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I would not mind to give Walkers Stomp.

What i dislike is that Stomp is not locked to the CC.

If i could only hit the units that are actualy in CC Stomp would be much better. Its just crazy that a Model that is locked in CC can hit anything up t 15" away.

How is this going to happen? Jumping mystericaly around the board and then again in the position it started this kind of 'dance' ?

So in my opinion Stomp with a 3" template and no scatter would be much better. Heck even removing the 6 result and replace it with a S10 ap1 would be better. if you want with the addition of capping any possible save to a 6 or 5+.
   
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It is the Hull points which make Walkers useless. Walkers tend to have roughly ~1AV less than equivalent costed tanks (Predator AV13, Dreadnought AV12). This makes them really easy to glance to death. Especially as smaller walkers often have just 2 hull points.

Walkers have never really been CC monsters, remember that in 5th edition Monstrous Creatures had Armourbane in EVERY attack. And back then Dreadnoughts had just 2 attacks. However Grenades only hit them at 6+, making them quite dangerous to Infantry. Nowadays Walkers are easy to kill with Grenades.

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You could make their stomp D3 attacks with the strength on the stomp damage table perhaps? D3 large blasts would be stupidly powerful though - that's one of the things that makes super heaves so good

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I was thinking of giving them one stomp, making them Small Blasts, and have them roll on the Stomp table, but with a -1 to the roll.

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It's only small blasts - Large Blast stomp is unique to the Warlord Titan (thank god).

The problem is that the monstrous creature rules were originally written with Tyranids in mind. In the original scheme of things, they were a fair trade-off with walkers:

Monstrous Creature:
Pro
Has an armour save so not worried about S7-8 fire as much as a dreadnought
Fights at full effect until destroyed
Cannot be taken out in one shot.

Cons
Easily wounded by S5-6 attacks
Can be occasionally wounded by S4 attacks from accompanying squad members


Walker
Pro
Immune to S4-5 weapons
Hard to damage with S6 weapons
Nead to roll a 'kill' to actually destroy

Cons
Easy to reduce its fighting capability
Can theoretically be one-shot-killed



The biggest problem is the preponderance over the last edition of T7+ and 2+ save monstrous creatures - which essentially become immune to the high rate of fire S6-8 weapons (scatter laser to krak missile) which are supposed to be the answer to that unit type.

Plus, as noted, so many of them got given jump unit type, and even the ones which were historically jump became flyers.


It's interesting to note that in Horus Heresy games, where the monstrous creature is hard to get (essentially limited to the odd daemon ally or battle automata which have serious limitations on useability), the dreadnought still exists as the scary stompy thing of choice. However, even there, the Contemptor is the 'base model' (AV13, 5++, 3HP), and the assault walker is the Leviathan (AV13, 4++, 4HP).


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Hull points should bring an Armour save of some sort. Like someone said, AV essentially works like Toughness in terms of "armour penetration roll".

AV10 acts like T6 with the added downsides that :
1) You don't get an Armour Save
2) Any "To Wound" roll over the minimum required is likely to result in your vehicle being debuffed.
3) No abuse to the cover saves, for some reason.

I don't think Walkers are half bad as people make them, but they're not big stompy killy robots. I play Raven Guard and regularily field a Ravenhawk Assault Group and it's quite annoying for the opponent when there are 10 Sternguards and a Dreadnought in his line.

Regarding the lack of mobility, well they work like Vehicle Infantry, so if you want them mobile you need a transport, deep strike, infiltrate, scout or Outflank. The Helbrute formation that gave them Deep Strike is pretty cool for that. Dreadnoughts in Pods are still interesting.

But yeah, they are completely outclassed by MCs, just for being vehicles. They should either have a Save or the removal of Hull Points altogether with glances rolling on the damage table.
   
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GreyCrow wrote:
Hull points should bring an Armour save of some sort. Like someone said, AV essentially works like Toughness in terms of "armour penetration roll".

