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I'm still tinkering w/ my slaaneshi daemon force, and I'm haveing a hard time deciding if Pavane is ever really worthwhile, given its short range of effect (a low roll on the movement is unlikely to effect most units much), reliance on balistic skill, and the fleeting ability of most of the potential wielders.

1. As has been discussed ad nauseum, The Masque's inability to join units means she Pavanes 2 units on average when she lands and then gets shot to pieces.

2. On Heralds.. they are usually attached to units that are trying to get into CC. Pavaneing the unit that you are trying to charge is pointless, as you are better off fleeting. Pavaning any other unit prevents you from assaulting. So, if things go well, Pavane is only likely to be used on the turn the Herald arrives. 20 points for one shot of Pavane that's going to hit only half the time seems excessive.

3. Ditto for the Keeper. If you are assaulting - which you are trying to do whenever you can - Pavane is pointless. Again, if things go well, you're paying 25 points for one shot.

4. Daemon Prince.. I suppose this is one model that it can work with somewhat. Since fleeting isn't an option, Pavane can help you with your assault, albeit not particularly reliably. However, if you don't need this assault boost, it becomes wasted again after the arrival turn.

Ironically, it seems to me that the best unit for using Pavane in a support role is The Bluescribes.

Any thoughts? Am I way off?

Thanks.

I think you are right on. The best pavane model is the scribes.

Like the rest of the powers in the Daemon codex pavane is over priced, underpowered and only available to units that don't need it.

Pavane is good in a mixed army especially with khorne models - just view it as fleet of foot for them.

A DP with pavane and breath seems to be one of the best uses for it(esp since it doesnt have fleet). Pile em up and breath, then assult whats left.

I played a slaanesh-only list recently, and had two DPs with Pavane.

My first wave was my icon-bearing daemonettes, and seekers, second wave was the heavy hitters (keeper, princes, etc).

The Pavane allowed me to recover from a couple of bad scatters, because, combined with fleet, and cavalry charging, getting yet another d6 with which to ensure that 2nd turn charge was very helpful.

My opponent was playing necrons, with teleporty lord. Pavane allowed me to move the necrons that teleported with the lord out of the way, letting me actually catch that guy in assault.

Redbeard wrote:
My opponent was playing necrons, with teleporty lord. Pavane allowed me to move the necrons that teleported with the lord out of the way, letting me actually catch that guy in assault.

Very smart use of it. Nice tactic.

Redbeard wrote:I played a slaanesh-only list recently, and had two DPs with Pavane.

My first wave was my icon-bearing daemonettes, and seekers, second wave was the heavy hitters (keeper, princes, etc).

The Pavane allowed me to recover from a couple of bad scatters, because, combined with fleet, and cavalry charging, getting yet another d6 with which to ensure that 2nd turn charge was very helpful.

My opponent was playing necrons, with teleporty lord. Pavane allowed me to move the necrons that teleported with the lord out of the way, letting me actually catch that guy in assault.

I guess I gotta ask:

Is your opponent on your skill level?

Is he experienced in general?

Is he running a balanced necron list?

Does he know how to defend properly against a deep striking force?

Does answering no to some/all of these questions invalidate the point you are making?

It would seem to.

Stelek wrote:I guess I gotta ask:

Is your opponent on your skill level?

Is he experienced in general?

Is he running a balanced necron list?

Does he know how to defend properly against a deep striking force?

Does answering no to some/all of these questions invalidate the point you are making?

It would seem to.

1) Yes
2) If he's experienced, and Redbeard has shown to be experienced (making a good showing at the gladiator this year!) then since he answered yes previously, doesn't this question become redundant?
3) As an experienced general, with a VoD lord, it sounds like he prolly knows a thing or two about list building
4) Not at all, because your questions don't mean anything at all.

Are you somehow implying that against a skilled opponent, the Pavanne (or the demon army in general) would be completely useless?

Stelek Wrote:
I guess I gotta ask:

Is your opponent on your skill level?

Is he experienced in general?

Is he running a balanced necron list?

Does he know how to defend properly against a deep striking force?

