Post FAQ Tournament Tactica - AKA How to Win More

Burnage wrote:

Quauchtemoc wrote:

Burnage wrote:

Quauchtemoc wrote:

TeenageAngst wrote:

How about this, for purposes of me talking about NOVA and further tournaments, it's RAW, but for anything friendly or outside of that sphere it is RAI? Otherwise we will be on different pages until doomsday or GW releases another FAQ.

Well if your local tournament are agree with it their is nothing i can do about it, but i'm quite sure it will not be the case everywhere. But its true , RAW it could be understand like that but considering every codex have the same introduction before their stratagem then i can mix different eldar craftworld and then use all the stratagem if i want ( for exemple )

Yep, this is part of the reason why Ynnari were doing so well pre-FAQ. You could take a small Alaitoc detachment to unlock all the Craftworlds stratagems, then run a mixed Ynnari detachment that included some Saim-Hann bikers - they could then use the Saim-Hann stratagem while also taking advantage of Strength from Death. This wasn't happening at local tournaments, this is exactly how the winner of the Las Vegas Open ran his list.

Ok i see, very bad writting from GW here . But why its diffrent post FAQ then ?

Nothing about stratagems, depending on how you interpret "appropriate faction" - in fact it's actually easier since now you don't need a different Craftworlds detachment. I just think the changes to how to build the army mean the Ynnari aren't going to be doing so well post-FAQ.

If you want to run all three Eldar factions as Ynnari now - which was pretty much always the point of the faction! - you're looking at a 610 point tax.

Well the problem is not about the interpretation of "apropriate faction" but if the small text before each codex army is still viable after the Faq clarification

The fact Ynnari were nerfed by segmenting them into Battle Brother detachments while heavily implying in the notes that they could still benefit from stratagems like before says to me that the way the stratagems worked before was understood by GW and is still allowed because now a Ynnari detachment needs to pick an Eldar flavor and no longer can play Superfriends detachments.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Burnage has it. Now back to the task at hand, figuring out a way to take all 3 parts of the army with obsessions and plenty of CP and minimal unit tax. Anyone wanna take a stab at that one? I got some popcorn in the microwave.

I find this annoying as well.
I don't want to pay for 4-5 HQs to get the CPs and obsessions i want.

Thoughts?

Painjunky wrote:

TeenageAngst wrote:

Burnage has it. Now back to the task at hand, figuring out a way to take all 3 parts of the army with obsessions and plenty of CP and minimal unit tax. Anyone wanna take a stab at that one? I got some popcorn in the microwave.

I find this annoying as well.
I don't want to pay for 4-5 HQs to get the CPs and obsessions i want.

Thoughts?

Honestly how is it any different than any other army tho? We arnt using HQs for obsessions, we are for 1/2 of our army, if you just want the obsessions then its no different than say Tyranids, if you awnt Genestealers and Harpies as Kraken for Advace+charge and Hiveguard as Kronos for re-roll hits.

It just SUCKS that we can onyl take 1/3 our army without being force to take more and very limited HQ's

It's not like "every other army". Every other army can take virtually their entire codex in one detachment and have them all benefit from the chapter tactics. We can't, and in fact we need 3 detachments just to get the entire army a chapter tactic. Plus, our HQs are bad and terribly expensive. Hence why I said no one playtested this properly.

Wait right there TA....Reece and Frankie playtested it and they said it was "So good!"

In all seriousness, I get the frustration, I'm struggling to get a viable list utilizing all three. I end up forced to use a Patrol for one of the three detachments.

merse24 wrote:

Wait right there TA....Reece and Frankie playtested it and they said it was "So good!"

Don't get me started on those two, FLG is the practically the second Warhammer Community site now. I'm mostly disappointed in the playtesters that were hand picked from this very forum. They of anyone should have seen these problems ahead of time.

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In all seriousness, I get the frustration, I'm struggling to get a viable list utilizing all three.  I end up forced to use a Patrol for one of the three detachments.

The fact that so many people vehemently disagree with the notion that somehow this is unacceptable is what I find so flabbergasting. If this exact same rule existed in 7th edition we would have never heard the end of it, but 8th has people putting their pants on their heads and pretending the army is perfect. It's good, yeah, I'll give it that. It's certainly more playable than it ever was. But making lists work is a maddening affair especially if you're confined to the 3 detachment limit. No matter how I make my list I never feel like I'm running the army I want to run because I either run it without Obsessions at all or have 200+ points of useless HQ and troop tax holding me down like a sack of potatoes.

Eh, I feel like that more or less minor difficulty is a decent price to pay to have 3x the special rules, so we can pick our choice of buffs/relics/stratagems.

I agree that it's difficult to find an army list that feels right to play. I also spent hours tuning my list and ended up taking a patrol for my coven units because I don't want to put my Talos' in separate units for the spearhead. So I ended up with a kabal battalion, cult outrider, and coven patrol.

I take alliance of agony and put my HQs in a venom as an elite CC squad together with a Sslyth.
EDIT: Depending on the map setup and enemy they sometimes walk so the Talos' get the +1 T.

