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Just wondering how on earth I'm supposed to shut down the waveserpent. It shouldn't be as difficul as I'm finding it.

HELP!

Information overload. You're being too specific.

With what army?

I play crimson fists. I've got all manner of heavy weapons floating around, but all these shields and fancy motors are blowing my mind.

ignore them, they are like house flies. Unless you can shoot them from behind you are wasting your shots.

Clthomps wrote:ignore them, they are like house flies. Unless you can shoot them from behind you are wasting your shots.

Kinda Hard to ignore them when they are Ramming you and delivering some Aspect Warriors into your lines.

indeed but why wast your shots on something that will ignore them 80% of the time.

The only effective way to kill them is shooting them from the rear. So try metla weapons on bikes, drop pods with nuaghts or tac squad with melta.

they only have 10 armour in the rear, and they don't get the shield in the rear either.

even a tac squad rapid firing into the rear will kill them.

It's extremely easy to shut it down. Even in 4th Edition when people were pretending that skimmers were the riders of the apocalypse, it's tremendously easy. It's rather easy to get through Waveserpent armor, and any roll is bound to stop it from shooting, immobilize it, or destroy it outright.

Assault Cannons, Meltaguns, Plasma guns, Lascannons, they all tend to make mince meat of Waveserpents. How exactly is it not being stopped- is there a Farseer casting Fortune on it after it's moved Flat Out? That's a tough nut to crack, otherwise it's easy as cake. My personal favorite is Assault Marines with minimal upgrades. That many Krak/Melta Bomb attacks on rear armor blows away any Eldar skimmer like a joke- especially since skimmers are apparently just as easy to hit as a tank on the ground in 5th edition.

No Waveserpent will ignore "80%" of what is thrown at it. Even if it were legal to give them Holofields, they aren't that hard to stop.

Well.. ignore them until they disgorge a 10man bladestorming dire avenger squad?

Best way to kill them is in close combat.. you ignore thier energy field & hit rear armor. Ramming with a fast vehicle also could be a good idea.

seeing that they will need 6's to hit in in cc, I doubt you will kill a WS until it has dropped its pay load.....

to beat a skimmer use a skimmer ... friend of mine has been using a scout LS, to drop off scouts just behind me. 4 bolter (rapid firing), 1 combi melta and ether a heavy bolter or assault cannon (on the LS) and thats death to at least one WS . hate not being able to deep strike any of my skimmers

Eldar skimmers never die, they just can't get it up any more.

Having a problem in taking down a Wave Serpent? Fall back on the tried & trusted Imperial Guard tactic of apply more firepower.


Enough Auto / las-cannon & Krak missiles will take anything down.


There's no such thing as overkill; there is only "Open fire!" and "I need to reload."

Well, Serpents are quite resilient. Lascannons and meltas have a hard time to take them down.
But they easily get down in cc.

I generally leave the WS alone unless its charging into the middle of my army with full squad of strikig scorpion.

Dhugs wrote:
There's no such thing as overkill; there is only "Open fire!" and "I need to reload."

How true...

Really it depends on your situation...and the rest of his army. If their are a few of them (and no other vehicles) go ahead and try to make whatever is in them walk (as most eldar have short range wepons if I remember right).

They can die they just dont do it as often as you want. Also if he's spending 100+ points on a transport consider yourself lucky as that means their can't be as many other expensive squads out there.

Its funny how the non-eldar players are like:

Just keep shooting at them
Or
Get them In CC

And the eldar players are:

why bother wasting shots on them.
or
just shoot them from behind


I think this really outlines the problem we are having here. People that don't play them fear them, and people that play them see them as a one shot tool to drop of a payload. Find a way to deal with the payload and you will have no problems with the transport itself.

Well, if you need to destroy it from a distance, Missiles are as good as everything else. Take Devastators with 4 Missile Launchers, serves as anti infantry too, and you got a good chance of scoring a pen in one round.

Some mathhammer for you...

Average number of weapon shots needed to bring down a wave serpent by weapon.

Missile Launcher or Las Cannon (same due to energy field) at BS4 => 13.5 shots
Missile Launcher or Lac Cannon at BS3 => 18
Auto Cannon (BS3) => 36 shots (18 rounds of shooting)
Scatter Laser (via multiple weapon destroyed / immobilaized results) => 144 shots (36 rounds of shooting)
Melta Guns (BS4, front/side arc) => 7.8 shots
Melta Guns (BS3, front/side arc) => 10.2 shots
Melta Guns (BS4, rear arc) => 3 shots
Melta Guns (BS3, rear arc) => 4 shots
Rail Gun => 7.8 shots
Plasma Gun (BS4, front/side arc) => 27 shots (13.5 rounds of rapid fire)
Plasma Gun (BS4, rear arc) => 9 shots (4.5 rounds of rapid fire)

So in the end, the trick (at least according to the numbers) is to try and get behind the serpent. From there things like melta guns and plasma guns can really work their magic. From the front and side arcs, the serpent is a really tough cookie and it's going to take a lot of concentrated fire to bring it down.

By comparison, it takes ~27 power fist attacks to bring down a serpent in hand to hand...mostly due to the fact that you only hit on 6's.

