New edition thoughts - In the grim dark of the future, there are only Eldar.

So I notice a lot of idiots are posting/cheering about how Deathstars are going to go away, specifically beast-stars, seer council etc. Notably on BOLS and Faeit....

My description of those people should tell you what I think of that.

Invis + Fortune = "I Win".

Invis, to those who have not yet read the book, means you have to snap fire at the unit, and can only hit them on 6's in CC.  It's stupid, because as far as I can tell, ignore cover doesn't remove invis. So having to snap fire is atrocious. It also means blasts / template weapons can't be shot into them.... (as its not a snap fire). Then you can't assault them, because you'll hardly touch them. Meanwhile, they'll play with you just fine.

Give those two powers to an army that can assault turn 2, and throw tons of attacks, have reliable invulns, have plenty of IC's to spread around abilities or break away to kill shit, and a lot of psyker levels, and you've got a recipe for super death stars.

Seriously invis is stupidly good. What were they thinking?

A lot of people are championing the return to MSU - They are wrong. Vehicles are slightly more durable than they were previously, but the gains are uneven in each army. Wave serpents benefited immensely, while rhinos only slightly improved. So your scoring MSU'd vehicle army is only slightly more durable than it was in 6th (unless you play wave serpents of course).

 It's nice to know that those AP3 and worse guns won't insta-gib a vehicle. But, all that requires is a few weapon swaps to get back to the status quo. Prepare for a lot more AP2/AP1, or S6+ torrent to simply glance stuff out.

Vehicles needed more hullpoints, or 6+ invuln saves (representing armored systems.. or whatever take your pick), not just booming on a 7+. It's a helpful change but not the best.

Seer councils / beast stars weren't having a problem tabling people in 6th, MSUing your units isn't going to really change that, it just means that the seer council or beast star might include more wave serpents to boom your vehicles (as they do it quite easily and reliably), and less wraith knights (As cover saves are dumb now). Or just a few more anti-tank ranged units.

It's also a thing, that you can summon your own daemonic allies (at least atm, we'll see with FAQS), so you can rush that more durable than ever death star across the board, and it can summon more units, to help kill whatever it might be facing.

And because your MSUing, that deathstar player knows you won't have your own deathstar to oppose theirs. So they can toss their stuff forward and go full bore into you, and summon daemons every turn to bolster their army, allowing them to hunt down your squads efficiently and effectively.

I will tell you, that some deathstars are going to disappear real fast. This is very unfortunate as before we had a sort of balance occurring, with several deathstars able to nock each other out, so at least it wasn't monolithic.

Forget that for now. In the grim dark of the future, there is only Eldar.

Centurian stars, ovesa star, these will be gone. Ovesa isn't legal anymore (unless faq'd otherwise by GW), and centurian stars relied on either having a buff commander for ignore cover, twin linking, etc, or on psyker powers, which will now be much harder to get off vs. a seer council player who can toss all their dice with no fear of retribution into shutting down your crucial roles. Do you as a tournament player, really want to risk your death star getting its shit pushed in by someone who can shut down your crucial buffs 1/3 the time. Not to mention, Centurian stars will rely on throwing a lot of dice to get the powers off, risking perils! Something Eldar don't fear.

I saw someone pointing out that Eldar players won't want to risk their armor save improvement powers because of the new casting things...

So what?

A re-rollable 3+ and/or 4+ is still good.

Additionally the changes to how cover saves work (standing in terrain by itself is no longer cover), means MC's and weak troops are now super easy pickings for ranged attacks.

For those who missed it, being obscured by difficult terrain is now a 5+, and being in any part of a ruin (but not necessarily obscured) is a 4+.

So armies with good troops, or good transports to hide them in will be vastly improved. Armies without.. well. GTFO? Especially with the proliferation of barrage potential from imperial armies and.. Eldar.

So expect to see -- Seer council w/ wave serpents; Beast Stat w/ Wave serpents; Cheeky drop podding marines (which will go away just as quick, as they realize helldrakes are still going to rip them a new asshole, not to mention the previously mentioned armies will have no problem shredding them once they adjust to bringing some more anti-tank guns to nock down their stuff).

I was hoping IG would be awesome. Now I don't think so. The change to invis is just to much, a solid deathstar like described above can simply come across and kill them.

A lot of people are looking hard at GK to problem solve this. It's an interesting idea, but ultimately I don't think it will pan out. GK's are not going to win an assault fight vs. seer council or beast packs, and they're not going to shoot them down if they have invis. So it'll really depend on if the GK player can roll enough dice to cancel the Eldar players power. That's some chancy shit tbh. Especially if backed up by wave serpents the elder player with some careful target priority can quickly reduce the number of dice the GK player can toss to block powers.

In case you all missed it, template/blast weapons no longer work based on ruin levels. It's simply models under the template. So those of you hiding under skyshields, that doesn't work anymore. But it also means spreading your troops across ruin levels to protect against them is more or less pointless. Also barrage now comes from the center of the first landing spot. So if your models were standing in some difficult terrain that obscured them from the front, but not from the rear (where our hypothetical blast has landed), despite standing in terrain, no cover saves(unless in a ruin). So that's kind of a big deal.