Craftworld Codex Impressions

Well it was a long, long wait but after getting my codex and pouring it over all day yesterday, I gotta say I'm pleased. My first impression was the book didn't look as "fun" as the Dark Eldar book with all its wargear options, but after an hour or two of going over the unit, entries and points cost I have to say this is a lean, mean book.

One of the big things for me is the points cost. A lot of units went down in points, and not units that I would expect to go down I might add. The big ones to me are Jetbikes, Shining Spears, Rangers and Wraithguard, all which now can be easily inserted in any list, which for me was a major problem until now. I always wanted to use those units. I felt like I had to strip my entire army down to bare bones just to include those units, and then theme the list to support them with units I didn't really want to take. Point being, Eldar hybrid lists are back. Jetbikes, Shining Spears , Wraithguard can be easily added to any army in either a support role, or as the spearhead of the army.

The other thing I found very pleasing was well rounded units that really need no upgrades. The big ones for me are Farseers, and Wave Serpents. I always ran stripped down, one power Farseers with no upgrades simply because of all the expensive powers and upgrades of the old codex. While not being able to choose powers is tough, 3 powers stock is awesome which more than mitigates the random powers, giving me a swiss-army knife of fairly long range buffs at the heart of my army which is all I ever wanted from my Farseer.

On to the Wave Serpent. While I was reading the rumors and leaks, I dreamed of going up to Phil Kelly and demanding an answer to why the Wave Serpent was made an assault vehicle, after getting the book and seeing the fantastic durability of a stock Wave Serpent and then seeing the truly remarkable resilience it can get from holofields, super-cheap twin linked heavy weapons, I had my answer. Its good enough without the assault ramp. In fact its more than good enough, the thing has become a main-line battle tank, which when on the move is going to shrug off penetrating hits with ease, and if you shell out the points for holofields you'll be shrugging off glancing hits with good regularity.

One suprising thing was the ease with which you can run a MEQ Eldar list. Autarch, Jetbikes, Shining Spears, Wraithguard, Scorpions, Warp Spiders, Wraithlords, Wraithguard, Wraithblades, Dark Reapers and Rangers when given decent cover. Most of which have no ned for a transport to be effective, which further illustrates my point of Eldar hybrid mech/infantry lists being back in full force.

I also think Battle Focus is going to make Eldar one of the slipperiest armies in the game. Dire Avengers darting behind cover after every attack, warp spiders bouncing all over the board with even deadlier nightspinners, shoot and scoot War Walkers with super cheap heavy weapons more than mitigates their conversion to open-topped, bombarding your opponent with waves of rushing guardians, and even the Avatar can make use of it with his ranged attack from his Wailing Doom. Combine this with the bladestorm attribute for all shuriken weapons, and the stat boost to all guardian units and I really Phil Kelly has given the core of the Eldar army versatility, effectiveness and a nasty edge in regards to shuriken weaponry that I never saw coming.

So in summation, I'm really happy with the book. Sure I wish I had the wargear selection of the Dark Eldar book, and an assault vehicle for Craftworld CC...but what do I really care when I run Dark Eldar as allies anyway? This book is meant to last, and has made every unit (including Swooping Hawks) viable again. This book looks like its going to be great fun, and when allied with Dark Eldar provides an almost endless combination of lists, and playstyles. Consider me a very happy Eldar player.

Glad to say that I totally agree. PK has managed to revive the old flavor that many longtime players like myself have missed for years. It's a brutally effective army now that reflects the fluff well. Color me happy

Agreed. Obviously it would be nice to have gotten an assault transport, but if that were the case, Banshees would be practically impossible to deal with, the resilience of the wave serpent takes out the random element that wyches have of will they/won't they get close enough to charge, and now you can guarantee that if you drop a decent sized unit or two of assault troops out of a wave serpent, they'll get there pretty much intact (as opposed to getting their transport shot out from under them) if the enemy doesn't concentrate all their fire (which lets the rest of your army hammer away unmolested). I realise people will point out that without being able to charge the turn they disembark banshees might never make it into combat, but don't forget that their charge distance is effectively 13", more with fleet.