Does answering no to some/all of these questions invalidate the point you are making?

It would seem to.

These questions do not account for terrain, dice or one of the hundreds of other factors that can effect the outcome of a game of 40K. While Army selection is important, it is certainly not the be all/end all of determing who is supposed to win the game. I have yet to meet the 40K general who has a perfect winning percentage and I have met many generals who regarded certain unit choices as suboptimal and then got their butts kicked because they underrated how a unit that is less than stellar on paper can be the perfect complement to something else in your opponent's army.

Point is, that particular line of questioning does not invalidate the use of Pavane as described above. No one can predict how their opponent will use their army's unique skills and abilities with 100% accuracy in every game. Just because someone got outfoxed in one game doesn't make them a bad general-it just means that they've been shown a new trick they need to devise a counter for.

Take care,
Mike K.

He's experienced in general, and was running a balanced necron list. Neither of us were playing rock-hard tournament style lists, I'd say the lists were about even.

Does he know how to defend properly against a deep striking force?

He does. Although, when your opponent can deep strike and assault something 30 inches away the next turn, I don't know what defence works. (30 is a 6" move, a 6" fleet, a 6" pavane towards you, and a 12" charge)

Does answering no to some/all of these questions invalidate the point you are making?

It would seem to.

There you go being an ass again. Oh great and wise Stelek, please enlighten me as to why my point (which was simply that Pavane can be useful) is invalidated.

That wasn't the point I got from your post, Redbeard.

"My opponent was playing necrons, with teleporty lord. Pavane allowed me to move the necrons that teleported with the lord out of the way, letting me actually catch that guy in assault."

This sounded to me like your opponent deep striked in a bad spot, and you made him pay for his mistake.

Am I incorrect?

Even in 5th edition you can deep strike in such a manner with a unit of crons as to make it almost impossible (even with counterattack) for you to get into the lord.

Sorry if you were offended. At least you had two people step in and defend your honor.

Pavane, to my mind, fills the following function.

When your assaulty troops land the opponent may choose between backing away and letting you have it with only long range weapons, or stepping into your drop and rapid firing you wherever he can. The threat of pavane precludes the first option, as he cannot be certain of escaping.

Unfortunately, Daemonettes/Seekers also basically preclude the first option, so the army that can use the Pavane most if a Khornate force. It doesn't really matter if the Masque ever actually Pavane's anything, if you can pay 100 points and make the enemy choose to engage you at ~12 inches she's done her job.

What if the Masque dies before you get to employ it, and your opponent plans on that?

Against Slaanesh, you are correct--you step up and rapid fire them to death.

If you have the ability to take down the seekers/crushers (each a mini DP in their own right) you'd better.

It all depends on what is being dropped in what half.

Once people learn the list and know what to target (and know you can't hide or play any 'tricks' in 5th edition) it won't be as big a deal.

Stelek wrote:"My opponent was playing necrons, with teleporty lord. Pavane allowed me to move the necrons that teleported with the lord out of the way, letting me actually catch that guy in assault."

This sounded to me like your opponent deep striked in a bad spot, and you made him pay for his mistake.

Am I incorrect?

Now, that sounds more reasonable. But, if my opponent's necrons ended up in a 'bad' location or not is not indicative of the quality of my opponent. I think he ended up scattered away from where he had wanted to land. Yes, his robots landed in a position that wasn't ideal for him, but it was certainly more ideal than remaining in an existing combat.

Even in 5th edition you can deep strike in such a manner with a unit of crons as to make it almost impossible (even with counterattack) for you to get into the lord.

Hence the ability of Pavane to move the warriors away from the lord, so that you can get into the lord. So, Pavane's use of fishing the Lord out from within the ring of teleported robots is a valid example of the utility of Pavane.

I meant it's impossible even with Pavane to get to the Lord if you place yourself correctly.

Knowing now he was using warriors instead of immortals speaks volumes on his chosen army list, enough for me anyway.

How do you place yourself to avoid having your lord assaulted in 5th ed, facing a potential Pavane?

