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Martel732 wrote:
At least the GK stuff would die. Wave Serpents are frustratingly immortal.

Which only reminds me that Elder had this issue before in 4th edition. Back then it was Falconspam.

Which pretty much reminds me that Kelly really, really enjoys buffing up parts of Eldar to make them ignore parts of the Edition he doesn't like.

Martel732 wrote:
At least the GK stuff would die. Wave Serpents are frustratingly immortal.

I played a game yesterday against a seer council army. He had 4 serpents with his seer council. I was able to shoot down 3 of the serpents, and assaulted the other with marines killing it. They are tough -- but not immortal.

You just need to bring enough of the right tools. I was playing my "Vanilla Sky" army. That has all the tools needed to kill serpents.

Okay, "immortal" should have been in quotes. It's offensive that a lascannon battery is basically garbage against the standard Eldar transport. I find it offensive that any given list needs "tools" to bring down another list's dedicated transports. Any old anti-tank should work. It doesn't. That makes them broken.

Martel732 wrote:
Okay, "immortal" should have been in quotes. It's offensive that a lascannon battery is basically garbage against the standard Eldar transport. I find it offensive that any given list needs "tools" to bring down another list's dedicated transports. Any old anti-tank should work. It doesn't. That makes them broken.

That's kind of the problem with the current Eldar dex. Against the average build, you HAVE to tool your army up to stand a chance. Its far too easy for an Eldar TAC army to completely negate another non-Eldar TAC list.

If you don't know ahead of time you're facing Eldar, you can't "tool up".

What makes the Wave Serpent so hard to kill now?

Does the one pip in cover save really make that much of a difference?

Maybe the Wave Serpent is the Eldar version of payback for having such horridly overcosted units since 3rd edition dropped.

I wouldn't really know, though. My Eldar army is mostly jetbikes, with two grav tank chassis that I have setup to be customizable as either Falcons or Wave Serpents, so I can only field two of either at a time. But I've been told I'm crazy, because I don't spam grav tanks and I actually field a squad of Shining Spears.

 Daba wrote:
What makes the Wave Serpent so hard to kill now?

Does the one pip in cover save really make that much of a difference?

When its on an AV 12 vehicle that has the option to never be penetrated, yes.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Maybe the Wave Serpent is the Eldar version of payback for having such horridly overcosted units since 3rd edition dropped.

They haven't had any more overcosted units than many other armies, and were certainly no slouches in 3E and 4E with their invinciskimmers, Alaitoc distruption tables, flying circus, and 3E starcannon spam, etc.

 Daba wrote:
What makes the Wave Serpent so hard to kill now?

Does the one pip in cover save really make that much of a difference?

An AV12 Fast Skimmer that can sport a 3+ cover save in the open and downgrade pen's to glances on a 2+ is pretty damn sturdy, making HP kills and physical assault the only effective recourse. It takes more lascannon/melta fire to kill a maneuvering Wave Serpent than it does to kill a Land Raider on average.

The fact that it can be spammed and takes up no FoC slot, and for 135pts can pop out up to 11 Twin Linked S6/7 shots (the S7 shots ignoring cover) with tremendous range is what makes it even more silly.

I mean, lets look at something like an IG Hellhound, also a Fast AV12 tank with generally anti-infantry weaponry. It gets no skimmer bonuses, has a far shorter weapon range, no transport ability, takes up a Fast Attack FoC slot, needs to buy it's ability to generate cover saves (which are inferior and one-use), and costs the same number of points, the only thing it gets over the Wave Serpent is AP4.

 Daba wrote:
What makes the Wave Serpent so hard to kill now?

Does the one pip in cover save really make that much of a difference?