I've also seen comments that complain that assault units in wave serpents won't be able to charge before turn three. I say so what, by turn three I'll have caused enough damage to ensure that what i'm charging gets hurt, instead of running flat out on turn two into a full squad of whatever.

I've got plenty of ideas so far about how to run an Eldar list, I'm really looking forward to getting them on the table (once I get funds together for them of course!).

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

I've also seen comments that complain that assault units in wave serpents won't be able to charge before turn three. I say so what, by turn three I'll have caused enough damage to ensure that what i'm charging gets hurt, instead of running flat out on turn two into a full squad of whatever..

I'm in total agreement.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

now you can guarantee that if you drop a decent sized unit or two of assault troops out of a wave serpent, they'll get there pretty much intact (as opposed to getting their transport shot out from under them) if the enemy doesn't concentrate all their fire (which lets the rest of your army hammer away unmolested). I realise people will point out that without being able to charge the turn they disembark banshees might never make it into combat, but don't forget that their charge distance is effectively 13", more with fleet.

Sorry but unless you can manage to disembark your Banshees completely out of LOS of the enemy then they are going to get shot up sufficiently that they will be little or no threat to any enemy. Especially as they will almost always be striking simultaneously with their opponents. In fact it's hard to see any viable assault element in the new codex other than a melee-equipped Wraithknight. Everything else suffers from the lack of a delivery system.

I personally feel you gentlemen are being far too sanguine about what the lack of an Assault Vehicle does for Eldar assault troops. I think anyone making heavy use of them will have to be pretty stubborn, and that goes doubly so for Banshees.

Also, given the proliferation of MEQ killing weapons, I'm not sure I'd want to run a T3 version!

@Count. That's exactly my point, you force your opponent to shoot at a particular unit or face the consequences. Don't assume that you have to charge the enemy at the earliest opportunity, soften them up first while your assault squad is safe and sound inside that wave serpent, then charge when you've softened them up sufficiently so that they can't kill enough of your squad to make it ineffective.

I'd also dispute that they will almost always be striking simultaneously, the rule states that for that to happen, the banshees must charge through difficult terrain, so if you use movement appropriately you will strike first most of the time. The penalty also doesn't apply if the unit is in combat from a previous turn, so you could quite conceivably tarpit the unit you want to charge for a turn with, say, jetbikers, then charge in with the banshees the following turn and clean up. No-one ever said using an Eldar army was supposed to be easy.

@Count/wanderingblade. As for the lack of a delivery system, that's the case with most armies since you're limited to open topped transports (which have a tendency to explode leaving you foot slogging across the field anyway), jump infantry which is sorely exposed, or the land raider, which is a huge points sink if you mainly use it as a transport. Feel sorry for the Tyranids if you must, no transports at all, their combat units are always exposed to fire but I've never heard them grumbling about it.

@wanderingblade. I think the point of the eldar codex is that they aren't supposed to make heavy use of assault troops, they're supposed to make a balanced use of all the troop types - Eldar have always been intended as a force that has a key for every lock, but no master key that opens all doors. Banshees have specific targets in just the same way as striking scorpions, or fire dragons, if you're charging something with AP3 weapons that's a bad tactical decision (or a desperate one). Use them to bully other units though and you're onto a winner, just shoot the AP3 toting squad with your fire dragons or shuriken cannons etc instead.

Just a final thought then, if armies didn't have their own inherent weaknesses (like lack of an assault transport in this case) then every game you played would be an identikit of the last, with two armies of basically the same ability slugging it out, and the result would be entirely dependant on who got the first turn/who rolled the best dice and the only difference would be what the models looked like. The reason I don't collect Tyranids is because I always want to have a viable shooting phase. The reason I don't collect Guard is because I don't want to watch my army evaporate in the close combat phase, I play marines because I like their resilience, but I accept that they're never going to be better than a specialist at a particular task. The tactical challenge of this game we play (and I presume we all enjoy, otherwise why do you play at all) is how to make the most of your advantages whilst making sure your weaknesses don't lose you the game.

