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I play eldar normally in about 2000 point games but i don't know whether i should buy any dark reapers i have heard from some people that they are not worth the FOC slot or points. So i thought why not ask my fellow dakkanauts! could you please help out and if you don't think i should take them what would you suggest for heavy support slots. I currently run with 2 fire prisms, holo-fields and spirit stones as well as a falcon with bright lance, holo-fields and spirit stones ( i use the falcon as transport for my fire dragons).
C's and C's are welcome.

I've seen dark reapers work pretty well, especially against MEQ armies. Beware of cover saves though, that will depend on how much terrain you play with.

Secondly, I'd recommend not putting your dragons in the falcon. If it's moving flat out to deliver the dragons, it can't fire all of it's lovely, long range weapons. They're much better off in a wave serpent. This will give a slot to try the reapers.

I rate reapers very highly. They are really good at erasing Marine Squads and have enough FP to deal with horde armies by chipping away every turn.

I'd still take Walkers over Reapers, just for the amount of FP that they can muster.

Take the exarch with reaper launcher and crack shot, he wipes out marine squads single-handed. The problem with the squad is fragility for their points cost, and army matchups. Most well-built eldar armies don't want a defenseless static firebase (and dark reapers compete with the best firepower choices in the book; most decent eldar armies take 3 HS choices) and most well-built opposing armies are going to feature lots of vehicles, against which dark reapers are not good. In short, they are great as long as you know there will be dismounted marines for them to shoot at. Even then, they are fragile and not as versatile as other heavy support shooters.

As said above, an Exarch with Crack Shot will absolutely slaughter MEQ infantry. The problem is any vehicles that you'll have to deal with, though you can work the rest of your list to handle this, and honestly despite the 3+ save Dark Reapers can't really handle all that much return fire.

I do agree that Dark Reapers are sorely underused by the Eldar community in general; they make mincemeat of 3+ or better saves and the Exarch can make even MEQs hiding in cover cry.

However, I think the three main reasons that Dark Reapers are usually avoided are thus:

1) They take up a Heavy Support slot; in today's meta of "tanks=win" you'll always want that Falcon/Fire Prism/Nightspinner or even War Walkers as usually, they are far more flexible and infinitely less static than the Dark Reapers.

2) Against the majority of players (aka marines) they will draw tonnes of fire.;Usually, I'd say this was a good thing as it lets the rest of your army ping away at his while he focusses on the Dark Reapers. However, the problem with this is that the Dark Reapers are expensive. Very expensive. Costing up to 237pts for a 5 man squad which will not be hard to focus fire down with T3 and only a 3+ save.

3) They are far too static and inflexible; Dark Reapers need clear lanes of fire in order to be effective and to make the most of the AP3. With the abundance of cover and their Heavy weapons, the Dark Reapers will need a turn to re-position if your opponent counter-deploys them. Effectively this means that 237pts of your army is useless for a turn. Also S5 is very limiting, if you do kill that unit of Marines out in the open and are only presented with a wall of rhinos as your targets then you probably won't be doing much.

Overall, I like them. But I feel that they just have 1 too many a flaw to be used competitively.

Iranna.

So with my 2 prisms already would people suggest something like 3 walkers?

The walkers can, excuse the pun, walk in from the back having their use as a sort of suicidal unit that can be a distraction just long enough. I do like the Dark Reapers though, I keep them with a squad of Guardians on the home objective. However my local meta is foot slogging and mech hybrid.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/439202.page

The best way to equip them is for anti infantry. Give the exarch crack shot and and a tempest launcher and you basically whipe space marine squads like its a joke.

Re rolling to wound small blast ap3, 2 of them, its REALLY powerful.

Its a good unit, you just need a special list to run them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reanimator wrote:I've seen dark reapers work pretty well, especially against MEQ armies. Beware of cover saves though, that will depend on how much terrain you play with.

Secondly, I'd recommend not putting your dragons in the falcon. If it's moving flat out to deliver the dragons, it can't fire all of it's lovely, long range weapons. They're much better off in a wave serpent. This will give a slot to try the reapers.

Yea, you have no idea what your talking about rofl

Smitty0305 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reanimator wrote:I've seen dark reapers work pretty well, especially against MEQ armies. Beware of cover saves though, that will depend on how much terrain you play with.

Secondly, I'd recommend not putting your dragons in the falcon. If it's moving flat out to deliver the dragons, it can't fire all of it's lovely, long range weapons. They're much better off in a wave serpent. This will give a slot to try the reapers.

Yea, you have no idea what your talking about rofl

Erm Reanimator is perfectly correct on both statements?

