Reading this week's White Dwarf

So, I've just been reading the latest White Dwarf (all about Dark Eldar), and a few things occurred to me...

Quote :

Dark Eldar Wyches excel in gladiatorial combat... gliding gracefully into battle aboard sleek Raiders before leaping into the bloody melee.

Do they indeed? We'll see. I'll hold you to that!

From the battle report:

Quote :

Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue... Archon Witherchill

'Lady Malys? Who's that?' This is just sticking the knife in.

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The Razing of Hive Alarum

'Alarum' as in Hive 'Warning'? Or Hive 'Shakespearean Stage Direction'?

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Wait! The imbecile monkeigh have arrayed... 'forces' against us. Slaughter them and the feast begins. Saegran, lead us in.'

Someone wrote that dialogue, on purpose.

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This is a special rule for our game to make the Dark Eldar look good represent the suddenness of the Dark Eldar attack.

Normally, of course, Dark Eldar always call before attacking.

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... combined their firepower on the approaching Wyches, killing several... explosive shells caught four more Wyches and blasted them to bits.

So, not so much 'leaping into the bloody melee' as 'getting blasted to bits on the way' then? Is it just me or do I sense a certain glee in that 'blasted to bits'? Maybe... they just don't like wyches?

Quote :

Haemonculus Malothrack and his Wracks were blown apart by massed autocannon and lasgun fire, A Grotesque was torched to death... the Wracks of the Suffering Host earned their name as... [seven are killled] in the furious blast.

'Blasted to bits', 'blown apart', 'torched to death'. I'm really not getting the impression that 'wow, Dark Eldar rule!'

Quote :

The [Incubi's] armour proved too much for the [Ogryns], and only a single Incubi fell, avenged effortlessly by the infernal huskblade of Archon Not-Malys.

Effortlessly? Either the Huskblade has been improved somehow, or rolling lots of 6's now counts as 'effortless'.

Quote :

The Wyches in the south assaulted [the Wyvern], blowing it sky hight with plasma grenades...

So much for 'leaping into the bloody melee', if all they do is still go after vehicles. And plasma grenades? Why didn't they just use Haywire grenades instead? No, don't tell me they've taken those away!

Quote :

As the game continued the Dark Eldar found themselves getting better and better - their physical bodies literally strengthened by the death and suffering around them... by Turn 3 every Dark Eldar on the battlefield benefitted from Feel No Pain... by Turn 5 the Dark Eldar would also become Fearless...

So, yeah, that's how Power from Pain works now.

Quote :

... blasting the Succubus and her Wyches, who quickly fled... The Archon and his remaining Incubi didn't stand a chance... punished Urien Rakarth and added yet another death...

Hey! Whose battle report is this supposed to be anyway?

Quote :

The Voidraven bombers proved their pedigree throughout the battle.

From the sound if it, they did everything.

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On the ground, the Wracks, Grotesques, and Pain Engines really excelled...

But everything else kind of sucked?

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... the advantages of Power from Pain showed themselves - by turn 2 almost every Dark Eldar unit benefitted from Feel No Pain, and when they began to get Furious Charge and then Fearless...

In case there was any doubt: yes, that is how Power From Pain works now. No more pain tokens. I think that might be a good thing.

Quote :

The humble Guardsmen more than showed their quality...

Oh, please. That's just taking the piss.

Quote :

Ed Cottrell: The Voidraven had to be larger than the Razorwing...

That's pretty big!

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Jes: Yeah, it's an evil bomb. Very evil.

An evil petting zoo?

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8 Things You Need To Know About Dark Eldar Weapons... splinter weapons... shredders... an eyeburst...

A what?

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Liquifier guns... The Parasite's Kiss...

The which?

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If the weapon has 'dark' in its name (such as dark lance), run like the wind.

A dark petting zoo?

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How nasty can a sword made of bone be, eh? Very. Don't touch it. Ever.

I... wasn't going to.

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... darklight weapons which... fire beams of energy stolen from the crushing depths of a black hole.

And yet it takes dozens of them four turns to kill five Imperial Guard tanks, and they had to send in the Talos to finish them off, and some wyches with, ugh, plasma grenades.