The Wave Serpent not being an assault transport doesn't bother me. Partnered with some wraithblades, and supported by a bevvy other Wave Serpent deployed units, if your opponent decides to focus all his attention on the Banshees it'll be his mistake.

Besides with Striking Scorpions, Wraithblades and affordabley costed Shining Spears, you can actually just have the Banshees focus on what their supposed to do, shred things left out in the open. Thats not to mention if you have allied Wyches or Incubi already mixing it up while the Banshees wait a turn.

The non-assault vehicle thing definitley crimps my style, but I think its pretty easy to work around with the right units supporting the banshees . Besides the Wave Serpent is such a beast at medium, to close range with cheap-o TL scatterlasers and bright lances you are bringing a ton of heat right up into your opponents face. He'd be crazy to focus on the banshees alone.

First off, while I do not wish for completely homogeneous armies, giving most armies something fast with 2 or more attacks basic (so, CCW/Pistol) is a long way away from that. We know this as I think every army in the game apart from Tau, Imperial Guard, and CW Eldar have it. Moving Eldar from column B to column A would not be out of place or harmful to the diversity of the game.

I would personally say it seems very clear that you're not being expected to make heavy use of assault troops with this Codex. But there are an awful lot of them in the codex, and it would be nice if they didn't come with such restrictions to use.

I think players will struggle to deploy a bevvy of Wave Serpent mounted units close up to the enemy simply due to them being so expensive. A full Banshees squad, some Wraithblades and two Wave Serpents along break 500 quite comfortably. Two squads of Marines in Rhinos should work out at less. And yes, Wave Serpents are awesome, but if you simply want the mobility of a transport, they're not a great choice, particularly if you start sticking on holofields and heavy weapons onto all of them.

Nor do I think your opponents will have to focus on your Banshees alone to stop them. 9 Bolter Marines kill four of them double tapping - and as that's a 18" threat range, your Banshees have to confront that at some point, unless you shoot them all dead before then, at which point why do you need them? That 4+ armour save tends to go missing a fair bit under fire too. One heavy flamer can easily wipe out half the squad. Unless you have heavily suppressed the enemy, they are probably going to have the firepower to reduce the Banshees to an annoyance and kill anything else they don't like. And if you've dropped 500+ points alone on this assault force, I'll be really impressed if you have suppressed the enemy that much.

Also, Banshees suffer in that their specific target - MEQ - doesn't appear in ever list and is something easily covered by half the army; a static Scorpion Exarch kills nearly as many MEQ as six static Banshees. But that's somewhat besides the point. I'm somewhat bemused by the idea that Wraithblades and particularly Shining Spears are more suited than Banshees for heading into cover; clearly Eldar artisans hand-produce every plasma grenade.

And of course the vast majority of assault troops in the game have it difficult at the moment. Its why an awful lot of them aren't fielded, or acknowledged to be weak armies/builds taken en masse. What makes anyone think Eldar assault will be any different?

wanderingblade wrote:

Nor do I think your opponents will have to focus on your Banshees alone to stop them. 9 Bolter Marines kill four of them double tapping - and as that's a 18" threat range, your Banshees have to confront that at some point, unless you shoot them all dead before then, at which point why do you need them? That 4+ armour save tends to go missing a fair bit under fire too. One heavy flamer can easily wipe out half the squad. Unless you have heavily suppressed the enemy, they are probably going to have the firepower to reduce the Banshees to an annoyance and kill anything else they don't like. And if you've dropped 500+ points alone on this assault force, I'll be really impressed if you have suppressed the enemy that much.

I completely agree with this because this has been my experience in general, especially for any army that does not have an assault vehicle. I would like to add that Scorpions have a major strategic place still because of the fact they can get in the enemies face by round 2-3.

