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Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point cost of an ideally loaded paladin squad, just approximately?

Like with most huge hard to killl things in this game, I like to take solace that 1's happen about 1/6 of the time and even a pair of 1's happens 1/36 of the time and so on. I'm wondering how much simple rapid fire it would take to have a decent chance of lucking out against one of them, and how huge a dent in the army it would make. Probability math is not a strongpoint for me.

mister robouteo wrote:Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point cost of an ideally loaded paladin squad, just approximately?

Like with most huge hard to killl things in this game, I like to take solace that 1's happen about 1/6 of the time and even a pair of 1's happens 1/36 of the time and so on. I'm wondering how much simple rapid fire it would take to have a decent chance of lucking out against one of them, and how huge a dent in the army it would make. Probability math is not a strongpoint for me.

I think they are over 400pts for a tooled up squad of 5.

You cannot shoot them with regular weapons though and just "hope" for a 1. These are far from regular Terminators. They have 2 wounds each, FnP, and wound shenanigans. It takes about 360 bolter shots to take down a squad of 5, or about 860 attacks from boys to kill them in combat.

The biggest downfall I have seen is people throwing small arms at Paladins looking for some results, and always getting none. You need to shoot them with Str 8+, AP 2 and under weapons, or just ignore them.

The problem I see with Paladins is that a very popular tool in most TAC lists these days is melta. Which will slag a Paladin as soon as that 5++ drops. (Alternatively, a Demolisher shell). Now, if they could take Storm Shields, that would be a whole different thing going on.

But as soon as they get in CC, you're in for a world of hurt. Have fun with that 1 powerfist in a squad...

Looking at them on paper, I don't feel like they're worth it. I feel that as an IG player I wouldn't have too much trouble fending them off.

It takes 18 bolter shots to wound a paladin. That means 36 to kill a pally all by his lonesome, and 108 bolter shots if he brings 4 friends. That's just to remove one model. Add in FNP (can't remember if they can get that or not, shush I'm tired) and it becomes a staggering 216 bolter shots from BS 4 to kill a 5 man pally squad.

Aye, 400-450 points for a squad of 5 with all the bells and whistles. For a full squad of 10, throw another 275-300 on top of this.

And no, you really can't spam bullets at them and "hope for the best"...You have a squad of 5 fully diversified 2+ save dudes with 2 wounds and feel no pain. You need to hit, wound, bypass 2+, and then 4+ to create a wound. After you do this five times, the sixth will take the first model off the board.

Killing them effectively is going to probably involve you trying to not let the paladins touch anything important while you peel the support elements. Which army do you play? Dash listed a couple good ones for his DE, with Ultramarines my vindicators and dreads would certainly get some use. With IG, you have demolishers, manticores, and melta/plasma that comes in packs of 3 to help with wound allocation. They have the multishot to strain the wound allocation stuff even with draigo. I don't know how well powerblobs would work on a small paladin unit, I am assuming it would be very bloody if it worked at all.

Paladins are a wonderful deathstar unit, but like any deathstar, hes putting his faith in a small number of models, and in the ability of his support units to give the enemy something they can't ignore spending time shooting at, and in this case, and to a greater extent TH/SS where mobility is a problem ( I Took a hammer and a big metal plate and no guns! I surely won't need to fight anything more than 6 inches away!), removing your opponents ability to control the flow of the battle/get out of the way.

As far as shooting is concerned I fear no demolisher, melta or plasma with my paladins. You need to be close to fire those weapons and if the GK player has a brain, his paladins should have cover from the shots. If you managed to bring a high number of plasma or melta shots in range and LOS of my paladins, I've done something wrong or the dice gods hate me, plain and simple. The only units that could bring enough melta to fear are sternguard, command squads and firedragons. Out of those, the only 1 with a real chance of getting within 12 and firing at full strength are drop podding sternguard.

Also, plasma is not an effective answer to paladins, given that they can survive more than 1 shot of it and even an IG command squad will only land about 3 wounds, meaning no paladins will die.

The only shooting worth a damn against paladins, assuming the GK player isn't an idiot and footslogging them out in the open, are long range strength 8 AP2 weapons, or better. Basically railguns, dark lances and lascannons, and if those are being shot at paladins as opposed to vehicles, then the GK player is in enough trouble as it is.

Hmm, I wonder if a counter would be two chapter masters? Given the incredible clumping of units that the pally running fellow on here keeps talking about, two Str 10 ap 2(1) <- can't remember off the top of my head templates would certainly smack something up terribly.

