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I checked a mates Eldar Craftworld dex out briefly the other day but rather stupidly didn't check the Fast Shot rule. I've been assured it remains the same. If it hasn't, this thread is stopped dead in its tracks from this point.
If so, combining this with a Macro Cannon or Plasma Oblitorator (as brought up in a thread a month or so ago) is absolutly devestating. Combining it with both however is just insane. Also ignoring jink with these.
Now the big scary things recently are scat bikes, WKs, skittari podders, and skyhammer. All of which buildings (especially ones that ignore jink with D/highstrength-low ap very large blast weapons) are a good counter to.
Take the following list for example:
(Now when I looked at the dex, I saw nothing stating a warlock council was a non-compulsory HQ anymore, therefore allowing for a 35pt HQ tax, please do correct me if im wrong though. Also after reading reviews on the new SM dex, it appears ANY character on a bike unlocks bikes as troops, again, please correct me if I am wrong. If either of these are not the case, then a bike squad can be dropped down to a scout squad for the points needed.)

Eldar
Warlock

3 windriders
Scatters

3 windriders
Scatters

2 Dark Reapers (In Macro cannon)
1 Exarch

2 Dark Reapers (In plasma Oblitorator)
1 Exarch

Macro cannon strong point

SM
Librarian
Bike

5 bikes
2 grav

5 bikes
2 grav

Typhon heavy seige tank

Plasma Oblitorator

1847pts

That gives 8 st5 ap3 ignores jink, 12 grav, 24 st6 ap6, 1 st10 ap1 ignores cover 7" primary weapon blast (all previous at bs4), 2 st7 ap2 ignores jink 7" primary weapon bs5 blasts, and either 4 stD ap1 ignores jink 5" primary weapon bs5 blasts or 2 st10/7/5 ap1/4/6 ignores jink apocolyptic primary weapon bs5 blasts. What can survive such a thing? 4 stD supported by the grav and the Typon can take out vehicles and MCs/GMCs easily enough, whilst everything apart from the grav can deal with horde. Everything aside from the tl bolters on the bikes is lethal to well armoured troops... and jetbikes - ha! SM would either be UM for the TL goodness or Raptors for the outflanking of the grav. If flyers and FMCs stay flying, then everything else should be tabled in short order (especially if a lot of points has gone into wings of one variety or another).

Now that is just an example list to get the ball rolling, more could be included with the exclusion of the Typhon. What would you include to take extreme advantage of Fast Shot?

Now the Macro Cannon going boom is a big worry since no bubble wrap. AV15 and -1 on the pen table should help big time but multiple melta drop is still around and still pens av15 27.8% of the time from a bs4 model. But it would still leave 3 deadly 7" blasts and lots of other dangerous shots to make sure the game is still up for grabs. A void shield may be a good edition since there is controversy as to whether melta effects void shields (I'm on the fence). Even if it does, that's one shot it has absorbed.

Another idea is to have coatez in the plasma oblitorator with the second Dark Reaper squad outside and the macro cannon in a corner protecting one flank and its rear (so they can't DS out of sight/range of the coatez oblit). If any melta drop then tries to take it out, the plasma oblitorator can take them out first. Once the opponent has dropped the lot, swap coatez with the second DR squad to get back the 2 shots and ignores jink.

Taking out the Typhon and adding Coatez, an inquisitor with 3 servo skulls, 5 more bikes with 2 grav and 3 more scatbikes would allow for this to work. Also frees up 8pts.
Furthermore, the inclusion of the servo skulls means that anything within 18.5" of them is auto hit by the centre st10 ap1 of the apocolyptic blast (12" of the servo skull + 7.5" into the 10" blast - 1" max scatter (d6 - bs5)), or within 18" and 16" of the oblitorator or stD blasts respectively. Realistically you can add an inch on as it will only scatter at all on a 6.
This build is probably stronger due to the coatez defence + servo skulls + more scoring units, but will not be allowed in tournaments that restrict you to only 2 detachments (word on the street is that major tourneys are opening up to more than 2).

What other builds take advantage of the fast shot? What other strengths/weaknesses are there that I have overlooked that you see? What would you do against it if you came across it with your tourney list? Is the Dark Reaper Macro cannon/Plasma Oblitorator combo a good one in your eyes?

Of course there is also the disadvantage that some tourneys disallow fortifications.

Eddited for incorrect type of 'there'. BAH!

Looks good on paper, but you don't have a lot to engage MSU, and even less to go up against anything out of line of sight.
Also, you don't have enough that ignores cover.
IMO, go with just a single macro cannon, and spend the rest on normal troops.