1). AV 12/12/10
2). Fast Skimmer Tank
3). Jink save of 5+ as long as it moves
4). Serpent Shield- on a 2+, ALL penetrating hits get downgraded to glancing hits
5). Add Holofields for +1 Cover Save
6). Add Spirit Stones to ignore Shaken (2+) and Stunned (4+)
7). Can take any of the Eldar Heavy Weapons- Twin Linked no less. But most don't, as the Scatter Laser is awesome now, and you have the Serpent Shield...
8). Serpent Shield: Range: 60" (Yikes! Really? I thought that was a misprint, but it's not). S 7 AP - Assault d6+1, Pinning, Ignores Cover

All this in a dedicated transport, that costs less then 150 points. Let's look at the math a bit. Assume a Space Marine Army shooting Lascannons:
-14 Lascannons shoot
-9 hit (BS4)
-Roll for armor penetration: 2 Glance, 4 Pens
-Eldar Player rolls for the serpent shield, and converts all penetrating hits to Glancing hits
-Eldar Player rolls Jink save, gets +1 due to Holofields (4+), takes 3 Glancing hits wrecking his Wave Serpent

14 Lascannon shots to take out ONE Wave Serpent. It's about 18 Missile Launcher shots to achieve the same thing. Maybe you could get lucky with a Meltagun/Meltabombs, but again, converting Penetrating hits to Glances, and then getting the Jink save... It pretty much makes it one of the most durable tanks in the game.

thing is a LR cant be hurt by st6,str 7(plasma) while serpents can meaning autocannons, plasma will glance it to death fairly fast. and all the shots are ap- so it really can only hunt light av tanks and artillary and small men squads. and i thought that if it went flat out it couldnt shoot it weapons

 hiveof_chimera wrote:
thing is a LR cant be hurt by st6,str 7(plasma) while serpents can meaning autocannons, plasma will glance it to death fairly fast. and all the shots are ap- so it really can only hunt light av tanks and artillary and small men squads. and i thought that if it went flat out it couldnt shoot it weapons

Clearly you haven't played against 4+ of these things as ap- doesn't mean squat when your putting so many wounds on things, melta, plasma and auto cannons will not glance this to death quickly as it has a 4+ save when it moves, 3+ in ruins, good luck with that

 hiveof_chimera wrote:
thing is a LR cant be hurt by st6,str 7(plasma) while serpents can meaning autocannons, plasma will glance it to death fairly fast. and all the shots are ap- so it really can only hunt light av tanks and artillary and small men squads. and i thought that if it went flat out it couldnt shoot it weapons

It's all about wound spamming.

 Formosa wrote:

 hiveof_chimera wrote:
thing is a LR cant be hurt by st6,str 7(plasma) while serpents can meaning autocannons, plasma will glance it to death fairly fast. and all the shots are ap- so it really can only hunt light av tanks and artillary and small men squads. and i thought that if it went flat out it couldnt shoot it weapons

Clearly you haven't played against 4+ of these things as ap- doesn't mean squat when your putting so many wounds on things, melta, plasma and auto cannons will not glance this to death quickly as it has a 4+ save when it moves, 3+ in ruins, good luck with that

ive got two myself as an eldar player and i seem to find that even with holofields its 4+ meaning half shots and im not sure about how many shots can be fired when going flat out, mine always seems to get taken out tun 2 by IG orders(make me re-roll successful cover) meaning its not as good and if use the shield its going to die while killing 3-4 guardsmen and if i dont it will only kill 2-3 from scatter(either its not as good or he always seems to blow it up with mass autocannons)

Let me know where my loyalist marines can get some mass autocannons.

Martel732 wrote:
Let me know where my loyalist marines can get some mass autocannons.

Don't you mean loyalist marines getting mass ANYTHING, marines are not good at spam, well except razors and rhinos.

Lets put this all in perspective, how would everyone feel if land raiders were dedicated transports and cost 150 pts each, bloody hard to kill and could put out a hell of alot of firepower for 150pts, that's what the serpent represents.

We can get mass gravy guns.

Wow 18" and 24" guns...woo, I get your point though

I had no intention of running White Scars anyway, but it seems the servo skull thing has put a rain over their scouting parade. That lasted what? 2 months?

Martel732 wrote:
Let me know where my loyalist marines can get some mass autocannons.

yeah no one at our local club uses "low skill armies ) and most of my regular opponents are guard and tau and as far im concerned they can spam Good n Proppa

 hiveof_chimera wrote:
thing is a LR cant be hurt by st6,str 7(plasma) while serpents can meaning autocannons, plasma will glance it to death fairly fast.

