If we get a 6th Edition Codex...

@ Totingtendertoes
The Diresword in the eldar book has the remove from play special rule is ap2 and cheaper than our huskblade, so it could be possible.
I think the best way to make the archon more killy is to revamp the soultrap. Let the archon soultrap characters as well. Have the increase in strength be a percentage of the captured model's strength say half. Kill a sergeant soultrap him and you're strength 5, then kill a riptide and now you're strength 8!
Makes it easier to power up while not being overpowered. It also makes the enemy think twice before he challenges your archon to keep him from butchering his troops.

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

I think the best way to make the archon more killy is to revamp the soultrap. Let the archon soultrap characters as well. Have the increase in strength be a percentage of the captured model's strength say half. Kill a sergeant soultrap him and you're strength 5, then kill a riptide and now you're strength 8!
Makes it easier to power up while not being overpowered. It also makes the enemy think twice before he challenges your archon to keep him from butchering his troops.

YES PLEASE

As regards 5th edition and assault, here's how I recall it;

3rd edition was an assault based edition.
4th was shooting.
5th favored assault again, though this was colored by the favoring of mech.
6th favors shooting again, and has weakened mech.

I do think assault based armies thrived in 5th. Especially early 5th where stuff like Orks was eating everything and their uncle. Then people figured out that 5th was also a mech paradise and everyone started to stay in their metal boxes (as a way to avoid shooting and assault) and the meta shifted to being about destroying mech and then destroying the passengers.

But 5th was a pro-assault based edition, because of the speed it adjusted assault to. Back in the day assaults tended to grind on because of lack of sweeping advance rules (also the old 5th edition fearless = extra wounds business). 5th made assaults super brutal, if you hit with a bigger blow on the turn you assaulted in - odds were your target was just dead and gone that round, or at most next.

6th reversed from that into again calling back to 4th edition where gunlines and pew-pewing at each other was really the way you got stuff done. Assault remains amped in the speed and danger, but now there are a lot of extra risks and negatives applied to initiating the assault,a nd also you're not allowed to do it as quickly (remember Ghaz infiltrating into your back field with Snikrot and eating the gunline? Forget that noise!)

So, yes, I consider 5th a far more assault friendly and powerful edition. I played assault based armies and won with them last edition. Nowadays, barring Daemons, I can't think of one of my armies that I run as assault and also consider to be competitive.

Quote :

but it took us a while to puzzle out such mind-staggering stratagies as 'Baron+Beasts' Like

Well, it took 6th edition for that, cause in 5th beasts would not have hit and run. Hellions were better in 5th, i think with 4+ FnP and 4+ cover for half the unit in cover.

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

The Diresword in the eldar book has the remove from play special rule is ap2 and cheaper than our huskblade, so it could be possible.

Yes, and no, the diresword is an upgrade to the Dire Avenger exarch for 20pts (loosing his avenger shuriken catapult but gaining said sword and a pistol) AND most importantly the target must fail a leadership test to be removed and seeing as most HQ you'll see in melee are LD10 that's a 1/12 chance to fail, I think it's actually worse than straight up instant death. The only remotely dangerous (i.e beat-stick HQ) thing with a diresword is Asurmen, autarches can't even purchase them.

I'd like to see something along the lines of venom blade poisoned 2+ ap4, agoniser poisoned 3+ ap3, huskblade poisoned 4+ ap2 along with some kind of remove from play ability, but perhaps making everything poisoned isn't all that fun. One could just give Archons Ancient Nemesis, judging from fluff there aren't alot of things they haven't killed.

But I see your point, one can but dream.

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

Let the archon soultrap characters as well. Have the increase in strength be a percentage of the captured model's strength say half.

While I like that idea no one is going to accept your challange, take the archon's wounds on something irrelevent and let the sergeant die to the rest of your squad, or straight away force him into a fight with their (most likely) superior beat-stick HQ and we're back at the Archon being abit meh again.

It's a cool idea though!

Thor wrote:

Back in the day assaults tended to grind on because of lack of sweeping advance rules.

Yeah, but I'm wondering if sweeping advance wasn't introduced in 3rd? Or am I thinking of something else? I'm almost sure you did extra wounds/killed the unit if you won assault and they failed a leadership test. Either way I'm not a great fan of sweeping advance, I feel someone clever could come up with a much better way of handling someone trying to run from a fight.

