16727
Post by: lordrevege
What do you think is the most worthless unit in all of 40k?
READ THIS PLEASE:
Answer my question (What do you think is the most worthless unit in all of 40k?) and then bash on my oppinion.
Thank you
Here's my take:
Gretchin are by far the worst unit.
Ya, they're cheap, but that's all they have going for them.
BS 3 isn't bad , but shooting those crummy pistols never works to well for them.
They get BUTCHERED in cc.
S2 and T2 just make them worthless.
Ya, they can clear minefeilds, but imo that's pretty circumstantial
18213
Post by: starbomber109
Guess what I just realized, Tau Firewarriors only have marginally better stats yet cost 4x as much as a grot!
10347
Post by: Fafnir
Cheap objective holders, cheap movable cover, or ablatave wounds for a SAG Mek. They won't be killing much, but they don't have to do much to get use out of them either.
You can certainly do worse than grots.
16727
Post by: lordrevege
Fafnir wrote:
You can certainly do worse than grots.
Then what are worse than grots?
any troops can be cheap objective holders.
14062
Post by: darkkt
How about a 40pt 'Fast attack Unit' that has the 'slow and purposeful special rule?
Yes, I would nominate the Humble Chaos spawn, as 'most useless' - They only end up on the board from psykers using Gift of Chaos - Ive never seen anyone chose one for an army list.
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Post by: starbomber109
lordrevege wrote:Fafnir wrote:
You can certainly do worse than grots.
Then what are worse than grots? any troops can be cheap objective holders.
Yes, but nothing else that is a cheap objective holder costs 3 points per model. That's bargain basement right there.
20901
Post by: Luke_Prowler
Lordrevege, you're thinking too much of power gaming. What grot excel at is being a screening unit, and at 3 pts a pop (ignoring runtherds) they're probably the best screening units ever. Sure, they suck at HtH, but once assault is over, the some 30 slugga Boyz hiding behind them charge in and turn whatever unit that assaulted the grot into a fine red paste.
And don't nark their shooting. I've killed SM with grot blasters thanks to sheer amount of shots.
16727
Post by: lordrevege
darkkt wrote:How about a 40pt 'Fast attack Unit' that has the 'slow and purposeful special rule?
Yes, I would nominate the Humble Chaos spawn, as 'most useless' - They only end up on the board from psykers using Gift of Chaos - Ive never seen anyone chose one for an army list.
True true. I've never seen anybody feild spawn either
However, I've had the supreme displeasure of having one of my gaunts "gifted" into a spawn, resulting in 6 or 7 more gaunts killed in the ensueing close combat that tied up my gaunts for a turn or 2.
If some spawn went up agianst an equal point ammount of gretchin, and the gretchin got to shoot, and assault the spawn, I'd put my money on the spawn every time.
I'm still thinking grots are the worst.
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Post by: Fafnir
It's not always about kill power. If it was, yes, Grotz would be the worst. But in the case of utility, they're far above Chaos Spawn.
You're too narrow-minded in your approach. A unit can win or drastically impact a game without killing a single model. It's not about how much damage a unit does that makes it useful, it's how it synergizes with your army and influences how your opponent plays that matters most. If that means doing damage, that's great, but when it comes down to it, damage is not the be-all-end-all of unit usefulness.
16727
Post by: lordrevege
Luke_Prowler wrote:Lordrevege, you're thinking too much of power gaming. What grot excel at is being a screening unit, and at 3 pts a pop (ignoring runtherds) they're probably the best screening units ever. Sure, they suck at HtH, but once assault is over, the some 30 slugga Boyz hiding behind them charge in and turn whatever unit that assaulted the grot into a fine red paste.
And don't nark their shooting. I've killed SM with grot blasters thanks to sheer amount of shots.
Okay, then what Is the worst unit?
Nark Nark Nark: anything can inflict dammage on sms with enough numbers.
20901
Post by: Luke_Prowler
lordrevege wrote:Luke_Prowler wrote:Lordrevege, you're thinking too much of power gaming. What grot excel at is being a screening unit, and at 3 pts a pop (ignoring runtherds) they're probably the best screening units ever. Sure, they suck at HtH, but once assault is over, the some 30 slugga Boyz hiding behind them charge in and turn whatever unit that assaulted the grot into a fine red paste.
And don't nark their shooting. I've killed SM with grot blasters thanks to sheer amount of shots.
Okay, then what Is the worst unit?
Nark Nark Nark: anything can inflict dammage on another unit with enough numbers.
Anything that isn't Orks Biovores, from what I've heard.
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Post by: Kingsley
I think you're mixed up with Pyrovores.
18213
Post by: starbomber109
If some spawn went up agianst an equal point ammount of gretchin, and the gretchin got to shoot, and assault the spawn, I'd put my money on the spawn every time.
Hang-on, I wanna math-hammer this
40 point spawn
against
10 grots with a runtherd (40 points)
grots shoot the spawn with 10 S3 shots first, 5 hits, around .8 wounds (so a wound from shooting)
then the grots charge, spawn loses an attack from the runtherd, runtherd goes at the same time, .6 wounds, (so, probably another wound...maybe not) spawn hits back, D6(-1) attacks(so the spawn could possibly have no attacks), hits on 3's, kills on 2's, then surviving grots hit on 4's and wound on 6, so it's totally possible for the grots to kill the spawn, and the spawn can't really kill all the grots if it gets charged by them, it might run them down, but grots are only behind it's I by one, so they might get away.
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Post by: lordrevege
okay starbomber109.
You have a point.
I had no idea how much spawn cost. 40 pts is utterly ridiculous for a spawn cost.
There is a good chance that the grots would win.
My oppinon has changed to spawn.
21946
Post by: ZacktheChaosChild
Chaos Possessed.
Costs as much as Terminators.
Are just about as useful as a small band of teenagers.
11422
Post by: Iron_Chaos_Brute
The Space Pope.
205 points of absolutely nothing.
18922
Post by: crazykiwi
darkkt wrote:How about a 40pt 'Fast attack Unit' that has the 'slow and purposeful special rule?
Yes, I would nominate the Humble Chaos spawn, as 'most useless' - They only end up on the board from psykers using Gift of Chaos - Ive never seen anyone chose one for an army list.
True true. I've never seen anybody feild spawn either
However, I've had the supreme displeasure of having one of my gaunts "gifted" into a spawn, resulting in 6 or 7 more gaunts killed in the ensueing close combat that tied up my gaunts for a turn or 2.
If some spawn went up agianst an equal point ammount of gretchin, and the gretchin got to shoot, and assault the spawn, I'd put my money on the spawn every time.
I'm still thinking grots are the worst.
the manager from my gw had a army of 60 of them and 2 squads of 5 Csm and a sorceror with gift for him 1500 (dont qoute me on the amount of spawn) but dirt cheap marines and bare bones sorc and the rest all Spawn strangely did quite well
16727
Post by: lordrevege
ZacktheChaosChild wrote:Chaos Possessed
Are just about as useful as a small band of teenagers.
Hahahaha! 
They do suck.
That daemonkin table is trash
If you could choose which abylity they could get, Id say the'd be wayy better
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Post by: starbomber109
I heard that a certain blogger was going to try the same kind of spawn spam army, only he had 2x lash princes in it, I guess to mitigate some of the SnP?
Anyways, all-spawn is a 'fun' build. any great amount of shooting will destroy it.
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Post by: I grappled the shoggoth
Worst unit in the game depends, I mean you have worse for all kinds of stuff. Largely its a points for what it does basis that determines how bad it is. Its silly though to say fire warriors are worse at close combat then say thousand sons, therefore fire warriors serve no purpose. So this argument must be made categorically.
Worst transport has to be the tau devilfish that all pathfinder teams must take.
I think the worst transport overall is probably the wave serpent. Not because its bad, though it needs a point reduction. But because eldar dont have any cheap transport options, but instead the most costly transport in the game. Thing costs more then the guardian squads it carries.
Most expensive shooty unit has to be devastators.
Worst troops I think are either fire warriors. They arent too great at range, and suck balls up close. The best tactic, the fish of fury, involves getting them right up on top of the enemy and hoping to kill enough that you dont get obliterated in the return fire.
Noise marines are pretty poop too.
Worst close combat unit is probably the feared and respected chaos spawn, with the ability to almost tarpit a tac squad and then die.
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Post by: starbomber109
Wait, what about shining spears, no matter where I go I hear nothing good about them, not enough kill for too many points is what I hear most of the time.
21913
Post by: thekerrick
I second the Space Pope.
16727
Post by: lordrevege
What's the space pope?
18213
Post by: starbomber109
Space Pope= Aun'Va
Tau Ethereal special character. He does....some random stuff, some kind of army-wide leadership bonus, and when he dies all fire-warriors on the field get furious charge and preferred enemy. edit: if they pass leadership.
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Post by: Fafnir
Tau special character. When he's alive, he does nothing. When he dies, he makes your men run away.
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Post by: Norbu the Destroyer
Any unit you spend a ton of points on and then realize that no matter how good the unit is on paper, rolling 1's for saves drops them just as quickly as guardsmen. 
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Post by: I grappled the shoggoth
Shining spears arent bad per se. They were decent in 4th. Problem is you cant hide them, they die super easy, for their points, and are only good in one round of an assault. If the old 4th edition LOS rules were still in effect theyd be great for fighting nidzilla now though.
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Post by: Kveldulv
I guess I would define a bad unit as: a unit there is a better alternative for in the same FOC slot, ensuring that it will never be fielded by competent players. The logic is simple: You construct your army out of one codex, not several. How grots perform vis-à-vis Fire Warriors doesn't concern me, I need to know how they perform vis-à-vis other Ork units.
Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord. You can never kit him out to be more points-effective or fearsome than a Daemon Prince or a special character.
There are alternatives to grots in the Ork codex, but if you need a super-cheap screen you have no other place to go. Even more so for Fire Warriors - it's hard to make a Tau list without them.
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Post by: Kroot Loops
Kveldulv wrote:I guess I would define a bad unit as: a unit there is a better alternative for in the same FOC slot, ensuring that it will never be fielded by competent players. The logic is simple: You construct your army out of one codex, not several. How grots perform vis-à-vis Fire Warriors doesn't concern me, I need to know how they perform vis-à-vis other Ork units.
Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord. You can never kit him out to be more points-effective or fearsome than a Daemon Prince or a special character.
There are alternatives to grots in the Ork codex, but if you need a super-cheap screen you have no other place to go. Even more so for Fire Warriors - it's hard to make a Tau list without them.
It's impossible to make a Tau list without them, they're 1+ in the FoC 
But seriously, by any measure Aun'va/Ethereals has to be the worst unit in 40K. Expensive, take up a valuable HQ slot, has no armor, and does more for your opposing player than they do for your own army.
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Post by: Volkov
The Space Pope.
205 points of absolutely nothing.
Seconded
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Post by: ZacktheChaosChild
Kveldulv wrote:
Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord.
*facepalm*
You best be trolling.
Many people use the Chaos Lord and they are very competitive.
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Post by: Iboshi2
I grappled the shoggoth wrote:
I think the worst transport overall is probably the wave serpent. Not because its bad, though it needs a point reduction. But because eldar dont have any cheap transport options, but instead the most costly transport in the game. Thing costs more then the guardian squads it carries.
I think you're very wrong there. The reason they might seem bad to you, is because you're transporting guardians. The 'overpricing' you speak of might have something to do with the special rules it possesses, and Fast, Tank, Skimmer classification. If you plan to use the Wave Serpent like an Ork Trukk, you plan to loose.
I grappled the shoggoth wrote:
Noise marines are pretty poop too.
Have you ever played against them, or are you just judging by their entry in the chaos codex? They're far from even being listed in this thread. A squad of 10 noise marines with sonic blasters can deliver withering fire while maintaining mobility, being fearless, and hitting most units first in CC. I'm not sure you're thinking of the right unit.
Imo, Chaos Spawn is a worse choice than Aun'va. My reasoning, is that Aun'va has potential tactical application, while spawn have no strength on the table, besides being on the table as a contesting unit. Almost every unit can do that.
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Post by: Volkov
Imo, Chaos Spawn is a worse choice than Aun'va. My reasoning, is that Aun'va has potential tactical application, while spawn have no strength on the table, besides being on the table as a contesting unit. Almost every unit can do that.
Aun'va gives your army stubborn which for tau is THE WORST THING YOU COULD POSSIBLY DO! A chaos spawn may be a waste of points but it is not going to take down your army while wasting those points
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Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
On the subject of Grots I'm going to re-post my defense of them. They're one of my favourite units fluff, model and gamewise.
Grotz have won me more games with my orks than any other unit.
People complaining "their gun is rubbish" "they can't kill anything" are missing the point.
There are 4 main tactical uses of grotz in a list.
1. Grot Screen - 80 pts buys you 20 grots and 2 herders or a KFF. For a footslogging force the KFF will grant a 5++ save, the grots wil grant a 4++. That helps keep those more expensive shoota and slugga boyz alive as they advance across the battlefield more effectively for the same points. Oh and the extra wounds, extra sots and extra attacks over the KFF are a pure bonus.
The only downside if a drop in mobility since you can only manouveur as fast as the grots so if they roll a 1 to run you either have to break past the screen or slow down.