Not through a potential 3+ cover save, and the Land Raider costs twice as much

and all the shots are ap- so it really can only hunt light av tanks and artillary and small men squads.

All of which you're likely to face in most games and it's still a very high volume of high S fireepowr to plink down heavy infantry.

If it has a 3+, it has moved flat out so isn't firing it's guns or disgorging it's contents that turn.

Other times, it has a 4+, which is one pip better than what vehicles normally get if there's any bit of cover at all, or a 3+ in ruins where the other vehicles get a 4+.

Vehicles go down to glancing hits, and the difference between the Serpent now and before the latest codex is that they get +1 cover but Lascannons got -1 strength (AP roll is worse)

 Daba wrote:

If it has a 3+, it has moved flat out so isn't firing it's guns or disgorging it's contents that turn.

True enough, and that's not unique to the Wave Serpent also, but it's something that does get enhanced on the wave serpent in conjunction with it's field.

Other times, it has a 4+, which is one pip better than what vehicles normally get if there's any bit of cover at all, or a 3+ in ruins where the other vehicles get a 4+.

Yes, again true, though that "one pip" equates to ~17% reduction in the effectiveness of your opponents firepower, which is seemingly understated here.

Vehicles go down to glancing hits

Yes, but the big thing here however is that all those big AT guns people invest huge amounts of points in are largely pointless against it if using the shield, and if not then it's firepower is tremendous.

and the difference between the Serpent now and before the latest codex is that they get +1 cover but Lascannons got -1 strength (AP roll is worse)

The difference is that it removes almost entirely the possibility for the "one hit kill", and can trade that for significantly more firepower than it ever had before, especially in conjunction with a Scatterlaser. It's also got +1 Ballistic Skill over what it had previously.

In effect, it's far more flexible than anything else out there, either making itself notably more difficult to kill than anything else in its weight class, or throwing out more firepower than almost anything else in its weight class (especially at longer ranges), while having a transport capacity and no FoC restrictions and still sitting at about the same price.



To me honestly it illustrates what is so broken with vehicles in 6th edition in general and the massive gap between flyers/skimmers and tracked vehicles. This coming from a guy who owns 5 Eldar Wave Serpents and at least as many Falcons.

I do appreciate that it's clearly too good for the cost (definitely in offensive power with a Scatterlaser), but while it's good I really think it's exaggerating to compare it to the old Falcon (much harder to kill), or a lot of the 5th edition shenanigans that went on. In 4th Skimmers had more advantages as well (all penetrations became glances) and there's less of an advantage now for a generic skimmer - they get to take their 5+ cover save with them so they're better in the open (but no better in actual cover) but otherwise they follow the same rules as ordinary vehicles; the Waveserpent has wargear and it's own special rule on top of this, but those aren't endemic to skimmers and is more of a localised problem.

Multi-shots at med-strength have been better against this edition in general for taking out vehicles anyway, so armies with 5th edition lists (where Melta was king due to vehicles not having hull points and only dying on a '6' normally) haven't adapted to the edition in general; this is not unique to Wave Serpents, but they bang home the point being even more resilient to penetrating hits. While 17% is quite a bit better, it doesn't land it into 'invulnerable' realms. The 6th core rules (that is excluding the Wargear on the Serpent and others) is much more balanced in terms of vehicles than the game has been before, except that normal vehicles don't get to shoot enough (which has always been a problem) and are too immobile.

Assault is also much more effective against skimmers now, as hitting them is more reliable and Krak grenades are more common too.

 Tamwulf wrote:
14 Lascannon shots to take out ONE Wave Serpent. It's about 18 Missile Launcher shots to achieve the same thing. Maybe you could get lucky with a Meltagun/Meltabombs, but again, converting Penetrating hits to Glances, and then getting the Jink save... It pretty much makes it one of the most durable tanks in the game.

Eldar players will be shooting their serpent shields. They will be stunned/immobilized, and then destroyed in the next round of shooting. A single MM or LC shot can destroy the serpent. Wave serpents are tough, but not invulnerable. If your opponent is dumb enough to never shoot their serpent shield, you have already won the game.

