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Rangers are incredibly expensive for what they do. It takes on average 9 Ranger shots to kill a T3 W3 5+ character, and you're spending 200 points for that. Taking a single squad will almost never do anything, since putting wounds on characters doesn't matter if you can't finish the job.

Wyldcarde wrote:How much are people paying for their hemlocks? 211 or 221?
Originally battlescribe had them costing 211 not having to pay for the spirit stone upgrade as it wasn't listed in the equipment list on the hemlock. Now it has updated and is costing an extra 10 points paying for the spirit stones.
I can see why it would be both ways.

Goobi2 wrote:Hemlock Spirit Stones are like Autarch Forceshields, they are abilities not wargear. You dont have to pay for abilities, so you shouldn't charge yourself for Hemlock Stones.

Galef wrote:On the Autarch and Force shield: until FAQ'd in the Xenos 1 Index, there is no indication that you have to pay the 8pts. "Force Shield" is an ability that Autarchs have and should not be confused with "Force Shield" that is WARGEAR for Wraith Blades.
One is an ability, the other is wargear. You do not pay for abilities.
It may be intended for Autarchs to have it listed as part of their wargear, but it isn't

So in regards to the above. FAQs aren't errata. FAQs are answers to questions. I think an FAQ that was answered as seen in one situation, does apply to ALL situations like it... for better or for worse ( in this case worse, as the hemlock would be 221 then!) GW did say.. in all instances of "other wargear" .. i don't think they meant just for index imperium 1.

Martel732 wrote:"If the intention was to account for the potential buffs a WK can get, those points should be added to the buffing unit, not the WK itself." Then there would be complaining about the cost of Eldar psykers. You have to pay for your cheese on one end or the other.

As much as you have been bashed on a few notes... I don't think you are wrong with this... Should this be how it is done.. maybe not.. but I tend to agree that the tax is spread out over the book to keep the cost of psykers and other buffers down.

Selym wrote:The Dire Avengers are 10ppm plus 7ppm for their ASC. GW separated the price like this so that other units do not have to pay differing costs for the same weapons, except that only the DA use ASC. Really, the DA should be around 14-15ppm, and the ASC should be 0ppm, given the current listbuilding method. Here's a fun fact though, a DA Exarch with power glaive and shuriken pistol is 14 points. Weird.

So.. I really like dire avengers. I think 10ppm for what they are is spot on when compared to other "models" cost. You get +1 L and bs5 overwatch for 2pts over a guardian.. Seems about right. (also that tax we mentioned.. exarchs and phoenix lords and all). I think the true culprit is actually the Avenger Catapult. 7pts is definitely harsh. And probably should be about 5pts. There seems to be a high modifier in GWs algorithm when it comes to range and number of shots when it comes to weapons. and I think that is why we also see the starcannon as a bit overcosted (i think it probably fits the bill for about 25pts rather than 30pts ... but i am sure people will still think that is too much).


In any case I think the Eldar community as whole has generally been pretty poor so far. Is it just me that feels this way? Like the majority I read is just complaints about how we can't use these awesome (definitely undercosted) units from 7ed. Eldar are fine, we have strong combos and good units for the cost. Do we have suboptimal units for once.. sure.. good! so does everyone else. Get some lucky dice, and start being good generals instead of complaining about what you dont have! Be positive!

Moosatronic Warrior wrote:

While it would overwhelm some armies anti tank I always think: 15 lascannons could kill the knight turn 1.

I don't think 15 Lascannons would do it in 1 turn (although it depends on the BS of the shooters). The WK has 24 Wounds behind a 6+ save (assuming LCs with AP-3). Let's assume shooters with BS3+ so you are hitting on 3s and wounding on 3s with each failed save causing on average 3.5 wounds. I make that 18.5 lascannon shots to drop a WK.

IG might be able to do that but they are mostly BS4+ so about 25 lascannons. A lot of armies will struggle to level that kind of firepower and that assumes the Farseer has not cast Fortune on the WK. 25 Lascannons all needing range and LOS is not that easy, particuarly if you deploy a WK on a flank. To be fair, that number of anti-tank shots will probably kill 500-ish points of pretty much any armour that an opponent deploys so it is not as if this is a specific counter to a WK.

