List of flawed ships

[Plaxor]

Sorry Pthisis, I had it backwards; Incubi=Marines. Wyches= Mark of Khorne.

I could see there being an added benefit to boarding, saying for every ship that they destroy/cripple during a boarding action they get double victory points or whatnot.

Also not to mention that having marines on an impaler equipped ships makes it so that they cannot be destroyed.

[horizon]

Feel free to use everthing from the DE pdf on this page (link at bottom):
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/archive/rules/gothic/geldarmms01.html

[Zhukov]

Ive heard from several DE players that they believe the Impaler isn't worth it, both from Jim & on other forums.

Just going to interject something here,

I am an ADAMANT Dark Eldar player and have personally found Impalers to be amazing. I arm nearly every escort I have with them and with the FAQ giving the option of cruisers to have 2 of them (paying for each seperate) I may do the same here. Impalers wipe escorts off the board (because Impalers aren't A-Boats, enemy escorts don't get the save throw).  With the mobile element of the enemy gone, you can rain Impalers on the enemy capital ships at will and run away if any ships get damaged. With ~13 Corsairs and 3 Tortuers I get somewhere around 17 Impalers total in my fleet. That amount of fairly easy full critical hits on ships (especially if you gang up) is devastating.

-Zhukov

[Plaxor]

Whenever I play with DE I always liked having a squadron of escorts with Impalers. They are quite decent at keeping your escorts from getting exploded. Similarly, I would usually put launch bays on my Tortures.

Then again, DE are just slightly harder to kill than CE, so even now, (with non-BFG:R) playing against DE with Orks I seem to splode then rather easy.

[Plaxor]

Pthisis; Perhaps Wyches=Terminators.... and then something else means MoK equivalent?

Maybe some ability that has to do with Grotesques/Haemonculi?

Unfortunately I'm not too solid on DE fluff, as I haven't read their most recent dex in depth, and the older one had like a page and a half of fluff.

You know what would be funny for impalers? If they ever got the 'bridge smashed' result from their critical hit, then they would be assumed to have captured the commander. So they would get VPs equivalent to that commanders value.

Oh and to address the DE BB issue, we actually discussed it quite a bit a while ago. Probably back in December, anyways the thought wasn't that there wouldn't be enough space for a battleship in the webway, it was more along the lines of that if an Archon ever had one, then he would likely end up assassinated by another Kabal. Or his ship would end up blown up or whatnot.

So the easiest thing to agree on was that a larger torture could be permissable and within the fluff.

[Phthisis]

The arguments I heard against the Impaler revolve around it not having a big enough payoff vs torpedos.  They can stay at range and launch torps, but to use the Impaler they have to get into range of enemy guns.  The torpedos cause damage directly, but the Impaler only does it incidentally.  Sure, 7 Impalers simultaneously could mess a ship up, but so could 7 ships worth of torpedos simultaneously. 

Once again, I'm just brainstorming, but how about Incubi=Terminators and the Impaler doubles their boarding value?

I like the idea of getting extra VPs for ships taken by boarding to represent slave taking.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

Oh and to address the DE BB issue, we actually discussed it quite a bit a while ago. Probably back in December, anyways the thought wasn't that there wouldn't be enough space for a battleship in the webway, it was more along the lines of that if an Archon ever had one, then he would likely end up assassinated by another Kabal. Or his ship would end up blown up or whatnot.

It's why it's called survival of the fittest. If the Archon isn't shrewd enough to get rid of his rivals on board, tough! Destroying a kilometers long ship isn't going to be that easy even for Eldar.

[Zhukov]

The arguments I heard against the Impaler revolve around it not having a big enough payoff vs torpedos.  They can stay at range and launch torps, but to use the Impaler they have to get into range of enemy guns.  The torpedos cause damage directly, but the Impaler only does it incidentally.  Sure, 7 Impalers simultaneously could mess a ship up, but so could 7 ships worth of torpedos simultaneously.

I look at a squadron of 3 Corsairs. You either get 6 torps or 3 Impalers. I honestly think that's pretty even. But for the fun of the game and having a completely unique weapon, I would take the Impaler.

-Zhukov

[Taggerung]

Plaxor,

It turns out our DE Player doesn't even want a BB, so I think maybe a new cruiser, and removing the requirement for the Light cruisers would be a great way to bump up the fleet. I am also digging the special rules for slave taking, and even the possibility of capturing an enemy fleet commander.

[Plaxor]

Updated Eldar/DE to MMS.

Changes from MMS 1.9 (you guys might complain)

Holofields instead of being a save mechanic force lance type weapons/nova cannon hits to be re-rolled. Cancels with LO, (We talked about this at some point Horizon)

Weapons batteries are a RS when firing at holofield ships.

Eldar don't auto-pass LD checks for asteroid fields, they instead roll 3D6 and pick the two lowest. Similarly they roll 3D6 and choose the two highest for warp rifts. Still the same on being permanently lost on a 1-2.

Dark Eldar lost their inherent +1 to H&R attacks, but they now have Terminators. They also have shields and Shadowfields work identically to holofields.

Changed the Dark Eldar critical hit table a little.

On to Orks! Woot.

[Taggerung]

MMS?

Yea I don't like these rules for Eldar. They are still glass cannons, but now much easier to hit.

[horizon]

MMS is awesome. lol

What is it you do not like?
Glass cannons (5+ armour/4+ armour ain't bad). They have a shield and a holofield (above 15cm).

Still fast, very manouvrable. And expensive.

Easier to hit? yes. You'll need to plan the whole attack.
More play fun the official Eldar for sure.


Plaxor:
the lance re-roll = makes Eldar MMS more resilient. Denies effect of range.
Cancels with LO = the problem of the holofield re-roll approach. You start attacking core rule mechanics. Something I rather dislike.

The Eldar ld, tests, meh-ish. Not opposed if this would be it but also not yayayay.

[Sigoroth]

MMS?

Yea I don't like these rules for Eldar. They are still glass cannons, but now much easier to hit.

While I personally am not sold on the concept of Eldar being glass cannons (looking at the fluff suggests that this should not be the case) they should very definitely be easier to hit. Any difficulty about hitting them should stem from their ECM. They shouldn't be able to sail into your guns, shoot you, turn around and sod off behind cover saying "nyah nyah you can't hit me".

[Plaxor]

@Tag,

Have you not seen MMS before? everything here is a duplicate of that, other than the Holofield rules. (which likely will just end up being as MMS 1.9)

I was against MMS before, but the argument for making them this way is sound. They are a very glass cannon feel, their weaponry is rather powerful, but they don't have too much for survival.

They are a hell of a lot more survivable with the shields and crits on only 5+ and they still have some help from HF. So I think that they should have comparable durability to Chaos. And quite a few people have been using these rules for years without falling apart.

@Horizon,

All right on the re-roll thing, but how about lance-type weapons receive a -1 to hit if firing over 15cm, -2 if over 30. It would give your range-dependant defense thing, and would provide an added benefit against lances which cause multiple hits.

I also like the idea of lances being worse than WBs against Eldar, which this kind of does.

As far as Nova Cannon hits, they roll 2D6 and choose the lowest die for damage caused?

[horizon]

Hey Plaxor,

your line of thinking on the lance isn't bad. As I did like that approach as well. Nice and clean. However some opposed as they said it was a core mechanic that a lance always hits on a 4+.
But I would like 4+/5+/6+ for a lance instead of a saving throw. This represents ecm quite well imo.

Sigoroth? Your idea?