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I'm personally a little leery of what looks like the start of power creep in WH40K. Only 45pts more than a Land Raider? 25 transport slots (i.e. 12 termies + 1 marine in a single transport)? S9 AP2 Heavy 4 TL-lascannons? FSR 14? PotM? Ceramite Shielding for +20pts? The Chaos verson steps it up even further with the addition of Havoc Launcher, Reaper Autocannon and Daemonic Possession options - the latter of which's -1 BS is offset by the Twin-Linked nature of the lascannons.

This is a little excessive. They're still beta rules, but they're the only rules that we're likely to recive for the Spartan. Add to it that it's likely to become a favorite due to the high power, and the metagame might distort around it. I think this is something to watch out for. Nevertheless, I'm interested to hear different viewpoints. It'd be great to see if I've missed something or gone wrong somewhere.

Assorted pictures from Forgeworld, for those who haven't seen them yet:

And yet, people will flame until they're blue in the face that there's no reason to dissallow FW in normal games of 40k.

Sure I wouldn't mind something like that in an apoc game, but in a standard game of 40k it'd just be obscene. Yes it can be killed by melta, but it's survivability vs its potential damage (including of course the guys inside it) is just insane. edit - just realised, it can be immune to melta. Oh god

I mean, that thing could have 24 Death Company + Reclesiarch in it, and the whole time it's moving it's wasting your light armour. Ouch.

 Testify wrote:
And yet, people will flame until they're blue in the face that there's no reason to dissallow FW in normal games of 40k.

Sure I wouldn't mind something like that in an apoc game, but in a standard game of 40k it'd just be obscene. Yes it can be killed by melta, but it's survivability vs its potential damage (including of course the guys inside it) is just insane. edit - just realised, it can be immune to melta. Oh god

I mean, that thing could have 24 Death Company + Reclesiarch in it, and the whole time it's moving it's wasting your light armour. Ouch.

On the other hand, that's how many points?

Start of power creep? We have that with every codex that come out...

This does strike me as an apoc scale vehicle. Particularly when filled with troops, it's going to be far to large a percentage of any normal point game.

I also dislike slapping ceramite plating on a tank. Unless you are dropping from orbit, you shouldn't have it. Yes, melta can crack open your tank; that's what it does. Letting you ignore the primary AV weapon so you can justify a massive tank is silly. Your basic LR is supposed to be the pinnacle of space marine armor. Having another tank, that's like a LR, but BIGGER and BETTER smacks of 12 year old fanboy game design.

You want a LR++, keep in apoc. With super heavy rules. The normal LRs are probably the top end of armor that are appropriate in a normal scale game.

I think it is ridiculous. By that, I mean ridiculously cool. It is a mean battle taxi. It should be significantly more expensive that a standard Land Raider, it does more.

And it looks a helluva lot better than the old spartan...

OMG THE SKY IS FALLING THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Ok, now that we're done with that, it's not even a good unit:

1) It's better than a Land Raider. So what. Land Raiders suck. A slightly better Vendetta would be completely broken, but a slightly better Land Raider probably just brings it up to average.

2) Who cares about the transport capacity. A codex Land Raider already has enough transport capacity to deliver any reasonable unit you'd ever want to use. Increasing it to 25 models just lets you bring overkill units and throw away points. 95% of the time you're going to be leaving a lot of the Spartan's transport capacity empty. Except in Apocalypse, I guess.

3) It's 300+ points. Add the cost of a unit and you're talking about 750-1000+ points depending on how much transport capacity you leave empty. Congratulations, you now have one unit and some token scout squads to hold your objective. Now watch as your 1000 point death star overkills a squad of Fire Warriors every turn while the rest of their army wipes out everything else you brought.

4) Melta immunity is nice on a gun tank, but not exactly game breaking on a transport. Once you've got a Land Raider in melta range it's already disembarking passengers to start killing stuff. Obviously you want to kill it, but it's kind of late. Now, I'd always buy melta immunity for it, but it's really not that scary, especially in a world of hull points.