AV10 acts like T6 with the added downsides that :
1) You don't get an Armour Save
2) Any "To Wound" roll over the minimum required is likely to result in your vehicle being debuffed.
3) No abuse to the cover saves, for some reason.

I don't think Walkers are half bad as people make them, but they're not big stompy killy robots. I play Raven Guard and regularily field a Ravenhawk Assault Group and it's quite annoying for the opponent when there are 10 Sternguards and a Dreadnought in his line.

Regarding the lack of mobility, well they work like Vehicle Infantry, so if you want them mobile you need a transport, deep strike, infiltrate, scout or Outflank. The Helbrute formation that gave them Deep Strike is pretty cool for that. Dreadnoughts in Pods are still interesting.

But yeah, they are completely outclassed by MCs, just for being vehicles. They should either have a Save or the removal of Hull Points altogether with glances rolling on the damage table.


The best part about this is that this is exactly what we had in 5th edition. There were no hull points and glances had a separate table from penetrations. People complained too much about vehicles being too hard to kill and they were overpowered... so we got hull points... this is one you can't blame on GW as they did exactly what we wanted. made vehicles less indestructible.

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Unfortunately the pendulum swung too far, and they went from too hard to kill, to too easy to kill. You thought it would have been addressed with 7th, but I guess not.


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 Xerics wrote:
GreyCrow wrote:
Hull points should bring an Armour save of some sort. Like someone said, AV essentially works like Toughness in terms of "armour penetration roll".

AV10 acts like T6 with the added downsides that :
1) You don't get an Armour Save
2) Any "To Wound" roll over the minimum required is likely to result in your vehicle being debuffed.
3) No abuse to the cover saves, for some reason.

I don't think Walkers are half bad as people make them, but they're not big stompy killy robots. I play Raven Guard and regularily field a Ravenhawk Assault Group and it's quite annoying for the opponent when there are 10 Sternguards and a Dreadnought in his line.

Regarding the lack of mobility, well they work like Vehicle Infantry, so if you want them mobile you need a transport, deep strike, infiltrate, scout or Outflank. The Helbrute formation that gave them Deep Strike is pretty cool for that. Dreadnoughts in Pods are still interesting.

But yeah, they are completely outclassed by MCs, just for being vehicles. They should either have a Save or the removal of Hull Points altogether with glances rolling on the damage table.


The best part about this is that this is exactly what we had in 5th edition. There were no hull points and glances had a separate table from penetrations. People complained too much about vehicles being too hard to kill and they were overpowered... so we got hull points... this is one you can't blame on GW as they did exactly what we wanted. made vehicles less indestructible.


I think you are mistaken. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a glancing table in 5th, and it was just a -2 modifier to the damage roll on a glance.
In 4th ed there was a damage table for glances and pens.

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 Griddlelol wrote:
Unfortunately the pendulum swung too far, and they went from too hard to kill, to too easy to kill. You thought it would have been addressed with 7th, but I guess not.


7th was just a cash grab there were not enough changes to make it worth buying.
   
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 morganfreeman wrote:
 Ashiraya wrote:
Walkers should NOT get stomp.

It is not the solution.


Actually, giving Walkers a version of Stomp with fewer stomps (maybe just one) and no Everything-under-this-bit-dies result would go a long way. A huge issue with walkers is that a lot of them are supposed to be CC viable.. But with only a few attacks (5 at the top end) and average weapon skill (4-5) they're easily bogged down by tarpits. Which doesn't make sense, because a dreadnaught vs a bunch of ork boyz should involve the dread killing multiples of them per sweep of its CC weapon, as well as rampaging through the mob and stepping on them.


A nerfed stomp, yeah, sure, I am fine with that.

Just not the SHW version.

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Of course not. That would be absurd.
In the late WHFB, there was a both monsters and monstrous infantry could stomp. Its just that monsters had a better version called a thunder stomp.

A concept like that could easily be applied to 40k.

