Yeah, and IIRC the pulse rule being changed to 2x shots as opposed to the hit+hit+hit rule had a profound effect on the Scorpions and Titans and less of an effect on the Falcons. In other words, Falcons remained relatively unchanged whereas Scorpions took a nose dive and titans took a dip.

So how is making a unit go from 2 shots to 3 shots going to make the unit balanced and NOT change the style of play? The effective change is going to be making a unit that is more powerful than the original unit which will change the style of play.

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3x 3+ for Scorpions is statistically about the same as the original scorpion, only with a more reliable distribution curve.
3x 2+ would be slightly better than it originally was.

I favour the former as I'm a cautious kind of fellow.


In the case of the Titan Pulsar, the weapon has *always* been sub-standard compared to the other weapon choices IMO, and has always needed a power boost to fix it.

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Doubt it on the original titan weapon with pulse. With that as an aside, this change still makes no sense. We have an actual played set of games from way back when which the community decided was wrong for the playstyle. By modifying the pulse rule the firepower was changed and the Eldar could no longer "stand and deliver". Now we're going to take the heaviest hitting MW and TK units in the game, increase their power above where they were, and not expect to have the same exact problems? Just because the intent of of this new change to is different doesn't mean that the result will be different. We're still talking dice, and the dice don't care what our intent is.

If we're going to make a conscious decision to make these units more powerful, then at least do it incrementally. The original pulse rule is somewhat less of a change and -unlike this 3x shots- has the benefit of actually been tried and shown to be powerful enough (and to many it was considered too powerful).

To put a visual on it...

--------------->| this was the original pulse rule that people felt gave the Eldar (specifically titans and Scorpions) too much power
--------->| this is where the Scorpions and titans ended up
------------------->| this is what we are saying makes sense to test now?

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

People never felt that the Pulse rule was too powerful ; The Pulse rule was not changed because it was too powerful.

The Pulse rule was changed because people felt that it promoted the wrong kind of playstyle, a playstyle that was un-Eldar (stand still & shoot, rather than dance & shoot).

unit/weapon power levels were an entirely independent concern, albeit a concern in the case of the Scorpion that was created by the change to the Pulse rule.

No?

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Spectrar Ghost, is the intent to improve the Eldar ability to 'stand and deliver', specifically with the Scorpions and titans? That is what you are doing whether it is your intention or not. The 2x pulse rule changed the firepower which changed the playstyle. Now we can expect the same thing to occur. The 3x pulse rule change will change the firepower which will change the playstyle. In fact, it will make Scorpions and titans even more deadly than they used to be. How do I know that? Because the less powerful version of this 3x rule (a.k.a. the pulse description from Swordwind) was played in dozens if not hundreds of games way back when GW was supporting Epic and the results of those games is waht precipitated the change to 2x shots.

E&C, I understand what you are saying but it doesn't matter. See above.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

For the Titan Pulsar, I really think we are having a debate over something which is really not that hot.

Having to pick a 750 pt Titan to have some long range ability in what for the rest is a FF assault army will not change the playstyle.

For the Scorpion, your argument makes sense, especially when combined with the reduction for multiples. That Eldars would have such an option seems entirely reasonable to me. That it could shadow other options is a concern, and that's why 3x3+ seems more reasonable. That way, even if slightly underpowered in the result (something of which I am not convinced), people will pick Scorpions to get an MW edge and not as a stand-in army.

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I'm not fully certain you do - see below. :-)


I want 3x 3+ for the Scorpion, because it sits in a statistical straddle with where the Scorpion used to be in Swordwind.
It won't make it more deadly than it used to - it simply restores the Scorpion's power back to where it started out.

3x 2+, as proposed by SG, certainly will make it more powerful than the Swordwind version and I'm against that as I think it's a boost too far (at this time).


The Titan's Pulsar, as I noted above, actually does need to be more powerful than it used to be IMO, because it kinda sucked in the first place (it's rather odd that a Revenant Titan formation costing less points will kill twice as many non-RA units as the twin Pulsar Phantom when shooting, and even against RA4+ units they kill the same amount as the Phantom). That upgrade could be either to give it an extra shot, or give it TK(d3) instead of TK(1), either would be a boost that makes the Pulsar weapon more attractive.

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The original pulse rule is more or less off the table - the reason for this is as E&C states. Tying the number of shots to successive hits incentivises taking actions that maximise chances of hitting, i.e. Sustain and Advance. This is why the flat 2 shots was instituted, from my understanding. Allowing the same number of shots regardless of to-hit no longer incentivised standing still. Unfortunately for units with good to-hit scores it actually decreased the number of hits a weapon would score on average, as well as decresing the absolute maximum number of hits possible for all weapons with pulse.

So, independent of balance, which we can estimate but needs to be tested empirically, how does the increase in shots incentivise a stand-and-deliver mentality more than the original rule? Take Titan Pulsars. They hit on a 3+ of course, so how does the action taken affect their average hits

With the original pulse rule an Advancing Pulsar would average 1.41 hits, with a 1/3 chance of doing none. A Sustaining Pulsar would average 2.11 hits, and miss entirely 1/6 of the time. Thus by Sustaining the average hits are increased by 50%. When Doubling, a Pulsar would average 0.88 hits, with a total failure half the time. By Doubling you decrease your average hits by about 38% fron Advancing, and by 58% from Sustaining.

