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Dire Avengers in a serpent are good, but what about Storm guardians with flamers?

10 guardians, 2 flamers, warlock with destructor

vs

10 dire avengers, exarch and bladestorm

The guardians come out several points less, but have less resilience. Discuss?

Both can put out a good chunk of firepower. Hell I'd argue that the guardians can do more damage the you DA's.

The problem with guardians is that they die in droves. Yes there are situations where you will get to deploy into cover, but every time you don't they will probably take heavy casualties.
DA's are just ungodly resilient. Especially with an exarch.

For Mech lists I've usually done 2:1 or 3:1 Avengers to Storms. Storm Guardians provide some much needed template love, but because of their save I wouldn't use too many squads. I attach my Doomseer to this squad for the Ld10 and so that they've always got Doom going for them.

Well, Eldar troops are not really resilient. They need a transport to protect them, unless you play Pathfinders (while Wraithguard as troops do not fit into the theme).

I find that Storm Guardians with dual flamers and a Warlock with destructor is a viable option.
Clearly, Dire Avengers are more resilient than Storm Guardians. But this is not a big issue, since you should concentrate all your army on one part of the enemy. Then three Storm Guardians squads should be as survivable as three Dire Avenger units after disembarking.

Both work but they both have pros and cons.

Guardians:
pro: Cheap
con: T3, 5+ save means they die in droves
pro: Lots of flamers
con: Short range means you need to drive up into the enemy's face

Dire Avengers:
pro: 18" range means you can stay out of assault
con: Significantly more expensive
pro: 4+ save means that not every basic weapon in the game ignores their armor.
con: Not significantly better in hand to hand than guardians.

All in all, I would run at least one squad of guardians in a mech list but I don't think I would have them outnumber the dire avengers.

The problem I see with storm guardians is that if they don't kill what they shoot at, they'll get shot and or assaulted the next turn. If DAs don't kill what they shot at, they might still be out of range of the worst assaults coming back. It doesn't take much to lock up storm guardians in combat and whale on them pretty good.

assuming you spring the 3 points for a spear, the guardians also have the advantage of having a single shot at taking out a tank too. Plus, in friendly games you can easily swap between two flamers and two melta depending on who you're facing without any hard feelings.

Also, the look on your opponents face when you pile out and roast 200 points of genestealers with 3 templates is pretty priceless.

Id also like to add you can have 12 storm guardains in a squad, embarked in a wave serpent compared to the maximum of 10 for the dire avengers sqaud.

Could star-engines be used to block assaults (I know they cant be used to tank-shock, in the shooting phase) so will the tanks mere presence cause an enemy to move around the vehicle (or can they move through it? Is it difficult terrain?) and going from that..would it be big enough to realibly block a template-range assault?

Counter-arguing my point.. will a decently equipped serpent spend its time better simply shooting at the sqaud that may charge your guardains?

Razerous wrote:Id also like to add you can have 12 storm guardains in a squad, embarked in a wave serpent compared to the maximum of 10 for the dire avengers sqaud.

Could star-engines be used to block assaults (I know they cant be used to tank-shock, in the shooting phase) so will the tanks mere presence cause an enemy to move around the vehicle (or can they move through it? Is it difficult terrain?) and going from that..would it be big enough to realibly block a template-range assault?

Counter-arguing my point.. will a decently equipped serpent spend its time better simply shooting at the sqaud that may charge your guardains?

Move through it? It's an enemy unit that still functions. Opponent must stay 1" away at all times, except assault phase.

If your opponent shoots at them with anything significant, then the storm guardians are just going to fold anyways, so buying more than the minimum number isn't necessary.

Also, if you buy DAs with no exarch (shooting 40 shots in two turns is often much better than 30 shots in two turns) then they are a nice inexpensive squad too.

I've been running one storm guardian squad of flamer doom and one squad of un-augmented dire avengers, and I like both of them.

willydstyle wrote:Also, if you buy DAs with no exarch (shooting 40 shots in two turns is often much better than 30 shots in two turns) then they are a nice inexpensive squad too.

