Shining Spears are Aspect Warriors who ride Jetbikes for the Eldar in the 4th Edition Eldar Codex for Warhammer 40,000.

Background and Description

Shining Spears use their laser lances from atop their Jetbikes to strike and harry the enemy with mobile attacks and powerful charges.

Note: These rules and descriptions are necessarily truncated. Please refer to your 4th Edition Eldar Codex for specific model statistics, rules and points costs

Special Rules and Wargear

1. Eldar Jetbike: Increased Toughness and armor save of the rider. May move in assault phase and gains cover when turbo boosting.
2. Laser Lance: Short ranged weapon that counts as increased strength and a power weapon in a round when the Shining Spear charges.
3. Twin-linked shuriken catapults

Upgrades

1. Exarch:
   1. Shuriken Cannon
   2. Power weapon for laser lance
   3. Star lance for laser lance: Laser lance with Strength 8
   4. Skilled Rider: Exarch and squad gain Skilled Rider
   5. Unit may Hit and Run

Overview

1. Assault-Good on the charge/Poor the rest of the time
2. Firepower- Average with Exarch/Poor otherwise
3. Durability-Average
4. Speed-Excellent

Shining Spears are an expensive, fast moving, hard hitting assault unit.

Strengths

1. Charging into assault: They have a good initial charge. They hit with strength 6 power weapons where they can do a lot of damage to even the most elite infantry. They also have a high intuitive to strike before most units.
2. Exarch: This is almost a must-have upgrade. He can not only purchase the Exarch powers of Skilled Rider and Withdraw, but also upgrade to a Shuriken Cannon to use his high ballistic skill, and a Star Lance to not only hit at strength 8, but have the Lance ability to hunt tanks.
3. Fast Attack: In an army that has excellent Elite and Heavy Support choices they are not in competition for one of those slots.

Weaknesses

1. Point Cost: Their cost-to-benefit ratio is too high. They are way overpriced for what they do on the table top.
2. Assault: They do not have any plasma grenades and have very few attacks
3. Prolonged Assaults: After the initial charge they loose all of their power. If they do not win an assault outright they are in a lot of trouble. Since hit-and-run works at the end of the turn, they can withdraw and then be vulnerable to enemy fire and counter assaults on their opponent’s turn, or they can stay in combat where they perform poorly.

Tacticas that mention Shining Spears