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Kabalite/raider combo is completely nuts, and should be listed together.

Martel732 wrote:
Kabalite/raider combo is completely nuts, and should be listed together.

What's nuts about it exactly?

It's firing 4 heavy weapons, has 10 ablative T5 wounds and moves 14". And a 5++ and stacks two obsessions.

Martel732 wrote:
It's firing 4 heavy weapons

How?

You get one Heavy Weapon on the Raider and 1 in a 10-man Kabalite squad.

Martel732 wrote:
has 10 ablative T5 wounds and moves 14". And a 5++

How are they ablative?

Or do you make this complaint about every single vehicle in the game?

Martel732 wrote:
and stacks two obsessions.

What?

Sorry, my play group counts 4, because blasters are just shorter ranged lances.

 Fafnir wrote:
You are greatly exaggerating their viability. With the exception of Celestine (who'll likely use her own) and Imagifiers (who cost as much as your squad and only work half the time), Sisters only get a single AoF per turn. Not to mention, that those 40 shots are only while within rapid-fire range.

Moreover, even with the AoF (which means they can't shoot twice), that 24" move is not "per turn," it's once per game, and comes at the cost of that double shooting that you're talking about.

Dominions are good, but they're not nearly the level of potency you make them out to be. Plenty of other units get stratagems that allow them to be just as efficient, if not moreso, than Dominions.

You may only get one AOF per turn, but Sisters is an allied army at best. Wile running guard, or some other CP heavy army it's well worth it to take a aux detachment for just a single unit of sisters, almost guaranteeing AOF for them every turn. Yes, it is just the first turn they get the bonus 6+d6, but after shooting across the board 24" you're going to be in rapid fire range till they all get killed.

You can't spam them, and you only get 1 if you want to optimize them, but the question was effectiveness vs points, and for that they ARE the most points efficient.

They're also competitively irrelevant at this point. You end up jumping through a lot of hoops for that unit, and taking a detachment of sisters is a harsh opportunity cost now that Celestine is harshly outclassed and you could be taking banana bikers instead.

One turn of 5 models with decent S4 shooting is not strong for its points anymore.

 Fafnir wrote:
You are greatly exaggerating their viability. With the exception of Celestine (who'll likely use her own) and Imagifiers (who cost as much as your squad and only work half the time), Sisters only get a single AoF per turn. Not to mention, that those 40 shots are only while within rapid-fire range.

Moreover, even with the AoF (which means they can't shoot twice), that 24" move is not "per turn," it's once per game, and comes at the cost of that double shooting that you're talking about.

Dominions are good, but they're not nearly the level of potency you make them out to be. Plenty of other units get stratagems that allow them to be just as efficient, if not moreso, than Dominions.

I generally agree with the idea of approaching armies and situations as an in-practice kind of scenario.

But Celestine gives you a second act of faith. You do not have to use it on her - and in a full army it's not always wise to do that. Unless she's locked in combat with some baddie and you can fight twice / free her before movement, or in serious need of a turbo-boost, the act of faith can be far better put to use in other places. Saying they get one act of faith per turn is patently disingenuous.

Sisters are one of the few armies that can kill screens and then deep strike in the newly freed space. Sisters still have a broken scout move which is a hold-over from 7th edition, as well as firing ports for high quality weapons with solid BS. There are some very amazing ways to use 2 acts of faith.

You can get your hands on en extra AOF for 15 points by simply charging a diologus at a gunline. Martyrdom is very strong with the amount of melta you can spam.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
It's firing 4 heavy weapons

How?

You get one Heavy Weapon on the Raider and 1 in a 10-man Kabalite squad.

Martel732 wrote:
has 10 ablative T5 wounds and moves 14". And a 5++

How are they ablative?

Or do you make this complaint about every single vehicle in the game?

Martel732 wrote:
and stacks two obsessions.

What?

I think what he means about stacking 2 obessions is - they get ignore cover and reroll 1's inside the transport. Raiders are opentopped so you can shoot out - very few units in 8th can do that. It's a much bigger deal now in 8th because vehicles are actually hard to kill. A 10 man warrior gets 3 specials - 1 heavy and 2 assault. Can ether be 2 shreder and a splinter cannon. Or can go 2 blaster and a dark lance (almost no reason to take the DL). The radier also has a heavy - so thats 4 "heavy weapons" from 1 raider and in order to stop them - you have to kill a raider first. Then 10 guys inside. It's one of the strongest units in the game in combination - I agree - they should be listed together. Easily a top 10 option right now in flayed skull.