The only thing good about this tank is that you get twice as much lascannon firepower, and there are much cheaper ways of bringing lascannons.

If someone wants to spend the cash to bring this to the table, then I'm fine with it. As Peregrine said, it's not incredibly OP in my opinion.

Proxying it? That I have an issue with. Same issue I have with the dreadnought drop pod, dreadclaw, etc.

 Nevelon wrote:
Your basic LR is supposed to be the pinnacle of space marine armor. Having another tank, that's like a LR, but BIGGER and BETTER smacks of 12 year old fanboy game design.

This

 Necroshea wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Your basic LR is supposed to be the pinnacle of space marine armor. Having another tank, that's like a LR, but BIGGER and BETTER smacks of 12 year old fanboy game design.

This

Yeah, all those superheavy tanks (bigger and better) are just fanboy game design...

TBH I don't see the problem anyway. Fluff-wise the Land Raider might be cool, but on the table it's a garbage unit. It's hardly fanboy game design to try to turn the basic concept into a semi-useful unit.

I don't see what the bid deal is. If somebody wants to spend the $$ and the points on it I say game on. It's not over powered for the points.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Testify wrote:

I mean, that thing could have 24 Death Company + Reclesiarch in it, and the whole time it's moving it's wasting your light armour. Ouch.

On the other hand, that's how many points?

How many points a unit can cost is often overshadowed by how many points of your opponent's models they can wipe off the table before the same happens to them. It's one of the reasons pitting a Titan against a point-equivalent horde of Boyz is in favour of the titan - the high-power weapons kill more boyz than can be brought to bear in a single turn of charging, keeping them away and giving the Titan a more efficient points-for-points exchange.
The example given above may be costly and mean the rest of your army is sparse, but they'll kill many more points worth of enemy models before they fall. This is an excellent trade-off most of the time, as both armies are usually eqivalent points-wise.

This is the main problem with the Spartan - it may be expensive in terms of points, but the amount of firepower and heavily-shielded transport it brings will earn them back in no time. Try proxying it in a number of casual games, and you'll probably see it and the troops inside (~800pts all up) earn back ~1200pts worth of destroyed or tied up units.

 Peregrine wrote:

1) It's better than a Land Raider. So what. Land Raiders suck. A slightly better Vendetta would be completely broken, but a slightly better Land Raider probably just brings it up to average.

2) Who cares about the transport capacity. A codex Land Raider already has enough transport capacity to deliver any reasonable unit you'd ever want to use. Increasing it to 25 models just lets you bring overkill units and throw away points. 95% of the time you're going to be leaving a lot of the Spartan's transport capacity empty. Except in Apocalypse, I guess.

3) It's 300+ points. Add the cost of a unit and you're talking about 750-1000+ points depending on how much transport capacity you leave empty. Congratulations, you now have one unit and some token scout squads to hold your objective. Now watch as your 1000 point death star overkills a squad of Fire Warriors every turn while the rest of their army wipes out everything else you brought.

4) Melta immunity is nice on a gun tank, but not exactly game breaking on a transport. Once you've got a Land Raider in melta range it's already disembarking passengers to start killing stuff. Obviously you want to kill it, but it's kind of late. Now, I'd always buy melta immunity for it, but it's really not that scary, especially in a world of hull points.

1. It might just be a quirk of your local metagame, but Land Raiders are usually A-lister units in the games I see and play. FSR 14 in 5E meant S7 or below had no chance of scratching it, let alone glancing or penetrating it. S8 in most armies requires dedicated anti-tank: Ork Rokkits, Tau Railguns, Imperial Lascannons, etc. Add to that the sponson-mounted heavy weapons, and it was capable of taking and dishing out lots of damage. I'm not too aware of how vehicle damage works in 6E, but the spartan has a whopping 5 HPs - one more than Land Raiders.

2. A transport capacity of 25 means we can now hide whole terminator units inside metal boxes. Land Raiders usually had to take understrength squads (at most 8 models) and restricted what you could put in there. Now you can fit full termie squads, two tactical squads and a devastator quartet, or any arrangment you desire.

