New Dark Eldar - only a year away?

Just stumbled across this over on BolS:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/11/40kwfb-rumors-2014-schedule.html

Nutshell for those that don't want to/can't click the link:
Q1 Dwarves, IG
Q2 Wood Elves, Orks
Q3 WFB 9th, Brets, SW
Q4 Dark Eldar, ??

Came with the caveat that each quarter is less reliable than the one that precedes it, but it seems like a reasonable release schedule based on age/playability of respective books (if it was down to me, I'd flip Q1 and Q2 but that's just me). Food for thought!

Rumours are rumours, but I do wish for our most favourite spiky elves to get an update. This might go hand in hand with the rumours of GW trying to get rid of Finecast until 2015 - Wracks, all the beasts and Incubi are quite popular.

Of course, that also means we should be seeing a second wave for Eldar, because they have finecast, well, everything!

Ooooh man. If this is true I'd be so stoked! The cool thing is model wise the DE are loaded with great current sculpts... my money is on some awesome new units. Also...I've been calling this for awhile but I'm calling Wyches getting their dodge save against overwatch. Calling it!

I will be over here with my head-sized grain of salt...

If, and it is a big if, GW keeps up the current rate of 40k codexes then I'd expect a new DE codex before the end of next year. I suspect however that the next edition of WFB will slow things down so more like 18 months is my best guess.

I'm taking everything with a grain of salt till I can be sure Phil Kelly is working on the next book.

HUGE grain of salt for me as well. The current dex is 3 years old this month, it's a xenos army, and it still pretty well holds it's own....I just don't see it.

But I sure would love it    

Depends, a codex change is not always a good thing.
Heck, I'm still smarting from some of what we lost from the last dex shift.

Quote :

Depends, a codex change is not always a good thing.

Im totally with you. I see no problems in our codex that arent meta depended. Our codex is really solid piece of work, im not so sure next will really be on this level of quality.

I still remember awfull old 5th edition Chaos Space Marines and Tyranids.
Well, new CSM arent good as well, only so much Flaming Space Dragons around. DOnt even actually see marines themself.

All I'm saying is a nice 3+ sv on our jet bikes would be nice.... I mean come on our jet bikes look identical to our kin.

MurDok nailed it. My friends look at me funny when I tell them that unlike my eldar bikes, I have a 5+ save and can't capture objectives. I guess that's what they get for drilling holes all in their bikes, but then what is a reaver without scary bike flying noises lol

Azdrubael wrote:

I still remember awfull old 5th edition Chaos Space Marines and Tyranids.
Well, new CSM arent good as well, only so much Flaming Space Dragons around. DOnt even actually see marines themself.

Imagine if they just decided to break the codex into three, have a seperate codex for covens, cults and kabals... In theory it almost sounds good, but in execution it's bound to be a terrible mess! As the age-old wisdom advises; if it ain't broke, don't fix it!


(The forgefiend and hellkite are also completely abysmal concepts imho. I hope nothing of that ilk befalls our range of models.)

If the new dex really is coming out in about a year it could explain where that voidraven we have been waiting for ended up. When they finally got it done they figured that the new dex was only a few years off so they may as well just wait and release it with the new dex to maximize sales.

They only need to change a few things to make it a competitive dex again (Str3 vehicle explosions, Wyches getting dodge in the assault phase and doing something to the mandrakes so they are passable.) Basically it can be done easy and fast.

The model range is the best one that they make. If they want to sell those beautiful models (and this is GW so of course they do) then it is only logical they release a dex that makes them competitive again.

I am hoping for no new dex...all they can do is screw it up at this point.

If there will be codex we will get Eldar tratment at best. Some units will be nerfed, 1 or 2 will be over the top. Mandrakes will be even worse. Thats a design vision of infiltrate worth.

We will probably have some situationall to worthless warlord traits, like Combat Drugs for Kabalites.

I will say, Mandrakes have gotten progressively worse thus far, why buck a trend?

It's an interesting thought about units getting 'nerfed' because that would mean some of our units are 'overpowered' or, at least, considered overpowered right now. I'm curious what that could be.

Beast Packs?
Venoms?

That's literally about the sum total of the list I can think of for 'overpowered' units in the DE dex.
Maybe at a squint and a stretch you could toss in Trueborn too.
I'd love to see Wyches be the next 'broken' unit though.

Webway portals need fixing, if they make them play like they do in apocalypse I would be a happy bunny!

I think it's very easy to come up with a list of things that are not strong in the Dex - Mandrakes, WWPs, Scourges, The Court (oh dear gawd, The Court), Lelith, Draz, Decapitator, the Cronos, Shredders, most of the missiles, the electrocorossive whip, mindphase gauntlets, Wych Weapons, Retrofire Jets, Chain Snares, Envenomed Blades, no shooting upgrades possible on Sarges of shooting units (Kabalites/Trueborn/Scourges/ect), no assault upgrades for Sarges of assault units (Mandrakes/Wracks/ect) the list is pretty extensive and easy.

I'm more interested in what is considered perhaps OP for the DE.

I honestly can't think of anything besides the venom being labeled overpowered. And that said I don't consider our Venom as that overpowered since it's insanely fragile and for that matter expensive enough. It also has no means of being used against vehicles, so for basically 12 bolter shots at 36" I'd say it's fair... sure Tyranids cry against us, but that has always been the case and to fix that they'd have to take away poison entirely from basic units.

As for the beast pack, it's certainly a powerful unit when combined with the Baron and a Farseer, but it's stuch a huge investment I'd hardly call it broken. with the right kind of shooting dedicated to it it's relatively easily dealt with.

Honestly, I can't think of anything extremely overpowered in the dex. We do have the opportunity to "spam" things, but we're far from Wave Serpent level here, we do more target saturation. Thus we naturally have to have more similar units on the field. This is also a disadvantage at Killpoints.

Dogmar wrote:

Honestly, I can't think of anything extremely overpowered in the dex. We do have the opportunity to "spam" things, but we're far from Wave Serpent level here, we do more target saturation.

^ this, and given what has arrived with recent army updates, I wouldn't call anything in ours overpowered. I wouldn't have in the past, and certainly not now.

I think the venom losing its flickerfield would be fair though. And we can certainly use an upgrade for our vehicles that denies the enemy's overwatch like in the Chaos book.

With the way DE  close combat works now, that isnt that big nesecity.

Azdrubael wrote:

With the way DE  close combat works now, that isnt that big nesecity.

Not sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate? Something like a Dirge Caster would be a HUGE benefit to a unit like Wyches who are so vulnerable outside of combat.

Units that are extremely vulnerable overwatch (wyches) right now cant take on fearless or atsknf big units head on. They are not effective as a killing power in 6th ruleset and works good only with shooting support. And overwatch from small size unit isnt scary and well mitigated by fact that we can now shoot before assault.

This upgrade will be a waste either way.

Thats a big topic about assault itself, I want to start a new a thread where I can explain in details what I mean.
Without Fearless wounds from 5th there is little point in taking wyches in a killer configuration ( haemy, heka, agoniser ) that was popular before.

Azdrubael wrote:

Units that are extremely vulnerable overwatch (wyches) right now cant take on fearless or atsknf big units head on. They are not effective as a killing power in 6th ruleset and works good only with shooting support. And overwatch from small size unit isnt scary and well mitigated by fact that we can now shoot before assault.

This upgrade will be a waste either way.

I can see what you're saying but that really comes down to the fact that we can't benefit from most of the weird combos that many other armies use due to our extremely limited ally selection and general lack of USRs, which is another issue altogether. I still think that a means of bypassing overwatch would result in more DE assault options being used in games, which can only be a good thing.