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So my conclusion so far points me to no.

Let me explain. Haywire blasters have a job and they do the job fairly well. 24" range on a jump troop that move 12" and can shoot a vehicle down. Cover saves or even inv. saves are an issue however as are getting mostly glances rather than penetrating hits and often needing more firepower. Against vehicles haywire is actually pretty decent even on scourge.

My issue however is that half of the armies i face don't even really have much in the way of vehicles or buildings with armor facings. So half the time it's pretty good and the other half the time it's worse than useless as it takes up points and can only really do a str 4 ap 4 shot per haywire blaster and can be laughed off the board. In fact in games without enemy vehicles or enemy buildings they are so useless that having hellions would probably do more for me and as we all know they're like the worst unit dark eldar have.

In fact this has gotten so bad in games where i face no vehicles that i'm thinking of taking out the haywire blasters and putting blasters in their place or heat lances or just about anything more useful that fills a similar role. I mean i have 2 units of haywire blasters which at their cheapest cost 120 pts a piece for scourge squads. About 250 pts of wasted potential is huge in a 1500 to 1750 points game if i am playing one. Against armies where we fight an uphill battle as dark eldar this can really hurt our chances of winning.

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So the other options are heat lance which are actually pretty decent on bikes which can jump away after shooting or just go into melee with all the cluster caltrops to finish off a critically wounded vehicle. Heat lance are also good on scourge deepstriking if they do it with an HQ unit (gives you the half range melta and generally kills whatever vehicle it gets near). Probably would be a waste of points however to take more than one but even 2 HQ attached to 2 heat lance scourge units might be ok in bigger games. Even without vehicles the str 6 ap 1 is a bit shabby but not absolutely useless. Not as much utility as a blaster but much more than a haywire blaster.

Blasters also seem ok as they have more utility. The ap 2 is alright and pretty good in some cases. The str 8 causes instant death where it's so badly needed at times. It can hurt monsters and do ok damage to vehicles too and have only slightly shorter range than the haywire.

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Anyway what do you guys think. What are your opinions on haywire whether worth it or not? As i said i'm starting to very much lean towards not.

This just sounds like a personal meta situation. Taking the best gun in the game for killing vehicles won't do anything if your opponents don't have vehicles for it to kill, but that doesn't make it a bad weapon. Haywire blasters are the best gun for killing vehicles reliably (as you can do it from safe ranges both from the table or off deep strike). The heat lance is less reliable for hurting vehciles (as you have to make it to 6" range for the melta rule to be a functional anti-tank weapon) but in exchange has more versatility for targets to shoot at.

Haywire is the best way to remove vehicles. A pack of 5 scourge with haywire blasters can reliably take down a 3 hp vehicle when they deep strike. However vehicles are not seeing that much use these days. Neither Eldar or tau play them, marine lists only play them half the time. You are very likely to end up with a unit doing nothing. I would say heat lances are better for the current meta as they can dish out the wounds against monstrous creatures that are everywhere. If you want to risk it you can deep strike within 6" and have a 1\3 chance of a direct hit. Not too bad.

Pretty sure half range melta is 9" for heat lance because it is 18" but no big. It's slightly more convenient. Wielding them on bikes and scourge i should have more than enough possibilities for some to go off at half range.

Pretty sure you guys have helped convince me that haywire isn't the way to go or at least not in my store's meta.

So far i've faced a tau with no vehicles (super hardcore list multiple times and he's a power gamer), one tau with vehicles (only once but had enough AT), imperial guard with tanks (didn't have enough AT actually), DKoK (had just enough AT against them but only needed it to take out 2 structures), orks (had enough AT but didn't need so much), chaos space marines (had just enough AT against one guy 2 separate times and not enough vs the other which only took a knight), nids with genestealer cult allies (no vehicles whatsoever), space wolves (just one drop pod i think), space marines (i think only a drop pod and one rhino), death watch (a flyer and some drop pods but didn't need that much AT as they weren't a huge threat), blood angels (not many vehicles i think), dark angels (not many vehicles i think).

As i said i'm mixed. I may even be facing vehicles 75% of the time. Sometimes they have too many vehicles and others they have enough and sometimes none at all but in the games with none such as the tau or space wolves player i am so hopelessly outmatched in power level that having haywire scourge makes it just that much harder.

I like them against those things you just really need to glance a couple of times to eliminate- things like Land Raiders, Obsec Drop Pods and the odd deep-struck Dreadnaught can be a real pain at times.
I also like Heat Lance, but a bad scatter means they don't do much on Deep Strike. I'm actually surprised at times by how resilient Scourges can be, the 6++ or 4+ Armour can be good on occasion. I run three units so there's a bit of a saturation element for me.

I know of one Dark Eldar player has had great success using Blasters on his Reaver Jetbikes to give them a broad range of targets, and then 5-man squads of Kabalites in Venoms with a Blaster and a Sybarite with HWG so they can threaten pretty much anything as well.

I'd definitely give Heat Lances a go on Scourges though as they can still be effective AT, but also have a secondary role with S6 AP1 guns.

Also, don't need to deep strike them the whole time. If you've got something suitably big and scary like a Dark Artisan or Grotesquerie then deploying your H/L Scourges still gives them a 30" threat bubble and they might not get shot to pieces if you cackle maniacally every time you move your DA.