3. See my point at the top regarding points-to-kills efficiency. The Spartan just kills more points than it costs per battle.

4. Melta immunity is amazing. It means getting those glancing or penetrating hits is now a lot harder for armies that relied on the safety of Melta to pop tanks and transports. While HPs bring down its' effectiveness from what it would have been in 5E, it still has more of them than other vehicles.

I was quite suprised when I saw it isn't for Apoc games only.

Meh, just gonna give more fuel to the FW haters I suppose...

 NimbleJack3 wrote:
How many points a unit can cost is often overshadowed by how many points of your opponent's models they can wipe off the table before the same happens to them. It's one of the reasons pitting a Titan against a point-equivalent horde of Boyz is in favour of the titan - the high-power weapons kill more boyz than can be brought to bear in a single turn of charging, keeping them away and giving the Titan a more efficient points-for-points exchange.

That's not a fair comparison because the titan has massive range and can split fire, so it doesn't have to worry about wasting overkill firepower on a single target, while the boyz can't even return fire in any meaningful way. Even once they get into assault the can only glance AV 14, and only with a couple models.

It's also a bad comparison because titans are significantly underpriced, most likely to encourage you to buy one and actually get them on the battlefield. If titans were priced "fairly" an equal point value in non-titan units would be perfectly capable of destroying one. As it is a dedicated anti-titan force can consistently blow one up for the same point value.

In short: you didn't prove that expensive units are awesome, you proved that sending a unit to do the wrong job usually fails.

This is the main problem with the Spartan - it may be expensive in terms of points, but the amount of firepower and heavily-shielded transport it brings will earn them back in no time. Try proxying it in a number of casual games, and you'll probably see it and the troops inside (~800pts all up) earn back ~1200pts worth of destroyed or tied up units.

Err, how exactly? You can only deliver those troops to a single target, so even if you kill a unit every turn starting on turn 2 a MSU list is just going to laugh at that. There's no way you're going to reach and kill 1200 points unless your opponent brings an equally expensive death star, in which case the two death stars smash into each other and both are destroyed.

This is already a problem with death star lists, all the Spartan does is allow you to make your death star even more powerful. This is a worthless ability since a death star in a regular Land Raider can already wipe out almost any unit in the game, so doubling its power just means you're wasting points overkilling 5-man tactical squads.

If your army doesnt have a way to deal with one 300 point 14 armor vehicle then i can see where this might be the a problem. It is a beautiful model but subpar as vehicles go.

If each individual lascannon could splitfire... maybe?; still its very pricey.

Lets take a look at the armies that literally could care less about a 300 point battle tank with melta immunity because its dead during their turn.. Everyone but sisters... got it. Every other army has a counter for it, or should. Guard have too many options, imperials have chainfists, vindicators, Lysanders, you name it. GK sick a vindicare/pycannon/dreadknight on it, Necrons cackle mightily. Orks will send a furious charge klaw or two. Tau send you a thank you card: its always nice to reply with tkank you cards when given gifts (especially when your going to pile your eggs into one easily shootable basket.). There is also a decent chance it suffered a glancing hit before it sat up when facing the lance wielding elves.

If your meta fears land raiders then your meta is velvety soft honestly. Land raiders are fair to below average tools; too much in 40k liquidate them.

Uh guys it has experimental rules (as opposed to just approved for 40k) ... Therefore legit by permission only, that's how FW defines experimental

I mean, dont get me wrong, the FW debate is a lively one, but it seems like we should keep it to the units which are approved for 40k instead of beta rules, since their point costs change quite often (like the mortis contemptor dreadnought for example).

Largo39 wrote:
Uh guys it has experimental rules (as opposed to just approved for 40k) ... Therefore legit by permission only, that's how FW defines experimental

The point is the rules arent even that powerful. Its a tremendous point sink for 4 lascannons and the temptation to stick your entire army in the thing.

Well yes Im not disagreeing with you there, but im just saying that in general the FW or not debate should be kept to those units for which it is intended, not those units which are still beta/fluff. The fact that the tank itself is a not worth the point sink is just... extra.

