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Hola guys and girls,

So I've been reading up on warp talons and all the bad press they get and have found what I.think to be a simple solution that would actually make them fit and not be just cool models.

Demonic Intervention

As per the vanguard vets heroic intervention just for the elite of chaos assault teams.

Basicly giving them a reason to try and ds 6" away from a unit so theycan assault on the turn they come in. Negating their neeed for grenades for a turn at least as things would be blind.


Anyone think it would be to op? Or broken? Or welcome any comments

They would need a significant price hike. Blood Angels Vanguard Veterans pay a 5 point premium per model for equivalent equipment (one lightning claw, which gives them the same number of attacks as Warp Talons). Warp Talons furthermore have 5+ invuls, and can force a blind test against their opponents on the turn they come in.

I'm not against that.

However I do wish to add that with the BA VV they do benefit from Descent of Angels making them even more likely to get into combat, and have more customization options.

Talons are stock all I can do it take more except on the champion I can get mutations, and take a mark.

I don't have my BA codex handy so I cant run a point comparison.

I do have my SM Codex handy.

10 VV with BP/or CCW, Lightning Claw/ Jump Packs is 370

10 WT is 310

for 60 pts
VV gain Frag/Krak, ATSKNF, Combat Squads, +1 attack(Base Stat), +1 LDS (Standard), and the ability to shoot.
Plus you sink more points into them and you can change your shooting abilities/ CC/ Survivability.

60 less WT Gain a, 5++ invulnerable Save, Fear, the ability to blind enemies within 6" of where ever I land if they fail a init test,

In all actuality I think V V get the better deal. even if they are 60pts more expensive.

6" is great, but.....anything beyond 6" still gets to lay into me and possibly kill me before I can get anywhere.

WT might be useful for stopping a gun line for shooting at the rest of my army for a single turn. But I can think of much better options to spend 310 pts on to do that.

But like I said. Just looking for ideas.

Just to throw out a number... maybe 40 or 45 points per model. Expensive, but they would be dudes who assault out of deep strike with lightning claws, cause blind, and have a 5++. So a price premium is warranted.

I think it would be fine with their current point cost. For a unit that cannot shoot, only has a 5++ and 3+, and can still miss their Deep Strike which will be dangerous when used in 6" of a unit anyway, and even then when they will be taking Overwatch and possibly failing the charge.

The Blinding test also is potentially great but also only usually has a 50% chance of going off if they land near something. For an already overpriced unit, giving them the Assassination rule for free seems fine.

Another route to take if people think it's too strong is to have them pick a unit. If they Deep Strike within 6" of that unit, they can assault it in the same turn.

Only Blood Angel VVs can assault out of deep strike now. Codex: Space Marines VVs cannot.

I would say no if anyone tried to houserule the ability to come out of reserves and assault. There's a pretty damn good reason it was removed.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Only Blood Angel VVs can assault out of deep strike now. Codex: Space Marines VVs cannot.

I would say no if anyone tried to houserule the ability to come out of reserves and assault. There's a pretty damn good reason it was removed.

Arguable.

While assault out of reserve -was- quite overbearing way back when, it was so because of everything else. You could enter from reserves, run, and assault all in the same turn. Terrain was also more favorable to assault oriented units (you couldn't see all the way through it, none of this True Line of Sight bs). Charge ranges were reliable too, you weren't going to fail a 4 inch charge in the open.. And let's not forget the loss of my beloved sweeping advance into combat.

As you well know, everything I mentioned has been nerfed for melee. Terrain is much more flimsy and much less useful, you can't assault out of reserves / deep strike, charge ranges are unreliable, overwatch, ect ect. Quite frankly, considering how absolutely castrated the ease of getting into CC has been, the over-arching fear of deepstriking into assault is pretty unwarranted these days. Doubly so because it won't lead to just sweeping-assault spamming your way through an army.