Toward the start of 7ed I had thought this would be a good combo. At that time this was actually even stronger for the most part as serpents combined better with the strong point and made significantly more durable support. Also there was a lot less D weapons and haywire.

I played some pretty tame elysian, SoB, and DKoK assault brigade lists against it while having my brother cheese it up as much as we could think with this combo and any additions we could think of. What I found out is that it rarely gets to fire more than 1 turn. I blew it up 3 games on the first turn and 2 games on the second turn. (a couple of those games we tried coteaz and a vindicare shooting the gun).

The problems are;
1) The extra shot has to target the same unit as all the other shots. MSU makes this thing look silly with a ~600 pts low durability, huge target killing ~70-100 pts a turn.
2) The gun is too low to the ground. Everything that this thing shoots at will get cover saves. The worst part was when a turn of shooting bounced off of a a unit of DKoK siege regiment deathriders on the last testing of this combo. It looks so good until you realize everything is getting cover saves against it the majority of the time. Probably the worst part of our tests was when 2 SoB dom units were closing in and the gun could only kill one of their transports thus allowing both squads to close and shoot the gun with 8 melta shots. Blew it up pretty easily and still cost way less than the strongpoint.
3) It is immobile and so on a decent board it often finds itself with LoS blocked to a significant part of the board. The more you position to avoid this the more you mess up your deployment as the thing is so dang big.
4) CWE with fast shot seems like a good mix however you quickly realized that your 600 pts unit with takes another 600 pts of CWE to properly support or it gets blown sky high. The strongpoint worked a lot better combined with a vindicare assassin for ignore cover and a huge BS to reduce scatter with IG units to bubble wrap and setup artillery around it. Another fun combo would be a unit of khorne daemonkin to collect blood tithe from the shots. Still too expensive for what you get but hey.

It is an interesting gimmick that could work on less experienced players or lists that don't show up to every game ready to kill an imperial knight or two. Unfortunately, I always do and anybody I help make lists for also does.

Glad to know it's been tried out extensively. Thanks for the feedback Ansacs. Also thanks for the suggestions HawiiMatt.

Just a few quick questions though.
-Did you try it out with servo skulls? Being able to place 2 10" blasts wherever you want as long as the centre point is over the same unit and the same again with 2 7" blasts, should mean that far more than 1 unit is hit with the blasts surely?
-Did you try it combined with a coatez oblit to stop any melta drop? If an opponents counter to a knight is anything to do with DS, this should prevent that being used against the Macro Cannon. Haywire is also useless against it. That leaves lances and D. Or mass st9/10 shots.
Did units taking 2 st10 ap1 or 4 stD ap1 shots each somewhat counter the cover save? Did you have any other ignores cover (like a Typhon) to get rid of those pesky units hugging a 2+ cover?

Your conclusion that the cover and LoS proved a huge problem sure does indicate an ignore cover Vindicare seems the way to go.

One more thing to consider: with a lot of future tourney lists probably including drop haywire/melta, scatbikes, WKs, grav etc. Then this would throw a spanner in their works right? As in a tournament you can't change your list half way through, and if your lists AT isn't long range high strength weapons or lances - you're screwed due to coatez dealing with the melta and buildings ignoring haywire and grav.

Since all you care about is the exarch and since you are struggling to find an HQ, I would think the Morgan Ra would solve both problems. Drop a reaper squad for Ra who not only has fast shot but can split fire.

That would seem to improve your efficiency considerably

serathnal wrote:
Since all you care about is the exarch and since you are struggling to find an HQ, I would think the Morgan Ra would solve both problems. Drop a reaper squad for Ra who not only has fast shot but can split fire.

That would seem to improve your efficiency considerably

That. Is. Excellent!

Poly Ranger wrote:

serathnal wrote:
Since all you care about is the exarch and since you are struggling to find an HQ, I would think the Morgan Ra would solve both problems. Drop a reaper squad for Ra who not only has fast shot but can split fire.

That would seem to improve your efficiency considerably

That. Is. Excellent!

Except he doesn't have fast shot. He has the ability to fire the Maugetar twice, so you get 8 S6 shots out of him.
He does have split fire though, so he can make the exarch target a different unit than the rest of his squad.

Personally, I'd go with a fortress of redemption. Two squads of dark reapers w/exarchs to double fire the S9 AP3 indirect firing blast, and two twin-linked S9 AP2 skyfire interceptor shots.
Add a cheap banshee squad who can disembark and charge anyone who gets too close, and they can fire the 4 heavy bolters until the enemy closes in.
Fortress is big enough to provide good cover for the wraith knight(s), and jet bikes can jump shoot jump from behind it, up to the battlements, and then back behind it again.
Even warwalkers can play the peek-a-boo pop out shoot and duck behind the fortress again (battle focus, with star engines is a 9" run after shooting).