You also have to remember that the Spartan is for use (and has rules in) the Horus Heresy expansion. The land of 10 man heavy bolter squads, and 10 point marines.

I am going to run one in tandem with an Achilles. Both are extremely expensive but with the Achilles providing cover for the Spartan its even more potent and you get some anti infantry with the thunderfire or if using a HH the quad mortar. With a 10 man terminator squad inside the spartan you can reliably assault just about anything. Wouldn't use this in anything short of a 2k game though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lightcavalier wrote:
You also have to remember that the Spartan is for use (and has rules in) the Horus Heresy expansion. The land of 10 man heavy bolter squads, and 10 point marines.

Actually with the basic tac squad you are looking at 15 pts per guy. Its when you add in the 2nd 10 guys it drops down to 12.5 per guy, kinda weird but its not 10 per.

Here's what it brings beyond a Land Raider

Can carry 2 Squads of Assault Termies plus Characters as oppossed to 1. For Codex Marines, combat squad a 10 man Squad, add Lysander and a TDA Libby with SS. Put in a Techmarine to keep it running, and Ceramite to keep melta in Line. Extra armour negates Stunned, Techy regens HP and it can blast away all the while

 NimbleJack3 wrote:

1. It might just be a quirk of your local metagame, but Land Raiders are usually A-lister units in the games I see and play. FSR 14 in 5E meant S7 or below had no chance of scratching it, let alone glancing or penetrating it. S8 in most armies requires dedicated anti-tank: Ork Rokkits, Tau Railguns, Imperial Lascannons, etc. Add to that the sponson-mounted heavy weapons, and it was capable of taking and dishing out lots of damage. I'm not too aware of how vehicle damage works in 6E, but the spartan has a whopping 5 HPs - one more than Land Raiders.

No, sorry. The fact that you see land raiders outside fluff/joke lists is a quirk of your meta.

They're not good, and competitive players wouldn't field them unless their list had a very specific purpose and was build completely around them (which is ridiculously unlikely).

I'm not too aware of how vehicle damage works in 6E, but the spartan has a whopping 5 HPs

There's your problem. You don't realize that 5 HP's is one glance less flimsy than 4HP's. Still pretty damn flimsy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Deadshot wrote:
Here's what it brings beyond a Land Raider

Can carry 2 Squads of Assault Termies plus Characters as oppossed to 1. For Codex Marines, combat squad a 10 man Squad, add Lysander and a TDA Libby with SS. Put in a Techmarine to keep it running, and Ceramite to keep melta in Line. Extra armour negates Stunned, Techy regens HP and it can blast away all the while

Good thing you can carry multiple units in a transport...

Oh...wait. No.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Here's what it brings beyond a Land Raider

Can carry 2 Squads of Assault Termies plus Characters as oppossed to 1. For Codex Marines, combat squad a 10 man Squad, add Lysander and a TDA Libby with SS. Put in a Techmarine to keep it running, and Ceramite to keep melta in Line. Extra armour negates Stunned, Techy regens HP and it can blast away all the while

Good thing you can carry multiple units in a transport...

Oh...wait. No.

Oh wait, FAQ states that 2 combat squads from the same original squad may be embarked in the same vehicle.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 NimbleJack3 wrote:

1. It might just be a quirk of your local metagame, but Land Raiders are usually A-lister units in the games I see and play. FSR 14 in 5E meant S7 or below had no chance of scratching it, let alone glancing or penetrating it. S8 in most armies requires dedicated anti-tank: Ork Rokkits, Tau Railguns, Imperial Lascannons, etc. Add to that the sponson-mounted heavy weapons, and it was capable of taking and dishing out lots of damage. I'm not too aware of how vehicle damage works in 6E, but the spartan has a whopping 5 HPs - one more than Land Raiders.

No, sorry. The fact that you see land raiders outside fluff/joke lists is a quirk of your meta.

They're not good, and competitive players wouldn't field them unless their list had a very specific purpose and was build completely around them (which is ridiculously unlikely).

