I think the thing that frustrates me the most is how every new or interesting change that seemed to add balance, was followed by a line like "except for models with and they shall know no fear", or "except for drop pods". Just put a giant disclaimer at the front that says BUY SPACE MARINES OR DON'T PLAY!
Anyhow, I'll have to do some playtests, but I'm absolutely certain that my lists will be changing dramatically. So I'm just going to go over a few observations that I've made for my Dark Eldar army, mixed with a few general observations and opinions I've read/heard else where.
- So lets start with the obvious, WWP Assaults are dead, FAQ double slaps us, no assault out of a WWP(no surprise), but also no allies out of a WWP.
- Assault is going to be harder to get into with random charges and overwatch
- Wyches are much less viable, slightly less threat range on average, subject to shooting if they come from WWP/reserve, and then subject to overwatch with a very real chance that they fail the charge and get shot again. Wyches + shooting = dead wyches.
- Beasts threat range greatly reduced, and will be more vulnerable moving across the table.
- Flyers are slightly less effective shooting, no more single turn alpha strikes with all the guns and missles.
- Warlord rules don't do much for our army, most of these abilities we can get from upgrades/combat drugs/pain tokens
- FNP nerf hits us hard, with 5+ and 6+ nerf armour saves, the 4+ FNP was what most units survived on.
- Jetbikes got better, with a 4+ cover save all the time thanks to jink + skilled rider they may be viable shooting units again.
- Gunboats are back, splinter racks will become valuable now
- Raiders didn't really get as nerfed as other vehicles with Hull Points.
- DE Archons/HQ should excel at character hunting/challenges, huskblade/soul trap was made for this.
- Drazhar became very powerful with how difficult 2+ saves are
- Incubi will excel at what I'm going to dub the "Aspect Trick"
- Opinion seems to agree wound allocation slows the game down drastically, so points levels will likely fall back to 1500pts
There are a few others that I'm going to test a bit first, but I want to explain one thing I mentioned near the end, the "Aspect Trick". Incubi, and all Eldar Aspect warriors for that matter, have a "character" that fights at a different initiative value than the rest of the squad, this allows your character upgrade to be the ultimate CC sniper. This takes advantage of the new close combat wound allocation, and some sneaky charge movement, as I said, I've only read the rules once so feel free to correct me.
Aspect Trick: Move the Klaivex into B2B with high threat target, making sure not to touch any other models. Klaivex strikes at I6, while remainder of Incubi strike at I5. Thus when Klaivex makes attacks at I6, he should be the only one attacking at that Initiative on your side. Wounds don at I6 can only be taken from models in base to base with models striking at I6, thus the high threat target the Klaivex maneuvered into B2B must die. Bonus: If the Klaivex rolls a 6 to hit, he may use the Precision Strikes to allocate to another model in the combat, and still snipe his B2B target.
I expect this to be a HUGE advantage if the squad makes it into CC with anything with limited power weapons. The problem I see arising, is a lot of units, the power weapons go to the characters, and they will get a "look out sir" roll. But something like the grey hunter squad with a couple meltas and a power weapon, this will be gold And don't we all expect to see more of those grey hunter squads in 6th?