While being unable to assault out of reserves/scour/infiltration was a swift kick to the nuts for us melee players, the ability was removed for good reason, imo. It's bad game design to have tactics a player can utilize that the other player can't react or and/or try to defend themselves against. With assault rules working the way they've done in previous editions, any beaty deep-strike unit was basically a point-and-click removal unit. Pick one of your opponent's units, say "I want that dead pls" and deep-strike your unit, there was basically nothing your opponent could do. Now they at least get a turn to try to protect their units. Even with shooting being as lethal in this edition as it is, with entire units being shot off the board in a turn sometimes (*cough* fething Riptides *cough*), you as a player can at least take steps to attempt to mitigate the effectiveness of your opponents' shooting. With the units already on the board, you know exactly where they are, where they're coming from, what part of the map the range of their guns can reach and what units of yours are in danger, etc. That's not the case when dealing with units that can assault out of reserves.

Anyway, the biggest problem with Warp Talons imo is their cost and their ability to be wiped off the board. You're paying terminator prices for a model that has a marine stat-line. Basically, you're just paying extra for the lightning claws and jump-pack. Not worth it.

If I was designing the unit, I'd have them be significantly cheaper, about 22ppm, and I'd change Warpflame Strike from blind to one of two things: "enemy units targeting the Warp Talons from within 12'' can only fire snap-shots the round it arrives on the table", or simply giving the unit shrouded for the round it arrives on the table. Either one would go a ways toward making the Talons much more likely to get into combat, while simultaneously giving your opponent the opportunity to try to defend himself.

Its no less unexpected than playing a drop pod army. They get to land and shoot things with las-cannons, plasma cannons, or what not from dreadnoughts, and what not that can dp or ds in.

Imo that's worse than a unit getting into melee.

(Have used that tactic well to deploy behid things for the easy rear armor shots)


But I'm liking what yall are saying for the most part.

Very few drop-pod units can completely wipe a squad or model from existence with a single round of shooting, for one, and you can also defend against shooting attacks much easier than you can defend against a melee unit that's in charge range. You can put your units in cover against shooting attacks, you can displace them the maximum 2'' coherency to minimize the damage from cover-ignoring weapons like flamers and blasts, etc. Also, you always know beyond a shadow of a doubt that at least half of his drop-pods are coming in turn 1. With all your units in your deployment zone you can therefore plan ahead for how you'll deal with his DPA, then continue on with the match.

By comparison, a unit that's simply deep-striking in can arrive at any time between rounds 2 and 4, anywhere on the board. With that much randomness it's very difficult if not impossible to plan against. As well, none of the things mentioned above (cover, dispersion) will do anything to protect you from assault. If a unit drops in within assault range, there's pretty much nothing you can do to stop that assault from happening, and unlike shooting an assault unit need only kill a few models in your squad to wipe the entire thing out, thanks to sweeping advance rules.

I did a revamp of the Warp Talons in my Reign of Chaos project. What I did was make the Warp Talons a targeted assasination unit. You pick an enemy character after deployment and if the warp talon unit deep strikes with in so many inches of that target they do not scatter and if they assault the unit containing the target character they can assault the turn they deep strike.

Warp Talons revamped You can check 'em out here.

As a player, if you didn't want your Herald/Command squad/Archon/Etheral/ squishy HQ that relies on mobility or distance from the front-line for survival to not be killed by this unit, what actions can you take beyond stuffing them in a unit that's tougher than the Talons?

Look at zaggy - he also lost his DS+charge ability. And all the new VV. I think it's just gona be a bit wrong to give the ability that everyone else looses.

I think, it's worth digging into their real potential of ds+blind that's been missed by codex writers. Make this blind within 6' an auto-failed test for the ones hit with it - friends or foe alike. Thus, you don't have to invent anything new and WT will be of some real tactical use in almost any csm army.

There's another option ofc. The new trend has been increased survivability on the turn such shock units arive. Lictors, kommando formation, new assasin. Some suggestions:

Replace the 6' blind test with:
1. Until the start of their next turn, only snapshots can be fired at them.
2. Until the start of their next turn, they reroll failed saves from shooting.
...etc

 BlaxicanX wrote:
As a player, if you didn't want your Herald/Command squad/Archon/Etheral/ squishy HQ that relies on mobility or distance from the front-line for survival to not be killed by this unit, what actions can you take beyond stuffing them in a unit that's tougher than the Talons?