You can dramatically increase your chances of destroying them through using force multipliers. Put 3 LC/ML centurians in a bastion with either a buffmander or tigurius. Your looking for the 'ignore cover' ability or power. Prescience is the second one you want. Being in the bastion, they will have the LoS to most serpents on the board. Having ignore cover, twin-linked, split fire, and tank hunter will vastly increase the rate of wave serpent destruction.

If you build your army correctly, your not going to need 14 LC or 18 ML shots to kill one serpent.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
14 Lascannon shots to take out ONE Wave Serpent. It's about 18 Missile Launcher shots to achieve the same thing. Maybe you could get lucky with a Meltagun/Meltabombs, but again, converting Penetrating hits to Glances, and then getting the Jink save... It pretty much makes it one of the most durable tanks in the game.

Eldar players will be shooting their serpent shields. They will be stunned/immobilized, and then destroyed in the next round of shooting. A single MM or LC shot can destroy the serpent. Wave serpents are tough, but not invulnerable. If your opponent is dumb enough to never shoot their serpent shield, you have already won the game.

You can dramatically increase your chances of destroying them through using force multipliers. Put 3 LC/ML centurians in a bastion with either a buffmander or tigurius. Your looking for the 'ignore cover' ability or power. Prescience is the second one you want. Being in the bastion, they will have the LoS to most serpents on the board. Having ignore cover, twin-linked, split fire, and tank hunter will vastly increase the rate of wave serpent destruction.

If you build your army correctly, your not going to need 14 LC or 18 ML shots to kill one serpent.

Think about what you are saying- "...If you build your army correctly..." means "...if you build your army to take on Eldar..." now what are you going to do in a tournament environment? This last weekend, I faced off against a four Wave Serpent and Jet bike list, a Necron "Con-Air" list, and a White Scars 38 bike/15 Gravgun list. If I had done what you suggested, as in crafted my army to take on just the Eldar opponent, I would have gotten my butt handed to me by the other two armies. Instead, I lost to the Eldar and won the other two games. Knowing what my opponent will take before I make my list ensures my victory, but it's something you can't do in a tournament environment.

The assertion you are recommending has three components: A special character worth 165 points, plus 300 points of Cent Devastators, and a 75 point fortification. Total points: 540 points, to kill ONE WAVE SERPENT that costs less then 150 points. FYI, Mathammer still says with three TLLCs and three TLMLs, you will only get five hits, three glances (converted penetrating hits to glances from Serpent Shield). I'm not sure how you are ignoring cover or getting Tank Hunters, unless you are suggesting taking another Special Character to buff the Cent squad? But according to Mathammer, you are still not going to be able to wreck a Wave Serpent with one round of shooting unless you get lucky. I'd rather take 2-3 Devastator squads with all Missile Launchers (8-12 ML's) then bundle that many points into 4 models with a Fortification. Oh, and I hope the Eldar player just doesn't destroy the Bastion... as that's over 500 points just sitting there...

The smart Eldar player will never shoot the Serpent Shield midgame. He'll shoot it first turn out ranging everything you have to get First Blood. Then, last turn of the game, he'll shoot them again to clean up any left over units.

Wave Serpent Spam is a very, very difficult thing for any army to deal with, except for maybe Tau. Possibly Necrons. Any other army, including Eldar, just can't effectively deal with such a powerful, dedicated, cheap transport. The best a player can hope for is the Eldar player making some mistakes, and you capitalize on those mistakes, and get lucky on some dice rolls. Tank Hunters is immaterial vs. a Wave Serpent due to the Serpent Shield converting all the hits to glances. Somehow gaining Ignores Cover will help a bit against a Wave Serpent, but for a Space Marine player, it's hard to come by. Catching one in close combat- that would be a mistake made by the Eldar player and you taking advantage of it.

The best, most effective way to take out a Wave Serpent is concentrated firepower, more firepower than a typical Space Marine army can field in the 1500-2000 point range. The saving grace is that the rest of the Eldar army is not nearly as efficient or difficult to deal with as a Wave Serpent. If you can somehow just ignore them, your chances of winning go up.

 Tamwulf wrote:
Think about what you are saying- "...If you build your army correctly..." means "...if you build your army to take on Eldar..." now what are you going to do in a tournament environment? This last weekend, I faced off against a four Wave Serpent and Jet bike list, a Necron "Con-Air" list, and a White Scars 38 bike/15 Gravgun list.

