So, am toying with taking an Ulthwe army to a tournament come january (as some may have twigged) but am interested to know why (despite not being able to see any obvious draw backs to the list Ulthwe are Strategy rating 5 and not 4: I don't want to be seen to be being beardy!

Black Guardians already get +1 Warlock but I guess the extra pip of initiative is included in their +50pt increase.

Is the Ulthwe list widely regarded to be balanced seeing as it's up for inclusion in the NetEA Army book?
Yrs,
R>

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As you note, price increases in the core hosts are intended to cover the increased SR. Ulthwe is generally regarded as balanced overall and if I'm not mistaken, will be "NetEA Approved" in the compendium when it is done.

Flavour wise, Ulthwe have the most Seers and have the most foresight, so they're even more "strategic" than other Eldar, so they have that increase to Strategy Rating as a characterful change.

Their main "drawback" is that they only get two Troupe formations per Warhost, so they're going to have a lot of, rather fragile, Guardian based Warhosts if they want a lot of other toys.

The Black Guardians are elite soldiers, a militant approach not taken on any other Craftworlds as Ulthwe doesn't follow the Path of the Warrior as strongly as other Craftworlds, so they get the "elite" initiative of 1+. This is also reflected in the army's smaller Aspect Warrior Troupe.

Lastly, they don't get the Voidspinner, which is often seen as the best Engine of Vaul in the Eldar army.


Ulthwe has seen extensive testing and has not been shown to dominate or be beardy, it's looking to get "Approved" status in the NetEA Army Book so it's ready for tournaments.

In earlier development an "across the board" minor increase in points for all formations was proposed, but was argued against as being unnecessary.

I look forward to hearing how the army works for you!

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I'll see how an ulthwe build goes these next few weeks then :-)

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Well...I'll take a look at the EUK one too and see which fits my preference better in that case :-)

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Certainly not having 4 strong aspects seems better for balacen (i.e. 6 strong instead of 8 strong).

Actually, the whole 2 support per Guardian warhost thing is turning me away from Ulthwe towards Biel Tan. The increased SR is nice (never take Black Guardians as they can't take wraith constructs), but the army list structure always forces me into a particular list and play style (troop heavy, wraithgates). Not that that's a criticism of the list, which I feel is pretty well balanced, but I feel I've done that pretty well now and want to try something different, but can't do what I want to do with Ulthwe.

Played Ulthwe' a couple times. Liked it. Won both but that isn't exactly a scientific sample.

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

How about several guardian formations in wave serpents as the core? Or is that too expensive, leading to too few warhosts and therefore too few troupes?

that's part of the problem - take beafy fms and you hammer your activation count, take scrawny ones and your wimpass Guardians get hammered. I usually end up with 4 Guardian fms - 2 with wraithguard, 1 with Seer Council (awesome BTW) and 1 bare. The bare one I almost always have to take to get another support slot, even though it's largely useless (it usually just wanders around being ignored). If I don't take it, then I have to pump up one of the Guardian fms which cuts my activation count.

Don't get me wrong, I've done pretty well with my Ulthwe army. It's just that I find the most effective use of Guardians to be a) with a Seer Council sitting on the Blitz on OW or b) amped up with wraithguard, assaulting out of a gate (wraitgate or stormserpent). The other options I've tried just don't work as well, mostly due to the fact that Guardians die even if you just look at them funny. That and the mostly 2+ init means that your game plan degrades far more quickly than a Biel Tan army with some Aspects in it.

Oh, and painting that many Guardians blows goats

The limit of 2 support per host forces a play style of Guardian,Black Guardian,Farseer heavy/reliant lists .Which is what Ulthwe are supposed to be as far as I can tell and what this list is trying to achieve.

If it was upped to 3 support per host then the army is no longer as Guardian,Black Guardian,Farseer heavy/reliant and it then loses the Ulthwe feel. Becoming just a higher strategy rating (Guardian focused) Eldar list which can be done easily with the Biel Tan Eldar army.

@ mattthemuppet
How can you not want to take Black Guardians , they're worth the extra points just to be able to do the Rolling Assault (Warlock especially) or Retain and Triple Retain all with the possibility of not having to roll higher than a 1+ to activate.

The EpicUk list does not have 1+ black guardians, they are 2+.

http://epic-uk.co.uk/lists/Epic-UK%20Eldar%20codex.pdf

They also have I think a better 6 strong/1exarch aspect formation avoiding some of the problems 4 gives you - I think at possibly 25 points too much though.

Yes but Ryan is asking about the NetEA list which has them at 1+.

I will probably try out the EpicUK list some other time though it's continual +25pt guardian formations does mess up my current build (which goes for 3 standard gaurdian formations)

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