the scythes on the bomber should be the same as the CWE, again IMO

Agreed...

Count Adhemar wrote:

The problem of course comes when you face a player who isn't an idiot and doesn't have a handicapped codex.

I've mentioned this elsewhere but in my meta, most marine players have switched to scout MSUs.  This also seems to be a growing trend in tournaments, so I'm probably not unique here.

So ya, scouts do everything we do but better and for (what works out to be) the same price.  They're basically immune to psychology, way tougher, carry grenades, and have cheaper/better gear.  They take 5 man open top skimmer transports that are just as fast and durable as ours (ok, no flickerfield but jink), but can actually harm other vehicles or heavy infantry (rending), besides just being effective versus hordes.  They also have some special rules including a large blast blind weapon, scout/outflank, and the ability to mess with deep strikers. Barring serious tactical errors or insane bouts of (un)luck, this style of army should beat us at our own game pretty much every time.

Don't believe me? Run this battle out in your head - 4, 5 man scout squads (with bolters) in land speeder storms with an assault cannon, cerberus missile launcher, and a combi flamer against 4, 5 man kabalite warrior squads in venoms with the extra splinter cannon and a blaster.  Now play the mission.

These two simple armies are exactly the same point cost (120 points x 4 vs 120 points x 4), and I won't do the math for you other than to say that it doesn't end well for the dark eldar.  Like under any circumstances.

This is before you even get to chapter tactics, or supporting units.  I regularly face scouts with camo cloak in 2++ cover ruins because there's a tech marine on the table somewhere; or devastators with ignore cover, tank hunting, heavy bolters (that re-roll 1s) because they're imperial fists, and so is the librarian with them.

We on the other hand, simply have no bag of tricks to draw from.

TLDR; - if you're still playing against a marine player who leaves his troops out in the open "cuz power armor" - then consider yourself very lucky.  I hope he blasts grav cannons at your grotesques all game long while his hammernators remain tied up with your wyches on an objective.  May you keep winning and may he never figure out why.

Scouts in lss are solid, I was running them for awhile alongside my centstar lol. They aren't on par with our troops IME but they do match up against them quite well as they do "play our game" only with strength based weaponry. That's someone tailoring though because spamming those is definitely not the best build marines can do and just not that good against other common competitive builds.

stilgar27 wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

The problem of course comes when you face a player who isn't an idiot and doesn't have a handicapped codex.

I've mentioned this elsewhere but in my meta, most marine players have switched to scout MSUs.  This also seems to be a growing trend in tournaments, so I'm probably not unique here.

So ya, scouts do everything we do but better and for (what works out to be) the same price.  They're basically immune to psychology, way tougher, carry grenades, and have cheaper/better gear.  They take 5 man open top skimmer transports that are just as fast and durable as ours (ok, no flickerfield but jink), but can actually harm other vehicles or heavy infantry (rending), besides just being effective versus hordes.  They also have some special rules including a large blast blind weapon, scout/outflank, and the ability to mess with deep strikers. Barring serious tactical errors or insane bouts of (un)luck, this style of army should beat us at our own game pretty much every time.

Don't believe me? Run this battle out in your head - 4, 5 man scout squads (with bolters) in land speeder storms with an assault cannon, cerberus missile launcher, and a combi flamer against 4, 5 man kabalite warrior squads in venoms with the extra splinter cannon and a blaster.  Now play the mission.

These two simple armies are exactly the same point cost (120 points x 4 vs 120 points x 4), and I won't do the math for you other than to say that it doesn't end well for the dark eldar.  Like under any circumstances.

This is before you even get to chapter tactics, or supporting units.  I regularly face scouts with camo cloak in 2++ cover ruins because there's a tech marine on the table somewhere; or devastators with ignore cover, tank hunting, heavy bolters (that re-roll 1s) because they're imperial fists, and so is the librarian with them.

We on the other hand, simply have no bag of tricks to draw from.

