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Definitely OP.

I voted Overcosted because it looked lonely being one of the two with no votes. And I couldn't bring myself to say it was balanced.

It's not fair that SM get nice cheap 35 point transports and w Eldar have to pay 130+ points.

Ah silliness.

Idk why GW thought serpents needed more firepower. It would have been fine with just the shield as an incredibly durable transport.

I would keep the points cost, give it assault transport, but if you embark or disembark, you lose the shield. Reduce the shield to a 3+ to downgrade pen to glance also. That way it does exactly what its supposed to: transport. It would be one of the best transports in the game, but only a transport.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
and Survivability of the Land Raider.

I've yet to see a Marine punch a Land Raider to death, or seen one killed by a Str 7 guns.

I see that happen to a Wave Serpent literally every time one is fielded.

There's some important information about wave serpents you guyz should know.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/618107.page

When my local meta was a thing, I only saw one wave serpent, it blew itself up trying to ram a rhino or something (the details are fuzzy), anyway with this conclusive proof of the lack of OP, I have beaten all your arguments.

On a side note RIP local meta 2009-2014.

This one time I fielded 12 Wave Serpents, and even though they wiped out most of my opponents army, they couldn't hurt his Land Raider. Obviously they are not OP, and the shield should be Range 120", Strength 10 AP1, Assault 6D6, Armourbane, Lance, Ignores Cover.


Wait, we are trying to balance the Serpent, right?

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
and Survivability of the Land Raider.

I've yet to see a Marine punch a Land Raider to death, or seen one killed by a Str 7 guns.

I see that happen to a Wave Serpent literally every time one is fielded.

A marine with a 14% chance of killing one on the charge if he can get into cc (I'm assuming you mean powerfist)

And a strength 7 weapon with a 5% chance of killing one (assuming plasma gun into read armor double tapping)

Kills them every game. Literally. Every game. Anecdotal evidence is the best.

Massively OP

Unless you are only interested in winning - in which case they are massively underpowered and overcosted.

The next time I face off against nine wave serpents, I'll just remember the counter strategy: I'll use my SM sergeant with a powerfist to kill them.

Done and done.

Serpents are unbalanced.
In a doubles tournament, we (Eldar and DE) battled a dual CSM army.
One of the my Serpents killed a grounded DP in one volley, 11 hits with tl scatterlaser, shuricannon, and shield. Too many wounds, gone.
I've shelved my Eldar army for other days to come and enjoy playing Necrons.

wuestenfux - you missed understood. You only killed the DP because it was grounded. Had it been flying around still you wouldn't' have been able to touch it.

 Happyjew wrote:
wuestenfux - you missed understood. You only killed the DP because it was grounded. Had it been flying around still you wouldn't' have been able to touch it.

Well, all weapons of the Serpent were twin-linked.
CSM lost horribly.

 TychoTerziev wrote:
Wave Serpents are ok. I don't know why people whine about them. I hard-counter them with Pyrovore spam.

I go back to my Wave Serpents are the hard-counter to fun.....

 Happyjew wrote:
I voted Overcosted because it looked lonely being one of the two with no votes. And I couldn't bring myself to say it was balanced.

It's not fair that SM get nice cheap 35 point transports and w Eldar have to pay 130+ points.

Ah silliness.

I would use a Wave Serpent over any Drop Pod or Rhino if I had the option to buy them for my Space Marines.

Swap the shields shooting to S4 AP- torrent (much more wave like IMO).
Swap the defense to 3+ or 4+ to turn pen to glance.
Give it assault ramps, because putting assault troops in it makes your army worse.

-Matt

And many Eldar units would take a Rhino or Pod over a Serpent given the option.

A rear armor powerfist or plasma pen may only have a 1/6 chance to remove an unhurt Serpent, but a Serpent wound has a 0 chance of removing a Tac squad.

Stop fishing for Explodes on a 3hp vehicle with AP2+. Especially in 7th, you're going to hull it out instead.

Also, any rear pen is going to either immobilize it (letting you trash it next round), or drop its shooting ability.

