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Hmmm let me see.

IG can spam out heavy bolters, ML + HB, and autocannons in huge amounts--all at once.

SM can spam out heavy bolters, and devastator squads with missile launchers will be making a comeback I assure you.

Eldar use mass amounts of S6 and make war walkers cry.

Dark Eldar Ravagers fire 3 plasma templates at you. Warrior squads fire 2 DL.

Tyranids put a big S8 template on you and laugh when it hits all 3...

Oblits plasma template you. NM template you.

I mean, the list is endless really.

You also left out the 150 point farseer supporting the unit, who suddenly has dick to do when his WW die.

So 210 + 150 = alot + the other supporting arms to keep CC units away.

Then there's the reality of the rules:

You get hit 3 times.
You assign your hits (once to each).
The 3rd one, that is weaponless...makes it's cover save (highly doubt you get a save but whatever).
The other ones, don't.

Hmmm...right, you get it no?

WW? Good? When playing against noobs. Vet players, not so much.

Don't forget Fish O' Fury.

I think it is going to depend on a lot on the type of terrain. If you are playing with a lot of hills of LOS blocking buildings, they will probably be able to control their exposure pretty well. If instead you have open ruins and forrests, WW will likely just get pegged by whatever heavy weapons don't have anything better to do.

I'm not sure I understand--aren't all of those still a 4+ cover save?

The farseer giving them guide, is he getting a free pass behind a building that was built solely to block LOS for eazymode laziness? Lame.

I don't see much in the way of tactics, other than...hurr I shoot alot hurr.

AV10. Even with a 4+ re-rollable save, it isn't that good. Since you've burned a heavy slot, are you doing tri-Walker? Running this unit dictates your army IMO, and that isn't a good thing.

No, intact buildings block LOS, at least I am given to understand, if there is no part of the unit visible.
As to "built solely to block LOS", most buildings have interior walls that block vision to the other side. If you make a building that is intact it certainly should block LOS. Even ruins should be built in such a fashion, though the height of such walls would vary.

All that aside, the point was that avoiding LOS is not impossible, and getting a 4+ is not too difficult depending on the terrain you have.

However, they are very terrain dependant, as I said. If you can control exposure, they have a good chance of living to do a great deal of damage. If you can not, they go splat.

Has anyone yet explained how the war walkers are worse than they were before? Rather than simply debating the impact of the things that make them better?

The only large difference I'm seeing is the lessoned ammount of thin walls of area terrain somehow forever shielding the unit from damage. Which compared against farseer perma shielding, running, improved damage tables, and the improved viability of scatter lasers and shurikan cannons should at the very least be a draw.

@wehrkind:

When you say 'intact', do you mean 'windowless'?

I can guarantee that if you use a GW cityfight building you can barely find a place to hide anything behind it. They weren't designed to be non-LOS blockers.

@ shumagorath:

War walkers are worse in the context of 5E versus other vehicles, which is all I care about. I don't give a rats about 4E versus 5E.

In 5E, War walkers can have a neat cover save--and it can be made annoying with a farseer. Hell, spend a thousand of your points on tri + tri, I don't care. You can still only punch 1 unit per turn, vehicle based armies will own you, deep strikers and infiltrate armies will own you, gunlines will own you (yes, cover save...great...then 20 autocannon shots come your way per turn and it ain't so hot), terminator armies will own you, bike armies will own you...

I mean, the list is endless. So you have one great uber shooty unit. Now it doesn't die to penetrating hits as bad as before...oh wait, it DOES. See, 4+ = dead.
Glancing hits still kill you on a 6.

You also get owned in CC by everyone. Holy hell guard with frags will kill you.

It's best strength is against marines, but against everyone else with cover saves....big woop, you put 15 wounds on my guard and my lascannon guy has to make a 4+ cover save. Then his buddy takes over.
Gaunts laugh at you. Yes, you can wipe whole units off the board. Then the carnifexes make you cry, especially the super fex with the 2+ save and T7 that your shooty does nothing to.

An endless list of WW crap, I have it right here...

ShumaGorath wrote:and the improved viability of scatter lasers and shurikan cannons...

I've been hiding under a rock for the last month and a half- what "improved viability" are you referring to here?

I still think Hellfire Dreadnought can overshoot tri-WW anytime... TLLC and ML versus whatever WW can have.... Hellfire Dreadnought also have longer range in the first place anyway

@Stelek:

No one said war walkers were invincible. Any unit in the game can be taken down if you have the right counter for it and war walkers are no exception. The thing is that for most armies, it takes the dedication of a lot of fire power resources to acomplish it. Now some armies like gun line IG and dark lance spam Dark Eldar will have the resources to devote to killing the war walkers without gimping their ability to harm the rest of the eldar army. However, I think most lists (particularly horde or assault based lists) will be streched thin trying to deal with the walkers and the other elements in the eldar army.

