DE may not be overpowered, but soup may be.

Went to a two day GT this weekend. Played 5 games over 2 days.
Took second place (missed 1 game by 1 measly point... 1 point!) but I was more interested in the armies that attended.

75% of the armies there had castellians. They were all some variant of CP farms with guard, blood angels and knights.
The other 25%?
Eldar soup.

Dark Eldar/Eldar or Dark Eldar/ Eldar/ Yannari/ Harlequins. There were only a few armies that did not have a CP farm, Eldar or Knights.

In the end, 5 of the top 6 players vying for first through 6th were running Eldar soup. Either Dark Eldar and Eldar or some with Harlequins thrown in.

5 of the top 6 at a GT.

At this point, I have to admit that Eldar soup is overpowered. I think Dark Eldar is fine. I think Eldar is fine. I think Harlequins are fine. I think any mix of the three is NOT fine.

At this point, we all know that you take Black Heart for vect and the CP farm, you take Prophets for the 4++ that makes talos and Grots amazing. You take Yanari or Haim for the extra movement/attacks.
What GT has poisoned tongue at the top tables? Coven of 12?
NONE.

I don't want to be nerfed, But I think a fix to ALL the problems in competitive 40K is allowing soup (allies)
Take that away, and the game would be great.

Just my .02

Eldar is only OP b.c Imperial is OP, and b.c tournaments force timed matches with house rules for VPs.

Aeldari soup is the only army to counter them Castallens atm (actually Tyranids does too, but players are just now realizing it), Ynnari Soup has been shown to lose against Nids/Ocks without the ITC rules.

ITC style playing is the real problem IMO, armies that relay on 4-5 turns to win with no up front damage cant handle ITC, we NEED to play full 5 rounds with 3 hours at least per game, and we need to get rid of kill XYZ type of units for bonus VP (Head Hunter for example), in many tournaments assassins for worth 1 VP, thats why they are following out of favor, no one wants to take an 80pt unit that gives VP and doesnt gain any VP.

Are some Imperial and Ynnari to strong and needs to be nerf in general? YES, but Ynnari as a whole is fundamentally broken, you either nerf the points so badly that none Ynnari cant even be played or you make the Characters for Ynnari all 300ptsand then no one will want to play them anyways. Ynnari just needs to be charged to have a Buff (like Power from Pain) chart, just you need to die or kill things to move the chart up, making the 1st couple easy and the last few harder to get (more deaths).

Imperial is bad b.c CP farming, otherwise they are well balanced, but having infinite CP is a problem, every army with that is a problem.


EDIT: Let me add, i personally know a few Tyranid players (im a long time player of DE and Nids) that has gone 4-1 against IG/IK/BA list, the also do well against Ynnari soup b.c the nature of the armies, its either 250+ models with 9+ Psykers or its Units of Carnifex's, as 1 in a unit doesnt give soulburst actions and Castallens cant kill more than 1 normally do to no over spill damage, along with Flyrants to take out the IG/BA and loads GSC/Magus (both lists runn a Battalion of GSC/Magus).

It's already rumoured that CP farms will be hit with the nerfhammer in the next Big FAQ.

there's only one way to reduce the eldar soup lists
nerf dark eldar

One GT is not a large enough sample size.

NOVA for instance, had only a couple Eldar soup players in the invitational. Almost half was Imperial Knights soup.

As bad as people think Eldar soup is, I mean... Juice beat Matt roundly.

The issue, as it stands, is that there isn't a single benefit to not Souping.

- You get no advantage in units. In fact, you're going to be at a severe disadvantage. Firstly, because the Soup armies are free to cherry-pick the best units from multiple armies, shoring up weaknesses and/or taking solid units. What's more, mono armies are still limited by the rule of 3, so they can't even have more of their own army's good units than Soup armies.

- You get no advantage in CP. And, once again, you'll almost certainly be at a huge disadvantage in this area. You're stuck with whatever CP your own army can generate, whilst Soup armies can ally in CP batteries (with Imperial Guard being the most notorious). What's more, many armies seem like their stratagems were based around the number of CPs they could generate on their own. e.g. IG can generate a ton of CP but really don't have an abundance of good stratagems to spend them on. In contrast, Knights can generate very few CP but have some very nasty stratagems. The issue is when these armies are combined and Knights suddenly have a ton of regenerating CP at their disposal.

- In theory, mono armies could get an advantage in unit cohesion/buffs. Except that, more often than not, even this falls flat. To take the example of Eldar Soup, Dark Eldar don't have any in-Codex buffs that compare even remotely to the power of, say, Doom. Indeed, if anything, Doom would seem to synergise far better with many of our units than our actual HQ buffs.

Count Adhemar wrote:

It's already rumoured that CP farms will be hit with the nerfhammer in the next Big FAQ.

I've heard it suggested that you might only be allowed to spend CPs on the detachment that generated them, which would definitely help with IG CP farms.

I think more would still need to be done to fix Soup, though.

While I agree soup in general is annoying, ITC tournament format deserves a good chunk of the blame. I also don't know if GW is willing to step away from soup, because it's a sales-driver.

withershadow wrote:

While I agree soup in general is annoying, ITC tournament format deserves a good chunk of the blame. I also don't know if GW is willing to step away from soup, because it's a sales-driver.

Soup is fine if you dont get all the rules to go with it, if you got ONLY the base rules on the Datasheet of "ally" detachments then none of these problems would appear, you wont have Ynnari and Agents of Vect in the same army, you wont have CP regen/Stratagems for Knights, you wont have BA captains with Relics, etc....

This is how AoS does it and IMO a good start for 40k, just dont have points limit on allies in 40k like AOS does.

You can still take all the same units the same ways, just you need to make 1 detachment your main (your WL detachment) and if you wanted to change secondary Faction (Aeldari <Drukhari> to Aeldari <Ynnari>) you will make that an Ally detachment, or keep it all as Aeldari <Drukhari> and all 3 detachments gains all the rules.

This is also let players keep using Multi-detachments for different Traits within the codex rules.

I've advocated for AoS style allies since AoS introduced allies because it makes so much sense. It's the first good rule to come out of that tampon bucket they call a game system.

Not having stratagems or relics to work with would actually make taking stuff like Doomseers require way more of a cost/benefit analysis. I can get behind that (even though it would really harm the lists I like to run!).

I would say that if they brought in allies AoS style I'd like a return to the allies matrix. The idea of Eldar and Imperium working together has been in the game since its inception and with only 500 points of soup allowed it wouldn't be completely unreasonable. Also it'd give me the entirely self-serving ability to run my small Sisters collection for the first time since this damnable edition came out.