Dreaming about Dark Eldar design

What about making the Blaster a rapid fire gun?


Oh. And thanks for your professional feedback Klaivex...

CptMetal wrote:

What about making the Blaster a rapid fire gun?

I can get behind that.

Obviously I didn't mean that splinter rifles should have their poison replaced by a strength value, I was saying they should be s4 poison 4

Ah. Okay. That would be fun too but it's just crystal Splinter so Strength 4 would be a bit much compared to self propelled mini rockets that are strength 4 too.
I'd like to be able to buy upgrades for the poison. Even if it's only for the true born. Or some new troop choice that's like Kabalite Warrior but you could choose to upgrade the poison to 3+ or give it a strength value or make it Haywire light for 1 to 3 points per model.

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That would be fun too but it's just crystal Splinter so Strength 4 would be a bit much compared to self propelled mini rockets that are strength 4 too.

You can justify anything with fluff as the rules are only abstract.. In this case the S4 would not come from the impact of the crystal but either represent the basic lethality of the poison (it is equally "unrealistic" that Space Marines suffer the same poison effect as imperial guard when SM are genetically engineered to resist poison way better than ordinary humans) or the corrosive effects on vehicles (which is also stated in the fluff but not translated into the rules)

CptMetal wrote:

Ah. Okay. That would be fun too but it's just crystal Splinter so Strength 4 would be a bit much compared to self propelled mini rockets that are strength 4 too.
I'd like to be able to buy upgrades for the poison. Even if it's only for the true born. Or some new troop choice that's like Kabalite Warrior but you could choose to upgrade the poison to 3+ or give it a strength value or make it Haywire light for 1 to 3 points per model.

Yeah, I've always been thinking about poison upgrades too. I remember Splinter weapons being loaded with different poisons depending on the situations (lethal toxins inside Commorragh), agonizing/paralyzing ones when on raids. So, it only seems evident that there is a big range of possible loadouts.

Also, since raids are planned in advance it would only make sense if weapons would be tailored to individual targets and that there is a wide range of poisons to choose from.

Personally, I think a Bane/Virus Rifle for Trueborn with the Fleshbane rule would be cool.
The fluff behind this weapons is that this is a rifle loaded with a derivate of the Glass Plague that is used on raids to eliminate "precious targets" like enemy HQs or MCs and turn them into crystalline sculptures (with their last moment of terror frozen for eternity).

Those sculptures are then either kept by the Archon as a personal trophy of a victorious raid or sold to other Archons which are passionate collectors themselves for a small fortune.
Naturally, those weapons would only be handed out to an Archon's most trusted Trueborn.

The Strange Dark One wrote:

Personally, I think a Bane/Virus Rifle for Trueborn with the Fleshbane rule would be cool.
The fluff behind this weapons is that this is a rifle loaded with a derivate of the Glass Plague that is used on raids to eliminate "precious targets" like enemy HQs or MCs and turn them into crystalline sculptures (with their last moment of terror frozen for eternity).

Those sculptures are then either kept by the Archon as a personal trophy of a victorious raid or sold to other Archons which are passionate collectors themselves for a small fortune.
Naturally, those weapons would only be handed out to an Archon's most trusted Trueborn.

So, a Hex Rifle?
I could actually imagin the Covens selling these weapons (and ammo seperately), for prices only Trueborn or Scourges could normally afford. And unlike with a Liquifier or Ossefactor, one doesn't need a modified body to wield a Hex Rifle after all.

Rokuro wrote:

The Strange Dark One wrote:

Personally, I think a Bane/Virus Rifle for Trueborn with the Fleshbane rule would be cool.
The fluff behind this weapons is that this is a rifle loaded with a derivate of the Glass Plague that is used on raids to eliminate "precious targets" like enemy HQs or MCs and turn them into crystalline sculptures (with their last moment of terror frozen for eternity).

Those sculptures are then either kept by the Archon as a personal trophy of a victorious raid or sold to other Archons which are passionate collectors themselves for a small fortune.
Naturally, those weapons would only be handed out to an Archon's most trusted Trueborn.

