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How effective would this HQ be in a full 10man dire avengers squad with an exarch with the power weapon & shimmer shield (purely because it is useful, if asurmen's already got bladestorm & defend.)

Also, assume they are in a waveserpent.

The unit would cost just over 500pts. Covers your hq & one troop slot in your FoC which is a good & bad thing. Mostly good.. The serpent has a shuriken cannon & EML.

The unit is fearless. Every model has a 4+/5++ in close combat, asurmans got 3 wounds, eternal warrior & a 2+/4++. Defend & blade storm powers. A good amount of shooty & the re-roll to miss str 4 dire sword is respectable.

Very costly. You could have two dual-catapult 10man avengers in cheap serpents for the same points, roughly.

So to warrant that high point cost, I ask you all: Will the phoeonix lord make his points back via his improvements to the dire avengers & leathality in CC?? This would be the best unit to use the bladestorm + charge manouver.

Good point ... Dawn of war you will have your most powerfull unit on the table ready to go.

when you start shooting you'll get 22shots + WS (or if you blade storm 32) ...

Where this unit falls down is it cost far too much for what it does.

It does everything though. Bar dedicated anti-vehicle offensive. How good are they in CC? Taking into account things like Asurmens eternal warrior, 3wounds & invunerable, defend, 2 power weapons (one str 3 yes & the other an ID'able str 4 wep). Ws4 I5.

I guess its a case of they can do these things & score. Elite choices probably can do thier job as-well/better for less points.

NNOOOO you never ever want to get Dire avengers into Close combat ... They are not a close combat unit and will lose against almost every thing thats charges them ... take for example a set 30 boyz orks (i'm sure you'll have shot some of them but lets leave it at 30) they genrate 120 attacks on the charge - the 1 attack thats 90 vs 4A,2E & 9DA ... some how i feel they're going to lose combat ...

That's why you do the charging. You have higher initiative than most units, two power weapons and the enemy gets -1 attack from defend. They're pretty good in assault for a shooting unit.

Exactly my point - Thier in a wave serpent, they have assault weapons, so they can pick & choose targets to assault. They also all have a 4+/5++ save. Their also all fearless which has its own pros/cons.

They'd eat 30 boys for breakfast. Problem is, thier unit costs about 230, this costs lots more! The 11man unit is 380pts.

if you got assaulted by 30 boys, you did something wrong and deserve to lose your unit anyway. There aren't too many things in the game that can brush off 30 boys charging them in the first place. thats why ork players take them in grps of 30, and why everyone who plays against orks does their best to whittle down those units before they hit anything at all.

A more accurate test would be to see the maths of 10 avengers with/without the phoenix lord bladestorming and then charging 30 boys. if they can achieve that, you can consider it somewhat effective.

On another note: never run dire avengers without a farseer. even if you are taking asurmen, the baldestorm+doom is too good to pass up. Also, doom+fortune+defend and shimmershield is a powerful combo for making avengers last in CC. if you are also packing a decent CC character in that unit, then fortune+doom makes the unit a winner (even if it is expensive.)

See I was thinking of using a farseer doom combo but having the farseer with a seperate unit of DA's. Although while the doom+bladestorm combo is good there are other worthy uses of a farseer & the Asurmen & avengers tagteam arent relient on a farseer to make them effective.

Long story short, I think you would be better off with 2 units of dire avengers in serpents than you would be with one and Asurman. The two units take more work to kill, can go after seperate targets, and pump out a lot more fire power than the single unit. The only down side is that they are worse in hand to hannd, and then it's not by all that much.

Edit: Then again, are you really worse in hand to hand? I'm not certain that you are. I don't have the stats for Ashurman handy but I'm curious to see how many wounds you could expect from him in hand to hand against both MEQ's and orcs. Then you can compare that to what you would get out of 10 dire avengers...it might not be as different as you might think.

On a charge he gets 5 str 4 power weapon attacks that re-roll to miss. He'll be hitting on 3's vs virtually anything so 3-5 hits. 4's to wound w/ no save cept invunerables & 6's kill the model outright. Doesnt mention instant death specifically so thats always a bonous. 2 wounds. no saves. possibly one crazy-death.

10 dire avengers get 20ish attacks on charge, hitting on 4's vs meq, 10 hits. str 3, 3 wound. 1.5 save. 1.5 wounds (ish). One exarch gets an extra attack & theres a small chance of his higher WS hitting on 3's wounding with str 3 still, allowing no save. 10 da's dont really come out trumps. Simply more bodies, more shooty & more mobile.

The sqaud with asurmen is fearless & you get to have the diresword goodness along with dual cats, shimmer shield (2nd exarch) and both skills. Mainly fearless is the bonous here. Your spending 180pt for his awesomeness. Other pheonix lords are more awesome in H2H but dont have two key things 1) Invunerable and 2) lots and lots of synergy with a worthy sqaud making them cost less.

Other squads simply dont need/would use thier phoenix lord as effectively. Cept Kanrandras 2nd most expensive but doesnt count as a scoring unit. Jain has an assault weapon when she should always make use of the banshees fleet. Mr.Ras got an assault weapon with a heavy-weapon sqaud. Baharroth (lol). Fuegan is tough and fighty when really fire dragoons should always be shooting with the weapons theyve got.

Here's a quicky spreadsheet with some values that should be accurate... I don't know a good way to put tab-delimited data into a post though.