Codex tweaks you'd like to see

we have dark lances. that'll do me.
I want vector dancer and vector strike ground infantry

@Stilgar

When I was saying we have everything we need to deal with enemies, we do, my point being that yeah, we have multiple lances tons of lances, lances can take out anything, I'm just saying we need so much more out there to deal with enemies, I'm saying we need answers for stuff like that, the amount of points most of our tough units need, shoots massive holes in any strategies we have, 8 Ravagers with Dark lances pointwise would equal a stompa, but if the stompa went first, it could literally take out at least 5 of those in a single turn with relative ease, if we went first, we would still need pretty decent dice rolls to mortally wound it.

You're right, I was kind of ranting as much as anything.  I agree entirely that it takes too many lances to kill just most vehicles and ceratinly super heavy/gargantuans, and I simply don't believe that's how this army was supposed to function.

As someone who plays a few other armies, I just don't find lances very effective for anything other than splatting marines.  As you noted, the solution to the ever increasing scale in 40k is probably some stronger family of weapons, most likely in the form of haywire and fleshbane.

I kind of feel bad for consistently taking this thread off on tangents, I think I might make a simplified thread over in the rules development section like "fix our codex in 3 changes or less", and leave all you good people in general discussion alone for a while

stilgar27 wrote:

We basically don't get any de-buffs (or really any dirty tricks) at all.

Considering we're supposed to be an army of cheating bastichs, we seem to be pretty obsessed with Queensberry rules .

We should have more debuffs than you can poke a stick at - like the anti-Tau, instead of all their explicit synergy, we should be able to ping enemy units with all sorts of maladies.

Instead, we get Soul Blaze, and Concussive on a pair of poxy melee butter knifes. And the only Pinning in the whole Codex is when you look at our wargear page and find your eyes pinned open in horror.

Creeping Darkness wrote:

Instead, we get Soul Blaze, and Concussive on a pair of poxy melee butter knifes. And the only Pinning in the whole Codex is when you look at our wargear page and find your eyes pinned open in horror.

Our shooting weapons need a strength profile. Glass cannon troops firing s3 ap5 at fire warriors is atrocious. Splinter cannons could do with being s5 assault 4. Dark lances need a complete rethink. S9 probably just won't cut it. They are inferior or equal to lascannons in all but one instance: AV14. Does that make sense for the glass cannon army? Every weapon needs to be faster firing or more damaging than its space marine equivalent or the army fundamentally fails.

I think our blasters are fine. Just overpriced. 10 points like a Melter would be okay because it's comparable to it. Longer range, less devastating.

Even at 10pts, I don't see how they're possibly fine.

The extra range isn't nearly enough to compensate for how abysmal they are against vehicles.

But, even if we pretend for a moment that the two are even remotely balanced, that still leaves us with a second problem - where is the cannon to go with our glass?

Marines with meltas are T4 with 3+ saves. Eldar Fire Dragons are T3 with 3+ saves, and their meltas are even better. So, with T3 and a 5+ save, you'd expect ours to be better still, right? Otherwise, what's the point of us being glass at all? We're trading something (armour) for nothing.

If you want to fix Blasters, leave them as 15pts and make them Assault 2.

That would be nice too. Or give them the Melter rule for 6 or 8 inches additionally

CptMetal wrote:

That would be nice too. Or give them the Melter rule for 6 or 8 inches additionally

Actually melta and lance AND the 18" range would justify the 15 point price tag and make them deadly against most anything at as much as 9".  Essentially it'd be a fire pike which swaps the AP1 for the lance rule.  I could live with that.

15 points is what a fire pike costs in a unit of fire dragons btw.

Of course it'd make heat lances totally pointless... but then they kind of are anyway aren't they?

If you made them melta weapons, I think they'd need AP1.

Otherwise you've still got the problem of expensive, single-shot weapons that can only expect to kill by stripping hull points.

How about S6 AP2, Lance, 18", assault 2. For the same points. And a 12" range on the pistol to compensate for the pistol rule and not assault 2

Wait, are we making it worse now? Why S6?

To compensate for the 2 shots.  with lance that still means glancing anything on a 6.  Still high enough to kill anything else

How about the following

Blast Pistol

12"   S6   AP2   Pistol, Lance, Darkflash

Blaster

18"  S6  AP2  Assault 2, Lance, Darkflash

Dark Lance

36"  S8  AP2  Heavy 1, Lance, Darkflash

Dark Scythe

36"  S8  AP2  Heavy 1, Blast, Blind

Void Lance

36"  S9  AP2  Heavy 1, Lance


Darkflash rule - Models firing Overwatch with Darkflash weapons may blind the closerange targets. Any successful hits cause the attackers to take a Blind test. The Blin effect ends at the end up the Assault phase

The two shots don't need compensating for. They're already compensating for the blaster being so bloody abysmal.

