Hey there,
I have been giving the stuff people have said about the troops some serious thought at the moment, and TKE and I have been discussing at great length behind the shifting curtain of the Interwebs what to improve, what to remove, what to change and how to make certain groups of people happy.I have recently been bouncing ideas off my local forum, and my decisions have yet again made me unpopular, with my honest criticism of people's ideas dredging up endless criticisms. In particular, I was mathhammering the new Dire Avenger firing profiles and comparing to other weapons that I knew the figures of but clearly that was enough to enrage the guys on there. Nevermind, I'll just use this place for all the feedback and changes :).
With regards to Rangers and Guardians, the corrections that people recommended or mentioned have been considered such as price hikes, gun changes have been cast aside due to artistic differences, or seemlessly integrated into the unit design.
I do have to give a few hints as to what's coming though with regards to explaining some design choices:
There is a Warlock Psypower called Keening (requiring casting at the start of the Shooting phase) that renders all Shuriken weapons fired by a target unit in 6" Rending. [TKE's Note - I actually want always Rending, All the Time for Shuriken. Width thinks that may be OP. I point to Poison - but a lot of this also depends on wtf GW does with Gauss. Methinks Necrons will get boned, but we will have to see....] Warlocks *are* expensive and are a real underpinning element of the army - having been significantly modified from what they were originally (nowadays being more of a Psychic Wolf Guard than anything else). However, the entry here is FAR from perfect so don't go unleashing rabid, horny donkeys at me just yet.
In order to try and balance this power, Shuriken Weapon-armed things are slightly more expensive than they would be otherwise to mitigate spamming the power to slice through infantry, MCs etc. I feel that the costs of the units involved accurately reflects the increased penetrative ability bestowed on them. (I have extensively math-hammered these weapon and they come out only slightly better vs MEQ and TEQ, and if they're in cover (or have Storm Shields) almost exactly the same as they do without - it's the S3 that's the clincher.)
Similarly, new psypowers available to the Farseer render some units utterly lethal, especially when they take some upgrades now incorporated into the unit profiles. For those interested in writing a codex of some form, you'll find it is very difficult to write unit entries without forgetting that every unit must be thought of as part of a whole, not in isolation, and that people who can break something, will break something - just look at the lists people write with the SW dex - who takes anything other than Long Fangs for Heavy Support?
Some keen-eyed observers may have noticed that Guardian Jetbikers have vanished from the troops section. After some consideration, TKE and I decided that it would be best if they were normally Fast Attack but could be taken as a Troops choice on the proviso that they pick an HQ riding a jetbike - instantly unlocking Saim-Hann army builds for those that own a bucketload of jetbikers.
A Quick Rundown of Changes made based on Feedback thusfar:
Guardian Defenders:
Added in Black Guardian Options
Guardian Storm:
Added In Black Guardian Options & Changed their Weapon availability
Rangers:
Made them normal Sniper Rifles with Ap1 bonus on a 6 - like old times :).
Dire Avengers:
Bladestorm adds rending and 1 extra shot.
12ppm
Exarch has one power - cannot buy extras.
DA catapults are Assault 2, S4 ap5 24” (Storm Bolters)
12ppm
Exarch has one power - cannot buy extras.
DA catapults are Assault 2, S4 ap5 24” (Storm Bolters)
LINK.
...and now a short musical break.
Now that you've been reading a fair while, let me broach another topic. The Wave Serpent.
Endlessly frustrating for melta, ordnance and pretty much everything to kill at range - Max S8, only one D6 to pen (that includes you mr Vindicare Assassin).
One caveat.
It costs silly points - when compared to a Chimmy, I wouldn't pay at least 20 points more for that slight benefit. Especially when I have to buy all the other weapons, including the base turret. However, if the base cost were to include a turret mounted weapon, I'd be happy. I mean, Valkyries are silly cost!
HeroZero on the Chatbawx made the point that a LasPlas is an amazing transport - for 75pts. Can transport a few PA dudes and has some nasty firepower. The wave serpent is 90pts but lacks any firepower, with the codex forcing you to expend X points for weaponry - not fair I say. The base cost of the serpent includes the turret weapon, but it can't hurt as much stuff as a lasplas. I figured that 70pts was a good base cost for them.
There really haven't been many other alterations, other than rendering the cost of weapon upgrades a bit cheaper than they were originally... (45pt TL bright lances made me very sad).
As for changes to vehicle upgrades.... take a read of the draft profile you might be pleasantly surprised (or horribly surprised of course):
LINK
So, what do you think of the Wave Serpent and the altered Vehicle Upgrades...?
Next time, we make a start on Elites with Fire Dragons, Howling Banshees and Striking Scorpions. :)
Love and Kisses,
Width
9 comments:
One question at this point: why have you chosen to retain a 4+ armour save for the Rangers?
Obviously 6th ed rules changes pending, but I think Rangers should stay as is, maybe a slight.. pts reduction, looking at the Marine Scouts who can do a similar job, if not better job are 90pts w/ camo cloaks. I also think the Pathfinder upgrade should stay the same pts, but include a +1BS
I agree with the Wave Serpent pts cost or 80pts base with a Shuriken Cannon then plus 10 for Scatter, 15 for missile etc etc
Eldar missile launcher on profile for wave serpant. Correct that to 48" no reason to nurf our only missile launcher that we have with our army.