Bubblewrap, place near board edge, place near impassible terrain, place in vehicle, etc etc etc.

Bubble-wrap them from every direction? What if you don't have a transport or building to put them in? Putting them near impassable terrain or a board-edge isn't worth banking on since deep-strikers have a 33% chance to not scatter and and will be scattering no more than 7 inches the majority of the time anyway.

Considering the factors listed above, as well as the fact that most force multiplier HQ's work with ability-bubbles that have limited range, you're basically being forced to stick them in a corner somewhere where they won't be contributing for most of the game in order to protect them from this unstoppable assassination unit that the player has no way to react to once it hits the board.

That's not good game design. There are ways to make Talons not ass beyond converting them into a lazy point-click-removal unit.

If you're trying to abuse warpflame strike, though, you won't be using a 10-strong squad. Multiple smaller squads to spread the love are better.

I've seen them used effectively once - in fairness, I've only seen them used once - by a chaos player who sprung three units in and amongst a necron infantry line. The result was carnage as about half of the necron army found itself stuck on snapshots only for turn 2. Granted, tesla weapons deal with snap-shooting better than most but not well enough...

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Bubble-wrap them from every direction? What if you don't have a transport or building to put them in? Putting them near impassable terrain or a board-edge isn't worth banking on since deep-strikers have a 33% chance to not scatter and and will be scattering no more than 7 inches the majority of the time anyway.

Considering the factors listed above, as well as the fact that most force multiplier HQ's work with ability-bubbles that have limited range, you're basically being forced to stick them in a corner somewhere where they won't be contributing for most of the game in order to protect them from this unstoppable assassination unit that the player has no way to react to once it hits the board.

That's not good game design. There are ways to make Talons not ass beyond converting them into a lazy point-click-removal unit.

What's the counter to deep-striking into a terrain dense map such as a city?

What's the counter to having a nice piece of impassable terrain a gun line can plop down behind to massively length the distance I have to cover to get into assault?

What's the counter to the fact that you can now see through area terrain, it has worse benefits, and ignores cover mechanics are plentiful?

You're right in part. Deep-striking in with a nasty assault unit and 'assassinating' something is, on kind of a basic level, fundamentally broken. The ways to counter it are very extreme and circumstantial, so it's not a fair trade off.

On the flip-side, Riptides dropping AP2 pie-plates of death from across the board is fundamentally broken. That one Necron hero being able to roast hordes with ease ( and never die) is fundamentally broken. The horrible, horrible, horrible things that Tesla weapons do to Tyranids and Orks are fundamentally broken. Eldar being able to move-shoot-run with all of their ground units is fundamentally broken.

Point is, there's a lot of fundamentally broken stuff in this game. While I won't make any claims to 40k being balanced terribly well, it most certainly leans towards a A-symmetrical balance when it tries to. As a result, something being fundamentally broken doesn't mean it can't exist - it doesn't even mean it can't exist and be fair at the same time. The problem, at present, is that shooty gits get all the broken toys and tactics, where as Melee just keeps getting smacked with more and more nerfs.

 morganfreeman wrote:
The problem, at present, is that shooty gits get all the broken toys and tactics, where as Melee just keeps getting smacked with more and more nerfs.

I'm glad they at least toned down precision shots and gamebreaking focused fire. And made stupid challenge system not that broken - though still bad if you ask me cause we, orkses (mellee-oriented and challenge-loving in fluff) pretty much have to play around them.

I've started playing in early 5 ed and compared to what i remember from back than, melle's been hugely toned down. 6-th ed ruleset basically killed most mellee lists from 5 ed codexes. 7-th hasen't changed much from the rules perspective but that's the new codexes making up for the penalizing rules! Have you noticed that 7-th ed codexes don't lack decent mellee options to say the least.

So, in spirit of new nice books, i've suggested the rules a few posts above.

 morganfreeman wrote:

What's the counter to deep-striking into a terrain dense map such as a city?

the counter is: don't.

 morganfreeman wrote:

What's the counter to having a nice piece of impassable terrain a gun line can plop down behind to massively length the distance I have to cover to get into assault?