If you face someone who can spam lots of Lascannons, chances are that you will finish your deployment first and hence take the first turn. That means you have a chance to Fortune the WK and hopefully put some holes in opposing units that can damage him. Also if your opponent concentrates his AT fire on the WK then those Wave Serpents can get up close and unload their cargo. Shuricat fire will shred Guardsmen and Guardians can even outfight them in close combat (not many foes they can make that claim against). So if your opponent does focus on the WK, he will be getting 40 Shuricat shots + 30 Shuricannon shots into his infantry next turn along with whatever the Fire Dragons bring to the party. Even a conscript blob will start to melt under that kind of fire.. Then most of the army can charge which will reduce his firepower next turn.

Of course if the WK actually survives it will then take a further toll on the army by shooting again and charging.

I was doing lascannons hitting on 3's and forgot the 6+ sv.

I think the list works it just isn't anything too special. I would expect most decent armies to be able to drop the Knight in 2 turns.

This is actually a good thing for me as I felt bad using a Knight in normal games last edition so he stayed on the shelf.

As much as dual wraithcannons dish out the pain I prefer the suncannon with shield on the wraithknight for the invulnerable save. Makes him 30% more survivable without giving up all his firepower. The titanic feet are fine in combat without the glaive anyway.
So far my experience with vehicles is that vehicles without inv saves are ok but the invulnerable ones are annoyingly difficult to deal with.


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Or just take the skartarch wraithknight and deepstrike

Wyldcarde wrote:
As much as dual wraithcannons dish out the pain I prefer the suncannon with shield on the wraithknight for the invulnerable save. Makes him 30% more survivable without giving up all his firepower.

It only increases his survivability against weapons with AP-3 or better. Even against lascannons, it is a 5+ save against a 6+. If you opponent is firing Krak missiles at him, the Shield won't do anything for him unfortunately. For me the opportunity cost of another heavy weapon is why the shield does not appeal much.

Also the Suncannon looks very disappointing when compared to the Rapidfire Battlecannon (which is cheaper). The Suncannon will eb wounding most vehicles on a 5+ whereas the RFBC will be wounding most of them on a 3+ (as well as MEQs on a 2+). The extra point of AP on the Suncannon is not enough to make it worthwhile. It was an underperforming weapon in 7th and continues to be so in 8th.

Just take a Scorpion. its 662 pts and blows the WK out of the water. 60" Heavy 4d6 s12 -4 3D

Yes but the times it will go down in 1 turn are the times it will cop melta guns and lascannons and other -4 ap weapons. Being able to shrug off even 2 of those big shots should get it into close combat where you can jump in and out of combat.

Wraithcannon damage output is significant tho. It comes down to what else is in the army and the role you want for the wraithknight.

Wyldcarde wrote:
Yes but the times it will go down in 1 turn are the times it will cop melta guns and lascannons and other -4 ap weapons.

Meltacide is easily countered by bubble wrapping. You only need a few extra models to make sure they cannot land within 12" of the WK. I honestly think it will not be easy to bring to bear the kind of firepower that will bring down a Knight in 1 turn provided you are a bit careful with your positioning.

 Karhedron wrote:

Wyldcarde wrote:
Yes but the times it will go down in 1 turn are the times it will cop melta guns and lascannons and other -4 ap weapons.

Meltacide is easily countered by bubble wrapping. You only need a few extra models to make sure they cannot land within 12" of the WK. I honestly think it will not be easy to bring to bear the kind of firepower that will bring down a Knight in 1 turn provided you are a bit careful with your positioning.

The only real threat I think for a turn 1 wipe would be a shadowsword, cobra, or scorpion.