I love that you gave the Dire avengers "storm bolter" profiles. I still think that bladestorm being 12 ppm is too much if you have to give up your next turn of shooting.
Bladestorm - at 24 points per model and the exarch purchase.. for something you have to reload the following turn. Just isn't worth it. I would say make it a 20 point exarch ability.
As the unit is only going to probably fire it 2 times maybe 3 times per game. Not worth it even with having the rending benefits... imo. If DA's are not already killed or have not been locked in close combat by that point... well that is surprising. since the guns are 24"
I could see spending maybe 6 points per model on the unit for bladestorm.
making a unit of 12 (216pts)
Just my suggestion.
and don't nerf the eldar missle launcher. back to 48" IT is a missile launcher like all others and doesn't have any other benefits. Either make it Cheaper (or free) then all other missile launchers if you are going to reduce the range by 12" (and must be a large point reduction, since Marine tacical squads can have 1 for free on a 10 man unit.) or put it back to 48" where it belongs or buff the weapon 36" Str 9 Ap2 or something.
~Lackeylsk
hey Width, liking this so far. Few wee queries just to throw at you
In the troops section, storm guardians have the option to exchange their shuriken catapults for pistol/ccw, but then in their options it states that a model can exchange it's pistol and close combat weapon for a meltagun or flamer...by RAW this means that if a player chooses not to switch to the pistol/ccw combo they cant get special weapons. Is this an oversight or deliberate?
Also, should it not be a fusion gun rather than a meltagun...we are no mon-keigh dogs after all!
For the serpent entry-
- as the shuriken cannon is now S4, could we not reduce the cost of a chin cannon to 5pts? seems overcosted now at 10pts when it cant hurt vehicles at all
- spirit stones- i like the idea but they now seem a lot worse, yeh you can negate shaken totally but stunned results are the reason you take these currently and now they are only a 50% chance. I would prefer that it was a downgrade from stunned to shaken automatically as currently, and also any shaken results are ignored on a 4+, and even if that costs another 5 pts i wouldnt argue
- Star engines- perhaps a stipulation needs added about whether they can be used if the vehicle cannot shoot that turn due to a shaken result. If a vehicle cannot shoot then technically it cannot do anything "in lieu of shooting", as this requires that the vehicle has the ability to shoot in the first place
- Psycho-conductive matrix- love this upgrade, but how does it affect psykers in vehicles themselves? They technically dont have line of sight to any vehicle then, which means this upgrade is useless unless the seer is on a bike or on foot- both not great options. Perhaps if the vehicle the psyker is in also has PCM (sound like a condition :s) then the vehicle is used for line of sight? Would get around it
otherwise, keep up the good work Width! Im always on hand to bounce ideas off, you have my twitter :)
Araith:
After chatting with TKE, we've actually decided to put them back to 5+ save. Need to re-add the masters of stealth thing too.
Embolden:
Thanks for the input - I think we'll be upping it to 75pts base, after my mini-playtest today, the WS was a tiny bit too cheap for what they can do.
Christopher:
You are forgetting the high availability of Rending to the rest of the army via Warlock intervention - given that large squads will be followed by a warlock more often than not, they will still benefit from rending shots thanks to Keening.
With regards to your views a l'egard to the Missile Launcher, the 36" range means you can still threaten pretty much the width of the whole board in one move - given the turret's height, this too is a benefit. We had originally considered a weaker profile with more shots, but that would have removed much of the Long Range Firepower available to the Army as a whole - something that even in playtesting hasn't worked out amazingly.
Try as we might, we just can't up the threat range of 24"-36" to 36"-48" as it would make out transports useless and would require some significant modification of already exisiting units and weapons.
Mike:
Yes, that is an oversight, something I had not even anticipated to be honest. Again, the fusion gun thing was an oversight, when you have this many entries flying around, it gets easy to forget little things such as this.
Will have to think about Spirit Stones - balancing them is hard (as you can probably imagine).
Again, we'll probably rule Star Engines that way - seems better, will have to peek at the Aethersails entry to see how it's written there.
PCM: I think it'll be if the vehicle, or the transport has LoS. There has to be some way of balancing it. See, with some of the new Psypowers around, it has to be balanced to prevent people exploiting things too much. Hence the one power per turn etc.
All:
Thanks for the feedback and points made thusfar - check back later this week for some Elites loving. :)
Just a quick note before you move on:
Guardian Defenders
Basic stats stay the same, maybe a slight pts reduction to 7pts
Warlock – upgrade 15pts
Shuriken cannon – rending and costs 5pts or comes as standard.
D-Cannon/Vibro Cannon/Shadow Weaver – 40pts
Shuriken Catapults – 18” Range – Str3 rending – Assault 2
Rangers
Pathfinder upgrade +1 BS, Relentless for 5pts
Embolden...
All in good time.
Warlocks are going to work in a totally different way. ;)
I'm curious what you have in mind for them.
I wasn't sure if you'd gone over them yet or not.
I'm interested in what you think about dropping the Weapon Platforms from the heavy support section of the 'dex and having them as a Guardian upgrade?
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