Cover saves hamper everything but the Exarch's shots for the most part and Falcons do indeed make terrible transports for Fire Dragons, relative to the Wave Serpent of course.

Iranna.

Iranna's correct there. I'm not sure what you're getting at, Smitty.


As an aside, I'd recommend taking only 3 reapers (squad min is 3, right?) and decking out one as an Exarch, he's the real killer in the squad with Crack Shot. If you do have a Heavy Support spare, that squad may be small enough to go unnoticed until they really start racking up casualties.

Also, I would never advise taking War Walkers. Eldar Corsair Wasp Walkers are fantastic, but they have that magical BS4. With BS3 your average War Walker isn't really good for much other than tarpitting units for a turn or two.

Hazardous Harry wrote:
Also, I would never advise taking War Walkers. Eldar Corsair Wasp Walkers are fantastic, but they have that magical BS4. With BS3 your average War Walker isn't really good for much other than tarpitting units for a turn or two.

That's why they are often fitted with double scatter lasers for 8 shots. They are also cheaper than the configured war wasps as well, so you can take more in the squad.

I like my dark reapers, great anti mech, I tend to run one squad and a falcon in lower point games and 2 fire prysms and a squad of dark reapers in higher points the ap3 is just amazing, nothign like droppign MEQ and necrons without saves, wipe out the necron squad and they are immortal no more and don't get back up.

also dark reapers against MEQ when you have popped thier transport and are all in the crater without the ability to take a cover save is hawt

G00fySmiley wrote:I like my dark reapers, great anti mech, I tend to run one squad and a falcon in lower point games and 2 fire prysms and a squad of dark reapers in higher points the ap3 is just amazing, nothign like droppign MEQ and necrons without saves, wipe out the necron squad and they are immortal no more and don't get back up.

also dark reapers against MEQ when you have popped thier transport and are all in the crater without the ability to take a cover save is hawt

I think you're wrong on the "great anti-mech" comment, since when was S5 "great" at popping armour?

Iranna.

Iranna wrote:

G00fySmiley wrote:I like my dark reapers, great anti mech, I tend to run one squad and a falcon in lower point games and 2 fire prysms and a squad of dark reapers in higher points the ap3 is just amazing, nothign like droppign MEQ and necrons without saves, wipe out the necron squad and they are immortal no more and don't get back up.

also dark reapers against MEQ when you have popped thier transport and are all in the crater without the ability to take a cover save is hawt

I think you're wrong on the "great anti-mech" comment, since when was S5 "great" at popping armour?

Iranna.

MEQ = marines and thier equivilant

mech - mechanical

ie all chapters of space marines, space wolfes, dark angels, blakc templar, blood angels, vanilla marines etc

note i said after you have popped their transport, in lower points games my falcon pretty reliably destroys MEQ transports between the pulse lazer and the bright lancs or missle launcher. then the dark deapers destroy the gooey units that pop out

Mech generally stands for 'mechanized', in other words, armies that are mostly in transports or made largely out of vehicles. So when you say dark reapers are anti-mech, you're saying they're anti-vehicle. Which if you take an eml and fast shot they can be okay at but then the regular reaper launchers don't do anything but ablative wounds.
You're right in how to use the reapers just off on your abbreviations.

Actinium wrote:Mech generally stands for 'mechanized', in other words, armies that are mostly in transports or made largely out of vehicles. So when you say dark reapers are anti-mech, you're saying they're anti-vehicle. Which if you take an eml and fast shot they can be okay at but then the regular reaper launchers don't do anything but ablative wounds.
You're right in how to use the reapers just off on your abbreviations.

i suppose but I almost always see people shorten space marines to MEQ, heck scroll up and you'll see i was the 4th person in this thread to refer to space marines as MEQ thought it was a universally accepted abbreviation, heck scroll over MEQ and it says "space marines and their equivilant"

i've honestly never tried taking the missle launcher but actually I might try it next weekend just to see it is a bit more versitile, but lesser str blasts... I'll have to seer how it plays on the table

MEQ was correct, Mech was not.

Actinium wrote:MEQ was correct, Mech was not.

ah righto i seenow i didn't fix it, i post on my phone and it autocorrects so i have to overide the auto corrects (still faster than typing space marines, but my bad

note i really had never thought about using the missle launcher thats pretty exciting in lower point games where i don't even want to take a falcon ie 750-1k that should work for most transports, or in 1250-1500 take with the falcon to attempt to pop multiple transports early on, then worry about popping the units inside

dark reapers are great at killing Meq out of cover. Unfortunately in this metagame killing Meq out of cover isnt very useful or unique skill.

