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3 small blasts almost always will hit more than 1 large. Then you have the whole 9+ wounds T7 vs AV12 tank. I'd take the Arty any day. Finally, 90 points vs 115. If i wanted to take a HS tank, id just take the prism for the AP3 and actual AT ability.

 zephoid wrote:
3 small blasts almost always will hit more than 1 large. Then you have the whole 9+ wounds T7 vs AV12 tank. I'd take the Arty any day. Finally, 90 points vs 115. If i wanted to take a HS tank, id just take the prism for the AP3 and actual AT ability.

The torrent is a nice option though for the NS.

Powerguy wrote:

The S8 for the Nightspinner comes up more than you might think, which is what actually makes it a choice between in and 3 Shadow Weavers. Againsts Necrons you cause ID to Wraiths, against Tau you cause ID to all the normal sized Suits (and since Tau tend to stay close together to maximise overwatch you still end up hitting stuff even when you scatter) as well as Ethernals. Its also S8 against Orks, which means you cause ID on Nobz and Meganobz. If you run a Spiritseer or a couple of Warlocks then you can also end up with the -1I power, which brings stuff like Fleshhounds into the ID bracket. Imo its also debatable whether 3 small blasts do more damage to infantry than a single large blast, since usually people see the blast coming and spread out, which limits the small blasts to 1-2 hits each, while with the large blast you tend to get 3 per hit pretty reliably, YMMV. Usually its going to come down to the mobility issue, if you are running a Jetbike heavy list I can't see the Platforms fitting in, while the Nightspinner can avoid quite a bit more. In a more infantry based army which has something to stop people running straight at you (i.e a Wraithknight, or a big block of solid infantry like GK Terminators) then the Platforms are clearly a better choice. In a mech list they can be a nice bunker for a Farseer as well, but I'm actually thinking that you would be better off just taking the Mantle in that case so you aren't stuck around a single pivot point.

Good post (I'm not even used to thinking about Orks). But I do think you're underestimating the multiple barrage rules. A single small blast doesn't do a whole lot of damage to a spread-out target, but if the first blast ends up anywhere near an enemy unit a subsequent "hit" lets you place a blast with no requirement to have the center over a model. 3 hits is easy and 4 is feasible, unless the enemy is in a line at max coherency (and this is an extremely inconvenient formation to be in, typically).

Yes but you are comparing apples to oranges really as a NS should almost always be firing the torrent mode. That will hit 4+ models easily every turn with no risk of scatter and in fact can hit multiple targets like vehicles close together or being screened by infantry. The S8 vs armor is HUGE as well and s8 is the magic number for instant death as well. I think both are equal but slightly better at slightly different rolls and your list will determine which is the right choice. Saying one is better then the other is rather unjustifiable without knowing the circumstances.

If you are consistently firing torrent, how many turns do you expect to survive? 2? Shadow weavers almost always last the game except vs maybe demons. Most armies dont consider them enough of a threat to focus fire on T7. Even if they do, they rarely do enough damage to kill the squad with any ease.

Then there is pinning. One of the huge pluses to barrage is a free pinning test. Mitigating firepower through pinning is easy and very strong. Therefore the barrage has pluses over even the torrent fire mode. 6 turns of pinning tests often yields at least 1 pinned squad, which either mitigates firepower or can be game changing (G2G squads cant score).

S8 vs AV12
33% to pen
5% to kill.

S8 vs AV11
50% pen
8% kill

S8 is in no way "HUGE". Multiple missile teams are usually required to kill AV12 vehicles from range. One hit isnt doing much.

Shadow weavers are most definitely a great choice. Multiple shots means you are much more likely to get more hits then a single shot, Yes even if those are small blast vs Large blast, Small blast will hit 1-3 people and a large 3-4 (maybe more for both first turn). (edit oh ignoring torrent fire because I've never been a fan of place my tanks withing 12" of the enemy .. sure ignoring cover is nice ... just not for me ... still only likely to hit 4-6 models)

If you really want a tank ... fire-prism is probably a better choice then the night spinner.

 zephoid wrote:
If you are consistently firing torrent, how many turns do you expect to survive? 2? Shadow weavers almost always last the game except vs maybe demons. Most armies dont consider them enough of a threat to focus fire on T7. Even if they do, they rarely do enough damage to kill the squad with any ease.