I use this strategy nearly every game to minimise incoming damage as I move up the field.
2. Grot Shield
If packed together tightly enough (i.e. less than the full 2") the enemy cannot assault past your gretchin to get at the orks behind. As we all know orks are amazing on the charge but rubbish if they get charged. If you have a bunch of grots in front of your orks the enemy cannot charge you. He either has to shoot the grots away (and there are 20 of them) or he has to charge them. The grots will almost certainly die but then the enemy is left out in the open ready to be charged by the rest of your force.
I used this just the other weekend against a chaos player. 2 dreads, a daemon prince, a greater daemon and a squad of berserkers were all poised close to my orks and ready to charge but the grot screen was in the way of all these units. He couldn't charge me and instead was shot + charged by me the next turn depriving him of his daemons and zerkers in one turn.
3. Hold objctives - in at least one mission we need to leave a unit at home whilst the rest of the short ranged ork army goes and does some killing. 80pts gets you 20 wounds, probably in cover, probably going to ground that only have to exist to potentially win the game. 160pts buys you 20 orks who aren't going to do the job any better at all.
4. Bait - this is more of a psychological trick but you'd be amazed how often it works.
In Dawn of War you can only deploy 2 troops and 1 HQ. I routinely deploy my gretchin in a vulnerable position and leave the rest of my army ready to emerge turn 1. Players don't like to do nothing, they like to feel like they've achieved something even if it is just killing grots. So most players will move towards the gretchin "bait" in their turn and try and shoot/assault them. In one tournament I had a ravenwing player manage a first turn assault against my grots with a big expensive bike unit and kill them all. In response my entire army including some bikes marched on, shot and charged him and made short work of that expensive unit.
This works against any opponent where you might want to reserve your entire army i.e. daemons. Take everything away and he'll get canny by deploying into cover, out of line of sight, too far from the edge, etc. Give him a focus however and most players will send at least 1 unit to go kill the grots which gives you 1 unit you can move up, shoot and assault turn 1.
Those 80pts can be used to lure your opponent into making tactical misjudgements which can help you.
There are of course dozens of other uses, they can bodyguard a Big Mek, they can actually shoot something sometimes maybe if they get lucky, they can assault an enemy and pull it out of position and with 2 herders their actually pretty good at taking on MC's. But none of those other uses have ever helped me directly win games like the first 4.
Arguably all of these can be done using standard orks who are also better at killing. But those orks won't do the grots jobs any better than the grots and they'll cost twice the price, if all you want from a unit is to die and in so doing potentially win a game then keep that unit cheap.
On the subject of the worst unit in 40K the easiest and best way to do this is to pick the worst choice from every codex and then compare them with each other.
Marines - Vanguard, seem fine but are waaaay too expensive to ever be properly used. They take up too many points for their potential benefit to the army.
Space Wolves - um, there isn't really a bad one. Lukas isn't a unit as such but sucks hard because he's only really useful when he dies. Even he has some good points though (hey, he can kill abaddon in one turn or a titan!)
Blood Angels - Tycho, hello. I have anti-ork rules but wargear that is useless against orks. Nobody likes me.
Dark Angels - Techmarine, more because he's pointless than bad.
BT - I dont know.
Sisters - Redemptia, they will never get into cc and when they do they'll die before they get to swing. And they cost too much. Also priests.
Daemonhunters - Daemonhost, stops you using GK's, is unrealiable, expensive and hard to use. Fun though.
Imperial Guard - Priests, even worse than Ogryns and Techpriests which have a use but just suck at it. Priests turn ordinary guardsmen into cc monsters, except they don't and why would you ever want to?
Chaos - Spawn, hard to use, expensive, will kill sod all.
Daemons - Nurglings, non-scoring troops competing with the awesomeness that is every other troop choice.
Tau - Vespids was my first thought but really it is the Space Pope. Does nothing then dies and he makes your men run away for an astonishingly huge amount of points.
Necrons - Pariahs, which actually are pretty good just expensive and fragile and competing with Immortals which everyone likes. Reduce your Necron count.
Eldar - Hawks or Spears. Spears are expensive and fragile but powerful, hawks are tricksy but will struggle to kill anything.
Dark Eldar - Hellions, they are an assault unit with a rapid fire gun! Expensive, fragile, crap at what they are meant to do and competing with better units in that slot.
Orks - Flashgitz, which again have great stats and actually are a bargain for that statline compared to regular nobz but will end up being too expensive and fragile. Especially without the bosspole that makes them expensive and ludicrously likely to run away.
Nids - Pyrovore, fulfills a role no one asked for, competes with awesome and necessary stuff, is expensive and fragile.
Out of all of these most of the units are either too expensive and fragile for their potential effect on the game (pyrovore, vanguard, repentia) pointless and fulfilling a role nobody asked for or that they do badly (techmarine, priests) or competing with units that do the same job in the same codex or are better in the same slot (pyrovore, nurglings).
That only leaves three very special units that actively make your army BAD! Not just by sucking up points better spelt elsewhere but because they're rules actively work to make your forces suck.
Those are Pariahs, by reducing Necron count, Daemonhosts, by denying GK's, and the Space Pope that makes you flee.
Pariahs are quite awesome statwise they just suck in the context of the army.
Daemonhosts really should be excluded as you kind of know that you want a no- GK army to use them. They're for fun and they do that job very well. Noone will ever take them to a tourney but plenty of people like them.
But the Space Pope. Crap model, no real benefit when he is alive and a crippling blow when he dies plus he costs a huge sum of points.
Space Pope is the worst unit, always.
23803
Post by: Mastershake
Most of these "worst units" are simply inefficient point-wise or do something useless. For me a worst unit has to be detrimental to the army.
Worst unit in the game- the IG commisar, why? He lets your guardsmen stay in combat for 1 extra turn so you can't shoot whatever charged them. If you plan on blobbing 50 guardsman together the guy has a use, but otherwise is not simply a bad investment of points, but is detrimental to the army. Al'Rahem is a close second. He forces you to outflank an IG infantry platoon every game. It's just made of fail. The Tyranid parasite of mortex looks like he'll be on failboard as well seeing as how he makes extra kill points for your opponent.
22766
Post by: Kveldulv
ZacktheChaosChild wrote:Kveldulv wrote:
Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord.
*facepalm*
You best be trolling.
Many people use the Chaos Lord and they are very competitive.
I see your facepalm, and raise you one!
Show me a tournament-winning list with Chaos Lords in it. I have stated my arguments against them, now state your arguments for them.
Of course, the Lord packs a lot of whupass, but he is never viable in a list. Grots are.
8359
Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
Those blobs with hidden commissars seem plenty popular though. If something has a limited use but that use is effective and lots of players like it you can hardly claim its bad otherwise we'd have to put land speeders, flaners of tzentch, termicide and other suicide units on this list.
Consider other choices in the IG list and how little they see play.
Priests - make guardsmen good at cc. Worse at that job than commissars without the bonus of the big stubborn unit being a great tarpit/objective grabber. Why would you ever use one when a commissar will do that role for you but better?
Ogryns - way too expensive for their fragiltiy and game effect. Trying to solve a problem (bad at cc) that IG are better off not solving.
Techpriests - crap at a job that doesn't need doing (fixing vehicles, most of the time vehicles are either dead or don't need fixing)
Punisher - expensive and uses a heavy slot for shooting power that is comparable to and available in your cheaper troop slots.
Commissars don't even come close to the crap these units are.
18213
Post by: starbomber109
On the subject of "Worst Transport" I actually think the Wave-Serpent and the Devil-Fish are some of the best transports in 40K, yes, they are 80-90-100 points, but what does that buy you?
AV12 (which is pretty good all things considered), some special rules to improve their staying power, and the Serpent gets some cool twin linked guns, they are also skimmers, which means terrain only matters if you land on it. This makes the serpent a better Tank, and the fish a better Transport, but both are fairly good. The battlewagon is pretty close as a great transport, but only a few orks can take one as a 'dedicated' transport, also it has only a few gun options and none of them are all that great, as well as the slightly over-costed Deffrolla that has become the hot-topic of rules debates everywhere (which is not worth headaches arguments lost friends $20 or 20 points imho), another good 'transport', just not as good of a 'tank'.
Drop Pod has to be one of the worst transports, but "For what it does it's pretty good," it can get a squad or a dread almost anywhere on the board in relative safety, once they get there they will get shot apart, but the pod delivers them and delivers them fast...then it normally dies, oh, and it only has a storm-bolter, when has a storm-bolter won a fire-fight with a Predator tank?
Therefore, worst 'transport' in the whole game, has got to be, the ork Looted Wagon, an open topped rhino which takes a breakdown test, it also has competition from the awesome battlewagon, and NOTHING can take it as dedicated. You can make it closed topped to maybe make it more durable, but you lose all the utility of having orks shoot/assault out of it. Granted, it could be somewhat useful (great as a random transport in an appoc game, or good if you have a HS slot open and simply NEED an extra transport) but not quite good enough.
8359
Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
Looted Wagon is easily the worst transport.
I have only ever seen it fielded as a boomwagon sacrificing the transport capacity for a (relatively) cheap big nasty ordnance gun.
20901
Post by: Luke_Prowler
Not really. For the same points as a trukk, you can get better armor and count as a tank without taking reinforced ram. run it with a KFF mek and you got a more survivable vehicle that can tank shock something after dropping the cargo.
24528
Post by: I grappled the shoggoth
I still think wave serpents are amazingly overcosted. Im not saying they should be dropped by half, but one with lances and stones shouldnt cost more then 100, maybe 110. Same for the devilfish. Its got average firepower, and average armor, the disruption pod is cool. But all it does is carry around fire warriors, big fething deal.
Chaos lords a very good choice. Ive seen one with blissgiver and 9 zerkers rolling around in a raider dish out the pain, ask Starbomber's nobs about that unit. Never gave me issue as I have yriel, but god help the poor player who doesnt.
He can be better then a demon prince in that he can be hidden in a unit, ride in a tank, and with certain demon weapons dish out comparable amounts of pain in hand to hand. I know someone who ran a khorne lord on bike with 4 nurgle biker escorts. Boost up and charge whatever, kill it off.
As for noise marines i should have clarified. Both plague marines and zerkers are better for cheaper.
23433
Post by: schadenfreude
I nominate the Khorne Deamon prince.
Simply put Khorne Deamon princes suck when compared to a Deamon Prince with warptime. It fills the exact same role as a warp time prince, is in no way better, and is an inferior CC combatant.
Noise Marines are a good unit, they just have different uses and tactics than zerkers or plague marines. They have 2 good uses.
#1 Hold an objective while in cover. Place an objective in cover and set up a squad with sonic blasters and a blast master to hold it. With a 4+ cover save and 3+ armor save they are not squishy, the have a lot of firepower, and they are a fearless unit.
#2 Jump a squad out of a Rhino. Even with their sonic blasters they are I5 and still have a bolt pistol and cc weapon so they get to shoot an assault 2 weapon and then charge with 3 Initiative 5 attacks. In this squad dump the blastmaster for a doom siren and it's an excellent marine killing unit.
8316
Post by: J.Black
The WH list has some awful crap in it:
Sisters Repentia, sure they get holy rage and eviscerators, shame they'll be wiped out by anything even approaching competence in CC before they get to swing.
Penitent Engines, being av11 and open-topped is really just asking for trouble especially when their only viable tactic (indeed, rules-enforced tactic) is charging headlong towards the enemy gunline. And how much do you have to pay for this? 80 points :(
I see someone mentioned swooping hawks, i'll go one further and mention Baharroth. 200pts for what? a blast marker every turn? some s4 pw attacks? wewt :(
18806
Post by: Volkov
Penitent Engines, being av11 and open-topped is really just asking for trouble especially when their only viable tactic (indeed, rules-enforced tactic) is charging headlong towards the enemy gunline. And how much do you have to pay for this? 80 points :(
I have found the only use for penitent engines. The problem is it just requires two armies. We often do 2vs2 games and my WH friend will fight along side my guard, and he has 6 penitent engines he holds in reserve and the enemy will rush headlong at us and right as they smash into our gun line the penitent engines come running in from the board edge and rip up crap
9920
Post by: dumplingman
I find it hard to find any unit worse than sisters repentia
overcosted T3 4+ save always strikes last
Also warp beast packs are pretty low on the list too: tiny unit terrible save completely worthless
4932
Post by: 40kenthusiast
I find it hilarious that you can take a Khornate Daemon Prince in WHFB Warriors of Chaos, Daemons of Chaos, and in 40k Daemons of Chaos and Chaos Space Marines, and in all those codexes it isn't a good idea even once. Harsh.
There's even an awesome Forge World model (guy with big pole axe).
24528
Post by: I grappled the shoggoth
penitent engines can be down right scary at times. My friend Kevin runs 9 of them, and I know I dont want to see that across the table from me. Sure they are av 11 open topped, but its a unit you have to deal with.
Throw a squad of 3 in a guard army and give them out flank ala creed.
4139
Post by: wuestenfux
Chaos Spawns.
Hellions - I never had any success with them.
2776
Post by: Reecius
Some of these "worst" unit nominations had me laughing! I guess it really just comes down to how you use a unit. Everyone's experience is different.