TLDR; - if you're still playing against a marine player who leaves his troops out in the open "cuz power armor" - then consider yourself very lucky.  I hope he blasts grav cannons at your grotesques all game long while his hammernators remain tied up with your wyches on an objective.  May you keep winning and may he never figure out why.

I agree with absolutely ll parts of this post, and it saddens me to say, that it is because of this ridiculous imbalancing of the game that i sold my entire (8000 pt) collection of Dark Eldar. I jkept my Harlequins, for those games when i dont have to play a total douche, and moved to Guildball (which is outstanding by the way)

It saddens me, but why spend 4+ hours playing a game, that even when the players try to balance, there is fundnamental balance issues like the one you mentioned above.

Will keep my head in this forum, as its a good, helpful community, but for now, me and dark eldar are done.

jk

Okay. Have fun!

I agree with Shredder on this.

Unless I find myself in a narrative or campaign in which it makes sense for my True Kin to work with Craftworlders, I won't be using Craftworld allies with my Dark Eldar. Ever.

I play Dark Eldar because I love Dark Eldar. The Dark Eldar think their cousins on the Craftworlds are weak fools, and frequently wage war on them.

To me, "Those idiots on Ulthwe are failing to keep Chaos from invading the webway," is a good reason to ally with Craftworld Eldar; "My codex isn't good enough by itself," is not. If that means that I will lose games, then I will lose games.

I'd like to weigh in here briefly and say that BDobbins did an excellent series of videos on some of the concepts we're witnessing here in 40k and have been witnessing over the last 3 editions.


Some of the salient points later on in the video are about how randomising matchmaking, loot drops and item quality through an extremely reductive system (which is directly relevant to 40k and I'll demonstrate in just a moment) did great damage to the game through infuriating a large portion of its playerbase most notably older players who have more alternatives and life experience and through this lost a great portion of its potential customer base. Much of what is said in the video predicates on the team at Bungie relying on pre-orders for 'collectors editions' to make the bulk of their money and that this is not an unreasonable assumption. Destiny marketing was famously 500million and it made all of that back within the first week.

Getting back to the parallels between destiny and 40k I believe they both function on one or two fundamental balancing principles.

1. Randomisation. Randomising everything to the Nth degree guarantees that bad players win occasionally, that little kids who aren't good at all can still come out breaking even or even winning against better players and better lists because randomisation of dice rolls saved their asses.

2. Reductivism. Every single activity in the game is now getting its own set of rules and sub-rules. These rules have had more randomisation injected (notice a trend yet?) even when its not completely appropriate. By reducing scenarios into easily compartmentalised chunks and then spinning them on the lottery wheel of chance you help to even out the success/failure rates of players and force an arbitrary sense of balance on the game. What GW game designers have done essentially is this: they've taken every army that could conceivably succeed based on tactics and nuance and reduced their capacity to rely on sound strategy for victory. This reduction in viability for specialist units especially fragile ones like dark eldar leads to identifying units that are the most effective and spamming them. Caveat emptor; this has always already happened to a degree yes, but predominantly because some units like 5th ed spacewolves and GK being badly designed by a bad game developer. The units we see spammed on the board aren't even necessarily the ones with the best special rules. Typically it's a saturation of high toughness, high strength models with one or two gimmicks inherent to their unit type. Flying daemon princes, most gargantuan creatures, (jet)biker blobs, terminator/centurion blobs, mounted wolflord spam, jumppack infantry spam etcetera etcetera.

These two factors combine to create the modern 40k we have today. If you haven't yet watched that video fully yet then you could stand to do so now to really see how it all ties together. The reduction of content upfront in a codex being supplemented in other books (effectively tabletops version of microtransactions), special pay-to-win creatures and rules, the breaking down of cohesion via unbound lists, the breaking down of victorious strategies by implementing more and more random elements in order to make the game more accessible for the 11-14 year olds that we see in the stores everywhere, with almost noone over 21 to be seen ever except for the staff. The erosion of the official tournament scene as an attempt to circumvent criticism for a broken game.