Compare with the same weapon with flat 3x shots. From Advancing (avg 2 hits), Sustain (2.5) or Double (1.5) actions modify your average hits by 25% either way, with Doubling hitting 40% less than Sustaining.

This means that your incentive to sustain is smaller - particularly when the chance of whiffing is taken into account. On a Double you will fail to hit entirely 1/8 of the time with flat 3x shots versus fully half the time with the original pulsar rule.

This rather large incentive to take actions that maximised your to hits is why the pulse rule was changed. Now we can see about fudging numbers - 3x MW2+ is noticibly better than 3xMW3+ and MW3+, Pulse for instance, but then making the Titan Pulsars and Scorpions more attractive was kinda the idea, no?

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

2x shots was based on Falcons, right? Doubling with Falcons sucked big time with old pulse. With new pulse, it's actually on option to consider.

Scorpions were collateral damage. Titan Pulsars weren't affected much either way, but are regarded as being underpowered at the moment.

I'm opposed to any kind of 3x2+, though. 3x3+ matches the old Scorpion, while 3x 4+ matches the old (and current, actually) Titan Pulsar. So if both the Scorpion and the Titan Pulsar go to 3x3+, they will both be improved - or changed back to old style in the case of the Scorpion.

One thing that could work and would be cool, would be to return the old pulse rule for Pulsars only. That is, Revenants and Falcons keep 2x shots, while Scorpions and Titan Pulsars get the old hit-hit-hit rule.

Titan Pulsars could be improved to 2+ to hit so they'd get the boost they need.

No need for a special rule that affects two units only.

Just look at Lance. Barely nothing actually uses lance these days. It's a cool rule, but could be done entirely without.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

How many units use Deflector Fields? Holofields? Or Power Fields for that matter?

Titans get special rules.

I agree with E&C, the Pulse rule was not changed to nerf the weapons, it was changed because it created an exaggerated effect of doubling or sustaining, incentivising sustaining and de-incentivising doubling. Especially for Falcons, which need to double around the place and many felt they couldn't.

If it were up to me, I would have just modified the rule to mean hit values were not modified by either sustain or double, but there were lots of opinions at the time and in any case, what's done is done.

I think both the scorpion need a bump, but I'm ambivalent about whether 3x3+ or 3x2+ for the scorpion. Right now it's the number of shots that bugs me about the unit so that might be enough, but it's hard to make a call.

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IIRC, the biggest issue was with Revenants, where Sustain improved the shooting significantly encouraging the wrong playstyle. As I understand it, we are not proposing to change these.

Scorpions 3x 3+ seems about right as others say, while the titan pulsars need reviewing.

Got a game in tonight versus SM.

My list:

• Avatar
• Aspect Warhost, 4 Wave Serpent, Autarch, Exarch (I used Dark Reaper Characters, 4 Dire Avengers, 2 Fire Dragons)
• Guardian Warhost, 4 Wave Serpents
• Guardian Warhost, 4 Wave Serpents
• Engine of Vaul Troupe, 3 Scorpions (BTS)
• Swords of Vaul Troupe, 4 Falcons, 2 Firestorms
• Swords of Vaul Troupe, 4 Falcons, 1 Firestorm
• Windrider Troupe
• Windrider Troupe
• Ranger Troupe, 4 Rangers

His list (not the NetEA version, instead straight from the rulebook)[list][*]Tactical, Supreme Commander (BTS)
[*]Tactical, Commander
[*]Tactical, Commander
[*]Devestator, Librarian
[*]Devestator, Librarian
[*]Predators (all Annihilator)
[*]Whirlwinds
[*]Terminators, Commander
[*]Terminators

I won, with the stars of the show being the Windriders who won three successive engagements against Space Marines (1 Dev, 2 Tac) - only one of which I initiated. It was some really bad dice for my opponent.

As you can probably tell the things I wanted to test this game were Scorpion changes and the EoV cost changes.

Turn 1 I Doubled forward behind cover, foolishly ending up just out of range of the formation I was trying to shoot. By turn two I'd accumulated enough blast markers to suppress a Scorpion, but was able to use the remaining two to good effect destroying two Rhinos and two Space Marines, breaking the formation. Turn three found me unable to shed enough blast markers to fire all three scorpions, but enough remained to take out three terminators (of four hit) on a hold.

We ended up calling the game after a tie on turn three left him horribly mauled with five of my own formations still relatively combat effective. We discussed the Scorpions, and were unable to reach a conclusion (which is to say neither of us had a strong opinon) as to whether 3xMW2+ or 3xMW3+ was better. The Scorpions were a rock around which much of the army revolved, but I think against another army they would be far more vulnerable than against SM, whose only real WE hunters are countered by Skimmer. They certainly didn't do damage out of proportion to an IG Tank Company, or even the 600pt Aspect Warhost in the game.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.