Chaos Lords are the worst unit in the game? Really? Wow, that is crazy. A lord on a bike with MoN and a Nurgle daemon weapon is NASTY. A guy in our group, who is one of the best players I have ever met, uses one in his list and routinely put a beat stick on people.
Lord with MoK, jump pack and LC's is a boat load of hurt too.
The reason you don't see lords more often is because lash sorcerers and warptime princes are so much better for the points. Lords aren't weak, just less powerful.
Penitent Engines are great too, if taken en masse. I have lost games to those stupid things multiple times because they are across the board in two turns and hacking gak apart. They aren't the greatest, but certainly not the worst.
And wave serpents are the worst transport? That is nuts! They are awesome! Super fast, crazy hard to kill, what more would someone want?
I guess it just comes down to how you play to answer that question. I am sure there are people out there who can find a use for any unit.
If I had to choose though, I would say Daemonhosts.
8471
Post by: olympia
Gretchin are a great unit. Flash Gitz, on the other, eat @#$^
19490
Post by: O'shovah
+ 1 for the Space Pope.
The only time Furious charge and preffered help is with a Farsight deathbomb unit (can't be fielded in the same army) and a maxed kroot unit (not caring about if the Space Pope dies or not).
22766
Post by: Kveldulv
Kveldulv wrote:Of course, the Lord packs a lot of whupass, but he is never viable in a list.
olympia wrote:The reason you don't see lords more often is because lash sorcerers and warptime princes are so much better for the points. Lords aren't weak, just less powerful.
Yep, I agree! I play Orks, but I meet chaos marines quite often and they're always boring lash/plague marines/oblits. That's just how their codex is, I guess
And yes, I can't name a worse unit than Aun'va, so the "worst unit in the game"-discourse is no longer as interesting as "the worst unit in each codex". And let me throw a torch in here: Every time the SW player I regularly meet field Bjørn The Fellhanded all he gets is hassle. Bjørn gets shot up first, and with some luck SW will spend the rest of the game trying not to loose an objective.
10517
Post by: RedFloyd90
Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.
Here's what I keep hearing people say.
Theyre too fragile. oh waaah, go play space marines then, what armies in the game other than necrons, SoB and the numerous variants of space marines has better than 3T 4Sv.
If you're going to consider anything not in power armor as being too fragile to possibly play, youre powergaming too much and should just stick with your undercosted OP space wolves.
They suck in CC. well, of course they do, don't let them get assaulted, tau take more finesse and dodging than brute force.
They cost too much, not realy.... youre getting a guardsman with 4+ armor and a S5 AP5 30" range gun for 5 more points, who cares about weakening them in CC with lower I, and WS when youre playing an army that by definition loses CC.
They can't shoot well, you have two choices here, use markerlights or volume of fire to fix that. Once again, these arent space marines where 1 squad can destroy everything, you have to use different tactics and combine arms. Send a hammerhead's blast and 6 BC shots into something then mop them up with rapid fire FW's.
for long range, you can add a marker light to the squad for a small cost on the ui you should already have bought, and for a little more, let him shoot his rifle as well as his ML, send 2 squads at max range into something, kill a few things, get a ML hit or two, then send that crisis team or stealth team into them with extra BS
the only reason people think FW's suck is because they don't bother to use tactics or synergy in their armies, that doesn't work in most armies, especially not tau
On the subject of Pathfinder's, i was somewhat morbid about them until i started thinking about them as FW's with carbines for 2 points more, that can outflank in their devilfish, this seems like a good tactic, take a squad or two, outflank them, fly on, drop out into cover, shoot something up with some long range help from rifle FW's, crisis suits, or HH's. then unleash the markerlights next turn. plus i have been informed that pinning is done per weapon that does a pinning wound, not a squad that does a pinning wound. so if pathfinder's do 4 unsaved wounds, obviously from 4 diff carbines, that's 4 pinning tests. The way pinning is worded is a little vague, but i'm pretty sure that is the way it works.
And how is the pathfinder's devilfish the worst transport? if you want to use it for FW's, just put them in it 1st turn, its the same price, and you can reroll scatter dice on deepstrike, very nice for TL flamer/melta crisis squads dropping in to assassinate hordes of infantry or tanks.
People should really think about tactics and synergy instead of playing a unit like MEQs before declaring them worthless
PS, i will grant that aun va sucks, a lot, but regular ethereals can be handy, just have to be very careful. one of the tricks that's fun with them is to use them to reroll passed morale in melee, let the enemy sweep your FW's that get caught during their turn so that you can immediately open up on them before they can move into cover or assault again
23332
Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
Just because CSM have amazing HQ choices doesn't mean the Lord is instantly the "Worst Unit in 40K". Quite contrary, Chaos have some of the BEST hqs in the game, and just because one strat that uses all of your HQ choices seems best with CSM, doesnt make the lord any worse, I can names a few units from the CSM dex alone that pale in comparison to the Chaos Lord;
i.e
Summoned Lesser Daemons
Thousand Sons (Extremely point inefficient, especially when Plague Marines are SO much better)
Chaos Dreadnaught
Chaos Terminators (there is a reason the strat with them is called TermiCIDE)
Chaos Spawn is not on that list in my opinion because while it costs 40 points, it takes up no space in your Force Org, and really should only be taken as filler points (I.E you have all the upgrades you need and you have the extra 40-160 points, as nothing decent in the dex costs <150pts). Also keep in mind that the same statline comes free with the Gift of Chaos spell, which could actually pay for itself in a single cast, exampe CSM vs CSM ahriman casts GoC on Abadon x3, 3 tests should pass, you should beat his T5 by the second roll, either way, your 250 pts just IKed 275pts and gave you a 40pt model with S5 T5 W3 AD6.... kinda win if you ask me.
Hellions are definately up there for worst unit in the game, however all and all, my vote for the worst Unit in the game would have to be Codex: Black Templars
24528
Post by: I grappled the shoggoth
How the hell arent chaos terminators good. They are better then TH/SS terminators under some situations. Full claw slaanesh termies are monstrous to fight in hand to hand. Same for a squad of 5 with combi melta hopping out of a raider.
23332
Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
I grappled the shoggoth wrote:How the hell arent chaos terminators good. They are better then TH/SS terminators under some situations. Full claw slaanesh termies are monstrous to fight in hand to hand. Same for a squad of 5 with combi melta hopping out of a raider.
And with the slannesh ones, you are wounding T5 on 5+s (plaguemarines, bikers, orcs, Tyranids, things you would be meleeing. Inorder to get close to the space marine equivalent, you have to BUY powerfists (15 each) and BUY Mark of Tzeentch (35 points for the squad) to give you a 4+ save where Space Marines get the same free.
As for shooty, granted we have a bit more customisation with our termies, but against any army thats worth their salt, if you are getting close enough with normal dakka termies (or worse, Combi-Melta single claw/Chainfist) those termies are as good as dead, meaning the 1 vehicle or 5 models you are killing better be worth over 200 points, or you have officially lost points (assuming you didnt take any melee upgrades)
Again, chaos really shines in its HQs and Heavy support (and plaguemarines).
8359
Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
Chaos Termies are an average as an assault specialist and a good as a shooty unit. Termicide works for them as do Landraiders. Far from as broken as Thunderstorm termies but pretty good in limited roles. Automatically Appended Next Post: Luke_Prowler wrote:Not really. For the same points as a trukk, you can get better armor and count as a tank without taking reinforced ram. run it with a KFF mek and you got a more survivable vehicle that can tank shock something after dropping the cargo.
Uses a heavy slot.
Hey, wanna buy a rhino for a heavy slot?
No, no I do not.
Its stats are fine, its a rhino (that might go out of control) with open-topped which is great for a transport. The only problem is that it takes up heavy slots that couldbe used for kanz, kannonz or battlewagons.
21946
Post by: ZacktheChaosChild
Kveldulv wrote:ZacktheChaosChild wrote:Kveldulv wrote:
Therefore, I nominate the Chaos Lord.
*facepalm*
You best be trolling.
Many people use the Chaos Lord and they are very competitive.
I see your facepalm, and raise you one!
Show me a tournament-winning list with Chaos Lords in it. I have stated my arguments against them, now state your arguments for them.
Of course, the Lord packs a lot of whupass, but he is never viable in a list. Grots are.
Well I can't find you a tourney winning list with one because I don't know where to look, but Lords are great in my opinion. Many special characters are good, but in most cases you can make the Lord as good at the job or better. Yeah, a Daemon Prince is the more "competitive" choice, mbut for whoever for whatever reason doesn't want one, the Lord is a fun one to play, and still kicks ass. IMO, he is far from being useless.
And whoever said that noise Marines are bad has obviously never played against them. I can make you cry with Noise Marines.
Sonic Blasters: Bolters that can rapid fire at the full 24" and still asault (which, by the way, they will almost always go first in, and hard).
Blastmasters: Just scary.
Doom Siren: a S5 AP3 flamer.
Noise Marines are amazing.
8359
Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
RedFloyd90 wrote:Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.
2 reasons really.
1 - they are overcosted. 11 pts is the same as a Sister of Battle. On the Tau side you get the pros of a longer ranged (by 6") and stronger gun, access to bonding, defensive grenades and the possibility of markerlights and pinning but lose
1 worse armour save
1 worse BS
1 worse init
1 worse WS
access to specialist weapon upgrades like flamers, heavy flamers and meltas
a squad specialist who can take cc upgrade equipment
book of st lucius which is better than bonding
faith which further lets them enhance the role of their specialist equipment
Seriously compare that statline with sisters, eldar, guard or orks and you start to realise that firewarriors are quite horrendously overcosted.
2 - They don't really do anything much. They are focused on killing the enemy's basic troops (with a sideline in really piss weak vehicles) which is fine. Generally troop guns are used to kill other enemy troops. The problem is they aren't very good at it. They need support from the rest of the army (quite rightly so as this is the Tau design ethos) in the form of markerlights, a transport (an expensive one) to let them get to where they can rapid fire, other support units to soften up or finish off the enemy (i.e. another fire warrior squad or a crisis suit team in your example) all of which raises their effective cost to do a job that isn't that essential. You could just equip your crisis teams for troop killing and send them off on their own really rather than spending a lot of pts and several units trying to force fire warriors to be good at that role.
Compare them to troops in other armies which are either good enough to kill the enemy without much support (Orks, Grey Hunters, Berserkers, Genestealers, Bloodletters) able to be equipped with specialist tools to give them a defined role ( IG vets, Normal Marines, Dark Eldar) or tough enough/stealthy enough to be a good objective holder (Plague Marines, Pathfinders, Scouts) and Fire Warriors which are overcosted, limited to one job and unable to do that job without support look pretty rubbish.
The key to fixing them though whilst remaining in the Tau design ethos is making the units they synergise with much more attractive and cost effective (devilfish, markerlights) along with probably a slight pts decrease.
17923
Post by: Asherian Command
Rippers...
22245
Post by: Jimole
IG conscripts are pretty woeful, they can't fight because they are bs and ws 2 and they can't screen because they are only ld5. They are like grots but worse because you have to buy an 80pts lord commissar to turn them into a useful screen. For that same 140 pts I could nearly have a mechvet melta squad or 2 autocannon squads (nearly).
20172
Post by: Kroot Loops
RedFloyd90 wrote:Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.
Zzzz... FW don't need apologists.
No one gives a crap about the strongest basic rifle in the game when the basic rifle is the only rifle. It's been proven over and over (and over) that 12 str 5 AP 5 weapons is inferior to 7 lasguns and 3 plasma rifles or 3 meltas, especially when that squad can stay in it's transport and fire two weapons from firing ports, maintaining killing power and protecting it's troops.
Many people will disagree with this, but the design philosophy of the Tau is flawed when paired with it's application currently. The idea that it's cool that you need 1/3 of your army at 1500 points to kill one enemy squad because they're Tau and Tau are about synergy is fundamentally flawed because Tau are on a clock, a clock that ends when the army gets caught in CC.
With the speed armies close to assault in 5th edition, you can't afford to need 500-700 points to kill 200 points of the enemy.
3933
Post by: Kingsley
Space Marine Servitors are pretty awful.
7308
Post by: Marshal_Gus
I nominate the Culexus Assassin...
Are you really going to going to field an Inquisitor to get one?
Are you really going to field the assassin when you don't know if you're going to play a psyker army?
Do you really count on the Soulless rule doing anything in a game that is heavy Mech and heavy Fearless?
Have you ever seen one fielded?
After that I recommend Flash Gitz...because it's obvious.
17376
Post by: Zid
Possessed CSM. Pointless, no use, and expensive...
19445
Post by: Warboss Gutrip
IMHO, the worst unit in the game is a Space Marine Master of the Forge trying to CC tank. Made of Fail...
22508
Post by: FlingitNow
I really don't understand how anyone can suggest anything other than the Ethereal with Aun'Va the king of all ethereals.
Seriously compare what you "poor" unit does to this:
205 points
no shooting.
ID from S6 and above.
Makes your army stubborn which for Tau turns your firewarriors into nice assault pillows. Greatly reducing your chances to shoot enemy assaulters.
Makes your whole army (the worst Ld army in the game) take a morale check when he dies.
