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Want to turn them into missile launchers? That's fine too.

 admironheart wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

They're not tank hunters. That's the role of Fire Dragons.


This is why we can't have nice things, people!

Says you....I have printed GW codexes and White Dwarf articles that says otherwise back in RT and 2nd ed. THEY are difinatley infantry tank hunters.

LOOk.

Every race has a foot trooper option to fire heavy weapons. Without the need for Vehicles. That has always been that way. Fire Dragons/wraithguard are close range assault units....you don't throw devestators with meltaguns in the front line.

Devastators can't take Meltaguns. They never have been able to. They could take Multi-Meltas but most people didn't take those, they just took Grav-Cannons instead--assuming they even took Devastators instead of Centurions.

That is what you are asking. This is the Eldars Anti tank (the Reaper Launcher WAS ALWAYS the equivalent of a Missile Launcher....always in the early days WHEN the unit was created. FACT.

The sacred weapon of the Dark Reaper is the reaper launcher, a long-barrelled missile weapon that can create a blistering firestorm with a single salvo. This is not the clumsy bombardment of other races, however, but a pinpoint volley aimed for the heart. The armour-piercing starshot missiles that the reaper launchers fire have the punch to smash through the battle plate of the Traitor Legions, tear apart Tyranid carapaces, and even wreck light vehicles. Only the most heavily armoured of foes can hope to escape.

That's from the 2012 Eldar book, the only one I own.

It also has this:

Reaper Launchers
Used to deadly effect by Dark Reaper Aspect Warriors, reaper launchers fire a fusillade of small but potent armour piercing starswarm missiles. Some Dark Reapers also sport the more powerful starshot missiles, which allow them to engage enemy tanks and fortifications with impunity.

So it's not a "standard" thing. It was a specialized missile variant that actually required you to pay an additional 8 points per model for it.

If everyone else has long range foot troops with anti tank weapons...even tyranids....why don't you want elder to have it? Are you that biased?

What "long range foot troops with anti-tank weapons" does Adeptus Mechanicus have? Tau? Dark Eldar?

Even if Dark Reapers lose their ability to engage tanks(real tanks, such as Leman Russes and Land Raiders)--Eldar don't actually "lose" their ability to engage those things. They'd still have weapon platforms and Support Weapon Batteries.

sigh...

Your point about the Devs and Melta guns...IS THAT THERE IS ANOTHER UNIT THAT DOES THAT! (like Fire Dragons are for the elder)

You completely prove my point. Close Assault units are indeed different roles than long range support. Thank your!

Ok now from the earliest entries of Dark Reapers :

Dark Reapers Aspect @(c) 1994
...Their black armour is made from heavy interlocked plates and they have heavy lower leg armour to stabiles their bodies so that they can aim and fire more accurately.
The Weapon relays an enhanced targeting image into the warriors helmet via the receptor vanes, making it almost impossible for the Dark Reaper to miss.

Now their weapon:

The concept is universal, and version are produced all over the galaxy by humans, orks and elder. The most usual missile type is the krak armour penetration missile,...this missile is designed specifically to crack open heavily armoured targets and is the standard anti-vehicle missile,... also popular is the frag missile.

You CANNOT get more simple than that.....they are an anti tank unit primarily!

Dark Eldar have Scourges with 4 Dark Lances. Kabalite Trueborn can have 2 DL for every 5 models(1 unit) You can spam them to have equivalent firepower.

Tau are a different entity, They have the Crisis Guard/battlesuits for their heavy support....so no real foot troopers.

Adeptus Mech is more of a mech army with robots and has a ton of imperial soup to back them up....or actually if one is fluffy, Ad Mech is there to back up the Imperial soup.{plus they are not a separate race, just a faction unlike the elder is a whole other race with not much soup options....at least with the topic concerned}

If I don't want to Wraiths or Mech in my elder lists....Then I should be able to use a SwordWind of Aspects to make a fighting force (And I count Crimson Hunters more of a Vehicle than a foot unit)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Want to turn them into missile launchers? That's fine too.

PLEASSSSSE do!

so I suggested +3 points for the base Reaper cost.
and with the 22 Reaper launcher going to an EML (elder missile launcher) that is +3 more.

So that adds up to 33 points.....seems pretty good to me.

With a command reroll + DOOM.....my Reapers will deal an average of 3 or more damage well over 75% of the time now. That is way superior to the lackluster 3 dmg currently that takes forever to take down a landraider.

 admironheart wrote:
sigh...

Your point about the Devs and Melta guns...IS THAT THERE IS ANOTHER UNIT THAT DOES THAT! (like Fire Dragons are for the elder)

You completely prove my point. Close Assault units are indeed different roles than long range support. Thank your!

And I think you completely are failing to understand why I made the comment I did...

People didn't put Multi-Meltas on Devastators because it was an expensive option that required your units to get in close. You had better weapon options but even then, you had an entirely better unit option in the form of the Centurion Devastators.

It would be like if there was an option for a Wraithguard to have a Reaper Launcher.

Ok now from the earliest entries of Dark Reapers :

Dark Reapers Aspect @(c) 1994
...Their black armour is made from heavy interlocked plates and they have heavy lower leg armour to stabiles their bodies so that they can aim and fire more accurately.
The Weapon relays an enhanced targeting image into the warriors helmet via the receptor vanes, making it almost impossible for the Dark Reaper to miss.

Now their weapon:

The concept is universal, and version are produced all over the galaxy by humans, orks and elder. The most usual missile type is the krak armour penetration missile,...this missile is designed specifically to crack open heavily armoured targets and is the standard anti-vehicle missile,... also popular is the frag missile.

You CANNOT get more simple than that.....they are an anti tank unit primarily!

That's nice, I guess? It doesn't mean much these days though.

Dark Eldar have Scourges with 4 Dark Lances. Kabalite Trueborn can have 2 DL for every 5 models(1 unit) You can spam them to have equivalent firepower.

Do you not understand why these two statements are not the same as Dark Reapers?

Dark Reapers are a whole squad featuring their weapon with everyone having the same special rule present. It would be one thing if the Exarch was required to have the Tempest Launcher to 'mess up' the unit composition and encourage the player to actually think a bit harder about their range bands and things of that ilk.

Tau are a different entity, They have the Crisis Guard/battlesuits for their heavy support....so no real foot troopers.

Their Crisis Suits fill the same role as the Aspect Warriors do. They're highly specialized support troops.

Adeptus Mech is more of a mech army with robots and has a ton of imperial soup to back them up....or actually if one is fluffy, Ad Mech is there to back up the Imperial soup.{plus they are not a separate race, just a faction unlike the elder is a whole other race with not much soup options....at least with the topic concerned}

Which doesn't actually answer anything. It's just deflecting. Eldar are a "whole other race" with three soup options(Harlequin, Ynnari, and Dark Eldar) to throw into the mix.

Additionally, Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator Fleets operate on their own with no "Imperial Soup" present.

If I don't want to Wraiths or Mech in my elder lists....Then I should be able to use a SwordWind of Aspects to make a fighting force (And I count Crimson Hunters more of a Vehicle than a foot unit)

What does that have to do with anything? Nobody is saying you should be required to bring Wraith or Mech in your Eldar lists.

Dark Reapers need to be toned down. End of story. People whined and moaned about my damn Guard to the point where Conscripts and Commissars are unplayable, yet somehow you think you should be immune to having changes made?

If you give Reapers the Eldar missile launcher instead of their current version, you'd also need to up the points to at least 35ppm.
That's all fine and good, but it certainly makes them lose a bit of "flavor"

Then there is the modeling problem. Reapers clearly do NOT have EMLs. Their weapon is noticeably different. This could easily be fixed with a redesign in plastic which NEEDS TO FREAKING HAPPEN SOON!
But I digress.

Really, what I'd like to see is Reapers having mini versions of the EML, i.e. D3 damage instead of D6 and the secondary mode with fewer shots.
At the end of the day, Reapers are a unit that can take 3+ Launchers in an army whose other choices can have 2 max Launchers per unit (aside from War Walkers, but you pay a ton for that).

