Lord Rogukiel wrote:
Well you see now that's funny, because my 7 banshees were charged by a squad of 10 chaos bezerkers, (admittedly they were doomed) and managed to chomp them in a single turn.
Maybe I'm just lucky....
Yep pretty much just this
lol, on average 7 Banshees (assuming you have an Exarch) get roughly 4 kills when they are being charged with Doom, it works out as something like a 2% chance of getting 10 wounds, not exactly something to build an army around. In return even if you only have 4 Berserkers + a Champ remaining they will rip the Banshees into tiny pieces. Without Doom (i.e non ideal conditions) even a full squad of Banshees could easily lose against the Berserkers if they are taking the charge.
I generally consider 'can this unit beat a Tactical Squad in assault' to be the absolute bare minimum to be considered a passable assault unit (ignoring the fact its still might be massively overpriced, slow, easy to kill or terrible in some other way which stops it being useful in competitive environments). Without Doom Banshees get maybe 6 kills on the charge against a Tactical Squad, who kill 1 in return and can then Combat Tactics out (and rally easily) then shoot you to pieces, or just leave you sitting there in combat ready to get crushed by something which wouldn't even need to be a proper assault unit itself (even another Tactical Squad on the charge would have a decent chance of winning that combat). With Doom the only thing that changes is that you might actually manage to kill off the scoring unit before you get blasted into tiny pieces the next turn. Banshees assaulting into cover certainly aren't breaking that squad (I only recently realised that the Banshee Mask doesn't work in 5th) and if its something which is a bit better in combat than a Tactical Squad (like say Grey Hunters) then you can easily fall on your face.
TH/
SS Terminators (who probably have to be considered the 'elite assault squad' benchmark
tbh) clearly smash Banshees, but even standard Terminators with a 5++ do pretty well and standard Marines with access with Storm Shields will do ok as well.
Either way the biggest issue is always their fragility (which means they are very rarely going to be able to get off more than a single charge) combined with their delivery, which can be countered by something as basic as flying a Vyper around behind you the entire game (so you can never disembark and assault since you have to move first to give yourself space).