So for 205 points you get a unit that does no damage to the enemy, makes the rest of your army do less damage to the enemy and then makes half your army run away when he dies. And it costs you 205 points for that privilege!!!
Seriously what even compares to that?
23332
Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
bravelybravesirrobin wrote:RedFloyd90 wrote:Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.
2 reasons really.
1 - they are overcosted. 11 pts is the same as a Sister of Battle. On the Tau side you get the pros of a longer ranged (by 6") and stronger gun, access to bonding, defensive grenades and the possibility of markerlights and pinning but lose
1 worse armour save
1 worse BS
1 worse init
1 worse WS
access to specialist weapon upgrades like flamers, heavy flamers and meltas
a squad specialist who can take cc upgrade equipment
book of st lucius which is better than bonding
faith which further lets them enhance the role of their specialist equipment
Seriously compare that statline with sisters, eldar, guard or orks and you start to realise that firewarriors are quite horrendously overcosted.
Name 3 units with Str5 for 11 points.
Then of those three name 2 with 30 inch range
then of those two name 1 that CAN potentially have BS 4 and Ignoring coversaves
Congratulations, you have firewarriors.
They are the ONLY troops choice in the game that can Pen standard rear AV without ANY upgrades with a gun. And they do it from 30 inches.
Pretty good for 11 points each...
now the Ethereal special character... pretty terrible.
I still however stick with my choice for the worst Unit in 40k... Codex: Black Templars
8359
Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
Daemon-Archon wrote:bravelybravesirrobin wrote:RedFloyd90 wrote:Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.
2 reasons really.
1 - they are overcosted. 11 pts is the same as a Sister of Battle. On the Tau side you get the pros of a longer ranged (by 6") and stronger gun, access to bonding, defensive grenades and the possibility of markerlights and pinning but lose
1 worse armour save
1 worse BS
1 worse init
1 worse WS
access to specialist weapon upgrades like flamers, heavy flamers and meltas
a squad specialist who can take cc upgrade equipment
book of st lucius which is better than bonding
faith which further lets them enhance the role of their specialist equipment
Seriously compare that statline with sisters, eldar, guard or orks and you start to realise that firewarriors are quite horrendously overcosted.
Name 3 units with Str5 for 11 points.
Then of those three name 2 with 30 inch range
then of those two name 1 that CAN potentially have BS 4 and Ignoring coversaves
Congratulations, you have firewarriors.
They are the ONLY troops choice in the game that can Pen standard rear AV without ANY upgrades with a gun. And they do it from 30 inches.
Pretty good for 11 points each...
now the Ethereal special character... pretty terrible.
I still however stick with my choice for the worst Unit in 40k... Codex: Black Templars
What I'm supposed to be impressed by str 5? Why? It's not like that's any good for troop killing (because their ballistic skill is crap and they get one round of shooting before they die from assault) and its crap for tank killing. Who the hell is presenting you their rear armour from 30" away? To get at the av 10 stuff you can pen you need mobility (+100pts to the cost of the unit) and you need to double tap to have a decent chance of penetrating rear av so you need to get within 12" in which case the fact that its a gun no longer impresses me because I can think of dozens of troop choices able to grab str 5 vs a vehicle (Nobz, space wolves near ragnar, Ba near corbulo, berserkers, bloodletters, sisters of battle, genestealers) and frankly I don't rate them as big anti-tank choice either yet they'll all do it better than the Fire warriors.
11pts looks impressive but it isn't so much the statline and cost per model as it is per unit. 55 minimum for a legal squad then a devilfish to move them anywhere so they can do some good and probably pathfinders in the list somewhere for markerlights. For that cost I can get a tac squad with a meltagun that will be vastly superior against tanks and troops. Hell I can get a Sisters squad that will be vastly betetr against tanks and troops. The fact that the gun is str 5 counts for nothing when most of the time str 5 kills sod all compared to str 4 with a special weapon.
And for a legal unit cost of 55pts I can find tons of things mounting str 5 weapons that are superior to 5 firewarriors on foot.
kanz with big shootas
buggies with twin linked big shootas
deffkoptaz with twin linked big shootaz
land speeders mounting heavy bolters
attack bikes with a heavy bolter and a bolter
vypers with scatter lasers
a crisis suit with a burst cannon, etc
And most of these options can mount stronger and more specialised weapons rather than a generic str5 gun.
So to answer your challenge.
55pts gets you 5 firewarriors at the cheapest you can field, 5 shots at range 30.
60pts gets me two buggies with 36" range and 6 str 5 shots.
To get BS 4 you need a second squad with a markerlight which increases your cost to more like 100 pts in which case 2 landspeeders with heavy bolters, 6more range, better ap, better mobility, 1 more shot and not reliant on a markerlight hit for roughly the same points. Automatically Appended Next Post: Daemon-Archon wrote:bravelybravesirrobin wrote:RedFloyd90 wrote:Why do people bash the fire warrior all the time? I would hesitate to say they are one of the best troops around. They get the best basic ranged weapon, possibly contested by the gauss rifle, decent armor, for a reasonable price.
2 reasons really.
1 - they are overcosted. 11 pts is the same as a Sister of Battle. On the Tau side you get the pros of a longer ranged (by 6") and stronger gun, access to bonding, defensive grenades and the possibility of markerlights and pinning but lose
1 worse armour save
1 worse BS
1 worse init
1 worse WS
access to specialist weapon upgrades like flamers, heavy flamers and meltas
a squad specialist who can take cc upgrade equipment
book of st lucius which is better than bonding
faith which further lets them enhance the role of their specialist equipment
Seriously compare that statline with sisters, eldar, guard or orks and you start to realise that firewarriors are quite horrendously overcosted.
Name 3 units with Str5 for 11 points.
Then of those three name 2 with 30 inch range
then of those two name 1 that CAN potentially have BS 4 and Ignoring coversaves
Congratulations, you have firewarriors.
They are the ONLY troops choice in the game that can Pen standard rear AV without ANY upgrades with a gun. And they do it from 30 inches.
Pretty good for 11 points each...
now the Ethereal special character... pretty terrible.
I still however stick with my choice for the worst Unit in 40k... Codex: Black Templars
14070
Post by: SagesStone
Pyrovores?
22508
Post by: FlingitNow
Fire warriors are only 10 points and the minimum squad cost is 60. Not 11 and 55!
They aren't very good and are a weak choice. Yes S5 and potentially BS5 is good and having 2 full fire warrior squad rapid firing anything with ML bonuses is a lot of death.
But they are paper thin in CC 2 scouts would most likely wipe out a 12 man squad in 1 turn. You've also missed the obvious troops choice that pumps out 3 S5 shots at BS4 a turn each Tyranid warriors! And they're tasty in combat! Same armour better toughness for points same wounds, shots.
Sorry compare a FW with a sister:
same shooting (one BS3 S5, The other BS4 S4).
Far better CC from the sisters.
Far better armour given the prevalence of cover saves.
ML vs Faith Points? Faith points win by miles.
They can take special weapons
They can be lead by someone that can take CC weapons.
All that for 1 point? Still think the FWs are good?
12030
Post by: Demogerg
Kveldulv wrote:
And yes, I can't name a worse unit than Aun'va, so the "worst unit in the game"-discourse is no longer as interesting as "the worst unit in each codex". And let me throw a torch in here: Every time the SW player I regularly meet field Bjørn The Fellhanded all he gets is hassle. Bjørn gets shot up first, and with some luck SW will spend the rest of the game trying not to loose an objective.
Ive fieldied Bjorn quite a few times, and I won 2 tournaments with him in the list. Used correctly he is a huge boon for the entire army.
One game he tied up Gazzy for 4 rounds of combat, he didnt die, and gazzy was made useless, allowing the rest of my army to wreck some orks. Win!
Another game I lined him up to get shot to pieces vs guard, and used him as an extra objective on my side of the board, forcing the guard player to come to me, Win!
Yet another game I had him stomp through a bunch of defielers, get killed by a prince, then making my army fearless helped to keep some scouts in the correct table corner to contest, Win!
how can you not like an AV13, 5++ invul save, venerable walker that gives you the opprotunity to place an extra objective on the table or make your army fearless if he dies? field him with a saga of the iron wolf, 3 servitor, 4 cyberwolf Iron Priest in a land raider redeemer, and you have a wall of hard-to-kill auto-repairing awesome.
581
Post by: Grimaldi
People always fail to consider the old DE codex for some worthless gems. Scourges, for example, are a poor choice to begin with, and the fact that they take slots from ravagers is an even greater crime. Hellions, as mentioned earlier, are also a pitiful and extremely expensive unit.
Still, the Space Pope is tough to beat.
2080
Post by: Samwise158
Etherials in general never made much sense as an HQ choice. If they are the spiritual leaders of the Tau people why would they be hanging out on the front lines anyway? It makes sense with Marine Chaplains or Farseers because they actually are also really scary in combat. The main purpose of including an Etherial is for it to die and piss off your troops.
Huh?
More importantly, why would the Space Pope, the most important etherial, show up in combat?
Its a wonder the Tau Empire is expanding.
Hopefully he will be torn to pieces by grots and Chaos Spawn.
4932
Post by: 40kenthusiast
It's true, I can't think of anything that beats the Space Pope. Everything about him is made of lose.
11933
Post by: number9dream
Demogerg wrote:Kveldulv wrote:
And yes, I can't name a worse unit than Aun'va, so the "worst unit in the game"-discourse is no longer as interesting as "the worst unit in each codex". And let me throw a torch in here: Every time the SW player I regularly meet field Bjørn The Fellhanded all he gets is hassle. Bjørn gets shot up first, and with some luck SW will spend the rest of the game trying not to loose an objective.
Ive fieldied Bjorn quite a few times, and I won 2 tournaments with him in the list. Used correctly he is a huge boon for the entire army.
One game he tied up Gazzy for 4 rounds of combat, he didnt die, and gazzy was made useless, allowing the rest of my army to wreck some orks. Win!
Another game I lined him up to get shot to pieces vs guard, and used him as an extra objective on my side of the board, forcing the guard player to come to me, Win!
Yet another game I had him stomp through a bunch of defielers, get killed by a prince, then making my army fearless helped to keep some scouts in the correct table corner to contest, Win!
how can you not like an AV13, 5++ invul save, venerable walker that gives you the opprotunity to place an extra objective on the table or make your army fearless if he dies? field him with a saga of the iron wolf, 3 servitor, 4 cyberwolf Iron Priest in a land raider redeemer, and you have a wall of hard-to-kill auto-repairing awesome.
The other day Bjorn and his Ven Dread buddy took out Ghaz and 8 meganobz (although they came in waves of 4) =[ I realized, post-humously, that charging in with the Meganobz wasn't the best idea, should have left the job to Ghaz. Of course, Ghaz missing all 5 attacks on the second turn didn't help
Always hit on a 3 is pretty annoying!
23332
Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
FlingitNow wrote:
Sorry compare a FW with a sister:
same shooting (one BS3 S5, The other BS4 S4).
Far better CC from the sisters.
Far better armour given the prevalence of cover saves.
ML vs Faith Points? Faith points win by miles.
They can take special weapons
They can be lead by someone that can take CC weapons.
All that for 1 point? Still think the FWs are good?
fair nuff
All rolls using random.org
Starting 36 inches away
Sisters turn 1 move six inches, run 2 inchs now @ 28 inches
Tau turn 1, 5 shots hitting on 4+s using ( 4 2 1 5 1) Wounding on 2+ (6 3) 2 wounds. 3+armor save (1 2) 2 dead.
Sisters leadership test for casualties (4 4) 8 so I believe they pass (cant remember the codex and cant access PDFs from work comp, inculding on GW site)
Sisters turn 2, move 6 inches run ( 6 ) inches now at 16 inches
Tau Turn two, Move 4 inches, fire rapid fire. 10 shots at 4+ to hit (5 6 6 6 4 2 5 1 3 3) so six hits, wounding on 2+ (3 4 3 5 1 5) Sisters get their 3+ save (2 2 4 6 4) down 2 1 member.
LD test (6 3) 9, Im pretty sure this breaks them. So they retreat 2d6 inches, and are below 50% (3 3) 6 inches, now at 18 inch range.
Assuming they have some ATSKNF or To the Last man Type rule (again, no pdfs atm, I recall them having something like that) they take their regroup roll (6 4) 10 ((ok, that was pretty gakky "luck" for the sisters I guess) so they fail and continue running (6 2) 8 inches. (at 26inch range)
Tau turn 3 firing 5 shots at 4+ again (1 2 1 2 5) ((Sucky shot)) wounding on 2+ (2) (O wow) 3+ save (2)
So sisters saved a total of 3 of 8 wounds ( Very bad luck on their end, as they should have saved at least 5) However the tau player took 20 shots and only hit with 7 (again, statistically they should have scored 10 hits and at least 8 wounds). The two run rolls were total 8 (so average 4+ statistically normal) the total leadership rolled was 27/3 tests, so a bit more then stat av. but the fallback distance of 14/2 tests was a bit less. So all in all, this is fairly stat av.
Firewarriors 5
Sisters 0
Still think SoB are much better then FWs?