While I like blade storm, I always tell people that just because you have it doesn't mean you should always use it. 30 shots is better than 20 shots but 40 is better than 30. The thing is that timing makes a big difference. You really have to look at the situation and decide which is going to lead to the best results. If you are likely to kill your target with 20 shots, it probably isn't worth blade storming (unless the game hinges on you being sucessful there). However if 20 probably won't kill the target but 30 will, then perhaps it is worth doing. If you are planning on embarking back on your wave serpent next turn, then there isn't really a good reason to not blade storm and the same goes if it is fairly certain that you'll end up in hand to hand. Pumping out 30 shots instead of 20 may also cause enough damage to the enemy that they can't effectivly shoot back in their following turn and thus save you a lot of casualties. On the other hand, if you don't significantly blunt their offensive capabilities, you may just want to hold off on the blade storm so you can get more shots in the following turn...particularly if it's a unit that is unlikely to shoot the avengers.

So in the end, it's a balancing act of trying to figure out what's likely to bring about the best results for you.

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:

Razerous wrote:Id also like to add you can have 12 storm guardains in a squad, embarked in a wave serpent compared to the maximum of 10 for the dire avengers sqaud.

Could star-engines be used to block assaults (I know they cant be used to tank-shock, in the shooting phase) so will the tanks mere presence cause an enemy to move around the vehicle (or can they move through it? Is it difficult terrain?) and going from that..would it be big enough to realibly block a template-range assault?

Counter-arguing my point.. will a decently equipped serpent spend its time better simply shooting at the sqaud that may charge your guardains?

Move through it? It's an enemy unit that still functions. Opponent must stay 1" away at all times, except assault phase.

I think he is saying that you use the vehicle's star engines to move it in such a way that it blocks the shortest path assaulters may take to get to the cargo, so that they must move farther around the vehicle, like the old Tau fish of fury tactic. This would work even better with two serpents, which you will have anyway in a Mech list.

whitedragon wrote:

I think he is saying that you use the vehicle's star engines to move it in such a way that it blocks the shortest path assaulters may take to get to the cargo, so that they must move farther around the vehicle, like the old Tau fish of fury tactic. This would work even better with two serpents, which you will have anyway in a Mech list.

That is great... except that you cannot use your Star Engines on the same turn that you disembark.

The only way to do it is to use a second WS to block for you...one cannot do it alone.

Alerian wrote:

whitedragon wrote:

I think he is saying that you use the vehicle's star engines to move it in such a way that it blocks the shortest path assaulters may take to get to the cargo, so that they must move farther around the vehicle, like the old Tau fish of fury tactic. This would work even better with two serpents, which you will have anyway in a Mech list.

That is great... except that you cannot use your Star Engines on the same turn that you disembark.

The only way to do it is to use a second WS to block for you...one cannot do it alone.

If you are playing Mech, you should have plenty of serpents around to do this.

Phoenix wrote:

willydstyle wrote:Also, if you buy DAs with no exarch (shooting 40 shots in two turns is often much better than 30 shots in two turns) then they are a nice inexpensive squad too.

While I like blade storm, I always tell people that just because you have it doesn't mean you should always use it. 30 shots is better than 20 shots but 40 is better than 30. The thing is that timing makes a big difference. You really have to look at the situation and decide which is going to lead to the best results. If you are likely to kill your target with 20 shots, it probably isn't worth blade storming (unless the game hinges on you being sucessful there). However if 20 probably won't kill the target but 30 will, then perhaps it is worth doing. If you are planning on embarking back on your wave serpent next turn, then there isn't really a good reason to not blade storm and the same goes if it is fairly certain that you'll end up in hand to hand. Pumping out 30 shots instead of 20 may also cause enough damage to the enemy that they can't effectivly shoot back in their following turn and thus save you a lot of casualties. On the other hand, if you don't significantly blunt their offensive capabilities, you may just want to hold off on the blade storm so you can get more shots in the following turn...particularly if it's a unit that is unlikely to shoot the avengers.

So in the end, it's a balancing act of trying to figure out what's likely to bring about the best results for you.

But for every exarch with bladestorm, you can get 2 dire avengers, so if you're comparing points wise (which doesn't work in game as they must be purchased in units with max 10) you get either 48 shots over two turns for un-upgraded DAs, vs 30 or 40 shots over two turns for DAs with exarch plus bladestorm (doesn't take into account any weapon upgrades).

I can kind of see the point if you're running all-mech, and you want to maximize the firepower that hops out of each serpent, but I've been waaay more happy with my DAs when I don't take any upgrades and have the points to spend on other things.