Scourges

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Evil Space Elves wrote:

Rokuro wrote:

CurstAlchemist wrote:

It's to bad that the jack ass that wrote our codex hated us enough to not give scourages relentless or consider them jet pack infantry instead of jump infantry.

Sorry, but I'm really sick of hearing this.
The 7th ed. codex authors didn't hate Dark Eldar, they just didn't take the project as serious as they should have. They wrote it to be compatible with 7th ed. rules and the official miniature line, not more, not less. And that was obviously not enough. But nobody at GW had the goal to make Dark Eldar, or any army for that matter, not worth playing.

So much of this. Nailed it.

I disagree. You can see by the characters that they removed that it was at least PARTIALLY a knee-jerk reaction to their lost sections of the lawsuit against chapterhouse. This was a time when the previous(then current) CEO openly admitted that he didn't think the game mattered at all, and that it was just about the models, so they made kneejerk rules decisions to get rid of all the characters that didn't have models without doing ANYTHING to fill that void.

Almost all our options became MORE limited as well. People make blanket statements about them not TRYING to make our codex worse, but they killed all our special characters amongst over 30 other direct nerfs like making huskblades AP3 and demiklaives +1S instead of +2S. Those stat nerfs are EVERYWHERE in the new codex, but people somehow seem to forget them. This in an edition that makes poison only effect GCs on 6's, while basically our entire army is armed with poison. The level and number of nerfs made were inexcusable. I won't let people forget that. Definitely NOT "nailed it".

Completely disagree. DE Codex was in line with Orks, SpaceWolves and GreyKnights. All of this Codex were resized, lack in powercreep (yes, event with thunderwolfs) and I was in love with that trend.

And then comes Necrons....


I can see a turn in that way. If GW hates DE, so they hates Orks, SW and GK as well. And I don't belive it. The real mistake was to come back to the power creep (with Necron, then Eldar and Tau). Not the DE codex itself.

I think we simply were victim of very bad timing. 7th edition was rushed and GW needed some codex fodder that is sold along the new BRB to push the new edition.

It is no secret that GW has codices written well in advance, so they just launched everyhing they had at their disposal when the current edition hit. So, it comes at no surprise that DE is in line with Orks, SW, GK, as well as the the codices prior to 7th.

A lot of changes like the loss of SCs and no more Haywire on Wyches were foreseeable due to the way codices were written in 6th edition.
I think with the launch of 7th edition, GW also had the idea of making the game more focused around formations and detachments to boost their sales in a more directed way.

Why do you think haven't there been any supplements since Necrons? GW saw that 6th edition codices don't work with their planned business model and also brought out formations to provide the old codices with a list of formations. In that sense the supplements were nothing more than "corporate ducttape".

It is really unfortunate and if GW had stayed with the "tone down and streamline" mantra, we wouldn't be in such a bad spot, really.

While our latest codex surely is a codex of missed opportunities and most clearly it was no passion project as well, I don't think the one(s) responsible for this mess had a lot of choice.
It is evident that the ones responsbiel for the codex did/do not have a lot of experience with DE. Still, when you are ordered from "high above" to trim things down and cut out things wherever possible, you can only do so little.


Naturally, this is a lot of speculation, but it makes too much sense to ignore it.
But hey, on the other hand we got a kickass supplement with interesting new fluff and some time ago Forgeworld even released the "Dark Eldar, how it was meant to be" Codex. Some people also refer to this codex as "Corsairs" .

Honestly, I think if we got a codex right now we would get a huge power boost. After all, there hasn't really been a "weak" codex since Necrons.

So, yes. The position we are in sucks and our codex is simply not good (not saying that it is useless). It would be naive to say otherwise.
However, it would also be naive to say that GW hates us, if that would be the case we hadn't gotten the Coven supplement, but rather got the Squat treatment instead. Think about that.

Two major factors hit with our change from the amazing 5th ed codex,

First was the general streamlining going on in 40k (which removes are blood tokens to a turn counter and replaces our fluffy rules like bladevanes to use rulebook rules like hammer of wrath).
This also meant our good stuff got worse (which was pretty much everything heavy support went up in price and down in rules) and our garbage became meh.

The second was the chapter house lawsuit, which is why no one has options that aren't in their kit and all of our special characters have become special foot notes. If GW doesn't sell it you can't have it.

For Scourges they got a lot better out of the deal and are totally usable now, quite possibly our best AT

The Strange Dark One wrote:

Why do you think haven't there been any supplements since Necrons? GW saw that 6th edition codices don't work with their planned business model and also brought out formations to provide the old codices with a list of formations. In that sense the supplements were nothing more than "corporate ducttape".

So you're making a statement under the assumption that there have been no supplements released for post-Necrons codices (the Necron Codex was released in January of 2015)? If this is the case then that statement is false, Space Marines, a post-Necrons codex, clearly written within the power creep model of 7th edition had a supplement released called Angles of Death. I'll forgo the other supplements released (Angel's Blade, Black Legion, and Crimson Slaughter) because they are tied to pre-Necron codices and fit your narrative of supplements being only part of GW's attempt at stopping codices from dying from all the hemorrhaging they did when they sliced huge chunks of flavor and uniqueness out of them with the 6th edition era codices.