I did however forget that Warriors were troops. Again, Its not like I'm typing this from my FLGS
Str 5 glances Rhino front/side armor, glaces Pred/Vindicator side av, Pens Land speeders, Pens Chimera/basilisk side, Pens Warwalkers, Pens most Ork AV, pens Raiders on all sides, Ravager's rear, glancing front and side, pens Sentinels. 2+ to wound.... All eldar infantry, All darkeldar infantry, All WhichHunters Infantry (unless taking SMs), All Imp Gaurd Infantry (but ogryns), All Tau infantry (but Crisis suits and Vespid), Nid's gaunts and gargoyles, Necrons, Orks, Nid (infantry not Monsterous creatures) and Marines will, for the most part, be 3+ to wound. Again, 55(not +55) points for something can at least glance over 60% of all vehicles and literally wound EVERY model(with T) in the game up to 10 times (5 at 30 inches) is not what I would call, "The worst Unit in 40K". Did I also mention they were scoring?
But a bit more on topic, As far as scourges are concerned, I see nothing wrong with 16 Str 4 ap5 shots@24 inchs at BS 4 with a 12 inch move, deepstrikeable. Hellions however, bleh!
Your armor save means nothing when I'm dropping 20+ wounds on a 10-or-less strong unit.
I've always found warhammer 40k to be a very glass cannon friendly game. Even if you are piercing my armor and 2x toughing me, if you only have 3 shots a turn vs my 20+, you are going to lose. Remember, the BEST chance you have is 1 in 6...(unless you have FnP, but then again, different story)
4670
Post by: Wehrkind
I good trick I saw for using Etherials was for ninja tau style armies. Most of your army stays off the board except for your commander and the etherial.
Turn one Tau, Commander hides. Etherial raises his stick thing, and runs screaming at the foe.
Turn one Enemy: Look askance at each other, then gun down etherial. Commander passes Ld10, and entire tau army becomes fearless and furious charge or whatever.
Turn 2: Buffed tau start showing up.
Sort of a wierd upgrade, but pretty funny, and might work well with aggro kroot popping in off the flanks.
1523
Post by: Saldiven
bravelybravesirrobin wrote:
Dark Eldar - Hellions, they are an assault unit with a rapid fire gun! Expensive, fragile, crap at what they are meant to do and competing with better units in that slot.
Pretty exhaustive list, but for DE, you need to include Scourges, as well. I mean, they're a 20+ point model with S/T 3 and a 5+ save. So, they decide to give jump packs to a unit that carries heavy weapons that cost twice as much as that same heavy weapon costs in a Troop squad. For the cost of a minimum sized unit (5) of Scourges with 4 dark lances, I can almost afford two different Troop units totaling 20 models with the same number of dark lances.
Also, if we're going to include special character's in the mix, the Decapitator sucks pretty hard, too. It costs 112 points for a T3 model with 4 S3 power weapon attacks and has a 5+ save. An assault unit that will hit most units, kill two, and then immediately die to return attacks from just about anything.
It doesn't even have a model.
22766
Post by: Kveldulv
Demogerg wrote:Kveldulv wrote:
And yes, I can't name a worse unit than Aun'va, so the "worst unit in the game"-discourse is no longer as interesting as "the worst unit in each codex". And let me throw a torch in here: Every time the SW player I regularly meet field Bjørn The Fellhanded all he gets is hassle. Bjørn gets shot up first, and with some luck SW will spend the rest of the game trying not to loose an objective.
Ive fieldied Bjorn quite a few times, and I won 2 tournaments with him in the list. Used correctly he is a huge boon for the entire army.
One game he tied up Gazzy for 4 rounds of combat, he didnt die, and gazzy was made useless, allowing the rest of my army to wreck some orks. Win!
Another game I lined him up to get shot to pieces vs guard, and used him as an extra objective on my side of the board, forcing the guard player to come to me, Win!
Yet another game I had him stomp through a bunch of defielers, get killed by a prince, then making my army fearless helped to keep some scouts in the correct table corner to contest, Win!
how can you not like an AV13, 5++ invul save, venerable walker that gives you the opprotunity to place an extra objective on the table or make your army fearless if he dies? field him with a saga of the iron wolf, 3 servitor, 4 cyberwolf Iron Priest in a land raider redeemer, and you have a wall of hard-to-kill auto-repairing awesome.
Hm, you've actually gone and got me convinced. Must be because you're smarter in using him than we are! But I wouldn't charge him with Ghaz... How would you use Bjørn against a kan wall? Cheap DCCW atcha!
20952
Post by: BAN
grots rock my world
1) they soak up fire for some reason, i took them for a laugh when i first got them and the guy i was playing took 3 turns to shoot them all! meanwhile my green tide slowly gets within assault range.
2) plonk them on an objective and go to ground that gives them 3+ cover save (or is it 4+) either is good for them. then leave them ther all game.
3) they make me smile  therefore i wouldn't call them the worst unit by a long stretch
18861
Post by: Sanctjud
I don't know about those bashing the options in the CSM codex.
Possessed/Spawn have done wonderful in the games I've had. Maybe your expectations are too high, maybe you just don't use them.../shrug, either case, they are alot more functional than some of the other options suggested here.
I will second the Space Pope and his lesser ranked dudes.
16269
Post by: Try Again Bragg
I am surprised no one has nominated Nork. Most people who I talk to claim he is the most damaging unit you could put in your army if you want to run multiple command squads. How does the quote go "let him shoot a battle cannon out of each eye and then he is worth it". He competes with the space pope as you have a close combat monster with a short ranged gun in a unit you want to keep out of cc to keep issuing orders (most of the time).
Space pope is most certainly useless its just a contest of how much. Space pope gives you stubborn which is useful against anti leadership armies (pyker battle squad anyone) and can give everyone preferred enemy which can be a repelant to charging, as opposed to you charging.
22508
Post by: FlingitNow
Still think SoB are much better then FWs?
Yes they are miles better with your 2 sisters dieing in turn 1 and them charging across open ground on foot at firewarriors....
Had the sisters not taken a casualty in that first turn (which is 47% chance) they'd have just stood there and out shot you. Even if only 1 died they'd still be favourite to out shoot you:
5 x 1/2 x 5/6 x 1/3 = 0.69 deaths per turn
4 x 2/3 x2/3 x 1/2 = 0.89 deaths per turn
So your example was dumb overly simplistic hugely lucky for the tau on that crucial first turn shooting and then having the Sisters be stupid.
Still think FWs are great? Automatically Appended Next Post: Space pope gives you stubborn which is useful against anti leadership armies (pyker battle squad anyone) and can give everyone preferred enemy which can be a repelant to charging, as opposed to you charging.
I tyake it you've never used Tau neither of these effects is beneficial to the army. The stubborn rule is damaging you want your FW to flee from combat as much as possible Stubborn reduces that and puts you in a world of trouble when the enemy does get to assault you as it is now game over as one of his units is in combat you never get to shoot it again because your stubborn soldiers are staying in combat for your turn.
Making the whole Tau army stubborn is about the most damaging thing you could do to the army! I'd rather use an acroos the board BS2 army than a stubborn army!
preferred enemy discourages people from charging you? That is a joke right? Oh no that S3 FW have preferred enemy and I2 I better not charge him I'll just stand here and let him assault me...
Yeah that happens a lot, it is a very common thing. I am forever charging unit of genestealers with my firewarriors. I mean there is almost no point rolling the dice my FW are so certain to win if they have prefered enemy right?
18213
Post by: starbomber109
people wrote:Fire Warrior VS Sisters of Battle Squads
Everyone is making too many asumptions in this fight, if the firewarriors are really just standing there shooting at sisters, then the firewarriors are getting shot at with exorcist tanks (and the sisters are probably being fried by crisis suits and hammerheads)
A friend of mine hates to assume things, so lets magically assume a SoB squad and a FW squad were teleported into rapid fire range and have a shooting war.
10 FW hit on 4s but wound on 2s (about 8 wounds)
10 SoB hit on 3s and wound on 3s (close to 9 wounds but probably 8)
However, the sisters can rely on their armor to save probably 4-6 of those hits, the firewarriors will at best save 4-5 wounds, and their damage potential (IE: the maximum ammount of wounds they can cause), is actually different, because sisters have access to flamethrowers, which have a chance to deal far more wounds, firewarriors have no special weapons.
22855
Post by: djdutton
While mentioning special characters that suck can I nominate Kaptin Badrukk? 135 points for basically the same stat line as a nob except he gets one more point of WS, which considering he is suppose to be a shooty boss means that its only partially useful. He has no power weapons so assaulting would be stupid anyway. His gun is pretty decent, str7 and ap2 assault 3. Combine that though with his BS of 2 and only one of those shots is probably gonna hit.
I don't see why (considering that he is a special character) that they couldn't have given him BS 3 instead of increasing his WS which is pointless. In the end he is a waste of points and provides no more use than what you can get out of a regular mob of shooty boyz.
19490
Post by: O'shovah
FlingitNow wrote:So your example was dumb overly simplistic hugely lucky for the tau on that crucial first turn shooting and then having the Sisters be stupid.
+1
And horay for him not paying attantion to squad size either.
This time done smartly (and with averages):
11 FW vs 10 SOB (can't remember if they have to take a sister superior but they don't have one).
SOB move and run to around 26" away (starting 35" maximum)
FW's shoot, 5.5 hits, 4.5833333333... wounds. 1 1/2 die.
SOB move into range (but not move and rapid fire range)
1.5 die again.
7 return fire getting (likely gaining rending due to faith)
Without faith: 4.666.... hits, 3.1111.... wounds, 1.5 die
With faith: 4.66666.... hits ,0.777... rends + 2.3333.... wounds, 2 die
9 return fire netting 4.5 hits, 3.75 wounds, 1.25 die.
6 return fire (now without rending most likely). 4 hits, 2.666.... wounds, 1.333... dead.
7 return fire (4.444.... dead). 3.5 hits, 2.916666666..... wounds 1 dead.
5 return fire. 3.333.... hits, 2.2222 wounds and 1.1111... save (so 2 die because of rounding up), Fire warriors most likely pass Ld test with 5 left.
5 return fire. 2.5 hits, 2.083333.... wounds, .7 dies.
4 return fire. 2.666... hits, 1.777.... wounds, 0.8888... die (none due to rounding down at .4444.... of a death).
5 return fire and kill .7 but due to rounding down none die.
4 return fire and deal .888... killing one
4 return fire. 2 hits, 1.6666.... wounds. 0.5555.... fails and kill one (pass ld check)
3 return fire and get 2 hits, 1.333 wounds and .6666 kills (getting one).
SOB then whittle the FW down to oblivion.
And that was only using 1 act of faith. If they ran straight at the fire warriors they'd take 4.5 casualty's before rapid fire range then kill 1 with rapid fire (without faith). lose 2.7777.... more before charging and easily annihalating the fire warriors so yes they do suck but us tau players know what we have and would never leave a fire warrior squad alone (and rarely outside of a devilfish) without support for that kind of pro-longed firefight.
As for destroying tanks SOB with bolters can glance AV13 with Acts of faith (it may just just give them better AP, I'll check soon).
Also it is highly likely the SOB would be in a rhino/Immolator/Chimera so the Fire warriors would be even more easily annihalated (Immolator/Chimera would do it single handedly)
12030
Post by: Demogerg
Kveldulv wrote:
Hm, you've actually gone and got me convinced. Must be because you're smarter in using him than we are! But I wouldn't charge him with Ghaz... How would you use Bjørn against a kan wall? Cheap DCCW atcha!
Kan wall? Long Fangs.
I tend to use Bjorn with an iron-priest filled land raider as a screen for a rhino with Njal Stormcaller in it. drive up to the center field and let loose with Murderous Hurricane/Jaws of the World Wolf and Chain Lightning
D6 S8 hits on each unit of kans will wreck a good number of them me thinks.
9454
Post by: Mattlov
n0t_u wrote:Pyrovores?
What is bad about: A S5 flamer template, power weapon CC attacks, a Tyranid that doesn't need Synapse for ANYTHING, and that can be spore dropped right next to the enemy.
18213
Post by: starbomber109
Mattlov wrote:and that can be spore dropped right next to the enemy.
....he can? He's a bit like a dreadnought then (only he dosn't have a multi-melta) Most people looked at the elites in the new bug codex and went OMG! Hive Guard and Zoanthropes and stopped reading.
21846
Post by: Arheiner
And Deathleaper (@ above podter)
Automatically Appended Next Post:
And Deathleaper (@ above poster)
23332
Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
FlingitNow wrote:
So your example was dumb overly simplistic hugely lucky for the tau on that crucial first turn shooting and then having the Sisters be stupid.
Actually, I gave the sisters first turn, why would they not move to try and assault the Tau? Would they be better in 4+ cover as opposed to 3+ armor? Would they be safer at letting the tau get to 30 inch range as opposed to their 24 inch? I don't get how it was "dumb"
Was it not your example that initially had the SoB's meleeing Firewarriors? What selfrespecting Tau player would EVER let a sisters squad get ANYWHERE near assault range?
