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I'm thinking they're actually in worse shape. Theirs shooting improves a little, but their fragile assault stuff is just boned. And not being able to hide their transports at all is crippling.

Your thoughts?

This is how my 5th DE morphed.

First I ran a bunch of warriors.

Then I ran a bunch of warriors + wyches and raiders in the WWP.

Then I ran min warriors with dark lances, and raiders with disintegrators...and night shield...and sat on my ass.

If you could shoot me, I hit you with PC templates and dark lance shots (10 lance, 17 PC). That usually meant you couldn't shoot me in a turn, maybe two.

I've never favored Wych Cults, I've always found beating them to be too easy--being a CC monster means nothing if I down your transports and rapid fire you to death.

So are Wych Cults in worse shape? Yes.

PC that don't miss (much)? Sign me up...my 12 hits a turn go up, and I don't eat partials anymore? Holy cow...

Oh and the webway portal army is still a ton of bull, even for an experienced player. Now that you can't hide from what comes out of it...oh boy!

Except that army evaporates if you don't get first turn. And the webway portal is now even less likely to get placed where you want it.

I think you're forgetting that every raider and ravager will be in LOS of everything all game with no area terrain blocking for them.

And you're forgetting everything you shoot with all that ap2 is getting a 4+ save.

Ed, welcome to the "Bizarro world" of Stelek logic. I think he actually likes to be wrong just to argue.

Yes DE got weaker in 5th. The troops cannot survive to get across the table and claim an objective.

The transports are slower.

Wyches cannot consolidate into fesh units.

Yes, DE have a ton of AP:2 shooting, but opponents will have alot more 4+ cover. Against DE, I will happily trade Missile launcher (Eldar or Marine) fire with their lances and disintegraters.

Orks are back and Orks will eat DE.

Darrian

mauleed wrote:Except that army evaporates if you don't get first turn. And the webway portal is now even less likely to get placed where you want it.

I think you're forgetting that every raider and ravager will be in LOS of everything all game with no area terrain blocking for them.

And you're forgetting everything you shoot with all that ap2 is getting a 4+ save.

It does? How does it evaporate? I'm confused.

I guess I'll relate my experiences, and see if that helps.

If you cannot range my raiders, you cannot shoot any part of this army. So all the armies with 36" weapons need to move. Moving is nerfed in 5th, so...you setup far enough back that people have to drive forward to get shots at you on their 2nd turn. Of course, since you know if you will go first or second it isn't difficult to setup your army correctly, right?

Anyway this is usually how I run the raider horde against people who can see me. I block LOS to most of the raiders behind me, in a zig zag formation and I run one raider at all out mode into the front of the zig zag formation. Amazing, everyone gets cover saves. Since my nose mounted weapons are out in the open AND I can fire from anywhere on my open-topped hull...you get zero cover saves against me because of my army. If you believe having a 4+ cover save is doable for every army, you are mistaken--and in the end, when I have 20+ heavy weapons to most armies 4 or 6, I win shooting battles. 4+ cover or not.

The webway portal is actually more likely to go where you want it to, given you know if you are going first or second. Go first? Run forward, accept shooting, place. Going second? Hide, run forward, accept shooting, place. If you are really afraid of the enemy shooting, place immediately. It's not that big a deal.

So key points:

Mass weight of fire. Rarely miss. All template hits are hits. Raiders block LOS to raiders, granting cover saves. Destructors are S4 on low mode, and thus defensive weapons.

WWP: If you have grotesques in front of a warrior unit escorting the WWP carriers forward, how many warriors are you going to kill through that 4+ cover save? Don't even get me started on mandrakes.

Darrian13 wrote:Ed, welcome to the "Bizarro world" of Stelek logic. I think he actually likes to be wrong just to argue.

Yes DE got weaker in 5th. The troops cannot survive to get across the table and claim an objective.

The transports are slower.

Wyches cannot consolidate into fesh units.

Yes, DE have a ton of AP:2 shooting, but opponents will have alot more 4+ cover. Against DE, I will happily trade Missile launcher (Eldar or Marine) fire with their lances and disintegraters.

Orks are back and Orks will eat DE.

Darrian

Pretty much all nonsense. Welcome to 5th edition, where all of your assumptions are WRONG.

mauleed wrote:I think you're forgetting that every raider and ravager will be in LOS of everything all game with no area terrain blocking for them.

And you're forgetting everything you shoot with all that ap2 is getting a 4+ save.

Not quite on both counts. While you will not be able to hide behind area terrain to keep your vehicles alive, you can hide behind your vehicles to keep your vehicles alive since they now block line of sight. It may or may not be enough to keep them alive, but it certainly couldn't hurt. That and if you are behind area terrain, you get a 4+ save for your vehicle. While this isn't as good as not being able to be shot at all, it might help in the long run. Previously if you were out of line of sight, the weapons that were shooting at your vehicles then shot at something else that was in line of sight. This means that their fire power was being put to use somewhere else in your army. Now with that fire power being applied to things (including vehicles) with a 4+ cover save, half of that fire power is going to prove to be useless. So while enemy fire power might be directed to areas where it will be most effective, the inclusion of the cover save may end up blunting its over all effectiveness.