You mention things like 4 missile launcher devistators, but on average, that unit only kills one walker a turn (and this is assuming that the walkers don't have cover). I also wouldn't worry too much about small blast templates since the base size of the war walkers and 4" coherency (assuming they didn't change it) makes it difficult to hit more than one walker with them and since they are not open topped anymore, they don't take 2 hits from the templates. As a side note, does not being under the template hole still cut the weapon strength in half for armor penetration purposes?

As far as the farseer goes, he is useful, but I wouldn't consider him required for the war walkers. Even if there is one present, drop troops are about the only thing he really needs to fear. Otherwise, it shouldnt' be too diffucult to find some line of sight blocking terrain to hide one model behind. That or since vehicles block line of sight, he could just hide behind the war walkers themselves. Heck, don't wrecks block line of sight just like the vehicles do, or have wrecks been changed? If they are the same, then it would be a simple matter to hide the farseer behind the walkers and even if they go down he'd still be covered.

The Governator Council wrote:I still think Hellfire Dreadnought can overshoot tri-WW anytime... TLLC and ML versus whatever WW can have.... Hellfire Dreadnought also have longer range in the first place anyway

That statement is false. The dreadnaught fires 1 twin linked las cannon and 1 missle launcher shot per round. At its BS of 4, that's .88 las cannon hits and .66 missile launcher hits. That's a total of 1.56 hits

3 War walkers can be fitted with a total of 6 heavy weapons. The best comparison here is probably 6 missile launchers. At their BS of 3, that's 3 missile launcher hits per round, which is double the number of hits the dreadnaught can be expected to put out.

Now since the hits are all S8 AP3 as opposed to the dreadnaught that can put out some S8 AP3 and some S9 AP2 there might be some targets where the Dreadnaught is superior. However, by and large, the war walkers put out significantly more fire power than the dreadnaught.

....at quite a few more points than said dreadnought however.

If you deployed your army and watched your opponent put down 6 sentinels armed with multi lasers, how high would you prioritize their elimination? Do 6 Armor 10 Open Topped BS3 3/S6- walkers represent a significant threat to your army? How many resources, over how many turns, do you expect to have to expend to guarantee their removal?

Now divide that number by 2 and that's about how much of a threat War Walkers will be in 5th ed. If you aren't scared of Sentinels, you're not scared of War Walkers.

You cannot really compare Sentinals to WW's, WW's pose a SIGNIFICANTLY larger threat than Sentinals when equipped and deployed correctly. That threat is almost doubled when they're teamed with a farseer.

Deadshane1 wrote:You cannot really compare Sentinals to WW's, WW's pose a SIGNIFICANTLY larger threat than Sentinals when equipped and deployed correctly. That threat is almost doubled when they're teamed with a farseer.

Very true. Sentinals have one multi laser...war walkers each have 2 scatter lasers (or the heavy weapon of your choice). So double the fire power comes with each one. Add in a farseer with guide (a very distinct possibility) and you tack on an extra 50% lethality on top of that. Average number of hits is as follows

3 Sentinals => 4.5 multi laser hits
3 War walkers => 12 scatter laser hits
3 War walkers + guide => 18 scatter laser hits

Now each itteration down the line gets progressively more expensive so it may not always work out to be the most cost effective (I don't have the point values on hand at the moment). So much like the comparison with the dreadnaught earlier, the war walkers might not be the most economical choice, but they are the most powerful.

3 war walkers and a Farseer cost, what, 360 points? Sentinels with Multilasers are 45, giving me 8 vehicles in 3 squadrons compared to your 3.

Round 1

8 Sentinels => 12 multilaser hits, against light infantry probably 8-9 casualties inflicted
3 War Walkers + Guide => 18 Scatter laser hits, against infantry probably 15 casualties inflicted

War Walkers are awesome!

Oh wait, the bad guys can shoot too.

4 BS4 S8 shots

You get hit 3 times. Cover saves are almost impossible because you're shaped like an orange on chopsticks. You get penned twice and glanced once. 1 Sentinel and 1 War Walker bite the dust, 1 Sentinel and 1 War Walker are immobilized and destroyed because of vehicle formation rules, 1 Sent and 1 WW can't shoot.

