Eldar MMS v2.0

[ten]

Yes Admiral_d_Artagnan is right. I played the MMS Eldar against Niilo a couple of games yesterday.

First game was "the Raiders" Corsairs attacking. My fleet was
Ecpilse
Shadow
2 Nightshade + Hellebore
2 Hemlock

IN had Emperor, a couple of cruisers and a couple of escort fleets so double the number of points. The scenario meant that IN had to deploy ships 20cm apart each other which lessens their retaliation strenght. Also IN had -1 LD for 4 turns.

I was able to attack during first turn and the reduced LD from scenario did deny my opponent for bracing before cripling a cruiser and one escort fleet. Radiation Bursts played a major role taking away the already low IN LD a few times. At the end I had only lost a couple of escorts and Eclipse had 2 damage. Whole IN fleet (twice the size) was either destroyed or disengaged.


Second game was just normal 1000 point clash without any specific scenario. I did add one more Nightshade and Hellebore along with Pirate Prince. IN did drop one escort fleet and the Emperor.

Nova Cannon managed to get first hit by destroying one Hellebore at range, but then Eldar used 50-60 cm movement to strike. Attack cripled escort fleet and forced two cruisers to brace. Still other 3 cruisers were fully functional and get to shoot Eldar at pretty close range. However, shooting abeam Eldar ships with weapons batteries didn't prove very successful, especially if not withing 15 cm. Almost all my Eldar ships got shot, but because of the shields actually the only damage was done to Nightshade/Hellebore escort fleet caught between two IN cruisers.

Later in the game Eldar were not able to deal very much damage fast, but practically IN weapons were totally unable to get past shields. I braced my Eclipse several times only to notice it would've took 0 or 1 damage. Eventually IN was forced to disengage. Even though my total losses were just those 3 escorts and minor dmg on Eclipse, victory points were not drasticly in my favor as all IN ships managed to get away before being destroyed. Still Eldar did claim the battlefleet.


I have to say that the MMS Eldar fleet was a lot more enjoyable to play with and it relies less on luck than the official version (I for some reason tend to fail all holofield saves and bracing doesn't do much good for me either). It is totally different ships being able to withstand damage as previously practically every single shot had a decent change taking out every Eldar ship. Now taking out Eldar needs concentrated firepower which probably isn't that easy to archieve due to good Eldar mobility. Just shooting here and there doesn't do any good that's for sure.

And btw it is not gaming experience that did bring the games in my favor. We played first a game where heavy wpns battery IN fleet did totally defeat my slightly modified first Eldar fleet above using normal MSM rules. Crappy rolling yeah =)

We'll probably need to test these MMS a bit more by reversing sides. So more feedback to follow perhaps...

[horizon]

Hi,

thanks two...I mean ten

Game 1
alas it happens. The Imperial leadership plus radation burst making them not able to brace was indeed very harsh. Given the nature of speed and deployment the Eldar thus had an advantage never to be lost. Hard to comment thus.

Game 2
So Eldar fleet like this :
prince
shadow
eclipse
3 nightshades
2 hellebores
2 hemlock

did the Imperial player have a carrier around? I'm glad you liked MMS more. But a resilient eldar shouldn't be it. Reversing roles is certainly interesting.
Were there some serious issues with the rules?

[nkalakos]

I think Niilo meant he had two games with "ten" and not "10" games in all.

That's right, two games with "ten"  

First game: Raiders, IN defending, ca.750 points Eldar (Shadow, Eclipse, some escorts) vs ca.1500 points IN (Emperor, Overlord, Dominator, Dictator, 5 Swords, 4 Firestorms). Flare region with solar flares and radiation bursts. This game is probably not very interesting from rules testing point of view. I quickly lost almost 600 points worth of vessels (Dominator, Swords and Firestorms) closest to eldar edge of arrival. Radiation bursts (-5 or -6 to Ld, in addition to -1 from scenario) kept me from bracing, reloading ordnance or disengaging crippled ships or squadrons for several turns. Instead of disengaging at that point ten decided to try and cripple the Emperor, which he promptly did. I think I managed to kill couple of escorts and maybe inflict a point of damage on one of the cruisers.

Second game: "deploy in the corner and kill the enemy"- scenario, 1000 points. Eldar had Shadow, Eclipse, some more escorts and I had Overlord, Dominator, Dictator, Dauntless (lances) and 5 swords. Dominator managed to take out a single Hellebore early on with its NC and Eldars early torpedo salvo got neutralized by fighters from Dictator. After that the battle turned to close range shootout, with eldar eventually crippling Dominator, Dictator, Dauntless and Sword squadron. I managed to get some shots in crippling an escort squadron (Hellebores and Nightshades) and two hits to Eclipse. Eventually, with all but one of my ships crippled and facing away from the eldar, I disengaged.

I found the eldar cruisers very hard to damage. Table was cluttered with blast markers so thanks totwo column shifts my broadsides generally ended up rolling one two dices. This of course is no different from original rules, but then even occasional dice had a change of doing something. Now those same dice are stopped by shields. Thanks to two moves, Eldar players still chooses which ships get to shoot back.

Well, I'm sure I can work out something in the end. More escort could be the way to go, maybe Cobras. I'm just a bit disappointed if yet another fleet turns out to be practically immune to weapon batteries.