As far as everything getting a 4+ cover save, I think that's a little far fetched. While its likely that the most valuable targets will likely always have a 4+ cover save due to either actual hard cover or intervening enemy units, forward forces will not have that luxury. So you will have to chose between focusing on the screen or focusing on the "real" threat behind them. I think that it poses to create some interesting tactical decisions. Is it more valuable to spend time and effort blowing a hole in the screen or just shoot the real threat directly? Perhaps some combined arms tactics to make sure you can eliminate screens might be in order. All in all, I'm looking forward to it.

Currently only Tau (markerlights) and Eldar (Phoenix Lords Maugen Ra, Fuegen, and Fire Dragon Exarchs) can negate cover saves so I'm not certain what combined arms tactics you are referring to--not that you can negate cover for the guys behind unless you roll a 6 and destroy the vehicle. For dark eldar though rolling a 6 can actually be rolling a 4 (+1 AP1, +1 open topped)...it's not like it's a perfect tactic, it's just strong.

Phoenix wrote:

mauleed wrote:I think you're forgetting that every raider and ravager will be in LOS of everything all game with no area terrain blocking for them.

And you're forgetting everything you shoot with all that ap2 is getting a 4+ save.

Not quite on both counts. While you will not be able to hide behind area terrain to keep your vehicles alive, you can hide behind your vehicles to keep your vehicles alive since they now block line of sight. It may or may not be enough to keep them alive, but it certainly couldn't hurt. That and if you are behind area terrain, you get a 4+ save for your vehicle.

Actually, vehicles don't benefit from a 4+ for being behind area terrain if I'm remembering it correctly. They have to actually have 50% blocked.

And I'm not seeing how raiders hide behind raiders, except to get a 4+ cover. And even then, unless your raiders are laying on the ground with no flying bases, you shoot the first, it drops, you shoot the second, and it no longer gets a 4+, because it's cover just dropped, etc.

The first DE raider needs to be on a flying base in order for it to 'drop'. We all ahve played anough games where the skimmers are not on bases and sit on the ground. Since true LOS is so vital in 5th it seems reasonable to insist vehciles with flying bases must be played with flying bases.

Amen. In 5th, if you do not have your models properly based you can't play.

Darrian

Depends on the height of the flying base to.

A Raider is tall enough that if it survives being a wreck it should be sufficient to provide the save for Raider behind it.

Also, another big thing is that 66% of the time you can deploy really close to the enemy. You have Table Quarters that just have the circle in the center, and you have Dawn of War where there is no buffer zone.

I am not a DE player, but a max sized squad of Warriors hiding a Haemonculus with a WWP, with maybe a second unit of Warriors acting like a disposable cover save, rushing and running forward and droping the portal would allow you to pretty much dictate which one of your units effect which one of theres.

5th Edition needs to have the Missions in mind to when talking tactics. The old ways of winning just aren't there anymore, except for the good old fashion tabling, but making that the tactic of your army = the fail.

mauleed wrote:

Phoenix wrote:

mauleed wrote:I think you're forgetting that every raider and ravager will be in LOS of everything all game with no area terrain blocking for them.

And you're forgetting everything you shoot with all that ap2 is getting a 4+ save.

Not quite on both counts. While you will not be able to hide behind area terrain to keep your vehicles alive, you can hide behind your vehicles to keep your vehicles alive since they now block line of sight. It may or may not be enough to keep them alive, but it certainly couldn't hurt. That and if you are behind area terrain, you get a 4+ save for your vehicle.

Actually, vehicles don't benefit from a 4+ for being behind area terrain if I'm remembering it correctly. They have to actually have 50% blocked.

And I'm not seeing how raiders hide behind raiders, except to get a 4+ cover. And even then, unless your raiders are laying on the ground with no flying bases, you shoot the first, it drops, you shoot the second, and it no longer gets a 4+, because it's cover just dropped, etc.

I recall you debated this exact same issue a couple of years ago on this forum. The other poster posted pics of the Raiders and it was still clear that LOS existed to the Raider that the other poster claimed no LOS.

5th Edition appears true LOS is what GW is going after. Folks need to get into that mindset.

Which make raiders very easy to hit because of thier size, shape, and flying base. Good luck getting 50% of that model behind any kind of decent cover.
The top half of the raider alone could be argued is more than 50% of the model

Won't that depend on if you use the hull of the Raider when determining LOS. Sure the top wings stand pretty tall but if folks start claiming LOS to wings and not the hull, an exacto knife will take care of that.

Wonder if the sentence in the current book about using the hull to shoot at vehicles made it into this rulebook.

So now I model my raiders with none of that rear wing silliness, no?

There are a few things people need to get into their mindset for 5th edition. A big one is "you can use modelling to your advantage," to quote the mighty Yakface.

I would have to say that the Raider is likely to see a lot of conversions because of this. That is fine by me, I am not really into all the wing thingys at the top personally.

You could just model them like the repulsor sleds from Return of the Jedi. They are open topped cargo/troop carriers without the crazy frills/wings on the top.

well, voluntarily keeping the raiders off the table may help with the DE's viability. They still move 18", and the wyrchs can still fleet and charge (possibly even a 12" charge) giving a threat range of around 31-36 inches on the turn they come in.

that is at least something.


Grotesques as a meatsheild may be viable, however for your warrior squads, getting a 4+ cover save instead of the 5+ armor save, and your meatsheild can only be killed by 6+ weapons is pretty good.