Guardians, the complete edition

Taken from; http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/eldar/205745-repairing-our-codex-one-unit-time.html

Post 1;

IMO the guardians biggest fault is that it is an overpriced IG guardsman, with inferior weaponry. Guardians offer very little to a convential Eldar army, beyond being 8pt, wussy scorpions-analogues for when all your elite slots are already occupied.

IMO we can fix the guardian by raising his bs/ws both to 4. Just having guardians being slightly more reliable in combat (3+ to hit) would improve their viability.

Post 2;

Infact, in lieu of making guardians ws/bs 4/4 I'd be happy with making their catapults 18", and leaving dire avenger catapults unmodified. 8pts for a guardian, 12 for a DA. Is the +1 BS +1 ld +1I 4+Sv of a direavenger worth the 4pt difference?

17% more chance to hit, 17% more chance to survive an attack for a DA. Ergo, you maintain a noticeable distinction between Guardians and DA without forcing DA to become elites. Guardian defenders can take heavy weapons, DA get exarchs+powers.

Post 3;

The difference being that IG stand on their own without orders. Eldar units almost *need* a farseer as a crutch for their units, simply because we are limited to 5 or 10 for an aspect squad, and said aspect squad has weaponry/stats only on the grounds of equivalent to spacemarines. In exchange for approaching the glory of Ultramarines and their illustrious primarch (whom our eldar brethren have yet to accept as their spiritual liege [curses!!!]) we get worse S, T, Sv, and the only thing which can carry a special weapon in most cases are the exarch sergeants. Most of these ultraspecialised units also cost equivalent to a His Holiests Finest Mighty Imperial Space Marine, in most cases.

There is literally nothing stopping an IG or spacemarine army from outspecialising your typical eldar army. For less.

THe biggest inhibitor to an eldar army is (and I quote)

This is just a mild annoyance most of the time , play a runepriest/Njal spam army sometime and you may realize how utterly on powers many of our units are, which is not as it should be.

Currently my biggest pet peeve has to be the cost/rules for most eldar heavy weps and the fact that its on a bs3 delivery most of the time.

I have not used a brightlance in fifth , they were overpriced in fourth but since the damage chart changes they are now shorter ranged, less accurate and weaker on the majority of targets and nearly twice the price of lascannon, so much for eldar technological superiority. if given the choice of a plasma cannon (imperial) or starcannon I would take the imperial weapon every time , in-fact except from the scatter laser all of the eldar weps are either worse than the imperial equivalent or where they are roughly comparable hugely overpriced.

Also the eldar heavy weaps being overpriced could be attributed to the assumption that they will somehow always be guided at a doomed target .....never mind the fact that you have to buy a farseer for a not inconsiderable amount of points to potentially be able to do it.

If we gave storm guardians plasma and defensive grenades, would that make them better? What about the option for 1 power weapon per 5 models, at +5pts each?

Post 4;

Ok so a summary of the most popular list of changes. In future I will be sure to specify the additional condition of not adjusting the cost of the unit itself for each model.

Add a real sergeant to the squad.
Allow multiple heavy weapons.
Modify shuriken catapults to at least 18".
Lower min# of units for a squad to 5.
Reduce heavy weapon costs by minimum 5 pts.
Give Guardians grenades.
Storm guardians specificly need at least assault grenades.
Allow SG's access to sergeant.

My final thoughts on this thread are to give SG's the powerweapon/shimmershield combo from direavengers. I feel it's more appropriately placed in a SG squad than in a predominantly GEQ killer shooty squad. What DA replace it with will be covered when we do that thread.

C&C on revised list necessary. From now on, challenge only one change, and propose only one change.

Post 5;

For the sake of argument, the sleeve mounted forcefield you see is present on autarch models and Yriel. The principle operation is not unique. A Guardian Sergeant could very easily be justified as possessing a 5++ that only triggers in melee. It doesn't necessarily mean removing it from DireAvengers at present, but maybe improving the DA version as right now everyone takes doublecata in lieu of anything else... which pretty simply suggests there's a principle shortfall in the other options.