This worked not to bad for me. But I only played 2 games with this list right now. And considering the prices we are paying for kabalite warriors and dissie raiders I'm not too concerned that our HQs are a little overpriced.

I have no difficulty to find a nice/competitive army to play with this limitation personnally. Even pure cabal/cult/coven army seems really easy to build.

Pure Kabal has no CC. Pure Coven has no range. Pure Cult has no range AND no staying power. The 3 parts are meant to be run together as they compliment each other, but to get all 3 on the board with obsessions requires and extra useless Archon, extra useless troops, or to ditch most of your command points while taking things like the Spearhead or Outrider.

It's dumb, it's painful to deal with, and it makes no sense from a gameplay standpoint. Again, no other army has to shoot themselves in the foot to get on the table.

No CC doesn't feel like the end of the world to me, I was very happy running an Index list without any (aside from a couple of token HQs). I'm slowly sliding towards running mono-Kabal even though I desperately want some jetbikes and Grotesques on the table.

It is a bloody irritating limitation of our army, there's no denying that. I also think it's fair to say that the relative strength of our Obsessions and list-based stratagems makes up for it to at least some extent.

I realize this isn't the army list forum, but an example might be in order to illustrate the point. I mocked up an army list to try to put some perspective on what it costs to "buy" obsessions for our army. (I've put it in a spoiler tag to minimize the disruption that a large block of text would create in the thread.)

This list is 1880 points. I've included what I felt were mandatory upgrades, but also left enough under the 2k threshold to accommodate an additional unit or weapon upgrades.

Spoiler:

There's very little 'tax' here. It has 4 HQs, while a brigade would have only three, but there's a spot for each HQ aboard a raider with escort. And it avoids the mess of sticking all the HQs in the same transport.

For what it's worth, I'm actually more bothered by the command point deficit than I am by the restrictions. In any other army, this would constitute a brigade and reward me with 12 CP. As I've structured it, I get only 7 CP.

Hence my complaint. If you want enough CP, you need to bring either excessive HQs and Troops or lose Obsessions to run a Brigade. If you want Obsessions, you need to either sacrifice CP to not bring tax or run only a small portion of the army. If you want every part of the army, you either need to forego Obsessions with a Brigade or lose CP to fit in multiple smaller detachments. Everything is a tax, be it points, CP, unit choice, or Obsessions, you must lose one to gain another. Eldar doesn't do this, neither do Space Marines or CSM or Tau or Necrons. If I wanted to run Windriders, Aspect Warriors, and a Wraithknight in a Bael-tan detachment I could, and all would get the same benefit. We, save perhaps for Chaos Daemons, are the only ones who cannot do that.

One might be able to argue that elite armies such as Death Guard, Deathwatch, and Grey Knights do not get the luxury of choice and are instead forced to pick the option that gives them a small amount of CP, but I would also argue that, Death Guard aside, those armies are not well designed either, or are constrained by their own internal limitations that have existed for multiple editions.

Also that list has terrible tax from my perspective because I view most Kabal units as a waste of points, but aside from that, I would lose 5 CP on the cuff from not taking a Brigade. IMO any loss greater than 3 is too much, which severely limits my available build options, as it is mandatory I have more CP than my opponent during a match for Agents of Vect to work properly.

If you really do think kabalites are so terrible, then you can even minimize them further by running two groups of 5 in a raider. (I assume you're not complaining about the ravagers -- if that's the issue then we really are just speaking different languages.)

I'm generally happy to pay for my kabalites, however.

Our Troops are amazing, maybe you have a problem with the army itself?

Initially, I hated it too. But now that I think about it more, I think it is kinda a game-design-strength. The whole point of having fun designing a list is trade-offs. If I could have everything I wanted in the list building phase it wouldn't be as interesting or challenging. Imagine chess where every piece was the same. Not at all the same and not nearly as interesting a game. The tradeoff is part of what is interesting to think through about the codex. How do I get everything I want while minimizing taxes?

Also, in compensation the obsessions are MUCH stronger than those from almost every other previous codex. I would take literally any obsession for its relevant troop type over +6 inch smite range (Thousand sons), any of the demons faction loci, and even most of the necron ones (which are mostly also more narrow). The obsessions also all have some benefit for every entry type, whereas marines for example get nothing on their vehicles even for chapter tactics that might be relevant.

This^^. Our Obsessions are way more stronger than the major of other "chapter"(and similar) rule. And we can even mix those easely than each other army.

corollax wrote:

If you really do think kabalites are so terrible, then you can even minimize them further by running two groups of 5 in a raider. (I assume you're not complaining about the ravagers -- if that's the issue then we really are just speaking different languages.)

I'm generally happy to pay for my kabalites, however.

I run my Kabalites minimum squad and foot slogging. They're 30 point zone control for deep strikes.

Cerve wrote:

Our Troops are amazing, maybe you have a problem with the army itself?

Oh our troops are amazing. I just don't want 9 of them for 3 Battalions, or an excess of Wyches.

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How do I get everything I want while minimizing taxes?