Whining,
Niilo

[nkalakos]

did the Imperial player have a carrier around? I'm glad you liked MMS more. But a resilient eldar shouldn't be it. Reversing roles is certainly interesting.
Were there some serious issues with the rules?

I had Dictator, which was quite helpful defensively, intercepting some torpedoes and also meaning that some of the Eldar attack craft were fighters.

At more difficult target orientations (other than closing), which Eldar can easily present, extra column shift cuts 30-50% off the battery power. This combined with two shields makes them very hard to damage compared to imperial cruisers. And of course they have higher leadership, so they brace more efficiently as well.

Rules itself felt fairly good. All situations we came across were clearly spelled out in rules. More so than the original rulebook, I feel.

Niilo

[horizon]

On weapon batteries, under 15cm no shift from holofields. This and a 15cm left shift on the gunnery table (per normal rules) make batteries quite potential up close and personal.

I'm also no fan of the Overlord as it is generally seen as a weak ship anyway. And I think the Firestorms would be better replaced with another cruiser. A single Dauntless isn't great as well.

[nkalakos]

At short range batteries are rather good, although getting that close would usually require a serious mistake from Eldar player. That is of course something I have to try, since I can't get rid of the batteries anyway.

Overlord and Dauntless were the only ones to actually do something in the second game , due to having lances. I'm not a huge fan of Dauntless anyway, but then I used about two minutes to grab ca. 1000 points off the shelf. The firestorms and other ships used in the first game didn't matter anyway, as they were destroyed before having a change to return fire.

Anyway, we need to try them again at some stage, before we decide which rules to use in our campaign. As it is, MMS-rules do remove some unattractive parts of the original rules.

Niilo

[kungpung]

-Why is dragonship better than Eclipse(2 more hits, 1 more lance or as GW better armour and 1 more lance) at just 10pts. As the fleets can be allies it can't have anything to do with respective fleet composition.

-Maybe a clarification about necrons and ignoring holofields.

-Lock on is powerful when launching a broadside against enemy ships, but eldar ships dont have broadsides. Maybe a thought of allowing it to turn in one of its movement phases?

[horizon]

1) Iffy, but the Eclipse is a 10pts overcosted on purpose. The Corsairs should focus on escorts. Plus you can take a fleet of Eclipses but not a fleet of Dragonships because of restrictions.

2) Same as normal. In the official Eldar rules there is no mention about Necrons as well. But the Necrons mention that they ignore holofields. They still do in MMS that way.

3) In the past (before version 1.5) they where able to do that but it was massively overpowered.

[kungpung]

-Okay, dont like the fact that a captial ship is more expensive for one of different fractions. Rather se a limit of one capital ship for every five escorts or something.

-Does the restrictions follow the reseve rules, ie;you have to take two wraith to get a dragon as reserves. The Reserves rules only states that fleet maximums cannot be ecceded...

-Having tried out the MMS in two small (750) engagement vs chaos i see the eldar beeing capable of taking lot of more damage, (except from ordinace), making it a far more intresting fleet. Would almost say the eldar ordinance itself is a bit over the top, but then again, you get half the number the other fleets get.

-There is one thing though that isn't perfectley clear, does each of the eldar moves conferes a minimum move to a capital ship (half to full) at respective speed, or can the eldar stay on the spot (thus counting as defences if moved below 5cm total). This makes big difference when manuevering past the gunlines of the enemies...

-Is there any plan of incoporating these new rules as GW-offical (words from GW?), as the current ones is not much of gothic playing, but a lottery of survival...

[horizon]

- wella

- they do

- okay

- they may stay on spot

- I know the rules commitee is cool about the mms rules and likes them. But making them official....?

[ten]

We tried the MMS rules a bit more and this time the Eldar were not as superior as last time. Because the rules themselves produce more enjoyable game for both sides we decided to use them in our campaign. I can give some more feedback as the campaign progresses, but some quick remarks now:

-Eldar torpedoes seem to be (still) by far the most efficient way to deal damage. Pulsars do well if you get lucky, but torpedoes pretty much guarantee a large number of hits bypassing shields. All Nightshade fleet FTW or...? Should the price of torpedoes go up sligthly?
-Nova cannon gives Eldar maybe even too much trouble when multiple guns are present. Low number of shields/hits and easy criticals mean that capital ships are easily cripled even with a single direct hit. Also large number of escorts in fleet means that many times also the scattered Nova Cannon hits somewhere. I wonder why there isn't holofield save vs. Nova Cannon as is would perfectly make sense and 6+/5+ save wouldn't be that powerful either I think.

[DycesKynes]

How did the Your Fleet survive any Weapon Battery attacks with no holosaves?  Mine gets destroyed so easy that way, unless this was changed in the 1.9?  I can't get to that file from work.

[horizon]

...?
Wella, holofields work above 15cm (right shift vs batteries), under 15cm no holofield. But a single shield will hold a bit though.

Cool to hear you are using MMS in the campaign, feedback is very highly appreciated.

Eldar torps are indeed evil always have been. Nightshades are 50pts, 10pts above official rules.

[DycesKynes]

Well considering the about of WB brought to bare they dont hold out long, esp is he gets me with Lock On. 

[horizon]

Hi,

considering armour. Currently we have the large escorts and capital ships at 5+ armour. This due Wraithbone being strong. But we cannot say sails are that though.

What about reducing armour to 4+ overall? Or a mixed value? Or a random value (if hit roll d6: 1-3 is hull on 5+, 4-6 - sail on 4+)?