Certainly with the Word of the Phoenix ruling, I'm not sure it's that necessary to take down a Wraithknight in one turn. It doesn't have a whole lot of firepower until it gets close enough to charge. It's putting out something that's only a little better than 4 Lascannon shots, plus its heavy weapons -- lots of stuff has comparable firepower for about half the cost. If you attach a Farseer to it for Guide and Fortune you significantly increase its cost. So far I haven't had much trouble killing Wraithknights before they caused too much trouble, even with Necrons (it did charge some Warriors on turn 3 before dying, but I would have had much more trouble if the Eldar player had had just brought more firepower to help kill the Warriors starting on turn 1).

Dionysodorus wrote:
Certainly with the Word of the Phoenix ruling, I'm not sure it's that necessary to take down a Wraithknight in one turn. It doesn't have a whole lot of firepower until it gets close enough to charge. It's putting out something that's only a little better than 4 Lascannon shots, plus its heavy weapons -- lots of stuff has comparable firepower for about half the cost. If you attach a Farseer to it for Guide and Fortune you significantly increase its cost. So far I haven't had much trouble killing Wraithknights before they caused too much trouble, even with Necrons (it did charge some Warriors on turn 3 before dying, but I would have had much more trouble if the Eldar player had had just brought more firepower to help kill the Warriors starting on turn 1).

yep, with most of the super heavies you are generally better off dealing with their support first. it is an objective game after all.

 Grizzyzz wrote:
Just take a Scorpion. its 662 pts and blows the WK out of the water. 60" Heavy 4d6 s12 -4 3D

Surprised nobody has noticed how ridiculously op the scorpion is yet.

I think I prefer the Vampire Hunter if we're talking Forgeworld stuff. It's nearly as durable for its cost on wounds alone, but then also gets Hard to Hit and the ability to actually move far enough to get a 4++ and still shoot. Its main gun is pretty similar to the Scorpion's and then it adds another really solid 8 shots.

Strange that Scorpion doesn't have fall back & shoot rule that most things like Baneblades do have.

 Shadenuat wrote:
Strange that Scorpion doesn't have fall back & shoot rule that most things like Baneblades do have.

It has fly. so it doesnt need any other special rule o7

Oh right, I'm a dummy.

I'm going off the assumption that the Damage=3 on the Twin Scorpion Pulsar was a typo, that it's meant to have the same D6 damage as the other superheavy Pulsars (like in previous editions). The weapon notes in both the profile and the appendix make it pretty clear that it's D6 damage (+1D6 on 6's to wound). That said even if it was errata'd to Damage3 (and notes removed) it would still be powerful, considering Starcannons got nerfed.

IMHO Scorpion is still better than both the Revenant and the Vampire Hunter, and point-for-point even better than the Phantom. Vampire Hunter has the flyer restrictions so movement is more problematic (thankfully firing arcs being gone is better) and due to how big the base usually is for a Vampire, movement is difficult to control - the 50% increase in points with no change in damage output may not make it too much better than faster movement and more wounds.
2 Scorpions will always out-shoot a similarly costed 1 Revenant. And four scorpions would out-shoot a similarly costed 1 Phantom! WTF happened to the super phantom Pulsar? Phantom Pulsar has the same number of shots as every other superheavy pulsar, and the the better -5 AP is pointless because if a target superheavy unit has saves it'll be using invuls anyway at this point. It still wounds 95% of the big vehicles (T8+) in the game on 3's.

I don't think Vampire has that many problems with it's movement due to Wings of Khaine. If for some reason you don't want to make your minimal move, you can declare Hover too.

Wings of Kain helps, but I mainly meant physical movement and placing it. With such a large heavy model, you need a pretty big base for the Vampire. I have one and used a large base as shown in this pic - I may have been able to gone a little narrower and weighed it down, but anyone with a large flyer on a flying base will be wary of getting the center of gravity too high.

(yes, this is technically a Vampire Raider with scatch-made Pulsars, from the end of 7th when they were 1 Vehicle. It was a quick conversion and I'm acquiring a Revenant to steal the real Pulsars).)

I don't really follow. Wings of Khaine and 48" guns mean that you can literally just swing back and forth along a table edge. You have some reason to move up next to what you want to shoot, if possible, but all you're getting out of that is BS2+ rather than 3+. And you can just sit still and shoot at 2+ if there's nothing very dangerous around.