Round 2

5 Sentinels => 8 hits, against light infantry 6 casualties
1 War Walker + Guide => nothing because I can't shoot LOLZ

You get shot again, War Walkers are all dead, 4 Sentinels shoot down 4 more dudes, run into melee, and bog down a unit for 2 more turns, kicking to death 4 more dudes.

Equal points value, Sentinels kill 10 more guys, last longer, and have more overall impact. The longer the fight goes, the more Sentinels will be favored over equal points of Guided War Walkers. Bottom line is, War Walkers are expensive for what they do. Anything Eldar can kill troops, and probably with more survivability than a squadron of War Walkers. If an army would be able to shrug off Sentinels, it'll be able to shrug off Guided War Walkers with ease. Taking shooty infantry instead will serve you a lot better.

Friendly Edit Disclaimer:

If I seem a bit adamant on this point, it's because there's this total -hat at my LGS who's the Stereotypical Gamer: greasy, loser-ish, lives off of unemployment, stays up all night perfecting his list instead of taking a shower before game days, refuses to play opponents that beat him because they're "overpowered". He runs Tri-Walker armies because he's math-hammered out how TOTALLY AWESOME walkers are, he sinks almost a thousand points into 9 models with AV10, and then one tank round explodes 3 models and he quits the game because Leman Russes are cheesy.

Savnock wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:and the improved viability of scatter lasers and shurikan cannons...

I've been hiding under a rock for the last month and a half- what "improved viability" are you referring to here?

It's generally accepted that in fifth eddition armies will be much more troop heavy due to the change in scoring units. Only troops can now score or capture quarters. Thus with an increased ammount and importance of many low point units weapons designed specifically to kill them (scatter laser/shurikan canon) are much more viable in an army.

Alot of people are forgetting that they have the 'Scout' Special rule, meaning they can outflank. This is a huge boon to their survivability giving you a 4/6 chance of getting them on where you want them to and getting alot of scatter laser shots. My hobby store owner has been running three with Scatter lasers and they are absolutely devastating coming off a flank. I would definetly say you try it out. If you dont get the side you wanted, just move them into cover, or hide them in preparation for further action.

I don't think anyone is forgetting that they can outflank, it's just less meaningful because warwalkers are not a CC threat and as already mentioned they're an enormous point sink to even make them a respectable shooting threat.

Deadshane1 wrote:That threat is almost doubled when they're teamed with a farseer.

And then eliminated a turn later by anything that's S5+ and fires lots of shots.

War Walkers are a great Alpha Strike unit. 6 EMLs or 6 BLs, backed up by a Farseer! Wow! Whatever you fired at is probably a smoking crater. However, once you've done that, that's it. No competant opponent is going to let such a powerful shooty force survive to fire a second time, and ensuring that WW's don't get a second turn of shooting isn't hard given how horribly fragile they are.

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Deadshane1 wrote:That threat is almost doubled when they're teamed with a farseer.

And then eliminated a turn later by anything that's S5+ and fires lots of shots.

That doesnt change the fact that there is a threat. If WW's posed no threat or very little threat you might likely ignore them and shoot at the Avatar instead or some troopers or whatever else was "threatening" your troopers.

WarWalkers pose a VERY real and SERIOUS threat...otherwise people wouldnt blast though their paper thin armour the first chance they got....of course destroying them.

Flanking doesn't require one to be in assault range (although it can). Flanking would allow War Walkers the ability to set up good lanes of fire on weak parts of your opponents army. It is also helpful if you are going 2nd so as to completely avoid losing them right off the bat. If you are running 1 - 2 Autarchs, it gives more flexibility when they arrive.

After a few games this weekend, Falcons are still fire magnets that can take a hit while War Walkers flanking has its' uses. For the points, I'm putting my War Walkers in the army as opposed to my Vibro Cannons or Fire Prisms.

Plus, they just look cool with my Guardian stylized army.

Stelek: By "intact" I am referring to buildings that are not ruins, and that are garrisoned in the same method vehicles are embarked upon (as I am given to understand is in the new rules). In otherwords, a building like my house which is as of 7:45 this morning devoid of smoking craters in it. You can not see through it despite its size due to interior walls.

Now, I agree that the GW cities of death building kits do not necessarily lend themselves to making buildings with insides, but if you are making intact buildings, either just say "you can't see through them" or use some card to make walls inside that block LOS. I intend to use card to make wrecked interior walls in any future ruins to change how easily they are seen through.

Alternately, we have been playing with a general rule of "if the target or the shooter is not within 3" of a window in a non-wrecked wall, you can't snipe him through it." We are still tweaking, such things like adding distance if the target is a tank, etc, but it works pretty well so far.

