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Shuriken weapons are truly the final insult once you catch the WS. I've actually taken a ton of wounds from these things at critical junctures.

easysauce wrote:
you cant make sense of english, then ill dumb it down for you...

I'm saying your grammar sucked in such a way that it was incomprehensible.

the above basically translates into:

my theory is that you call anyone who says they can deal with WS spam a liar,

No, I'm saying the counters *you* put forward aren't very good ones, and explained why. You have yet to actually point out any problems in my explanations of this.

I give strats that work for me, you say "youre a liar, nothing works" and around we go! what a great debate! what manners!

Again, no, you just tossed out a couple things and said "this works", and made a rather ridiculous boast about kiting armies built around kiting. I pointed out flaws with these and why they're not going to perform well on any consistent basis and how it's rather easy for a WS list to counter those (to which you've yet to provide an adequate response) and then, yes, I questioned your boast.

why bother reading this thread if you are just going to ignore advice and dump on people who claim they can counter WS spam?

I'm dumping on the things you mentioned because I immediately see flaws in them that should be easy for an Eldar player to exploit ruthlessly and with minimal effort (vendetta aside).

I'm not alone in that.

IG HWS's are horrible counters to WS's because of the massed S6+ firepower they can put out and utterly massacre such units (not to mention that, again, they're cost ineffective in general), 5 man units of Interceptors are very easy to make ineffective through just a couple casualties (more than possible for the Wave Serpents), and effective Deep Strike units aren't routinely available to every army.

how about instead of being a rude person who calls people liars,

I said I don't believe you when you made a silly boast. If you're going to make statements like that, provide some sort of evidence.

simply for trying to tell people about tactics that WORK,

I've certainly never seen them work (EDIT: I should say, "never seen them work on anything like a consistent, reliable basis that can act as a reasonable counter"), on paper they shouldn't work anywhere near reliably, and other people seem to concur.

instead of endlessly complaining about how there are no counters...

Show me where I said this.

besides that...
its CANADA you dont care about our players names or our competitions... our biggest tournies, will be full of players just as good as in the us or UK.

So...because it's Canada I will have never heard of the event (you'd think especially because it's a 50 person event in Canada it'd be more well known) and won't care. Ok, not true but whatever.

And I'm not doubting Canadian players, however I am saying that if, just because you have Jump infantry, you can kite a well built and well played Eldar army, that your opponent was bad.

FYI i took 1500pts of GK's to a tourny called onslaught, and yes it is our provinces 2nd biggest, and no, its not a nova or adepticon, so you will likely only confirm it exists on FB or google or something, not sure you can seee all the names due to privacy issues.

I've heard of it, IIRC in edmonton? found a list of winners but no armies attached to names.

next I expect to hear" oh well thats not a real tournament, cause canadas not a real country" and so on...

Methinks you have some...other issues here.

@ Arbiter_Shade

Well if you do manage to blow the suckers up you are gonna kill a chunk of what is inside. The eldar player on average will lose 1/2 his Guardians or 1/3 his Dire Avengers(Wraithguard being the exception, but chance are Wraithguard WSs probably already delivered their payload).

I think the frustration comes from this...

One side is thinking about facing WS spam while the other has like 3 on the table in mind.

Against WS spam the answer is this...

ANOTHER OVERPOWERED NETLIST, lol!

Against the more moderate 2 or 3, you are still gonna need to play smart and maybe tailor a little bit.

Tailoring is out when you don't know that you are against Eldar.

x13rads wrote:
@ Arbiter_Shade

Well if you do manage to blow the suckers up you are gonna kill a chunk of what is inside. The eldar player on average will lose 1/2 his Guardians or 1/3 his Dire Avengers(Wraithguard being the exception, but chance are Wraithguard WSs probably already delivered their payload).

I think the frustration comes from this...

One side is thinking about facing WS spam while the other has like 3 on the table in mind.

Against WS spam the answer is this...

