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Eidolon wrote:everyone knows nobs are a terrible, terrible unit.

Sorry.

So a unit which can have access to FNP and invulnerable saves as well as wound allocation, the ability to be taken as troops if taken with Ghaz or a Warboss and 2 wounds for a total points cost that is comparatively not too high for what you're getting is a terrible unit now?

The only problem with them is that at the current meta there is so much S8 floating around they can sometimes have a bad time, but that doesn't make them a bad unit.

Rampage wrote:

Eidolon wrote:everyone knows nobs are a terrible, terrible unit.

Sorry.

So a unit which can have access to FNP and invulnerable saves as well as wound allocation, the ability to be taken as troops if taken with Ghaz or a Warboss and 2 wounds for a total points cost that is comparatively not too high for what you're getting is a terrible unit now?

The only problem with them is that at the current meta there is so much S8 floating around they can sometimes have a bad time, but that doesn't make them a bad unit.

Surely it is the number of Grey knights floating around which is the problem.

MFletch wrote:

Rampage wrote:

Eidolon wrote:everyone knows nobs are a terrible, terrible unit.

Sorry.

So a unit which can have access to FNP and invulnerable saves as well as wound allocation, the ability to be taken as troops if taken with Ghaz or a Warboss and 2 wounds for a total points cost that is comparatively not too high for what you're getting is a terrible unit now?

The only problem with them is that at the current meta there is so much S8 floating around they can sometimes have a bad time, but that doesn't make them a bad unit.

Surely it is the number of Grey knights floating around which is the problem.

Well yeah, they're part of it, as they can churn out a heck of a lot of S8 shooting with their contribution of the Twin-Linked Autocannon dreads with Psybolt, etc. The Force Weapons are another reason, but as they are mainly located in the Grey Knights book they are not as common as the S8 problem.

Rampage wrote:Well yeah, they're part of it, as they can churn out a heck of a lot of S8 shooting with their contribution of the Twin-Linked Autocannon dreads with Psybolt, etc. The Force Weapons are another reason, but as they are mainly located in the Grey Knights book they are not as common as the S8 problem.

The s8 shooting is probably aimed at your battlewagons, say. Whereas to use your nobs you must plan to charge into cc, unless you are using them to shoot or just as an objective sitter. So you charge in to virtually any grey knight unit, are hit first and every wound instant kills :(

MFletch wrote:

Rampage wrote:Well yeah, they're part of it, as they can churn out a heck of a lot of S8 shooting with their contribution of the Twin-Linked Autocannon dreads with Psybolt, etc. The Force Weapons are another reason, but as they are mainly located in the Grey Knights book they are not as common as the S8 problem.

The s8 shooting is probably aimed at your battlewagons, say. Whereas to use your nobs you must plan to charge into cc, unless you are using them to shoot or just as an objective sitter. So you charge in to virtually any grey knight unit, are hit first and every wound instant kills :(

Very true, but I'm not debating that they don't work well against Grey Knights, but that doesn't make them a bad unit overall. I suppose it depends upon your local meta on whether it is full of Grey Knights or not but in a non-GK meta they can be a very effective unit.

Not really, they were bad before grey knights came out. Just another nail in the coffin for nobs. You put so many points in a single unit, that dies to the high strength shooting that any good army list puts out, and it fails in the regular competitive metagame. Which, I believe, to be a good definition of a bad unit.

If you use them properly you can generally avoid most of that high strength shooting, it can still hurt them but if you manage to avoid most of it it isn't going to be as bad. If you march them straight across the board, yes they will get shot at and they will die, but that isn't because they are a bad unit, it's because they are being used badly.

You need to stick them in a transport. Battlewagon mainly, but if your meta has a large amount of terrain then you can make a case for the Trukk due to its superior speed and low points cost, as you'll be hiding it behind terrain. you then trundle across the board and cause a lot of damage.

As for fails in the Metagame, I run an army with 2 maxed out Nobz mobs in Trukks and have been to a couple of tournaments now, during these tournaments, I have only lost 1 game with that list. There are simply too many Nobz for my opponent to take them all down. Grey Knights, I can catch their dreadnoughts pretty quickly as I'm faster than everything else (I'm yet to see a Stormraven). Dark Eldar, they may be fast and pack a lot of S8 but a run a couple of squads of Lootas which down those things pretty quickly, etc, etc.

I will agree that Nobz are not as good as they used to be but when used properly Nobz can be a good unit.

