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Has anyone else tried ramming with a shock prow on Dark Eldar raiders. I tend to suicide ram vehicles with mine after I drop my troops. I find that this is very effective when fitted with advanced aethersails. Drop your troops and ram the biggest thing on the field next turn. Is this a waste of a raider or am I on the right track?

If the Dark Lance isn't working anymore, sure.

The only issue is that the strength of the ramming hit can only really damage certain vehicles. The maximum strength of a raider's ram is 8(unless the shock prow adds anything) and unless you are hitting transports it may not be enough. It certaintly won't bother a Lemun Russ, Landraider, or Monolith.

And thats if you are able to move the maximum distance with the ram, which is doubtful.

Grey Templar wrote:If the Dark Lance isn't working anymore, sure.

The only issue is that the strength of the ramming hit can only really damage certain vehicles. The maximum strength of a raider's ram is 8(unless the shock prow adds anything) and unless you are hitting transports it may not be enough. It certaintly won't bother a Lemun Russ, Landraider, or Monolith.

And thats if you are able to move the maximum distance with the ram, which is doubtful.

The shock prow adds D3 to the front armor of the raider for the ram so on it will be armor 11-13. Which brings the base str of your hit to str 9-11 plus d6.... and yes.. im pretty sure that will make a lemun russ bothered... even a land raider wont like that... however your poor raiders probably toast after this (unless you get really lucky with that flicker field save... hehe Ive done this XD smashed a land raider to bits, got penned back, rolled 5+ ignored the hit and LAUGHED XD)

Yeah, you can, my friend has a raider he has named the photon torpedo after its successful ram and destruction of a predator then it SAVED ITS FETHING FLICKERFIELD. Needless, to say i don't like that

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:If the Dark Lance isn't working anymore, sure.

The only issue is that the strength of the ramming hit can only really damage certain vehicles. The maximum strength of a raider's ram is 8(unless the shock prow adds anything) and unless you are hitting transports it may not be enough. It certaintly won't bother a Lemun Russ, Landraider, or Monolith.

And thats if you are able to move the maximum distance with the ram, which is doubtful.

The shock prow adds D3 to the front armor of the raider for the ram so on it will be armor 11-13. Which brings the base str of your hit to str 9-11 plus d6.... and yes.. im pretty sure that will make a lemun russ bothered... even a land raider wont like that... however your poor raiders probably toast after this (unless you get really lucky with that flicker field save... hehe Ive done this XD smashed a land raider to bits, got penned back, rolled 5+ ignored the hit and LAUGHED XD)

So in that case it will have an average of Str10 hit, at the maximum distance possable.

It is highly unlikely you will have a full 24" move on your rams.


I would say a 12-18" move is far more likely. a 18" move will yield a Str8 hit. Still not going to bother anything besides a transport.

Lets say you Ram a Chimera with a Str8 hit on its side armor. You have a 27% chance of wrecking/exploding the Chimera. While you have a 55% chance of wrecking your Raider(open-topped and immobilized autowrecks)



Its an ok suicide thing, but I wouldn't do it unless your Dark Lance is shot off, which will turn your 55% chance of losing the raider on impact to a 69% chance as weapon Destroyed results will become Immobilized which become wrecked because you moved Flat out.

With the advanced aetersails you get 2d6 to you maximum movement. I have opened a few land raiders with this and saved which is pretty funny. So I guess it is worth it and hillarious at the same time. Plus I never make my dark lance rolls. Thanks guys.

I plan to put them on my Wych Raiders (so two in the army) since this 5pt upgrade lets me tankshock troops, then dart into enemy vehicles if necessary once the unit is destroyed.

I have a regular Dark Eldar opponent who I reliably lose at least a couple of chimerae to per game to shock prow rams.

It's not something you should be looking to do all the time with every raider, but its an option to consider if you have the opportunity to use it.

Well Shock Prows are worth having just for the ability to tank shock, which lets you annoy expensive non Fearless units (i.e Paladins) and push your way onto an objective through infantry.

