Warrior Spam an option?

Quote :

I see we clearly lack tools to be a good horde army outself but how about having just enough warriors to not get instantly overwhelmed by horde?

20 Warriors comes to 140 Points. You can buy 35 Guardsmen for the same price. If the Kabs get to shoot first, you'll kill 9.89 Guardsmen. The Guardsmen will shoot back with their remaining 25 models, killing 10.89. If the Guardsmen get to shoot first, they'll kill 17.44 Kabs, with the three surviving Kabs retaliating and killing 1.33.

If said Guardsmen have First Rank Second Rank on them in either scenario (They will), the Kabs will be eradicated several times over.

There's nothing wrong with Kabs. They're chaff with a good BS, that are dirt cheap by Eldar standards. I think the core of the problem is our vehicles. Paying more than twice as much for a transport than the squad that's inside it in arguably the most mechanized army in the game is frankly ludicrous. Making a 10 wound, T5, 4+ transport degrade, then having the audacity to make it cost 115 points is ridiculous. To rub salt into the wound, they also found it apt to decide that this flying death trap will move a full 2" slower than the average for Eldar vehicles, making it tied for the slowest Eldar Skimmer in the game. (The other also being a Dark Eldar vehicle

Our Transports are the root of the problem. Taking away all mobility options aside from Transports, then making said Transports some of the most fragile vehicles in the game, then reducing the offensive output on one of the Transports, then making the Transports noticeably slower than their equivalents in other Eldar armies, all while doubling the Transports in price is bloody asinine to put it euphemistically.

Tl;dr: A lot of our problems stem from being a mechanized army with crap options for mechanization

Yeah, the increase in the cost of our transports seems excessive. Especially when they were also stripped of one of their main advantages.

What's more, given that their cost was increased by about 50%, did Venoms really need to have their guns nerfed to hell?

And here is the counter argument that will come from GW if the transport problem is brought up. "You are the only army that can shoot out of their transports (forget harlequins exist for a minute) and in terms of power when comparing INDECIES the Druhkari (Dark Eldar) are more powerful then they were in the previous two additions and are more survivable to boot. Plus the index books were penned well before the codecies and the codecies have already provided changes to the existing index rules making thing cheaper and or adding utility to the army as a whole. So be patient for another year for your codex to see all the awesome changes we have waiting for you. But since we are new and improved GW we will listen to your suggestion (if you can find where to submit them) and take I to consideration the ideas by talking extensively with our play testers to see if these ideas would widely out balance the power level of the army. Thank you for sharing your ideas and concerns. GW staff" now then ... I am still excited at where we are compared to the last two additions and can't wait for the Codex: Druhkari in which I do honestly think that we will get some tools and tricks that'll make our army more fun then ever

In Commorragh, an Archon who possesses the level of optimism we as dark eldar players have about our next codex would have died excruciatingly within their first night of office.

It is interesting how GW has learned nothing from all their past. Zero, nada, null.

I was hoping GW established a stable system where a Codex only tweaks and fixes what was already present in the indices. And with a new head at GW, I was positive things could improve. Oh boy, how naive I was (again). "Hey, we have guys from FLG that help us balancing" they said, "We are doing everything better" they said (okay, not literally, but this is how it sounded).

With Codices being released one by one, we will see the old power creep coming back. It was because of this incremental release strategy that power creep existed in the first place. I thought they had a plan for the game and a system that supports this. But I have seen no incentive from GW to stop making their previous mistakes again.

Let's face it: The Codex system is downright terrible at balancing and only focuses on selling a hard/digital copy and sees balance second.

Sure, right now we are saying "yeah it's getting worse for us, but our new Codex will fix everything". Sounds familiar? How many remember when 7th edition Codex dropped?

Let's face it (again): We are the B-line (maybe even C-line) in GW's range that had moments of glory with that amazing 5th edition Codex because the guys making it had a vision. After that it went downhill. We couldn't catch up then with the power-creep and our last Codex was just to poor transition which aimed to streamline us.
Further, the indices are just another transition job mostly and arguably our biggest advantage was that were weren't hit as hard as other factions. Sure there were other buffs too, like PfP and some useful Dark Lances. However, glaring problems still exist and in some cases (anti-horde) they are more apparent than ever.

I doubt there will be much chance with the future Codex either and I expect another plumbing job that only changes some weapon/model stats along with a few Strategems and wargear options. We will lose some here, gain some there but overall we will be left in the same spot while other factions compete with the newest hotness due to power-creep.

And the reactions will be the same again: "Why can they move faster and have more firepower, yet cost roughly the same? They are more Dark Eldar than we are".

@TheBaconPope I couldn't agree more and consider myself on the "Transports are the problem, not the solution" camp as well.

Ironically, one could argue that our transports are now among the worst assault transports in the game, since they have no advantage over other transports in that regard while being both expensive and fragile.

So, some suggestions.
HQ mount options. At minimum Bikes for Archons and Skyboards for Succubi, but both options for both would be good.