That means that if you "just give them EMLs" the buff train will have no brakes

-

Kanluwen wrote:
And I think you completely are failing to understand why I made the comment I did...

People didn't put Multi-Meltas on Devastators because it was an expensive option that required your units to get in close. You had better weapon options but even then, you had an entirely better unit option in the form of the Centurion Devastators.

It would be like if there was an option for a Wraithguard to have a Reaper Launcher.

Ok now you have it backwards. You implied that Dark Reapers don't need to hunt tanks....you said Eldar have Fire Dragons for that. Compare if I said Devestators SHOULD ONLY have heavy bolters and Auto Cannons because marines have a unit that can take Melta Guns/Plasma Guns.

It was you who are trying to take a long range anti tank unit away......I am not saying take Heavy Plasma/LasCannon/ML from Devestators.....so why are you trying to take the role Reapers have enjoyed for decades!? Just because some lame latter edition tried to revamp the fluff don't mean squat for the role the unit was created for by the Big Designers of 40K and from what the unit is currently able to do.

Dark Reapers Aspect @(c) 1994
...Their black armour is made from heavy interlocked plates and they have heavy lower leg armour to stabiles their bodies so that they can aim and fire more accurately.
The Weapon relays an enhanced targeting image into the warriors helmet via the receptor vanes, making it almost impossible for the Dark Reaper to miss.

Now their weapon:

The concept is universal, and version are produced all over the galaxy by humans, orks and elder. The most usual missile type is the krak armour penetration missile,...this missile is designed specifically to crack open heavily armoured targets and is the standard anti-vehicle missile,... also popular is the frag missile.

Galef wrote:If you give Reapers the Eldar missile launcher instead of their current version, you'd also need to up the points to at least 35ppm.
That's all fine and good, but it certainly makes them lose a bit of "flavor"

Then there is the modeling problem. Reapers clearly do NOT have EMLs. Their weapon is noticeably different

Well the models that are legal now were the ones from RT, 2nd and 3rd/4th. So the Reaper Launcher back then (a span of 3 decades) was a MISSILE LAUNCHER. Just because the kiddies now only know they were a different set of rules.....does not mean the highly sophisticated and advanced elder cannot shoot the same powerful shots out of a much smaller gun.

Maybe you should see the First Eldar Missile Launcher. It was a small and short 'barrel' with multiple firing ports.....It looks nothing like the Reaper Missile Launcher or the War Walker Missile Launcher.

Heck....I think I have like 5 or more versions of the Shuriken Cannon from jetbikes to metal, to plastic to new weird triangle thing. Same with Scatter Lasers. So if you have a hangup on how it looks.....then most of the model range which is 20+ years old should be banned with your mindset.

Since the history of the dark reaper has been coming up off and on, I glanced over my old 'dexes to see what reapers have traditionally looked like.

2nd edition, they were in fact krak/frag missile launcher carriers with a rangefinder that gave them +1 to hit and ignored the penalties normally caused by enemy models moving quickly.

3rd, I have no idea; this is the only 'dex for eldar I don't have. 4th, they have the two-shot strength 5 profile. I started playing in 5th and don't recall anyone but myself ever fielding them because strength 5 is bad against vehicles, and no one needs more ways to kill marines.

6th, they're still toting the 4th edition guns but with the option to pay 8 points to fire a single strength 8 shot instead. My understanding is that they were usable but too expensive to really be appealing next to other units. Ditto that for 7th.

Now in 8th, they're actually probably worse against vehicles than they were in 6th and 7th (as vehicles generally get saves against them, and it now takes at least 4 failed saves to kill things that used to die after 3 failed saves), but they've received a sufficient price decrease to make them appealing for their points.

So in other words, they've been capable of mixing it up with vehicles in more incarnations than they haven't. Saying that they're "meant" to be an anti-infantry unit seems inaccurate.

Not that that should necessarily have a ton of bearing on how they ought to perform in the present and future. That said, I still don't like them as d3 damage light vehicle/heavy infantry hunters.

Our basic guns and shuriken cannons are already pretty solid against heavy infantry as are, in a pinch, nearly all of our heavy weapons, most of our HQs, most of our elites, most of our fast attacks, and most of our heavy supports. You could field reapers to take on heavy infantry, and they'd do just fine at it, but so would pretty much every other unit in our codex. But those other units would tackle heavy infantry while often also being good against other targets.

As for light vehicles... there just aren't a ton of them out there. And many of them are lumped into a small number of related factions. We'd be looking at what? Most dark eldar vehicles, harlequin vehicles, vypers, anhilation barges, and land speeders? That seems too specific to be of much use in an all comers army. And again, I can take other units that will be nearly as effective against light vehicles as d3 damage reapers while also being better against other targets. Dragons and wraith guard can take down a venom at least as reliably as they take down a land raider.

If you make their damage crummy, I just don't have much motivation to take them. Especially if you always lower their strength. Sure, you get a decent number of shots for your points, but you'll barely tickle the health bar of any target you want to use your high strength against. And if you're using your lower strength shots, there's a good chance you'd be better off using a different kind of gun entirely. Especially if you drop it down to strength 4.

I really feel like we've gotten swept up in hyperbole here. Let's pause, acknowledge that missile devastators are probably overcosted and that reapers are undercosted, and then glance at how the two compare. Not in a "your unit is broken and mine isn't" kind of a way. Just a brief comparison.

Missile devs have a higher average (3.5) and max (6) damage per shot, but will roll lower than the flat 3 damage of a reaper launcher 1/3rd of the time. Marines can take (relatively) cheap ablative wounds that die before the missile devastators, but reapers can move and shoot thus allowing them to hide from alpha strikes relatively well. Frag missiles are slightly less effective against most infantry than the strength 5 reaper shot, but have a higher max damage (for you gamblers out there). Additionally, Missile devs can instead be heavy bolter devs if you're planning on using them to clear crowds. Heavy bolters being arguably better than the strength 5 shot due to the low importance AP -1 versus AP -2 against models with poor armor saves and the fact that heavy bolters get an additional shot. For tank busting, Missile devs can potentially kill anything with 12 or fewer wounds with a couple lucky shots while reapers need at least 4 wounds to go through to kill anything in the 10 to 12 wound range. You can also opt to make those missile devs lascannon devs and wound T8 targets on 3s and have slightly better AP. Reapers don't have as many options, but they can ignore to-hit penalties. Which is really great against about 3 factions and a handful of specific units and mostly useless against everything else unless you constantly shuffling them around the table for some reason.

So with all that in mind, the capabilities of reapers compared to devs seem pretty reasonable to me. It's just that the prices might need to be tweaked, the reapers could maybe stand to have their max squad size capped, and we *maybe* want to look at the reaper rangefinder again if only because it happens to be good against options that are currently popular in the meta. (Although part of me still finds it odd that people are so annoyed by the thought of popular trends in the meta having counters.)

In the current edition, 35 points apiece for 3 to 5 reapers would be pretty reasonable in my eyes. I'd be less interested in taking them if you priced them much higher that that, but I could find a use for them.

Reapers are fair and fine - if players weren't stacking the anti-targeting stuff, the "always hits on a 3+" wouldn't matter.

As always, Eldar are a counter-reaction to whatever cheese dominates the meta - as Eldar should be. Stop playing cheese, and they aren't a problem.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Reapers are fair and fine - if players weren't stacking the anti-targeting stuff, the "always hits on a 3+" wouldn't matter.

As always, Eldar are a counter-reaction to whatever cheese dominates the meta - as Eldar should be. Stop playing cheese, and they aren't a problem.

Right, because someone running Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, or Stygies should be punished for the way that Eldar and Tyranid players can stack to hit modifiers.
All of those are restricted to -1 to Hit at 12" or further. They don't get stackable benefits like Eldar Flyers(Alpha Legion and Raven Guard both only apply to infantry units and Dreadnoughts) or Tyranid units with Venomthropes nearby.