I think it's worth pointing out that the elder codex has a metric ton of ways to pin the other guys along with ways to make them reroll successful tests and reduce leadership. A pinned unit is less of a threat to your banshees as they hop out of their transport and spend a turn fixing their hair (Mane? whatever...) before they charge.

all true points referring to pinning. there does seem to be a prevelance of LD10/fearless armies around at the moment though and pinning wont help one bit against them.
whilst banshees might work under some seriously niche conditions, it is much much easier to get decent performance out of infiltrating scorpions or harlequins. the days of banshees FTW are long gone unfortunately :-(

csjarrat wrote:

all true points referring to pinning. there does seem to be a prevelance of LD10/fearless armies around at the moment though and pinning wont help one bit against them.
whilst banshees might work under some seriously niche conditions, it is much much easier to get decent performance out of infiltrating scorpions or harlequins. the days of banshees FTW are long gone unfortunately :-(

While what you said is true, the wraith fighter has terrify which makes them lose fearless. throw in a raider with torment grenade launchers turboboosting to be over a unit with a warlock or spirit seer with horrify and that leadership 10 fearless army is LD6 having to reroll successful tests. Is it hard to do? yes, but it can be done and would be amazingly fun. (did I mention the banshees can have have fear?)

But wont it take till at least turn 2 before they can charge? Lets say turn one, I have them in a serpent and the serpent turbos across the board to get them in close turn 2 they get out and fire a short range pistol then turn 3 they can charge.

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

While what you said is true, the wraith fighter has terrify which makes them lose fearless. throw in a raider with torment grenade launchers turboboosting to be over a unit with a warlock or spirit seer with horrify and that leadership 10 fearless army is LD6 having to reroll successful tests. Is it hard to do? yes, but it can be done and would be amazingly fun. (did I mention the banshees can have have fear?)

As you say, its hard - keeping multiple AV10 vehicles alive, rolling the right psychic power, getting the psykers within 18", making the roll, not getting done over by DtW/Psychic Defences, not having any of your own units panic or have the Hemlock in position so that he won't be making them reroll, not accidentally causing the target to flee leaving the Banshees stranded - and then you've got one unit suppressed. It's mate is fine... but lets assume you've managed to spot an isolated unit, so isolated it can't be supported in any meaningful way, you've got the charge in and...

You just spent a huge amount of resources and planning on getting one subpar combat unit into contact. 10 Banshees should kill 5 Marines. 4 Wraithblades will do that, so that's about even but 5 Shining Spears will do it in the shooting phase alone.

Like, I don't want to discourage people from trying to find a good way to use them, but it depresses me just how hard it is and unfortunately I must share it. I think that's the final insult really. The difficulty in getting them there is one thing. The fact that once there they're not exactly outstanding is the real killer. Even with power weapons, 2 WS4 S3 attacks simply don't advertise themselves as elite. But that's a problem for the Banshees. The difficulty of the delivery system is an issue for all of them.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Sorry but unless you can manage to disembark your Banshees completely out of LOS of the enemy then they are going to get shot up sufficiently that they will be little or no threat to any enemy. Especially as they will almost always be striking simultaneously with their opponents. In fact it's hard to see any viable assault element in the new codex other than a melee-equipped Wraithknight. Everything else suffers from the lack of a delivery system.

Yep and Banshees and Avengers are the worst element of the new list solution dont take them.. Scorpions , bikes or spiders can be in combat on turn 1 , Harlies on turn 2 and they can survive the fire. Yes its a foot / biker army now . Thats good Guard , Marine , Dark ELdar and Orc already do Mech .

You don't have to do all of that to make them fail a pinning test though. Any one of them would be enough to make most units fail a pinning test. When they are pinned they are easier to charge was my point ( and the elder have 12 separate weapons that cause pinning checks last I looked. When you're forcing that many checks most non fearless armies are going to fail eventually).
Would I use Banshees? heck no. But people keep saying they are completely unusable and that simply isn't the case. Are they hard as heck to get to work? Yes, But there ARE work arounds to most of their problems if you're willing to invest the effort. Effort better spent in other area I will freely admit, but if you have your heart set on banshees then you can still use them.

(on the charge they have 3 attacks not two btw and the exarch can take a +2 strength AP2 weapon that strikes at IN plus some nice powers like disarm for challenges.)