ANOTHER OVERPOWERED NETLIST, lol!

Against the more moderate 2 or 3, you are still gonna need to play smart and maybe tailor a little bit.

I'm not going to lie, I just got tired of writing math out so I ignored the explosive results lol. Still if you take that into consideration, the explosion will hurt the interceptors and what ever is inside.

And really that is what it boils down to, WS spam is not an auto-win sure, but if you have to build a list to specifically counter it in order to stand a chance THAT is where the problem is. No list should be so good that it can dominate a meta and every has to build to answer it. That IS the way things go, but we should strive to see the game we play be better, not just acceptably bad.

For example, how do I prep for both WS and helldrake spam?

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

x13rads wrote:
@ Arbiter_Shade

Well if you do manage to blow the suckers up you are gonna kill a chunk of what is inside. The eldar player on average will lose 1/2 his Guardians or 1/3 his Dire Avengers(Wraithguard being the exception, but chance are Wraithguard WSs probably already delivered their payload).

I think the frustration comes from this...

One side is thinking about facing WS spam while the other has like 3 on the table in mind.

Against WS spam the answer is this...

ANOTHER OVERPOWERED NETLIST, lol!

Against the more moderate 2 or 3, you are still gonna need to play smart and maybe tailor a little bit.

I'm not going to lie, I just got tired of writing math out so I ignored the explosive results lol. Still if you take that into consideration, the explosion will hurt the interceptors and what ever is inside.

And really that is what it boils down to, WS spam is not an auto-win sure, but if you have to build a list to specifically counter it in order to stand a chance THAT is where the problem is. No list should be so good that it can dominate a meta and every has to build to answer it. That IS the way things go, but we should strive to see the game we play be better, not just acceptably bad.

Well if it makes you feel better, Whita Scars should scare the Frak out of any fast Eldar Army. Or any gun>assault army for that matter. It's just that typical Marine players don't have that many bikes on their shelves, and they lose to Horde and better Assault armies.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
For example, how do I prep for both WS and helldrake spam?

If you are talking about Competitive play then you don't. All you can do Is pray you don't get a bad draw. But that was true long before Wave Serpent Spam.

I mean how to you prepare for Heldrake Spam & Wraithwing/Annihilation Barge Spam & FMC Spam & Seer Council w/ Baron & Quad Riptide Spam???

*forgot Necron Flying Circus in there

"I mean how to you prepare for Heldrake Spam & Wraithwing/Annihilation Barge Spam & FMC Spam & Seer Council w/ Baron & Quad Riptide Spam??? "

True that.

I mean how to you prepare for Heldrake Spam & Wraithwing/Annihilation Barge Spam & FMC Spam & Seer Council w/ Baron & Quad Riptide Spam???

Fateweaver
2 tzeench heralds
1 khorn herald
khorn hounds
1x10 plaguies
2x12 horrors
7xscreamers
1xflying DPs

and never play under 3 LoS blocking terrain pices

I hate to see people get discouraged but Codex Creep is part of the game. Let me share this story that happened to me only a few months back...

(gosh I feel like a grandpa typing that line)

Went to the shop cause I had a game set up to play a first timer 40k player(he played Fantasy regularly). Well I got there early and there was another guy there with his new Tau and asked if I would throw down with him. Now what I brought with me was meh. My 1000pt Necron list was like 2 Ghost Arks with Warriors inside, a larger Warrior squad on foot, a Triarch Stalker, and a decked out Overlord with a small Cryptek RC sprinkled in the Warrior squads. In NO way a net list(was a little AV13 wall)

Tau guy was not prepared to do 1000pts so he was cutting down his list to make due. In the end it was probably 1200pts of streamlined Tau v. 1000pts of "Teaching a Guy How to Play" Necrons. He had a Riptide, Commander Crisis Suit Team with their own Markerlights, Broadsides with their own Markerlights, a pathfinder team with added gundrones and a Devilfish, 2 full Fire Warrior teams with their own Markerlights, a Hammerhead, and an Ethereal.