Rampage wrote:If you use them properly you can generally avoid most of that high strength shooting, it can still hurt them but if you manage to avoid most of it it isn't going to be as bad. If you march them straight across the board, yes they will get shot at and they will die, but that isn't because they are a bad unit, it's because they are being used badly.

You need to stick them in a transport. Battlewagon mainly, but if your meta has a large amount of terrain then you can make a case for the Trukk due to its superior speed and low points cost, as you'll be hiding it behind terrain. you then trundle across the board and cause a lot of damage.

As for fails in the Metagame, I run an army with 2 maxed out Nobz mobs in Trukks and have been to a couple of tournaments now, during these tournaments, I have only lost 1 game with that list. There are simply too many Nobz for my opponent to take them all down. Grey Knights, I can catch their dreadnoughts pretty quickly as I'm faster than everything else (I'm yet to see a Stormraven). Dark Eldar, they may be fast and pack a lot of S8 but a run a couple of squads of Lootas which down those things pretty quickly, etc, etc.

I will agree that Nobz are not as good as they used to be but when used properly Nobz can be a good unit.

Sure, when you can outplay your opponent then they are a good unit. When your opponent is on your level or better they become bad.

Eidolon wrote:

Sure, when you can outplay your opponent then they are a good unit. When your opponent is on your level or better they become bad.

Is it really that easy to get them on foot and hose them with strength 8 fire?

MFletch wrote:

Rampage wrote:Well yeah, they're part of it, as they can churn out a heck of a lot of S8 shooting with their contribution of the Twin-Linked Autocannon dreads with Psybolt, etc. The Force Weapons are another reason, but as they are mainly located in the Grey Knights book they are not as common as the S8 problem.

The s8 shooting is probably aimed at your battlewagons, say. Whereas to use your nobs you must plan to charge into cc, unless you are using them to shoot or just as an objective sitter. So you charge in to virtually any grey knight unit, are hit first and every wound instant kills :(

Luckily S8 is really bad at doing anything to battlewagons. If they shoot battlewagons instead of nobz, your opponent doesn't know what he is doing.

Eidolon wrote:Not really, they were bad before grey knights came out. Just another nail in the coffin for nobs. You put so many points in a single unit, that dies to the high strength shooting that any good army list puts out, and it fails in the regular competitive metagame. Which, I believe, to be a good definition of a bad unit.

Interesting definition you've got there. So the entire Grey Knight army is full of bad units? I mean, purifiers die just as fast as the exact same amount of points in nobz, when shot at by those S8 weapons. They must be the definition of a bad unit.

Nobz actually have an invulnerable save against Krak missiles, whereas Purifiers do not.

I actually constructed a couple of test lists to mathhammer for a turn of shooting, and I came up with a Razorback Purifier list at 2000 pts and set it against a BW rush list w/ Nobz, and determined that if you set the rending weapons against the oncoming BW loaded with Nobz, on average you could pop at least one, targeting the Nob's wagon, you could wait til the Nobz were dismounted and wipe out a small unit of Nobz with 3 Psyfleman Dread autocannons in one turn.

Just for ref, 3 Str 8 Autocannon dreads: .88*.83*.66*4*3 = 5.78 instakill wounds. What's a typical 6 man Nob squad cost? 2 PKs, 50 pts, Waagh Banner, 15 pts, PB 30, 25 a model at 6 so something like 250 points of damage in a turn from 3 Dreads. That's just horrendous, and super cost effective. So an effective strat would be to target the BW carrying a Nob squad with AT and missile launcher the gak out of the squad that drops for major pointz.

Not saying it's destined to happen or anything, but it's technically plausible that at high point values you could pop a wagon and drop a unit of Nobz with Psydreads in one turn of shooting. Or their equivalent, whatever. Longfangs would be a good example.

The real limitation of Nobz is they have nowhere near the shooting capability as GKs, they put all their eggs in one basket, die easily to strength 8 shooting, and they usually have a hidden cost expanding beyond their base cost, e.g. Painboy, Power Klaws do the most damage. If he gets past the ablative wounds and kills a couple of Power Klaw Nobz, that's like 50 points per model. That's intense.

Keep in mind GKs can shoot and do CC. If we're talking about a shooty army, you don't have to spend very much for the cost-effective toughness of a 4T/3+ model. How much do they spend for that toughness? Nothing. Peanuts compared to what a Nobz unit costs for comparative toughness in CC, and they can still get wiped out by Force Weapons or Hammers. By contrast, compare the relative rarity (and expense) of AP3 weapons.