I'm not too aware of how vehicle damage works in 6E, but the spartan has a whopping 5 HPs

There's your problem. You don't realize that 5 HP's is one glance less flimsy than 4HP's. Still pretty damn flimsy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Deadshot wrote:
Here's what it brings beyond a Land Raider

Can carry 2 Squads of Assault Termies plus Characters as oppossed to 1. For Codex Marines, combat squad a 10 man Squad, add Lysander and a TDA Libby with SS. Put in a Techmarine to keep it running, and Ceramite to keep melta in Line. Extra armour negates Stunned, Techy regens HP and it can blast away all the while

Good thing you can carry multiple units in a transport...

Oh...wait. No.

They are not good. hmmmm

Maybe not when you can take 2 Vendettas for the same price. Or better yet a 9 man squad of flamers with some points left over for a few screamers.

Maybe GW is on to something with their anti competitive attitude, because Land Raider's are fun. IMO really fun, but when a single Grey Hunter drop pod can drop first turn an pelt it with 2 melta shots, then yes maybe its not uber competitive. Except wait an Achilles or a Spartan can take ferromantic invulnerability and melta can suck it. I wish the Achilles could carry more because those 4 hull points on it are worth gold.

If the only reason you play this game is competition, maybe you should just play Yahtzee instead. Same mechanics you throw dice an try to win.

Sorry, but this vehicle is no scarier than any other 14FSR armor vehicle in the game. If you have the AT to deal with it, then who cares? If you don't it isn't any scarier than any other vehicle you can't hurt with that armor. In order to make *full* use of it in a regular game of 40k you need to stuff it to the gills with 10+ man strong terminator units (or 2 terminator combat squads) and 2 terminator armored special characters using 1100-1300 points of your army points allotment to do so. Thus in a 1500 point game you will have 400-200 points to spend on the required troops models (of course some forces do have the ability to have termies as troops with the right special character, but Dark angels can't get 10 man termie squads, so that cuts them out of the mix; Do BTs have a way of making terminators troops?). So now you have this single massive tank loaded for bear with nasty assault termies drawing ALL the heavy weapons fire from your opponent, meanwhile their troops and other units are moving out and taking over objectives and easily wiping out your own limited troop support. Any smart opponent will keep their forces spread out enough that once your monster finally disgorges its contents only a single unit can be affected at a time by your assault. So now your crafty effort of sneaking in 2 terminator combat squads ends up meaningless because there is only one enemy squad to attack anyway. So you 12 man uber character supported terminator assault force has beaten a single enemy unit on the table. Wow so horrible.

As with any "all your eggs in one basket" unit this is just not that scary at all. Avoidance, concentrated fire and an opponent with better flexibility to achieve mission objectives all combine to make such units pointless in normal point level 40k games. The investment of points necessary to make this vehicle "scary" in a regular 40k game is exactly what will keep it from ever being scary in that points level or even viable. As the points levels go up for the game the scarieness of a single transport with 12 terminators in it just gets less and less impressive as the game gets bigger and bigger.

I just don't see why everyone is so worried about these vehicles. They are pricey, and to make them the monster everyone fears them to be requires the investment of too many points in a regular scale 40k game...

Skriker

 Deadshot wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Here's what it brings beyond a Land Raider

Can carry 2 Squads of Assault Termies plus Characters as oppossed to 1. For Codex Marines, combat squad a 10 man Squad, add Lysander and a TDA Libby with SS. Put in a Techmarine to keep it running, and Ceramite to keep melta in Line. Extra armour negates Stunned, Techy regens HP and it can blast away all the while

Good thing you can carry multiple units in a transport...

Oh...wait. No.

Oh wait, FAQ states that 2 combat squads from the same original squad may be embarked in the same vehicle.

That is still one unit. Like you can only take a 10 man tactical squad, but then combat squad them when they exit.

I thought that a lot of these tanks were geared towards legions rather than chapters, and to be fair Heresy games are designed to be on the large side. I think this tank is OTT when in a standard 40k game (some where it shouldn't be imo) but fits in nicely in apoc games. However I love the idea of a 'Big Brother Land Raider' which has since the Heresy all but disappeared from the armouries of the 41st millenium...