The closest to Eldar or Tyranid benefits are Stygies Sydonian Dragoons since they have a -1 to be hit thanks to their Incense and then a -1 at 12"+ thanks to being Stygies VIII, but Dragoons have always been preferred over Ballistarii because of points and other odds & ends. Now that Ballistarii(and Rangers for that matter) have lost their Precision Shots USR from their initial inception, they became even less exciting and/or interesting.

Wyldhunt wrote:6th, they're still toting the 4th edition guns but with the option to pay 8 points to fire a single strength 8 shot instead. My understanding is that they were usable but too expensive to really be appealing next to other units. Ditto that for 7th.

Now in 8th, they're actually probably worse against vehicles than they were in 6th and 7th (as vehicles generally get saves against them, and it now takes at least 4 failed saves to kill things that used to die after 3 failed saves), but they've received a sufficient price decrease to make them appealing for their points.

When did vehicles have saves prior to this edition...? The only vehicles that had saves were Skimmers and Flyers thanks to their Jink Saves(which Reaper Rangefinders negated) or those which had Invulnerable Saves(which were few and far between).

In 6th and 7th, those Starshot Missiles(the S8 AP3 missiles) were what was intended to be used against vehicles--and because of the way that Armour Penetration worked? It had a 'hard cap' as to how far it could go since you didn't get any additional dice or anything for rolling Armor Penetration. You rolled a single D6.
To use a Leman Russ as an example, you had to roll a 6 in order to do anything to a Leman Russ's front armor. 5+ to do anything to its side armor. 2+s to do anything to its rear armor.
Against Sentinels? You're rolling 2+s to do anything to them(barring the Armoured variant which was 12 on the front facing).
You then were further capped by the damage table and the fact you didn't get any real benefits unless you were AP2 or AP1(Reaper Missiles, even the Starshots, were AP3 meaning no benefits).

Reapers don't have as many options, but they can ignore to-hit penalties. Which is really great against about 3 factions and a handful of specific units and mostly useless against everything else unless you constantly shuffling them around the table for some reason.

Let's be brutally honest here. Whether or not the Devastators have "many options" is not really a big deal when most of those options don't get taken anyways.

If you have 4 different choices of sandwiches and two of those sandwiches are presented to you on moldy bread, one is good bread but has a topping that you don't like, and only one sandwich is something you like...is there really an "option" as to which sandwich you're going to pick?

Focusing too much on the idea that "X unit has options, Dark Reapers don't!" is missing the forest for the trees when X unit isn't taking those options right now anyways.

So with all that in mind, the capabilities of reapers compared to devs seem pretty reasonable to me. It's just that the prices might need to be tweaked, the reapers could maybe stand to have their max squad size capped, and we *maybe* want to look at the reaper rangefinder again if only because it happens to be good against options that are currently popular in the meta. (Although part of me still finds it odd that people are so annoyed by the thought of popular trends in the meta having counters.)

Nobody is claiming that they should be tweaked "because they counter popular trends in the meta".

People are claiming they should be tweaked because they're a powerful unit that is undercosted for what they do. If flipping Conscripts can be bumped up to the same price as a Guardsman and Commissars can be nerfed into the ground because they were "autotake options", then Dark Reapers damn well need to be changed when they fall under the same "autotake option" heading.

They don't need to be nerfed into oblivion like Commissars and Conscripts were, but let's stop pretending that being able to ignore unit survivability traits with impunity is no big deal shall we?

As I said the Range Finder should not be negating move and shoot modifiers, it should not be negating conceal/smoke/hard to target modifiers.

It should only be used vs speed modifiers like Vectored Engines and JInk and Super Sonic Flyers.

Inescapable Accuracy was worded too simply because GW has not used modifiers for over 2 decades and they are not familiar with its effects anymore.

Replace Inescapable Accur. with Reaper Range Finder entry:

This unit does not receive penalties to targets that gain modifiers based on the targets movement, speed or ability to dodge incoming shots.

The Reaper Launcher is a Heavy Weapon, subject to move and fire and terrain modifiers such as Alaitoc or the Culexus have no bearing on it.

Change that and it makes most of the problem go away.

 admironheart wrote:
As I said the Range Finder should not be negating move and shoot modifiers, it should not be negating conceal/smoke/hard to target modifiers.

It should only be used vs speed modifiers like Vectored Engines and JInk and Super Sonic Flyers.

Inescapable Accuracy was worded too simply because GW has not used modifiers for over 2 decades and they are not familiar with its effects anymore.

Replace Inescapable Accur. with Reaper Range Finder entry:

This unit does not receive penalties to targets that gain modifiers based on the targets movement, speed or ability to dodge incoming shots.

The Reaper Launcher is a Heavy Weapon, subject to move and fire and terrain modifiers such as Alaitoc or the Culexus have no bearing on it.

Change that and it makes most of the problem go away.

I appreciate what you're going for, but that rules wording doesn't actually communicate how the rule works. Does this work against dark eldar flicker fields, for instance, which are basically tossing holograms around while moving quickly enough to confuse the enemy? Does it work on the Eldar -1 to hit stratagem? And surely this should work against the lightning dodge of a succubus given that "dodge" is in the name, but it probably doesn't as that's not a "penalty." I'd definitely be open to the general idea provided it was worded in rules speak though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Reapers are fair and fine - if players weren't stacking the anti-targeting stuff, the "always hits on a 3+" wouldn't matter.

As always, Eldar are a counter-reaction to whatever cheese dominates the meta - as Eldar should be. Stop playing cheese, and they aren't a problem.

Right, because someone running Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, or Stygies should be punished for the way that Eldar and Tyranid players can stack to hit modifiers.
All of those are restricted to -1 to Hit at 12" or further. They don't get stackable benefits like Eldar Flyers(Alpha Legion and Raven Guard both only apply to infantry units and Dreadnoughts) or Tyranid units with Venomthropes nearby.

The closest to Eldar or Tyranid benefits are Stygies Sydonian Dragoons since they have a -1 to be hit thanks to their Incense and then a -1 at 12"+ thanks to being Stygies VIII, but Dragoons have always been preferred over Ballistarii because of points and other odds & ends. Now that Ballistarii(and Rangers for that matter) have lost their Precision Shots USR from their initial inception, they became even less exciting and/or interesting.

While JohnHwangDD is oversimplifying things, I do partially agree with him here. Alaitoc is hands down the most popular craftworld trait. Alpha Legion is definitely one of the most popular chaos legions. RG are probably the most popular chapter tactic with UM being taken more often mostly due to the advantages of fielding Guilliman. Having one decent unit out there that bypasses their -1 to hit gives people a small reason to consider fielding a different chapter/legion/craftworld.

As for eldar and 'nids getting stackable to-hit penalties, I'm afraid I don't see how that serves your overall point. If you dislike that those factions can stack to-hit penalties, then surely you like that there exists a unit relatively popular in the meta that counters those rules, no? Reapers ignore -1 to hit rules the way banshees and warp talons ignore overwatch shenanigans. These are useful but situational rules. It's just that they're less situational for reapers when everyone is fielding -1 to hit penalties.

 Kanluwen wrote:


When did vehicles have saves prior to this edition...? The only vehicles that had saves were Skimmers and Flyers thanks to their Jink Saves(which Reaper Rangefinders negated) or those which had Invulnerable Saves(which were few and far between).

In 6th and 7th, those Starshot Missiles(the S8 AP3 missiles) were what was intended to be used against vehicles--and because of the way that Armour Penetration worked? It had a 'hard cap' as to how far it could go since you didn't get any additional dice or anything for rolling Armor Penetration. You rolled a single D6.
To use a Leman Russ as an example, you had to roll a 6 in order to do anything to a Leman Russ's front armor. 5+ to do anything to its side armor. 2+s to do anything to its rear armor.
Against Sentinels? You're rolling 2+s to do anything to them(barring the Armoured variant which was 12 on the front facing).
You then were further capped by the damage table and the fact you didn't get any real benefits unless you were AP2 or AP1(Reaper Missiles, even the Starshots, were AP3 meaning no benefits).