Needless to say it was a curbstomping. But on Turn 3 he DS his Commander next to the Warrior squad with my Overlord. All of a sudden I turned the game into an Assassination Mission in my mind. My only goal became to kill his Commander. I trash talked a little bit and sure enough I charged with one squad eating the overwatch, and chraged the second squad with my Overlord in it getting into CC with his suits. It was turn 3 and all I had left on the board was my Overlord and 5 Warriors.

2 CC phases later(and a litle bit of ribbing on my part) and I was the one smiling as I cleaved his Warlord in half even though he tabled me. He was even a little POed that I had turn the game into something it was not.

My point being, sometimes you are gonna find yourself in an immpossible situation, but that shouldn't stop you from having fun. When you find yourself up against a netlist, set yourself some goals and rise to the challenge. One of the cool things about 40k is that if you are willing to wait long enough, one day your army will br the flavor of the month. I can remember specifically in 3rd when you could consolidate into CC that BAs were the cat's meow.

Jesus, they should just sit down and go;

"Is this thing super tough? Is it also super fast? Does it also drop a shitton of dakka or choppy?

If yes, nerf one of these, because we don't know how to cost super units to save our fething lives"

Makumba wrote:

I mean how to you prepare for Heldrake Spam & Wraithwing/Annihilation Barge Spam & FMC Spam & Seer Council w/ Baron & Quad Riptide Spam???

Fateweaver
2 tzeench heralds
1 khorn herald
khorn hounds
1x10 plaguies
2x12 horrors
7xscreamers
1xflying DPs

and never play under 3 LoS blocking terrain pices

There is no way to assure that terrain set up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

x13rads wrote:
I hate to see people get discouraged but Codex Creep is part of the game. Let me share this story that happened to me only a few months back...

(gosh I feel like a grandpa typing that line)

Went to the shop cause I had a game set up to play a first timer 40k player(he played Fantasy regularly). Well I got there early and there was another guy there with his new Tau and asked if I would throw down with him. Now what I brought with me was meh. My 1000pt Necron list was like 2 Ghost Arks with Warriors inside, a larger Warrior squad on foot, a Triarch Stalker, and a decked out Overlord with a small Cryptek RC sprinkled in the Warrior squads. In NO way a net list(was a little AV13 wall)

Tau guy was not prepared to do 1000pts so he was cutting down his list to make due. In the end it was probably 1200pts of streamlined Tau v. 1000pts of "Teaching a Guy How to Play" Necrons. He had a Riptide, Commander Crisis Suit Team with their own Markerlights, Broadsides with their own Markerlights, a pathfinder team with added gundrones and a Devilfish, 2 full Fire Warrior teams with their own Markerlights, a Hammerhead, and an Ethereal.

Needless to say it was a curbstomping. But on Turn 3 he DS his Commander next to the Warrior squad with my Overlord. All of a sudden I turned the game into an Assassination Mission in my mind. My only goal became to kill his Commander. I trash talked a little bit and sure enough I charged with one squad eating the overwatch, and chraged the second squad with my Overlord in it getting into CC with his suits. It was turn 3 and all I had left on the board was my Overlord and 5 Warriors.

2 CC phases later(and a litle bit of ribbing on my part) and I was the one smiling as I cleaved his Warlord in half even though he tabled me. He was even a little POed that I had turn the game into something it was not.

My point being, sometimes you are gonna find yourself in an immpossible situation, but that shouldn't stop you from having fun. When you find yourself up against a netlist, set yourself some goals and rise to the challenge. One of the cool things about 40k is that if you are willing to wait long enough, one day your army will br the flavor of the month. I can remember specifically in 3rd when you could consolidate into CC that BAs were the cat's meow.

All power armor lists in 3rd were over powered.

Breng77 wrote:
It is mostly the shield but more than that it is all the things the wave serpent brings together.