Also as far as "Luck" if you actually read the post, you will see it is mostly Stat Av. The sisters took 2 wounds they should have saved where in the Tau missed 3 shots they should have hit (wich, combined with their hit-wound ratio at the moment, also should have been 3 more wounds) which in turn would have saved maybe 1 sister in total, they would still be falling back... Unless they spent a faith point for Emp's light, which would ROYALLY feth them over as they would have to either move closer to the tau (potentially letting the tau Rapidfire them) or remain in range (no 2d6 fallback) of another tau volley.
Equal points (actually the tau cost 5 LESS) FW should always beat SoB in a shoot out, unless the Tau player rolls HORRIBLE and the sisters are BLESSED with incredible luck.
Does that mean a SoB squad is the worst unit in 40k? Absolutely not, but neither are FW. Neither unit is the best or the worst unit in 40k...
*Edit*
Wait wait wait... Are people actually bringing up things like "Sisters have flamers" or "Sisters would be in Immolators" or even more redic " Lol exorcists"
Ok
cool, the entire sisters squad gets wrecked by a single Sustained Hammerhead Railgun shot... then, that same hammerhead 1 shots the exercist.
GG.
4670
Post by: Wehrkind
Even spore podding in a pyrovore is bad. Assuming you get a good landing spot, which isn't too hard with a pod, you are going to get off 1 heavy flamer shot. Next turn your T4 wounds are getting ripped off by small arms fire, and he falls over. So what, 140 points is it for 1 heavy flamer shot (and the more amusing pod attacks as well)? That just isn't too exciting.
The dread comparison is iffy as well, as he is only T4, not AV12. That means small arms kill him, and he can't tie up devastator type squads. In fact, CSM devastators would rip him to pieces. (I recall him only being I3 and A2, though I might be wrong.)
The pyrovore seems to be made to kill light infantry in cover, which is nice and all, but 'nids are not really hurting for anti-infantry. If he was designed to kill MEQ, more attacks, or an AP3 flamer, would have gone much farther. Hell, T5 would be an improvement, though a 3+ save would help.
As to his "I explode on ID!", you don't NEED to ID him. If he gets in melee, he will probably get smashed down by normal troops before the power fist swings. At range, you are about as likely to hit your own troops when he gets killed by a lascannon at 36" or the like.
22508
Post by: FlingitNow
Equal points (actually the tau cost 5 LESS) FW should always beat SoB in a shoot out, unless the Tau player rolls HORRIBLE and the sisters are BLESSED with incredible luck.
Deployment is usually 24" apart we'll say 25" and Tau go first. 11 FW 10 Sisters (so same points). Who's going to win that match? 2 rounds of shooting from the Tau before the sisters start shooting back and guess who still wins on average? Sisters. Point for point in a straight shooting match Sisters will win they are just better surviving whilst both units are basically equal at shooting (slight edge to sisters). Read the other post above where someone details 11 FW shooting at 10 sisters... It is not about horrible luck versus good luck it is about averages on average in a straight shooting match point for point Sisters will beat FWs. In an actual game the sisters will also have transports (as will the Tau) but the sisters transports are cheaper and better and the Sisters can take heavy flamers (all Tau under template dead on a 2).
23395
Post by: Gavo
Oh God....
My quick list:
-Ethereals
-Possesed
-Chaos Dread (Not the worst, but I really hate it)
-Chaos Spawn
I choose not to say Grots because they cost so little it's ridiculous.
22508
Post by: FlingitNow
Vespids have to be a pretty poor choice too, Pulse Carbine FWs, Skyrays, Ethereals but Space Pope just wins hands down.
I think Tau have the largest selection of useless things certainly as a proportion of their total choices (Marines have more HQ choices than Tau have choices).
9463
Post by: PanzerSmurf
Well, for all of those who have never seen a spawn fielded, you never saw me play =). Great fun just for the randomness, though will never be a gamewinner.
Let's see, eldar guardians, not really great.
Necron flayed ones.
Possessed. Dont get me started on this one.
Chaos dreads. Most people do not like them, but for me, they work great! Probably because they're just as nuts as I am. In a more boxy way.
That's about all I can think of right now, but then again, its late, and I had Belgian beer, so...
20172
Post by: Kroot Loops
Daemon-Archon wrote:FlingitNow wrote:
So your example was dumb overly simplistic hugely lucky for the tau on that crucial first turn shooting and then having the Sisters be stupid.
Actually, I gave the sisters first turn, why would they not move to try and assault the Tau? Would they be better in 4+ cover as opposed to 3+ armor? Would they be safer at letting the tau get to 30 inch range as opposed to their 24 inch? I don't get how it was "dumb"
Was it not your example that initially had the SoB's meleeing Firewarriors? What selfrespecting Tau player would EVER let a sisters squad get ANYWHERE near assault range?
Also as far as "Luck" if you actually read the post, you will see it is mostly Stat Av. The sisters took 2 wounds they should have saved where in the Tau missed 3 shots they should have hit (wich, combined with their hit-wound ratio at the moment, also should have been 3 more wounds) which in turn would have saved maybe 1 sister in total, they would still be falling back... Unless they spent a faith point for Emp's light, which would ROYALLY feth them over as they would have to either move closer to the tau (potentially letting the tau Rapidfire them) or remain in range (no 2d6 fallback) of another tau volley.
Equal points (actually the tau cost 5 LESS) FW should always beat SoB in a shoot out, unless the Tau player rolls HORRIBLE and the sisters are BLESSED with incredible luck.
Does that mean a SoB squad is the worst unit in 40k? Absolutely not, but neither are FW. Neither unit is the best or the worst unit in 40k...
*Edit*
Wait wait wait... Are people actually bringing up things like "Sisters have flamers" or "Sisters would be in Immolators" or even more redic " Lol exorcists"
Ok
cool, the entire sisters squad gets wrecked by a single Sustained Hammerhead Railgun shot... then, that same hammerhead 1 shots the exercist.
GG.
wait wait wait, are you actually proposing to keep the FW on the table? one blast template and you've lost half your squad. As I've explained elsewhere, the 30" range on the pulse rifle is smoke and mirrors against most armies. Effective operating range of the pulse rifle is 12"
24732
Post by: Delta Squad 98
If 1 on 1 gretchins 
8218
Post by: Raxmei
Wehrkind wrote:I good trick I saw for using Etherials was for ninja tau style armies. Most of your army stays off the board except for your commander and the etherial.
Turn one Tau, Commander hides. Etherial raises his stick thing, and runs screaming at the foe.
Turn one Enemy: Look askance at each other, then gun down etherial. Commander passes Ld10, and entire tau army becomes fearless and furious charge or whatever.
Turn 2: Buffed tau start showing up.
Sort of a wierd upgrade, but pretty funny, and might work well with aggro kroot popping in off the flanks.
Doesn't work. Price of Failure only affects units that took the morale check, in this case just the commander. Tau that aren't on the board when he dies don't take the morale check so they don't get Preferred Enemy, and for similar reasons Kroot don't either.
13720
Post by: jehjr1337
To answer your question first, swooping hawks.
Gretchin are meat shields for you 6+ sv ork boys or a squad of burna boys.
Gretching with 3 runtherds are AWESOME at tying up a carnifex, or any other single non-vehical model that could do devastating attacks if it wasn't tied up in cc.
So imagine 30 gretchin and 3 runtherds going up against a single wraithlord, carnifex, or avatar. Avatar will now have 1 attack, carnifex will have 1 attack, and so will a wraithlord.
Same can be applied to a 3 man TL Railgun broadside squad.
Sure they are easy to kill but that's wasted shots at a puny squad when you have bigger things to worry about.
4776
Post by: scuddman
Lol at people defending firewarriors.
Someone asked, bs 4, strength 5 guns, and ability to remove cover saves.
Hmm, veterans with a heavy bolter and a flamer...
: )
On a more serious note...
firewarriors and their fish can only kill troops. In a vacuum of troop choices, firewarriors and a fish mostly cann't hurt vehicles that are armor 12+ and can't really effectively or quickly injure monstrous creatures with 2+ saves.
That might not seem like a big deal, but when everyone is meching up, what answers do the firewarriors provide?
Also, the comparison to sisters is flawed. A real comparison would be firewarriors and a transport vs. sisters in a rhino.
You'll find..that unless you get lucky and immobilize the rhino, the sisters are deep into Tau space without taking a single casualty.
That doesn't even factor in things like droppods or outflank...
You want a bad matchup? Take equal points of firewarriors in a transport vs. plague marines in a rhino...
23332
Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
scuddman wrote:
That might not seem like a big deal, but when everyone is meching up, what answers do the firewarriors provide?
Glancing Rhinos on Front/Side (pen rear)
Glancing Immolators on Front/Side (Pen rear)
Penning Chimeras on Side/rear
Pening Raiders on all sides
Penning Trukks and Buggies on all sides
Glancing Pirhana's on front and Devilfish on Side (Penning both on rear Pirhana on side)
So they effectively only have issues with Land Raiders, Wave Serpents (penning Rear), battle wagons (Pen rear), Valk/Vendettas (pen rear), and Falcons (pen rear).
So of the 36 Transport AVs... they can pen 17 and Glance 21
Were as str 4 troops can glance 17 and pen... 0
Str 3 troops can glance 0
scuddman wrote:
That doesn't even factor in things like droppods or outflank...
You want a bad matchup? Take equal points of firewarriors in a transport vs. plague marines in a rhino...
As I understand it neither Sisters of Battle nor Plague marines have the option of Drop Pods or outflanking...
Also, Having veterans with a heavy bolter and a flamer does not give you the same as the firewarriors.
#1 Flamer is Str4, not str 5
#2 Heavy bolter is HEAVY (thus the name) veterans are not relentless, so you cannot move and shoot it.
#3 Heavy bolter does not remove coversaves
I still defend the point that Firewarriors are not the worst Unit in the game, actually, I'll even push it further saying they are not the worst Troops choice either. (Guardians much?)
20172
Post by: Kroot Loops
Heh.
to glance on AV 11, 12 FW shooting beyond 12" may produce one glance on average (0.96). that glance only has a truly important impact on a 4 or 6, so largely negligable. Then the Whirlwind blast comes down and wipes out your FW squad.
If you're getting side or rear shots, you've moved, so you're within 12" to be able to shoot (with the Tau transports limited to a 12" move, rear shots will be hard to come by)
So 12 FW rapid firing on the side of a rhino: 1.92 glances. and again you need a 4 or 6 for anything significant. But lets say you immobilize the rhino.
10 sisters get out. We'll assume for the moment that they don't have anything besides bolters.
They rapid fire on the FW: 13.2 hits, 8.71 wounds, 4.36 dead FW, which is enough to force a break test on Ld 7.
If they use faith points, or have special weapons, the casualties suffered by the FW increase.
I never said FW were the worst troop choice, but they are bad.
This is magnified by the fact that 1. They are required, and 2. There is no other *Tau* troop choice (Kroot are not Tau). Eldar have other troop choices apart from guardians, and they're pretty good. Putting guardians on jetbikes also significantly upgrades their effectiveness.
22508
Post by: FlingitNow
I'd have to agree with everything Kroot loops has just said. Whilst FWs may not be the worst troop choice they are pretty poor and the Tau certainly have the worst selection of troop choices.
Compare them with Sisters and they are 1 point more but point win at shooting, surviving, assault, leadership, tactical flexibility and basically everything else you dan think of...
4776
Post by: scuddman
As I understand it neither Sisters of Battle nor Plague marines have the option of Drop Pods or outflanking...
Also, Having veterans with a heavy bolter and a flamer does not give you the same as the firewarriors.
You're right, even that terrible weapons setup outranges Tau at 36". For models that are 7 points. You're right they're not the same. Veterans are way better.
Also..all this talk of rear shots...on a unit that can't move and shoot unless within 12"...right...someone has to moon the firewarriors on purpose for firewarriors to get rear shots. The devilfish has a better chance, but 18" range hurts a lot.
A chimera is cheap (55 points), shoots a 36" range strength 6 shot (way better than burst cannon), and the side armor only matters if you can get to it. And if you do get to it, you are within 18-12" if you got to the side with the fish or the firewarriors.
And it's not like in this edition that getting your transport blown is a huge penalty.
Sob and plague marines don't need droppods. All they need is a basic rhino. And the sisters rhino will always have extra armor since they're using old rhinos. You just need the rhino to get you to within 24". You don't need to be in rapid fire to shoot at firewarriors. All you have to do is move up once and get behind the rhino.
The major advantage of guardians was that as things moved forward you could move backwards while shooting. However, this edition has pooped on that strategy.
Actually, I'd still argue that guardians are better than firewarriors. Take a warlock with heavy flamer and stick them in a waveserpent. What's the firewarriors and devilfish going to do to stop that?
8359
Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
Daemon-Archon wrote:scuddman wrote:
That might not seem like a big deal, but when everyone is meching up, what answers do the firewarriors provide?
Glancing Rhinos on Front/Side (pen rear)
Glancing Immolators on Front/Side (Pen rear)
Penning Chimeras on Side/rear
Pening Raiders on all sides
Penning Trukks and Buggies on all sides
Glancing Pirhana's on front and Devilfish on Side (Penning both on rear Pirhana on side)
So they effectively only have issues with Land Raiders, Wave Serpents (penning Rear), battle wagons (Pen rear), Valk/Vendettas (pen rear), and Falcons (pen rear).
