Eldar 6th edition release in a week

[Bertylicious]

Tau were shit, Eldar will be too.

So what was bad about the Tau book? Bullshit fluff aside, the crunch looked pretty solid.

The Taubook didn't work in 5th, and does not in 6th. The main problem, decent troops, still remain. Things that needed change didn't get any. It was mostly shuffling some numbers around but besides the Riptide it's the same friggin codex as before without S10 guns on the XV88.
Which means: Tau is still a solid ally, but a bad choice for a main force.
Alot of people were already aware this was going to happen, since the ally chart made the Tau the whores of the universe with 12 or so allies.
Don't get me wrong, it's not as if their not playable, they were my main army a long time, but for a tournament play their performance is to unstable to be considered anything but mediocre. Sadly, it remains the 2nd strongest Xenos codex (3rd if we count Chaos as Xenos and not as evil Imperials).

tl;dr => Codex changed numbers around, unplayable units still unplayable, bad troops not fixed

6th edition is a horrible rule set. Fliers are shoehorned in, the alliance table is neither balanced nor does it make any sense fluffwise.
Everything got random, everything got "cinematic". All that's left is a terrible beer&pretzles boardgame.

Also they tried to shift everything to foot unit, so they can sell their infantry in 6th after they've sold their Rhinos in 5th.

While many of the 6th changes (flyers, allies, random shit, wound allocation) are BS, the game doesn't play too much differently form 5th. The new rules have made infantry focused armies viable against after multiple editions of mechainsed dominance, why is that such a travesty?

See THAT is the main problem. The rules are totally bullshit, but we GW costumers are used to such treatment, so we don't even care anymore. The shift onto foot was only made, because they wanted to sell models - since they've sold metal boxes before, now they want you to field 100 foot soldiers. It had nothing to do with balance or game design.

Fliers are broken and alot of them got nerfed by FAQ errata after they've sold a bunch. It's the usual GW thing: Bring something new, make it broken, FAQ nerf it after it sold.

Fun part: Mech/Semi-Mech is still stronger than pure foot lists. Also the forced shift onto foot hurt Xenos more than any other. 5+ cover for Xenos matters, Marines never used cover anyway.

PS: Actually wound allocation actually got better, imo. Sped things up alot.
PPS: Out local tournaments still look the same: Imps/GK's plow through everything. You won't stop crazy ass lists with 15-20 vehicles and 50-70 troops with the other codizes. Specially not with Xenos ones.


And to everyone who wants to start with Miniature Gaming: Don't.
Currently the whole industry is on a decline since years. The costs are gettin' crazier than ever, and there's nothing besides some fun matches. Most tournaments are shit and the most companies don't support their own game very well - at least not compared to E-Sports, MTG or even Boardgames like Dominion/Settlers of Catan.
Also 3D-Printers are on their way and few miniature players already started producing their minis themselves because it's cheaper.

Unless Hasbro/Wizards buys one of those trainwrecks and revives the genre i'd bet miniature gaming dies in few year. My last hope is currently the Shadowrun miniature game that's in the making, since the designers they got on board are crazy: Gregory Marques, Mike Elliot and James Lin 3 MTG R&D fellas. Rob Heinsoo and Rob Watkins designers from D&D 3.5/4 Edition and Conan Chamberlain who worked on over 50 diffrent projects with Vivendi, EA, Disney and more.
If that game fails too, the genre will die out.

As a man who predominantly played 2nd ed I can tell you that it was flawed. Vehicles were too tough, vehicle cards like ablative armour just made them ridiculously difficult without some daffy response like a warlock on a jetbike with a vortex grenade or some other nonsense.

I do wonder whether 3rd ed, which seems to have become the template, threw the baby out with the bathwater though.

I dunno. Maybe not (bit drunk). Perhaps they were right? I mean, shouldn't 40k be about squads? Not big hench dudes lathering the shite out of each other or gorblin champions with that fecking magic item that swaps toughness & weaponskill or other "combination tactics" but rather a contest of mobility and raw power.

The cost of the hobby has always been a concern to me though. It's like taking heroin but you don't get to have sex with Lindsay Lohan. Then again it is a collectible hobby, with the side effect that you have to paint your minitures and therefore render them worthless. Which is awful and has always been awful.

God, Games Workshop are fully evil. Like Hitler or one of them fellas.

Fucking fun though.

Am I wrong? Has 40k actually always just been about buying the new thing with the new Special Rules?

 

[BoxCutter]

What's changed since then?

No more Fish of Fury.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

As a man who predominantly played 2nd ed I can tell you that it was flawed. Vehicles were too tough, vehicle cards like ablative armour just made them ridiculously difficult without some daffy response like a warlock on a jetbike with a vortex grenade or some other nonsense.