1.) Shield is long range ignores cover, high strength, high rate of fire shooting. In addition it is built in defense against other armies alpha striking your serpents as you downgrade penetrating hits to glancing.

2.) It is the ability to take a gun that then twin links the shield (which is itself twin linked), giving the vehicle lots of twin linked S6 and 7 shooting.

3.) It is the durability of the serpent being AV 12 with a built in cover save (that can easily be improved)

4.) It is that it is on a fast skimmer so that it can move to get LOS and good shots while still shooting everything.

5.) It is being a dedicated transport - meaning you can take what up to 9 or so of these in your army.

If you took away any one of these it would still be a good unit, but not as powerful as it is right now.

1.) If the shield were shorter range, or did not ignore cover, or one use only...it is good but not amazing.

2.)If you could not twin link the shield it greatly reduces how effective it is.

3.)If this were a DE vehicle with AV10 or 11 and opentopped...no big deal.

4.) If it were a regular tank like a chimera and needed to snapshoot weapons if it moved more than 6" (and with 3 weapons I think it would need to snapshoot one anyway) it would put out less fire.

5.) IF all these options came on say the falcon in heavy support, it would still be a great vehicle but you would max out at 3 (in single FOC games), so it would be managable.

QFT. It's just too tough for most other armies, especially when there's 3 of them on the board.

3? That's a small amount. I've faced six, seen seven and heard of more than that.

x13rads wrote:
@ Likan Wolfsheim

An average board is gonna have 12 pieces of Terrain, 6 of them you are gonna put out. No one complains where I live when people bring their own terrain to the shop. As long as you and your opponent are both aloud to pick from the terrain you bring there shouldn't be an issue.

Heck I LOVE big line of sight blocking terrain and have several Pegasus Hobbies buildings all with at least one side of the ruin completely blocking line of sight on the bottom and sometimes 2nd level. The Imperial Sector buildings GW pus out has several ways where you can construct the building to block line of sight.

My main point is there are cool ways out there to make LOS blocking Terrain, and as long as your not an arse when showing up to the FLGS, most people are reseptive(sp?) to new cool terrain to play with.

The average battle for me usually has more like 15+ pieces of big things cluttering the board and I still don't think that's gonna help a lot of armies against Serpents. Now I'm not saying that I have trouble with Serpents, because I've long since learned counters. What I'm saying is that for a MEQ army, terrain placement is hardly a counter. I've already stated that both the store's terrain and my personal collection are lacking in massive LoS-blockers and that maybe huge pieces of terrain are much more common elsewhere. Around here we have massive ruins--some with lots of open places, some almost solid. Unfortunately, the BRB's handling of most terrain makes it impossible for MEQ infantry to utilise the ruins defensively against the Serpents (however it will help against AP3 shooting, of course) By-the-book that ruin you mentioned in the quoted post isn't going to help: if it's a ruin shots will go straight through it. It doesn't matter if the Serpent is shooting through a solid chunk of ruin wall or a section with a window: the ruin is not solid and doesn't block LoS. It's perfectly fine for opponents to agree that it functions like that, but that's just a house rule and it's likely that elsewhere someone's going to insist that the ruins be played in their semi-solid BRB state.

What are the counters you have long since learned?

Nothing terribly relevant for BA I'm afraid (I've only derped around with the codex a few times so I can't really say I play them). Deathwing Assault behind the Serpents has consistently broken about half the serpents on my first turn from in 1.5k-2k games, and the termies have somehow managed to whether all the shuriken shooting. For IG a Pask-piloted Exterminator has been doing really well for me in all my matchups, and Demolishers are good for dissuading shield-firing and IG blobs are pretty good at soaking up the firepower and taking up space on the board to slowly (often agonisingly so) box the skimmers in . I've found outflanking scout-sentinels with autocannons can get some nice shots on rear armour...and then there's Vendettas. And with DE I'm still having some success with dark lances and catching the serpents with haywire-grenade troops...though it is a hell of a lot harder and the lack of flickerfields on non-Venoms in TAC lists hurts when it comes to that shield's shooting (all in all Dark Eldar are definitely the least successful against Eldar). I have yet to test my codex marines against Serpents...but I have a feeling they'll get destroyed.