 Xenomancers wrote:

I think what he means about stacking 2 obessions is - they get ignore cover and reroll 1's inside the transport.

Sure. But that's not stacking Obsessions - that's a single Obsession that only gets those benefits when embarked in a transport.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Raiders are opentopped so you can shoot out - very few units in 8th can do that. It's a much bigger deal now in 8th because vehicles are actually hard to kill. A 10 man warrior gets 3 specials - 1 heavy and 2 assault. Can ether be 2 shreder and a splinter cannon. Or can go 2 blaster and a dark lance (almost no reason to take the DL). The radier also has a heavy - so thats 4 "heavy weapons" from 1 raider and in order to stop them - you have to kill a raider first. Then 10 guys inside.

It's a good unit, sure, but I don't think it's that amazing.

They get the unit obsession and then the obsession from the transport. At least, that's how its been explained to me.

 Marmatag wrote:
Sisters are one of the few armies that can kill screens and then deep strike in the newly freed space. Sisters still have a broken scout move which is a hold-over from 7th edition, as well as firing ports for high quality weapons with solid BS. There are some very amazing ways to use 2 acts of faith.

They've had scouts since 5th ed and I find the concept of faith-firing stormbolter dominions to clear a couple of models away for deepstriking seraphim to be... odd, not quite sure where that would be useful.


But point for point, taken out of the context of a sisters army the lone permanently faith powered unit does have its appeal. Wasn't uncommon to see a squad of heavy bolter retributors in the early soup lists until battle brothers and new releases put a fork in them.

Martel732 wrote:
They get the unit obsession and then the obsession from the transport. At least, that's how its been explained to me.

Hmm, it depends what you mean. Let me break it down - there are 4 different Obsessions:

Poison Tongue: Reroll 1s to-wound with Poison Weapons.

Black Heart: +1 to PfP or get 6+ FnP if they don't have PfP (i.e. vehicles).

Flayed Skull: Flying models get +3" movement. Models that can fly or that are embarked in Flayed Skull transports that can Fly also ignore cover and Reroll 1s to hit with Rapid Fire weapons.

Obsidian Rose: +6" of range for all weapons except Pistols, Artefacts, and the Medusae Gaze.

Now, I could embark a unit of Poison Tongue Kabalites in an Obsidian Rose Raider. This way, the Kabalites will reroll 1s to wound with their poison weapons, and the Raider's gun will have +6" range. However, the actual Kabalites won't benefit from the Raider's Obsession themselves - so their weapons won't also get the +6" range.

Likewise, I could put Obsidian Rose Kabalites in a Flayed Skull Raider. Now the Kabalites will have +6" range, whilst their Raider will have +3" of movement and will ignore cover with its weapon. But, once again, the Kabalites won't get the corresponding bonus (so they won't ignore cover or reroll 1s to hit). Nor will the Raider benefit from their Obsession.

Finally, Flayed Skull models (as you can probably see above) get the most benefit from being in a transport. However, the FAQ clarified that it *must* be a Flayed Skull transport. If you put Flayed Skull Kabalites in any other transport, then don't benefit from their Obsession at all.

Oh, they're not using the FAQ. Go$#@$mmit. I hate having to know every faction's FAQ in addition to my own.

Why aren't fire warriors on there? At 7 points they're brilliant, and that's in a vacuum. Realistically they're gonna have a fireblade and marker light support in game. Obsec 4+ wounds that spit out ridiculous amounts of S5 fire from across the board? Gimme gimme.
I'll take a ghostkeel's worth of fire warriors over a ghostkeel any day.

The raider combo - probably just with Blackheart for the 6+++ is good - ignoring cover on AP4 isn't obviously a requirement (although 3" move does add up).
Compare to say a 4 Las Predator you do have to chew through 20 wounds to kill the unit - and arguably yes, the first 10 are largely ablative as you only lose one lance. (Although you are likely to lose 1-2 DE when it is destroyed). At the same time it can move (and how) without penalty to shooting. It can also fly out of combat (although this does stop the occupants firing - but I think they could disembark if not surrounded.)
Really though its a question of the meta. Massed S5 AP- shooting should get about double the return on raiders (and ravagers) as it would on a predator. But your las/melta and their equivalents only gets you about half the return.