So, a Hex Rifle?
I could actually imagin the Covens selling these weapons (and ammo seperately), for prices only Trueborn or Scourges could normally afford. And unlike with a Liquifier or Ossefactor, one doesn't need a modified body to wield a Hex Rifle after all.

Yes, he refers to Hex Rifles.

But no one would willingly buy those awful things on trueborn. Unless Hex Rifles were vastly improved, or were super cheap, or both maybe, it'd be a waste on our already expensive trueborn, who normally want blasters besides.

I think a simply weapon with a more potent, paralysing poison could be in order, and easier to implement.

An upgrade for trueborn, court of the archons or scourges equipped with shardcarbines or splinter rifles/pistols/cannons, that gives them fleshbane rounds, maybe with AP4 thrown in for good measure.

hydranixx wrote:

An upgrade for trueborn, court of the archons or scourges equipped with shardcarbines or splinter rifles/pistols/cannons, that gives them fleshbane rounds, maybe with AP4 thrown in for good measure.

That sounds like a job for a formation rule to me. And like a reference to the Kabal of the Obsidian Rose.

I was sure the Hexrifle is frequently filled with various types of ammo, but going throught the Codex again I see that it were only the novels depicting the weapon like that.

However, I agree that it would make more sense with an "Obsidian Rose" formation

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I was sure the Hexrifle is frequently filled with various types of ammo, but going throught the Codex again I see that it were only the novels depicting the weapon like that.

Hexrifle is the glassplaque virus. The ordinary splinter rifle comes with different ammunition depending on the target.

i think the usr for DE should be preferred enemy (all). delete that crap night vision crap and the army would do soooo much better since we dont have rerolling anywhere

Read the whole thread and here is my (current) wish list as applied to it.  Basically the idea is to turn splinter weapons from a hindrance in to the feared signature weapons they are meant to be.  Also these rules would encourage aggressive (if not reckless) closing with the enemy.

Night vision becomes Infravision: In addition to the night vision rules, any model with this special rule- within 12" of an enemy unit may reduce that unit's cover save by 1 when firing on it.

Battle Frenzy:  A unit composed entirely of models with this special rule may fire snap shots and charge after making a run move.  

Replace all splinter rifles with shardcarbines and splinter pods with twin-linked shardcarbines.  Make splinter cannons AP4, make splinter pistols count as poison (4+) close combat weapons. (sorry wracks, we'll fix you another day).

I've ranted about this before but the only conceivable reason to fire a crystal out of a weapon is that when it struck a hard object properly, it could generate a large (piezo)electrical voltage.  So give splinters the special rule - Piezo:  Any weapon with this special rule gains the haywire special rule on any to hit roll against a vehicle of 6.  Any roll to hit of a 6 against an enemy with a toughness value gains the shred special rule.

By the way - Blasters could be assault 2 if only because the name implies there is a blast.  A similar handheld blast weapon (shotgun) was long ago converted from it's tiny 1" blast to assault 2 - which has roughly the same effect.  Grenade launchers were also assault 2 for a time to represent they way they fire(d).  And I imagine you all know that corsairs have already had the price of blaster reduced by 5 points, meaning somebody official out there thinks they're at least 50% over-costed.

Somewhat random idea, but what if Urien could regenerate back from the dead?

Here's my few thoughts on things we could do to improve DE. I'm gonna stick to the original 3 strands that HERO suggested in the first post, and I'm not going to try and fix combat - that'll probably need more than 3 things on its own!

In keeping with the philosophy of the glass cannon I'm not going to look at increasing toughness or survivability of any units, but I do want to look at increasing damage output.

1. Lasting toxins. When a hit is scored with a splinter weapon, there is a chance that the target will not succumb immediately. Once you have rolled to hit, roll to wound as normal, but create two pools, one for successful wounds and one for unsuccessful. Roll armour saves as normal against both pools. Remove casualties from the unsaved successful wounds, but keep note of how many unsaved unsuccessful wound rolls were made. At the end of every successive shooting phase (both players) roll the remaining dice in this pool, removing the appropriate number of models based on the successful wounds. whole models must be removed were possible, no further armour saves may be taken against these wounds, though feel no pain rolls can be made.