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A funny result to accentuate the Vehicle Damage table vulnerability from one of the games I played had it where I destroyed the gun of the enemy Helbrute on turn 1, and then it just turned into a walking post that couldn't do anything but block line of sight for some of my units until it hoped it could get into range to charge. That never happened, as my dread landed an explode result from firing its Multi-Melta and now that Helbrute had 0 contribution to the battle itself. We just joke around about how useless the Helbrute is rather than act like its a threat.

If walkers could move farther, charge farther, and get an armor save (I'd argue a 2+ for dreads if Termies get 2+) based on how we play at the moment, then the walkers would feel more useful. But as it stands, being able to just look at the thing with a psyker and melta beam-ing it to death before it gets to do anything really leaves something to be desired about justifying their existence...
   
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preston

Giving Walkers a save, more attacks and some form of smash would go an awfully long way to making them viable again.

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I wouldn't address walkers until the general miserable state of vehicles has been addressed and THEN see if walkers are still bad. Giving them base 9" move wouldn't be crazy though.
   
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 master of ordinance wrote:
Giving Walkers a save, more attacks and some form of smash would go an awfully long way to making them viable again.


Smash alone makes sense. A Triarch Stalker is AP- but a Riptide is AP2. dafaq.

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 KingCorpus wrote:
In my opinion...

Walkers EVERY SINGLE ONE base 4 attacks, not just daddys favorites
5++
Move Through Cover (why is this not a thing??)
Ability to upgrade to a 4+ invul (Like the skitarii crabs)
Walkers get -1 to the vehicle damage charge/ cannot be shaken or stunned
4 Hullpoints



Love your list... we actually add the 5++ in my group as a house-rule. And I seem to remember that Dreadnoughts did actually have Move Through Cover back in the day, or am I just crazy?
I also like the '4 hullpoints' but even if everything else but this changed, I'd be happy.

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 Xerics wrote:
Walkers would be pretty good with those buffs. War Walker with double scatter lasers, 4 hull points, 4 attacks (not that it would matter for the War Walker), ability to get a 4++, and still be able to move-shoot-run, and immune to shaken and stunned. I would take these in every army.


Don't worry Xerics it is coming very soon, but only for Eldar armies. See what happens in 40K is that fanboys are writing your Eldar codex, then when they get yelled at by everyone for writing a biased OP codex from hell what they do is take the biggest offending unit (IE Transports with Shields) and nerf it, but not horribly, just enough to make it relatively balanced in the game. And after they do that they spend the rest of the time working on the codex buffing EVERYTHING ELSE. So whats going to happen for Eldar in 8th edition is that Scat Bikes are going to go back to 1 per 3 (Because GW does listen to its fanbase) and then they are going to buff the hell out of the war walker, making it a giant mobile gun platform with more durability then most MCs.

Im calling it, thats my prediction for 8th edition.

 Tomsug wrote:
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SemperMortis wrote:
 Xerics wrote:
Walkers would be pretty good with those buffs. War Walker with double scatter lasers, 4 hull points, 4 attacks (not that it would matter for the War Walker), ability to get a 4++, and still be able to move-shoot-run, and immune to shaken and stunned. I would take these in every army.


Don't worry Xerics it is coming very soon, but only for Eldar armies. See what happens in 40K is that fanboys are writing your Eldar codex, then when they get yelled at by everyone for writing a biased OP codex from hell what they do is take the biggest offending unit (IE Transports with Shields) and nerf it, but not horribly, just enough to make it relatively balanced in the game. And after they do that they spend the rest of the time working on the codex buffing EVERYTHING ELSE. So whats going to happen for Eldar in 8th edition is that Scat Bikes are going to go back to 1 per 3 (Because GW does listen to its fanbase) and then they are going to buff the hell out of the war walker, making it a giant mobile gun platform with more durability then most MCs.

Im calling it, thats my prediction for 8th edition.