Then there is pinning. One of the huge pluses to barrage is a free pinning test. Mitigating firepower through pinning is easy and very strong. Therefore the barrage has pluses over even the torrent fire mode. 6 turns of pinning tests often yields at least 1 pinned squad, which either mitigates firepower or can be game changing (G2G squads cant score).

S8 vs AV12
33% to pen
5% to kill.

S8 vs AV11
50% pen
8% kill

S8 is in no way "HUGE". Multiple missile teams are usually required to kill AV12 vehicles from range. One hit isnt doing much.

I would like to point out to you both weapons will almost always be hitting side armour as you can choose how to place your torrent so you should be talking AV10 for most of the vehicles that matter. Additionally the NS is actually a decent vehicle to use the crystal targeting matrix for so you can turbo boost behind an enemy line and wipe out their backfield elements turn 1. With a holofield you then have a 3+ cover save to help you survive. The comparison is not cut and dry. The NS and batteries are both good choices and I would say the batteries can be dropped into any random list with much more success. The NS needs to be in the right lists to really shine.

Night spinners are a wraith's worse nightmare. At S8 you will kill them outright, and since they have small squads every loss counts. Sure, they have a 3+ invul, but still, you will kill them.

Doing the math on Wraiths, I'm not really convinced. The Spinner probably has Spirit Stones and a Holofield, so it costs only marginally less than a typical Serpent.

From 24", a Serpent expects 2.84 wounds on Wraiths. A Spinner that manages to catch 6 Wraiths under its template expects 3.33 wounds (1.67 failed saves, doubled). If it only catches 5 Wraiths, it's simply worse than the Serpent. Of course, it needs to be within 20" of all six Wraiths and they have to be positioned just right. It will also get torn to pieces next turn unless you have a bunch of other things shooting at the Wraiths.

I was talking about the barrage. Of course using the torrent on the wraiths is a bad idea. If it fails to wipe them out, the wraiths will make their charge.

With the barrage though, you can harass the wraiths with S8 blasts while hidden from any retaliation.

Quick question: would you take three Shadow Weavers over three War Walkers with two bright lances? I already have a Crimson Hunter, 5 man unit of Fire Dragons, and two Fire Prisms, so I'm not sure if I need the extra AT the War Walkers provide.

torrent v 3 weavers

wraiths

It's easy to position a dlord to eat the s8 hits and los rends onto the wraiths.

The weavers only single wound, but they can bypass the dlord.

Against vehicles.

3 hits at s 7 v one hit at s8

Barage is usually better than torrent because it hits side armor

As long as the side armor is 12 or less the 3 hits is better.

3 hits is really brutal against IG & Space marine 12/10/10 or 13/11/10 armor. 3 hits at s7 to the side is the same as 3 hits at s9 hit to the face

You center the barrage away from the DLord. Then the wounds have to be allocated on the wraiths, as they are the closest to the center, iirc.

But if the Spinner is firing large blasts, don't Serpents look even better, relatively? The Spinner's not getting as many hits that way. If the Spinner's averaging 4 hits per shot, it's only expecting 2.22 wounds. Serpents can virtually match that from 36" (2.1 wounds).

A naked Spinner is an option, but a Nightscythe can cripple you. Spinners do not like the damage table.

That's true. Last time I faced eldar on vassal, there were 2 spinners.

One of them got immobilized first turn with heavy gauss cannons. He had a bunch of Serpents though, so I had to direct my fire towards them, and then it started to drop blasts everywhere. Which did nothing, but only because I kept my infantry in good cover, and I didn't have much infantry on the field anyway.

The other one drove around and tried to torrent my anni barges. Which also didn't do much, because it's S8 against AV13. It then got glanced to death by warriors.

Still, keep a spinner well protected, and it could be a thorn in your opponents side. No one likes having S8 blasts dropped on them.