I apologize if my post was unclear. You're making the same arguments I intended to. I'm saying that vehicles didn't get saves against reapers in past editions whereas they do now. And in editions where hull points were a thing, many targets were as easy to wound or easier and only required you get 2 or 3 shots through to kill. So these days, we have to get through an armor save, and we often need more wounds to go through to finish the target off. As you point out, reapers weren't generally making their targets explode, so I'm focusing on how many shots it takes to get through wounds/hull points.

So to reiterate, my point is that reapers were probably fine in 6th and 7th and that their relative ability to take down most vehicles has diminished slightly. Which is not a problem but does offer some perspective on their lethality towards certian targets.

Let's be brutally honest here. Whether or not the Devastators have "many options" is not really a big deal when most of those options don't get taken anyways.

If you have 4 different choices of sandwiches and two of those sandwiches are presented to you on moldy bread, one is good bread but has a topping that you don't like, and only one sandwich is something you like...is there really an "option" as to which sandwich you're going to pick?

Focusing too much on the idea that "X unit has options, Dark Reapers don't!" is missing the forest for the trees when X unit isn't taking those options right now anyways.

Fair point. As I prefaced my post by acknowledging that devastators were overpriced, I intended to look at the units' capabilities with the assumption that we could price them such that all their options would be relevant. Perhaps you disagree. That's fair but probably too much of a tangent for this thread. To use your metaphor, those other sandwiches might be more appealing if they were made with different, lower points bread.

Nobody is claiming that they should be tweaked "because they counter popular trends in the meta".

Politely, are they not? Ignoring to-hit modifiers is relevant against a few (4?) faction rules and a smallish group of other units. So anything with hard-to-hit, venoms, starweavers, sky weavers, land speeders, vectored engines, rangers, camo cloaks, and... probably some other things. That's a large enough spread to make the rule nice to have, but it also leaves 99% of the units in the game unaffected. Would be care about the reaper launcher as much if the factions that get -1 to hit at 12+" weren't affected? If the gun ignored FNP type rules instead (thus "punishing" Iron Hands and Death Guard instead of Raven Guard and Alpha Legion), would there be as much opposition to it?

People are claiming they should be tweaked because they're a powerful unit that is undercosted for what they do. If flipping Conscripts can be bumped up to the same price as a Guardsman and Commissars can be nerfed into the ground because they were "autotake options", then Dark Reapers damn well need to be changed when they fall under the same "autotake option" heading.

They don't need to be nerfed into oblivion like Commissars and Conscripts were, but let's stop pretending that being able to ignore unit survivability traits with impunity is no big deal shall we?

I'm absolutely fine with tweaking reapers and acknowledge that they're undercosted. Just like I did in my previous post. I'm just not sure the rangefinder specifically is that big of a deal. I'd be totally fine with changing it to just letting them move and shoot or letting them have some minor advantage against bikes/vehicles that advanced or something. I look at it like this:

When melta is popular in the meta, you think twice about running vehicle spam. When hordes are popular in the meta, you have to decide whether or not to take lascannons instead of something with horde killing ability. When reapers are popular? Maybe you give a different chapter tactic a look and consider not buying the camo-cloaks.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Reapers are fair and fine - if players weren't stacking the anti-targeting stuff, the "always hits on a 3+" wouldn't matter.

As always, Eldar are a counter-reaction to whatever cheese dominates the meta - as Eldar should be. Stop playing cheese, and they aren't a problem.

Right, because someone running Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, or Stygies should be punished for the way that Eldar and Tyranid players can stack to hit modifiers.
All of those are restricted to -1 to Hit at 12" or further. They don't get stackable benefits like Eldar Flyers(Alpha Legion and Raven Guard both only apply to infantry units and Dreadnoughts) or Tyranid units with Venomthropes nearby.

The closest to Eldar or Tyranid benefits are Stygies Sydonian Dragoons since they have a -1 to be hit thanks to their Incense and then a -1 at 12"+ thanks to being Stygies VIII, but Dragoons have always been preferred over Ballistarii because of points and other odds & ends. Now that Ballistarii(and Rangers for that matter) have lost their Precision Shots USR from their initial inception, they became even less exciting and/or interesting.

While JohnHwangDD is oversimplifying things, I do partially agree with him here. Alaitoc is hands down the most popular craftworld trait. Alpha Legion is definitely one of the most popular chaos legions. RG are probably the most popular chapter tactic with UM being taken more often mostly due to the advantages of fielding Guilliman. Having one decent unit out there that bypasses their -1 to hit gives people a small reason to consider fielding a different chapter/legion/craftworld.

Alpha Legion is popular not strictly because of the -1 to Hit but also because of the buffs it gives to Cultists and the Infiltration Stratagem.
Raven Guard are also popular because of the Infiltration Stratagem.

As for eldar and 'nids getting stackable to-hit penalties, I'm afraid I don't see how that serves your overall point. If you dislike that those factions can stack to-hit penalties, then surely you like that there exists a unit relatively popular in the meta that counters those rules, no? Reapers ignore -1 to hit rules the way banshees and warp talons ignore overwatch shenanigans. These are useful but situational rules. It's just that they're less situational for reapers when everyone is fielding -1 to hit penalties.

The issue is that you're talking about the fox being in the hen house. Reapers ignore the penalties to hit while at the same time being in the army that can stack the hell out of them.

If there were other units out there spread across every army that allowed for this to be done? It'd be a different story. As it stands, there isn't.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:


When did vehicles have saves prior to this edition...? The only vehicles that had saves were Skimmers and Flyers thanks to their Jink Saves(which Reaper Rangefinders negated) or those which had Invulnerable Saves(which were few and far between).

In 6th and 7th, those Starshot Missiles(the S8 AP3 missiles) were what was intended to be used against vehicles--and because of the way that Armour Penetration worked? It had a 'hard cap' as to how far it could go since you didn't get any additional dice or anything for rolling Armor Penetration. You rolled a single D6.
To use a Leman Russ as an example, you had to roll a 6 in order to do anything to a Leman Russ's front armor. 5+ to do anything to its side armor. 2+s to do anything to its rear armor.
Against Sentinels? You're rolling 2+s to do anything to them(barring the Armoured variant which was 12 on the front facing).
You then were further capped by the damage table and the fact you didn't get any real benefits unless you were AP2 or AP1(Reaper Missiles, even the Starshots, were AP3 meaning no benefits).

I apologize if my post was unclear. You're making the same arguments I intended to. I'm saying that vehicles didn't get saves against reapers in past editions whereas they do now. And in editions where hull points were a thing, many targets were as easy to wound or easier and only required you get 2 or 3 shots through to kill. So these days, we have to get through an armor save, and we often need more wounds to go through to finish the target off. As you point out, reapers weren't generally making their targets explode, so I'm focusing on how many shots it takes to get through wounds/hull points.

So to reiterate, my point is that reapers were probably fine in 6th and 7th and that their relative ability to take down most vehicles has diminished slightly. Which is not a problem but does offer some perspective on their lethality towards certian targets.

What's the Rend value on a Reaper Launcher's different fire modes? Because that is going to affect whether or not their "ability to take down most vehicles has diminished". If it's a rend of -2 or higher, they're able to negate basically every vehicle in the game since even a Baneblade chassis only features a 3+ save.

Previously, not much was reliably "making their targets explode" and you relied on glancing things to death when possible.

Let's be brutally honest here. Whether or not the Devastators have "many options" is not really a big deal when most of those options don't get taken anyways.

If you have 4 different choices of sandwiches and two of those sandwiches are presented to you on moldy bread, one is good bread but has a topping that you don't like, and only one sandwich is something you like...is there really an "option" as to which sandwich you're going to pick?

Focusing too much on the idea that "X unit has options, Dark Reapers don't!" is missing the forest for the trees when X unit isn't taking those options right now anyways.

Fair point. As I prefaced my post by acknowledging that devastators were overpriced, I intended to look at the units' capabilities with the assumption that we could price them such that all their options would be relevant. Perhaps you disagree. That's fair but probably too much of a tangent for this thread. To use your metaphor, those other sandwiches might be more appealing if they were made with different, lower points bread.