So of the 36 Transport AVs... they can pen 17 and Glance 21
Were as str 4 troops can glance 17 and pen... 0
Str 3 troops can glance 0
scuddman wrote:
That doesn't even factor in things like droppods or outflank...
You want a bad matchup? Take equal points of firewarriors in a transport vs. plague marines in a rhino...
As I understand it neither Sisters of Battle nor Plague marines have the option of Drop Pods or outflanking...
Also, Having veterans with a heavy bolter and a flamer does not give you the same as the firewarriors.
#1 Flamer is Str4, not str 5
#2 Heavy bolter is HEAVY (thus the name) veterans are not relentless, so you cannot move and shoot it.
#3 Heavy bolter does not remove coversaves
I still defend the point that Firewarriors are not the worst Unit in the game, actually, I'll even push it further saying they are not the worst Troops choice either. (Guardians much?)
Let me the first to say I don't think that firewarriors are the worst troops choice in the game either and they're far from the worst choice in the game (still Space Pope) gut your argument is still ridiculous.
Your long list of all the vehicles fire warriors can glance is largely irrelevant because 1) although they have the potential to glance the odds are not in their favour and 2) although you state that str3 and str 4 troops can't glance/pen vehicles this is often completely wrong.
Marines, Chaos Marines, Sisters, IG and stormstroopers can all have meltaguns which will bust AV up to 14 far more effectively than the firwarriors ever will. Most of those choices can also have a lascannon that will bust tanks at range more effectively than the firewarriors ever will and they still have comparable anti-infantry capability to the firewarriors to boot.
Orks have rokkits, nid warriors have venom cannons, necrons have gauss, guardians have bright lances, DE warriors can have multiple dark lances pretty much every army has some form of basic troop which can buy a special weapon that wil make them superior at busting tanks than the firewarriors.
This lack of special weapons is one of the main reasons fire warriors are considered quite bad. A tac squad can be equipped to deal with any threat in the game in multiple phases whilst a fire warrior squad has pathetic chances at glancing/penning low av vehicles. This leaves them with only one real role, infantry killing.
But the problem is they're not really very good at that either. Str 5 BS 3 is actually slightly worse than str 4 BS 4 on average against most targets because you roll to hit dice before you roll to wound dice. Does anyone run naked sisters units or naked tac marines hoping to use the awesome power of bolters to mow down infantry? No, because it isn't sufficient. Its nice and forms part of proper tactics but all those tac squads and sisters units which are used for troop killing will also be packing flamers, heavy flamers, plasma guns, etc that will enhance their killing power greatly over those firewarriors for usually only 5-15 pts.
You could use markerlights to increase your killing power (and should) but a pathfinder team costs a lot more than 15pts and requires an extra roll to hit. They simply aren't as cost effective as troops for other armies.
So I'll reiterate my case again.
Fire warriors are bad because;
1) they are overpriced compared to their killing power and any options to improve their killing power (markerlights, devilfish) are similarly overpriced and just compound the problem
2) they are very limited in what they can accomplish on the tabletop compared to most other armies' troops.
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Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
bravelybravesirrobin wrote:
Your long list of all the vehicles fire warriors can glance is largely irrelevant because 1) although they have the potential to glance the odds are not in their favour* and 2) although you state that str3 and str 4 troops can't glance/pen vehicles this is often completely wrong**.
Marines, Chaos Marines, Sisters, IG and stormstroopers can all have meltaguns which will bust AV up to 14 far more effectively than the firwarriors ever will. Most of those choices can also have a lascannon that will bust tanks at range more effectively than the firewarriors ever will and they still have comparable anti-infantry capability to the firewarriors to boot.
Orks have rokkits, nid warriors have venom cannons, necrons have gauss, guardians have bright lances, DE warriors can have multiple dark lances pretty much every army has some form of basic troop which can buy a special weapon that wil make them superior at busting tanks than the firewarriors.
This lack of special weapons is one of the main reasons fire warriors are considered quite bad. A tac squad can be equipped to deal with any threat in the game in multiple phases whilst a fire warrior squad has pathetic chances at glancing/penning low av vehicles. This leaves them with only one real role, infantry killing.
For starters, as you said yourself, they have to BUY the special weapon. Which if they did they ** would no longer be str3 or str4 shooters, but str 8/9 respectively.
Melta weaponry requires 6 inch range, @12 inches you get 1 str 8 shot (on the AV11 example, thats a 4+ to pen for your ANTI-TANK gun. And supposedly 4+ is bad as seen in BS3)
*Also, as far as the Odds in there favor. When talkting AFV str 5 vs str 4 on AV11 for example, even 1% is ∞>0. Also, the worst chance you have on a d6 is 13%. 13% for any true gambler is GREAT odds... try going to Vegas some time.
bravelybravesirrobin wrote:
But the problem is they're not really very good at that either. Str 5 BS 3 is actually slightly worse than str 4 BS 4 on average against most targets because you roll to hit dice before you roll to wound dice. Does anyone run naked sisters units or naked tac marines hoping to use the awesome power of bolters to mow down infantry?
As a thousand-sons player, I run pure bolters all the time, and give my sorcerers Doombolt (because honestly, then BoC is not worth it in the long run). So would that make Thousand Sons the worst troop choice in the game? (as I can't BUY upgrade weapons)
bravelybravesirrobin wrote:
1) they are overpriced compared to their killing power and any options to improve their killing power (markerlights, devilfish) are similarly overpriced and just compound the problem
2) they are very limited in what they can accomplish on the tabletop compared to most other armies' troops.
1) If they were 13pts a model I would agree, but their low point cost, availibility to take skimmers as transports, increased range, and the fact that they are backed up by some of the nastiest elite/Heavy choices in the game make them totally worth their point costs.
2) AFV they are not, when you start throwing in upgrades of 10-15 points a model, yeah they start to falter a bit, but not in the sense that they get worse, moreso that the others get better (thus upgrades). Using DE and Gaurdians as examples of troops that are better because of their potential heavy weapons however is right-out. Lances are heavy weapons (no moving and shooting) and blasters require 12 inch range, which, tbh if your warriors are getting within 12 inches of an enemy vehicle... its dead anyway (You should have killed it earlier).
Check the facts, check the figures, they aren't that bad... maybe your tau players (or you) are just bad at their(your) race?
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Post by: sckum555
Conscripts?
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Post by: carmachu
Daemon-Archon wrote:
LD test (6 3) 9, Im pretty sure this breaks them. So they retreat 2d6 inches, and are below 50% (3 3) 6 inches, now at 18 inch range.
Your example is full of fail. LD 9 passes with a vet. No sister player is taking a squad without one and a book.
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Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
carmachu wrote:Daemon-Archon wrote:
LD test (6 3) 9, Im pretty sure this breaks them. So they retreat 2d6 inches, and are below 50% (3 3) 6 inches, now at 18 inch range.
Your example is full of fail. LD 9 passes with a vet. No sister player is taking a squad without one and a book.
Your reading is full of fail? If you read the example, the cost of a vet and a book is not inculded with the squad.
Arms racing the example will do nothing more but cause massive confusion off the original point (which it seems you are trying to do), Firewarriors are NOT the worst units in the game and they will not get "Crushed" by a min- str SoB squad...
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Post by: Broken Loose
Mattlov wrote:n0t_u wrote:Pyrovores?
What is bad about: A S5 flamer template, power weapon CC attacks, a Tyranid that doesn't need Synapse for ANYTHING, and that can be spore dropped right next to the enemy.
Nice troll.
A single WS3 power weapon attack at I1.
He DOES need Synapse or else he'll run towards the nearest tank and do jack all.
If you take more than 1 in a squad, you'd best hope you don't get shot or else you will definitely break with Ld 6.
If you get into assault, you'd best hope your opponent doesn't pass his Initiative tests. Or if you die to a powerfists, hope you roll a 4+ to use his special ability! And then don't botch the range roll. And wound with a S3 hit.
Of course, if you lose combat without dying, then the pyrovore is worthless because it just broke with its Ld 6. It DOES need Synapse, but not as much as it needs to die. A unit whose sole purpose is to die in a very specific way without getting touched on the way there, all the while hoping your opponent fails his rolls and you make yours. Meanwhile, the SW get a suicide unit who starts at 20 points, gets all the gear in the book, has amazing USRs, and grants a negative KP when he dies.
All this, for 45 points, in a slot populated by the best units in the codex (Elites). Cheers.
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Post by: Kroot Loops
@Daemon-Archon:
Your examples are simplistic, not well thought out, and just plain wrong.
As a Tau player with a winning record and who has won local tournaments with the army, I feel like I do a pretty good job with them. I have no illusions that I am the best Tau player, but I don't lose too often, and most losses have come when a list has been constructed specifically against Tau (maxed out on jump infantry, 3 squads of SW scouts that can come in off the back edge, etc).
Firewarriors are bad. There are no two ways around it. Their str 5 AP 5 guns are not as effective as the special weapons that other squads can either buy or get for free, and we do not have a large pool of troop choices to pull from (Kroot are also bad, but they are better than FW). It is not uncommon at all to see tournament Tau lists with 1-2 minimum size FW squads in DF who will never disembark from the DF unless it is destroyed.
As far as Tau having the best heavy support, that's pretty questionable. Railguns are great, but one weapon destroyed result on a hammer head makes your opponent giggle as your expensive tank runs around for the rest of the match shooting str 5 ap 5 shots. Broadsides are delicious, until they get stuck in CC, which in 5th ed happens occasionaly on turn 1, pretty common in turn 2, and almost always by turn 3.
Lets face it, the only thing keeping Tau semi-competitive are Crisis Suits and Disruption Pods, and the hit or miss 'piranha wall'. The information leaks on the tantalus lander and the wide spread belief that it will be made available to all SM chapters, is pretty much the nail in the coffin for the 4th ed Tau.
So, laughable special characters, a HQ choice that does more for the enemy than for you, bad troop choices with no good upgrades, heavy support that only has one viable weapon... I'm going to go ahead and say Tau are the worst army in 40k currently. The only possible contender could be Necrons, and that is hinged upon how your local gaming group rules on the sweeping advance/WBB thing
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Post by: carmachu
Daemon-Archon wrote:
Your reading is full of fail? If you read the example, the cost of a vet and a book is not inculded with the squad.
And thats why it fails. There isnt a sister player, not even a novice, thats not going to take 10 or 11 sisters in a squad while not being faithful.
Its not an arms race. Its you setting your example up to skew the results to the way you want.
Its full of fail becuase its not going to happen, ever.
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Post by: Daemon-Archon Ren
carmachu wrote:
Its not an arms race. Its you setting your example up to skew the results to the way you want.
Actually, its me comparing 50 pts of Firewarriors vs 55 pts of SoB, which was what was proposed previously in the thread...
But thanks for reading the thread before making accusations, as well as throwing the thread down the path of "lockhood"
Its already be established that Firewarriors, while not great and not necessarily better then an equal str sisters squad, are not the Worst unit in 40k.
If you have any personal grievance with any of my arguments, send me a PM as opposed to wasting space in this thead/resputtering the same stuff other members have already said when the point was changed days ago.
Meanwhile, back on topic...
@Broken Loose. While I don't disagree that Pyrovores are (one of) the worst units in the game, whats the SW unit that is 20 pt Suicider?
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Post by: Broken Loose
Daemon-Archon wrote:@Broken Loose. While I don't disagree that Pyrovores are (one of) the worst units in the game, whats the SW unit that is 20 pt Suicider?
Lone Wolves. Yeah, not a lot of people realized you get the EW, FNP, Fearless, WS5, and W2 in power armor for just 20 points. Putting them in terminator armor with chainfists and SS is radioactive icing on the cake.
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Post by: adam_gipson
Without a doubt--Heralds of Nurgle. Not only do they suck, but they take up precious HQ slots. They're so bad I wouldn't even take them in a mono-nurgle list.
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Post by: Ostrakon
Necron Flayed Ones.
Dedicated melee unit with crappy initiative and no fleet, no options for power weapons at 18pts/pop.
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Post by: Kurgash
Ostrakon wrote:Necron Flayed Ones.
Dedicated melee unit with crappy initiative and no fleet, no options for power weapons at 18pts/pop.
If you use them like a standard assault unit then yes, they fold like wet paper. If you try to use them as a counter offensive unit, IE deep striking then attacking dev's or lootas, then they work wonders, as they more than likely will tie up the unit for a turn or so. Granted they probably will die off but that was some extra time bought for the main army to get there. And don't sniff at their terrifying visage, it works well against even fearless units if you win the roll off. Outflanking them can be beneficial too, just gotta gamble a bit.
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Post by: Ostrakon
Kurgash wrote:Ostrakon wrote:Necron Flayed Ones.
Dedicated melee unit with crappy initiative and no fleet, no options for power weapons at 18pts/pop.
If you use them like a standard assault unit then yes, they fold like wet paper. If you try to use them as a counter offensive unit, IE deep striking then attacking dev's or lootas, then they work wonders, as they more than likely will tie up the unit for a turn or so. Granted they probably will die off but that was some extra time bought for the main army to get there. And don't sniff at their terrifying visage, it works well against even fearless units if you win the roll off. Outflanking them can be beneficial too, just gotta gamble a bit.