 McNinja wrote:
Quick question: would you take three Shadow Weavers over three War Walkers with two bright lances? I already have a Crimson Hunter, 5 man unit of Fire Dragons, and two Fire Prisms, so I'm not sure if I need the extra AT the War Walkers provide.

... tough question personally If your thinking about moving up to 2000pt games (opening up a second FOC) i would recommend getting Shadow Weavers ... but since you all ready have war walkers i would just re arm them with all scatter lasers.

Shadow Weavers are great, cheap and should be spammed if possible but it really depends on your list and play style. I use my army aggressively so my batteries normally remain at the back unmolested (if some one does deal with them they normally wast a more expensive unit which i find a fair trade off) . They do a lot of damage turn 1 and then their effective drops off, like all blast weapons, if you like the sound of all that then take them. If you don't well ...

 Tri wrote:

 McNinja wrote:
Quick question: would you take three Shadow Weavers over three War Walkers with two bright lances? I already have a Crimson Hunter, 5 man unit of Fire Dragons, and two Fire Prisms, so I'm not sure if I need the extra AT the War Walkers provide.

... tough question personally If your thinking about moving up to 2000pt games (opening up a second FOC) i would recommend getting Shadow Weavers ... but since you all ready have war walkers i would just re arm them with all scatter lasers.

Shadow Weavers are great, cheap and should be spammed if possible but it really depends on your list and play style. I use my army aggressively so my batteries normally remain at the back unmolested (if some one does deal with them they normally wast a more expensive unit which i find a fair trade off) . They do a lot of damage turn 1 and then their effective drops off, like all blast weapons, if you like the sound of all that then take them. If you don't well ...

Well, it is only an 1850 list. the WW unit was 210 points, so I did some math and if I drop them for the Shadow weavers I can get the Crimson Hunter Exarch, three more Fire Dragons, and three more Warp Spiders, which may or may not be a fair trade off.

3 war walkers with brightlance are 210. You can get 7 Shadow Weavers for that cost. AV10 vs T7. 3+ vs 5++. War walkers die turn 1-2. Shadow weavers usually survive the game.

Wraiths are one of the only thing in the game where the nightspinner is doing well. Taking a unit for the sole purpose of doing better vs one unit is kind of silly. Also, if you are trying to position the nightspinner shot away from a center-location D lord you are probably not even getting the 3-4 hits you are expecting. ~1 wraith kill a turn is not a worthwhile investment.

If using the torrent you hit facing armor, not side. Even hitting side you are hitting AV11-12 in almost any situation. Hammerheads, preds, eldar vehicles, Cron vehicles, Battlewagons, russes, and rhinos are pretty much the only vehicles run these days. Only guard run AV10 side.

If you are taking ghostwalk matrix, holofields, and spirit stones you are looking at twice the points as shadow weavers. Therefore the comparison is two shadow weaver units vs one nightspinner. Beginning to see the problem?

Shadow weavers are good, though I wouldn't recommend spamming them. I think the way to go is to diversify. Don't put all your eggs in 1 basket (i.e. don't count on all your offense in 1 type of unit). Running 9 of them actually unbalances your list. You will come into situations where they won't be as good, and this is coming from someone who at one time ran 9 biovores. Spamming them then makes it a rock-paper-scissors matchup. Go up against land raider-spam, necron air foce, ultra-fast daemons with the Grimoire, drop pod Jaws wolves, the seer council eldar, DE venom-spam and a number of other builds and you will be playing from behind. Of course there are some armies that they excel against but if you bring it to a tournament, just 1 bad matchup and you will be out of the running (assuming you care about trying to win in the tournament).

But they are good enough that I would actually consider 2x3 of them.

 jy2 wrote:

But they are good enough that I would actually consider 2x3 of them.

This is where basically all of my lists end up. Maybe you want a unit of War Walkers in a foot list. Maybe you want a Wraithknight in a skimmer list. Falcons and Wraithlords are meh. Prisms are neat, but I prefer Wraithknights for anti-tank and that's usually the big hole in my lists. I'm not paying 30 points per model for something that gets taken out on a 2+ by anything with AP3. I'm willing to consider 6 War Walkers or 2 Wraithknights, but that's getting expensive. So, artillery.