Sorry but I just cannot stay idle when someone uses math-hammer as an argument and actually it isn't right.

Say the opponent is going to field 5 WSs that you have to deal with. That is 20 S6 shots and 5D6+5 S7 shots, so you are statistically taking 10 S6 shots and 13 S7 shots. All of those shots are wounding on anything buts so you are going to be taking say...19 wounds, failing a third of those saves means 6 wounds.

With 5 WS and no Shuriken Cannons that is on average 31.5 wounds which equals 10.5 dead marines. If you add to it passengers (let's say there are 5 DA and not 10 Guardians each WS) it is additional 50 S4 rending shots.
It is 5.6 rending wounds and 11.1 normal wounds which equals 9.25 dead marines. Altogether it is nearly 20. Additional 5 Shuriken Cannons add on average 5 more. 25 out of 30 are dead in one turn.
The only downside I can see is being a little bit vulnerable to DK flamers. But I cannot possibly see it killing all my troops. Even with those 5 remaining marines who are probably killed by some leftover firepower. Fire Prism, Warp Spiders, Wraithknight, War Walkers, etc. Those 5 WS cost "only" 1050 points.

You know, I really didn't think Wave Serpents were that good when I first read the book. In all honesty, I just read the books for the fluff on the first time through, then skim the points. At first I thought "Hmm, another Devilfish kind of vehicle." The points at first struck me as high.

Upon further reading, I was stunned at the combination of rules that helped the vehicle. Breng77 put it very clearly forward. Even one of those things falling away would be fine. Serpent shield as a one shot would be good.

Off hand I can't think of any counters to a list with 5-7 of these things though. They are VERY good at killing other transports. Then the volume of fire is pretty solid against infantry. So overall, the OP has been answered, rage comes from spamming... but that goes for most things.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:
Nothing terribly relevant for BA I'm afraid (I've only derped around with the codex a few times so I can't really say I play them). Deathwing Assault behind the Serpents has consistently broken about half the serpents on my first turn from in 1.5k-2k games, and the termies have somehow managed to whether all the shuriken shooting.

I wished my regular Eldar opponent would be nice enough to allow me room to get behind his WS (and other grav tanks) in the first turn. He always sets them with the rear facing about 1-2" from the table edge, so there's no way to deepstrike anything to get those rear armour shots. After that, he tends to rush me with them to deliver their transported payload, or he leaves them in his backfield (again, rear to the board edge) and plugs away at range. The ONLY way I ever get rear armour shots is if I find one that rushed forward with my drop pod or termies, and then I have to survive the wraithguard that fall out of it.

macexor wrote:
Sorry but I just cannot stay idle when someone uses math-hammer as an argument and actually it isn't right.

Say the opponent is going to field 5 WSs that you have to deal with. That is 20 S6 shots and 5D6+5 S7 shots, so you are statistically taking 10 S6 shots and 13 S7 shots. All of those shots are wounding on anything buts so you are going to be taking say...19 wounds, failing a third of those saves means 6 wounds.

With 5 WS and no Shuriken Cannons that is on average 31.5 wounds which equals 10.5 dead marines. If you add to it passengers (let's say there are 5 DA and not 10 Guardians each WS) it is additional 50 S4 rending shots.
It is 5.6 rending wounds and 11.1 normal wounds which equals 9.25 dead marines. Altogether it is nearly 20. Additional 5 Shuriken Cannons add on average 5 more. 25 out of 30 are dead in one turn.
The only downside I can see is being a little bit vulnerable to DK flamers. But I cannot possibly see it killing all my troops. Even with those 5 remaining marines who are probably killed by some leftover firepower. Fire Prism, Warp Spiders, Wraithknight, War Walkers, etc. Those 5 WS cost "only" 1050 points.

