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So I'm trying to figure out why GW did this. Why did they turn an already good unit into an absolute broken must-have spammed killer?

Was there any reasoning behind it? Did they do it on purpose or was it a collective derp that they are now regretting?

Some would argue that its a sales pitch.

Kelly likes eldar . No one likes to play with bad units . He writes the eldar codex , so he makes it a good one.

Farseer Anath'lan wrote:
Some would argue that its a sales pitch.

They could've easily made it an Assault Vehicle instead of giving it the shield-shooting and boosted viability of a ton of other units.

But wouldn't that force them in to making new models for assault units ?

That is a bad thing?

Makumba wrote:
But wouldn't that force them in to making new models for assault units ?

No, it would make banshees viable for one thing.

However, they didn't do it because it would be seriously broke. The only transport for an army which is good at shooting (even without the shield) and able to deliver assault units at the same time... that would be going too far, unless you wnat to pay as much as a landraider for it

Actually, the question is why they removed the shieldgun from the 3rd edition Wave Serpent.

It's something it originally had, and as is fashion of the current, put back in for nostalgia (like a lot of things in 40k).

Just look at War Walkers and their many different incarnations to have many questions rise up.

I remember when people didn't like the chimera

And to be fair, with the loss of the 4th edition "Skimmers moving fast" rule they were actually not all that good due to being expensive and fragile.

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:
I remember when people didn't like the chimera

Because back then you required a doctrine and you couldn't take it for every squad.

Also it's pretty much Kelly's thing to overpower his Favorite Skimmers, 4th edition falconspam was pretty much top tier in the exact same way. People accuse ward of fanboying, but he can barely hold a candle to kelly.

Yes, but Ward is a lot more... blatant about it. :p

Heaven forbid they work together on a codex they both like.

This is one where it wasn't done to sell new models. Many folks already had a bunch of wave serpents on the shelves. As others have said, they made them powerful because they thought it was cool for them to be powerful.

The real issue is if they're going to be as good as they are, their point cost should be higher. I feel this is where GW falls down the most. Some units are either too cheap, making them too powerful, or too expensive, making them nearly unfieldable. They need to come up with a better system for assigning point values to units (not sure if they even HAVE a system, to be honest).

"It feels about right" was the answer to that question in White Dwarf.

Basically, they think about what they want it to do, compare it to equivalent units in other codices, and then +/- ten to twenty points.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, but Ward is a lot more... blatant about it. :p

Heaven forbid they work together on a codex they both like.

Yeah, but ironically he doesn't OP his dex's that hard. I mean BA and C:SM were middle, GK was the OP, and Necrons ended up very good.

If logic dictates he was more blatant, we'd have C:SM being the conqueror of all, with the Ultramarines proving beyond a doubt that they are the very best that ever was.

Amusingly even Kelly continued this theme too in Fall of Damnos for Ultramarines.

The first appearance of Ward in GW was him playing Necrons against Ultramarine.

Ward favours Necrons (secretly) way more than loyalist Marines.

The UM theme is just company policy, not Ward or Kelly in particular.

The serpent is really only that powerful because:

Combo with Laser Lock (probably not intended or thought of as much)

How good Cover is in this edition, and how it ignores it.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


If logic dictates he was more blatant, we'd have C:SM being the conqueror of all, with the Ultramarines proving beyond a doubt that they are the very best that ever was.

Perhaps noisy is a better word?

 Sir Arun wrote:
So I'm trying to figure out why GW did this. Why did they turn an already good unit into an absolute broken must-have spammed killer?

Was there any reasoning behind it? Did they do it on purpose or was it a collective derp that they are now regretting?

I guess it was a last-minute decision to beef up the Serpents after a series of playtests.

I think it's one of those things where they don't understand their playerbase. In their minds the serpent shield is a defensive system that only gets used offensively in emergencies. They never considered that players would fire the serpent shield every turn. Just like they don't seem to have considered that Tau players would take a commander with no guns or a few years back that Chaos players would take two Daemon Princes with Lash of Submission.

I'm convinced the 60" range is a mistake, and that it was meant to be 6" - something that hits the enemy the moment before the troops inside get out and engage - and not something that sits on the other side of the board blasting troops out of cover.

Actually, there was no reason to implement the Serpent shield as it is.

A typing error? Why not.

In the 3.5 CSM codex, there was a Tzeentch upgrade (some kind of flames) for Rhinos so that enemy models charging such a transport got an S3 hit or so in btb (not sure about the figures here). In the German translation, it was an S6 hit and it was corrected a few years later. What happened was that my buddy lost more than half of his Genestealers after charging said Rhino. He did it never again.

