Worms! Worms! Worms!

edit: Who kicked the can!?!

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

I'm sure that is a funny post, but the reference has escaped me.

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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.

I can't answer everyone directly (so many new posts!), but I'll try to hit the pertinent points.



I don't own IA11 yet, though it's been added to my shopping list. What are the Weapons options for Hornets? I assumed they could take any of the Eldar heavy weapons. Pricing is definitely an issue for Saim Hann, but (again, without the fluff in front of me) a Light Scout Tank doesn't seem like it should stack up well against an MBT in any shooting type. I can certianly leave both the stated solution and yours on the table for the time being.


Another to change the pulsar over the Fist, noted.



I agree. It unleashes a black hole on the battlefield. It should be good against everything. With barrage stats, even shooting against infantry, it will never have great to hit numbers because of its range. We can look into increasing the TK number later, this is the first step.

LotM - Good point on the Fire Prisms versus Scorpions. It's worth looking into.

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SG

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

While it's a cool rule, the knock against it is that it heavily favors high to hit and penalizes low to hit. That is, doubling becomes unattractive, working directly against Hit and Run.

Plus, at 3+ the effect of the change is pretty marginal anyway, so it won't help the Phantom much.

Also - Eldar lists are a pain to format. So much text!

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SG

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

My apologies, I mis-read what you wrote, and it is a valid weapons config.
It's not the coolest config, though. :-p
The twin pulse laser config is the only config they made nice resin weapons for in 40k.


Eldar are "soap bubbles with sledgehammers", seems perfect to me.

Mymeara has them at 175pts for 3 (58pts each, small vulnerable formation) rather than 250pts for 6 (42pts each, large resilient formation).

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On the TPF, when I look at the weapon I do think "that's awesome", and at the same time the Pulsar is underwhelming. To what degree each one is the problem I'm not sure, but I would be inclined to sort out the Pulsar before the TPF. Since the most common loadout is the Warlock with lance and PF which I think most people think is balanced, this seems the most straightforward way to approach it since it is as independent a change as you can make it.

The overarching factor we have to be mindful of though, is that the two weapons give the titan very different roles, and that means its not a simple matter of balancing one weapon against another. The PF titan (particularly the Warlock) synergises well with the army in general - you get a 1+ retain with an assault monster that can support assaults and also blow stuff up - but with a single primary limiting factor - it has to get close. In that respect it will be difficult to know when the Pulsar has been balanced, because even when it is it will likely still be less popular.

But OK, let's look at the Pulsar. If you have a twin Pulsar Phantom, extra FF attacks isn't really going to help much (even if the split didn't buff the Warlock too) since you're likely to be shooting things at range. Maybe if the problem with this build was that it kept losing defensive assaults, but I don't think that's the case. For me, the crux of the issue with the Pulsar build is that it just can't possibly kill enough stuff. It only has two weapon mountpoints, which when you consider that it has the same role as the Imperial titans need to pack some punch. The problem with the low-shots-but-TK1 stats it has is that its optimal utility is narrowed to RA stuff - and at 750 points that's difficult. I actually quite like the idea (in principle) of giving it the option to "rapid fire" lots of AT shots - say 4xAT3+. It is a big change though, and arguably its MW ability still needs a buff to 3 shots anyway so perhaps that should be tried first.

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As I inferred above, that's nice in theory.

But in practice, a pair of Revenant Titans will statistically kill exactly the same amount of RA4+ units as a twin Pulsar Phantom.

And against any armour save less than RA4+ (pretty damn common!), the Revenants will kill more units due to the greater number of basic MW hits.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

No. The Pulsars on the Revenant and Scorpion are the same.

The Pulsa ron the Phantom is a more powerful version.

Note that in WH40k the Phantoms's Titan Pulsar has twice the shots and double the range compared to the "generic" Pulsar as well as better anti armour capability.

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We are returned!
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That's a retcon. Revenants have always had Revenant Pulse Lasers in Epic, from they were introduced in 2nd(?), through Epic 40,000 and in Swordwind.

Curiously enough Scorpions (introduced in E40k) had the same Pulsar as a Phantom Titan.

In EA they all have different weapons (Pulse Laser, Revenant Pulse Lasers, Pulsar and Titan Pulsar) and that's the easiest way to balance them too.

If the Scorpion goes to 3 shots I'd like to see the Titan Pulsars get 3 shots as well, for consistency. Then Pulse Lasers (of all sizes) have 2 shots and Pulsars have 3.

Indeed, but to be more specific about what I meant - the revenants have a different probability distribution, so also have the "potential" to kill more even when the average is the same. A phantom maxes out at 4. I seem to recall a statistics thread exploring these factors, but suffice to say the average is not the only consideration.

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Eh, the doubling encouragement was pretty much taken care of when they removed the spirit stones. The pulse rule was awesome and it would certainly encourage use of the Scorpion, which is the main unit in question anyway.

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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.

The fire prism vs scorpion problem seems to me to be more of a fire prism problem then a scorpion problem. The one obligatory data point says we rarely see fire prisms used in groups, sometimes one is used for range stretching though.



If the pulsar option doesn't synergize with the Eldar army in general it can be "better" without upsetting list balance then if it has perfect synergy with the list. I would expect the pulsar option to be priced differently in the hypothetical list where there is super synergy with the pulsars, a bit like titans being priced differently in Titan lists compared to non Titan lists.

True. And to be fair, it's not like Warlocks are as important or unique to the list that you're never going to take a Phantom no matter what.

But, thinking aloud, it might be hard in the sense that the only reason one might not take a Phantom is because you can't spare the points, yet in a larger game when you do they might be a no-brainer choice. By making a unit good enough to be worth basing the whole army around at 3k, theoretically it's also possible that in a 4k army it is unbalanced.

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Let's drop changes to the power fist for now. I'm willing to concede that the problem is not that the fist needs to be toned down to Pulsar level, but more probably the pulsar (and probably several of the ETC weaps too, though that's something to discuss with AoC later) need to be brought up to the level of the fist and paychic lance.

So the easiest (and it seems most popular) option is to mirror the changes to the Scorpion and allow pulsars 3x 75cm MW3+, TK(1) shots.

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SG

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