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Doesnt matter how un cost effective a unit is, if it can murder important units as easy as you breathe, they arnt the most useless unit in the game. A greater demon against your unit, will cry to its mommy, tanks, for get it. You see my point?

Ethereals cant kill anything without lucky dice rolls, and unlucky armor saves. And did I mention that whole thing about AN ENTIRE ARMY LD TEST? They have bad LD man, its just a nightmare waiting to happen. Oh and they die easy cheesy as well.....so again.....SPACE POPES

a greater daemon, against the thunderhammer unit I mentioned, will come out ahead of the game in terms of points. with each marine in the squad at nearly 100 points, the daemon will likely kill 2-3 before they can swing.

say the half the tau army flees off the table. Gee, 500 points of firewarriors, i'd still say the remaining 500 points of fire warriors would kill the vanguard. a single 10 man squad, rapid firing, will get 8 wounds or so, and probably kill 3 marines. Again, thats super cost effective. Hell, even in HAND TO HAND, if the MARINES CHARGED the firewarriors, a 10 man squad will still likely come out ahead of the vanguard point for point (10 attacks, 5 hits, 2 wounds, probably a fail in there)

Sure itll kill 2ish marines out of the ten, but then he goes down. Period.

The Ethereal itself, sucks horribly, cant kill anything and has a decent enough chance of basically killing off your own army. Why are you arguing with this? Its one mini. One! That could easy off half your army on its own

scouts are useless -.-

Asherian Command wrote:scouts are useless -.-

lol You made me laugh

well, i'm just saying, even though the ethereal is crap, he's not very expensive crap. (he's less than 100 points, right?)

Any army that includes an ethereal can still hope to win a game.

Any army that includes a 1000 point squad of vanguard, cannot hope to win, because in ANY situation, against ANY unit, they are not points-effective. ever.

Im going to vote Repentia... just so Melissia quiets down about it...

Useless units are useless.

Much like opinions, and nether-holes, everyone has one, and they all stink.

I rather take an tactical squad. Scout squads are just guardsmen.

Honersstodnt wrote:i'm still of the opinion that a 10 man unit of vanguard with jump packs, dual wielding thunderhammers, is the most useless unit in the game. weighing in at 950 points or so, and loosing in hand to hand against any unit packing enough power swords, or even enough power fists (dual unit loss), though its easy enough to shoot them down before they do any damage at all.

I mean, couldn't the same thing be said about an equal sized unit of Death Company? They function exactally the same, cost more, have rage, and can't assualt the turn they deep strike.

Quite contrary, BA Vanguard vets scatter 1d6, can heroic intervene and take out a ~600 LRBT Squadron, or perhaps more depending on the guard players layout and multi-assualt capabilities.

I mean, if we are allowed to outfit the unit with stupid wargear/tactical selections then one could argue that an archon sqaud is the most useless if you outfitted it with a Crucible, nightmare doll, webway portal, soulseeker ammo. 8 incubi (two with shredders) one master and one Drazor, the master has a webway portal, soulseeker ammo, an agoniser, and a xenospasm.

This squad costs 613 points, and has to foot slog (no Fleet remember) across the board, and bits the big one from a single battle cannon.... Useless in this sense yes, but is it the most useless unit in the game? Hardly.

yes, a similar unit of death company (10 man with jump packs) is equally useless, though they DO have FNP, so they might be able to survive against things like tau in hand to hand.

as to your archon unit, the way I compare useless units is to ask myself, if it would beat another useless unit point for point if its in the same category (big crazy expensive deathstars at this point)... and your archon squad would WIPE OUT the death company or vanguard... they can shoot, AND they have enough power weapons to put down the marines before they can swing those nasty hammers.

against a squad of 3 russes, i'd imagine the russes would be moving beforehand, as they'd expect a unit of hammer vanguard to go after them... they'd come in, and if they didn't mishap, get 40 TH attacks... of that, 7 hit, of those, 3 penetrate, 1 glances. odds are good that the russes would loose 1, maybe 2... then the entire guard army would wipe em off the board :(

Honersstodnt wrote:well, i'm just saying, even though the ethereal is crap, he's not very expensive crap. (he's less than 100 points, right?)

IIRC, he's somewhere closer to fifty five.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Asherian Command wrote:I rather take an tactical squad. Scout squads are just guardsmen.

Have you ever SEEN a Guard codex?