Firstly, 40k is very list dependent. Right now there are a handful of lists that are 'all comers' and those are Eldar/Tau and Eldar/DE. Anything else is going to have bad matchups. The question is -- what percentage of bad matchups are you going to have.

If your going to be playing 1/3 eldar, then you probably want to run with the wolves you have been using. If your seeing a lot more Eldar/Tau you might want to run with something else.

In the example I gave, those points would not have been useless against a bike army. They would be wiping out one bike squad per turn. I play a white scars army, and I can assure you that 6 cover ignoring STR 8+ shots suck hard. Especially when they are immune to my grav guns. Cron-air also has big problems when our knocking 1-2 of them out of the sky a turn.

 Tamwulf wrote:
to kill ONE WAVE SERPENT that costs less then 150 points. FYI, Mathammer still says with three TLLCs and three TLMLs, you will only get five hits, three glances (converted penetrating hits to glances from Serpent Shield). I'm not sure how you are ignoring cover or getting Tank Hunters, unless you are suggesting taking another Special Character to buff the Cent squad?

Firstly, if the Eldar player is not shooting the serpent shield you have already won. You say a smart Eldar player will never shoot the shield midgame -- that's completely off base. I played a seerStar for a few months and let me assure you that holding back the serpent shield was a mistake 8/9 of the time. The serpent shield is what makes the wave serpent over the top.
Finally, this is an ongoing effect. 1-2 serpents a turn will be effected or destroyed. Its not like the cents are a one shot wonder. That's a serious problem for eldar players.

Imperial fists get tank hunter. Tigurius can roll 3 times on the divination table, and gets to reroll any power he does not like. If tiggy says "I want ignore cover", hes probably going to get it. The other route is to take a tau buffmander ally with tank hunter -- but I would go with tiggy for the other options he brings.

According to mathhammer this is what your looking at. per cent
(8/9 chance to hit) * (3/4 chance to penetrate) = 2/3 penetrates per turn.
(8/9 chance to hit) * (55% chance to penetrate) = ~4/9 penetrates per turn.
If you throw 2 cents at one target and another cent at a different target (as they have split fire), your probably going to be getting 2 pen effects on one target and one pen effect on another target. Pen effects are bad -- especially with the AP2 lascannons. But even a 'stunned' result winds up with a wave serpent in big trouble.

Most eldar have a problem with AV14. They have 2 tools in their kit -- fire dragons and wraithknights. A decent marine army should be able to deal with them before they become a big threat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tamwulf wrote:
The best, most effective way to take out a Wave Serpent is concentrated firepower, more firepower than a typical Space Marine army can field in the 1500-2000 point range. The saving grace is that the rest of the Eldar army is not nearly as efficient or difficult to deal with as a Wave Serpent. If you can somehow just ignore them, your chances of winning go up.

Incorrect. The best way to take out any target to is combine special rules. If you look at the game, that's what makes winning armies win. Its not the base riptide thats over the top. By itself a riptide is a decent, but not amazing unit. Its when the riptide is given twin-linked, interceptor, skyfire, tank-hunters, and ignore cover it gets over the top.

Trying to apply a brute force approach to winning games instead of maximizing special rules is a losing game. The torrent of fire stats illustrate this. Look at the top winning armies. All of them exploit special rules.

Just two things:

1) Don't seer councils still have ST 9 spears for AV 14?

and

2) Most Eldar I've seen take a couple turn to trim down lascannon and ML counts with war walkers and THEN start shooting the shields.

They haven't had any more overcosted units than many other armies, and were certainly no slouches in 3E and 4E with their invinciskimmers, Alaitoc distruption tables, flying circus, and 3E starcannon spam, etc.

Shining Spears are a definite one. Remember in 3E when they were 50 points apiece? Even now they are more expensive than they should be. Not a huge example, but one nonetheless.

Look, the 4th ed Eldar codex was a codex of peaks and valleys. It had some awesome units (which everyone used) and some crap (which no one used) and not much in between. That made it a surprisingly competitive codex, but a very poor one at the same time.