I do wonder whether 3rd ed, which seems to have become the template, threw the baby out with the bathwater though.

I dunno. Maybe not (bit drunk). Perhaps they were right? I mean, shouldn't 40k be about squads? Not big hench dudes lathering the shite out of each other or gorblin champions with that fecking magic item that swaps toughness & weaponskill or other "combination tactics" but rather a contest of mobility and raw power.

The cost of the hobby has always been a concern to me though. It's like taking heroin but you don't get to have sex with Lindsay Lohan. Then again it is a collectible hobby, with the side effect that you have to paint your minitures and therefore render them worthless. Which is awful and has always been awful.

God, Games Workshop are fully evil. Like Hitler or one of them fellas.

Fucking fun though.

Am I wrong? Has 40k actually always just been about buying the new thing with the new Special Rules?

3rd was meh. 4th was horrible and nearly killed 40k. Then came the 5th edition and yes, vehicles were dominant but it was kinda balanced and the games meaningful and fun to play.
6th edition ended up at "Lets throw a few hundred dice per turn so nobody feels like a loser". Nothing matters anymore, you just slam 200-250 models at each other (at 2k) and call it a day. Skill got removed, randomness is the deal.

Gw stated it over and over: Their hobby is painting and modeling. The gaming side is just a byproduct. That's also why they dropped all tournament support at the end of the 4th edition.

If i could i'd switch back to 5th immediatly.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, I was always more of a fan of the fluff than the game. I still think the fluff was better late 2nd/early 3rd ed.

The Tau were a bad idea, they changed too many basics about the universe, and there was too much fuss made about them. The Dark Eldar, those worked. They'd never really exist before 3rd, just a few vague references, but they fitted with the universe and slotted in well, didn't dominate.

The C'tan weren't bad as such, but they were god-awful in context. If your setting revolves round all powerful sun eating gods from zillions of years ago that various people have been in fear of ever since, you need to introduce them in the beginning. All of a sudden sticking them in a few years later is a rubbish idea. They got toned down later on, though, which was fine, only they got lathered with suck just like everything else.

Modern fluff tends to be awful. It's like your favourite TV or movie franchise from the 80's being brought back for cheap cash-in movies with the barest resemblance to the original.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

As a man who predominantly played 2nd ed I can tell you that it was flawed. Vehicles were too tough, vehicle cards like ablative armour just made them ridiculously difficult without some daffy response like a warlock on a jetbike with a vortex grenade or some other nonsense.

Except in that case you could always buy a vortex detonator for 50 pts.

The cost of the hobby has always been a concern to me though. It's like taking heroin but you don't get to have sex with Lindsay Lohan.

Then again it is a collectible hobby, with the side effect that you have to paint your minitures and therefore render them worthless. Which is awful and has always been awful.

Am I wrong? Has 40k actually always just been about buying the new thing with the new Special Rules?

Nope, it really, really isn't.

Depends on the mini. Not that I'd sell them but a lot of the old rogue trader stuff is worth more than I paid for it as a kid, painted or not. Even if it's not worth more I'll get what it cost me, although inflation will obviously change the relative value. Otherwise you're still going to get between 30-80% back on ebay, again depending on the demand for the models in question and the quality of paint job, if any.

Only since about 1993.

 

[Zantos]

My neighbour is probably going to get it as he usually plays space drow and has a few standard pointy ears for allies. I however, recently got the 1st Horus Heresy book from forge world and a bunch of their new Mechanicus Thallax units, so that ate up my 40K budget for the next 6 months.

Ooooh Horus Rising! "I was there the day that Horus killed the Emperor." I love that book!

I checked out the Thallax units when I last went on Forge World to just look at Lord Inquisitor Rex and they looked really cool. Although reading the whole "ripped out skeleton and welded it to metal" thing was a bit grim. Honestly, it's like you can't have anything nice in the 41st millennium without being mutilated or kidnapped as a child or having a close family member murdered or being brainwashed.

 

[Megalodon]

Tau were shit, Eldar will be too.

So what was bad about the Tau book? Bullshit fluff aside, the crunch looked pretty solid.

The Taubook didn't work in 5th, and does not in 6th. The main problem, decent troops, still remain. Things that needed change didn't get any. It was mostly shuffling some numbers around but besides the Riptide it's the same friggin codex as before without S10 guns on the XV88.
Which means: Tau is still a solid ally, but a bad choice for a main force.
Alot of people were already aware this was going to happen, since the ally chart made the Tau the whores of the universe with 12 or so allies.
Don't get me wrong, it's not as if their not playable, they were my main army a long time, but for a tournament play their performance is to unstable to be considered anything but mediocre. Sadly, it remains the 2nd strongest Xenos codex (3rd if we count Chaos as Xenos and not as evil Imperials).

tl;dr => Codex changed numbers around, unplayable units still unplayable, bad troops not fixed

But the main strengths of the Tau are still there. Fire Warriors are good value for 9 points, markerlights are still twisted, and Crisis suits stayed the same/got better. True, the stuff previously not worth taking still isn't, but the good stuff is still pretty damn good. Only major changes where "Riptides of Crisis for Elites?" and the removal of "Broadside or Hammerhead for Heavy Support?", as Hammerheads are now simply better.