Quote :

The Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue... painted by the Studio army painting team...

... Junior League Division.

Well a lot of it makes me go 'Hmm...', but it might not be so bad. They were pushing the Coven and the Voidraven, so of course they did everything: they barely had anything else. They sent the Wyches in on foot, so of course they got slaughtered, and they might not have given them haywire grenades, because points? I guess we'll see!

So they had to make up a special rule for this game to represent the suddenness of the DE attack.... No GW don't put a rule like that in the actual codex I'm sure all our opponents will allow us to change the rules when we explain it to them. Idiots.

I have this horrible feeling wyches won't get haywire nades and reavers will lose bladevanes!

From what I have seen I fear that:

Bladevanes gone from Reavers, moved to HoW, still 5+ Save
Haywire gone from Wyches
3+ models gone from Trueborn and set to 5+
Cannon now Salvo
Nightshields work like Holofields
Flickerfields gone
Beastpack smaller, Khymerae have Daemon special rule
Taloi still T7 and BF3 at the same price as an Wraithlord with T8 and BF4
Shredder no Monofile special rule
Wracks unchanged but no more troops with Haemonculus
Vect gone (so no more named Archon)
Still the stupid supersonic rule instead of a proper vector dancer on flyers
AV10 all around on Ravagers and Voidravens
Every model down 1 - 2 Points but no changes
Mandrakes still useless
Court still useless
Inccubi AP3 or AP2 with unwieldy
Still no own LoW
Warlord table trying to buff the Warlord with small combat stats
PfP per turn
Still no skyfire on non-flyers

oh joy

suddenly changed my mind about new codex, looks like there is some real treats in it (ok maybe not many)

Quote :

via an anonymous source on Faeit 212
Court of the archon is now between 1 and 12 models chosen in any combination from the 4 types (so can have 12 sslyths if you want etc,

still waiting for the codex, but so far the rumours don't look promising

rumors are generally bad, but I think there will be some good news

Feel no pain on toughness 3 is pretty bad. If you field wrack with T4 it's still bad because they have 6+ armour.. so meh.

I'm anticipating very few change except for the Voidraven bomber because they want to sell the new model.

I'm pretty sure the TAU will still the strongest codex by far.

Selvhan wrote:

I'm pretty sure the TAU will still the strongest codex by far.

Eldar are the strongest. I don't see us getting anywhere near our Craftworld cousins anytime soon.

I don't want to make a decision before actually reading it for myself but it looks exactly as I expected. A thick blob of bland paint smeared across what was a fun army. Where they could have actually made the dark eldar into what they are supposed to be, fast, hard hitting raiders, they have by the sounds of it gone and just put a line through anything that was original or unique. Fortunately I still have a large group of dissatisfied and begrudged players who have reverted to 6th and don't mind whether you use 5th or 6th/6.5 edition codexes to play with if I fancy actually enjoying the game.

First off, Barking Agatha, thanks so much for the laugh, I really needed it. You surmised pretty much everything I saw in that bat rep too. Looks like this maybe another DA disappointment for DE.

I read it and was paying attention on the flyers. I think three per turn had to jink every turn. It took them until turn four to destroy one hydra (done by the razorwing) and the new blast weapon from the bomber was only fired in turn one, where it killed four guardsmen. They did not write about every shot fired, but from time to time a lance sure hit something. No missiles used so far. I believe it was a 3000 pts game and the bombers were naked. But if they were jinking a lot, that suggests that you can still drop the bomb when doing so.

Edit: If you try to build the DE army with the actual codex, assuming wysiwyg and taking a bomber for aout 160 points, your are well beyond 3100 pts.

AM list is about 2700 with few upgrades.

So there is probably a point reduction with some impact. Like a free raider every 2000 points ?

Yeah, the batrep is pretty hilarious. So much for showcasing the new army! Without a custom scenario to make the new shiny toy look more attractive the DE would likely have been tabled.

That's the problem with the battle reports, or what passes for them now. They're universally done with custom scenarios, throwing the rulebook out of the window, and points limits and FOC be hanged. Its fundamentally different from the way 95% of gamers actually play... nobody realistically has time to go and sit down and draft a custom scenario for both players to enjoy and compete in, and certainly not on a regular basis. It's not a fair representation of the army's capability when the way you decide to showcase playing it is fundamentally different from the way the overwhelming majority of your player base plays the game.

