Eldar MMS v2.0

[horizon]

Yes, they replace every note/rule about holofields/shields in the mms v19 ruleset.

Thus: No shields.

That's the aim.

[lastspartacus]

Thats a good goal.  I'll practice on vassal with it.

[horizon]

Suddenly had a spark:

Holofields (no shields on vessels)

i) Leadership test
Enemy must make a Leadership test before it can shoot at an Eldar ship. Apply the following modifiers:

> 30cm = - 2 Leadership
15-30cm = - 1 Leadership
<15cm = 0 Leadership

This applies vs all gunnery / direct fire attacks.

* Brace for Impact is declared before this leadership test.
* If leadership test fails place a blastmarker on the Eldar ship (to create movement penalty and negative leadership). However Eldar ships do not take damage from blastmarkers in contact. If due a critical hit the holofields go offline Eldar take damage from blastmarkers per usual.

[lastspartacus]

Its interesting, but I personally feel it doesn't convey the holofields, and if we are going for gameplay over fluff then we might as well stick with shields.

These were actually the two I found most interesting.  I'm assuming the ships would be recosted accordingly, whatever the changes.

iii) Adjusting Hit rolls :
right shift gunnery

add this rule to the damage of lances and batteries for holofields:
15 cm or less - with armour 4+, both batteries and lances hits on a 4+
from 15 to 45 cm - batteries AND lances hits on a 5+
over 45 cm - batteries AND lances hits on a 6+

I thought about the effective 6+ armor thing myself, as Necrons also utilize stealth to effectively gain armor.
I don't know if the suggested flows the best though.
Here is my idea, with more flowing wording needed.
'Eldar ships go back to standard 4+ armor.
Eldar ships always benefit from a right gunnery shift when targeted.  
The armor value of an Eldar ship, when fired upon, depends on the enemy ship's range.  Beyond 30cm 6+ armor, 15-30 5+ armor, 15> 4+ armor.
Lance shots at Eldar are subject to a saving throw to avoid.  over 45 is 4+, 15-30 is 5+, 15> is 6+'
 (can go to 3+, 4+, 5+ if it is felt that this makes Eldar too lance vulnerable)
This is my favorite, as it brings Eldar to 4+ armor fragility while not being at all fragile, especially at range.  And of course keep crits at 5+ most likely.

Edit:  After thinking about it, also how about 'Holofields prevent left column shift under 15cm' because they are still very vulnerable to close range weapon batteries.

iv) re-roll hits
when a ship succesfully hits the eldar ship it must re-roll the dice. Second roll stands. Re-roll after Lock-On shots.

This is interesting.  Thats all I can say about it.  I don't know how it would statistically differ from shields in avoiding damage, someone should do the maths on both these points.

Edit:  Edited cuz what I first wrote didnt make sense.

[horizon]

Hi,

played an introduction battle yesterday. Using v1.9 as is to avoid confusion. I played along a brand new player who uses Corsairs. Against a Chaos flotilla.

Small battle 500pts
2x Carnage
3x Infidel

vs

Shadow
2x Aconite + 1 Hemlock
2x Nightshade

Was a fun little game to introduce someone. No attack craft yet.

In the end it was 2 crippled Carnages and 2 Infidels left.

And a crippled Nightshade squadron (failed BFI in last turn).
destroyed hemlock-aconite squadron (we did not disengage a single Aconite just because. We would have normally).
Crippled Shadow.

On table left: Shadow and a Nightshade, Chaos disengaged. Call it a Chaos Minor drawing victory.

On shields:
I called it 'outer hull quick wraithbone regeneration' in my head. Thus the outer hull having the least vital components is easy to build again by the bonesinger. Blastmarkers take that 'hull' down and when away it is reformed
Works exactly like shields. lol it works.

[lastspartacus]

Decide to stick with shields for good?  Or was the battle just for fun?

[horizon]

No decision I just liked the idea. I call it regeneration for now and no one can accuse Eldar having shields. lol lol lol.

The battle was as an introduction so no new tryouts.

[horizon]

Eldar Weapon Batteries
Per original rules it these count as Closing on the gunnery table regardless of facing. Tactical no-brainer.

In MMS it has always been a left shift. But to be honest that is wank a special rule to have a special rule. Since adding 2 batteries or so to the ship will have the same strength without a special rule.

So, ideas?

Negate blastmarkers? Hit on a +1?

[lastspartacus]

I like the left shift.  Its more characterfully representative than scads of batteries.

Also, its more beneficial to certain things than a couple more batteries.  Like hitting Ordnance.

[horizon]

Okay then.

[lastspartacus]

For the record, though, not a fan of the shields.  Dunno where you are at on them.