Another fun question is "Are City of Death style walls impassible?" We made arbitrary rules for that too, since it gets a little awkward when on turn three you get charged through a wall, expecting that it was impassible.

Deadshane1 wrote:
That doesnt change the fact that there is a threat. If WW's posed no threat or very little threat you might likely ignore them and shoot at the Avatar instead or some troopers or whatever else was "threatening" your troopers.

WarWalkers pose a VERY real and SERIOUS threat...otherwise people wouldnt blast though their paper thin armour the first chance they got....of course destroying them.

That threat has to be linked to some sort of survivability. Currently, they're a tradeoff unit. They show up and kill (maybe) a single infantry unit (or vehicle rear/side armor) and are then killed in turn when counterfire wipes them out. In just about every scenario, the Eldar Player loses on the swap because not very many vehicles/single squads cost 210+ points. And this assumes best-case scenario, where the WW actually fire first or come off of a useful flank.

Really, War Walkers are just hunter-killer missiles employed on a larger scale. They'll get one opportunity to make their points back, which they probably won't, and then be neutralized by a relatively small amount of anti-vehicle fire.

So yes, WW are 210 points of threat, but they're neutralized by ~150 points worth of guns.

It will really depend on what kind of terrain you are using where you play. If you got alot of stuff that might cover them they will be very good esp. with fortune/guide. If you dont they are a waste of points..

sourclams wrote:3 war walkers and a Farseer cost, what, 360 points? Sentinels with Multilasers are 45, giving me 8 vehicles in 3 squadrons compared to your 3.

More bodies per point is definately a very good point in favor of the sentinels in terms of survivability (mostly). The only problem it presents is that with more models it becomes harder to find cover for them. That's probably not of paramount importance though.

Oh wait, the bad guys can shoot too.

4 BS4 S8 shots

You get hit 3 times. Cover saves are almost impossible because you're shaped like an orange on chopsticks. You get penned twice and glanced once. 1 Sentinel and 1 War Walker bite the dust, 1 Sentinel and 1 War Walker are immobilized and destroyed because of vehicle formation rules, 1 Sent and 1 WW can't shoot.

It would appear that your conclusions here are a bit off. I'm guessing this is due to rounding off numbers (you either hit or miss right?) but that's not really a good way to do it since we are talking about averages and probability here. Lets break it down a bit further and see how it works.

4 BS4 shots => 2.66 hits
2.66 S8 hits => 1.77 penetrating hits and .44 glancing hits
The breakdown for those damage results is as follows
Stun/shaken (they are the same since its a squad) => .89
Weapon Destroyed => .37
Immobilized/destroyed (they are the same since its a squad) => .96

So your 4 BS4 missile launcher shots will most likely kill one walker and keep one other from shooting. The third walker will most likely escape unharmed.

As for getting cover saves, I don't see why it is going to be hard. All you have to do is have the walkers stand behind a forest or similar piece of area terrain and they'll get cover. Unless, of course, vehicles don't benifit from cover from area terrain or something like that. I don't have a 5th edition rule book yet so my grasp of the rules might be a bit rooted in 4th.

If I seem a bit adamant on this point, it's because there's this total -hat at my LGS who's the Stereotypical Gamer: greasy, loser-ish, lives off of unemployment, stays up all night perfecting his list instead of taking a shower before game days, refuses to play opponents that beat him because they're "overpowered". He runs Tri-Walker armies because he's math-hammered out how TOTALLY AWESOME walkers are, he sinks almost a thousand points into 9 models with AV10, and then one tank round explodes 3 models and he quits the game because Leman Russes are cheesy.

Sorry to hear about the unpleasent person you game with. Amusingly enough, red shirts in my area are allowed to kick people out of the stoor if they smell really bad. Perhaps you should discuss the possibility of a similar policy with your local store owner. Regardless this seems like a situation where you should hate the gamer not the game (or the unit in this case).

Although your math is more correct than mine, you can add one more missile launcher and the WWs are all dead or stunned again. Any way you slice it they're less of a threat than an equal number (points-wise) of Sentinels and although useful, nobody really fears Sentinel Spam. Cover saves, even with area terrain on the board, are going to be difficult due to the models' shape and coming in off of a flank makes them vulnerable to small arms fire. As has been said before, they're very much a fire and forget type of unit because you'll generally get one round of shooting before they get smooshed by return fire. In practice, they just don't return their points unless the only guys you're fighting are horde orks with absolutely no heavy support.