The problem is that massed S5 isn't obviously available to a lot of armies outside of Tau - and las/melta is the go to anti-big unit - which knights are rapidly making more of a requirement rather than less. I wondered if autocannons were going to become the meta choice - they might still be if Armiger spam becomes the go to - but I don't think they will cut it against T8.

God, I love Custodes Bikes.

bananathug wrote:
LOL @ votes for guilliman, razor backs, preds, storm talons, someone just checked all the Tau I see, nurglings? Those are really top 5 strongest per point on that list?

You are kidding man. Nurglings paired with Daemon Princes and Bloated Drones are the best way to defeat Guilliman Ultramarines. Have 3+ units of 9 bases infiltrate as close to Guilliman as possible. 1st turn, DP and Bloated Drones kill all those scout screens, 2nd turn, charge as many Nurglings into Guilliman as possible. It takes Guilliman at least 3 rounds of combat to delete 1 units of Nurglings, that is even assuming Guilliman makes every hits and every wounds and the Nurgling players rolls really poor that he fails every 5++ saves. In reality, it takes no less than 2 full battle rounds for Guillinan to cut his own way out. By when your Daemon Prince and bloated drones can kill everything else the Marine have by smite, 2D6 auto hit and combat.

Tyel wrote:
The raider combo - probably just with Blackheart for the 6+++ is good - ignoring cover on AP4 isn't obviously a requirement (although 3" move does add up).

I don't know, as someone who runs Poison Tongue, I've wished for Ignores Cover a hell of a lot more than I've wished for that 6+++.

Tyel wrote:
Compare to say a 4 Las Predator you do have to chew through 20 wounds to kill the unit - and arguably yes, the first 10 are largely ablative as you only lose one lance.

That's partially true, but then the first 10 wounds are also the key to both your mobility and your survivability (once those 10 T5 5++ wounds are gone, you're down to 10 T3 5+ wounds), and Raiders do degrade, so even taking off some of their wounds still hurts in terms of mobility and firepower.

Tyel wrote:

Really though its a question of the meta. Massed S5 AP- shooting should get about double the return on raiders (and ravagers) as it would on a predator. But your las/melta and their equivalents only gets you about half the return.

Very minor point, but I think the best weapons are actually S5-7 AP-1 weapons. Stuff like Heavy Bolters and Autocannons (Raiders and Venoms do have a 4+ armour save, so it's useful to take that down a peg).

Regardless, might this vulnerability to different weapons not be a good thing?

I mean, people already complain about hordes and the overabundance of anti-vehicle weapons. So perhaps having more Raiders and Venoms in the meta will encourage people to bring more Assault Cannons, Heavy Bolters, Autocannons etc., rather than Lascannons or the like.

Except that's not what people do they also take massive blobs of chaff to kill the chaff and hide lascannons etc in these chaff units so players with big mosters/vehicals have to chew threw the chaff to remove the threatening weapons. 8th edition has helped casual balance of infantry vrs vehicals, but cheap hoards are still meta.

Not that nurglings are terrible. They are probably scouts +1 (which are probably one of the best units that SM have access to...).

It's just that they aren't top 5. I more pointed it out to say that a lot of people are just picking units they personally have problems against vs. what are more generally powerful.

Same with the custode biker captian hate vs demon princes. Pretty close to the same unit, close to the same cost, both have access to decent to good strats/equipment, very similar stat lines, biker caps have storm bolters while the princes are psychers (the Tzeentch ones are probably the best) but since more people see the biker caps they get way more votes.

The inability of people to look outside of their local meta is surprising to me but not unexpected (if that makes any sense).

All that being said the survey looks like it has aged well. More people voting has kind of smoothed out the early outliers and it seems a fair representation of the more powerful units available. I think with IK dropping those numbers will go up as the meta shifts to be able to handle that many t8 wounds running around.

Also your game type does determine what is more/less powerful. Characters over 10 wounds are not as powerful in say ITC missions due to all of the secondaries they give up while an army of orc boys sitting on objectives is harder to deal with in end of game scoring missions vs high mobility meaning more in maelstroms...

The big difference with the bike captain is Natural 3 ++ (relics) save and 2+ armor. Ultimately a better weapon too. More movement - also a bit cheaper. 2+ to hit guns are a lot more reliable than psychic powers. TZ Daemon princes are a good unit too - just goes to show how OP a bike captain really is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Oh, they're not using the FAQ. Go$#@$mmit. I hate having to know every faction's FAQ in addition to my own.