The issue that you're missing is that all this talk of Devastators ignores the fact that:
1) The unit has a 'dud' from the start in the form of the Devastator Sergeant. He doesn't get a Heavy Weapon. Reaper Exarchs do.
2) Devastators have no native way of ignoring the -1 to Hit modifiers, at least not for the whole unit. You can have the Sergeant use his Signum to make one model in the unit be able to ignore that modifier but that's it. Captains allow for you to reroll hit rolls, not add to them.

Nobody is claiming that they should be tweaked "because they counter popular trends in the meta".

Politely, are they not? Ignoring to-hit modifiers is relevant against a few (4?) faction rules and a smallish group of other units. So anything with hard-to-hit, venoms, starweavers, sky weavers, land speeders, vectored engines, rangers, camo cloaks, and... probably some other things. That's a large enough spread to make the rule nice to have, but it also leaves 99% of the units in the game unaffected. Would be care about the reaper launcher as much if the factions that get -1 to hit at 12+" weren't affected? If the gun ignored FNP type rules instead (thus "punishing" Iron Hands and Death Guard instead of Raven Guard and Alpha Legion), would there be as much opposition to it?

Camo Cloaks don't do to Hit modifiers for anyone but Eldar. For Marines, it grants +2 to your armor save from being in cover rather than +1(Scouts then get 2+ armor saves while in cover, not 3+s).

"Ignoring to-hit modifiers" is a hugely relevant ability. It's a thing that is intended to give units that are otherwise fragile a bit of survival tools without needing to buff up their armor saves. Being able to ignore Hard to Hit(Flakk Missiles cost Guard and all flavor of Marines a Stratagem point), being able to ignore Chapter Tactics/Forge World/Craftworld/Legion Traits(although really the only faction that gets to stack Hard to Hit with their own traits is Eldar, since Chapter Tactics/Legion Traits are restricted to Dreadnoughts and Infantry), being able to ignore unit special rules all at once is a huge flipping deal.

As it stands, Dark Reapers are effective against:
Anything with a -1 to Hit penalty from their 'racial' trait like Raven Guard, Stygies VIII, Alpha Legion, or Alaitoc.
Anything with a -1 to Hit penalty from a special rule on the unit, such as things featuring "Hard to Hit" or a similar rule.

Everyone else has to make due with just leveling out against things with multiple penalties(read: Eldar) that can be leveraged.

People are claiming they should be tweaked because they're a powerful unit that is undercosted for what they do. If flipping Conscripts can be bumped up to the same price as a Guardsman and Commissars can be nerfed into the ground because they were "autotake options", then Dark Reapers damn well need to be changed when they fall under the same "autotake option" heading.

They don't need to be nerfed into oblivion like Commissars and Conscripts were, but let's stop pretending that being able to ignore unit survivability traits with impunity is no big deal shall we?

I'm absolutely fine with tweaking reapers and acknowledge that they're undercosted. Just like I did in my previous post. I'm just not sure the rangefinder specifically is that big of a deal. I'd be totally fine with changing it to just letting them move and shoot or letting them have some minor advantage against bikes/vehicles that advanced or something. I look at it like this:
When melta is popular in the meta, you think twice about running vehicle spam. When hordes are popular in the meta, you have to decide whether or not to take lascannons instead of something with horde killing ability. When reapers are popular? Maybe you give a different chapter tactic a look and consider not buying the camo-cloaks.

Again, camo cloaks do nothing for the "to hit" penalties outside of Eldar.

The Rangefinder is literally a huge deal. Nobody else gets a similar thing at this point, especially not for free. Even if it were made a 3 CP Stratagem it might still be a bit strong.

You want to make it a 'reasonable' thing? Start spreading that kind of rule into other armies. Many of them have units where it would absolutely work, such as the Guard Hydra(which historically had a "Targeting System" that allowed its hits to ignore Jink/Hard to Hit modifiers until Cruddace kept messing with things) or the Mechanicus Onager when outfitted with the Icarus Array.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Reapers are fair and fine - if players weren't stacking the anti-targeting stuff, the "always hits on a 3+" wouldn't matter.

As always, Eldar are a counter-reaction to whatever cheese dominates the meta - as Eldar should be. Stop playing cheese, and they aren't a problem.

Oh man we are full on Eldar Apologiszm... yeah Eldar and Dark Reapers are fine thats why 5 of the top 8 of LVO were Eldar spamming Dark Reapers (That destroy armies with and without the -1 to hit trait) and Bright Lances.
Like Eldars don't have been the masters of cheese for the past editions LOL

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Reapers are fair and fine - if players weren't stacking the anti-targeting stuff, the "always hits on a 3+" wouldn't matter.

As always, Eldar are a counter-reaction to whatever cheese dominates the meta - as Eldar should be. Stop playing cheese, and they aren't a problem.

Right, because someone running Raven Guard, Alpha Legion, or Stygies should be punished for the way that Eldar and Tyranid players can stack to hit modifiers.
All of those are restricted to -1 to Hit at 12" or further. They don't get stackable benefits like Eldar Flyers(Alpha Legion and Raven Guard both only apply to infantry units and Dreadnoughts) or Tyranid units with Venomthropes nearby.

The closest to Eldar or Tyranid benefits are Stygies Sydonian Dragoons since they have a -1 to be hit thanks to their Incense and then a -1 at 12"+ thanks to being Stygies VIII, but Dragoons have always been preferred over Ballistarii because of points and other odds & ends. Now that Ballistarii(and Rangers for that matter) have lost their Precision Shots USR from their initial inception, they became even less exciting and/or interesting.

While JohnHwangDD is oversimplifying things, I do partially agree with him here. Alaitoc is hands down the most popular craftworld trait. Alpha Legion is definitely one of the most popular chaos legions. RG are probably the most popular chapter tactic with UM being taken more often mostly due to the advantages of fielding Guilliman. Having one decent unit out there that bypasses their -1 to hit gives people a small reason to consider fielding a different chapter/legion/craftworld.

As for eldar and 'nids getting stackable to-hit penalties, I'm afraid I don't see how that serves your overall point. If you dislike that those factions can stack to-hit penalties, then surely you like that there exists a unit relatively popular in the meta that counters those rules, no? Reapers ignore -1 to hit rules the way banshees and warp talons ignore overwatch shenanigans. These are useful but situational rules. It's just that they're less situational for reapers when everyone is fielding -1 to hit penalties.

Dark Reapers are destroying everything with their insane firepower for their cost. It doesn't matter if it has a -1 or not. "Yeah I'm playing agaisnt a Dark Reaper spam list, I will use White Scars Chapter Tactics that surely will help me!" No. It doesnt. The "always hit on a 3+" is just the cherry on top.

Eldar have always been a good army. The rest of you need to learn to play smarter against them. In general, that means taking a LOT more cheap bodies.

You guys playing Rocks, need to stop whining about Paper being awesome. Buy a BRAND NEW Scissors army from GW, or STFU.

Yeah because Eldars arent one of the best anti horde armies of the game with their high number of shoots per point Those sexy 20-man guardian bloobs deepstriking in front of you.

JohnHwangDD, normally I don't know if you are trolling other people here or you genuinely believe what you wrote here and in other threads.

He's a troll. I ignored him a long time ago.

I'm no more a troll than Kan or Martel or the other "nerf Eldars". People who constantly whine about Eldars need to Git Gud and Learn To Play.

This being the "Proposed Rules" section, if you (general sense) don't think Eldar need fixing, it is probably best to move on along and perhaps not post in this thread.

IF you (general sense) feel the need to post, make sure to do so within the bounds of the few rules we have here.

Specifically RULE #1.

I really want to block Johny (because obvious troll is obvious) but their avatar is so nice to look at I can't bring myself to do it...

So feeding the trolls, if 500+ tournament players can't crack the dark reaper code, knowing that they were going to be facing reaper spam, I'm pretty sure the answer isn't "git gud" but maybe john knows something we don't...