Guard players would LOVE for their infantry to have the Scout statline! The only reason Guard even MIGHT be considered better is because they're cheaper, but the reason they're cheaper is because they're WORSE. Lower strength, lower toughness, lower armor save, worse equipment, worse leadership, lower leardership, fewer special rules, etc etc etc etc etc.

Chaos Spawn probably top the list. Even when you get them for free with Gift they're a free kill point for your opponent.

Pyrovores are an impressively worthless unit, if they're anywhere near your army they're more dangerous to you. And if they're not near your army then the opponent can just ignore them and they'll do nothing.

Screamers of Tzeentch are also pretty terrible. Hell yes one melta bomb attack for a silly price that dies to anything that looks at it and can't hurt anything that isn't a vehicle.

And yes Repentia are godawful too!

Like Azezel said, for it to be the worst unit (personally), the unit has to affect the entire army with its downside.

Also, I believe that this thread is most useless unit, not most useless unit configuration; otherwise, I could probably raise you with a Farsight crisis suit bodyguard team equipped with every hard-wired thing in the Tau armoury - which would come around to OVER a thousand in points; yet would still have the same weakness as the vanguard (in fact worse, as they are more vulnerable in CC, being, y'know, *Tau*).

So the choices so far seem to be Repentia, Space Pope/Bishops, Pariahs, and a DE unit (I don't know the CE that well, but they probably have a fair contender).

Repentia; their upside; good vs tanks and heavy elite units (eg. Termies), can be large number, fast (holy rage).
downside; bit expensive, vulnerable to incoming attack s (can be mitigated by number ratios)
Use: against Tanks and terminators, staying away from volume of firepower/close combat attacks.

Space Pope/Bishops: Upside; make army more sturdy, allow BS4 FWs, (Bishop) cheap for a HQ
Downsides: Very vulnerable to combat, Bishop vulnerable to shooting (low wounds and Toughness). When killed, half your army flees.
Use: In a fireline, protected by friends, in LOS of everyone.

Pariahs: Upside; Great against psykers, warscythes
Downside; one attack (elite unit!), weak armour for cost, expensive (almost termy cost, with being over twice as vulnerable to attacks), count for phase-out

DE Unit: I'm including these to point out something. As far as I know, there is no DE unit that has an army-wide affecting downside. Unless someone wants to make me aware of one, I'm discounting the codex from (my) choice of most useless unit.

Overall
THIRD PLACE:The Repentia are bad, but they do have uses; they're good against tanks&Termies (or rather, tanks and tank-armoured things ). They are also fairly fast, which can be useful. They are expensive for their toughness, but many units are (Eldar come to mind). Most importantly however, they don't have an army-wide downside (other than a couple-of-hundred points spent, which an average 1500-point army can win without).
SECOND PLACE: Pariahs. Expensive for their offensive power and toughness. They are good against psykers and (kind of) against Terminators. Also, they contribute to phase-out despite being less survivable than Warriors half their cost. The only reason they are not First is because the winner affects more of the army.
FIRST PLACE: The Space Papacy, on the other hand, give mostly a morale boost to the army. That may or may not be useful, of course (I have seen Tau played so that a unit gets charged then falls back to re-shoot them enemy next turn), but that's situational. The only reason they are in first place is the one main downside; the fact that almost half the army then runs away after they die. That means that in a 1500 point fireline army (what these are best in), maybe 500-700 points will run. That's alot, especially considering firelines often deploy close to the edge, and even one turn of lost shooting for a fireline Tau army is deadly for them.

Well, that's my opinion.
Oh, and whoever said that the Space Papacy is better in large battles? That means that the enemy has alot more artillery, deepstrikers and outflankers. All of which can kill that frail guy hiding in the back. And, being a larger army, you then lose more points from that one guy's death.

I cannot see her posts, but I see it in the quotes!

Space pope does nothing but hurt the army.

"But! But! But! I want to talk about sisters!"

fireball909 wrote:Repentia; their upside; good vs tanks and heavy elite units (eg. Termies), can be large number, fast (holy rage).
downside; bit expensive, vulnerable to incoming attack s (can be mitigated by number ratios)
Use: against Tanks and terminators, staying away from volume of firepower/close combat attacks.

Twin Lightning Claw termies will tear repentia apart with ease. While they MIGHT be good against TH/SS, it's easy to mitigate this precisely BECAUSE of holy rage. They charge towards the closest unit, not the unit which you want them to charge at. Basically, against anything that isn't initiative 1, Repentia suck in close combat against. T3 with a 4+ save means they can be given far more wounds than they can give, once they're whittled down, and being fearless they are going to suffer more casualties because of losing combat. And a full squad of them is more than 400 points, by the way...

