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Blackmoor

I understand your concept of vypers/warwalkers - now am I correct in assuming your support units include: avatar, guardians, and possibly a mini-seer council?

My point is that scatter lasers own shuricannons in that your opponent is forced to dedicate long raged heavy weaponry to take them out, or suffer the consequences of them lasting a couple more turns allowing more fire from the walkers. Which, by the by, is quite considerable. Forcing your opponent to make tactical choices will win you the game. take out the warwalkers raining death on me, or take out a number of other units threatening me with torrents of fire or worse.

While three walkers with 6 shuricannons = 2.5 dead MEq's, 3 warwalkers equipped with 6 scatterlasers = 3.33 dead MEq's AND has a better survivability chance to do the same next turn. That cannot be said for the shuricannon walkers. The 20 point increase above shuricannons per walker to help ensure their survivability to rain death again next turn is most worthwhile.

Shuricannons should only be considered when you feel confident that you can deny retribution towards the walkers or you need a cheap suicidal unit to do the nasty work.

In an army where Heavy Support slots arent an issue, you might compare WW to Terminators.

40 point per model
1/6 chance to be affacted by Bolters
24" range (Shuricannon)
Scout move vs Deep Strike
Ability to add "special weapons" (= Assault Cannon for 20 pts vs the Eldar weapons for a similar cost)

At once WW look pretty interesting dont they?
- The WW units are smaller which isnt allways bad.
- You may equip all WW with "special weapons".
- WW are slightly more resilient against low AP weapons.
- 6 S6 BS3 shots (WW) vs 2 S4 BS4 shots (termi) on the models without "special weapons"

In hand to hand combat Termis seem to come out on top. Theres nothing like having your 40 point Walker killed by Powerfists though and then blowing up and taking 3 or more Marines with him.

Posted By nikeforever22 on 11/25/2006 11:10 PM
Blackmoor

I understand your concept of vypers/warwalkers - now am I correct in assuming your support units include: avatar, guardians, and possibly a mini-seer council?

I personally am not fond of guardians. For troops I would go with Jetbikes and Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents.  Also for elites I would go with Fire Dragons. You are not hurting for anti-personal weapons, but you need some anti-tank, so I would give the wave serpents brightlances.

For HQ Farseers w/guide would be nice. When you have so many shots from the War Walkers, guide really helps out.

3 War Walkers with 4Scatter Lasers and 2 Starcannons=3.8 Dead MEQ a turn.
3 War Walkers with 4 Scatter Lasers and 2 Starcannons w/Gude=5.8 Dead MEQ a turn.

I was thinking of going with:

seercouncil on bikes with WBs and SSs
2 jetbike squads with shuricannon (SS warlock if points permit)
9 dual shuricannon vypers
9 dual shuricannon walkers

It is a tad risky having only 1 true antitank squad, that being the council, they do really well at the job but them being hte only true antitank is not comforting, thus the SSs on the jetbike squad warlocks would really help.

That is for 1500pts, for 1750 I just take 2 seercouncils on bikes. tone down the first one to make the 2nd one bigger, iirc the big council would be seer + 5 warlocks, in the 1750 it would be seer + 4 and seer + 3.

Puts out a nice 114 S6 shots a turn (well, atleast on the first turn) AV12 and below are going down, 13-14 are tougher but the council is pretty good at taking those out, (nothing with av13 has turboboost luckily)

Posted By Blackmoor on 11/26/2006 1:20 PM

Posted By nikeforever22 on 11/25/2006 11:10 PM
Blackmoor

I understand your concept of vypers/warwalkers - now am I correct in assuming your support units include: avatar, guardians, and possibly a mini-seer council?

I personally am not fond of guardians. For troops I would go with Jetbikes and Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents.  Also for elites I would go with Fire Dragons. You are not hurting for anti-personal weapons, but you need some anti-tank, so I would give the wave serpents brightlances.

For HQ Farseers w/guide would be nice. When you have so many shots from the War Walkers, guide really helps out.