Our codex was hit because it hasnt been written by Phil Kelly. Same way Eldar got too boosted. Because people who write them do not understand those armies. Armies are defined by their weaknesses as well as strenght.

Team on working fail to define the measure of both. Only with different results. Under/overpowered. Both are fail of gamedesign.

Do we have any official statements of any designers that work/worked for GW on how they design codices? Because it really looks like GW put some designers in charge and they came up with certain ideas that got shut down over and over again, until they were in line with what the higher-ups thought was the goal.

It is also very apparent that GW doesn't playtest the codices they write. If I were to tell you "Think about Orks. What is their essence?" You would probably thing about an endless green tide, backed up by heavy, clunky machines that wreck anything in their path. Then you would look at the codex and see that all their walkers are sh*t and every Ork unit is Ini 2 or 3 and and loses against almost every dedicated CC unit in the game. They are good at nothing. They can't hit stuff with shooting and they die before they can kill stuff in assault and in most cases can't even punch through their enemy's armour.

The same thing goes for so many codices. GW just doesn't stick with the essence of the army!

Tyranids should be an endless swarm that overwhelm the opponent in melee or shooting. Yet they are one of the worst armies because they suck at both!

Dark Eldar should be "evil space elves" that strike without warning at reckless speed. Yet we aren't even the fastest army in the game and the new Genestealer Cult is much better at the whole "striking without warning" then we are.

The Adeptus Mechanicus should go to war with a ton of robots and crazy vehicles, yet they have not a single vehicle (other than a walker and a tank) and only a single robot unit (but other than that they are actually pretty close to what they are supposed to be).

And so on.

With the release of the Genestealer Cult codex we actually see how it looks when GW picks a theme for an army and builds the whole codex around it. The GC is build around the idea of being a revolutionary army that strikes from ambushes and they build all concepts around it. From looted weapons to special rules, it all ties into that one theme - and it seems to be not only pretty strong but also very coherent! I really wish that we will see more like that in the future. And once 8th edition drops I wish that all codices would get a rework with the goal to build each army around their essence - something that they and only they can do and are better at than any other faction.

I think we are the fastest army in the game. At least to some degree:
All our transport vehicles are fast skimmers. They are open topped (but that's only useful for grotesques in terms of Close Combat) and all of them can deep Strike for free. That's nothing any other army has!
Wait... Space Marines got that too...
-.-

Yes, sadly.

Dark Angels with their bikes, Space Marines with their Drop Pods, Corsairs with reckless abandon and now the Genestealer Cult. All of those can be at least as fast as we are (whilst not having to sit in paper boats)...

Being an old school player who came back at the start of 7th edition, we used to feel like a fast army and now we don't.

The situation as it used to be was Raiders could move 12" and still operate because they were fast vehicles, which means shooting or disembarking. Non-fast vehicles were only going 6". Dark Eldar had fleet, which meant we could run and assault, when most others couldn't run at all. Charges were always 6" unless you got 12" charge from combat drugs. We had a massive mobility edge over most opponents.

Coming back to 7th edition, suddenly most of my units want to stay in transports. To operate at full effectiveness, that means moving no more than 6" per turn. We can't run and charge anymore, and everyone else can run. I remember playing a game against Grey Knights where their big monstrous creatures could jump 30" across the board on turn one and their deep striking units had battle focus. My mechanised Dark Eldar felt substantially slower than a Terminator army, which felt so incredibly wrong.

We are only fast if our units spend a turn moving flat out, which while sometimes useful, generally just means taking an extra turn of shooting without achieving anything in game.

On the other hand, with jink we are much less paper boat than we once were. Hull points didn't exist when I played before, and the glancing hits damage table had a 50% chance of wrecking a Raider. Our firepower seems less overwhelming than it once did too.

We used to have a play-style as a fast, glass-cannon type of army, and seem to have lost the speed, damage and fragility.

Oh well.
Back to topic: are shredder scourges any good? Or would Reavers be a better investment?

That's actually completely off topic lol! The shredder convo was in the shredder thread. last theoryhammering done here was about ablative wounds for CC units.

That said, Do you mean reaver jetbikes or corsair reavers? I'm going to assume the former but if you mean the later I believe reckless abandon makes shredders awesome.

I think that 100 pts Scourge units are straight up better per point than reaver jetbikes against anything with a 3+ or worse armour save and t5 or below. The only exception to that might be against the super jink dark angels.

I don't rate shredder scourges. They have to get soo close to shoot once before they're easily rapid fired or charged to death.

If I had to choose between...

5 scourge - 4 heatlances or haywire blasters - 120pts
6 reavers - 2 caltrops - 126pts

Ide take the reavers every time. The reavers do more work for me.
That being said units of scourge still have their place in many good lists.