Yeah, wow, I just looked over what I wrote and it is WAAAAY off. I have no idea where I was getting some of those numbers from, good call. I purposely left out the DA or Guardians in the transport to give him the benefit on the math because you don't really NEED those shuriken shots to show that Jump Marines are a bad choice to counter WS spam.

No, but the shuriken boys are a good extra kick in the power jimmies.

And lets not forget that if you shunt 30" into his deployment zone with everything, he just might decide that your empty one looks better.

120pts for that crazy of a transport huh? thats pretty damn cheap yaknow that right?

Its fast so it can fire both its weapons if it doesnt feel a threat it needs to keep the shield for, and both are high strength and enough rate of fire to put on some hurt. Unless its a 2+ armor, a D6 number of shots will force a lot of saves. Also, i play orks, AP- aside it ignores cover so now i have a 6+ save. Sounds pretty crazy now doesnt it? To top it off, its near-table range.

Shooting aside, the very very high chance to negate a Pen makes that AV12 vehicle tougher than a Landraider to pop for a lot of armies, since people tend to bring a big gun for vehicles rather than rate of fire. Easier to glance than a landraider yes but landraiders sometimes pop to a single melta - that thing most likely will never pop to a single shot.

Not sure how you dont see the reason for all the flame towards it. If i played newdar i wouldnt ever bring a ton of those for the same reason i dont riptide spam - its unfun to play against, and i dont have fun if i steamroll my opponent either.

x13rads wrote:
On a lighter note, do you think the OP got his answer ?

Yeah you could say that..
when I checked day previous it had 1 anwser then suddenly .. BOOM! +1000 views

yep thats everyone responding to wave serpents.
i beilieve there was also somehting like this when the riptide came out.....

I guess the Riptide posters didn't know how good they had it.

But still I think that 6+ is way too much. I myself haven't ever tried more than 4... yet.

6+ is perfectly legal, so it's demonstrably not too much.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 hiveof_chimera wrote:
I know this is extremely embarrassing to ask but why all the hate got the wave serpent? Is it because it's shield, it's a dedicated transport or because it's a skimmer because I honestly don't know. I mean it's 120 pts(base +scatter) for a 12 12 10 skimmer within a d6 ap - gun.
On a side note when do you use the shield?
Thanks

It's got an obscene amount of firepower that's very easily twin linked while still moving quite fast each turn, can be made to be *very* difficult to kill relative to most other vehicles in the game (particularly tracked vehicles) that got made hilariously easy to kill, and can be spammed without regard to FoC slots.

moving 12", firing 4 TL S6 shots and then D6+1 S7 AP- Ignores cover shots that get to be TL'd as long as at least one of the aformentioned four BS4 TL'd scatterlaser shots hits, and still benefitting from a 4+ cover save in the open (hooray holofields) is astounding mobility, survivability, and firepower. Alternatively, being able to move flat out and benefit from a 3+ cover save in the open and downgrade pen's to glances on a 2+ makes the damn near impossible to kill before it gets where it wants to be and dumps its transport load.

It's the same issue everyone had with the Falcon in 4E, just on the Wave Serpent now.

It isn't quite the same, the Falcon didn't have the firepower but was far, far harder to kill.

The Wave Serpent isn't that hard to kill with Hull Points (but ironically, the best thing at killing another WS is a WS thanks to the shield ignoring the WS defences), and if they fire the shield a penetrating hit that gets through puts it out of the game. AV12 isn't too hard to get by. It brings it's cover with it (Jink) but is no tougher than a non skimmer in a cover heavy environment (which is the board you should be playing on in 6th edition rules anyway).

The firepower with the scatter laser is quite obscene though. I think Laser Lock was a bit too much and makes that weapon too 'must have' for the Serpent.