You're looking at this backwards. The important thing is the increase to the chance of winning. When you're winning 91% of the time against SR1, bumping it to 97% chance is not much of a boost.

Basically, SR is most important at armies that have relatively close SR values. The farther apart the values are, the less an SR change matters. Against SR4 and SR5 armies, the +1 is a pretty big bump. Against SR1 and SR2, it's very modest.



Is this mostly balance or mostly perception? Zombo said perception is the biggest problem, while E&C has stated he feels the list is nearly unbeatable.

That's not to dismiss perceptions of fairness. It's quite important. I'm just trying to get a sense of whether this is "they always win" or "it's not fun."

A change in strat 4 to 5 does though have a significant boost to any armies effectiveness, if I had to guess at least about 10% when averaged over many games against armies of different strats (I actually think more for Eldar, but I will be conservative). It gives a big statistical boost to your chances of winning the initiative in the most important turn of the game (usually 2 - although it varies). Also Eldar as an army can often gain a greater advantage than other armies from winning the intiative in the second turn as they can effectively with a good triple retain cripple the opposing force.

All init 1+ (currently possible in the list - although I don't know if this is intended or not) just agravates this by effectively removing or reducing the statistical chance that on those occasions you win the initiative you then go on to fail a crucial activation. This over many games will clearly lead to Ulthwe wining a certain percentage more games.

The only question at that point really is do any of the supposed Ulthwe restrictions do anything to mitigate the advantage. Probably only the removal of the Void Spinner in my opinion - but does that do enough?

Just as a fairly interesting although perhaps not that relevent side point, the EpicUK Ulthwe list is currently running at 54% wins and 25% loses, although only from 28 games so a bit early for any real conclusions. It does however as far as I can see have no advantage over the NetEA Ulthwe list and is effectively identical but with no possibility of 1+ init guardians where you want them during a game and a non 4+RA supreme commander.

Having come back to Epic this year I noted with interest that the old 1:3 restriction was removed. My comments (alas on the other thread) are based on that perception.

I have played a lot of games with Biel Tan and I think it makes sense to compare to that list. I love to do triple retains. One the one hand they are nowhere near as easy to set up as some are assuming (which affects both BT and Ulthwe), but on the other hand SR5 and initiative 1+ are a huge deal to me. This is because the tactic is all-or-nothing. It usually determines the outcome of the game, with a failed activation often meaning you lose. With such a big downside, you will only ever use this tactic if the risk of failing is very small. So whilst Ulthwe may seem to have only a small improvement in their use of their tactic, I think it is the difference between being about to use it and not being able to.

The chance of Biel Tan failing a 1+, 2+, 2+ if they have a re-roll is 7.41%
The chance of Biel Tan failing a 1+, 2+, 2+ if they don't have a re-roll is 30.55%
The chance of Ulthwe failing a 1+, 1+, 1+ is 0%

Add a blast marker (or only use one BG formation):

The chance of Biel Tan failing a 1+, 2+, 3+ if they have a re-roll is 19.44%
The chance of Biel Tan failing a 1+, 2+, 3+ if they don't have a re-roll is 44.44%
The chance of Ulthwe failing a 1+, 1+, 2+ if they have a re-roll is 2.77%
The chance of Ulthwe failing a 1+, 1+, 2+ if they don't have a re-roll is 16.66%

I believe it is similar odds for 2+,2+,2+ but have only checked one calculation as I don't have all day

I have to say, the only time I ever attempt the triple retain with the Biel Tan is the perfect first case - no BMs, and a re-roll. Everything else I see as too risky, and that seems to be borne out in the stats too. Compare that to Ulthwe, who have minimal chance of failing even with a blast marker. In fact even if you have only one black guardian formation AND it has a blast marker, you're chances are still as good as a perfectly set up Biel Tan army.

Then there's the simple advantage of just being able to retain normally with no rolls, potentially multiple times per turn.

I believe it is the way that all the special rules combine, the nature of the army and the unit as a whole that all come together to make initiative 1+ very powerful in this particular case. But if you aren't using black guardians in this way I can see how you would think there was no issue at all.


So... what to do about it? One black guardian formation in a 3k list I can see as OK if is costed appropriately and the army has other down sides, so bringing back a restriction could work but I think it has to be a tight one (i.e. 3:1, to get 2 BGs you need 4 Gs).

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For me it's mainly balance, there will be games where things go wrong for the Ulthwe player, as happens with every list.
The problem I see is it doesn't happen enough in similar situations to other Eldar lists, when things go well for the Ulthwe player the list is overly powerful and in the hands of a good player it can be brutal.
This then becomes a problem as opponents will feel the list isn't fun to play against and can put opponets off wanting to face the list in fututre games.
We did a lot of testing for the E-UK Eldar lists and early testing included the NetEA lists, for me it's not perception.

Eldar are exactly the kind of army to benefit from SR5, but remember turn 2's roll is mitigated by turn 1's roll. To whit, if a SR4 army loses turn 1 against SR5 there is actually not a huge difference in chance of either army winning turn 2 - 42% for the SR4. Probably to say 10% of the entire points is to assume that winning T2 initiative almost always decides the result of the game, which is probably unfair.

That said, to be honest most of the restrictions can be seen as benefits as much as they are hindrances - aspects and swords of vaul namely, and the seer council is arguably a better place for a SC too. That leaves 1:2 troupes, and void spinners. The latter doesn't seem a big deal to me (I am not as fervent a fan as some it seems) - the list has a direct replacement after all.

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Just to add, if my brain is still working, overall a SR4 army has a 37% chance of winning turn two initiative against a SR5 army (vs 50% for SR5 vs SR5). This is assuming a straight roll off for a draw in turn 1.