And the Vampire has way more firepower than the Scorpion. Their main guns are essentially identical -- you expect 14 really high-quality shots. And then the Vampire gets an extra 8 almost- bright lance shots. This is 30% more firepower even against a Land Raider, or 62.5% more firepower if it hovers and doesn't move or uses its CTM (though against non-Titans you're probably shooting at multiple targets). I'm assuming that the Scorpion is moving in order to get an invulnerable save; I expect that mostly you will want both moving every turn. The Vampire looks even better against T7 with a worse save or an invulnerable save. And it only costs 37% more than a pretty minimally-upgraded Scorpion (CTM, spirit stones, shuriken cannon).

My argument for Scorpion over Vampire Hunter is their total cost and nothing to do with effectiveness for their cost.

There has to be a "rest of the army" after either one is purchased. Scorpion gives me more of that while still providing the basic thing I needed either of them doing, eg. killing big things.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
My argument for Scorpion over Vampire Hunter is their total cost and nothing to do with effectiveness for their cost.

There has to be a "rest of the army" after either one is purchased. Scorpion gives me more of that while still providing the basic thing I needed either of them doing, eg. killing big things.

I like flyer models.. but the Scorpion model is dope AF for a 40k tank

In any case I think the Eldar community as whole has generally been pretty poor so far. Is it just me that feels this way? Like the majority I read is just complaints about how we can't use these awesome (definitely undercosted) units from 7ed. Eldar are fine, we have strong combos and good units for the cost. Do we have suboptimal units for once.. sure.. good! so does everyone else. Get some lucky dice, and start being good generals instead of complaining about what you dont have! Be positive!

Lol. I dunno about you but the people I play against are good players. Playing with an inferior codex against good players is not a recipe for success. The Eldar codex is not competitive. In addition to not being competitive it does not play like the Eldar of old. I've been playing since 3rd edition. 8th edition feels like biggest mismatch between rules and fluff I've seen.

I've never played an edition where my grav tanks were static bunkers because they can't shoot effectively when the move. Meanwhile land raiders are driving around 12" a turn like they just don't care. Cause they don't. I've also never seen a game where my guardians couldn't move and shoot their heavy weapons platforms. I've never seen a book where Eldar didn't have fleet. A 1 inch greater movement isn't cutting it as a replacement for fleet. No re-rolls for charge distance really hurts. Especially more so when I see *entire* armies with re-roll charge.

This army isn't fun to play. It isn't fun to see other armies with 3++ storm shield that are 5 points. While 4++ force shields are 8 points. It isn't fun to see the WK and IK share a stat line but the WK is ~100 points more for no reason. It isn't fun to see that GW has refused to fix Guardians yet again. They've been a stupid unit since the 4th edition rulebook dropped. 12" range is a non-starter. A grenade has a range of 6" meaning their guns can only shoot twice as far as they can throw? Is that a joke? It feels like one.

The changes to psychic powers also really hurt. I can't use more than one farseers, or warlock, or spiritseer in any of my lists. I have 7ish farseer models. 6 of them are useless. I've got one tournament at the end of the month I'll playing Eldar for and then I'm probably quitting Eldar until their codex comes out.

Rough man. Unfortunately we will have to agree to disagree. I and the other Eldar players in my area seem to be having a ball. and I have had many good games with few losses.

I play pretty aggressive, so even my tanks are running up the field with me. crystals and guide are great for limiting the heavy weapon penalties.

I run Ynnari, maybe that is where things change for me, having such a mix of different mobile platforms from all the availability.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Silent_Tempest wrote:

Spoiler:

In any case I think the Eldar community as whole has generally been pretty poor so far. Is it just me that feels this way? Like the majority I read is just complaints about how we can't use these awesome (definitely undercosted) units from 7ed. Eldar are fine, we have strong combos and good units for the cost. Do we have suboptimal units for once.. sure.. good! so does everyone else. Get some lucky dice, and start being good generals instead of complaining about what you dont have! Be positive!