Ah that's a pity.

Now you put it that way - fortress of redemption seems made for Eldar!

Poly Ranger wrote:Glad to know it's been tried out extensively. Thanks for the feedback Ansacs. Also thanks for the suggestions HawiiMatt.

No problem. It was an interesting combo so we wanted to try it.

Poly Ranger wrote:-Did you try it out with servo skulls? Being able to place 2 10" blasts wherever you want as long as the centre point is over the same unit and the same again with 2 7" blasts, should mean that far more than 1 unit is hit with the blasts surely?

We tried servo skulls. The problem is that they don't actually make much difference as at the time we used a Maugen Ra when he had fast shot to pull this off. So the template already didn't scatter the 1 turn of shooting it usually got. The lack of scatter was actually somewhat of a problem with the 10" blasts as I just spaced my units out so that one unit at a time could be hit. Depending on the army I was playing I would essentially space out a bunch of mobile threats, have long range stuff behind an ADL with a get back into the fight order available (2+ cover bounces these off with little problem).

This sort of thing is a case of on paper it looks great. It is a lot of damage to put out. However when you play an actual game you find that having 60% of your pts tied into direct fire units that either cannot move or whose range shrinks to 24" when they move means you opponent can very easily duck out of LoS, claim all the objectives, and will almost always have a good cover save. When my brother combined several heavy hitters (a baneblade and this macro cannon combo) against my soft SoB list with only 2 dom units, no long range firepower, and a knight lancer; I was able to drive the doms right up into the strongpoint, blow it up, and then use the anex to block LoS to the baneblade. I could then just dart from LoS blocker to LoS blocker for 2 turns after that and even managed to trap the baneblade between a knight lancer charge and 2 units of doms turn 4. That is the unpleasant aspect of big fortifications, they give your opponent LoS blockers and 3+ cover saves to use against you.

Poly Ranger wrote:-Did you try it combined with a coatez oblit to stop any melta drop? If an opponents counter to a knight is anything to do with DS, this should prevent that being used against the Macro Cannon. Haywire is also useless against it. That leaves lances and D. Or mass st9/10 shots.
Did units taking 2 st10 ap1 or 4 stD ap1 shots each somewhat counter the cover save? Did you have any other ignores cover (like a Typhon) to get rid of those pesky units hugging a 2+ cover?

Haywire does a great job against buildings. A large building (aka the macrocannon part of the strongpoint) has 5 HP according to pg 383 of the BRB. This means it is very easy to glance it down to a total collapse with things like haywire which don't care about AV. Total collapse is also usually the result you want as it leaves a LoS blocker in the middle of the opponent's deployment zone to screen your unit from retaliation.

IMO regular DSing melta is a joke. You have little to no chance for your melta to land in range, hit, pen, etc. My elysians are the only army I bother with this gimmick anymore as they have locator beacons all of the army for no scatter DS. I put my melta on units that can either move 12" a turn, scout, infiltrate, or Drop Pods sometimes. I also have moved away from melta with a lot of units. Haywire, D weapons, tank hunter lascannons, tank hunters earthshaker heavy artillery, and heavy artillery medusa bastion breacher shells are the methods I tend to use to take down high AV targets.

Also remember with big blasts you cannot touch any of your own models. I found it very easy to move right on top of the opponent's fortifications and thus not be a valid target for their big blasts.

Poly Ranger wrote:Your conclusion that the cover and LoS proved a huge problem sure does indicate an ignore cover Vindicare seems the way to go.

The vindicare worked a lot better overall. There has a better alliance level so psychic powers could be shared, IoM is much better suited to being immobile around a large fortification than CWE who usually prefer to shimmy about the board dancing out of LoS and range of your stuff, and cover saves were a serious concern.

Poly Ranger wrote:One more thing to consider: with a lot of future tourney lists probably including drop haywire/melta, scatbikes, WKs, grav etc. Then this would throw a spanner in their works right? As in a tournament you can't change your list half way through, and if your lists AT isn't long range high strength weapons or lances - you're screwed due to coatez dealing with the melta and buildings ignoring haywire and grav.

Not particularly. Most drop haywire doesn't have to be within 12" to be effective. Even if it does and you happened to bring coteaz what will you really accomplish it the opponent is willy enough to DS on your own fortification. You will not be able to target them as you would have to hit your own model. As for wraithknights...they have 2 36" range D cannons. It kills the strongpoint vastly easier than the strongpoint can kill it, heck the opponent can always fight from reserves if he thinks you will get him.