That, and you usually use more than one PG shot, and always have at least two PF attacks (that do damage on a 2+.

Then, there is the rest of the squad. A naked 6-man tac squad will drop a serpent on average, if it gets to charge.

Serpent is OP, but it does have limits.

Bharring wrote:
And many Eldar units would take a Rhino or Pod over a Serpent given the option.

Maybe a drop pod. I highly doubt Eldar players would take a Rhino, unless they're taking it in an attempt to be fairer on their opponents.

Bharring wrote:
A rear armor powerfist or plasma pen may only have a 1/6 chance to remove an unhurt Serpent, but a Serpent wound has a 0 chance of removing a Tac squad.

Eh?

Bharring wrote:

Stop fishing for Explodes on a 3hp vehicle with AP2+. Especially in 7th, you're going to hull it out instead.

Well, you usually have to.

Are we saying that the WS isn't overpowered because it can actually be killed? O_o

Bharring wrote:

Also, any rear pen is going to either immobilize it (letting you trash it next round), or drop its shooting ability.

Or, you know, be converted to a glance on a 2+.

And, even if its not firing its shield, it can still put out something like 7 S6 shots at BS4 - 4 of which are automatically TL, and the other 3 will usually be TL as well.

How do you cope with such negligible firepower?

Bharring wrote:

Then, there is the rest of the squad. A naked 6-man tac squad will drop a serpent on average, if it gets to charge.

Where are these tactical squads charging from? I mean, the WS can move 12" each turn and still put out a ton of firepower - how are normal marines with no jump packs or bikes getting into combat with it?

Bharring wrote:
Serpent is OP, but it does have limits.

Yes, but those limits do not even come close to reflecting either its cost, or its DT status.

 vipoid wrote:

Bharring wrote:

Also, any rear pen is going to either immobilize it (letting you trash it next round), or drop its shooting ability.

Or, you know, be converted to a glance on a 2+.

If your opponent is trying to convert a pen on Rear Armour to a Glance, you need to smack them with the rules for the Serpent Shield.

I dunno - having something cheap like a Rhino to get infantry places would be useful. Not as outright powerful as a Serpent, but with ranges of 12-18 inches, saving over 100 points per squad for a relatively weak and fragile jaunt 18" up board first turn could be a good trade. Not great but not useless. I definitely agree the Serpent is better generraly though.

My point with the one pen/wound is basically a response to the claim that a single pen from an ap2 weapon is useless. An Assault Centurion isn't broken just because a single PG or PF wound doesnt kill it. Hullpoints really do matter on a Serpent.

A rear armor pen can only be downgraded if you're cheating. Regardless of whether the Shield was shot. Rear pens aren't easy to line up, but the Serpent has no special protection to those.

As for the shooting, if you penned, they're probably snapshotting next round. So BS1.

7xS6 TL is good, but 2x Assault Cannon razorbacks are a little cheaper for 8xs6 TL actual Rending. Shorter range, much better AP, and an additional shot. If it weren't for the Serpent Shield's shooting, it seems right.

Getting the Marines into position is hard. My point is that, if you can, you can kill it. This gives Marines some denial utility.

I agree the Serpent is OP, but not to the degree you seem to believe.

 Happyjew wrote:

If your opponent is trying to convert a pen on Rear Armour to a Glance, you need to smack them with the rules for the Serpent Shield.

Good point, my mistake.

Oddly enough, the rear armour of a Wave Serpent rarely come up in our games.

Bharring wrote:

As for the shooting, if you penned, they're probably snapshotting next round. So BS1.

But, even with BS1, you have 4 TL S6 shots, and if even one of those hits then its other weapons are TL as well. That does take the edge of snapshotting somewhat.

And, of course, you have the difficulty in penetrating it in the first place. You're either dealing with the Serpent Shield and/or Jink, or you're trying to catch a fast skimmer in melee.

Bharring wrote:

7xS6 TL is good, but 2x Assault Cannon razorbacks are a little cheaper for 8xs6 TL actual Rending. Shorter range, much better AP, and an additional shot. If it weren't for the Serpent Shield's shooting, it seems right.