See THAT is the main problem. The rules are totally bullshit, but we GW costumers are used to such treatment, so we don't even care anymore. The shift onto foot was only made, because they wanted to sell models - since they've sold metal boxes before, now they want you to field 100 foot soldiers. It had nothing to do with balance or game design.

What is that view based on? Why the assuption that every decision GW make is a mustache-twirling evil scheme to screw their customers (not to say those haven't been made before, bloody Finecast)?

EDIT: Better example of the kind of evil you're talking, repackaging Dire Avengers into five per box, then charging more for the fucking box. But again, while they pull shit like this, I don't see evidence for a conspiracy while they're writng the rules.

Fliers are broken and alot of them got nerfed by FAQ errata after they've sold a bunch. It's the usual GW thing: Bring something new, make it broken, FAQ nerf it after it sold.

Which flyersare broken, and which have been nerfed? Overall, I've not been too impressed with how flyers work, due to their movement rules, you only seem to get 2 turns shooting at what you want to target, which is not ideal in a 6/7 turn game.

Fun part: Mech/Semi-Mech is still stronger than pure foot lists. Also the forced shift onto foot hurt Xenos more than any other. 5+ cover for Xenos matters, Marines never used cover anyway.

If Mech is still stronger, how is there a "forced shift onto foot"? Also, which Xenos? The armies really play differently. If you footslog Dark Eldar, you're going to lose, but the Ork horde has lost little/none of its viability this edition. Then there's Nids, who never had the option. Not all Xenos are equivalent.

PS: Actually wound allocation actually got better, imo. Sped things up alot.

True for the most part, but I personally dislike the "always from the front" method, especially as there is no way to recover speial weapons if the guy with the gun falls. Let the flamer/melta/plamsa take a look out sir, just like the sergeant, and I'd have a lot less of a problem.

PPS: Out local tournaments still look the same: Imps/GK's plow through everything. You won't stop crazy ass lists with 15-20 vehicles and 50-70 troops with the other codizes. Specially not with Xenos ones.

What kind of points are you talking about here? What are these lists? Because even Guard will struggle to fit that many vehivcles into a normal 1500/2000 point list.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Ooooh Horus Rising! "I was there the day that Horus killed the Emperor." I love that book!

I checked out the Thallax units when I last went on Forge World to just look at Lord Inquisitor Rex and they looked really cool. Although reading the whole "ripped out skeleton and welded it to metal" thing was a bit grim. Honestly, it's like you can't have anything nice in the 41st millennium without being mutilated or kidnapped as a child or having a close family member murdered or being brainwashed.

No, not that one. Betrayal. The Horus Heresy Rulebook/army list/campaign/fluff thing from FW.

Betrayal has some more info on them, they are mainly mortally wounded skitari and mechanicus forces as well as some other sources left to your imagination. I personally take the grimdark bullshit with a pinch of salt. You can get mechanicus that are basically a brain in a jar, so why the hell the process of making a Thallax causes unimaginable agony and the replacement of natural sensory organs would require brainwashing above what they'd already have as Mechanicus forces anyway IDK.

 

[Greyhamster]

Sigh, I miss 40K. The cool dudes in the Games Workshop here got fired years ago and were replaced by a bunch of douchebags and the people I played with left. The new ruleset years back was the final straw. Still miss it though.

Glad to hear my Eldar are getting renewed. Eldar are awesome, especially harlequins and War Walkers. I love rolling 48 dice for 3 machines and rolling 40 dice for 10 harlequins (WITH RENDING) Ah, good times n.n

 

[ShipofFools]

People in my club are kind of done with Games Workshop anyway. The prices have become too crazy, just too crazy.
And now they've stopped with their awesome specialist games, made both fantasy and 40K depend even MORE on dice then they already did, and the tables get swamped with giant models.
It's just not fun anymore.

But check out Dystopian Wars, big resin ships that are very affordable, or Infinity, a tactical skirmish game with metal models, slightly cheaper then Games Workshop, but you only need about 10 guys to have a solid army.

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/
http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/

 

[BanicRhys]

Man, y'all are killing my mojo, remind me not to click on any more war gaming threads outside of dedicated war gaming sites.