If you ever get the feeling like you've lost interest in the game it's not because you have - it's because you haven't swallowed the koolaid and pandered to the companies anti-consumer corporate strategy. If you feel like you've been consistently robbed of wins by the dice it's because you actually have, by design, been robbed of wins because GW doesn't want you to always beat the kids at your FLGS every time. And this frustrates many players especially older players who consciously or sub-consciously recognise they're being scammed and refuse to tolerate it any more, so they leave the hobby and leave behind the bulk percentage of customers who are typically younger and more willing to accept at face value that the game they are playing is balanced and fair.

When threads like this can demonstrate that within merely 3 editions it went from being pretty balanced to just an outright joke, not taken seriously by the community at large because of it's enduring association with little kids and toys that are becoming increasingly visually dense to compensate for the diminishing number of uses for the models on the table.

So you're basically complaining that the dice introduce a random element. I'm sorry but sometimes it is just bad luck. That's the game. It's a game of statistics too. Nothing to complain about.

And if you compare that to the vast randomness due to dice tables in the early editions, it's much less random now. I don't get your point.

The game is unbalanced but the random elements of the game are inherent. Nothing to change here because there is no alternative in using a random number generator aka dice

CptMetal wrote:

So you're basically complaining that the dice introduce a random element. I'm sorry but sometimes it is just bad luck. That's the game. It's a game of statistics too. Nothing to complain about.

And if you compare that to the vast randomness due to dice tables in the early editions, it's much less random now. I don't get your point.

The game is unbalanced but the random elements of the game are inherent. Nothing to change here because there is no alternative in using a random number generator aka dice

I think you may be misunderstanding.

It's not just about randomness, it's about:

1) Randomness that removes/reduces player involvement. Having stuff like to-hit, to-wound, saves and such be random is fine. However, when you start to have stuff like random Warlord Traits, you're just adding unnecessary randomness and removing control from players for no reason whatsoever.

2) Randomness that carries unequal weight. e.g. with some psychic powers being game-breaking (Invisibility comes to mind), rolling for psychic powers carries far more weight than it should.

Hell, I could just point to the entire psychic phase as an example of randomness over tactics.

Another example would be if we were using the RSR detachment (or KRP Formation), in which case the Night Fighting roll becomes very important:
- It affects whether our Night Vision rule will be worth anything this game.
- It affects whether our fragile vehicles will have Stealth on turn 1.
- It affects whether or not we'll have our main detachment/formation bonus.

All that is decided with a singe d6 roll that we're unable to influence. No, I tell a lie - we can influence it. And all we need to influence it is to first roll well on the Warlord Traits table. I'm sure superior strategy will pull through here.

Or even Maelstrom - where random objectives basically replace all strategy, planning and tactics.


With regard to random tables in earlier editions, I can only assume that you're talking about 1st or second edition (which I didn't play). In any case, I'd suggest that the random tables in those editions were probably removed for good reason and many people aren't keen to see them return. Furthermore, bear in mind that many of us (myself included) started in or after 3rd edition, and so we don't have those early editions in our minds to juxtapose. All we see is a once-good game system being buried beneath random tables.

Exhibit A being Codex: Chaos Daemons!

Count Adhemar wrote:

Exhibit A being Codex: Chaos Daemons!

I know the randomness in that book killed my Chaos-playing friend's interest in demons - both in 40k and Fantasy.

There was a post I remember on dakkadakka where a Chaos Daemons player listed all the randomness his army had to go through, including a considerable amount before the game even started, and yet more every shooting phase. Might see if I can find it.