Jesus Melissia, you REALLY have to let everyone know how terrible your unit choice is dont you? Cant you just agree to disagree? I mean, really, they can beat the tar out of any ethereal in any situation, add the incredible "RUN FOR YOUR fething LIVES THE ETHEREAL DIED!!!!!!" army wide LD save, Im pretty sure your choice is better then the most useless.

I think Fireball909 hit the nail on the head with his post

That is what this thread is about, yes?

After looking at the spawn, I concur that repentia aren't the absolute worst unit in the game, but I still think the "space pope" isn't quite as bad as he's made out to be.

By far the space pope

I don't have my codex at work, so I may be off on a few things, but here is why the Space Pope (Aun'va) is the worst unit in the game:

1. costs over 200 points.
2. Can't take the BS 4 Firewarriors, instead has to take two Ethereal's to guard him (fail) Which means he can't join a larger unit
3. Has no armor save, instead having a Re-Rollable cover save. Thunderfire cannon Ho!
4. T3
5. Ultimate Price of Failure: He dies and the rest of the army deserts

Yes, but you also have to list the plus points of Space Pope, which are:

1. He has a cool floating Space Chair.
2. Two bodyguards who are nearly as good as an Ork Boy in combat.
3. Er...
4. That's it.

I thought people were talking about the standard ethereal. Guess I was wrong, heh. Damn, they actually made a special character who's WS1?

Space Pope is no ordinary Ethereal!

Honersstodnt wrote:sure, they may be able to cream things, but they are SO cost inefficient, that they actively reduce the size of the rest of your army by a huge margin.

While the space pope may be useless, you can try to just hide the bugger in the back, and surround him with firewarriors. Useless, maybe. I'd still put my money on a tau army at 1000 points packing nothing but a space pope and ANY basic troop choices from the tau codex, over a 10 man squad of vanguard with hammers like this.

Can't we just go all in and take 30 Death Company with dual hammers then?

Fire Warrior

Spawn cost me an Ard Boyz round one year They're not bad tanking an isolated MC. They're not great either, but they're not the worst IMO. The Winged DPs of Nurgle felt confident being in the cover of the trees that blocked 50% of their bodies... til each got charged by a separate full squad of spawn on turn 2. Kept them tied down for a long, annoying while

fireball909 wrote:
FIRST PLACE: The Space Papacy, on the other hand, give mostly a morale boost to the army. That may or may not be useful, of course (I have seen Tau played so that a unit gets charged then falls back to re-shoot them enemy next turn), but that's situational. The only reason they are in first place is the one main downside; the fact that almost half the army then runs away after they die. That means that in a 1500 point fireline army (what these are best in), maybe 500-700 points will run. That's alot, especially considering firelines often deploy close to the edge, and even one turn of lost shooting for a fireline Tau army is deadly for them.

Ah, but that doesn't fully cover the suckitude of the Space Pope.

Regular Ethereal lets the Tau units within LOS to reroll their morale checks. Also, Tau units joined by Ethereal become Fearless, which can also be useful if you don't take Honour Guard (which in itself isn't that bad). Of course, there is the major down side of your army possibly running off the table, but that only concerns actual Tau units, not Kroot etc. So you see, while bad, regular Ethereals can actually serve useful purpose (sometimes) and they're not that expensive.

Aun'va, on the other hand, is not an IC so he cannot join any other units. He does not grant rerolls and he has same down side as the regular Ethereal. Only thing he does is to grant Tau units Stubborn - and if you look up what Stubborn does, it is usually bad for Tau! So you see, with the Space Pope, you are paying 200+ points from an unit which is not only useless but actually causes signifant handicap to your army and takes up perfectly good space which could be used for something more useful, like Gretchin garbage dump heap. Yes, give me Repentia or Chaos Spawn any day.

to- Cannerus_The_Unbearable
    I'm surprised they didn't get completely mulched by fearless wounds. Did they manage to knock any wounds on the Demon Princes? Do you remember the DP builds?

to- Backfire
    When would Stubborn be bad for tau?

The Etheral, hands down.

Asherian Command wrote:I rather take an tactical squad. Scout squads are just guardsmen.

I once saw a unit of scouts knock out a wraithlord and an entire squadron of war walkers, all hiding in 2+ cover (with stealth of course).

to- Backfire
    When would Stubborn be bad for tau?