Edited my above to include a new rule

Sorry, but Darkflash doesn't help because it's primarily an anti-vehicle weapon.

What's your objection to it being S8?

I have no objection to S8, I love it. BUT to make it better I think 2 shots would be great. BUT at the current price OP. Just speculating with new ideas of making the Blaster less Anti vehicle and more anti-heavy infantry. Imagine A Blasterborn Venom unloading 8 S6 AP2 hits at some terminators...the venom slices up some marines...they charge and get blinded. LOL

Just lower the cost of the blaster to 10pts. If you want a strength 6 lance melta ap 1 assault 2, call it something else

It's a great sight to imagine, but don't forget that this topic is actually about making "tweaks". I think S9 AP1 for darklight would be a nice tweak for that matter.
But in my opinion, the best solution for the anti tank issue would be another new dedicated anti-vehicle heavy weapon that can be used wherever Disintegrator and Dark Lances can be used.

Maybe something like the Eldar's scatter-Laser or maybe something completely new with Armourbane.
The idea would be to have Dissies for heavy infantry, the new thing for vehicles and Darklight for a bit of both.

And on top of that, there should be portable weapons of all 3 main cannons.
Those 8 S6 AP2 shots sound nice, but I think a Disintegrator-Carbine could serve that role better.

Just my 50 cents.

Nariaklizhar wrote:

Just lower the cost of the blaster to 10pts. If you want a strength 6 lance melta ap 1 assault 2, call it something else

That's the whole point though - lowing the point cost isn't enough. The changes to 7th edition (not to mention power creep) has left blasters completely inept at their main role. They've become nothing more than hull point strippers for too many points and with too few shots. Lowing their cost won't change that.

They need an extra shot to compensate for AP2 being made so pitiful against vehicles. Not to mention that the Lance rule is largely useless anyway (and was even before 7th).

daveyo wrote:

I have no objection to S8, I love it.  BUT to make it better I think 2 shots would be great.  BUT at the current price OP.  

Sorry but it's not even close to being OP. Have you seen the game recently? Eldar are touting D-weapon Flamers, 4 S6 shots apiece on jetbike troops, Marines and cult mechanicus can field armies with several hundred points of free models, DA can have 2+ rerollable Jink saves. 2 S8 AP2 shots on models that die if anything so much as coughs at them isn't even in the same league. The most it will do is give us a fighting chance.

Bear in mind that we're supposed to be glass cannons, but as it stands we're trading armour for weapons that are less effective.

The Strange Dark One wrote:

But in my opinion, the best solution for the anti tank issue would be another new dedicated anti-vehicle heavy weapon that can be used wherever Disintegrator and Dark Lances can be used.

Maybe something like the Eldar's scatter-Laser or maybe something completely new with Armourbane.

Well, some more options in the weapon department certainly wouldn't go amiss.

Hand held disintegrators . Assault 3 AP2 goodness 18 range

daveyo wrote:

Hand held disintegrators .   Assault 3 AP2 goodness 18 range

A new weapon is the way to go as the dark/bright lances are all tied together.  If you're buffing a lance on our side, GW will undoubtedly buff them on the craftworlder's side (even though our tech is supposed to be much better) - and I think we can all agree that craftworlders don't need any further help.

So why don't we have any strength D weapons again?  Aren't most of them dependent on the idea of opening a portal to another dimension to suck in or otherwise dismember targets?  Shouldn't that be routine for us (as a race of beings that regularly travel between dimensions with pinpoint accuracy)?

Rumor is that corsairs have strength D grenades... and our heaviest weapons, mounted on vehicles, still can't manage that trick.

Ugh gw, just ugh.

If we're talking tweaks, remove the fething footnote that limits haywire blasters and heat lances to scourges only. In terms of change footprint on rules as written that would be tiny, but opening the world of melta up to our Troops would be a glorious change. Even if it's only S6.

Dark Gate for a Strength D grenade would be pretty hilarious. Shattershard for Str D flamer?

I could get behind an Assault 2 blaster. It would make dark lances look a little sad though with just the one shot.

I'd also love a weapon that arbitrarily immobilised enemy vehicles, a la Grav. It still annoys me that Space Marines get to cripple their enemies' engines then run rings around them, it should be us! Maybe if the dark lance forced enemy tanks to move as if in dangerous terrain next turn?