I'm not contributing much that I haven't already said, but to definitively answer the question posed in the main topic, 5E doesn't have much impact on WarWalkers in terms of their viability or role changing as compared to 4th, but in 4th they weren't remarkably good either.

sourclams wrote:3 war walkers and a Farseer cost, what, 360 points? Sentinels with Multilasers are 45, giving me 8 vehicles in 3 squadrons compared to your 3.

A war walker with one scatter laser costs 45 points. That's the exact same cost as a sentinel with a multilaser. Your argument is pretty invalid considering you can configure the war walkers to be exactly the same as the sentinels if you wanted.

War walkers are a lot worse at higher point games (say 1750+), but in the 1000 to 1500 point range I think their value increases drastically. They're definitely not a poor unit selection. They aren't the most survivable, but you should be able to make 180 points back with 24 str 6 shots without too much difficulty. If you're finding they aren't making their points back, you can cut a few guns from the squad until they reliably do so.

sourclams wrote:Although your math is more correct than mine, you can add one more missile launcher and the WWs are all dead or stunned again.

You are most certainly correct here. However, my question is how many missile launchers do you have? While 5 is far from a large number, unless you are playing a gun line army, you are probably not going to have more than 6-8ish. If you have dedicated 5 to shooting at war walkers, then it means that the units the fired at the war walker are not buisy downing the wave serpent full of banshees heading their way, or the flacon full of fire dragons, or the foot slogging harlequins, or the dark reapers shelling them from range. My point is that you can't really look at them in a vacume. There are going to be a lot of threats on the board and a good portion of them will be at extream ranges (36-48") or have fairly high armor values (12) so you will have to decide how you are going to allocate your shooting resources since its unlikely you can afford to ignore any of the threats.

Cover saves, even with area terrain on the board, are going to be difficult due to the models' shape and coming in off of a flank makes them vulnerable to small arms fire.

I would not recommend having your walkers come in from the sides of the board. Deploying them at the beginning with the rest of your army is a far better option. It ensures that they can stay at the range where they are effective and out of the way of all that small arms fire. It also means that you can take advantage of any cover that is available in your deployment zone rather than running the risk of being caught in the open if you come in on a flank. Finaly, it would allow your warwalkers to start shooting right from round 1 rather than having to wait for a reserve roll to get them in. Just seems like the best choice for the unit.

Warwalkers still fail compared to sentinels in as much as sentinels are a FA choice and not HS, this is a bit of meta-value that seems to get overlooked a lot in that specific comparison.

EDIT: Which is my way of saying that if Warwalkers were a FA choice like Sentinels are I might consider using them over vypers, I'd probably still go with the vyper because it's got half as much firepower and is twice as fast.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Deadshane1 wrote:That threat is almost doubled when they're teamed with a farseer.

And then eliminated a turn later by anything that's S5+ and fires lots of shots.

War Walkers are a great Alpha Strike unit. 6 EMLs or 6 BLs, backed up by a Farseer! Wow! Whatever you fired at is probably a smoking crater. However, once you've done that, that's it. No competant opponent is going to let such a powerful shooty force survive to fire a second time, and ensuring that WW's don't get a second turn of shooting isn't hard given how horribly fragile they are.

BYE

War walkers are a great alpha strike unit which are situationally very surviveable when used correctly against the right opponant. What's an ork line to do against a squad of war walkers at max range firing scatter lasers? Even given a totally open table the return fire will not be overwhelming, with the obvious danger being lootas. In this hypothetical all that really needs be done is have a piece of terrain between the WW's and the lootas and your reletively safe from return fire having killed 15ish orks in the process. Even with a heavy number of big shootas returning fire, lets say nine guns firing thats only 9 hits and roughly a glance and two pennetrates. Hardly something the unit can not survive if placed in terrain. Tyranids have a similar issue with the only real dangerous return fire stemming from venom cannons or a barbed stranger that might kill one of the war walkers with some good rolls.

Three very basic anti infantry war walkers at 45 a piece are 135 points. A previous poster mathammered ~14 kills with shurikan catapaults. Thats 70 points of basic spine gaunts or 98 points of basic orks. If you choose a more dangerous and expensive target it could be well above that. Even a high price bright lance unit will probably pay for itself if it guns down a hive tyrant +guard. Or a land Raider. Or kills a terminator squad. No low armor vehicle squadron is going to survive an IG or Tau gunline once they have been revealed, and honestly how many people play IG anyway? These arguments are all very situational. Why take any vehicle at all since 5 missile launchers will probably kill it?