Overall, I think Reapers could be 3 pts. more expensive. 30 is a good round number for their little T3 butts. They are pretty scary, but they are far from hard to kill.

On the flip side of things, I think Devastators with Missile Launchers or Lascannons shouldn't be more than 35 pts. Another 3 pt. shift that would really help out without getting too crazy.

one problem with the dark reapers "ignore all targeting penalties" is it makes it ahrder for GW to produce in the future a balanced faction that "dodge tanks"

one that is lightly armored, and low toughness but makes up for this by being really hard to hit.

Have you guys that say reapers aren't hard to kill ever played against them competitively?

An opponent worth their dice won't let you shoot them before they shoot you so in order to engage you have to survive their alpha. Next you need to be able to engage at 36" at least, their 3+ should be a 2+.

The t3 is the least of your worries. It's the cover and the minuses to hit and the really good eldar powers that make them hard to kill. They synergize really well with the tools available to eldar players.

Webway hides 2 units of them, a serpent hides the other unit. The webway ones pop out at optimal range of their target and melt it. The other unit pops out of the serpent and kills you, bonus points if your opponent is smart enough to run them as a ynarri detachment and word of phoenix them for another round of shooting.

They are bubble wrapped with -2 to hit rangers so no deepstrike for you. Many armies do not have access to weapons that can deal with a 2+, -1 to hit infantry at 36+ inches (after surviving alpha from them because your biggest threat to them should be priority 1) regardless of the toughness. Conceal one unit so now you're -2 to hit it, strat to make the other unit -2 to hit (I think it's -1 to hit it, they have some strat that makes me not want to shoot the second unit) and hopefully they've removed the threat closest to their ynarii unit to keep that one alive.

At least that's the way they are played against me. Hell I've have the ynarii one webway portaled on top of a fortification and then move, shoot, moved into the fort meaning I can't shoot at them for 2 turns (webway my turn 1, in the fortress my turn 2).

Start throwing guides, dooms and WoP around and an OP unit turns into a "I'm not playing against those again" unit.

 Kanluwen wrote:

The issue is that you're talking about the fox being in the hen house. Reapers ignore the penalties to hit while at the same time being in the army that can stack the hell out of them.

If there were other units out there spread across every army that allowed for this to be done? It'd be a different story. As it stands, there isn't.

So what you're saying is that it's a good thing the rangefinder exists to help counter those occassional armies that can really stack to hit penalties, and it would be great if we spread a similar rule to other factions? Sounds good to me! ;D

 Kanluwen wrote:

As it stands, Dark Reapers are effective against:
Anything with a -1 to Hit penalty from their 'racial' trait like Raven Guard, Stygies VIII, Alpha Legion, or Alaitoc.
Anything with a -1 to Hit penalty from a special rule on the unit, such as things featuring "Hard to Hit" or a similar rule.

Everyone else has to make due with just leveling out against things with multiple penalties(read: Eldar) that can be leveraged.

Sure. But would you say that all those things combined make up more or less than 10% of the units you'll see on the table? Let's say it's right around 10% and assume for simplicity's sake that most such units only have a -1 to hit as stacking penalties are mostly an eldar thing. That would mean that against 1/10th of the units you go up against, reapers will hit one extra time for every 6 shots they fire at just shy of 30 points apiece. So for every 162 points of reapers you take, you'll land 4 strength 8 hits instead of 3 against 1/10th of the targets you're likely to face. That just doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me. But again, I'm not married to the rangefinder, and I'm in the "nerf reapers slightly" camp.

Also, while it stinks that marines (and chaos marines?) have vehicles that don't benefit from their chapter tactics, this actually means that the reaper rangefinder is even less relevant against those armies. Sure, the reapers will still have a leg up against your little guys, but the strength 8 shot will be performing basically the same against your rhinos, predators, etc.

You want to make it a 'reasonable' thing? Start spreading that kind of rule into other armies. Many of them have units where it would absolutely work, such as the Guard Hydra(which historically had a "Targeting System" that allowed its hits to ignore Jink/Hard to Hit modifiers until Cruddace kept messing with things) or the Mechanicus Onager when outfitted with the Icarus Array.

Sounds good to me. Fluffy. Provides more counters to various penalty-providing rules. Let's do it.

What's the Rend value on a Reaper Launcher's different fire modes? Because that is going to affect whether or not their "ability to take down most vehicles has diminished". If it's a rend of -2 or higher, they're able to negate basically every vehicle in the game since even a Baneblade chassis only features a 3+ save.

Previously, not much was reliably "making their targets explode" and you relied on glancing things to death when possible.

It's -2, which means most vehicles get a 5+ against it. Which means you'll ignore 1/3rd of the wounds I toss your way. A rhino takes 4 unsaved wounds for reapers to kill, so I'lll need to do about 5 or 6 wounds to you to take down that rhino. My point was that reapers did not rely on making things explode and thus had to glance things to death. Which they could do more easily than they can kill the same targets now. Which is fine. My only point in bringing this up was to point out that their offensive power hasn't actually gone up all that much (though it has increased as a result of them getting cheaper). I'm definitely not saying they're trash. I'm just saying they weren't evaporating people in tournaments in the past, and now they actually have to work a little harder to take down a heavier target.

The issue that you're missing is that all this talk of Devastators ignores the fact that:
1) The unit has a 'dud' from the start in the form of the Devastator Sergeant. He doesn't get a Heavy Weapon. Reaper Exarchs do.
2) Devastators have no native way of ignoring the -1 to Hit modifiers, at least not for the whole unit. You can have the Sergeant use his Signum to make one model in the unit be able to ignore that modifier but that's it. Captains allow for you to reroll hit rolls, not add to them.

So let me preface this by reiterating that I do in fact believe devastators are too expensive and reapers are too cheap.
1) I'm not forgetting about him.You're right that he doesn't bring any offensive power to the table, and I do personally prefer an exarch to a sargeant and more reaper launchers rather than more ablative wounds. That said, I'm fairly sure the sargeant is less expensive than the exarch (even though the exarch is free for some reason), and there is an advantage to being able to sprinkle in some relatively cheap ablative wounds, especially if one of those wounds can provide a modest buff to another model in the squad. The reapers have the better deal, sure, but I feel it's disengenuous to act as though the sergeant doesn't have his up-sides.
2) I won't pretend that the rangefinder isn't nice to have, but I don't personally find it to have an enormous impact most of the time. On average, a 10 man reaper squad will 1 or 2 extra times against a target they would normally have a -1 to hit. If you're buffing them with Guide or something else that provides rerolls, then the ignore penalties rule matters even less because you have a good chance of converting that miss into a hit anyway.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

bananathug wrote:
Have you guys that say reapers aren't hard to kill ever played against them competitively?

An opponent worth their dice won't let you shoot them before they shoot you so in order to engage you have to survive their alpha. Next you need to be able to engage at 36" at least, their 3+ should be a 2+.

The t3 is the least of your worries. It's the cover and the minuses to hit and the really good eldar powers that make them hard to kill. They synergize really well with the tools available to eldar players.

Webway hides 2 units of them, a serpent hides the other unit. The webway ones pop out at optimal range of their target and melt it. The other unit pops out of the serpent and kills you, bonus points if your opponent is smart enough to run them as a ynarri detachment and word of phoenix them for another round of shooting.

They are bubble wrapped with -2 to hit rangers so no deepstrike for you. Many armies do not have access to weapons that can deal with a 2+, -1 to hit infantry at 36+ inches (after surviving alpha from them because your biggest threat to them should be priority 1) regardless of the toughness. Conceal one unit so now you're -2 to hit it, strat to make the other unit -2 to hit (I think it's -1 to hit it, they have some strat that makes me not want to shoot the second unit) and hopefully they've removed the threat closest to their ynarii unit to keep that one alive.

At least that's the way they are played against me. Hell I've have the ynarii one webway portaled on top of a fortification and then move, shoot, moved into the fort meaning I can't shoot at them for 2 turns (webway my turn 1, in the fortress my turn 2).