I've actually started taking them on all my Raiders, since its cheap, meshes well with the Flickerfield and makes all my transports 75pts and therefore easy to swap around (Venoms with 2 Cannons and Nightshields, Raider with Flickerfield and Shock Prow). Ramming isn't something that you rely on as a strategy since you have a Dark Lance to start with, but it means you can still do something after your Lances gets ripped off and its surprisingly effective. It can also control the movement of vehicles, which is something which is normally pretty hard to do.

@ Grey Templar. I don't think that Mathhammer is quite right, since the Shock Prow actually adds to the front armour of the Raider during the ram. This means in that scenario you are getting S6 for your movement and then +2 to your armour for a S8 hit, which has decent odds of destroying the Chimera but very high odds of doing at least some damage to it. In return the Chimera does a S7 hit back (S6 for distance + 1 for being a tank), which against AV12 needs a 6 to pen and then you get a 5++ against any damage. That works out as something like an 18% chance of dying in return (up to about 25% if you already lost the Lance).

So, the consensus seems to be that unless it is desperate, you really want to ram only when you can get that strength 9 or 10/side shot.

Did anyone else catch that he said he'd be usin the sails? That extra 3d6 movement could mean first turn tank shocks. Add that with the LD lowering addon and you could potentially run a ground unit off the board first turn.

Chance of the raider being wrecked isn't 55%. Not sure where that number came from.

First there is flickerfield, which should cut that # down to 37%.

Next the shock prow turns the front av of the raider to an 11, 12, or 13. Average it to 12 and a s8 needs a 5+ to pen.

At s8 I am getting numbers closer to 4/27th of wrecking on a pen plus 2/54 of wrecking on a glance for a total of 5/27th chance of the raider wrecking/sploding on a s8 ram.

I don't believe it will add to the front armor for the purpose of the hit generated penning the Raider. It will still be AV10 in that regard. It only adds to the value for the purposes of determining the strength of the hit IIRC.

The armor is d3 higher when using a shock prow to ram a vehicle

I'd want that FAQ'd before I actually had it be proper armor value. I think its purely for the strength of the ram and doesn't actually make the Raider AV11-13 for the purpose of taking the hit generated.

"It counts its front armor value as d3 higher than usual when ramming enemy vehicles." p63

Seems cut and dry to me. If they had meant to add d3 to the strength of the ram, they would have just said "adds d3 to the S value of the ram attack." They do not. I overlooked that particular detail. I think Shockprows are even more useful than I had first thought.

if the dice gods are in your favor you can split a land raider wide open first turn

Yes, but you certaintly can't have anyone in it. They would be almost certaintly destroyed along with the Raider.

It's not something you should be looking to do.

I run shock prows on all my wych raiders. I have gotten about twelve ramming kills with them so far, mostly transports. Out of those twelve, 3 have been AV14. It's an effective tactic... But not a first choice maneuver by any means.

Typically, I use my shock prow to tank shock squads into tighter formations so the haemonculus on board can liquifier gun the crap out of them. My wyches steal his pain token, hop off to assault something, then I run around dropping flame templates on whatever is close. At the same time, the dark lance is popping armor. If it suffers a weapon destroyed or shaken result, I will ram the nearest tank. It's a very aggressive tactic, but it works out well.

It can blow up spectacularly in your face though. Ram an enemy tank, blow up, and that's two kill points you just fed the enemy for free. I've learned that the hard way. Now the ramming part of this is a trick reserved explicitly for objective games.

Lokas wrote:It's not something you should be looking to do.

I run shock prows on all my wych raiders. I have gotten about twelve ramming kills with them so far, mostly transports. Out of those twelve, 3 have been AV14. It's an effective tactic... But not a first choice maneuver by any means.

Typically, I use my shock prow to tank shock squads into tighter formations so the haemonculus on board can liquifier gun the crap out of them. My wyches steal his pain token, hop off to assault something, then I run around dropping flame templates on whatever is close. At the same time, the dark lance is popping armor. If it suffers a weapon destroyed or shaken result, I will ram the nearest tank. It's a very aggressive tactic, but it works out well.

It can blow up spectacularly in your face though. Ram an enemy tank, blow up, and that's two kill points you just fed the enemy for free. I've learned that the hard way. Now the ramming part of this is a trick reserved explicitly for objective games.