3 War Walkers with 4Scatter Lasers and 2 Starcannons=3.8 Dead MEQ a turn.
3 War Walkers with 4 Scatter Lasers and 2 Starcannons w/Gude=5.8 Dead MEQ a turn.

2-3 units of Firedragons in a wave serpent could fit in the list. Also, I'm assuming that you're putting a warlock with a singing spear with your Jetbikes so they're a threat for anti-tank as well. I was thinking to keep the wave serpent as cheap as possible (spirit stones/vectored engines) scatterlasers.

I don't know how you feel about Eldrad - but Eldrad with another Farseer (guide) really complements this list. I truely like the D3+1 move (helps move vypers or warwalkers) and the 3x guides work wonders.

Let me try things out and I'll post my final list for critique.

I could see using Shuriken Cannon Walkers in a Cityfight game, where cover can really help them, but in every other case a Shuriken Cannon is suicide on a Walker. 24" is too close for AV10.

Scatters or better for me.

It is a trade off, you take raw power at the expense of defence.

What is the alternative you are suggesting then? Scatter/cannon or scatter/scatter.

Assuming you are going with vypers aswell.

I mean you could go scatter/cannon on both, would add versatility but chances are you will be wanting to use those cannons ore often than not even at the risk of return fire, while walkers can take scatter/scatter combo the vypers cannot.

Makes little difference if the walkers are range or not if the vypers are anyway, the shots are going against av10 either way (granted vypers take only glances but they also cost more and are tactically more important due to their speed and later deployment)

I have not been fond of guardians since the new codex came out, but maybe they are the way to go.

You can take a lot of them, and they will be very hard to take out.

Add an Avatar to them for several reasons.
#1. To make the guardians fearless.
#2. To add some much needed counter assault.
#3. To take fire from the high strength/long range weapons that would be taking out your War Walkers.

Double Scatter Lasers are better because of the 36' range. It forces your opponents to dedicate heavy weapons to kill the war walkers, which should be focused on the incoming waveserpents and bikes.

Assault armies will need to run through that fire to get to them, setting themselves up for the counter assault by shining spears and harlies or getting shot to death by fire dragons in a serpent or warpspiders.

Artillery heavy armies like guard would have to devote the ordinance too the walkers, freeing up your assault forces to get stuck in quickly.

Posted By Blackmoor on 11/24/2006 10:12 PM

And War Walkers are a lot more durable that everyone thinks. Read the rules on targeting vehicle squads and what you get is that if you are shooting single shots (and that is what you are going to get at 36" , they have to kill the first one before moving on to the next WW. So keep the closest in cover to help it survive, and keep the starcannon one a little farther back.

    After reading the rules (pg. 73), I don't see how you take that you have to destroy a complete warwalker before moving onto the rest. Which page are you reading??

    Yes, If I shoot just one lascannon at the WW squadron, one at a time, the first WW you take the closest one to get hit. If I shoot the WW squadron again in the same turn, but in a separate action, it would go to the same one that was hit (assuming it wasn't destroyed). However, if I have 2 to 3 squads shooting at the same time (i.e rolling them to hit and pen at the same time) it doesn't say anywhere that you have to roll one at a time or you can't have multiple squads shoot them at the same time. This would then be multiple hits coming in and it does say "When a unit of vehicles are fired at, any hits are distributed evenly amongst the vehicles, starting with the nearest vehicle model."

    So in short, I haven't seen many people try to take out a 3 vehicle squadron with just one shot. Expect the WW to get hit by multiple ML/Lascannons and what not. It appears you're trying to really spin something that isn't really there.

Posted By Blackmoor on 11/27/2006 12:02 PM
I have not been fond of guardians since the new codex came out, but maybe they are the way to go.

You can take a lot of them, and they will be very hard to take out.

Add an Avatar to them for several reasons.
#1. To make the guardians fearless.
#2. To add some much needed counter assault.
#3. To take fire from the high strength/long range weapons that would be taking out your War Walkers.

I like #3. Its a bit risky on the assumption, as I wouldnt dedicate fire to it until the walkers are dead, but a neat idea all the same and may work.