Start throwing guides, dooms and WoP around and an OP unit turns into a "I'm not playing against those again" unit.

That sounds pretty nasty, and I can definitely see a lot of armeis struggling against it. That said, that sounds like a lot of eggs in one basket. Assuming we're talking about 3 squads of 10 reapers (to maximize your buffs), we're looking at...

810 points for the reapers
~127 for a cheap wave serpent, though mine tend to get more expensive with upgrades.
132 for Yvraine (who, if I recall correctly, will prevent whatever detachment she's in from benefitting from <Craftworld> traits. )
40 points for a cheap Conceal warlock
100 for a farseer on foot
120 points worth of ranger to have a minimum of 2 squads, although I don't feel you screen that well with just 10 rangers.
So that's 1,329 points out of a list that has almost all of its offense wrapped up in 3 squads. If you want to add Fortune to the mix, you'll need another Farseer for another 100 points. I'm not saying that won't hit like a ton of bricks, but it is a huge investment.

Then, you're looking at...
3 Command points to deepstrike two of those reaper squads
2 Command points to intercept something (which you're not doing while all your reapers are in the webway or a transport)
2 command points to make a unit -1 to hit for a single shooting phase
1 Command point to move a single squad 6" after it shoots.

So if your opponent is doing everything you describe, they're looking at spending between 5 and 8 command points before their second turn rolls around. The stuff priced out above could be turned into a batallion and a a spearhead pretty easily, but that will still only get you 7 total. Assuming they add 1 or 3 more CP with the leftover points, they'll still have basically blown their load by the end of turn 2 with the tactics you've described.

Which isn't to say that the army you're describing doesn't sound brutal. It just sounds like a very expensive one trick pony. Yes, they'll shoot the snot out of you on your way to them, but they're basically out of luck once you reach them. Even falling back and shooting (if you let them) will be a further drain on their resources. A couple of deepstriking blood letter squads rerolling their charges could be enough to shot down one or two reaper squads pretty effectively.

any shooting at reapers is nasty.

Guardsmen, termagants, orks...any blob with enough dice make mincemeat of 3+ T3 dudes.

The thing is most are taking a big monster/vehicle or elites.

The counter to Reapers is lots of small arm fire.

Too many players rely on too few choices.

It reminds me of chess. I destroy a lot of players that are pro's at the Queen and Rooks, but really really lack with Knights, Bishops and PAWNS.
I suck at using a Queen....so I counter with what I'm good at.

If Dark Reapers are coming out of reserves/transports....have your own unit to counter them.

Forwarned only works in conjuction with a Farseer. So if he don't have the 1st turn relic to reserve from then he will need the farseer in a transport or a jetbike.

IF he don't have that then you can easily figure out where and what unit of Dark Reapers will Qualify for that Strategem.
Eliminate that unit.

Once you do that then your reserves can come in and shoot the crap out of the other unit.

Play the long game. Don't over react to the Eldar. Don't let him dictate your moves. Stay in Control and force him to play to what you give him.

A few distraction blobs work.

So many big monsters in the Nids normally take up all the shooting anyways.....Find the best blob unit that can get close to the reapers, spam them and shoot them.

Stop saying the Dark Reapers problem is a "git gud" problem. It isn't, LVO has shown that. The final was Dark Reaper spam vs Dark Reaper spam FFS. All what you are saying would be good assuming Dark Reapers were balanced. Then, they could have counterplay. But they don't have it. Because people isn't taking just Dark Reapers. What Dark Reapers can't kill the rest of the Eldar army surely can.
Imperial Guard is one of the strongest armies right now and even they can't compete with Dark Reaper Spam and Eldars. And are you saying Imperial Guard doesn't use a lot of cheap bodies? The "counter" agaisnt Dark Reapers?

Putting random or just dumb propositions from haters and people who never even played that unit, like 50 ppw and crappy weapons, aside, when we speak about things that look reasonable - mainly changing squad to size of 3 to 5, we need to concider something.

The reason why this change looks reasonable is entirely due to synergies, not just Reapers themselves, mainly the Ynnari double tap + Guide & Stratagems. This is due to already solid damage many Eldar units do being magnified further by them.

But if we go into that thinking, what other units are too powerful and could use a smaller squad size? Shining Spears? Then someone would argue, double-tapping 10 Dragons is too much. So make them also most of 5 models per squad? How about Guardians? 20 Guardians make some decent shooting. Double tap that for 80 shots with rending. Swooping Hawks? Actually tournament viable, 80 Lasblaster shots. Wraithguard with D-Scythes or Wraithcannons? Etc., etc.

As long as that synergy between eldar factions exist, you either balance all Eldar for Ynnari, or do not. If you do not, double activations take Eldar unit's already conciderable damage (because that's what they are about - mobility and focus fire) into stratosphere. If you do, everything without Ynnari would end up underwhelming. So everyone would keep taking Ynnari.

That's even if we concider that 40K should be balanced around sportshammer and tryhards who take 30 reapers. Note that Reapers were already 36 ppw in Index. They were dropped by 33% of their cost almost. Whatever that meant.
Personally, I'd begin with adding that 20-30% extra back. The further you go, the closer you'd be to butchering the unit. However, it would not solve Ynnari & Alaitoc. Because double activations & hit penalties are larger threat to game balance than any single unit. I mean, why SHOULD unit be balanced because a faction doctrine exists? From game design point, every other doctrine should be just as viable, and, say, Biel-Tan Reapers (who would be a lot easier to kill for IG, for example) shouldn't suffer price increase because Alaitoc Reapers are too powerful - and so on.

And are you saying Imperial Guard doesn't use a lot of cheap bodies?

Does every IG player finish every game though, instead of running out of time on turn 3? Tournaments are tournaments. It is not unknown for absolutely identical lists to end up on top 3 and on the last places at the same time, for example.

 Shadenuat wrote:


But if we go into that thinking, what other units are too powerful and could use a smaller squad size? Shining Spears? Then someone would argue, double-tapping 10 Dragons is too much. So make them also most of 5 models per squad? How about Guardians? 20 Guardians make some decent shooting. Double tap that for 80 shots with rending. Swooping Hawks? Actually tournament viable, 80 Lasblaster shots. Wraithguard with D-Scythes or Wraithcannons? Etc., etc.

As long as that synergy between eldar factions exist, you either balance all Eldar for Ynnari, or do not. If you do not, double activations take Eldar unit's already conciderable damage (because that's what they are about - mobility and focus fire) into stratosphere. If you do, everything without Ynnari would end up underwhelming. So everyone would keep taking Ynnari.

Currently, you can only do a given soul burst action once per turn, and most of our (craftworld) melee units are not all that great at killing things in melee. So most of the time, you're only getting a huge boost in damage when you soulburst with a shooty unit. Most of the units you've described have relatively short range thus making soul bursting difficult at the moment. Dark reapers are uniquely good at taking advantage of Word of the Phoenix because they have such a long range. So Word of the Phoenix on reapers means you basically double the unit's value. Using it on fire dragons means you've spent resources to get the dragons within 12" of a decent target and to get Yvraine or the Yncarne within range of the dragons. Ditto wraith guard. It's still a good combo, but it requires more of an investment to pull off while ynarri reapers are doing their thing from across the table. 80 shot hawks and ynnari spears are both things that I suspect people will become more aware and wary of with time.

That said, I get the impression GW has decided they don't like their own Soul Burst rules, and I won't be surprised if we see a massive overhaul of said rules at some point. Although balancing aeldari units against Ynnari rules might warrant its own thread.

BrianDavion wrote:
one problem with the dark reapers "ignore all targeting penalties" is it makes it ahrder for GW to produce in the future a balanced faction that "dodge tanks"

one that is lightly armored, and low toughness but makes up for this by being really hard to hit.

This isn't necessarily true. Dark Eldar Wyches, Imperial Assassins, and Harlequins(to throw some examples out there) have traditionally received an Invulnerable Save that represents their speed and agility.