What necron army would you build that doesn't have warriors? And, if you're playing against someone who is deep striking assault troops close to your lines, using terrain where possible, why is teleporting a unit that has been assaulted out of combat, freeing up firelanes for your other troops, speaking volumes about anyone's play?

See, you're making personal attacks over here. Perhaps subtle ones, but don't cry so offended when people do it back to you.

@Stelek

I have personally played Red Beard. I know he is a good general and if I were you, I would listen to him, as I'm sure you can learn from his experiances.

I'm not insulting you. I can make general comments about how weak warrior + lord teleport is, most necron players know this and don't do it anymore. You can cry foul if you want to, but saying a tactic is bad isn't insulting anyone. If it's so good, why did he lose? Right, end of that story.

I'm trying to "learn", darkness. Sadly I'm not getting anything other than "warriors don't suck" and "how do you place your lord so you cannot be pavaned" both of which seem highly questionable to me.

Let's see, deep strike a unit of warriors near an assault army...how is this smart play? Ignore for a second that warriors + lord teleport is BAD PLAY. How is making a tactically unsound decision a good game to judge the worth of your own army? Alot of players seem to assume everyone makes stupid mistakes and all you have to do is make less than the other guy...

A false premise indeed.

If you aren't sure how you deep strike the Lord + warriors so you cannot be assaulted--how can I take you serious as good generals? Place him at the back, away from the enemy. Since you cannot break coherency it's quite difficult to move the Lord through the unit without a very high roll. Maybe it's not 20 or even 15 warriors, or it's some kind of super secret 'tactic' nobody knows about and he's running 10 warriors. Then there's the whole 'lord isn't part of the unit' concept, and you lock him in on the back side so without some really neat dice rolling and model moving you can't get to him.

Sorry, what's that? 5th edition? Warriors + lord teleport? I have a hard time discussing flat out stupid army lists to justify how good a bad list is.

If you don't grasp how laughable this argument is, you should read it again.

You're insisting a bad combo is 'good', a bad tactical move was in fact 'fine', and bad placement/use of models/rules is the limiter not someones generalship.

Reality check.

You know, for a guy who calls everyone else on their BS, you can be a little sloppy sometimes, Stelek.

First off, it's probable that they were playing 4th. I know that you play 5th, in fact everyone that posts here and half the 40k players that have heard of Dakka probably know that by now. Even so, it's the current edition and discussion about it, while perhaps approaching academic, is not yet moot.

Second, it's presumptious from one data point (a VoD lord with warriors) to assume that the player was bad, or even suboptimized. The player might be running 15 destroyers, and simply dropped a foot lord with VOD for a fire base. The immortals may have failed a morale check, so the lord is running with warrarios. Or, the player may simply have decided that since Immortals can move and shot long range, they don't need help getting into range, while Warriors with 12" weapons both need some help getting close and are a more sacrificable unit.

Third, you yourself have lectured on the simple need to move forward and rapid fire daemons. I'm not sure how you can do that whil leaving yourself out of charge range, with or without veil.

Fourth, in the thread about the Meta game, you made some fine points about the overheated nature of internet lists, instead extolling the ability of a skilled player to pull good lists out of the codex. While it's not paradoxical that you can just as easily bash others lists based on their inability to live up to your lists, it is a stretch. Simply changing the field of the metagame from"Dakka" to "stelek's Notepad" doesn't change the fact that you think there are a handful of killer lists.

Fifth, and this is a bit cheeky: you posted multiple times about how something is too stupid to discuss. Let me break it down further: you have discussed, at more then the minimum required length, the lack of discussability of a subject. Forgive me if I think it's ironic.

Ill second Steleks opinion on this..

VOD with warriors close to chargedistance against someone with pavane is bad generalship. VOD with warriors is usually always a bad idea with very few exceptions (regardless if your immortals failed a LD or whatever) , esp against demons or any other CC based army. Why would you ever want to move forward and rapidfire them if you can stand still and shoot them 2 turns instead of 1?