2. Fight on the move. If a vehicle moves its full movement allowance and is closer to the enemy at the end of that movement by at least half the distance it moved, then its weapons benefit from +1BS. This means that if the vehicle jinked it will fire at BS2 in the next turn, giving us less reluctance to jink and a more reliable fire output when we are forced to, at the cost of having to get closer to the enemy. For example if a ravager moves 12" and is at least 6" closer to the enemy than it started, 2 dark lances fire at BS5 and the third at BS2

3. No dark eldar weapons have the Heavy type. splinter rifles become assault 2 to allow charges after shooting. Sorely tempted to say Dark Lances Assault 2 and/or S9...

I think this really ups the damage potential of our units, ravagers are no longer the static platforms they used to be, we're no restricted from moving and shooting effectively so even scourges could justify taking lances, going back to the heavy fire unit of times past, and poison weapons keep taking their toll on the enemy throughout the game. Just think, a unit of 10 kabalites with no upgrades will then cause approx 13 hits in a phase, let's say we're shooting at marines, so 7 wounds and 2 dead. The next player turn they lose another 2 guys without you even having to shoot at them again, and a fifth guy probably dies in your next turn. That's half a squad gone and you've only shot at them once. You can still top up the shooting in the next turn if you need but you start to stack up damage considerably, and you're less dependent on that first turn shooting to be devastating.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

1. Lasting toxins. When a hit is scored with a splinter weapon, there is a chance that the target will not succumb immediately. Once you have rolled to hit, roll to wound as normal, but create two pools, one for successful wounds and one for unsuccessful. Roll armour saves as normal against both pools. Remove casualties from the unsaved successful wounds, but keep note of how many unsaved unsuccessful wound rolls were made. At the end of every successive shooting phase (both players) roll the remaining dice in this pool, removing the appropriate number of models based on the successful wounds. whole models must be removed were possible, no further armour saves may be taken against these wounds, though feel no pain rolls can be made.

Bit clunky in terms of mechanics but I like the idea. How about just re-rolling successful armour saves against poison weapons? Less record keeping involved and can easily represent the corrosive effect that our weapons are supposed to have.

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2. Fight on the move. If a vehicle moves its full movement allowance and is closer to the enemy at the end of that movement by at least half the distance it moved, then its weapons benefit from +1BS. This means that if the vehicle jinked it will fire at BS2 in the next turn, giving us less reluctance to jink and a more reliable fire output when we are forced to, at the cost of having to get closer to the enemy. For example if a ravager moves 12" and is at least 6" closer to the enemy than it started, 2 dark lances fire at BS5 and the third at BS2

Again, a bit clunky and I think I prefer the original idea that we can always fire one more weapon at full BS than normally allowed.

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3. No dark eldar weapons have the Heavy type. splinter rifles become assault 2 to allow charges after shooting. Sorely tempted to say Dark Lances Assault 2 and/or S9...

I'd agree that we should not have any infantry-based weapons with the Heavy type. I've already argued that Blasters should be assault 2. Dark Lances could be Rapid Fire maybe?

@Count - yeah 1 is probably a bit clunky, but in my defence I'd spent about 20 minutes thinking about it. I went for the longer lasting effect though to try and represent the use of different poisons, some causing you to die slowly and painfully, others killing you quick (there's always a use for that, even if you do feed on suffering).

2 could be easily simplified by just giving you +1BS if you move at least 6". I think this is probably because my experience of ravagers is that i miss with two of the shots even at full BS, so making them BS5 would mitigate that and make them more reliable.

