Wednesday, July 4, 2012

6th Edition: What it means for the Eldar

Hello everybody.  So 6th had been out for a little while now.  I don't even have the book yet, but I've read/watched/listened to enough to get the general rules and big changes to the game.  What I've seen I believe gives Eldar some boosts I haven't heard talked about anywhere as of yet that I thought might be interesting to spread.  Here's just a few until I can get the book mid month:

The changes to vehicle damage I believe help the Eldar out.  Previously, getting enough weapons to penetrate armor was tough and expensive.  Now it's not so much an issue with what looks like a trend away from vehicles, and the massive amount of cheap mid-strength shooting Eldar can put out.  In 5th ed, glancing a vehicle to death was pretty tough and took quite a few hits.  Now though, with the hull points system, you only need to get 3 glances in most cases to wreck a vehicle.  Lists at 1750 I've made recently have 75 to 90 strength 6 shots.  Anything armor 12 or less would be incredibly easy to glance a few times, which in 5th would have annoyed someone but now would wreck face on all of your opponents vehicles.  The super cheap shuriken cannon and scatter laser are now excellent weapons, and a unit or two of fire dragons can hunt anything armor 13 or 14.  Not to mention a few units that can dish out tons of glances at once, I.E. wraithguard and assaulting swooping hawks.  The combo of less vehicles, easier to tackle vehicles, and the excellent anti-infantry fire and Eldar army can lay down will be neat to see unfold.

Conversely, Eldar vehicles aren't that worse off.  They might not be able to weather tons of glances, but with the combo of maneuverability, decent armor, and a free save that can be fortuned, Eldar might just have the best vehicles in the game again.  Holo fields did take a hit in its usefulness, as your vehicle has to take damage for it to matter.  It'll keep you from losing weapons or exploding, but gone are the days of holo fields making a falcon live forever.  They'll really only come into play a maximum of twice, which makes their value for the points debatable.

I heard a lot of grumping about the new psychic disciplines and mastery levels for farseers.  Eldar have never been the type for super killy powers, they manipulate the enemy and boon your own units.  Mastery level one allows one power a turn and spirit stones allow a second, or essentially mastery level two.  So really, nothing has changed for the Eldar psychically except access to more powers.  I see no reason to complain.  I'm not familiar with the new options, but I'm sure some of them are pretty cool and hey, options are options.
Also of note is the reduction of what psychic hoods do.  We are free to use powers that help out own units without interruption again, which is awesome.

Some other things like morale, reduced feel no pain to have to shoot through, and some enhancements to monstrous creatures and jump troops help cancel out things that used to be pretty annoying and breathe life into units people have been neglecting.

A few units I see coming back in enhanced roles because of the above:

wraithguard
wraithlords
warp spiders
swooping hawks
dark reapers
jet bike seer councils
striking scorpions

Don't get me wrong, some of those units were never really bad but the new edition (and possible new meta) makes them bounds better.

I hope some of this might be useful insight for someone, and I personally cannot wait to get the book and try these theories out.  Any other thoughts?  Are Eldar going to be kind of a surprise comeback kid?

Thanks.

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