That's a lot of 'but in this one particular situation where you have better options anyway' apologetics for something that's 18/model and other armies get much better versions of.
I'd rather take scarabs to do that job, since they're cheaper even with DFs, which will allow me to do much more with them.
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Post by: Kurgash
Ostrakon wrote:Kurgash wrote:Ostrakon wrote:Necron Flayed Ones.
Dedicated melee unit with crappy initiative and no fleet, no options for power weapons at 18pts/pop.
If you use them like a standard assault unit then yes, they fold like wet paper. If you try to use them as a counter offensive unit, IE deep striking then attacking dev's or lootas, then they work wonders, as they more than likely will tie up the unit for a turn or so. Granted they probably will die off but that was some extra time bought for the main army to get there. And don't sniff at their terrifying visage, it works well against even fearless units if you win the roll off. Outflanking them can be beneficial too, just gotta gamble a bit.
That's a lot of 'but in this one particular situation where you have better options anyway' apologetics for something that's 18/model and other armies get much better versions of. I'd rather take scarabs to do that job, since they're cheaper even with DFs, which will allow me to do much more with them.
True, but at my FLGS I pretty much know what situation calls for what as people rarely change their armies and I'm trying new 'Cron lists every chance I get. Granted the Flayed Ones give me mixed results but more often than not they pull through with tying up a vital shooting unit or grabbing a scenario point for being in the enemy's deployment zone as per League Scenarios we've done. I only take 4 anyways, for how I run them not much more is required. Situational unit at best, I know what you are saying.
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Post by: Ostrakon
Kurgash wrote:Ostrakon wrote:Kurgash wrote:Ostrakon wrote:Necron Flayed Ones.
Dedicated melee unit with crappy initiative and no fleet, no options for power weapons at 18pts/pop.
If you use them like a standard assault unit then yes, they fold like wet paper. If you try to use them as a counter offensive unit, IE deep striking then attacking dev's or lootas, then they work wonders, as they more than likely will tie up the unit for a turn or so. Granted they probably will die off but that was some extra time bought for the main army to get there. And don't sniff at their terrifying visage, it works well against even fearless units if you win the roll off. Outflanking them can be beneficial too, just gotta gamble a bit.
That's a lot of 'but in this one particular situation where you have better options anyway' apologetics for something that's 18/model and other armies get much better versions of. I'd rather take scarabs to do that job, since they're cheaper even with DFs, which will allow me to do much more with them.
True, but at my FLGS I pretty much know what situation calls for what as people rarely change their armies and I'm trying new 'Cron lists every chance I get. Granted the Flayed Ones give me mixed results but more often than not they pull through with tying up a vital shooting unit or grabbing a scenario point for being in the enemy's deployment zone as per League Scenarios we've done. I only take 4 anyways, for how I run them not much more is required. Situational unit at best, I know what you are saying.
Wait, how is a unit of 4 flayed ones somehow managing to survive its trek across the field to te up a "key shooting unit" without being, you know, shot at? If you run the whole way, they're just going to get chewed up. If you DS them in, they're going to be shot to nothing before assaulting and won't even really tie them up for a turn because they'll die anyway. At least scarabs can turboboost across the table, claim a 2+ cover save (saving them from shooty annihilation with impunity) and have an assault range of 24 inches the next turn anyway. And they're cheaper. At that crappy point cost, they should have power weapons by default a la Bloodletters.
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Post by: bravelybravesirrobin
the easy fix for flayed ones is to make them troops, the secondary fix is either a pts drop or rending. IIRC they have infiltrate and a tough, scoring, outflanking assault unit would be a good choice for pretty much any build.
The problem as is is that they are elites and don&t do much damage and take away pts needed to buy warriors or destroyers.
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Post by: Kurgash
Ostrakon wrote:Kurgash wrote:Ostrakon wrote:Kurgash wrote:Ostrakon wrote:Necron Flayed Ones.
Dedicated melee unit with crappy initiative and no fleet, no options for power weapons at 18pts/pop.
If you use them like a standard assault unit then yes, they fold like wet paper. If you try to use them as a counter offensive unit, IE deep striking then attacking dev's or lootas, then they work wonders, as they more than likely will tie up the unit for a turn or so. Granted they probably will die off but that was some extra time bought for the main army to get there. And don't sniff at their terrifying visage, it works well against even fearless units if you win the roll off. Outflanking them can be beneficial too, just gotta gamble a bit.
That's a lot of 'but in this one particular situation where you have better options anyway' apologetics for something that's 18/model and other armies get much better versions of.
I'd rather take scarabs to do that job, since they're cheaper even with DFs, which will allow me to do much more with them.
True, but at my FLGS I pretty much know what situation calls for what as people rarely change their armies and I'm trying new 'Cron lists every chance I get. Granted the Flayed Ones give me mixed results but more often than not they pull through with tying up a vital shooting unit or grabbing a scenario point for being in the enemy's deployment zone as per League Scenarios we've done.
I only take 4 anyways, for how I run them not much more is required. Situational unit at best, I know what you are saying.
Wait, how is a unit of 4 flayed ones somehow managing to survive its trek across the field to te up a "key shooting unit" without being, you know, shot at? If you run the whole way, they're just going to get chewed up. If you DS them in, they're going to be shot to nothing before assaulting and won't even really tie them up for a turn because they'll die anyway.
At least scarabs can turboboost across the table, claim a 2+ cover save (saving them from shooty annihilation with impunity) and have an assault range of 24 inches the next turn anyway. And they're cheaper.
At that crappy point cost, they should have power weapons by default a la Bloodletters.
My store runs alot building/ruins as their terrain so with my DS i dive in behind the buildings out of their LOS. Like I've said, they work for me because of the terrain I know is being used. Granted I wouldn't take them to a tournament but time and again I run them in a list because, hey I bought them might as well put some mileage on them. And yes, rending would have to be a must for them to be viable as an elite choice or just troops as they are the polar opposite of warriors aside the point cost being the same.
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Post by: carmachu
Daemon-Archon wrote:
Actually, its me comparing 50 pts of Firewarriors vs 55 pts of SoB, which was what was proposed previously in the thread...
But thanks for reading the thread before making accusations, as well as throwing the thread down the path of "lockhood"
Its already be established that Firewarriors, while not great and not necessarily better then an equal str sisters squad, are not the Worst unit in 40k.
If you have any personal grievance with any of my arguments, send me a PM as opposed to wasting space in this thead/resputtering the same stuff other members have already said when the point was changed days ago.
I read the whole thing. It fails. It doesnt come close to the reality of the table. Its like comparing 40 points of fire warriors with 40pts of chaos terminators. It doesnt happen, its an illegal squad on one end, just like your example. Its a stupid comaprison that has no basis in reality(or rather the reality of the game)
Miniums squad # is 10 for sisters. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. If your using celestians, who are squad minium of 5, are LD 9. No sister player ever brings a squad of sisters thats not faithful from the troop section. Full stop.
FW arent the worst unit. sPAWN or repentia hold that title.
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Post by: chaplaingrabthar
Thread is tl;dr
But have Vespid Stingwings been mentioned yet?
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Post by: I grappled the shoggoth
Oh god, vespid are so bad everyone forgot about them. Designed to kill space marines, and every game I played against them I made a point of taking them out with my marine jump infantry, raptors, in this case.
Kind of insulting to the tau player.
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Post by: DarkHound
Man, it is close tie between Vespids and Pyrovores. Then again, the Vespids were "designed" to do something the Tau want. Pyrovores don't do anything the Tyranids want, and they still manage to do it poorly.
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Post by: FlingitNow
Man, it is close tie between Vespids and Pyrovores. Then again, the Vespids were "designed" to do something the Tau want. Pyrovores don't do anything the Tyranids want, and they still manage to do it poorly.
Pyrovores, Vespid, Repentia, Spawn are ALL miles and miles better than an Ethereal who in turn is miles and miles better than the Space Pope.
Skyrays are also worse than all those units except maybe Vespids.
Vespids are "made" to kill MEQ right. Well lets compare a 16 point Vespid vs a 10 Point FW (who themselves are a poor choice and over costed). Vespid has AP3 the FW as AP5 so the vespid punches through Marine armour This makes them far better at this job doesn't it?
Well no it doesn't and here's why. Punching throw trhe armour means the space marine will not a get save so for every 3 wounds caused 3 marines will die. Contrast with the FW and it will be 1 death per 3 marines. Vespids are therefore 3 times as good against the one thing they are designed to kill better than a FW right?
Again no they have a 12" range at this range the FW gets twice as many shots. So the ratio is 3:2 not looking quite so good and when you consider the FW can also shoot up to 30" he then needs to get of 1 shot before rapid fire range to do equally well against the one thing the Vespids are supposed to be best at! Or you could look at it as 150 points of FWs will kill exactly as many MEQs as 160 points of vespid at the 12" range and obviously infinitely more at further range...
So the one thing they "excel" at they are are actually slihty worse at than one of the worst troops choices in the game...
Pyrovores are OK they are great situationally. The acid blood can be devastating if they are charged by ork boyz and 3 in a pod can ruin a green tide army. Their issue is the same as Lictors, Deathleaper and Ymgarl Stealers; Zoanthropes and Hive Guard are must haves for competitive games in fact ideally you'd want 2 units of each...
However none of this is relevant, the Space Pope costs 205 points and actually damages your army whilst he's easy to kill (which makes half your army run away) and totally incapable of doing any damage to anyone. No one else comes close 205 points of actually just making your army worse you'd actually be better off just taking 200 points less to the table than using the Space Pope!!!
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Post by: DarkHound
Yeah, sorry, you're right. All hail the mighty Space Pope.
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Post by: lordrevege
I now Nominate the Space Pope as the worst unit ever.
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Post by: Broken Loose
I'll agree that the Space Pope is worse than the Pyrovore, but I will contest your point that the Pyrovore has situational use. What good is a highly specialized and ineffective anti-infantry unit in an entire codex filled with better anti-infantry units? Hormagaunts, the Doom, tyrants, devilgaunts, gargoyles, biovores, or warriors could wreck boyz mobs easier than pyrovores.
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Post by: FlingitNow
I'll agree that the Space Pope is worse than the Pyrovore, but I will contest your point that the Pyrovore has situational use. What good is a highly specialized and ineffective anti-infantry unit in an entire codex filled with better anti-infantry units? Hormagaunts, the Doom, tyrants, devilgaunts, gargoyles, biovores, or warriors could wreck boyz mobs easier than pyrovores.
Just because the codex has better options doesn't mean it is a terrible unit just a tad redundant. Like LC terminators aren't terrible but you'd just be an idiot to ever take them as you are so much better off with the TH/ SS ones.
However I'd contest that ANY of the units you've mentioned would do well against Orks unless they got the charge. That is the beauty of the Pyrovore it can spod down next to them coat them in flame and then allow them to attack it and do horrednous damage with acid blood. A Tyrant would be ripped a new one by equal points of Orks on the charge!
It's not a great unit and they fill a role that can be done by most of the army (anti-infantry) but they do it in a different way. Situational yes and a tad reliant on your opponent being dumb (but hey if he's using Orks...) or shall we be kinder and say enthusiastic . But the unit's main problem is that the Elites choices open to Tyranids are awesome and the Pyrovore would be a waste.
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Post by: AdeptSister
Ok the Space pope is horrible. But I think repentia are the Second worst unit. They are basically uncontrollable and will lose to just about any assault unit. They are completely useless.
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Post by: ZombieKoolaid
We could say that every unit is good against this, bad against that, and the discussion could go on forever. However, if we look at which unit is least effective for a high cost as a basis of being "worst unit" I have to say that IMHO and from a SM player point of view there would be only one unit that comes to my mind as WORST.
Space Marine Vanguard Veterans. These guys just don't do the job they are intended to. Having "Heroic Intervention" just turns these guys into a REALLY expensive Assault Squad that will probably scatter, and the dice gods don't look kindly on point sinking.
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Post by: FlingitNow
We could say that every unit is good against this, bad against that, and the discussion could go on forever. However, if we look at which unit is least effective for a high cost as a basis of being "worst unit" I have to say that IMHO and from a SM player point of view there would be only one unit that comes to my mind as WORST.
Space Marine Vanguard Veterans. These guys just don't do the job they are intended to. Having "Heroic Intervention" just turns these guys into a REALLY expensive Assault Squad that will probably scatter, and the dice gods don't look kindly on point sinking.
Space Pope is 205 points and just damages your army. when he's alive he prevents your soilders from running from combat so you can't shoot at enemy assaulters (given that no Tau unit survives 2 rounds of combat), so he can just roll up your line with impunity as you'll not get that turn to shoot him before he assaults you again. Then when he dies the few guys left all run away. So you spend 205 point for something that doesn't kill ANY enemy troops whilst making your entire army worse. Sorry Vangaurd aren't even close. They are over costed and under effective true but taking them doesn't make your other troops significantly worse and they will do damage to the enemy and your entire army won't run away just because they die...
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Post by: Pipboy101
Any Tau Ethereal. They suck major monkey 
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Post by: ZombieKoolaid
Does Space Pope at least get a cool Pope hat with lasers?
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Post by: FlingitNow
Does Space Pope at least get a cool Pope hat with lasers?
Hat yes, lasers no...
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