@bklooste

In my humble opinion avengers now have two roles. A minimum unit of 5 to get a wave serpent for 25 points cheaper than Guardians, and a unit of ten plus shimmer shield in a serpent to aggressively take an objective and hold it. ( back line farseer baby sitter is also an option for them.

Also Eldar get access to telepathy, which is great on level three psykers. Especially ones that can take jetbikes. Terrify will strip fearless, and warlocks have access to horrify which gives -3 leadership. This can force even marines to fail their pinning test. Not to mention it makes being 7" or less away from the table edge a dangerous prospect. So pinning will be more useful with eldar than most armies.

That being said with all the other goodies in the book Banshees are not really needed. If you want to use them I would take them cheep, without a transport. They can cover 12" a turn on foot anyway. Suddenly you have a relatively cheep unit your opponent has to shoot and can threaten most of the midfield turn 2. I'm not saying they are ideal, I'm just saying maybe wanting to stick them in a wave serpent is the wrong approach. Hell just run them behind and advancing wave serpent!

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

I'd also dispute that they will almost always be striking simultaneously, the rule states that for that to happen, the banshees must charge through difficult terrain, so if you use movement appropriately you will strike first most of the time.

I can only say that if your opponents are allowing you to charge units without taking terrain tests then either they're doing something wrong or you're using a strange interpretation of the rules (possible, as I note you highlighted the word 'through' as though it was particularly significant in some way).

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

You don't have to do all of that to make them fail a pinning test though. Any one of them would be enough to make most units fail a pinning test. When they are pinned they are easier to charge was my point ( and the elder have 12 separate weapons that cause pinning checks last I looked. When you're forcing that many checks most non fearless armies are going to fail eventually).
Would I use Banshees? heck no. But people keep saying they are completely unusable and that simply isn't the case. Are they hard as heck to get to work? Yes, But there ARE work arounds to most of their problems if you're willing to invest the effort. Effort better spent in other area I will freely admit, but if you have your heart set on banshees then you can still use them.

(on the charge they have 3 attacks not two btw and the exarch can take a +2 strength AP2 weapon that strikes at IN plus some nice powers like disarm for challenges.)

@bklooste

In my humble opinion avengers now have two roles. A minimum unit of 5 to get a wave serpent for 25 points cheaper than Guardians, and a unit of ten plus shimmer shield in a serpent to aggressively take an objective and hold it. ( back line farseer baby sitter is also an option for them.

Look. I love Banshees, and I would love to use them. And I accept that unusable is too broad a term with factual inaccuracies. But, if the only way to use them is to gear the rest of your army about them, hope you roll the right powers (because Fearless does crop up often enough) and hope a plan with a great many potential points of failure goes off virtually hitch-free then, for my purposes, they are unusable. I like All-Comers lists, I like winning, Banshees are borderline incompatible with that. I know how many attacks they have, they will not get that charge bonus all the time, a Thunderwolf unit within 18" can charge them with nigh-total safety before you can wolf a wolf with another wolf. They're frail, they don't hit that hard (Exarch or no) and getting them to make that initial charge is very difficult. They are certainly a weak unit. Unusuable may be hyperbole, but saying there's no problem, as some have, goes a great deal further the other way.

Mush might be onto something with just running them cheap and on foot, people will kill them if they want to but its a situation in which target priority can be used in their favour. I'm still iffy on it. I'm iffy about FootDar in general. They might want people to run it, but my gods it looks fragile.

I agree with you on Dire Avengers though. I'd also add they'll be popular amongst people who find 12" guns a dealbreaker i.e. me. Dire Avengers playing weeaboo at 18" will be a great deal more difficult to retaliate against. Piling in guys to go kill at 12" to make a triumphant blow may be very Eldar but its not for me. I'll be scooting around with my DarkCraft United Mechdar, thankyou kindly.

And yes, Mechdar will be very alive and well with this codex.

Count Adhemar wrote:

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

I'd also dispute that they will almost always be striking simultaneously, the rule states that for that to happen, the banshees must charge through difficult terrain, so if you use movement appropriately you will strike first most of the time.