I don't even think different kabals can ride in each others transports. (eh guess they can - it just says drakari)

 Xenomancers wrote:
The big difference with the bike captain is Natural 3 ++ (relics) save and 2+ armor.

Daemon prince gets 3++ with relics and 2++ with psychic powers if i'm not mistaken. Best counter to that is to throw out a few mortal wounds, which one of these characters is.

A.T. wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
The big difference with the bike captain is Natural 3 ++ (relics) save and 2+ armor.

Daemon prince gets 3++ with relics and 2++ with psychic powers if i'm not mistaken. Best counter to that is to throw out a few mortal wounds, which one of these characters is.

Fairly sure it maxes out improving the invulnerable to 3+ GW has slowly learned that 2+ and rerolls is broken.

Impossible robe + tzeentch daemon gives 3++, and warp surge stratagem (Daemons codex) can take it to 2++ (technically 3++ save with +1 from ephemeral form) I think.

Mark.

Yeah, the old GW doesn't know how to keep track of their own rules interaction...2++ is broken but 3++ and getting a +1 to the roll is totally fine.

Either way, the two units are pretty close in power/price but one has the perception of being beyond broken (160+ votes) and the other only has 24 votes because of "feels"...

[edit: number of votes]

Cheeslord wrote:
Impossible robe + tzeentch daemon gives 3++, and warp surge stratagem (Daemons codex) can take it to 2++ (technically 3++ save with +1 from ephemeral form) I think.

Mark.

I keep forgetting that they ruled that to work differently for sheer brokenness. because having evething just improving your invulnerable by 1 to a maximum of 3++ was just too balanced

The thing is actually getting all those powers to stack on one DP is something a number of armies can interact with so a key deny here or there and not today DP. Its on 1 DP the rest as just normal DP and with some manovering can be removed amd one those DP start dying the psychic shenanigans drops off aswell. Shield captains are 0 interaction perma PITA units.

To be honest, given the durability of a lot of units in the game now, I kinda wish the Archon's Shadowfield would get a buff. Going down to a 5++ on a failed save would be nice, rather than just being lost entirely.

 DoomMouse wrote:
So here is the current top 20 as voted by you guys:

1) Custodes bikers
2) Dark Reapers
3) Guard inantry + officers
4) Blood Angels Smash Captain
5) Roboute Guilliman
6) Coldstar commander
7) Winged hive tyrant
8) Eldar hemlock wraithfighter
9) Shining spears
10) Dark Eldar Ravagers
11) Guard Leman Russ
12) Guard Manticore, basilisk or wyvern
13) Saint celestine
14) Necron destroyers
15) Mortar Heavy weapon teams
16) Wave serpent
17) Ork Boyz / stormboyz
18) Plagueburst crawler
19) Baneblade chassis variants
20) Tau riptide

Honourable mentions: Nurglings, kabalites/wyches, mortarion, obliterators + ahriman (all missed out on the rankings by one vote)

Seems like a solid reflection of the meta. I feel that what people normally fight influences this list heavily however. Surprised not to see tessaract vaults, assassins or talos placing higher.

If it's of interest, here are the rankings from the previous similar poll I did in January (shortly after chapter approved).

1. Guilliman
2. Dark reapers
3. Magnus
4. Mortarion
5. Celestine
6. Imperial guard infantry squads
7. Baneblade Chassis Tank
8. Manticores / Basilisk
9. Hemlock wraithfighter
10. Leman russ
11. Scions
12. Genestealers
13. Khorne berserkers
14. Razorback
15. Stormraven, stormhawk or stormtalon
16 Shining spears
17. Obliterators
18. Mortar teams
19. Hellblasters
Joint 20. Kastellans and Tau Commander

Looks like tge Daemon Prince got forgotten both now and previously. They were real good in my experiences fighting against them, especially the Thousand Sons ones. No Chaos player take less than two in the game in my local club. And in my experience with my army, only Guilliman, GMNDK, Draigo, and Destroyer Lord with Void Reaper relic can reliably put them down (with Guilliman being the only one who can 1 VS 2).

And I run the math of Tsons DP VS Biker Custodes Shield Captain (assuming both "naked", despite both of them can gain a lot of buff from relic, stratagem, and Daemon Prince csn get psychic buff), the result shows that the SC will not get the upperhand.