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So I was looking at the Achilles Land Raider again from FW, and realized that if you took them in an Iron Hands army and stuck some scouts in them you could have super scoring AV14 vehicles with long range anti-infantry and anti-tank guns that has IWND and is immune to lance and melta.


Am I missing something here? Why isn't this dominating the meta right now?

1. It's forgeworld, and isn't allowed everywhere.
2. It's obscenely expensive, both dollar and points wise.
3. Destroyer weapons still wreck your day.
4. Why pay big for defense when you can pay big for offense, and just blast your opponent off the board?
5. Slow
6. Mediocre to bad firepower for the points.

Don't forget that it also reduces any pen rolls by one on the damage chart as well. And has extra armour also.
If you give it schism of mars it also has a 4+ against haywire. Meaning its only proper kryptonite is stD weapons. Schism will also give its weapons tank hunter which is crazy on tl MMs.

An Achilles with schism and an extra MM is 360pts. With 5 scouts inside it is 415pts. And therein lies the problem. It has pathetic firepower for those points, even with 2 tl MMs, a single MM and a thunderfire cannon. And stD will still wreck its day, as will non melta armourbane.

Gauss, Grav and D weapons kill it just like normal, representing the three best armies in the game now that can kill them easily. It is a lot of points and money for again, minimum damage and only taking a single objective. It's too slow to help much in a Maelstrom game, and won't kill enough to make a difference in that mission. If you know you're playing Eternal War missions and forge world is allowed then it isn't bad, but it is still a big points sink.

Well by my calculations 3 Achilles Land Raiders with extra MM with 5 scouts each is 1,170pts.

If you devote the rest of your points for your army to getting rid of IK and WK then I can't think of a whole lot that could take that down.

The achilles are not super scoring (I assume you mean ObjSec). The scouts are ObjSec but as the achilles is not a dedicated transport it does not gain this rule. Thus to score objectives with ObjSec troops you will have to disembark and likely loose the unit. The achilles itself can be easily outscored by a TAC squad and will struggle to kill a spaced out TAC squad in cover before the game ends. 3 Achilles struggles in objective missions and gets dominated in maelstorm. It is an extreme build that some armies struggle to kill but most TAC armies will have answers for (as it is a lesser version of adlance high AV spam).

Achilles are fairly easy to take out. If you consider it at range then it is less durable than 2 leman russ tanks, which also has comparable or better firepower. If you consider it at short range then a single meltabomb can do the job.

An achilles costs about the same amount of pts as an imperial knight. Does a fraction of the damage and is a bit less durable against most weapons as the knight has a 4++.

Really an achilles is just good enough to justify it's points. It is one of the few land raider vehicles that is even close to the value it's points would indicate.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Don't forget that it also reduces any pen rolls by one on the damage chart as well. And has extra armour also.
If you give it schism of mars it also has a 4+ against haywire. Meaning its only proper kryptonite is stD weapons. Schism will also give its weapons tank hunter which is crazy on tl MMs.

An Achilles with schism and an extra MM is 360pts. With 5 scouts inside it is 415pts. And therein lies the problem. It has pathetic firepower for those points, even with 2 tl MMs, a single MM and a thunderfire cannon. And stD will still wreck its day, as will non melta armourbane.

Now that wyches lost their mass haywire it certainly is more resilient. But consider scourges, vanguard or breachers. Who all can tote haywire enmass. Will IWND be able to overcome 6 haywire shots a turn? Thats a 150 point unit slugging out that much. What if it's 12 haywire shots a turn, or 18?

It's a very good point. More likely to survive it but still has a very good chance at just making it disappear. Plus I completely forgot about gauss and grav as mentioned above.

Tbh, Id rather take a Typhon with ceremite for 370pts.

No half measures here.

AV14 immune to lance and melta, 4+ vs haywire is all good... but:
Scouts? Nah. Chapter master and 4 honor guard, joined to an allied DA Librarian with Power Field Generator.

Because I want a beat stick inside that thing, and 4+ invul makes it even better. Sure it's 855 points for everything, but hey, it's like really hard to kill right?

-Matt

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
Well by my calculations 3 Achilles Land Raiders with extra MM with 5 scouts each is 1,170pts.

If you devote the rest of your points for your army to getting rid of IK and WK then I can't think of a whole lot that could take that down.

Necrons would jump with joy to face an army like that. 1.1K hp in 12 hull points? And it needs to be within rapid fire range to give my vehicles a scare? Bring it on!

Because Necrons will glance it to death. I know I tried and I even put a MoF inside to try and repair it so it could potentially regain 2 hull points per turn.

One bad dice roll and a Ghost Ark wrcked it on turn 1.

Sounds good on paper but not so hot in practice.

An MSU list will also make it look foolish.

It pays a lot for AV, ignore melta/lance. But the most potent anti-vehicle weaponry nowadays simply ignores AV and is not melta/lance. And is way cheaper. Furthermore, your firepower is very poor for the points. Means many armies don't even need to kill it and can simply ignore and run around scoring points.

It'd be somewhat fine if it costed like a regular landraider.

It's still very much killable with Str 10, Armorbane (it only ignores melta!), Str D, Gauss, Grav, or the age old solution of a carnifex stampede.

 Kain wrote:
It's still very much killable with Str 10, Armorbane (it only ignores melta!), Str D, Gauss, Grav, or the age old solution of a carnifex stampede.

Scourges with Haywire blaster can also make short work of it.

Sorry. Thought I stumbled upon some gold there. I guess its too expensive to be used in practice.

 Erik_Morkai wrote:

 Kain wrote:
It's still very much killable with Str 10, Armorbane (it only ignores melta!), Str D, Gauss, Grav, or the age old solution of a carnifex stampede.

Scourges with Haywire blaster can also make short work of it.

Not that short of work. 4 hull points, with the ability to buy a 4+ ignore haywire and a you can always throw a power field in it for a 4+ invul.
3+ to hit, 2+ to damage, 4+ to ignore haywire, 4+ invul. Every 7.2 shots is 1 hull point. You need on average 28.8 shots to drop it. If you take it as iron hands, it also gets IWND.
I run a fair bit of haywire in my DE (ususally 12 haywire blasters + ~4 haywire grenades).
Needing 3 turns of full fire to kill it is a little daunting. I think I'd have to just ignore it, and take the hits from the thunderfire cannon.

But the real problem is GRAV. Even with the invul, you're still likely to get wrecked in a single volley from 5 grav centurions.
Necrons need 72 gauss shots to drop it in a single round, which isn't really all that many.

Hopefully the upcoming marine codex will neuter the grav centurion just a little. Give us a reason to build them with lascannons.

-Matt