Also, are demolisher cannons not ordnance? Does that not mean you can ignore cover when shooting them?

Finally, I agree that any fast moving army with enough ranged anti tank should be able to simply strip your support squads and then just run like the dickens from your pallies. Sure your pallies won't die, but everything else in the army is relatively squishy in comparison. 6 Chimaraes with guard equivalent inside are something to sneeze at.

Bruteboss wrote:One of the bonuses, is that with a dred at the back of the phalanx, and a librarian in the middle, I also have complete anti-psychic defenses. Want to hit me with JOTWW or some other horrible power? Take a test at -4 leadership followed by another leadership test to see if it works at all.

It's not exactly clear whether or not JotWW is affected by the Aegis; it doesn't specifically target anything. Just "trace a line"...

i've played one game so far with paladin wing against my, brother's Long Fang/ speeder missile spam + wolf guard melee deathstar. My list was 7 paladins w/ apoth, mostly kitted out to be different (Two halberds were the same), 2 units of 10 interceptor squads w/ daemon hammer, Halberd, and 2 psycannons, 2 psy-rifle dreads, Draigo, a Librarian, and a small strike squad to fill out that second troop choice.

I went first, he ended up going first however, due to stealing the initiative. The result was me tabling him. The psy-rifle dreads took out both land speeders and both rhinoes carrying grey hunters, the psycannons in the Paladin squad annihilated his land raider carrying his wolfstar, and even with a 5+ invulnerable, I only took three wounds against his now horribly weakened Wolf guard death star in melee, due to annihilating most of the squad and ragnar w/ the Daemonhammer on the turn I assaulted.

Overall? Missiles are laughed off, and any AP2 shots I laughed off with a 3+ cover from the librarian. If I had been hit by say, 20 lascannons? I would have been boned. However, even if a 7-8 man paladin squad is reduced to 2-3 models, they STILL hae enough hitting power between WS5, S5 most of the time, and I6 w/ 3 attacks charging to make most things their pants and run, if not out right die.

My next experiment will be using two squads of 5 unique Paladin paladin squads w/ Draigo and a Librarian in storm ravens w/ Dreadknights as backup. The Stormravens boost forward, use PToMS to fire their multi-melta, while the Dread knights scout forward for some alpha assault goodness. WHen the stormravens get lit up, the Librarian casts The Shrouding to give them a 3+ cover.


Overall, I am extremely satasfied with a Paladin Deathstar. Sure, may not be THE TOP TIER list, but it is still fun, and I think competitive in the right hands.

The problem is they are sorely outclassed by TH/SS a popular SM unit. A 5 man paladin squad is going to be facing 10 TH/SS on equal points, and that's not going to end well for the Paladins.

That's why Paladins shoot them before assaulting, honestly.

SOFDC wrote:

If it causes ID then I am not really worried as I can just put that wound on Draigo and have him save it on a 3+, not to mention I'll already be getting 3+ cover saves from shrouding on my current position.

The only catch is, that if they give you an AP2 ID -more- than one time in the 5-10 shots the squad will throw in, then things start to sting, but as I said, they're likely to only get once chance to do it with their appallingly short range.

Yea, it didn't go well for him. Only 3 of the wraithguard actually ended up in range to fire, 2 of which manage to hit and wound. Draigo caught them admirably with his 3+ invuln. They then proceeded to stomp through the 10 strong wraithguard, 10 strong swooping hawks, and shrug off about 20 shots fired from Rangers, and a fire prism blast; all while taking a grand total of 3 wounds and no losses. Draigo makes paladins absolutely ridiculous(also can't discount that wonderful librarian making all their cover saves 3+ with shrouding, so awesome), I actually lost a few of them before I took him... now I take no damage. Anything AP2 he just saves or takes on the chin (although he saved everything tonite).

After the game we talked about draigostar walking up the board with eldrad in tow + a seer council. Think about fortuned paladins for a second. Yea...
I also wouldn't be constantly having to use 3d6 for my psychic tests with the eldar actually on my team, apparently with eldrad you roll 3 and pick the lowest 2. I'd be stacking hammerhand like crazy

Bruteboss wrote:
For 1177 points, I can get a mixed unit of 5 paladins with master crafted psycannons, coteaz, a librarian with 4 powers, and 6 henchmen squads each with 3 meltas and a chimera. In games of 1850 points or more that leaves 673 points or more to spend on the rest of the army. I personally like to throw a venerable dred and a vindicare in at the back, to really buff up the shooting.

How is this a Paladin army?