Tri is correct for the unit SM are most likely to hurt Serpents with: Speeders. Landspeeders are the bane of Mech Eldar, but it becomes a standoff to see who can close first, since Serpents can generally can the Speeders. Deepstrike behind them and they're finished.

Autocannons are generally my Mechdar's nemesis, but the SM options for those are limited (Predators, Mortis pattern dreads.) Assault cannons are less scary unless they are in the rear arc.

So the lesson against Mechdar is to be mobile yourself, with Deep Strikers or fast skimmers. Bikes are also worrisome to Mechdar players.

If you're in the rarer position of being worried about shooting from the skimmers rather than the payloads (if for example you are playing 3x Land Raiders or Armored Co., and your opponent's main anti-tank power is brightlances on Serpents and Prism cannons), then do the old "shake and move on", and forget about destroying them. Neutralizing is usually enough.

Final suggestion- ask the Eldar player if you can trade armies and play a few games for fun. You will learn more about the army's strengths and vulnerabilities that way than any other, even if your opponent doesn't coach you. And if he won't trade for a few games, try going to an FLGS that has a learner army or friendly fellow players who will coach you.

Phoenix wrote:Some mathhammer for you...

Average number of weapon shots needed to bring down a wave serpent by weapon.

Missile Launcher or Las Cannon (same due to energy field) at BS4 => 13.5 shots
Missile Launcher or Lac Cannon at BS3 => 18
Auto Cannon (BS3) => 36 shots (18 rounds of shooting)
Scatter Laser (via multiple weapon destroyed / immobilaized results) => 144 shots (36 rounds of shooting)
Melta Guns (BS4, front/side arc) => 7.8 shots
Melta Guns (BS3, front/side arc) => 10.2 shots
Melta Guns (BS4, rear arc) => 3 shots
Melta Guns (BS3, rear arc) => 4 shots
Rail Gun => 4.1 shots
Plasma Gun (BS4, front/side arc) => 27 shots (13.5 rounds of rapid fire)
Plasma Gun (BS4, rear arc) => 9 shots (4.5 rounds of rapid fire)

So in the end, the trick (at least according to the numbers) is to try and get behind the serpent. From there things like melta guns and plasma guns can really work their magic. From the front and side arcs, the serpent is a really tough cookie and it's going to take a lot of concentrated fire to bring it down.

By comparison, it takes ~27 power fist attacks to bring down a serpent in hand to hand...mostly due to the fact that you only hit on 6's.

Check your Rail Gun math - it should be identical to the melta gun on front/side, given the energy field.

Well, I have been looking for an excuse to field some land speeders...thanks guys.

A bunch of str 4 attacks on the rear armor, hitting on 6's .. assuming the vehicle has properly moved fast the turn before (so crashes on an immobilised result) how many attacks do you need?

6's to hit & 6's to glance. 36 attacks & its got on avarge one glancing hit. With the amount of die any respectable hordey unit will be rolling, its not unlikely to happen.

Razerous wrote:A bunch of str 4 attacks on the rear armor, hitting on 6's .. assuming the vehicle has properly moved fast the turn before (so crashes on an immobilised result) how many attacks do you need?

6's to hit & 6's to glance. 36 attacks & its got on avarge one glancing hit. With the amount of die any respectable hordey unit will be rolling, its not unlikely to happen.

6's to hit, 6's to glance, 6's to immobilize (don't forget: glancing is a -2 on the table). That's 1/216.

Janthkin wrote:

Razerous wrote:A bunch of str 4 attacks on the rear armor, hitting on 6's .. assuming the vehicle has properly moved fast the turn before (so crashes on an immobilised result) how many attacks do you need?

6's to hit & 6's to glance. 36 attacks & its got on avarge one glancing hit. With the amount of die any respectable hordey unit will be rolling, its not unlikely to happen.

6's to hit, 6's to glance, 6's to immobilize (don't forget: glancing is a -2 on the table). That's 1/216.

And that immobilized result is pretty useless if the Eldar player has taken Vectored Engines- which is always a good idea when fielding under 3 transports IMO, as if you only have a few mounted units the cargo really needs to arrive. VE have saved my countercharge units' bacon more than a few times, and are really the thing that makes Eldar transports frustrating to fight. I mean, even if you immobilize them moving flat-out, the occupants still bail and fight next turn.

Janthkin wrote:Check your Rail Gun math - it should be identical to the melta gun on front/side, given the energy field.

Math is hard. Thanks for catching the mistake. I edited my original post to include the fix.

For some more math hammer, lets look at assault cannons

Average number of shots required to destroy a wave serpent.

Assault cannon (BS4, front/side arc) => 54 shots (13.5 rounds of shooting). This is due to the fact that you can't rend the serpent through the energy field and thus you can only glance it.

Assault cannon (BS4, rear arc) => 13.5 shots (3.4 rounds of shooting).

Multimelta attack bikes. You can turbo 24 to try and get behind and if you actually get a shot to hit and pen with a +1 to the damage roll its probably going down as immobilized is a kill unless they took vectored engines.

I find that ignoring them might be best.

I find ignoring benny g unit to be best. I'll get you someday.