By playing Eldar. Or CSM. Or any other faction that doesn't have its codex broken into 3 factions. This is not good game design, I am not having fun trying to work around either not having CP or not having Obsessions and being forced to bring detachments and units I do not want to bring. You might have fun doing it, and that's great, but don't try to pass this pig slop off as innovative and neat. It's garbage and I'm annoyed it wasn't removed in the playtesting phase because now everyone has to put up with it.

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This^^. Our Obsessions are way more stronger than the major of other "chapter"(and similar) rule. And we can even mix those easely than each other army.

How are they better? Half of them are ripped off from other factions chapter tactics. Like you realize how dumb this is in the context of the whole game, right? Why would I bring Reavers with a Wych Cult when I can bring Shining Spears that do the same damn thing but better? I mean hell I have to bring a whole other detachment to get my Obsessions so I might as well say nuts to that, put in a Farseer and Shining Spears and have an HQ that's actually good with a unit that's a wrecking ball. I'll even have a psychic phase, and guess what, the Shining Spears and Farseer get chapter tactics too.

Raiding force should be +2 CP if you bring at least one detatchment of <Kabal>, one of <Cult> and one of <Coven> that qualify for an obsession.

Corollax would then get 9 CP from his list.

Shining Spears and Reavers do two different jobs, if you're comparyze them I think you're misjudging Reavers.
Shining Spears are an Hanmer, Reavers are harass units. You don't use these two choices in the same way, they play in different ways.
Reavers are cheaper.
Shining Spears needs a game around them, and not just a Farseer.
One Farseer is nearly useless, if you play Spears you build around them a list.
For Reavers instead, you can just throw them into a lis and for their cost they will always pay themselves back.
Honestly, Shining Spears are great if Ynnari. Otherwise, I prefer Reavers. And after FaQ, if you wanna use the SaimHann Stratagem you have to build an entire SaimHann detatchement, so a whole detatchment for both. BUT picking them from Ynnari it means another SH detatchement ADDED to the Spears.

Anyway your playstile seems fitting more with Craftworlds than Drukhari. DE plays different from other armies, if you get amused from hammer units like Spears and others, you would prefer other armies with 360' well-rounded units (Eldar, Chaos, SM etc). Dark Reapers, Shining Spears, Wave Serpents, Obliterators etc are all costly, strong and well rounded units that can works alone. Where alle the DE choices works together as a choir. I know that sounds fluffy but just like Tyranids, Orks etc, Drukhari are amazing when their units cooperate together. Other than Talos, there are no choices that works alone in this Codex.

I can understand your point teenageangst, the way the army is build right now does limit our options a bit.
I don't think we are weaker than other armies, but we do play differently, we are based less around lots of special units than other armies and more on our troops (which I consider very good right now).
Also the command points are not a large problem for me (I usually gladly pay the "tax").
Also if you take 2 battalions instead of 1 brigade you lose 2 command points and 1 character. You pay 450-550 points for 10 command points (+3 for the army makes 13). Here you "waste" 1 HQ compared to a brigade, but you do not have to "waste" the mandatory 3 heavy 3 elite and 3 fast attack slots. You apparently like to play with a lot of those and yes that is harder without giving up command points.
As you mentioned: "as it is mandatory I have more CP than my opponent during a match for Agents of Vect to work properly."
You cannot expect to have more CP than your opponents without investing in it.


I am not saying the split is not a negative thing for us, it clearly is. Despite that I think we do have a fully playable army that is better and more fun than the last edition. We now have an extra limitation we must work around, which means we have to make some hard choices. I don't consider us a bad army at all and the fact that you have trouble breaking the system right now sort of makes me smile and think that balance for dark eldar is not that bad right now. I do realise that we play vastly different games (I would not be able to enjoy games with 100 flocks/ brimstone horrors etc on the table just because they are underprized). But I do agree with Cerve, maybe consider building an eldar army if you cannot field the dark eldar army you wanted, and keep considering the craftworld units over ours?

Cerve wrote:

One Farseer is nearly useless

This is completely untrue, and even after the Codex I'd argue that they're still a better force multiplier than all of our native HQs.

Doom is just too good.

Burnage wrote:

Cerve wrote:

One Farseer is nearly useless

This is completely untrue, and even after the Codex I'd argue that they're still a better force multiplier than all of our native HQs.

Doom is just too good.

Probably but they are supposed to be pure support HQ so its normal.

Rashkasha wrote:

Raiding force should be +2 CP if  you bring at least one detatchment of <Kabal>, one of <Cult> and one of <Coven> that qualify for an obsession.

Corollax would then get 9 CP from his list.

That's also what I think. The whole problem is that we have Raiding Party to allow us to use all three factions. But after the CP changes for battalion Raiding Party got useless. If we would get more CPs from it, everything would be fine.

Seriously, we need 3 HQs and 3 Troops to form a Raiding Party. This is (or should be) something very special only available to us! But for a batallion consisting of 2 HQs and 3 Troops you get 5 CPs, and everybody can do this. Raiding party has no reason to exist after the FAQ.