Brother-Thunder wrote:That's why Paladins shoot them before assaulting, honestly.

What makes Paladins so special that they automatically get the charge, and not the TH/SS? TH/SS are always in a Land Raider unless you are using deathwing or shrike.

scubasteve04 wrote:

Brother-Thunder wrote:That's why Paladins shoot them before assaulting, honestly.

What makes Paladins so special that they automatically get the charge, and not the TH/SS? TH/SS are always in a Land Raider unless you are using deathwing or shrike.

Because typically a paladin army will have a librarian, which means that you will charge them through both difficult AND dangerous terrain, which basically means you're better off receiving the charge

GeckoOBac wrote:

scubasteve04 wrote:

Brother-Thunder wrote:That's why Paladins shoot them before assaulting, honestly.

What makes Paladins so special that they automatically get the charge, and not the TH/SS? TH/SS are always in a Land Raider unless you are using deathwing or shrike.

Because typically a paladin army will have a librarian, which means that you will charge them through both difficult AND dangerous terrain, which basically means you're better off receiving the charge

I would have no problem moving cruising speed with the LR, and dumping the TH/SS 1" away from the Paladins. Dangerous is a non-issue, each model has a 5% chance of dieing.


What transport do people use for Paladins anyways? Are they better footslogging?

Well, I wouldn't say that they're better footslogging, but footslogging is an option due to their excellent shooting prowess.

GeckoOBac wrote:Because typically a paladin army will have a librarian, which means that you will charge them through both difficult AND dangerous terrain, which basically means you're better off receiving the charge

According to what are you basically better off receiving the charge? Termies are often accompanied by a Null Zone Libby, so the GK Librarian successfully casting Sanctuary isn't guaranteed. Even if the GK Librarian does cast, a Land Raider doesn't worry about variable movement distance and can traverse 12" (move) +2" (disembark) +1.5" (base size) = 15.5 inches to drop guys 1" away from the Paladin squad. They'll suffer 2 dangerous terrain tests per model which will average less than one TH/SS Terminator dying. Since the Terminators charged it'll be 3 attacks per model, as opposed to 2 if they receive the charge, and a Draigo+Libby supersquad costs as much as 2 Crusaders with 12+ Terminators and a Null Zone libby.

Vindicare pops the LR turn 1, next turn takes Libby's invul save, next turn kills Libby with Turbo Penetrator.

orkyben wrote:

scubasteve04 wrote:
They remind me of nob bikers - scary to an unprepared opponent, but not a big deal with all the melta, ordnance and powerfists people are packing these days.

That's exactly what they reminded me of but with a whole lot less mobility.

I just spent a butt-load o'cash on new figures and my group and I are attempting this weekend (two and a half straight days in my basement) to prove that all present factions are viable. Most of us are tournament level players and I have most factions available to 1500 points with plenty of variant figures. What we lack we'll just 'counts as'.

My contention is that the GK faction will unfold in a way similar to that expressed in the quote.

Who's to say, things change once the figs are on the table guided by the sick minds of my gaming group.

Vindicare pops the LR turn 1, next turn takes Libby's invul save, next turn kills Libby with Turbo Penetrator.

In fairness, the Vindicare needs to roll 15+ on 4d to penetrate (about 45%). He also needs to hit (about 83%), so all in all less than a 40% chance of a penetration (if we allow that just stopping the thing is enough, then adding in glances and counting any glance or penetration result apart from weapon destroyed as good enough for our purposes) he as just about a 50-50 chance of delaying, immobilising or destroying the raider.

That said, I don't hold with this 'oh paladins are easily countered by [insert name of any random weapon, wargear or unit type that seems superficially to be a certain paladin-killer, regardless of how realistically effective it is let alone how likely a non-tailored list is to have it -- and of course immediately claim 'oh I always take x number of them in my army' if queried]'.

Paladins are certainly not easy troops to field. But neither are they as easily dismissed as many people seem to be claiming. In my growing but still limited experience with a small variety of paladin lists, played mainly at 2000-3000 points, they do rather better than average (ie my win record with them is higher than my norm with other armies). that may be because my opponents are as yet unfamiliar with them, it may be that they suit my play style better than my other two armies (drop-pod marines, mechanised marines). But it's certainly not indicative of an army that's intrinsically weak.

The Vindicare gets a 4+ re-roll on failed to-hits, and with Rending the chances of penetrating increase massively.

Oh, I forgot that... silly me.