Exergy wrote:dark reapers are great at killing Meq out of cover. Unfortunately in this metagame killing Meq out of cover isnt very useful or unique skill.

This^

I really enjoy Reapers as there is nothing sweeter than seeing the look on a SM player's face when you tell them their whole tac squad is dead with no saves. But lately I've switched them out for warwalkers as they fulfill a similar role and are more mobile as well as being more effective against a wider range of targets. If I was allowed to tailor lists such as in some narrative or campaign setting I would take reapers against SM every time but as it stands War walkers are simply more effective against a wider array of enemies.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Hazardous Harry wrote:
Also, I would never advise taking War Walkers. Eldar Corsair Wasp Walkers are fantastic, but they have that magical BS4. With BS3 your average War Walker isn't really good for much other than tarpitting units for a turn or two.

That's why they are often fitted with double scatter lasers for 8 shots. They are also cheaper than the configured war wasps as well, so you can take more in the squad.

With a War Walker, that's 4 hits on BS3. With a Wasp it's 6. It's basic maths.

The points are worth it for the extra BS alone, nevermind the cool stuff Wasps get along with it.

Exergy wrote:dark reapers are great at killing Meq out of cover. Unfortunately in this metagame killing Meq out of cover isnt very useful or unique skill.

I beg to differ, the Exarch is perfectly suited to wrecking MEQ's in cover. Especially since they're more likely to be clumped up under that nice blast template of his.

There's 5 main problems with Dark Reapers that make them weak choices IMHO:
1) Their high points cost. 2) Their fragility - combined w/ 1. 3) Lack of anti-Mech. 4) Prevalence of cover. 5) Competing for a Heavy Support slot.

OP, considering you seem to be describing a mechanised list, I'd say Dark Reapers suffer even more.

With a War Walker, that's 4 hits on BS3. With a Wasp it's 6. It's basic maths.

The points are worth it for the extra BS alone, nevermind the cool stuff Wasps get along with it.

You don't get to twinlink your entire group with guide however. Which means on basic math they'll hit more than even on a BS4

8 BS4 shots is 5.33 hits, not 6. The rounding error is quite material in this instance.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

With a War Walker, that's 4 hits on BS3. With a Wasp it's 6. It's basic maths.

The points are worth it for the extra BS alone, nevermind the cool stuff Wasps get along with it.

You don't get to twinlink your entire group with guide however. Which means on basic math they'll hit more than even on a BS4

If you're using your Farseer to support War Walkers, which even the posters in favour of them have referred to as a throwaway unit, then I really don't think he's being put to good use at all.

MrEconomics wrote:8 BS4 shots is 5.33 hits, not 6. The rounding error is quite material in this instance.

Well...

On the Wasp, bear in mind that although they have Jump Jets and Deep-Strike, they do not have Scout, something which I would say is far more useful.

A whole host of things can interfere with Deep Strikes, or mess with units that utilise it, but Outflanking is often stress-free, and you have a 2/3 chance of coming on where you want without any fuss, as opposed to Deep Striking's 1/3.

Outflanking also allows you to charge the turn you come in, which can again be very useful since after all, you are a walker, and anything without a powerfist is going to have an annoying time locked in combat with a 40pt model. With deep-striking, you do not have that luxury.

Is a 10pt increase, jet-pack movement, and BS4 worth losing Scout, even if you do gain DS? I'd say no.

Although it does become a little less problematic when you factor in that, in Corsair lists, they are Troops choices, and thus you can have a lot more, and in Codex: Eldar lists they're FA, and therefore have to fight for a slot with the vastly superior Hornet, and so will likely not see use anyway.

Although it does become a little less problematic when you factor in that, in Corsair lists, they are Troops choices, and thus you can have a lot more,

Three max, due to you requiring a corsair squad for each one.

Missed that, but probably because i'd never take them even then; Corsair Squads are far better on their own.

145pts for a squad that is easier to hide, is scoring, has ablative wounds and can still move and fire 2 EMLs is my preference. 95pts For 2 EMLs on a single AV10 walker or 145pts for 2 EMLs and 8 spare wounds that are easier to hide and claim cover for... hmmm...

It might also be interesting to note that only the Corsair Wasp is BS4; Wasps taken for Codex: Eldar are BS3.

Avatar 720 wrote:
Is a 10pt increase, jet-pack movement, and BS4 worth losing Scout, even if you do gain DS? I'd say no.

I would say yes, as you can pop out from behind cover, shoot, then pop back in before anyone's the wiser. I'd say that's a lot more useful than scout might be.

And I also love the relentless corsairs, of course.