EDIT: Couldn't find that post, but I did find this:

Quote :

Good dice-based games involve randomness, but done in such a way that the randomness follows a nice bell curve (for example, shooting bolters with a full tactical squad) which allows you to intelligently make decisions based on risk vs. reward. The outcome of a given individual event is in doubt, but complete surprises are rare and in the long run everything converges on the average with the player who makes better decisions winning the game.

Bad dice-based games involve randomness with wild swings (which threaten to impact the game more than player decisions), lack of predictability (you can't make strategic plans beyond "roll the dice and hope they like you"), or things that should be player choices (picking warlord traits). The stronger these elements are the less player skill and decisions matter and the more the game becomes little more than an exercise in throwing dice and seeing what happens.

I would urge anyone debating the randomness point to watch the video I linked if you haven't already, at least from minute 20+.

Wild swings are what make the game fun! I'm all about making tactical decisions based on risk and reward, crunching some quick mathhammer before taking shots, giving my self the best chance, however, you need a few wild pitches every now and then. For example: your opponent only needs 3 inches to assault one of your units and rolls double ones! Play this scenario at a critical turn in the game and that could be game changing. The more randomization, the better as far as I'm concerned. It makes the game more fun, more unpredictable.

mrbenis wrote:

...little kids who aren't good at all can still come out breaking even or even winning against better players and better lists...

mrbenis wrote:

...GW doesn't want you to always beat the kids...

mrbenis wrote:

...enduring association with little kids...

Children playing games? Horrors! Pushing little men around a tabletop is obviously an activity for mature adults that has no place in it for grubby little urchins. Seriously though, whence comes this contempt for kids? I don't know about you, but I used to be one, back when dinosaurs walked the earth. Most of us began gaming as children, our hands and faces always sticky with jam somehow, even when we hadn't eaten any jam. It helped us to develop into the clever, charming, and sexually attractive adults we are today.

We need to get kids playing these games if the hobby is to survive to another generation. Otherwise they'll all grow up grumpy and dull of mind, and become estate agents, corporate lawyers, and mid-level managers. Is that what you want?

I'm personally not disappointed with the current state of 40K at all. I think it's the best that it's ever been, it's just that my favourite faction has been excluded from this Rennaisance. GW has completely lost interest in all things Dark Eldar. Even their line of miniatures is gone from stores. This isn't the first time that has happened, but it's still disappointing.

Even so, I'm pretty sure I could still beat a child, if that were any consolation!

I'll try to watch that video when I have a chance.

I think some degree of randomization is important, not because it creates risk - you should win that combat, but there's a chance you'll lose - but because it creates unexpected situations which prevent gameplay from becoming repetitive.

That said, I think GW has always had a thing about randomization for its own sake, like when magic/psionics were handled with decks of cards. As a result of this, some of their games have devolved into just rolling lots of dice until someone wins, or playing until someone draws the "I win!" card.

I really like warlord traits as a way of adding further character to your character, but as such I think they should be chosen, and possibly paid for with points, rather than randomized.

My absolute favorite approach to randomization is Warmachine/Hordes. The game rolls two dice for things instead of one, which means you're always rolling on a bell curve. In addition to that, players have a number of points each turn which can be used for various things, including boosting die rolls, so you can make it less likely that you'll get dice screwed on that crucial shot.

I'd like to see something similar in 40k. Each HQ character choice could be given a number of points representing their tactical prowess, and if they are the army's warlord, you could spend them each turn to sway die rolls and otherwise reduce randomization. An Archon would have a whole lot, while a Succubus would only have a few.

I also like the level of random in Warmahordes.

The magic system in particular appeals to me, in that it's based around resource management and risk/reward, rather than just random and more random.

Want to cast a buff? Pay the focus/fury and its cast. That's it. Want to cast an offensive buff? You have to roll to hit your target. That's it.

In particular, I like that you can spend additional points to improve the odds of hitting. And, of course, you also have to manage spending points on your warjacks and saving them to protect your warcaster.

Always seemed like a very elegant system to me.