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:
I remember when people didn't like the chimera

To be fair, until the 5E vehicle rules came about and the 5E IG codex came out, the Chimera was hideously overcosted and largely a deathtrap, it was like 90pts in the previous codex for what it's base configuration costs now and in 3E/4E tracked transports were awful.

Because Kelly's the joint worst Codex author with Jeremy Vetock.

He writes Codexes that 1-up everyone else and contain units that completely disregard convention. See wolves with 5E Marines, Long Fangs were twice as good as Devastators, and were 20+ pts cheaper once you'd got the total cost down losing only some garbage rule that let them voluntarily be useless for a turn. Rune Priests with infinite range BS5 S7 attacks and removed from play beams, as well as complementary psychic power nullify bubbles and access to artificer. Scouts that can come on from your board edge on a 3+ with double melta. The list goes on.

Wave Serpents are where Kelly has completely disregarded the fact that the Eldar are supposed to have fast, relatively shooty Grav Tanks with middle of the road defense. Instead, he gave them quite possibly the most, if not the most useful firepower of any vehicle under 200 points, despite being closer to 100 (!) and he made them almost unkillable. A Lascannon has a better chance of killing a Land Raider than a Wave Serpent with one shot.

Vetock's flaw is that he A) Made the abomination that is Riptides, B) Turned Tau into an army that can bend all the rules and barely care about their weaknesses and C) He wrote the abysmal Codex Dark Angels which effectively killed the play style most people people played it for, which was Deathwing.

Playing devils advocate but by buffing the Serpents, didn't Kelly make Eldar more Grav Tank oriented? And sure Kelly plays favorites, but he's nowhere near as bad as Vetock.

BaalSNAFU wrote:
Playing devils advocate but by buffing the Serpents, didn't Kelly make Eldar more Grav Tank oriented? And sure Kelly plays favorites, but he's nowhere near as bad as Vetock.

TBF the only really bad things that vetock did was the riptide and changing markerlights.

WS w/ Holofields 130pts

Lascannon vs WS
.667 Hit
.334 Pen
.167 Failed Jink
.056 Explodes

Lascannon vs Land Raider
.667 Hit
.111 Pen
.037 Explodes

Makes a Land Raider 40% more likely to survive a single Lascannon

If you can squeak out a 5+ cover save on your Land Raider you are at .012 wich would make it 80% more likely to survive a single Lascannon

*note* left out the Serpent Shield, OOPS! (but really, who doesn't shoot the thing every turn )

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

BaalSNAFU wrote:
Playing devils advocate but by buffing the Serpents, didn't Kelly make Eldar more Grav Tank oriented? And sure Kelly plays favorites, but he's nowhere near as bad as Vetock.

TBF the only really bad things that vetock did was the riptide and changing markerlights.

And markerlights could be made a good deal more reasonable by changing it from "2 tokens ignores cover" to "each token used reduces cover save by 1" This could be done before gtg was decided thus giving players the option to still boost their cover save instead of just ignoring the rule.

 FirePainter wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

BaalSNAFU wrote:
Playing devils advocate but by buffing the Serpents, didn't Kelly make Eldar more Grav Tank oriented? And sure Kelly plays favorites, but he's nowhere near as bad as Vetock.

TBF the only really bad things that vetock did was the riptide and changing markerlights.

And markerlights could be made a good deal more reasonable by changing it from "2 tokens ignores cover" to "each token used reduces cover save by 1" This could be done before gtg was decided thus giving players the option to still boost their cover save instead of just ignoring the rule.

MLs used to just give -1 cover per light which no one complained about. In fact no one complained about tau in 6th until the codex came out. Sometimes people are just looking for stuff to complain about though, increasing BS is a good example because we could always do that and nobody complained.

This seems like the editing team's hand here. Where Kelly is normally pretty consistent with his writing (See DE, even SW to an extent. Yes, they are largely better than generic marines, but generic marines were always sub-par/bad)

I'm betting it was probably either add a rule that gives them a 2+ to degrade pen to glance OR give it a new weapon. In this case, both got added, which seems like someone didnt pay enough attention. Also, laser lock is really what makes the weapon OP. Its the only craft that laser lock is actually useful on, so it seems like that rule was probably added late.

Also, against the generic MEQ S7 shots really arent impressive, even if they ignore cover. The problem is that the meta shifted when tau was introduced and their AP2 ignore covner pie plate spam made armor saves much less useful. If tau wasnt around we would be seeing more crons, nids, and 6th marines rather than demons and cover save based armies (killing tau's anti-cover save is much easier than their AP2 pie plates).