Thor wrote:

remember Ghaz infiltrating into your back field with Snikrot and eating the gunline?

Nope I never played against orkz back then! HA I WIN! I do feel they're abit too restrictive in ways to get into assault now however. Both of these issues are more of a rulebook problem than a codex one however.

Thor665 wrote:

As regards 5th edition and assault, here's how I recall it;

3rd edition was an assault based edition.
4th was shooting.
5th favored assault again, though this was colored by the favoring of mech.
6th favors shooting again, and has weakened mech.

I do think assault based armies thrived in 5th. Especially early 5th where stuff like Orks was eating everything and their uncle. Then people figured out that 5th was also a mech paradise and everyone started to stay in their metal boxes (as a way to avoid shooting and assault) and the meta shifted to being about destroying mech and then destroying the passengers.

But 5th was a pro-assault based edition, because of the speed it adjusted assault to. Back in the day assaults tended to grind on because of lack of sweeping advance rules (also the old 5th edition fearless = extra wounds business). 5th made assaults super brutal, if you hit with a bigger blow on the turn you assaulted in - odds were your target was just dead and gone that round, or at most next.

I'd have to disagree on that front - 5th was where the game really started to favour shooting over assault. With the removal of Sweeping Advance (or whatever the rule was called that let you win combat and charge a different unit), and with transports being made very cheap and incredibly durable there tended to be little advantage in gearing your army towards assault.

Don't get me wrong - in 5th it was still useful to be decent in assault (hence why GKs were one of the best armies - they had amazing shooting, but every model also backed that up with a force weapon). Likewise, having a some assault units could be useful but only if they were backed up by sufficient shooting. Otherwise, you'd find most of your assault phases grinding down to 'I assault your 35pt rhino with my ~200pt assault squad and kill it. Then I wait around to be shot in your turn.'

Also, whilst the Fearless rules might have made assaults shorter... it wasn't necessarily beneficial to the assaulting units. Ask a tyranid player how much they enjoyed having their gaunts explode whenever they lost combat. Hell, in a multiple combat, some dead gaunts could lead to a Hive Tyrant popping from combat resolution.

In 6th, they might as well have just removed the assault phase altogether, for all the penalties they gave assault units. Beyond a few specific units and lists (daemons ten not to have much choice) assault in 6th is a last-resort - rather than something to build an army around.

TotingTenderToes wrote:

Yeah, but I'm wondering if sweeping advance wasn't introduced in 3rd? Or am I thinking of something else? I'm almost sure you did extra wounds/killed the unit if you won assault and they failed a leadership test.

There was no sweeping advance in 3rd.

If you lost combat you had a morale check (no negative penalties to it from number of wounds you lost combat by - just straight Ld)
If you failed you fell back 2d6.
The enemy then got to advance *or* consolidate.
Consolidate is pretty much as it is now.
Advance you had to move 2d6 directly "forward" (towards the enemy board edge)
If you rolled high enough to catch the falling back unit then, and only then, would you wipe it.

So, yeah, it was nowhere near as easy as it was to do in 5th (or even 6th) and could also leave your assault unit in a pretty bad position if you attempted it.

TotingTenderToes wrote:

Both of these issues are more of a rulebook problem than a codex one however.

I never applied any blame for them, I'm not even sure if they are "issues". They are simply different rules now. I do agree that they are caused by the game edition and not the codex though.

Oh was it that hard?! Well I think it could do with being abit harder now atleast...

Thor665 wrote:

TotingTenderToes wrote:

Both of these issues are more of a rulebook problem than a codex one however.

I never applied any blame for them, I'm not even sure if they are "issues". They are simply different rules now. I do agree that they are caused by the game edition and not the codex though.

Well, I'm calling them issues because I dislike the rules.   

I do really think assaulting is unnecessarily disallowed in too many cases now. I don't see the massive difference between deepstriking a multimelta and blowing up a tank (or a farsight-bomb blowing up a whole lot more than that) or deepstriking a unit of daemonettes and assaulting a squad. Perhaps assault from deepstrike would be too good, but still more ways of getting into assault would (I feel) make the game awhole lot more balanced in regard to what is viable to bring to the table.

I'm going to stop derailing this thread now.