Building don't ignore haywire and grav btw. Grav just doesn't get the extra HP from immobilize result stacking. Haywire is also specifically mentioned on pg 384 BRB as working on buildings.

Some excellent points. Thank you for thouroughly answering each question posed. So it does seem like a paper only strength.
Its always nice to hear the issues brought up when things like this have been put into play. Especially when tested multiple times as you have.
I have never known that haywire affects buildings. Tbf the only time I've come across haywire properly is my own use of it in my ex-necron courts (I say ex as the B*stards have taken the option of my favourite unit away from me!). Played DE 3 times ever and never played skittari yet. So cheers for that info... I can think of at least 2 occasions straight off when this would have really helped me with my old stormtek-veiltek courts.
Dominions are indeed scary for things such as this. For other weapons I wouldn't be too worried about tank hunter unless it is on st10 weapons as even st9 needs a 6 just to glance. Any armourbane though and especially D and as you say - haywire would be very dangerous.

Who do you think would be better in my new plasma oblitorator (I say new as I still haven't built it yet), a vindicare, or a DR exarch then (I don't own any Eldar but do have a vindicare from an old WD somewhere)? Much cheaper than a macro cannon so not as significant an investment.
I've been thinking about a veteran renegade squad with TH inside of it. Primary weapon to give a 2d6 and pick the highest, followed by a further 2d6 and pick the highest if the first two fail. Should be reliably penning any av12 it catches in its blast. 60pts for squad with TH. What do you think?

Poly Ranger wrote:Some excellent points. Thank you for thouroughly answering each question posed. So it does seem like a paper only strength.
Its always nice to hear the issues brought up when things like this have been put into play. Especially when tested multiple times as you have.

Please don't take my word as the final verdict. It is possible that there are some tips or tricks I missed. I also thought it was a cool idea and should be powerful but it didn't pan out for us.

Poly Ranger wrote:I have never known that haywire affects buildings. Tbf the only time I've come across haywire properly is my own use of it in my ex-necron courts (I say ex as the B*stards have taken the option of my favourite unit away from me!). Played DE 3 times ever and never played skittari yet. So cheers for that info... I can think of at least 2 occasions straight off when this would have really helped me with my old stormtek-veiltek courts.

Sorry for being so late to the party. However don't forget to glance it down with warriors.

Poly Ranger wrote:Dominions are indeed scary for things such as this. For other weapons I wouldn't be too worried about tank hunter unless it is on st10 weapons as even st9 needs a 6 just to glance. Any armourbane though and especially D and as you say - haywire would be very dangerous.

When you are talking about 600 pts of stuff you can go pretty far with tank hunter Str9. Mostly I think of earthshaker heavy artillery batteries which I have used to take this down before. They are ordnance so that is roll 2d6 pick highest and reroll, so 50% chance to glance each shot with almost no chance to miss a shot.

The funny thing is if they didn't also release super heavies in the game this would be considered tough to kill. However people usually add enough anti tank to tackle a super heavy, thus this is pretty easy to kill in comparison.

Poly Ranger wrote:Who do you think would be better in my new plasma oblitorator (I say new as I still haven't built it yet), a vindicare, or a DR exarch then (I don't own any Eldar but do have a vindicare from an old WD somewhere)? Much cheaper than a macro cannon so not as significant an investment.

I think that is massively more threatening. Either would work well as either option is a pretty reasonable price tag and could get utility out of the upgrades and add ons. I really like the vindicare if you are light on ignore cover as it takes care of a lot of problematic units and the IoM armies IMO are a better match for fortifications you probably want to protect somewhat.

This could work reasonably well with CWE however I personally don't like having to stay anchored to a fortification to keep melta, haywire grenades, etc. from killing it (or worse a unit coming up fragging the unit inside and then taking the fortification over). One useful thing you could do with this is use it to give a wraithknight a 3+ cover save or block LoS to an avatar.

Poly Ranger wrote:I've been thinking about a veteran renegade squad with TH inside of it. Primary weapon to give a 2d6 and pick the highest, followed by a further 2d6 and pick the highest if the first two fail. Should be reliably penning any av12 it catches in its blast. 60pts for squad with TH. What do you think?

Actually that might be a pretty good use for it. You could even take a vox relay to buff the morale to anchor your artillery line. I am not sure how I feel about loosing access to an ADL but you could always take a purge or second CAD to get 2 fortifications.The price is pretty attractive for this entire setup as well and getting bubble wrap is no problem at all. I think I like it.