Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Eldar continued and the general 40K scene locally

After a number of games involving the Eldar, the one glaringly obvious conclusion I have come to is that the Wave Serpent is vastly overpowered.  I’m not brining what I feel is a “Let’s Spam Them” level of the things, but even the 4 that I was fielding were more than enough.  Averaging 9 wounds/WS/turn.  With 3 of them starting on the field for me, and not particularly caring about cover saves…  Oh, and they can move 12” and fire both of their main weapons?  Mine are coming in at 135 points with the Holo Field.  The Shuriken Cannon would be awesome, but just can’t quite justify the extra 10 points/Serpent…  Yet.  It is a major consideration, and frankly with more Marine rumors floating about?  Not sure this isn’t going to get FAQ’d out of existence.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have NOT fired the Shield as an offensive weapon, and almost all of these were Turn 1 when I either had no targets or the other side went first and I was unable to have fired J…  Hoping to survive the Meltas dropping in on me…
Last night’s game I used the Farseer for the first time.  Doom with the sheer number of shots?  And with Sniper, Shuriken and “d” class weapons all getting huge bonuses on the 6’s to wound?  Have to say, the life span of the big MC’s or Terminators will be very limited I think near one of these lads.  Picked my target, Doomed and Guided…  Did use the Eldritch Storm twice as well, and rolled snake eyes for the wounding myself…  NOT a bad power I have to say.  Fleshbane and a large blast?  2 power points though…  Still, bunched up stuff wounding on 2+?  Thinking that a Farseer/Spiritseer combo will allow me to have the best of both worlds.
Troops?  The 5 man Dire Avenger (DA) squads are adequate if what you are doing is getting the 135 point uber-transport and a few bodies to do the late game objective grabs.  The Wraithguard are awesome, and with the Spiritseer making them Troops and granting a few other bonuses they have been my “go to” troop option.  The DA with their 18” ranged rending (sort of) weapon, move-shoot-move option and not bad stats overall are pretty darn good.  I’ve been less happy with the Guardians with their limited range and large minimum size.  Not bad per se, but unless you are running a 20 man squad I’m having a hard time seeing them being as good as or better than the DA.  The Heavy Weapon upgrades are nice (except the Scatter Laser), but let’s be honest, I am NOT lacking on the number of heavy weapon shots in my army.  Bright Lances might be the exception, but haven’t seen the massed AV 14 stuff in a while…

Picking up some terrain from one of the other games locally…  The set includes 2 Bastions and 3 Aegis gun lines with the various guns.  One Bastion I will be making standard for my Imperial forces.  Seeing the usefulness of these recently playing with limited terrain, but having HtH Wraiths say waiting in the building?  Or just a squad of Praetorians to man the extra Heavy Bolters?  The AAA option will I think be needed as well, though more for the Interceptor option than the Skyfire recently…  Not seeing as many Aircraft, not entirely sure why, I think they are still on the really powerful end of things…  Tau are hitting the field in bulk these days, a bit surprised I’m one of the very few Eldar players..  But back on topic, the second Bastion?  Make it more Eldar maybe?  Dunno…  Forgot to check if these were things I could link together in Apocalypse games for one of the formations…  So, if anyone local is looking to pick up a Bastion or a few Aegis lines cheap, LMK…


Kind of in “wait and see” mode really with most of the local gaming group…  The group is still large and growing, and with the Students coming back now might even get larger…  But most of the people are cutting back on their purchases.  Dropping down to one or two armies, etc…  As more things get released in the 6th edition, I think the game itself is getting a bit more balanced overall, but there are a few things that really stand out about almost every new Codex.  Chaos Marines got the Heldrake, Tau got the load of “we break a lot of the game’s rules” stuff, the Eldar have their Wave Serpent, etc…  Really the only one I can honestly say did NOT get something that stands out as broken/silly is the Dark Angels.  Without the Heldrake a LOT of their stuff like the uber-bikers and the like would be really powerful and fun to play…  Now, they have the ability to make their Bolters Salvo 2/4 with a magic banner.  Neat I guess, if you are looking at causing mass wounds to things that are concerned about bolters.  So, yes, the people fielding the IG blobs, Cultist blobs or Green Tide stopped doing that after a few of us played DA that way…  But overall, the DA book was the one I’d point to and say it was a complete flop.  A few “new” things in the special speeder and unique flier, but the rules for both are such complete crap.  A real shame, the flier at least looked nice and having plasma armed speeders again was something in and of itself…  Have to say, this is my big concern with the Marine Codex coming out next month, or so the rumors go…  FFS, a major company hiding its release schedule until the last moment in this day and age?  Anyway, the Marines have so much potential, and there is SO much that they could draw on to make something new, unique and customizable for almost every 3+ armor save player out there…  Will they?  Hence the “Wait and See” attitude.  Right now a lot of us who play/played the 3+ armor armies are looking at the game and seeing that for the first time that we can remember the “standard” armor is no longer good enough.  Either weight of fire or low AP and/or the loss of cover saves has made it suicide to bring certain units…  Hell, certain armies are just silly to bring these days.  Thinking for me my Fleshtearers are just silly to bring, but my Crimson Fists are right there next to them.  At least the CF have the win big or die quick thing going for them.  A lot of the players, especially the ones out in Danville were REALLY not prepared for a hyper aggressive army played by someone who understood how to use it.  But against someone who has either seen it or understands how to defend against it or at least react to it?  I have one trick/shot to do so much damage as to force the game to end or I die.  This has gotten far worse with the Tau and Eldar now hitting the field.  My Scouts were my “Troops” to sit on objectives, but they are one of the “Why Bother” units these days.  Sternguard are great, but few in number.  Few AA options and the general feeling that the power spiral has passed the Marine based forces by mean there are more than a few players simply finding other games or just no longer showing up regularly…  Of course, the general feeling of being priced out of the game has grown a lot recently, and I know that with reality being what it is I and a lot of the others I talk to have had to seriously cut back on their purchases…  Thus, dropping to fewer armies, not buying new stuff, etc…  Maybe this will reverse, but…

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