TotingTenderToes wrote:

I do really think assaulting is unnecessarily disallowed in too many cases now. I don't see the massive difference between deepstriking a multimelta and blowing up a tank (or a farsight-bomb blowing up a whole lot more than that) or deepstriking a unit of daemonettes and assaulting a squad. Perhaps assault from deepstrike would be too good, but still more ways of getting into assault would (I feel) make the game awhole lot more balanced in regard to what is viable to bring to the table.

I'm going to stop derailing this thread now.

GW have got it into their collective heads that every unit on the table needs to be able to have a shooting phase before it can be assaulted. Every single restriction in the rulebook is based on that. That's why you will never see assaulting from webway portals, from outflanking or from infiltrating, etc.

If you keep that in mind, you can tweak certain wargear into some decent and plausible wishlisting. I would very much like for the Dark Eldar to get their speed and sneakiness back, so an example for a revised webway portal:

At the start of the game, after Infiltrators have been deployed but before scout moves have been performed, place a small baster marker or similar counter for each Webway Portal in the army anywhere on the table, but at least 12” away from any enemy unit. To determine the final position of each portal, scatter it 2D6”. Should a portal scatter on top of impassable terrain or another model (friend or foe), reduce the scatter by the minimum required. Any portals that cannot be placed are lost. Webway Portals count as impassable terrain and cannot be destroyed.
Any friendly Eldar or Dark Eldar non-vehicle unit arriving from reserves may instead use a Webway Portal to move onto the board, as if it was a board edge. In addition, any friendly Eldar or Dark Eldar non-vehicle unit may use a portal to embark (as if embarking on an open-topped transport) to be placed in on-going reserves. A unit may not embark upon a portal the turn it arrives from reserves.

While it's true they will most likely decline challenges they can still kill them outside of challenges as well (like they did through the entirety of fifth before there even were challenges.)
If they decline the challenge you'll just kill them anyways and they don't get to hit back. It's a win win however you look at it.
We are the fastest army on the board with open toped transports. If the enemy can get their beat stick into contact with yours before you've managed to eat a squad to power up than either you're fighting a FMC, you got caught doing naughty things with the dice god's daughter and he is making you pay, or you're doing it wrong IMHO.

One thing I'd say is that you don't have to fix a unit entirely in the unit.

If GW gave us some version of the Dirge Caster, then Wyches suddenly become more viable. If GW gave us some version of the Skull Cannon, that would be hugely beneficial for a large number of units in our codex. GW seem to be pushing unit combinations this edition, things like that wouldn't surprise me. If executed well, it wouldn't displease me either.

Few other thoughts...

The Voidraven either gets a model or the bin. It's likely they'd seek to make a Voidraven a double use kit. So a new flier could be on the cards.

A Trueborn specific sprue with a lot of snazzy weapon options would appeal to them commercially I'd have thought.

Don't think the Dais of Destruction has an in production model... maybe an updated version, that could be used all over the army, hopefully with better stats?

Mandor wrote:

GW have got it into their collective heads that every unit on the table needs to be able to have a shooting phase before it can be assaulted.

That's not such a bad thing. If a bunch of close combat monsters with T4 and 3+ or 2+ saves are going to assault you, you should at least get one chance to shoot at them before they wipe the floor with you. It only seems unfair when you have units that were never designed with that in mind, so they have T3 and no save at all and die like flies when anything shoots at them.

Barking Agatha wrote:

Mandor wrote:

GW have got it into their collective heads that every unit on the table needs to be able to have a shooting phase before it can be assaulted.

That's not such a bad thing. If a bunch of close combat monsters with T4 and 3+ or 2+ saves are going to assault you, you should at least get one chance to shoot at them before they wipe the floor with you. It only seems unfair when you have units that were never designed with that in mind, so they have T3 and no save at all and die like flies when anything shoots at them.

Very true. But usually these type of units do not have the speed to assault you in a single turn or are an obscene amount of points. It's mostly the fast and elite armies that were designed for this kind of assaulting that get penalized, like Dark Eldar, Eldar and Tyrands. And they got hit twice, because of this "extra" shooting phase, plus overwatch.

Mandor wrote:

Very true. But usually these type of units do not have the speed to assault you in a single turn or are an obscene amount of points. It's mostly the fast and elite armies that were designed for this kind of assaulting that get penalized, like Dark Eldar, Eldar and Tyrands. And they got hit twice, because of this "extra" shooting phase, plus overwatch.

Then they need to be redesigned with the new game in mind. Eldar and Tyranids are both doing fine now.