As somebody who has played Eldar since 5th let me just throw out there that back then on their 4th edition codex the space elves were all of the bads and one of the worse codexes out there. they have not always been good, but the 6th edition codex did make them amazing and the number of elder players soared, what you are seeing is what happens when models sell well. GW gave a good update, sold a lot of models and then updated the codex because they sold a lot of models, finally something maybe competing with space marines sales (admittedly they went overboard with the WK and scatterlasers more than 1 in 3 bikes)

war walkers as they are now though are a decent example of what walkers should be able to do.

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 G00fySmiley wrote:


As somebody who has played Eldar since 5th let me just throw out there that back then on their 4th edition codex the space elves were all of the bads and one of the worse codexes out there. they have not always been good, but the 6th edition codex did make them amazing and the number of elder players soared, what you are seeing is what happens when models sell well. GW gave a good update, sold a lot of models and then updated the codex because they sold a lot of models, finally something maybe competing with space marines sales (admittedly they went overboard with the WK and scatterlasers more than 1 in 3 bikes)

war walkers as they are now though are a decent example of what walkers should be able to do.


Eldar were far from awful in 4th, they were merely a bit weak but also how they were supposed to be. A lot of the Eldar fluff - with regards to combat - depicts how their many different specializations and aspects work in concert with one another. Each having substantial weaknesses / roles which they cannot cover, but then having those gaps filled into by the next unit type and the one after them. So on and so forth. Essentially an army of specialists who together are capable of taking on all challenges, with no real jack-of-all-trades fighters.

This is very much what the 4th ed codex looked like, but what the Eldar codex has never been outside of it. The Eldar codex from 4th ed felt weak because, for the first time ever (and since), Eldar weren't able to spam a couple of godly units and skull-feth everything they came across. They fulfilled their racial fantasy, and as a result were strong (but not the best) in the hands of a player who understood them and average in everyone elses.


   
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preston

 morganfreeman wrote:
 G00fySmiley wrote:


As somebody who has played Eldar since 5th let me just throw out there that back then on their 4th edition codex the space elves were all of the bads and one of the worse codexes out there. they have not always been good, but the 6th edition codex did make them amazing and the number of elder players soared, what you are seeing is what happens when models sell well. GW gave a good update, sold a lot of models and then updated the codex because they sold a lot of models, finally something maybe competing with space marines sales (admittedly they went overboard with the WK and scatterlasers more than 1 in 3 bikes)

war walkers as they are now though are a decent example of what walkers should be able to do.


Eldar were far from awful in 4th, they were merely a bit weak but also how they were supposed to be. A lot of the Eldar fluff - with regards to combat - depicts how their many different specializations and aspects work in concert with one another. Each having substantial weaknesses / roles which they cannot cover, but then having those gaps filled into by the next unit type and the one after them. So on and so forth. Essentially an army of specialists who together are capable of taking on all challenges, with no real jack-of-all-trades fighters.

This is very much what the 4th ed codex looked like, but what the Eldar codex has never been outside of it. The Eldar codex from 4th ed felt weak because, for the first time ever (and since), Eldar weren't able to spam a couple of godly units and skull-feth everything they came across. They fulfilled their racial fantasy, and as a result were strong (but not the best) in the hands of a player who understood them and average in everyone elses.



Pretty much this. The only time Eldar where ever "Weak" was when they actually had internal balance and the players had to actually think when it came to list building. They still had the most powerful codex, Eldar players just sucked at using it.

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Wasn't the 4th ed Eldar book the one with the Harlequins that had night-fighting, rending and can ignore cover on the charge?
Or Falcons that were pretty hard to take down thanks to the skimmer rules? Wasn't the Eldar codex the one that broke fourth ed, as it took advantage of 4th ed's core mechanics, such as the consolidate into combat rule that banshees and harlequins abused regularly?

Here, let me play the world's smallest violin in reponse to the claims that Eldar back then were weak.