Lol. I dunno about you but the people I play against are good players. Playing with an inferior codex against good players is not a recipe for success. The Eldar codex is not competitive. In addition to not being competitive it does not play like the Eldar of old. I've been playing since 3rd edition. 8th edition feels like biggest mismatch between rules and fluff I've seen.

I've never played an edition where my grav tanks were static bunkers because they can't shoot effectively when the move. Meanwhile land raiders are driving around 12" a turn like they just don't care. Cause they don't. I've also never seen a game where my guardians couldn't move and shoot their heavy weapons platforms. I've never seen a book where Eldar didn't have fleet. A 1 inch greater movement isn't cutting it as a replacement for fleet. No re-rolls for charge distance really hurts. Especially more so when I see *entire* armies with re-roll charge.

This army isn't fun to play. It isn't fun to see other armies with 3++ storm shield that are 5 points. While 4++ force shields are 8 points. It isn't fun to see the WK and IK share a stat line but the WK is ~100 points more for no reason. It isn't fun to see that GW has refused to fix Guardians yet again. They've been a stupid unit since the 4th edition rulebook dropped. 12" range is a non-starter. A grenade has a range of 6" meaning their guns can only shoot twice as far as they can throw? Is that a joke? It feels like one.

The changes to psychic powers also really hurt. I can't use more than one farseers, or warlock, or spiritseer in any of my lists. I have 7ish farseer models. 6 of them are useless. I've got one tournament at the end of the month I'll playing Eldar for and then I'm probably quitting Eldar until their codex comes out.

What list do you typically run? Maybe we can all give you some improvements. Always good to have different set of eyes o7

My list which i have had success with thus far in short form.
Yncarne
Farseer (or 2 warlocks)
2x dire avengers
2x wave serpants
3x windriders
2x incubi
2x raiders
hemlock

are swooping hawks better at taking out an assassin than rangers?


Curious as I have yet to see an assassin set up 'smartly' behind enemy lines. They normally set up behind a couple units away from the main force. Just poor deployment I guess

So is it just me or are Crimson Hunters bad at their jobs?
This is supposed to be our dedicated AA, right? But against other aircraft, it's hitting on 4s most of the time. Seems like the Hemlock is just better in every way, even at the job that the Crimson Hunter is supposedly specifically designed to perform.

Crimson Hunters have bs2+, way more range, and reroll wounds vs flyers. They're both good.

 Temujin wrote:
Crimson Hunters have bs2+, way more range, and reroll wounds vs flyers. They're both good.

Right. But Crimson Hunters must move at least 20" each turn. Which means they hit on 3+, because their weapons are Heavy. And most other aircraft are going to be benefiting from Hard to Hit, which means they hit on 4+. And suddenly it's not looking quite so rosy, even when you can reroll wounds.

 Marsyas wrote:

 Temujin wrote:
Crimson Hunters have bs2+, way more range, and reroll wounds vs flyers. They're both good.

Right. But Crimson Hunters must move at least 20" each turn. Which means they hit on 3+, because their weapons are Heavy. And most other aircraft are going to be benefiting from Hard to Hit, which means they hit on 4+. And suddenly it's not looking quite so rosy, even when you can reroll wounds.

Expected wounds vs storm talon
Crimson Hunter 2 pulse cannon shots 2*(1/2)*(2/3)*(5/6)*3=1.67 + 2 Brightlances 2*(1/2)*(2/3)*3.5=2.333 or about 4 wounds to a flyer on average. Also its worth noting that guide doesnt help you much because you reroll before modifiers so you only get to reroll 1s

Hemlock 2 heavy dscythe - 2*2*(2/3)*2 = 5.33

So math wise the hemlock is better at killing flyers because of the auto hit but it is also almost 40 more points and much lower range. The Hemlock does also have smite and a negative aura though which will probably be worth the point change. If the Hunter is an exarch or has guide its expected wounds will go up by about .67

So yeah the hemlock is at least as good if not better at killing flyers