I can only say that if your opponents are allowing you to charge units without taking terrain tests then either they're doing something wrong or you're using a strange interpretation of the rules (possible, as I note you highlighted the word 'through' as though it was particularly significant in some way).

I simply meant that if you're charging, for example, a unit hiding behind an aegis defence line, it only counts as difficult terrain if you have to go over it to make contact. If you drop your assaulters on the other side then there's no terrain for them to move through hence they strike at Initiative. Maybe it's my local meta and the amount'type of scenery available, but there aren't many occasions when i've had to assault through difficult terrain to make contact, particularly if you're careful about where you charge from (which in this instance is part of my point, since the resilience of the wave seprent means you don't have to strive for the earliest possible charge, turn 4 would be quite early enough).

Even if you do have to strike simultaneously, I'd happily put a unit of say 8 Banshees up against a marine combat squad, which is the point i was originally making, you can soften up the enemy to a point where you don't want to waste any more firepower on it, then use the banshees to mop up.

That's how I see them working anyway.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

I simply meant that if you're charging, for example, a unit hiding behind an aegis defence line, it only counts as difficult terrain if you have to go over it to make contact. If you drop your assaulters on the other side then there's no terrain for them to move through hence they strike at Initiative.

I see what you mean but that does still leave the problem of them standing around twiddling their pretty little thumbs for a turn after they disembark from their non-assault vehicle when presumably their potential assault targets will want to have a word with them. That word being "FIRE!!"

As Wanderingblade said a little while ago, Banshees may not be technically unusable but they require so much effort and luck to make them practical that they simply are not worth it for the very mediocre effect they have.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

Even if you do have to strike simultaneously, I'd happily put a unit of say 8 Banshees up against a marine combat squad, which is the point i was originally making, you can soften up the enemy to a point where you don't want to waste any more firepower on it, then use the banshees to mop up.

That's how I see them working anyway.

Shame that Shining Spears will do it better and more safely while retaining a useful role against more threats.

Also, I'm puzzled slightly by thinking your Banshees don't need to see combat until turn 4... if they're not going to get used before then, why not use the points elsewhere on something that will?

I'd expect shining spears to be more effective, they're nearly twice as many points.

The standing around bit is where I see the serpent shield coming in handy, nasty shooting attack, causes pinning and if you've got a wraith fighter hanging around (which I plan to do anyway regardless of using banshees or not) then any passed pinning tests need to be re-rolled. If you manage to pin the opponent then all of a sudden that standing around isn't so dangerous after all.

As regards not seeing combat till later in the game, what's the issue, reserves often don't even come onto the table till then and won't see action before that, the wave serpent itself will still have the opportunity to influence things. I see eldar as working as a whole, so I would use banshees/scorpions/harlequins etc when they were going to be most effective rather than taking something I think has to have an impact from turn one until it's dead. Maybe it's a game philosophy issue.

I was comparing the 5 to 8 Banshees which is near equal points after all. And that's in cover. Outside cover, the Spears will grossly outperform the Banshees.

And if you're planning on just using the Serpents for shooting, why spring for a Banshee unit inside, when the Dire Avengers are that bit cheaper? And more useful?

The reserves analogy is inaccurate, particularly with an Autarch, as they are likely to be in and contributing far earlier - and yes, it is an issue when they don't. I get the value in having a unit that comes into the fight fresh, once you've seen what is going on, and contributes. But that's not Banshees, as Banshees have to expose themselves before they can help. An assault unit that only gets in contact in turn 4 places me down a 100 points for half the game. That's not insignificant, its not ideal.

There definitely is a game philosophy issue here. You, as far as I can tell, have it in your head how Eldar shall fight and you're looking at the codex to find the best way of executing that. And good on you I guess. Me - I want an army that does fun stuff, and contains units I like, and wins - not cutthroat tournament playing, but I do want a strong army. And right now, I'm grumpy as I like combat, I really like Banshees, and neither seems really on my to do list now. There's a fun shooting army or two in there, so I'm not disconsolate, but Eldar assault seems really weak to me. And the worst thing is its not even balancing the book in any way, as its really trivial to take a decent assault force from DE to add to them.

Oi vey.