Full spam is only 270. That leaves plenty of room to diversify

s7 blasts shred venoms faster than venoms shred 12 wounds

Point for point they can take hits well from cron air and jaws as long as they do not deploy the reavers in a straightline.

Ultra fast deamons is an odd and rare army. There is also usually a good target for the reavers.

Normally I say spamming is bad because it leaves a list vulnerable. In the case of reavers the spam really does not cost much.

Yeah, I also wouldn't say that they're bad against a lot of those lists. Obviously Land Raiders give them trouble, although Eldar in general are good against LRs because of Bright Lances.

They're so damn cheap that it hardly matters if they're getting shot up. And against lots of those lists they dish it out just as well as they take it - they're as or more threatening to Venoms as Venoms are to them. They seem like the best possible HS choice against a Seer Council. They're decent against demons since they don't rely on AP. If the flesh hounds charge them that's fine; it's given my skimmers time to move to the other side of the board. If you'd be willing to sacrifice a minimum Guardian squad to tie up a unit of whatever for a turn, you should be okay with doing the same with Weavers.

pantsonhead wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

But they are good enough that I would actually consider 2x3 of them.

This is where basically all of my lists end up. Maybe you want a unit of War Walkers in a foot list. Maybe you want a Wraithknight in a skimmer list. Falcons and Wraithlords are meh. Prisms are neat, but I prefer Wraithknights for anti-tank and that's usually the big hole in my lists. I'm not paying 30 points per model for something that gets taken out on a 2+ by anything with AP3. I'm willing to consider 6 War Walkers or 2 Wraithknights, but that's getting expensive. So, artillery.

WKs over FPs? How do you figure? I would think that the S9 AP1 lance would be better than two S10 AP2 shots (even with Distort), unless you mean getting into CC.

WK survive the game as 95% of armies are not built to deal with them. FP get concentrated over even WS. Lance is incredibly overrated as only a small portion of targets actually have a benefit. Between rolling to hit, rolling to pen, rolling cover saves, rolling to damage, you arent doing all that much with a FP. A WK his height to deny a lot of cover saves and can move into spaces a FP would be overwhelmed. A WK does not fear much except specialized squads. Therefore side armor S10 is much better than S9 lance.

Also, vs things like tau, guard, quite a few cron builds, and other shooty armies, you can just run the WK up and punch everything. Making them deal with the WK can draw a HUGE amount of firepower off your WS and WG.

240 points for WK vs 150 for FP is a concern. Honestly i would still take the WK over the FP every day. 1 shot is not reliable AT. 2 shots+ punching is.

 McNinja wrote:
WKs over FPs? How do you figure? I would think that the S9 AP1 lance would be better than two S10 AP2 shots (even with Distort), unless you mean getting into CC.

Zephoid explains my thinking. To add some numbers, even just as a gun platform, the WK scores more damaging hits per point than a 150 point Fire Prism against everything except AV14, and more penetrating hits per point against everything except AV14. Its penetrating hits are not quite as good, obviously. It also receives more benefit from Guide or Prescience (especially Prescience since it applies to CC too) by virtue of costing more and stacking more guns in a unit. The Wraithknight's guns also ID Daemon Princes and various other T5 critters, and obviously have a chance of IDing even bigger MCs. The Prism's advantage is its ability to fire a blast and a large blast. But against most armies the Wraithknight is likewise able to deliver anti-MEQ punch with his CC ability, and he can also beat out a lot of scarier units that the Fire Prism can't deal with at all (MCs, mostly). The Prism is basically only better against multi-model T4/5 units that the WK doesn't want to charge, but that's what Guardians are for.

Edit: And AV14, as I acknowledged, but AV14 is still in danger at range from a WK, and its movement is severely restricted by the WK charging at it. Prisms are preferable when there is AV14 and the enemy has a nasty CC squad that the WK wants no part of. But a WK still works really well against a Land Raider and Terminators because he can just stand there and wait for them to get close while shooting at it. Sometimes he kills it at range. Sometimes he keeps it at a distance for most of the game. Sometimes it gets close enough that he can charge it and take it out, and at that point he's made his points back and the Terminators are welcome to him. After that they'll be a few turns away from anything else in my army.