The 4+ doesn't make a huge difference really but the rending does of course. Mind you, I'm not certain he's got more than a 2/3 chance of stopping/immobilising/destroying even with that. And less if it's fired smoke. Yes, it's an asnwer, but it's not by any means a sure thing (just like turning all your lascannon on a paladin squad isn't a sure thing either).

Artemo wrote:Oh, I forgot that... silly me.

The 4+ doesn't make a huge difference really but the rending does of course. Mind you, I'm not certain he's got more than a 2/3 chance of stopping/immobilising/destroying even with that. And less if it's fired smoke. Yes, it's an asnwer, but it's not by any means a sure thing (just like turning all your lascannon on a paladin squad isn't a sure thing either).

Don't forget +1 on the damage chart because of AP1.

Artemo wrote:

Vindicare pops the LR turn 1, next turn takes Libby's invul save, next turn kills Libby with Turbo Penetrator.

In fairness, the Vindicare needs to roll 15+ on 4d to penetrate (about 45%). He also needs to hit (about 83%), so all in all less than a 40% chance of a penetration (if we allow that just stopping the thing is enough, then adding in glances and counting any glance or penetration result apart from weapon destroyed as good enough for our purposes) he as just about a 50-50 chance of delaying, immobilising or destroying the raider.

That said, I don't hold with this 'oh paladins are easily countered by [insert name of any random weapon, wargear or unit type that seems superficially to be a certain paladin-killer, regardless of how realistically effective it is let alone how likely a non-tailored list is to have it -- and of course immediately claim 'oh I always take x number of them in my army' if queried]'.

Paladins are certainly not easy troops to field. But neither are they as easily dismissed as many people seem to be claiming. In my growing but still limited experience with a small variety of paladin lists, played mainly at 2000-3000 points, they do rather better than average (ie my win record with them is higher than my norm with other armies). that may be because my opponents are as yet unfamiliar with them, it may be that they suit my play style better than my other two armies (drop-pod marines, mechanised marines). But it's certainly not indicative of an army that's intrinsically weak.

Average dice roll on 46 is 14+3 from the Sniper rifle, and he has a 50% chance of wrecking it since his weapon is AP1.

4d6, shurely. Both groups I play with play as just 4d6, I'm sure.

If you're right, and you may well be, then the Vindicare would seem to me to be overpowered to say the least.

Assuming 4d6 pen and adding in rending, he penetrates round about 20% of the time (it gets hard to work in the rendings, but just under 16% fail to penetrate regardless of rending and not all rolls that might involve rending, or that do rend, do actually glance or penetrate). I was including any penetration or glance that wasn't 'weapon destroyed' as sufficient success.

Artemo wrote:4d6, shurely. Both groups I play with play as just 4d6, I'm sure.

If you're right, and you may well be, then the Vindicare would seem to me to be overpowered to say the least.

Assuming 4d6 pen and adding in rending, he penetrates round about 20% of the time (it gets hard to work in the rendings, but just under 16% fail to penetrate regardless of rending and not all rolls that might involve rending, or that do rend, do actually glance or penetrate). I was including any penetration or glance that wasn't 'weapon destroyed' as sufficient success.

You could potentially get a roll of 36 for armour penetration with the Vindicare .

Darkvoidof40k wrote:

Artemo wrote:4d6, shurely. Both groups I play with play as just 4d6, I'm sure.

If you're right, and you may well be, then the Vindicare would seem to me to be overpowered to say the least.

Assuming 4d6 pen and adding in rending, he penetrates round about 20% of the time (it gets hard to work in the rendings, but just under 16% fail to penetrate regardless of rending and not all rolls that might involve rending, or that do rend, do actually glance or penetrate). I was including any penetration or glance that wasn't 'weapon destroyed' as sufficient success.

You could potentially get a roll of 36 for armour penetration with the Vindicare .

You could even get as much as 39! (3+(6*4)+(3*4))

I notice that the old codex FAQ gave the +3 for weapon strength, but then of course the Vindicare wasn't rolling 4d6 but 3d6.

I must say my instinct is that they mean just 4d6 now but I can see that 4d6+3 is a perfectly logical stance. I just think it's a tad much myself... the Vindicare then does indeed go to being a near-certain AV14 stopper. Anyway, not wanting to derail this thread on the thorny question of whether GW mean what they say... I'll happily accept 4d6+3 as being RAW.

Amaya wrote:Vindicare pops the LR turn 1, next turn takes Libby's invul save, next turn kills Libby with Turbo Penetrator.

The "Beat this unit" thread is elsewhere.