When we get a new codex (not if!), I hope they figure out clearly what we're supposed to be good at, and then actually make us good at it. We should be all about speed and elusiveness.

Like what? Full BS shooting for vehicle crews at cruising speeds? 2d6 move for vehicles in Assault Phase? Army-wide Stealth or Shrouded rule? :-)

aurynn wrote:

Like what? Full BS shooting for vehicle crews at cruising speeds? 2d6 move for vehicles in Assault Phase? Army-wide Stealth or Shrouded rule? :-)

Ability to fire before or after turbo-boost/flat out moves (a la Eldar Battle Focus) would be nice.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Ability to fire before or after turbo-boost/flat out moves (a la Eldar Battle Focus) would be nice.

Seems like that would be reasonable new rule for us. Let's hope GW has either thought of it themselves or frequents TDC.

Yea and compared to Eldar it would be a vehicle rule. But before or after TB is too strong. I would rather see the jetbikes rule - 2d6 before or after shooting. Maaaaybe add the cruising speed - full BS. And I really think that our troops need a little more resilience. Hell our technologically evolved warriors wear equivalents of Eldar "civillian" armour and IG armour. I find that insulting... :-)

aurynn wrote:

And I really think that our troops need a little more resilience. Hell our technologically evolved warriors wear equivalents of Eldar "civillian" armour and IG armour. I find that insulting... :-)

We're supposed to be a glass cannon, so you better get used to paper-thin armour.

aurynn wrote:

Like what? Full BS shooting for vehicle crews at cruising speeds? 2d6 move for vehicles in Assault Phase? Army-wide Stealth or Shrouded rule? :-)

Like that, yes.

How about army-wide Night Fighting, i.e., 'when firing at these units, the Night Fighting rules are always in effect'?

Night Shields give the vehicle Hard to Hit, just like flyers.

A special save for jumping out of exploding vehicles.

The ability to disembark as well as shoot at full BS from a vehicle moving at cruising speed.

A few more choices, other than the same old Dark Lance, for dealing with enemy vehicles that don't require walking up to the opposing army and sticking a screwdriver in their electric bits.

Generally, more toys. Our list of weapons is sadly small compared to others', and most of it is either the same dark light in three flavours, the same splinter shards in four flavours, or the haemonculi's personal one-shot toys.

I think army wide night fighting would turn our army into a boring gunline type army as well as make other players hate to play us. I'd much prefer an army wide stealth. At least that would benefit our assault units. Army wide shroud would be too powerful.

Same thing with nightshields. That upgrade would cost like 30-40 points.

I agree on the exploding vehicles whole heartedly, something needs to be done. I don't mind being fragile, but one melta will probably kill one transport and half the crew. That's just excessively fragile.

And yes, please, more toys, or at least more access to the toys we rarely use because only two units can take them.

I  wholeheartedly agree that nightfighting is way too much. I would prefer nightshields to give shrouded applicable to jink. The reduced range is too frustrating against some armies that cannot catch us. Army wide stealth for foot units is a good idea. Although coven units should have some other defensive mechanism that will be fluffier, like +1 to FNP. Which equals to 25% less damage if the increase is from 5+ to 4+, which I find just OK.

I am all up for some "escape exploding vehicle" save.

More toys yeeees. All armies have multi-purpose guns. We are aerial army with a sorry defence against aircraft. Its difficult to ask for a s6 shooting while we have a magnificent disintegrator... couldnt just someone nudge it to S6 and put a higher price tag on it?

Shredder... make it template or longer range. Something to make it useable. Srsly compared to Shuriken cannon its absolute garbage.

Bladevaning vehicles with high S on Venoms and Raiders? It would have to be darn good to outweigh the dangers of such move. S6 ap4 venoms, s7 ap3 raiders/ravagers, s8 ap2 Tantalus... at least D3 hits each...

A Night Fighting Warlord trait would be sufficient.

Nah. I would prefer something similar like Corsair Prince has (Eldar Corsairs - Imperial Armour: Doom of Mymeara). Something that does not depend on a die roll. And it should be something that would mitigate if we lose 1st turn.

We already have nightfighting warlord trait - Strategic traits in BRB.

One thing that hasn't been touched on I don't think are the Warlord traits.

I imagine a night fighting warlord trait will probably be on the list, as well as potentially a bonus to seizing initiative. Probably some shenanigans with drugs and pain tokens too.