 TheCaptain wrote:

 NimbleJack3 wrote:

1. It might just be a quirk of your local metagame, but Land Raiders are usually A-lister units in the games I see and play. FSR 14 in 5E meant S7 or below had no chance of scratching it, let alone glancing or penetrating it. S8 in most armies requires dedicated anti-tank: Ork Rokkits, Tau Railguns, Imperial Lascannons, etc. Add to that the sponson-mounted heavy weapons, and it was capable of taking and dishing out lots of damage. I'm not too aware of how vehicle damage works in 6E, but the spartan has a whopping 5 HPs - one more than Land Raiders.

No, sorry. The fact that you see land raiders outside fluff/joke lists is a quirk of your meta.

They're not good, and competitive players wouldn't field them unless their list had a very specific purpose and was build completely around them (which is ridiculously unlikely).

I'm not too aware of how vehicle damage works in 6E, but the spartan has a whopping 5 HPs

There's your problem. You don't realize that 5 HP's is one glance less flimsy than 4HP's. Still pretty damn flimsy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Deadshot wrote:
Here's what it brings beyond a Land Raider

Can carry 2 Squads of Assault Termies plus Characters as oppossed to 1. For Codex Marines, combat squad a 10 man Squad, add Lysander and a TDA Libby with SS. Put in a Techmarine to keep it running, and Ceramite to keep melta in Line. Extra armour negates Stunned, Techy regens HP and it can blast away all the while

Good thing you can carry multiple units in a transport...

Oh...wait. No.

Bold quote in particular...FALSE
The fact that your SAT ignores melta, combined with 5, count 'em 5, HP means thats it is really a very durable tank for 40k. With 40K now bveing a melta-happy world, the ceramite restricts melta to 1D6 Pen, and the 5 hull points means that your super important suicide melta squad will die without taking any armor out. Combined with EA and PoMS, this is an armored deathstar in itself. If ones list relies on a suicide melta squad to take this deathstar out, that player will be very lacking in regular AA when his melta squad is dissappointed. The SAT is very durable, make no mistake.

 ace101 wrote:

Bold quote in particular...FALSE
The fact that your SAT ignores melta, combined with 5, count 'em 5, HP means thats it is really a very durable tank for 40k. With 40K now bveing a melta-happy world, the ceramite restricts melta to 1D6 Pen, and the 5 hull points means that your super important suicide melta squad will die without taking any armor out. Combined with EA and PoMS, this is an armored deathstar in itself. If ones list relies on a suicide melta squad to take this deathstar out, that player will be very lacking in regular AA when his melta squad is dissappointed. The SAT is very durable, make no mistake.

I encourage you to find anywhere that I said anything other than 5hp being slightly less flimsy than 4hp.

In fact, find me where I even directly referred to the SAT, or ceramite armor.

(You won't find it, because its not there.)

Good try.

FenixZero wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Here's what it brings beyond a Land Raider

Can carry 2 Squads of Assault Termies plus Characters as oppossed to 1. For Codex Marines, combat squad a 10 man Squad, add Lysander and a TDA Libby with SS. Put in a Techmarine to keep it running, and Ceramite to keep melta in Line. Extra armour negates Stunned, Techy regens HP and it can blast away all the while

Good thing you can carry multiple units in a transport...

Oh...wait. No.

Oh wait, FAQ states that 2 combat squads from the same original squad may be embarked in the same vehicle.

That is still one unit. Like you can only take a 10 man tactical squad, but then combat squad them when they exit.

I disgree. Based on my interpretation, you can embark two combat squads from the same squad in one vehicle, vs the standard rules.

 Deadshot wrote:

I disgree. Based on my interpretation, you can embark two combat squads from the same squad in one vehicle, vs the standard rules.

Interpretation is irrelevant if the rules don't leave it up to such a notion.

Because based on my interpretation, 1500 points means I get to bring 2000 points, but the rules say otherwise. Just like your case of embarking two squads in the same vehicle.