Post 1;
Now I use rangers already and don't consider them to be "that terrible" but a lot of other players I see call them outright worthless.
Why is this? Yea sure they're expensive but let's talk about what would make them worth 19/24pts instead of just demanding they get cheaper. Cheap troops that are useless are are just cheap and useless, not suddenly worthwhile, afterall.
I'm really gonna need other people to kick this off because personally I don't think they're that bad.
Post 2;
If every unit in a game could 'earn its points back through firepower' then I'd wager most games would be over in a 2 turns. It's endemic to the IG codex.. their shit is just too efficient. Most other codeci are bordering towards 50-70% efficiency which is the only way to prolong a game for 6 turns. From what I see anyway.
Post 3;
I've just had a totally crazy thought.
STALKERs. Eldar rangers are stalkers. BS4 GEQs, who are really good at hiding. They have 2 weapons. Ranger longrifle which is a rending weapon that wounds on a 2+, Shuriken UMP which is a pistol with the following profile S5 AP5 6" Assault 2. Rangers have defensive grenades. Pathfinder upgrade gives them Hit&run and they count as relentless.
Post 4;
In addition to testing out the new Spectres unit I have ran two seperate lists that included pathfinders. My results have been skewed by my opponent being a newbie and me taking a lot of time to teach him the game. But pathfinders are pretty much a 'press the big red button' unit so they're relatively easy to talk about.
So first off what I've found is that, simply, they don't provide enough of a net benefit to an army to be worth taking, for reasons I will detail now.
Firstly they're really designed to cover and assist a foot list. These guys are useless for mechdar. Mixed list doesn't have that much of a benefit either but it's better. For a foot list pathfinders primarily provide movement suppression and MC killing. Against tanks they're a waste of time, despite rudimentary transport popping power. The best way to use pathfinders is to get a group of 6-8 and park your farseer in with them, deep centre. From there you have a tough to kill core of psyker powers and a launching platform for starengine tanks to benefit from fortune. I was playing on a 5' x 5' board (roughly) and the main mistake myself and my opponent made were putting our eldrad to the side parked with pathfinders, when eldrads main strength really only gets leveraged from the centre of the table. He's an expensive target, he's in a unit of pathfinders under fortune, he can snipe your commanders and doom your troops. Any tanks near him can receive fortune for that lovely 36" charge into your rear lines ready to disperse hot fiery death.
The pathfinders themselves though.. from the centre of the board they hold a commanding position over skimmers/MC's. If you had 3 moderate sized units placed in a line across your part of the board, they could pretty effectively force your opponent into a detrimental movement methodology. As happened to me with my zilla cluster.
When I landed my DAs near to his pathfinders, and they got within charge range.. because they're in cover a few problems emerge. Obviously even pointblank shooting with bladestorm was mostly ineffective. Charging in afterwards meant he struck first thus reducing my assault power slightly. The second time I attempted this on a different unit of pathfinders, they weren't in range to charge. In his turn he had two choices, pistol me and charge at initiative 1, or sniper me and risk me saving/no pinning. Well as it happened he snipered me, killed only a couple of guys and on my turn I tankshocked 75% of his list off the board. BUT THE POTENTIAL WAS THERE.
IF he had had shuriken UMPs or analogue on his pathfinders then maybe we'd be looking at a very different story. A high strength low AP machine pistol that allows a charge afterwards. In that case, a last ditch attempt to keep his pathfinders alive and score another killpoint would definitely have been more accessable for him and the game might have gone very differently for me then.
I'm contemplating testing out all our 'new rules' in an upcoming game against this same opponent (since he's new it's not like he knows any better) and we'll see how they stack up. Since he and I have agreed to standardise our loadouts via xml comparisons (ie we use identical troops choices with no deviation allowed, preset limits on the other catagories) it will help to balance things out (he will be using eldar too so obviously I won't have a massive advantage over him or anything).
My predictions for eldar after the introduction of my 'codex repairs' will be that eldar may play much more aggressively than it does now.
Post 5;
Alright.. so adapting on your two ideas.. make their UMP 12" range and still a pistol? There's your valid carbine-AR alternative to the longrifles for when things go pear-shaped.
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