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Nightbringer

Pro:
- WS6
- Fleshbane
- Gaze of Death (ignores cover, regains lost wound)

Con:
- BS4
- Gaze of Death only 12"


Deceiver

Pro:
- BS5
- Hit & Run
- Dread
- Grand Illusion (Deceiver + D3 units redeploy - useful for units like Doomsday Arks to get LoS)

Con:
?

Transcendent C'tan

Pro:
- In the Heavy Support section instead of the crowded Elite section
- +1 Wound
- +1 Strength
- Deep Strike

Con:
- 10 points costlier
- meh special rule

Gaze of Death is by far the most powerful special rule of the lot. My vote is for Nightbringer.

is it? the average roll on a 3D6 is 10, most killworthy things have LD10.

Nightbringer by far. Gaze is incredibly powerful and depending on how you rule it in regards to cc it's always useful. The only downside is the night bringer is slow, which you can rectify by putting it in the conclave of the Burning one to give a crypt the veil. Because of that formation the tctan is useless as his deep strike isn't unique and his other rule sucks and the 1 wound and strength doesn't make up for the ap2 healing ability. The deceiver is OK, the bs is nice and if your running doomsday arks he could be more useful, you can get over his lack of speed with the conclave as well but it's less if a deathstar without the bonus ap2 attacks.

So I'd say the night bringer is the best with the deceiver being better in particular situations. And if slots for elites are a problem and you must field a ctan and your not in a decurion and you don't want to take the conclave, then the t-ctan is OK.

The average 3d6 roll is actually 10 or 11 at 12.5% each. That means that 50% of all GoDs causes at least a wound Ld10. And you even have a 25% chance of causing at least three wounds. Vs Ld 8 or 9 targets, which are still very common, the damage potential skyrockets. It is truly a great ability, seeing as it can be used even if locked in combat and can hit FMC:s without issue.

the question though, is that if you invest 240 points into a c'tan, does he do more damage in close combat or in ranged combat?

If I look at the powers most of them are large blasts and relatively high strength, and the C'tan only have 4 attacks in close combat (of which, if they hit on a 3+ and wound on a 2+, you're doing 2.22 wounds on average). The Nightbringer is only BS4 to boot while the others are BS5, so their ranged damage is better.

The Nightbringer needs to get within 12" or less of the enemy to make use of his better cc-potential, but as you said without Conclave of the burning one (which adds another 150+ points to the unit and gives you 2 pretty bleh crypteks in close combat and makes your C'tan T+1 and veil = DS) you'll have a tough time getting across the entire board without being shot up.

 Sir Arun wrote:
the question though, is that if you invest 240 points into a c'tan, does he do more damage in close combat or in ranged combat?

If I look at the powers most of them are large blasts and relatively high strength, and the C'tan only have 4 attacks in close combat (of which, if they hit on a 3+ and wound on a 2+, you're doing 2.22 wounds on average). The Nightbringer is only BS4 to boot while the others are BS5, so their ranged damage is better.

The Nightbringer needs to get within 12" or less of the enemy to make use of his better cc-potential, but as you said without Conclave of the burning one (which adds another 150+ points to the unit and gives you 2 pretty bleh crypteks in close combat and makes your C'tan T+1 and veil = DS) you'll have a tough time getting across the entire board without being shot up.

To this I would say that you can't look at the ctan in a bubble where you just sit there and wait for close combat. This is not a 1v1 battle.

You must take into account the damage they can do in all phases.

So I think the reality is that a ctan by themselves are good fire support if you march them up the field and stay in cover.
Or
You can drop a lot more points into him and put him in the Conclave of the Burning One formation and make a nice deathstar
Conclave of the Burning One - Nightbringer
The Shard also gets 5+ FNP as long as both teks are alive.

Cryptek 1
Veil of Darkness
Phase Shifter
Phylactery

Cryptek 2
Solar Thermasite - User gets +1 S to all weapons and re-rolls Saving Throw rolls of 1.
Solar Staff - Solar Pulse ability when they try to shoot you after deep striking.(may not be legal to have this with Mephrit relics)
The God Shackle - Gives C'Tan Shard +1 S/T while he's still standing.
Phase Shifter
Phylactery

At the risk of stating the obvious, "which x is the best?" doesn't make any sense without context. Best at doing what? What is the rest of the army like? What is the enemy like?

A game in which one of two or more identically or closely priced units was unambiguously "the best" would be an extremely poorly designed game.

Nightbringer is for fight.
Deceiver is for versatility.

Grand Illusion is very useful if you deploy first or you deploy second and the opponent has Scouts or Infiltrators. Suddenly moving vehicles away from Lascannons/Meltas or putting things into/out of cover is pretty great, though there will be games where it's pointless.

Hit and Run means that you can basically never be tarpitted, which is a very real threat for something big and expensive. I once had Nightbringer fight a unit of Termagants for nearly 3 whole turns thanks to some extremely bad rolling. Deceiver would have just stepped out.

However, as everyone else has said, Gaze of Death is stupid good. You might think a 50/50 wound seems bad, but given that he has other things on top (Powers, Assault viability, hard to kill), it's just gravy - gravy that often will give him a free wound back and can even get him out of an ongoing assault on his own turn. Gaze the thing you're in Assault with, shoot something nearby, charge new target).

I prefer the Nightbringer. But then again, I wouldn't bring him without the Conclave and a God Shackle. If you just want to bring a single Shard, Deciever might be better. He's better at shooting and can redeploy, so you can just hang him out in the gunline with your dudes and take potshots while charging anything that comes close.

Tactically, I prefer the Deciever, but I played him back before the last codex, so the Grand illusion + Hit & Run rules are a bit of nostagia for me.

I haven't run the conclave yet (though I plan to) and my deceiver is still unassembled at the moment, but I'll give him a fair shake too.

It definitely does matter how your meta/TO rules the Nightbringer's Gaze of Death. If they call it a shooting attack (haters don't hate - I don't believe it is but I did attend a tournament recently where it was ruled as such) then his flexibility is greatly toned down. Even there, I managed to utilize him effectively. Healing wounds cannot be understated, especially on a t7/8 platform. I think the conclave is probably the most optimal way to run him, but I've had some good success (6-1) just running him solo. Then again, that was in a wraithwing list and I had a ton of fun just rolling up MOA to get him into fun turn 1 places. Oh and for added irony, my one loss with that list was a game where the Nightbringer mauled a wraithknight, scared another one into the corner, and generally denied an entire side of the board. Definitely was not his fault I lost that one. In fact, I realized about 4 things after the game that would have caused me to win, but such is life when it's the second game you have with a list.

Outlining some neat tricks for Nightbringer if gaze is not a shooting attack:

1) you do not roll to hit
2) FMC are able to be wounded with impunity
3) apparently you can still "see" invisible units perfectly fine
4) you can target into/out of combat, or both!
5) you can run and gaze, making it anywhere from 13-18" range
6) you can gaze at something and then shoot and charge something else with his normal ability

 luke1705 wrote:
apparently you can still "see" invisible units perfectly fine

This came into my head:



I think Nightbringer works best in Conclave, Deceiver outside. Gaze of Death has a short range so having access to Deep Strike via Cryptek is a godsend (no pun intended) and you'll only need to DS once to start getting use out of the Nightbringer and into combat.

Transcendent is unfortunately past its prime.