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So, I love trying to figure out ways to make seldom used units work in some reasonable capacity. As most of you know, Reivers have always been pretty bad. However, with a few little tricks scattered about I think there's a way to make a single unit of them a credible threat. Here's the combo:

First off, you run Blood Angels for +2 S and +1 Attack on the charge.
You take 10 Reivers with a Phobos Lt. for 225 points and put them in Deep Strike.
The Phobos Lt. has a special move/shoot/move ability where unlike almost any other unit, it CAN charge after.

With this, you're dropping your full unit in on turn two, making some incidental shooting, then moving D6 towards your charge target. You've then got a very easy charge and are swinging in with 57 S:6. If that still isn't' enough, you can use Red Rampage to give these attacks Lance. The only downside is that there's not really a way to give these attacks AP, but with weight of attacks where most are hitting on 3's and wounding on 2's against anything that's not a massive tank, you're going to be forcing somewhere around 36 saving throws. And these do also have Precision which may be relevant in some cases too.

Since this is coming out of Deep Strike, the flexibility of where you can attack is high, and with the Relentless Assault strat, you can zip them around the board into other combats if they get bogged down, or just use it to keep up the attack buff.

Against high save armies, it doesn't seem like a tonne, downing an average of 2 custodes or 6 marines, which takes about 100 points off the table, but it's not spectacular, however, it does VERY well against high toughness low save armies like Orks where you average 30 dead boyz, or 24 even if they're on the WAAAGH! to wipe a full squad. It's not terrible at punching up either as you'll take an average of about 7 wounds off something like an Armiger. Not amazing, but it's not like it does nothing in that matchup either.

Seems like it's always falling on the spectrum of decent-great depending on the situation. What are your thoughts though? Is that still not good enough for the points investment?

I don't even think the Emperor of Mankind could make Reivers Viable. They just flat out suck. The other units around them are all better for everything. The only time Reivers are even valuable is with enemy models that have an elevated height advantage, and you're trying to charge up a building.

I did see someone did a theory craft once on making them effective shooters with IF, but that was in 8th. Now they are just flat old beans.

I play against this unit frequently and it’s brutal, so it’s a yes from me!

My opponent uses the carbines and is Dark Angels, the shooting can often pick up a character and the melee is still no joke.

The Blood Angel bonuses look properly tasty so I may have to try that myself some time.

Lance only applies to the bearer of the Shard, not the whole unit.
Otherwise seems workable.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Lance only applies to the bearer of the Shard, not the whole unit.
Otherwise seems workable.

Good catch. Instead, just use the Red Rampage strat if Lance is required and it makes the unit cheaper anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sonsoftherock wrote:
I play against this unit frequently and it’s brutal, so it’s a yes from me!

My opponent uses the carbines and is Dark Angels, the shooting can often pick up a character and the melee is still no joke.

The Blood Angel bonuses look properly tasty so I may have to try that myself some time.

The upside to taking the carbines too is that you can get around 12" no Deep Strike bubbles since you can shoot into it, move after shooting, and then be in charge range.

I hate that this appears to be useful, because I love to hate Reivers.

Yes it does, but use bolters instead of pistols and knifes. You need to be shooting a separate target to the one you intend to charge, as casualties will be pulled from the front, and if you roll low on the bonus move you could end up being more than 9" away again. 22 s4 shooting + 46 s6 melee attacks (including sergeants free knife and Lt) is better than risking it on the pistols for only 9 extra s6 attacks.

If you are crazy enough to own 20 (or more) Reivers, you can double down on this and have them rolling 136 hit rolls per turn; and if you fill up the rest of your army with actual decent units they might even get ignored long enough to do this a couple of times.

 Insularum wrote:
Yes it does, but use bolters instead of pistols and knifes. You need to be shooting a separate target to the one you intend to charge, as casualties will be pulled from the front, and if you roll low on the bonus move you could end up being more than 9" away again. 22 s4 shooting + 46 s6 melee attacks (including sergeants free knife and Lt) is better than risking it on the pistols for only 9 extra s6 attacks.

If you are crazy enough to own 20 (or more) Reivers, you can double down on this and have them rolling 136 hit rolls per turn; and if you fill up the rest of your army with actual decent units they might even get ignored long enough to do this a couple of times.

I was thinking that, there is certainly some benefit to using those guns. Gunna try it both ways and see what's more consistent.

And I am crazy enough to own that many. I got them second hand super cheap a few years back and used them last edition in my 8th Company that was themed after Loyalist Night Lords. I dropped two units in, one with the Master of Sanctity that had the special Ld debuff and another with a captain that had the generic one, plus with the custom chapter Ld debuff, lump that in with the reviers and I was making people take -8 or -9 Ld checks after charging them, it was a lot of fun and a pretty okay army. Making Custodes run from failing LD was hilarious. I've been trying to find a away to make them work even remotely good on 10th since then.

Since the pistols have precision though, if you drop near a unit with a character, you can put them into that character to prevent them from reducing your charge by killing models, and you get an extra pip of AP on those attacks too.