Threat saturation is a super big part of keeping DE effective for sure. Starting Scourges on the table seems risky to me though. I happen to have a regular opponent who plays a Thunderfire, makes not deep striking them seem risky... then again last game I played my reserves decided not to show up until Turn 3 and it lost me a game I was already shaky in, being on the table may have made a difference.

I feel that Dark Eldar could really benefit from a FA vehicle with some Haywire Guns.

Kind of like a Venom but with a ton of Haywire shots instead.

 Sinji wrote:
I feel that Dark Eldar could really benefit from a FA vehicle with some Haywire Guns.

Kind of like a Venom but with a ton of Haywire shots instead.

So a DE version of a piranha?

The great thing about the Haywire blaster is that you'll miss them if your opponent does bring any AV, yet if they bring no AV, it's still a str4 shot that can wound (unlike poison that is worthless against AV).

As long as you bring plenty of poison, having the Haywire isn't going to be that bad against an opponent with no AV.

I'm gonna have to challenge you there Galef, 4 S4 Ap4 shots is pretty bad, it'll ruin a vehicle, but it'll (at best) kill 4 firewarriors, it'll hurt to bring them against an infantry list I think.

I didn't say it was good, just that is isn't as worthless as Splinter weapons shooting at a tank. Plus at least 1 Scourge model will have a Carbine
If you bring Haywire Blasters and your opponent has 0 AV, then yay! for you the rest of your army has plenty of targets. Your Scourges are now fast objective grabbers
If you don't bring Haywire, Heatlances or Blasters and your opponent does have a decent amount of AV, sucks to be you.

Ah I apologize then, I must have misinterpreted your point.

 Galef wrote:
I didn't say it was good, just that is isn't as worthless as Splinter weapons shooting at a tank. Plus at least 1 Scourge model will have a Carbine
If you bring Haywire Blasters and your opponent has 0 AV, then yay! for you the rest of your army has plenty of targets. Your Scourges are now fast objective grabbers
If you don't bring Haywire, Heatlances or Blasters and your opponent does have a decent amount of AV, sucks to be you.

Actually it's pretty terrible as I'm currently finding out. I'm playing a campaign where at each points level we wright out a list and play each other with that list, I have both a Heat Lance and Haywire unit of Scourges and I'm the only player with any vehicles at the current 1000pt level, the Heat Lance lot can do a bit of damage thanks to mid strength, low AP but the Haywire Scourge are proving to be completely useless. If it looks like they're going to grab an objective they get killed off pretty easily.

Well, that's one of the basic reasons DE aren't considered competitive right now. They have to make weapon choices that are incredibly specialized, to the point that some choices are great in one game, but worthless in others.

This is just my two cents.

I run a simple DE list in my local area and I have a ton of fun with it. Kabalites in Boats, with two archons. I bring generally 1-2 squads of scourges kitted out with either 4 HB or 4 HL. Both of these weapons are very good, and it's always situation dependent. The huge amount of Dark Lance spam that I put out, combined with the deep striking scourges makes for some fun shenanigans against the players in my group. The nice thing about the scourges is the fact that they are both Jump Infantry, as well as having a 4+ and 6++ respectively. They're quite a bit more durable than the average DE unit, and I wish they had access to Combat Drugs.

Blaster is the General Purpose item and not to shabby ..Str 8 Ranged can instagib Meganobz..and lay down wounds on most MC's consistantly ..and Pen Av 13/14 reliably..SO 4 of those and give the Solarite a Carbine and a venom blade to assist in downing MC's and away you go ..

morfydd wrote:
Blaster is the General Purpose item and not to shabby ..Str 8 Ranged can instagib Meganobz..and lay down wounds on most MC's consistantly ..and Pen Av 13/14 reliably..SO 4 of those and give the Solarite a Carbine and a venom blade to assist in downing MC's and away you go ..

Blasterborn in a Venom do that job better though.

morfydd wrote:
Blaster is the General Purpose item and not to shabby ..Str 8 Ranged can instagib Meganobz..and lay down wounds on most MC's consistantly ..and Pen Av 13/14 reliably..SO 4 of those and give the Solarite a Carbine and a venom blade to assist in downing MC's and away you go ..

While I agree that Blasters are a good "all-purpose" weapon, you have to realize that so many platforms have access to them AND they are more expensive than Haywires for fragile Scourges.
If you have Blasters on Kabalites and Reavers, then Scourges need to fill a different roll. Giving them Haywire and specializing them for Anti-tank is general considered their best role.
Haywire is also only available on Scourges (oh how wonderful it would be if we could take Haywire Trueborn!)

The Scourges Deep Strike, or hide behind LOS blocking terrain turn 1. The shoot at a vehicle and if they don't kill it in the first round, your Blasters/Dark Lances from other units try to get the last HP. Scourges with Haywire can reliable kill an undamaged 3HP vehicle in 1 round, leaving your Dark light weapons to clean up on the odd turn that the Scourges whiff.
Haywire is also longer range, keeping your Scourges safer.

If you really want an all-purpose Scourge unit, than 2 Haywire/2 Blaster or Heatlances are a decent option as they can still vehicle hunt, yet have a couple AP1/2 weapons if no AV is available.