Jidmah wrote:

MFletch wrote:

Rampage wrote:Well yeah, they're part of it, as they can churn out a heck of a lot of S8 shooting with their contribution of the Twin-Linked Autocannon dreads with Psybolt, etc. The Force Weapons are another reason, but as they are mainly located in the Grey Knights book they are not as common as the S8 problem.

The s8 shooting is probably aimed at your battlewagons, say. Whereas to use your nobs you must plan to charge into cc, unless you are using them to shoot or just as an objective sitter. So you charge in to virtually any grey knight unit, are hit first and every wound instant kills :(

Luckily S8 is really bad at doing anything to battlewagons. If they shoot battlewagons instead of nobz, your opponent doesn't know what he is doing.

Well, you have ignored my point.
Firstly battlewagons have a small front side, unless you have modelled the wagon yourself, so side shots are not as hard as ork players make out, you might as well shoot through cover to a side you can hardly see as the kff gives them a cover save in any case.

My actual point, if you wanted to know , was that you can ignore nobs because what are they going to do to grey knights? Will they charge Grey knights, as the nobs will die, or try to shoot out which may be ok I suppose.
Which is why st8 might as well aim at something that is a threat rather than a unit that can be dealt with in cc.

Unless it's a Purifier Squad, a Nobz squad with a couple of Power Klaws should butcher Grey Knights.

You could basically wipe out a 5 man squad if two Power Klaw Nobs struck them.

MFletch wrote:

Jidmah wrote:

MFletch wrote:

Rampage wrote:Well yeah, they're part of it, as they can churn out a heck of a lot of S8 shooting with their contribution of the Twin-Linked Autocannon dreads with Psybolt, etc. The Force Weapons are another reason, but as they are mainly located in the Grey Knights book they are not as common as the S8 problem.

The s8 shooting is probably aimed at your battlewagons, say. Whereas to use your nobs you must plan to charge into cc, unless you are using them to shoot or just as an objective sitter. So you charge in to virtually any grey knight unit, are hit first and every wound instant kills :(

Luckily S8 is really bad at doing anything to battlewagons. If they shoot battlewagons instead of nobz, your opponent doesn't know what he is doing.

Well, you have ignored my point.
Firstly battlewagons have a small front side, unless you have modelled the wagon yourself, so side shots are not as hard as ork players make out, you might as well shoot through cover to a side you can hardly see as the kff gives them a cover save in any case.

You can't shoot a wagon if there is another wagon in front of it and an table edge on the other side. Even with small fronts, no one should be ever able to shoot more than one wagons side armor without a 3+ save. If you are lucky, you have some LOS blocking terrain that can hide the one exposed side as well, but I've found that to be a rare occurrence.
If you go first, you can move your wagons in such a way that the most dangerous anti-tank can only hit your front. If you go second you can either refuse flank some of the anti-tank and leave it out of range if it is spread across the deployment zone or deploy facing it if it's clustered. Either way, any non-fast vehicle is going to have a hard time getting into a side of an actual valuable wagon before you've done your second turn. After that, you really should care less about your opponent shooting battlewagons.

My actual point, if you wanted to know , was that you can ignore nobs because what are they going to do to grey knights? Will they charge Grey knights, as the nobs will die, or try to shoot out which may be ok I suppose.
Which is why st8 might as well aim at something that is a threat rather than a unit that can be dealt with in cc.

Nobz will tear up any power-armored greyknights as well as psyflemen or any band of henchmen. Only terminators and palandins can reliably deal with nobz. Just because you can instant death a few of them does not make you win combat.
If you don't believe my, just plonk down 10 purifiers and have them fight seven nobz. They will most likely lose that fight.

Ted:
Valid points, though psykannons are not exactly the best weapon to take down battlewagons, and GK are pretty much lacking any other options. In said purifier/psyback list a psycannon tends to be on the move for the first couple of turns, so you'd only get two shots out of each of them, which will each only ever make a dent into battlewagons on a roll of a six, glancing or penetrating. So you get an average of .0185 glances and .037 penetrating hits out of each shot against a KFF protected front and .0555 glances and .0555 penetrating hits from a side shot. So you need 18 psycannon sideshots to get one penetrating hit before rolling for results, meaning (on average, of course) no less than the entire GK army is required to take down the battlewagon and the nobz inside. Personally, I can live with the nobz pretty much disappearing into thin air afterwards, as this means a lot of other things have not been shot instead.