Is it just me, or does giving a race that prefers to employ stealth and deception based tactics a [HEADING=2]GIANT FUCKING GUNDAMU WINGU[/HEADING] ... seem a little backwards?

No, I think I'll be sticking with my convertible croissant and giant mecha chicken, thank you very much.

(Plus Eldar are just jerks)

 

[Chappy]

Haven't managed to see the pictures yet Chrome is having a fit and won't load them, does our Flyer look alright?

Also heard we are getting a Ranger character for a HQ.

 

[Megalodon]

Haven't managed to see the pictures yet Chrome is having a fit and won't load them, does our Flyer look alright?

Also heard we are getting a Ranger character for a HQ.

Yeah, Illic Nightspear, the Alaitoc guy from Codex Necrons, don'y know if he's HQ or just a unit upgrade though.

Flyer looks pretty solid, better than a lot of recent GW flyers (canopy-less necron ones and the Dark Angels flying cathedral spring to mind).

Man, y'all are killing my mojo, remind me not to click on any more war gaming threads outside of dedicated war gaming sites.

Is it just me, or does giving a race that prefers to employ stealth and deception based tactics a [HEADING=2]GIANT FUCKING GUNDAMU WINGU[/HEADING] ... seem a little backwards?

No, I think I'll be sticking with my convertible croissant and giant mecha chicken, thank you very much.

(Plus Eldar are just jerks)

Potentially, but then they've always had Titans, Superheavies and other big things. But I've covered my resons for disliing the Wraith Knight earlier in the thred (plus the fact it's 70 fucking quid).

 

[WindKnight]

I just don't like the chicken legs. I heard that wraithguard are finally plastic, and with a price reduction (yes, you heard that right, lower price than current for 5 wraithguard).

Wait... Games workshop are lowering prices? That can't be right, heck when they switch from metal to a resin that cost half as much to make the miniatures from, they still jacked the prices up.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Have they updated the Striking Scorpion models? Those things are possibly my favorite Xenos model.

 

[Batou667]

I haven't been in the hobby in any meaningful sense since 4th ed, but I've been keeping a bit of a beady eye on developments. I've noticed that everything is getting BIGGER[/i]. Not just the size creep (although I note that Killa Kans are the size of 3rd ed Dreds, and Deff Dreds are now the width of a Leman Russ) but also making regular 40k into a lite-version of Apocalypse with flyers as standard and stuff like the huge walkers.

How do the big walkers function on the tabletop? Are they just really big dreadnoughts, or are they war machines with multiple structure points, etc?

Also, I guess this means the Stompa will be a Troops choice in the new Orks Codex...

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

A lot of mixed reception on the direction the game is going.

I for one like 6th. I ran an Eldar army for awhile and they are my main force and I use a mix of vehicles and infantry. Mechanised was never an option for Eldar since Wave Serpents are too expensive. Currently running an all mech Dark Eldar army until the new dex is out and I think that the randomness improved the meta at both the GW I play at and the club I go to. I don't mind random powers and such and vehicles hull points are a good addition to the game. Your vehicles are easier to destroy but remain at full effectiveness for longer instead of being crippled by stuns and shakens from glances.

With the Giant Walker fad its just to add a new dimension of models to the tabletop. I will be buying a Wraithknight because the model is beautiful even if I don't run it often.Logical progression of a series is to get bigger, a sequel cant be smaller scale than the film that came before it for example.

 

[Megalodon]

How do the big walkers function on the tabletop? Are they just really big dreadnoughts, or are they war machines with multiple structure points, etc?

5 wound, 2+save monstrous creaturesfor the most part.

vehicles hull points are a good addition to the game. Your vehicles are easier to destroy but remain at full effectiveness for longer instead of being crippled by stuns and shakens from glances.

Could not disagree with this more, hull points are my most hated mechanic in 40k at the moment. In theory they could work, but the 2-4 scale is stupid, a DE raider and a Leman Russ should not have the same number of "wounds". The automatic nature of them is dumb as well, taking a hull point on a 4+ for glancing and 3+ for penetratig would be a far superior mechanic.

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

How do the big walkers function on the tabletop? Are they just really big dreadnoughts, or are they war machines with multiple structure points, etc?

5 wound, 2+save monstrous creaturesfor the most part.

vehicles hull points are a good addition to the game. Your vehicles are easier to destroy but remain at full effectiveness for longer instead of being crippled by stuns and shakens from glances.

Could not disagree with this more, hull points are my most hated mechanic in 40k at the moment. In theory they could work, but the 2-4 scale is stupid, a DE raider and a Leman Russ should not have the same number of "wounds". The automatic nature of them is dumb as well, taking a hull point on a 4+ for glancing and 3+ for penetratig would be a far superior mechanic.

An Autarch and a Wraithlord shouldn't have the same amount of wounds buts they do.