Panic_Puppet wrote:

That's the problem with the battle reports, or what passes for them now. They're universally done with custom scenarios, throwing the rulebook out of the window, and points limits and FOC be hanged. Its fundamentally different from the way 95% of gamers actually play... nobody realistically has time to go and sit down and draft a custom scenario for both players to enjoy and compete in, and certainly not on a regular basis. It's not a fair representation of the army's capability when the way you decide to showcase playing it is fundamentally different from the way the overwhelming majority of your player base plays the game.

That's a big chunk of the problem, definitely. The other is the intentional vagueness, where they don't tell you what any of the new weapons or wargear do, or in fact tell you what wargear a model even has for the most part. Basically, any of the things you might want to know are kept obscured. The length of them is also pathetic these days. Really disappointed in this issue, there is practically no other content in there, not a column or anything.

While we're complaining about White Dwarf, does anyone else find it a recurring slap in the face that they tried to make bits retailing more difficult just before including a "Bit of the week" section in their magazine?

Last week's White Dwarf was the first Weekly that I've bought, because its the first one that's had any relevance to me. All it has done is cause me to not want to buy any others, and I've heard much the same from other people (buying one that looked to be all about their army, and finding it almost completely devoid of content). Even before the split to weekly/visions (the latter of which is such a bad idea it's not even funny) the batreps seemed much more of a "here is a large collection of photos that took place over the course of the game" than anything else.

Eyeburst is the Medusae thingy.
Thanks for saving me 2.40, anyway. Kicking myself for even buying last week's. Why I thought I'd get any actual information out of it is beyond me.

Mr Believer wrote:

Panic_Puppet wrote:

That's the problem with the battle reports, or what passes for them now. They're universally done with custom scenarios, throwing the rulebook out of the window, and points limits and FOC be hanged. Its fundamentally different from the way 95% of gamers actually play... nobody realistically has time to go and sit down and draft a custom scenario for both players to enjoy and compete in, and certainly not on a regular basis. It's not a fair representation of the army's capability when the way you decide to showcase playing it is fundamentally different from the way the overwhelming majority of your player base plays the game.

That's a big chunk of the problem, definitely. The other is the intentional vagueness, where they don't tell you what any of the new weapons or wargear do, or in fact tell you what wargear a model even has for the most part. Basically, any of the things you might want to know are kept obscured. The length of them is also pathetic these days.

All of that, and also, who played it? They used to be played by actual people with names and faces. Now they use Tau drones. I don't trust Tau drones, they are sneaky, and flat.

The funny thing is that they transparently set it up so that the Dark Eldar couldn't lose, as if you wouldn't notice that, and it was still a slaughter. All three HQ's and every infantry model seems to have died twice! And I like that bit about 'the humble guardsmen', because the fluff says that guardsmen are the underdogs, and in their minds that makes it true. Bloody Tau drones!

Prior to this, have the Dark Eldar ever won a battle report in White Dwarf?

Calyptra wrote:

Prior to this, have the Dark Eldar ever won a battle report in White Dwarf?

didn't they win the one when they were allied with Chaos?

They won one a couple of years ago when they released the Talos model. Against (old-codex) Eldar!

I asked because they lost every one in third edition (after which I stopped paying attention), including their debut. I wondered if that record had continued, it might explain White Dwarf deciding not to take any chances with them this time.

Surely they just play a bunch of games until they get one that "forges an interesting narrative"? I'd also be surprised if the games weren't played "collaboratively" - that is, they play in order to produce "interesting" situations, rather than to win.

I really miss the days when the White Dwarf team were actually personalities, instead of faceless Tau drones. Them were heady days back in the late nineties...

Featuring Jervis "I always lose" Johnson and Andy "the evil Overlord" Chambers

Also somehow they managed it to provide tactical maps of the ongoing turns, Pictures, descriptions, Battle Plans AND Fluffy story texts.
Just have to look up Eldar vs Orks when the Dark Millenium Box came out or Eldar + IG vs Nids when Nids got their Codex in 2nd edition.