[Sigoroth]

Eldar have superior shield technology to the Imperium, so why wouldn't they have shields? I personally favour regenerative shields. Absorbs hits like normal shields, but after each ship/squadron completes its fire at an Eldar ship roll 1D6 for each shield the Eldar vessel has. For each 5+ rolled, remove a blast marker from base contact.

[horizon]

I know you would. But it is also overpowered in terms of game balance and we would need to whop an extra 5-10pts per shield on a ship.

[lastspartacus]

Two things:  For very slow/stationary things, such as Eldar defenses, I would like to see them gain shields instead of holofields.

Secondly, where in the entire background of the Eldar does it indicate that they use any form combat shielding on their vessels?

[Sigoroth]

The old Eldar and shields debate. Well, Eldar shield technology is supposed to be much better than that of the Imperium. According to fluff they look down on the crudity of Imperial shields, much like the Imperium would with Orks. Wave Serpents are supposed to have shielding for example (though it is poorly represented in 40k). Eldar have shields on their Titans and massive vehicles (I'm pretty sure this is reflected to some degree in Epic rules). In 40k rules this is often reflected as a flat save, rather than absorbed hits (much like Necrons get in BFG).  For a BFG example of Eldar shielding, the resilience of Eldar fighters is due in part to their shields.

The biggest problem is that those that made the rules for Eldar ships in the first place took on board 2 things about Eldar. 1) Their propensity to try to avoid fire rather than resist it. 2) The fact that most often Eldar shield, though putatively better, have been represented as saves rather than absorbed hits in GW game systems.

There are a couple of things wrong with this. Firstly, it would be utterly essential to have shields in space. You can't "fool" a swarm of micrometeoroids into not hitting you. Or a good deal of other celestial phenomena for that matter. This is particularly salient for the Eldar who spend a tremendous amount of time hiding in just that sort of terrain.

Secondly, shields in BFG are the best defence in the game. What they do very very well is protect you from incidental fire. A couple of hits against an IN cruiser is worthless. Not so an Eldar or Necron cruiser. They require that the enemy focus his fire or risk wasting a good deal of it. This then makes brace decisions easy as well as meaning that further fire will likely be reduced by BM interference. A Necron player will take less overall damage from a lot of focussed fire due to his save, but against incidental fire it is much worse than shields, so the opponent can split his fire. The Necron player will take the same number of hits as if they were focused, but since it's spread out the Necron player won't get the same benefit for bracing, unless he braces all ships, in which case he loses a lot more than a player with shields would. Not to mention the fact that BMs don't get placed to screw with gunnery.

So shields > other defences. Which makes me wonder why the Eldar are so disdainful of such an effective defence. Also, when you read the description of imperial void shields they get overloaded. Eldar shields aren't supposed to (hence in most systems they're represented by a save rather than absorbed hits).  I think that normal BFG shields should have had a chance of coming back up when out of BM contact, rather than automatically coming up (if that test is failed, place a BM in contact for each shield that failed). Eldar shields on the other hand should be like shields are currently. Automatically come back.

But since that's not how it is, I put forward regenerative shielding.

Note (horizon): the regenerative shields I just put forward are somewhat different to my original proposal. Originally they were supposed to get a regenerate test against each point of incoming fire (much like a brace save for shields) which if continued to be passed would result in the hit being completely ignored. It would take a number of fails equal to the number of shields to drop them all. So a BB with 3 shields at 4+ save would roll 3 dice against incoming hits. Any that came up 4+ would absorb a hit and keep rolling to absorb more hits. Only when you'd failed all 3 shields saves at least once would all the shields be down (failed saves absorb a hit too). So this rule was a little fiddly in that you kept having to roll dice and also powerful in that it could end up giving quite a lot of shields in the end.

In the proposal I mention above you would take hits exactly as a normally shielded ship except that when the enemy ship/squadron has finished shooting you roll 1d6 per point of shield strength. For each 5+ you remove a BM from base contact (essentially getting back 1 shield). Then the attacking player chooses his next ship/squadron to fire with and continues his turn. So if a BB had 3 shields it would like get back 1 for successive firing. This process would be repeated each time an Eldar ship is the target of fire, possibly getting back more shields. Overall this would amount to more protection when looking at multiple squadrons focussing fire on the one Eldar ship (much like Necrons flat save would do), keep incidental protection up (1 or 2 hits won't cut it!) while making the Eldar ship slightly weaker than its IN counterpart as far as a single squadron is concerned (they'd only need to get through 3 shields, not 4).

Besides, it's Harlequins that depend most on holotech, not CE or CWE! For DE a clear demonstration of their shield tech is the 40 shadowfield, which has been bastardised in BFG.