Prisms are versatility, much like missile launchers. You can get weapons/units for a single task but you'll not find a better all rounder. I find that they work nicely at higher points games because they give me options towards the end of my shooting phase.

Units like Warwalkers give you saturation, against a more specific range (in focused builds any way ... I've never been a fan of a mixing weapons strengths). A warwalker with twin guns will be much more effective against its selected target but also much weaker when forced to deal with other targets.

Heya guys, been lurking here for a while now. Collected Eldar more than 10 years ago, and kinda interested in getting back in. I was interested in Tau until they became the new flavor of the month and Eldar always hold a soft spot. Anyway, moving on...

I had not really considered the Support Batteries this edition. I thought about them in the previous incarnation, back when the monofilament made difficult/dangerous terrain. This post really got me thinking though. I like WK, Dark Reapers and War Walkers. I feel like the rest of the HS is a little outclassed elsewhere; or did until this thread. In small to mid point games, could a successful list be built around these guys? Would 3x3 provide enough midstrength firepower to make giving up some of the harder hitters in the HS slot up? Obviously, if you went this route, you would have to supply your AT elsewhere - which is where FA comes in. Warp Spiders can get behind enemy tanks to hit vulnerable armor and Crimson hunters could fill the rest of the void. I just don't want to run Mech spam and I'm looking for alternatives.

The core of the list would be something like:

10x Warp Spiders
Crimson Hunter
Crimson Hunter Exarch

3x3 Shadow Weavers


This whole group clocks in at 800 points. I figure that the four Str 8 lance shots are going to be able to do some damage to AV13/14 with good BS and movement abilities, plus another four Str 8 shots from the Pulse Lasers, making up for the loss of AT in the Heavy Support arena.

I've seen a lot of support for the Weavers, but would a list built around them (as the HS at least) have enough killing power?

Edit* I have read most of the tacticas out there and I know that Crimson Hunters are very fragile and risky to bank on, but with all those Shadow Weavers, you could reliably hurt most Interceptors in turn 1 right? Also, I didn't mean to imply that the Crimson Hunters and Warp Spiders were enough AT ( in my mind anyway), but they can definitely help out. And both groups would most likely prioritize flyers, since the Weavers can't.

 shamikebab wrote:
I think I'd rather have the Nightspinner personally. I haven't actually tried the Shadow Weaver yet but I've tried the other two:

Vibrocannons - meh, did ok but nothing special really
D-Cannons - in one turn they decimated a drop pod Sternguard....then were out of range for the rest of the game. Very much situational really.

Vibro cannons are mediocre until you consider that your opponent thinks they're mediocre as well.

Set up two of them behind an ADL with an icarus lascannon, a farseer and a warlock each (only one farseer.).

You get re-rolls, meaning usually you'll get the full 3 S9AP2 shots on each. You also have an extra S9AP2 shot from the icarus lascannon, shooting at BS5 with a re-roll.

On top of this, you get T7 with a 2+ cover save. 7 S9AP2 attacks doesn't seem too much, 'till you realise that it's less than 500 points that people will do their best to ignore - you can effectively have free reign with them.

I do agree that spamming them can hold all your eggs in one basket, but Landraiders and anything armor 14 or 13 is ot that scary because we have bright lances. If you add those somewhere else in the list, then I believe the three platforms are a great investment, and you will be more than happy with what they kill. Also, I was thinking maybe 2 shadow weavers, and one squad of 3 vibros for a little extra anti-tank. Thoughts?

If you want to use a lot of them, its better to run 2x3 and a wraithknight. Then run wraithguard in WS as your troops. Almost nothing in that army would be a good target for S3-5. Everything would require AT weapon equivalent to deal with. Makes it hard for armies like guard,SM, chaos, or shooty orks that do depend on small arms fire doing some damage to support the heavier weapons.