Webway portals need to come back. Either as a squad upgrade that allows deep striking, or as a HQ option that works like it did in 5th. Maybe let units return to the webway too like Swooping Hawk Skyleap.

Talos need a mobility boost. End of story. Deep Strike, or some other way to get into the battle rather than lag behind. Ditto Cronos.

Our vehicles need to be much faster. Back in the day I would routinely deploy on one flank then flat out to the other flank, using speed to leave the enemy out of position and scrambling to respond. That very much required a 36" move in one turn. If I tried that today I would get my ass completely torn apart due to our lack of speed.
We need at least 16" move, and enhanced Aethersails for +1d6 advance. We also NEED to be able to disembark after moving, even if we cannot then move ourselves.

An option that allows our wych cults to assault after advancing would be nice too.

I do not think our transports need that much help, a small boost in speed would be well appriciated though. (I think a standard advance move of 8 would be great) And siszes 1 or 2 models bigger so we can acutally have our heroes in them as well

I am against the assault rule, but since many people seem to want it back i suggest it becomes a new vehicle. Probably with a small move decrease (something like 12 max).

But I would much rather see our normal troops get a movement boost. yes we might not be able to charge that unit on the other side of the table (16 vehicle move, 3 inch deploy, 7 inch charge, means a 26 inch threat range...) aka put them in the middle of the board and charge whereever you like next turn. I know there are other factions that can do similar things, but this should not become the only option. I dislike that they gave complete factions an advance and charge rule since it makes 16 inch charges (or 24 for bikers) much to common.

And while it makes our army clearly better I want the vehicles to be a choice, not a must have.

2 lances and 2 blasters in a 20 man strong troup. It's a lot of dakka.

Lyceus wrote:

2 lances and 2 blasters in a 20 man strong troup. It's a lot of dakka.

It really isn't. The same points in guardsmen using orders puts out somewhere in the area of 3 times as many shots. Even with their low BS, that level of difference is a big deal.

Lyceus wrote:

2 lances and 2 blasters in a 20 man strong troup. It's a lot of dakka.

Compared to what exactly?

Also, I think it's worth remembering that DE get no actual advantage out of using 20-man units. All it does ist makes those squads far more susceptible to morale damage.

So let's take veterans instead they hit the same.
Also 20 veterans 2 lascannons (roughly our lances) and 6!! plasma guns
Or just to ofset the to hit ad 50% dakka
30 guards 3 lascannons 3 plasma guns
Both are slightly cheaper (just not enough for an order) then the kabalites

The difference is not so big, but big enough that as a strategy it falls short. The difference really is the support and the amount of special weapons we field and their price. If we could field an blaster for each 5 man and have blasters at half price and get a meaningfull buff/ignore morale at least it would be ok. But since we have none of that, we lack special weapons with our normal guys, pay more for less damage and die faster. Exept for the first turn, there is practically no reason to not field 2 units of 10 kabalites instead of 1 large unit.

|Meavar wrote:

So let's take veterans instead they hit the same.
Also 20 veterans 2 lascannons (roughly our lances) and 6!! plasma guns
Or just to ofset the to hit ad 50% dakka
30 guards 3 lascannons 3 plasma guns
Both are slightly cheaper (just not enough for an order) then the kabalites

The difference is not so big, but big enough that as a strategy it falls short. The difference really is the support and the amount of special weapons we field and their price. If we could field an blaster for each 5 man and have blasters at half price and get a meaningfull buff/ignore morale at least it would be ok. But since we have none of that, we lack special weapons with our normal guys, pay more for less damage and die faster. Exept for the first turn, there is practically no reason to not field 2 units of 10 kabalites instead of 1 large unit.

We also lack orders, which give things like "Reroll 1's to hit/wound", "Shoot after advancing", "shoot after falling back", or "Your lasguns are now rapid fire 2, have fun!"
Hell, in a pinch they can even get an extra phase in melee.

Dark Eldar are once again a garbage army that GW doesn't know what they want to do with. All of our faction buffs are for melee. Great, but our melee units are atrocious and our ranged units shouldn't be anywhere near a combat with anything more threatening than fire warriors. All of our infantry is meant to go in transports, but upgrades revolve around base 5 or 10, so if you want an HQ you're giving up a needed weapon in most cases.

Our basic weapons have a handy rule that lets us wound anything on a 4, which was great when a humble carnifex took 3x as many wounds from splinter as it did from bolters. Less so when we're wounding on 4s instead of 5s. However, since our example carnifex also had his wound count jump from 3 to 8, he also doesn't really give a crap about the odd wound our venoms can toss into him. On top of that, with the new prevalence of low toughness hordes, the trade-off becomes a glaring issue. If that weren't enough, however, our splinter weapons are also only able to wound vehicles on 6s. Yes, including t5 vehicles, which even the lasgun and grot pistols are wounding on 5s are nearly immune to splinter fire.

In short, I don't think a Dark Eldar horde army could work in its current iteration.