In any regards there's a reason why I suggested that Dark Reapers get something that has to do with the target moving a set distance in order for Reaper Rangefinders to 'trigger'. It can be fluffed as the Rangefinder needing a certain amount of time in order to properly plot/calculate a trajectory for the target.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:

So what you're saying is that it's a good thing the rangefinder exists to help counter those occasional armies that can really stack to hit penalties, and it would be great if we spread a similar rule to other factions? Sounds good to me! ;D

That's not what I'm saying at all, if I'm going to be honest. Even if I'd rather see the skill put out into more places I do feel like it just has no real business being a "one size fits all" thing.

Sure. But would you say that all those things combined make up more or less than 10% of the units you'll see on the table? Let's say it's right around 10% and assume for simplicity's sake that most such units only have a -1 to hit as stacking penalties are mostly an eldar thing. That would mean that against 1/10th of the units you go up against, reapers will hit one extra time for every 6 shots they fire at just shy of 30 points apiece. So for every 162 points of reapers you take, you'll land 4 strength 8 hits instead of 3 against 1/10th of the targets you're likely to face. That just doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me. But again, I'm not married to the rangefinder, and I'm in the "nerf reapers slightly" camp.

Also, while it stinks that marines (and chaos marines?) have vehicles that don't benefit from their chapter tactics, this actually means that the reaper rangefinder is even less relevant against those armies. Sure, the reapers will still have a leg up against your little guys, but the strength 8 shot will be performing basically the same against your rhinos, predators, etc.

The problem with this is that at the same time Reapers are negating the enemy's "To Hit" penalties...they're benefiting from their own.

It's -2, which means most vehicles get a 5+ against it. Which means you'll ignore 1/3rd of the wounds I toss your way. A rhino takes 4 unsaved wounds for reapers to kill, so I'lll need to do about 5 or 6 wounds to you to take down that rhino. My point was that reapers did not rely on making things explode and thus had to glance things to death. Which they could do more easily than they can kill the same targets now. Which is fine. My only point in bringing this up was to point out that their offensive power hasn't actually gone up all that much (though it has increased as a result of them getting cheaper). I'm definitely not saying they're trash. I'm just saying they weren't evaporating people in tournaments in the past, and now they actually have to work a little harder to take down a heavier target.

Honestly, the only difference between now and then is that vehicles get a save. It's pathetic that they're still able to kill vehicles as easily as you're suggesting they can.

So let me preface this by reiterating that I do in fact believe devastators are too expensive and reapers are too cheap.
1) I'm not forgetting about him.You're right that he doesn't bring any offensive power to the table, and I do personally prefer an exarch to a sargeant and more reaper launchers rather than more ablative wounds. That said, I'm fairly sure the sargeant is less expensive than the exarch (even though the exarch is free for some reason), and there is an advantage to being able to sprinkle in some relatively cheap ablative wounds, especially if one of those wounds can provide a modest buff to another model in the squad. The reapers have the better deal, sure, but I feel it's disengenuous to act as though the sergeant doesn't have his up-sides.

The only upside that a Sergeant brings to a Devastator Squad is the Signum, which allows a single Devastator to add +1 to their Hit roll against a target.
Devastators are 13points per model, including the Sergeant.
The only options the Sergeant can bring though? Various melee weapons and a Combi weapon.

2) I won't pretend that the rangefinder isn't nice to have, but I don't personally find it to have an enormous impact most of the time. On average, a 10 man reaper squad will 1 or 2 extra times against a target they would normally have a -1 to hit. If you're buffing them with Guide or something else that provides rerolls, then the ignore penalties rule matters even less because you have a good chance of converting that miss into a hit anyway.

Have you ever stopped to consider that the reason it's not seeming to have an enormous impact most of the time is because your opponents just gave up on using any of the units with negative to hit modifiers when you have Dark Reapers?

 Kanluwen wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:

So what you're saying is that it's a good thing the rangefinder exists to help counter those occasional armies that can really stack to hit penalties, and it would be great if we spread a similar rule to other factions? Sounds good to me! ;D

That's not what I'm saying at all, if I'm going to be honest. Even if I'd rather see the skill put out into more places I do feel like it just has no real business being a "one size fits all" thing.

As in it should e a penalty mitigator instead of an "always hits on 3s" rule? Something like, "A model equipped with a rangefinder never suffers penalties on to-hit rolls greater than -1?" I'm not opposed to that or to a mechanic that goes after "dodge" rules. We just need to word such a thing well.

The problem with this is that at the same time Reapers are negating the enemy's "To Hit" penalties...they're benefiting from their own.

Blame it on late night posting and being tired, but I'm not sure I'm following your point here. If you're opposed to models benefitting from to-hit penalties, then rules like the reaper range finder should be encouraged and possibly proliferated throughout other armies. If you're opposed to to-hit penalties being mitigated, then what's wrong with reapers benefitting from such penalties? Is it specifically that you don't want reapers or possibly eldar in general to benefit from to-hit penalties? Or perhaps that you feel there should be no way to mitigate such penalties but that to-hit penalties should cap out at -1 or something? My apologies, but I'm not sure what you're getting at here. It sounds like you're simultaneously saying you don't like when people ignore to-hit penalties but that you also don't like when other people benefit from their own to-hit penalties. I'm sure this is not your point.

It's -2, which means most vehicles get a 5+ against it. Which means you'll ignore 1/3rd of the wounds I toss your way. A rhino takes 4 unsaved wounds for reapers to kill, so I'lll need to do about 5 or 6 wounds to you to take down that rhino. My point was that reapers did not rely on making things explode and thus had to glance things to death. Which they could do more easily than they can kill the same targets now. Which is fine. My only point in bringing this up was to point out that their offensive power hasn't actually gone up all that much (though it has increased as a result of them getting cheaper). I'm definitely not saying they're trash. I'm just saying they weren't evaporating people in tournaments in the past, and now they actually have to work a little harder to take down a heavier target.

Honestly, the only difference between now and then is that vehicles get a save.

"The only difference between now and then is that vehicles ignore a certain number of your somewhat expensive shots." I mean... yes? That's not an inconsiderable difference. But again, I'm not saying they're bad against vehicles they're quite good against them. My entire intention when originally raising this particular point was to draw attention to the fact that, against most vehicle targets, reapers are now relatively less good at killing said vehicles. In other words, "If they weren't too good against vehicles last edition and are worse against vehicles now, that suggests they might not be problematic against vehicles."

It's pathetic that they're still able to kill vehicles as easily as you're suggesting they can.

What makes you say that? It's a heavy weapons squad carrying missile launchers. Would you say it's pathetic that devastators can kill vehicles as easily as they can? Reapers are worse at it than those devastators. Now granted, reapers are also less expensive, so perhaps you're saying that the reapers are too good at killing vehicles for their points. There's a 13 point difference between a reaper and a missile dev. So I'm curious, what is your ideal killing power to points ratio? Are missile devs priced perfectly? Or does the sweet spot lie somewhere in that 13 point and 0.5 damage difference between these models? And if that sweet spot happens to be about halfway between the two, say at 34 or 35 points, then I'd be happy to concede that that would be a good price range for reapers. Just like I did several posts ago.

So let me preface this by reiterating that I do in fact believe devastators are too expensive and reapers are too cheap.
1) I'm not forgetting about him.You're right that he doesn't bring any offensive power to the table, and I do personally prefer an exarch to a sargeant and more reaper launchers rather than more ablative wounds. That said, I'm fairly sure the sargeant is less expensive than the exarch (even though the exarch is free for some reason), and there is an advantage to being able to sprinkle in some relatively cheap ablative wounds, especially if one of those wounds can provide a modest buff to another model in the squad. The reapers have the better deal, sure, but I feel it's disengenuous to act as though the sergeant doesn't have his up-sides.

The only upside that a Sergeant brings to a Devastator Squad is the Signum, which allows a single Devastator to add +1 to their Hit roll against a target.
Devastators are 13points per model, including the Sergeant.
The only options the Sergeant can bring though? Various melee weapons and a Combi weapon.