Barrage weapons and outflanking flyers.

 morganfreeman wrote:

What's the counter to the fact that you can now see through area terrain, it has worse benefits, and ignores cover mechanics are plentiful?

Stealth and shrouded. Takes a 5+ cover and makes it a 3+

 morganfreeman wrote:

You're right in part. Deep-striking in with a nasty assault unit and 'assassinating' something is, on kind of a basic level, fundamentally broken. The ways to counter it are very extreme and circumstantial, so it's not a fair trade off.

On the flip-side, Riptides dropping AP2 pie-plates of death from across the board is fundamentally broken. That one Necron hero being able to roast hordes with ease ( and never die) is fundamentally broken. The horrible, horrible, horrible things that Tesla weapons do to Tyranids and Orks are fundamentally broken. Eldar being able to move-shoot-run with all of their ground units is fundamentally broken.

Point is, there's a lot of fundamentally broken stuff in this game. While I won't make any claims to 40k being balanced terribly well, it most certainly leans towards a A-symmetrical balance when it tries to. As a result, something being fundamentally broken doesn't mean it can't exist - it doesn't even mean it can't exist and be fair at the same time. The problem, at present, is that shooty gits get all the broken toys and tactics, where as Melee just keeps getting smacked with more and more nerfs.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Bubble-wrap them from every direction? What if you don't have a transport or building to put them in? Putting them near impassable terrain or a board-edge isn't worth banking on since deep-strikers have a 33% chance to not scatter and and will be scattering no more than 7 inches the majority of the time anyway.

The thing is, it's not reliable enough to be good anyway. You just can't bank that many points on perhaps reaching an assault out of Deep Strike when there's so much that can go wrong. If you roll a scatter with a Riptide there's no chance of a Mishap wiping the Riptide out instantly.

Just give them perma shrouded and hit and run. Each character they kill they reduce enemy leadership by one for break tests and fear tests for the rest of the game. Cumulative. Give then offensive and defensive grenades. That way they can chunk a blind grenade on the way in and aren't boned by cover. Points stay the same. I would play with that or against that.

 DanielBeaver wrote:
They would need a significant price hike. Blood Angels Vanguard Veterans pay a 5 point premium per model for equivalent equipment (one lightning claw, which gives them the same number of attacks as Warp Talons). Warp Talons furthermore have 5+ invuls, and can force a blind test against their opponents on the turn they come in.

BA also get FC both types of grenades and ATSKNF. You know how wonderful it is to have your 300+ points of Warptalons lose a combat and get swept


Also when you are forced to buy certain equipment, it is cheaper. Like SM honor guard. Having the option to buy some lightning claws, some power fists, and some cheap bullut catchers is an advantage. As warp talons are now, they are really good against T4 3+ save or worse. Really bad against anything with an amor value, 2+ save or T6+

Like Koooai suggested, when they DS , ennemy units can only snapshot at them, just like the Nids Lictors, that would be a good compromise i think, even if not ubber it would still make them a bit more durable for 30+pts models with 1W.

i regret the old Summoning mechanic for Deamosn though...

"Yup my Bloodletters are 26pts a piece, but they can assault the turn they come in..."

Something I've thought they could have gotten, in line with Kelly's love of random rolls, is that roll D3 before charging into assault. If you got a 3 with them, you get to teleport up to the unit you wish to assault without being overwatched and pull off Warpflame Strike. In order for you to utilize this however, you must not have used your jump pack in the movement phase and be within 12" of your target. If your Warp Talons land in/on a piece of terrain, then they would be required to make a dangerous terrain test.

Either that, or make it roll a 6 on a D6, still use Warpflame Strike, but gain bonuses depending on which Chaos God you grabbed a mark from. Thinking along the lines of HoW getting AP 2 with Khorne, poisoned HoW with Nurgle, able to pull off this move on a 5+ with Tzeentch, and concussive HoW with Slaanesh.

I use Warp Talons readily alongside Daemons. They're no nearly so gak when the Grimoire & Divination are in play, and Warpflame Strike is evil when combined with all the Icons Daemons themselves can carry.
The trick is to just take a small squad of 5-6.