Contextually, Redbeard still hasn't said why the warriors were teleported. For all we know, the Lord could have been used to pull the warriors out of combat to open up a unit for shooting. We can't just assume bad tactics without knowing the context of the unique tactical situation. I'm sure everyone on this forum has been forced into making less than optimal decisions by a clever opponent before. Perhaps we should ask more about the situation and make less assumptions.

Uhh he said they got teleported out of combat.

Who teleports a squad of warriors with the lord and doesn't jump across the table away from the demons?

Irony is ok with me polonius. If others want to keep discussing, I'll gladly oblige them. (Read that as: I was told to stop telling people they were stupid, so I'm not doing that. See? Irony indeed.)

This is pretty friggin ridiculous.

As Redbeard has said, some demons can go 24" in a round, and can assault a unit that started the turn up to 30" away. Add in the fact that a Deep Strike scatters up to 12", and you're talking about Daemons potentially assaulting a unit that was being Deep Struck a full 42" away from them. And that's not even factoring in the size of the Daemon unit, and the target unit.

The likelihood of this is virtually nil, but its still very stupid to act like a player is just an obvious DUMBASS because he couldn't find a spot to Deep Strike that wasn't 42" away from every Demon unit on the table, and not too close to a table edge, either.

Let's just use average rolls, to get a picture of how this would go. The Daemons will move 6", Fleet 3.5" and assault 12". That's 21.5" inches. For the sake of argument, let's assume the scatter was in a bad direction, but not directly at the Demons, and moved the unit 3.5" closer. Finally, we have the Pavane move, which adds another 3.5" for a total of 28.5".

Let's place a single Daemon unit in the center of the table, and assume it's occupying a circle with a 2" radius. Let's also bear in mind that Deep Striking anywhere within 7" of the table edge is a bad idea, and assume the target unit also has a 2" radius. Thus, in order to be "safe" the Necron unit has to attempt to deploy 32.5" away or more.

The furthest point from the center of a 4x6" table, but still more than 7" from the table edge, is about 36" from the center of the table. There are about 16 square inches of safe space on a 3456 square inch table. Roughly .4% of the total surface of the table.

And that's ONE Daemon unit, average rolls, poor scatter. If the rolls are above average, there is NOWHERE to hide. If there are two Deamon units there is NOWHERE to hide.

I realize terrain will change this simplified math, but not so much that it doesn't become QUITE easy to get assaulted after a VOD move.

Wow, Stelek. For somebody that can play out all six turns of a game in their mind before a single die is rolled, you have an awful hard time visualizing simple things.

I ran the numbers just to make it clear, but even before I did, I knew there would be little to no "safe" space on the table for a Deep Strike. And that's me, with my normal, human brain. I think you might want to look into a firmware patch, Stelek. Your computerlike mind is clearly having issues with its basic trigonometry routines.

The fact is, Pavane allows for a formation change, which in turn allows an IC to be exposed to assault. This is useful. This is what Redbeard is describing. Way to miss the point.

Yes, everything you said is pretty ridiculous.

Way to miss the point.

Yes, everything you said is pretty ridiculous.

Oh, but why, Stelek? Please, show me the error of my ways?

Surely your superior mind isn't caught without a cutting and authoritative response?

If you are playing 4th edition, the Lord can separate from the unit. If you don't understand how this stops you from assaulting the lord I can't make you grasp fundamentals.

If you are playing 5th edition, and don't use the anti-deep strike tactics I described for Necrons in another thread...what can I say? Foolish mistake?

If you think having more than 2-3 small squads of warriors makes a semi-competitive Necron army, let me be the first to enlighten you. Where are the Immortals? The Destroyers? The Deceiver? The Scarabs? Do they exist?

You can be an excellent tactician with a crap list, and when you face a list designed from the get-go to smash your army type to pieces in the phase you are weakest in...have I said enough?

Do you understand the point I'm trying to make in the first place? That saying you dicked a scrub over, then say he isn't one while simultaneously describing a scrub list using scrub tactics and THEN say your army "did well" when your using a rock to his scissors in the first place...

What, I should lend credence to comments like this just because saying it doesn't fit with reality isn't fair of me and I shouldn't say it??

Come on. Let it go already.