My favorite aspect of this hobby is analyzing army potential and building army lists. Some like to paint, some like to model, but I like the game for its core mechanics more than anything. I am first and foremost a gamer.. and a competitive gamer at that. Every time a new book comes out, I go into my LGS 3-4 times a week and analyze the book to its core. I read, I ponder and I write a ton of articles to catalog my thoughts and keep track of my predictions. I've been doing this for the last 10 years.
It's been a long time since I was wrong about a codex or army book. Every single army book that I've done research on has fallen on the scale of what I predicted months ago. I predicted the latest CSM book would be stale with very limited builds, Eldar will be good even past their 4th Ed. dominance and that the new IG will simply roll face. Of course when I talked it over to my friends at the LGS, it was a little more analytical than that (more in lines of what you see here), but the overall gist of it has been the same.
Enough of the history lesson and ego-stroking, let's get down to business. How would I rank the Dark Eldar book? Let's see. This is my first internet blogged entry for a successful prediction (even though I have evidence I said Tyranids would suck), so let's make it accurate. I think Dark Eldar will have a army power rating of 7/10. It will be on par with what Blood Angels are right now. Of course, certain power builds will have a increased power rating, but overall I think they'll fall on the fairly average scale. The book is very well balanced internally with a lot of acceptable and fair options. Nothing stands out as wtf-broken and nothing is a auto-include from what I can see. What puts Dark Eldar down is the fact that none of their troops can reliably hold objectives unless you take Wracks. If you take Wracks as troops, then you must take Haemonculi and thus you go into this slippery slope of fixed army lists. The mass array of AV10 open-top vehicles in this current metagame is also quite tricky since there's a lot more spammable armor now with heavy weapons. Despite how well the book is balanced internally, external factors will limit its power.
So how do I go about with these ridiculous power ratings? I factor in two different aspects of gaming actually: Internal balance and external balance. Internal being how the book functions as a whole; how strong certain units are, how are they priced, how are the special rules and most importantly, what options are available to the player in both a casual and competitive setting. Externally, I compare the balance of the book to the metagame and how it'll fare against other competitive builds. I also compare how fluff builds can match up against fluff builds and if both players can carry on OK. There's other minor tidbits here and there, but this should cover the basics.
How does Dark Eldar compare to the rest of the armies out there?
Imperial Guard - 9 /10
Space Wolves - 9/10
Eldar - 8/10
Blood Angels - 7/10
Dark Eldar - 7/10
Orks - 7/10
Tyranids - 6/10
Space Marines - 6/10
..etc
I rank Imperial Guard high because I think the entire codex is underpriced for what it can do. I know fellas taking the same list they did in 4th except they saved like 600 points on most units going down in price. That means a lot more tanks, a lot more shooting and lot more dead marines. They can fight anything in the game really well and they preform well in something that 40K is all about; shooting. Space Wolves are really good because the entire book is competitively (or questionably) priced and they have tons of unique and viable options. There's an insane amount of cost effective units and they're definitely the strongest MEQ dex out there right now. Eldar, even though they are overpriced as of now, still have some of the most flexible power builds in 40K. Mechdar, Castle Eldar and Seer Councils are all very viable and competitive builds for Eldar that excel at multiple different match-ups. I guess Eldrad wasn't kidding when he said that the Eldar race shapes the destiny of lesser races. Blood Angels is a book that's also well-balanced. Even though the Death Company has been made obsolete and worthless because of the the Rage USR, Blood Angels gained a lot of respectable and well-placed units. BA are one of the only marine armies that can sport an unhealthy amount of tanks rivaling the number that IG can take, and all of their vehicles Fast. As for Orks, there are some noticeable builds that can put out a lot of hurt: Nob Bikerz are one, Speed Freakz are another and even mass horde Orks can be good in any given metagame.
So who's left in the not so good pile? Books like Space Marines who are so well-balanced that they don't have anything to show for and Tyranids. The standard vanilla codex doesn't have anything particularly awesome other than slightly cheaper Terminators with TH/SS and Vulkan He'stan to make them better. Every thing else is simply OK.. which doesn't say much for the actual power of the book. The Tyranid codex just suffers horrendously in the field of internal balance. Half of the book doesn't make sense in terms of where the units are placed in the FOC and the upgrades options (or should I say lack of upgrade options) severely hampers their ability to make anything happen. Not just that, but the recent string of FAQs are out to squash bugs in particular, I swear. I can't help but have a extreme sense of book bias when comparing Robin Cruddace's work (he wrote IG and Tyranids). It's almost as if he has never played Tyranids (he plays IG, I know this) and the sole piece of advice he got when writing the book was: Nerf Carnifexes and sell more Trygons.
I would say that with these ratings, anything between powers 7-10 is considered good to overpowered. I have never given a codex a 10, but I have given an army book a 10 in power rating. That honor belongs to the 7th Edition Daemons of Chaos Army Book for Warhammer Fantasy. To say that book was powerful was an understatement. Just keep in mind that army book ratings have nothing to do with generalship. I've seen garbage players run power lists straight into the ground and I've seen smart generals own it up with crappy armies. These ratings are just there to rate the armies, not the players behind the armies.
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