How are the razorbacks cheaper? 2 Razorbacks with assault cannons is 150pts. A WS with Scatter Lasers and Shuriken Cannon is 130pts.

Bharring wrote:

Getting the Marines into position is hard. My point is that, if you can, you can kill it. This gives Marines some denial utility.

But that holds true for just about any transport - many of which do not have the defences or manoeuvrability of a WS.

So beautiful. The poll is almost like a middle finger to serps... (turn it on its side)

Poly Ranger wrote:
So beautiful. The poll is almost like a middle finger to serps... (turn it on its side)

You sir, have just blown my mind...

It's tzeentch at work. He's tired of losing his DPs and LoC to spams of the beggers!

the_scotsman wrote:

A marine with a 14% chance of killing one on the charge if he can get into cc (I'm assuming you mean powerfist)

And a strength 7 weapon with a 5% chance of killing one (assuming plasma gun into read armor double tapping)

Marines come in squads of 10 and carry krak grenades.

Strength 7 weapons come in many varieties, up to and including rending, twin-linked, ignores jink, and 6 shots on a fast vehicle.

If you're having trouble killing Wave Serpents, you aren't trying very hard to kill them.

Every vote helped create this beautiful piece of art.

I figured standard now was +holo +ghostwalk. And i don't field a lot of Razorbacks (My squaddies do my shooting, and normally the in-company kind, in my Marine lists).

So about the same cost for more dakka on on two platforms that are each individually less durable than the one platform. Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong, but that looks about right to me? But then, I don't see a lot of people taking Razorbacks, and when they do, they don't seem to be taking ACs.

All this assumes the Serpent Shield is handled somehow. Serpent is broken as is, of course.

 SHUPPET wrote:
I've played Eldar a lot so trust me, I know - Wave Serpents are not OP. They are just one of 40ks excellent units, but there are plenty of excellent units so they are no OP. Sure, they might be better than every single model available to every single army in 40k except for maybe 1, and can be taken in triple the number of most standard units, but hey, at the end of the day, what does overpowered really mean? Its not about winning games it's just that they are really easy to stomp noobs with like most posters on Dakka, high level wave serpent play takes a lot of skill and decision making or Eldar is almost guaranteed to lose, LOL jimsolo your credibility just got revoked you all have goldfish memories talk to me when you realise how 40k works on a competitive level, dude your codex just sucks, wow you think Dark Eldar need a buff to Haywire now LOL keep whining, I have a bunch of stats backing up my claim that Eldar isn't OP with only a 60% overall win rate in 6th ed tournaments which only makes them the highest by like 5%, just because you haven't learnt how to beat serpents does not make them OP, shuppet I'm not responding in this thread again until you learn how to discuss competitive 40k, have you ever even been to a tournament?

i know how to beat them: use ignores cover weapons, like legion of the dammed, bring a knife to a gunfight and deep strike something into it's rear. And yet every single game, i or any of my buddies play vs eldar, no one can bring those theories to fruition since eldar player (usually) isn't mentally handicapped person to allow that to happen

 Happyjew wrote:
wuestenfux - you missed understood. You only killed the DP because it was grounded. Had it been flying around still you wouldn't' have been able to touch it.

And if the DP was flying it wouldn't be doing anything because it has no shooting attacks and can't assault on the turn it changes flight modes.

the_scotsman wrote:
The next time I face off against nine wave serpents, I'll just remember the counter strategy: I'll use my SM sergeant with a powerfist to kill them.

Done and done.

Exalted.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

A marine with a 14% chance of killing one on the charge if he can get into cc (I'm assuming you mean powerfist)

And a strength 7 weapon with a 5% chance of killing one (assuming plasma gun into read armor double tapping)

Marines come in squads of 10 and carry krak grenades.

Strength 7 weapons come in many varieties, up to and including rending, twin-linked, ignores jink, and 6 shots on a fast vehicle.

If you're having trouble killing Wave Serpents, you aren't trying very hard to kill them.

No, I'm having trouble even reaching them with my 10 (and rapidly dwindling) krak grenades.