There are a lot of great ideas here, but many of them are difficult to incorporate into official rules for a fleet that consists primarily of an enormous number of independent and mutually antagonistic Cabals that exist solely as pirate raiders devoted primarily for the taking of slaves and raw materials from whoever or whatever they are strong enough to overcome. A Dread Archon is an imposing figure in WH40k terms, but in BFG terms an individual Dread Archon has at his disposal at best maybe three or four cruisers accompanied by a dozen escorts or so. Even the largest of them would have little more than twice these numbers, and they would not encumber themselves with larger vessels that would be correspondingly less maneuverable, not as fast, etc.
if anything, a Dread Archon's personal flagship would probaly have one or two refits as opposed to being something significantly larger or more powerful. As much as the Cabals hate each other, the first Archon that developed a ship significantly more powerful than his rivals would probably have said ship jumped, holed and offered up to Slaanesh. teh Dread Archon refits idea is something that can be added to the Eldar Domain rules if there is enough support, but we are not looking at creating a larger ship class, especially something that can't be easily modeled (meaning available as a single kit).
Based on the new Dark Eldar Codex, here are some other rules we are proposing for the Eldar Domains document:
When selecting scenarios, Dark Eldar always roll against the Raid table on p.65 of the rulebook. However, if the Dark Eldar fleet is the attacker and has a fleet 1,500 points or greater, they may elect to play a Planetary Assault on a D6 roll of 6 instead of rolling for it randomly. For campaigns, Dark Eldar fleets operate from a pirate base as described on p.151 of the rulebook and may earn up to three in the course of a campaign.
Shadowfield. The Dark Eldar utilize Shadowfields on all their starships, a more powerful and extremely stealthy version of the Night Shields utilized by their surface units. They work in the same manner as Holofields but impart an additional right-column shift (after all other modifiers are applied) to that provided by normal Holofields.
Then we add this note to the Eldar Haven:
Eldar Havens utilize shadowfields, which work as...
Then we modify the repulsion generators rule to become the Polarization Field that already exists in the Eldar refit tables. This makes this system a separate, pre-existing item in parallel with the Shadowfields as opposed to yet another something new. This way we don't have one mechanic for Eldar, a second mechanic for Dark Eldar and a THIRD mechanic for the Haven, which is the one thing that really bothered me about the Repulsion Fields mechanic.
Finally, if we incorporate this, we have to make the Netherfield refit unavailable to the Dark Eldar (roll again) because it and the new Shadowfield are essentially the same thing.
Thoughts?
- Nate
While they can and will engage in planetary assaults when they have the forces to do so, this is something even they will not do lightly.