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No, I'm not. As others have pointed out, setting up for a decisive triple retain in turn 2 will often be an all-or-nothing tactic. So the chance of failure will be extremely important, as it will most likely decide wether or not somebody tries it. So not only will Ulthwé succeed more often, Ulthwé players will attempt it more too.

Note, I still think the problem might be triple retain in itself, and Ulthwé merely highlights it because most BT players find the risk unacceptable, even if they have something of a 60%-70% chance of winning outright if they go for it.



Huh, you're right, I messed up my numbers. BT's chance of failure is 36%, 46%, 62% and 95% higher than Ulthwé vs SR4, 3, 2 and 1.

personally I think that the 1:2 core:support ratio is the biggest and most important restriction Ulthwe has. That in conjunction with only having Guardians as core (and mostly normal Guardians before the 1 per 3 limit BG limit was arbitrarily removed) has a huge balancing effect. You constantly need to balance core, support and activations to get the support you want without having pointless bare guardian fms without hammering your activation count. I usually have to take a token guardian fm that wanders around looking lost just to take one more support fm - if I don't take it, I have to spend my points on upgrades so losing 2 activations (the pointless guardians and the support fm that I actually wanted). I think that the 1:2 ratio is far far bigger a balancing factor than losing the void spinner (which would be nice, don't get me wrong).



what sort of strategy did they use? Mechanised or webway assault? I'm asking as I've found that people tend to take a while to adapt to facing a webway assault (much like Necrons, just to a lesser extent) but once they do things start to even out. There are also some other changes (fire prism AA, spirit stones, awesome revenants etc), but those are the same in other EUK Eldar lists - unless they are enjoying a similar success rate?

Since these reports are coming from the UK tournament scene, I think we can strike this off as a potential factor.

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The chance of failure is important in absolute terms. However, your comparisons of failure rates were ratios of ratios, causing distortion.

Starting with a very small number means a small change looks huge when expressed as a ratio, even though it means little in practical terms. If your chance of losing goes from .001% to .003%, your chance of loss has tripled, but who cares? It only changes the outcome 1 in 50,000 times. Statistically, that will never make a difference for most people. It doesn't matter if it's 3x the chance of loss or 100x the chance of loss.

The difference between 97% win and 91% win is +200% increase in the number of losses, but that's a poor comparison in terms of in-game effectiveness. The important thing is how often it changes outcome overall. The change in outcome only occurs 6% of the time, or roughly 1 in 16 strategy rolls.

Obviously, one extra initiative win, on a random turn, over 4-5 games is a very small boost. Calling it "+200% chance of loss" is technically correct, but gives a distorted view of how much difference the change makes in play.

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These are good to know, but I don't think we can strictly rely on these calculations when considering actual game play.

The Eldar have the option to abort at any point in this activation chain. Even if a 3-activation chance is the same, 3+/2+/1+ is "safer" strategically than 1+/2+/3+. If that first activation fails, then the Eldar player knows the attempt failed and can react accordingly. Fizzling at the outset is far less dangerous in terms of being overextended or otherwise vulnerable. 3+/2+/1+ is definitely preferable to 1+/2+/3+ strategically, even though the stats on succeeding on all 3 are identical.

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"All Or Nothing" Double Retain
I'm having a hard time with this concept.

In my experience, a lot of times the triple action plan doesn't consist entirely of interacting pieces. Plenty of times I've seen a double assault on one flank, followed by ranged fire on the other or some other non-interacting arrangement. Obviously, that third activation would be advantageous or the Eldar player wouldn't try it, but there's no special vulnerability based on an elaborate "do or die" setup.

As far as the rolling assault, as I note above, Eldar players aim for the weak activations first so they know ASAP if the plan will progress. They adjust accordingly, not just at the beginning but as their turn progresses. First activation fails? Abort and adjust to a better defensive position. Second activation had to use the SC reroll and the only available third activation is 3+? You haven't moved yet. Change the positioning on the second so the formation can withdraw conservatively and don't try the third. It's less than ideal, but hardly unrecoverable.

Obviously, Ulthwe have a better chance to succeed with rolling assault, triple-activation plan and can still adjust to failure or plan non-critical third activations as well. None of this is to say they can't. Nor is it to say that setting up a near-auto is not overpowered.

I'm just struggling with the perception that triple activation is all about Initiative failure and that the consequences are utterly dire. A failed Initiative or lost SR roll will cause some vulnerability, but it's usually no worse than for any other army made of small, elite formations. I rarely see this "all or nothing" situation develop.

I wouldn't say it's definitely better, at all. if I'm trying the triple retain assault then my formations are generally in vulnerable positions already (since they are in a position to assault AND consolidate into range of a second formation). If I fail the first activation that leaves all three formations vulnerable, having done no damage. Sometimes it's better to take out a particularly threatening formation for sure on a 1+ activation. But to be honest as I said before I rarely set up for one that will put me in the position where I have to choose between 3/2/1 or 1/2/3 - the chance of making it overall is just too low. Better just to do a double retain.


Fair enough, I'm not saying the triple assault tactic it's the only time you would use a triple retain, I'm saying that I personally consider it a great tactic with potentially major implications if your army is significantly more able to pull it off. Or to put more generally, the existence of many uses of something does not reduce the impact of any one of those usages.

In any case, as I said, I personally think it's fine for Ulthwe to have such an ability if the formation is restricted to 1 in 3000 points, given the other restrictions to the list (1:2 and guardians as core). Namely because, as others (matt?) have said, your other core choices never have better than 2+ to activate.

Do we have a clarification on whether this restriction is supposed to be present or not?

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