3. Rapid fire Dark Lances is something I like the sound of - their big problem at the minute I think is that they are neither sufficiently deadly to work in small numbers, nor sufficiently numerous to be able to flood the opponent without being attached to just about every platform we can think of and thus resulting in the 'lance spam' moniker. I'd love to see us get BS5 for our shooty units and WS5 for our combat units - let's face it Wyches should probably hit most things on a 3+ and another way of making us a glass hammer is making sure that when we shoot, we hit.

I love the idea, hitting really hard but then being forced to hang on as opposing forces wear us down, but it doesn't translate well - even getting it right could easily mean that games against DE became one extreme or the other. I think therefore the balance to be struck is around having powerful, but not ridiculous shooting (Eldar shooting is over the top, I wouldn't want to see us there, I'd rather they were toned down) with the option for increasing resilience at the cost of fire output. Basically what the rules try to do with things like jink, but there's too much ignores cover for that to work. The simplest method of achieving it is by saying that jink is not a cover save. Flamers etc therefore don't ignore it, though I still think firing our snapshots at BS2 is appropriate to our fluff.

I've long been a proponent of having Jink etc in it's own category of save, call it a Dodge or Evasion save or something. This then frees up the option to have different weapons with different effects. So Dark Reaper Rangefinders, for example, would ignore Evasion saves but not cover saves. Basically, anything that avoids an attack due to its speed or agility would be an Evasion save, whereas avoiding an attack by some sort of physical barrier (cover) or visual obscurement (concealment) would be a cover save.

stilgar27 wrote:

Night vision becomes Infravision: In addition to the night vision rules, any model with this special rule- within 12" of an enemy unit may reduce that unit's cover save by 1 when firing on it.

I love this. Perhaps could combine with the old Soulseeker ammunition for an additional -1.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Bit clunky in terms of mechanics but I like the idea. How about just re-rolling successful armour saves against poison weapons? Less record keeping involved and can easily represent the corrosive effect that our weapons are supposed to have.

Soul Blaze for poison weapons? Add a counter to any unit that received an unsaved splinter wound, on a 4+ at the end of turn they suffer d3 more unsaved wounds and the counter remains, 1-3 counter is removed, max 1 counter per unit.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

3. No dark eldar weapons have the Heavy type. splinter rifles become assault 2 to allow charges after shooting. Sorely tempted to say Dark Lances Assault 2 and/or S9...

Dark lances even have a suspensor pod modelled on. They should have mass but no weight, so should no way no how be Heavy.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Rapid Fire on Dark Lances. Suddenly, our Razorwings, Ravagers and Raiders double their lance firepower, which goes a long way to addressing the cannon part of the glass cannon without altering the glass part at all.

It would also reward the DE playing more aggressively. You're still free to sit back and shoot from the back of the board, but you'll have only half the firepower compared to shooting from 18" away.

To be honest, lance range already sucks for a single shot heavy weapon, and we are usually outranged by weapons that can easily pen our vehicles (lascannons, autocannons, battle cannons, missiles, pulse lasers, etc).  We might as well get some benefit to getting closer.

The problem I always see with this is that GW likes to keep parity between the craftworld/dark eldar, and even though the craftworlders certainly don't need a boost in this direction, (they already get cheap pulse lasers on quite a few vehicles) I'm sure the bright lance would also receive the same benefit.

The fact that corsair vehicles have seperate entries listed for both bright and dark lances does give me a little hope that they may diverge at some point.  Fluff wise dark lances are supposed to be technologically superior after all.

They are supposed to be superior? I didn't know that. Where do you get the idea from?

CptMetal wrote:

They are supposed to be superior? I didn't know that. Where do you get the idea from?

Bright Lances are highly advanced lasers, but still only lasers. Dark Lances are based on what passes for light in another dimension. That doesn't necessarily mean they are more powerful though.

And the Dark Lance being a heavy weapon doesn't seem to be due to its actual weight, but rather to the portable version being designed as something of an anti-tank sniper rifle.

Lasers are too mainstream for the Dark Kin. So we use alternate universe lasers, thermal lasers, antimatter, pretty much anything so long as its less effective than an actual laser!