More of a rant than anything this time. I had a good idea for a post a few days back but never wrote it down so mostly I've been just trying to remember it. If there's one thing that I'm prone to doing, it's over-analysis of unimportant shit. So here goes.
Having played eldar for nearly 2 years now I've come to read and agree with opinions on the web about what things are, how they are and why they are. Three similar but ultimately different states of existence that compound on each other to form the basis of an army that appeals to perfectionists and only disappoints them.
One of the best paraphrases I can make is from LO where one person said something about 'ooh eldar only seem weak, they just need to have a really good player behind them'. This statement is both true and totally wrong on many levels.
A fellow member of LO (niraco I believe) responded to the above post with (paraphrasing!!) 'any army that requires a perfect player to play perfectly is weak'.
Brilliant. Hard to say it better than that. It's very true. Lets break it down for the sake of completion;
1. First of all 40k is luck dependant. You can maneuvre, position perfectly but if you roll 1's the entire game it's game over baby.
2. Like above, your chances of success are a hard-coded statistical probability. How often you fall within the limits of success might be determined by the dice, yes, but getting the most dice as you can requires good judgement.
3. Combining the above two points brings open the third; if to field a 'competitive' force you must not only min-max your list (and preferably tailor it too) but also play extremely well from what you can do without dice interfering, you might just be looking at a weak army.
Summary? If a ball-standard player can play a IG mech list and toast most of his opposition he's very likely going to be regarded as a noob. Some people even refuse to play IG because of the total bullshit they can field. Compare with Tau.. what are you looking at? The best lists generally have crisis suits and pathfinders working together. A manta and maybe a pair of those big ass railgun tanks. There's no room for experimentation left, a couple of bad rolls really puts the hurt on and in reading OSH's preliminary works on introducing new Tau players... there's a very finite procedure to follow. The modus operandi is 'shoot shit, move into the gap'. Not really brain surgery. I pity Tau players, gimped by association thanks to their choice of army. But those things alone don't immediately scream "bad army" do they? So what explicitly about Tau makes them bad?
Following our earlier 3 step program lets see.
1. Shooting dependant. Low BS and fuck all TL weapons from what I know. If you waste a turn of shooting on a target.. that's a massive hit to your game plan. Luck however it out of the players hands..
2. A good shooting phase for Tau depends on the players ability to line up shots and make sure they're in range. Not so hard.. good range on their guns or so I'm told. Most require direct LOS I think except for some missile attack which is handy but I doubt it's a game changer.
3. What have we got? An army with one strength, low/mediocre attributes and a heavy dependancy on gimmick units? Musical wounds is for noobs, but OSH suggests players deliberately add drones to give ablative wounds for suits. Tsk tsk. When the resident master of a race is telling you that... there's a fundamental flaw in how your army works. The above two points combine into this army where if things don't go perfectly for the Tau player, they fight an uphill battle that is very steep indeed.
Such armies aren't good for the hobby. There's a certain 'elitist' attitude held by chaos players that is immediately noticable. Eldar players like myself generally resign to the idea that we have what.. 3 good units? Out of 33? Awesome. Tau I dunno. They power through the mediocrity which I guess deserves some respect but ultimately looks silly. I don't know any GK players personally. WH? 1 guy. Cheater. Necrons? Total bro. DEldar? Quiet, reserved and generally pretty honourable. Orks? A showmans army.
I could go on. And I am ranting.
So what about eldar? Why does this army still get considered good provided we have an excellent general at the helm? Well I wonder. If you took an accomplished eldar/Tau player and gave them an optimised netlist razorspam army or something, how would you expect them to do? I've now arrived at the point where I can consistently put my guys 1/2 inch out of charge range for an enemy melee unit. Hilarious when I shoot them round 1, bladestorm round 2 then charge to finish them off. PW/SS exarch yeyuh.
But that's not really what I'm trying to get across here. What I'm trying to say is: if an army is so bad the only way it can win is by having the best players, then it is NOT OK and it NEEDS improvement. GW try to make out they're "just a model company" but hoo have practices changed just recently with DE and now the FAQs which previously took years to emerge... all in response to competitors gaining players from disenfranchised ex 40k who are tired of no variety and the retarded superiority that comes with blowing a sizable portion of your yearly income on plastic.
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