The troops can start in reserve with the raider on the field allowing it to ram on turn 1 without killing any passengers. So wyches could deploy in their raider, or a haemeculus could drop a Webway Portal for them to come in off reserve.

schadenfreude wrote:The troops can start in reserve with the raider on the field allowing it to ram on turn 1 without killing any passengers. So wyches could deploy in their raider, or a haemeculus could drop a Webway Portal for them to come in off reserve.

Now that is a thought.

Running a couple suicide raiders on a WWP list.

It wouldn't be very points efficient, seeing as most heavily mechanized armies keep their stuff cheap. Unless you were up against some sort of AV 14 spam list, you'd probably only end up popping things like razorbacks and chimeras. Which (and I don't know the costs of either off the top of my head when I'm writing a post while trying to sober up after two fingers of moonshine) is roughly equivalent to the raider. So you blow up your 75 point model to blow up their 75 point model, and you both get a kill point.

It could work, in theory. Especially if say, you knock out the enemy's manticores, or leman russes, or whatever else would threaten your big blobs of wyches about to come on the board from WWPs. I don't see it as a tactic that would always work though, because the current meta is a lot of dedicated transport spam. Razorbacks, rhinos, raiders, and so on. Plus, on a personal note, I don't care for WWP lists. Not a stab at their efficiency, just a point of preference. I like my strategy of dropping flame templates on backfield Lootas while they're tied up trying to shoot down venoms and ravagers, and putting dark lance shots into the rear armor of battlewagons with the Raider itself while I'm at it. Hell, maybe I tank shock them off the board. It's a strategy that has worked well so far, to the point that one of the guys at my local store focused all of his army's fire on my raiders and attached haemonculi, and after succeeding in killing them, threw his hands up in the air, declared himself the victor, and flipped me the bird.

He's a mate though, so we had a good laugh and reset the game so he could go about and actually beat me in a game where he tried to win.

I have one empty suicide raider in my list since I run a webway assault list. I sit her back first turn and shot with the dark lance letting him get closer, then CRASH, shock prow to the face.

lol. "photon torpedo" .... i should try that.

It's a viable tactic but only for things that DL cant touch. Old Monolyths and Bless Hull LRs.

FAQ says the +d3 only applies to the strength, not the armor the raider uses when getting hit in the collision. But flicker fields work(hurray, 33% survival)

Lokas wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:The troops can start in reserve with the raider on the field allowing it to ram on turn 1 without killing any passengers. So wyches could deploy in their raider, or a haemeculus could drop a Webway Portal for them to come in off reserve.

Now that is a thought.

Running a couple suicide raiders on a WWP list.

It wouldn't be very points efficient, seeing as most heavily mechanized armies keep their stuff cheap. Unless you were up against some sort of AV 14 spam list, you'd probably only end up popping things like razorbacks and chimeras. Which (and I don't know the costs of either off the top of my head when I'm writing a post while trying to sober up after two fingers of moonshine) is roughly equivalent to the raider. So you blow up your 75 point model to blow up their 75 point model, and you both get a kill point.

It could work, in theory. Especially if say, you knock out the enemy's manticores, or leman russes, or whatever else would threaten your big blobs of wyches about to come on the board from WWPs. I don't see it as a tactic that would always work though, because the current meta is a lot of dedicated transport spam. Razorbacks, rhinos, raiders, and so on. Plus, on a personal note, I don't care for WWP lists. Not a stab at their efficiency, just a point of preference. I like my strategy of dropping flame templates on backfield Lootas while they're tied up trying to shoot down venoms and ravagers, and putting dark lance shots into the rear armor of battlewagons with the Raider itself while I'm at it. Hell, maybe I tank shock them off the board. It's a strategy that has worked well so far, to the point that one of the guys at my local store focused all of his army's fire on my raiders and attached haemonculi, and after succeeding in killing them, threw his hands up in the air, declared himself the victor, and flipped me the bird.

He's a mate though, so we had a good laugh and reset the game so he could go about and actually beat me in a game where he tried to win.

It would have to be an adaptive tactic. Ram expensive stuff like land raiders, battle wagons, or manticores. If the only targets available are 35 to 50 point transports shoot them instead or tank shock the infantry. The beauty of shock prows is they are so cheap a player can afford to buy them and not end up using them in every game.