It still wasn't as absurd as the newer books though.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/04/22 19:49:40


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 casvalremdeikun wrote:
I think if they gave Walkers Stomp and Fleet baseline, it might help them out a little. Won't help their weakness to being glanced to death effortlessly though.

Making them more powerful just makes them more of a glass cannon. It's just their resilience that needs attention.



 KingCorpus wrote:
In my opinion...

Walkers EVERY SINGLE ONE base 4 attacks, not just daddys favorites

Doesn't really make sense for Sentinels or Warwalkers to have a bunch of attacks.


Adding a save would be the 'easy' fix to most walkers... but, honestly, I'd still rather just see them turned into MCs and be done with it.

 
   
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I don't think giving Walkers an armour save would do it. They would still be glanced to death effortlessly.

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 Xerics wrote:

The best part about this is that this is exactly what we had in 5th edition. There were no hull points and glances had a separate table from penetrations. People complained too much about vehicles being too hard to kill and they were overpowered... so we got hull points... this is one you can't blame on GW as they did exactly what we wanted. made vehicles less indestructible.


Thing is, in 4th edition vehicles other than Skimmers sucked bigtime. So they made vehicles harder to kill in 5th. Now, this was not a problem as long as you had 4th edition Codeci. But at the same time, GW began to release army books where vehicles were dramatically cheaper than in 4th edition books. For example, Rhino's base cost dropped from 50 to 35 points, Chimera dropped from 70 points to 55 or so etc.

So basically, they saw a problem and fixed it twice, swinging the pendulum too much into other direction. If they had just introduced ONE of those fixes, vehicles would have been totally fine in 5th Edition.

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The problem was the transports. Nobody thought Russ tanks or Hammerheads or Dreads or Land Raiders were too hard to kill. The problem was that rhinos stuffed with assault units didnt care at all about 5/6 glancing results and 3/6 penetrating results. Had they kept the 5E system but had some effect on passengers like 7E does, then it wouldnt have been so bad

But, as usual, GW went out of their way to find the least appropriate solution.

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Yeah, but the mass transport phenomenon was made worse by Codex design where Dedicated Transports were suddenly much cheaper. Of course it is easier to build 10+ vehicle parking lot when every vehicle costs 15-20 points less (Of course in present edition they're free....).

5th edition was only edition where Land Raider was sometimes useful. That's one thing I miss.

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Yeah now theyre just free

Some transports needed the price fix, Chimeras were painfully overcosted in their older 3.5E book even in the first year or so of 5E before they got updated, id been hoping to see them at 65pts with side AV11, they came in at 55 with side AV10 instead. The Rhino going to 35 was probably a bit much, but would have been workable had Stunned/Shaken potentially impacted passengers methinks. Another issues was that cover was ubiquitously 4+, and thus smoke launchers had the same issues then that Jink does now, in that they were a bit too capable for no appreciable impact on things like Rhinos.

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Give walkers

9" movement
+D3" charge range
5+ invuln
Move through cover
Smash
A weaker single blast template stomp

Make all wannabe MCs/GMCs (pretty much all Giant robots in spaaaaccee *cough Tau and Eldar *cough* ) walkers and all is right between walkers and MCs
   
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 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah now theyre just free

Some transports needed the price fix, Chimeras were painfully overcosted in their older 3.5E book even in the first year or so of 5E before they got updated, id been hoping to see them at 65pts with side AV11, they came in at 55 with side AV10 instead. The Rhino going to 35 was probably a bit much, but would have been workable had Stunned/Shaken potentially impacted passengers methinks. Another issues was that cover was ubiquitously 4+, and thus smoke launchers had the same issues then that Jink does now, in that they were a bit too capable for no appreciable impact on things like Rhinos.


Yea that's a good point, 4+ cover was just a bit much. I don't think they really meant it that way, it is just how everyone interpreted cover rules in 5E.
Of course 5th edition was Razorback edition towards the end. At least with Rhinos they don't shoot much.

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