Their main problem I find is that there's too many other great choices in the CSM Fast Attack section that they're competing with for slots!
When Bikers, Spawn, Hellturkies & cheap double Melta Raptors exist, the Talons are easily the furthest thing down the list, not because they're god-awful, but rather CSM's don't need help killing MEQ's *and* there's no real synergy to add to the unit through options like an IC.

Sadly like Possessed, (even the Slaughter Possessed), Talons work far better in a Chaos Daemons list.
However, if Talons were to get buffed to become a relevant choice for the CSM book, I think they'd instantly become too good.

Instead, to "fix" these guys I think we'd need to just re-work the unit from the ground up to something like:
Warp Talon = WS5 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I4 A3 Ld9 Sv3+/5++
gear = Power armour, Aetherclaws, Jump packs.
special rules = Daemon, Warpflame Strike.

Aetherclaws gives all close combat attacks both Shred and Rending Attacks.
Warpflame Strike stays as is.

Then give the regular CSM Icons the ability to act as Teleport Homers to squads that share the same mark. (ie: Icon of Khorne allows no scatter for Deep Striking units that also have the MoK)
It's similar to the Daemonic versions, but not quite as good since Daemons should honestly be the Deep Strike masters of Chaos.

Now Talons would have a bit more flexibility to them, being able to clean up hordes & TEQ's more efficiently than other CSM combat specialists, and leaving the purely anti-MEQ combat roles to the likes of Termies, HQ escorted units, etc...

They would need a significant price hike. Blood Angels Vanguard Veterans pay a 5 point premium per model for equivalent equipment (one lightning claw, which gives them the same number of attacks as Warp Talons). Warp Talons furthermore have 5+ invuls, and can force a blind test against their opponents on the turn they come in.




______________
ahsan


Automatically Appended Next Post:
They would need a significant price hike. Blood Angels Vanguard Veterans pay a 5 point premium per model for equivalent equipment (one lightning claw, which gives them the same number of attacks as Warp Talons). Warp Talons furthermore have 5+ invuls, and can force a blind test against their opponents on the turn they come in.

What about a 'warp jaunt'- This model may move 2d6" for a run action, ignoring all terrain/units (Similar to Warp Spiders). If it does so, it receives a 4+ invuln (can't be improved beyond 3+), as it is outside the Materium in transit. Apply the Blind test to nearby units as if it has deep struck.

Gets them more mobility (DS or otherwise), makes them more survivable while getting into position, and let's them use their flair (I love double entendres, especially clean ones) more regularly.

Still gives plenty of room for counterplay, but has more mobility and a chance at survivability. Makes it a better bully, strengthening it within its niche, but without just amping them up.

 koooaei wrote:
Look at zaggy - he also lost his DS+charge ability. And all the new VV. I think it's just gona be a bit wrong to give the ability that everyone else looses.

I think, it's worth digging into their real potential of ds+blind that's been missed by codex writers. Make this blind within 6' an auto-failed test for the ones hit with it - friends or foe alike. Thus, you don't have to invent anything new and WT will be of some real tactical use in almost any csm army.

There's another option ofc. The new trend has been increased survivability on the turn such shock units arive. Lictors, kommando formation, new assasin. Some suggestions:

Replace the 6' blind test with:
1. Until the start of their next turn, only snapshots can be fired at them.
2. Until the start of their next turn, they reroll failed saves from shooting.
...etc

.
That is some nice extra stuff for the turn they deep strike. I like it when " you don't have to invent anything new," though.

I think that you can just change their type from Jump Infantry to Jump Beasts. There isn't anything invented about that, and you can actually interact with you opponent in an interesting way instead of just announcing you are going to use some ability to make him roll dice a different way.

Jump Beasts. Do they just move as beasts every turn and then get their HoW hits when they charge? Maybe, but maybe you should start playing with more impassable bottomless chasms crossing the board.

A plethera of impassible los-blocking terrain makes the game more fun, and would make Talons better (although less likely to deep strike.

House rule the talons to be cheaper than 20pts. problem solved.