Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

basicly the Sicaran is a tank optimized for the job of killing eldar tanks. it honestly makes sense given that when the great crusade was launched let's look at what the emperor was expecting to fight. he was proably figuring on fighting weak human resistance, orks and the remains of the eldar. So I suspect from an IC standpoint the Sicaran was literally designed to fight, and defeat, eldar

I have a Sicaran and it's dealt with rapidly every time. It's far from OP. I've had Tau drop in from behind and wreck it. I've had it blown up from across the table. It's died/blown up gloriously on several occasions.

 Lobukia wrote:
The Sicaran is a very reasonable tank. Do the math on how many turns it still takes one to kill a standard wave serpent. It's really not that impressive. There are some OP FW things. This isn't one.

I was thinking along these lines also, how many Serpents can the Sicaran hope to take out before it gets taken out itself. So a player spamming Serpents loses 1 or 2 before taking out the Sicaran. Not exactly OP in my book.

BrianDavion wrote:
Ceramite plating should be reserved strictly for air units. it makes sense as it's basicly plating designed to protect against the heat of re-entry...

It is stupid on flyers too. Re-entry is hot, but not melta-hot!
One is a natural phenomenon, the other is a weapon.

faerrrd wrote:
Killing a wave serpent or just a normal DE raider with autocannons with the new jink rules are damn near impossible...

Have you ever played against Dark Eldar? Wave Serpents are one thing, but DE Raiders die to everything up to and including autocannons, snipers, bolt pistols, and stiff breezes. Even with Night Shields, it's a 3+ save on a 3HP vehicle with crap armor and open-topped. Without Night Shields it's 4+, and that's a 15 point upgrade. I can't speak for Eldar players, but for DE, jink is literally the only thing standing between your paper-mache boats and your enemy's pistols, for god's sake.

 SweaterKittens wrote:

faerrrd wrote:
Killing a wave serpent or just a normal DE raider with autocannons with the new jink rules are damn near impossible...

Have you ever played against Dark Eldar? Wave Serpents are one thing, but DE Raiders die to everything up to and including autocannons, snipers, bolt pistols, and stiff breezes. Even with Night Shields, it's a 3+ save on a 3HP vehicle with crap armor and open-topped. Without Night Shields it's 4+, and that's a 15 point upgrade. I can't speak for Eldar players, but for DE, jink is literally the only thing standing between your paper-mache boats and your enemy's pistols, for god's sake.

That and having more of them then your enemies can shoot

 Desubot wrote:

 SweaterKittens wrote:

faerrrd wrote:
Killing a wave serpent or just a normal DE raider with autocannons with the new jink rules are damn near impossible...

Have you ever played against Dark Eldar? Wave Serpents are one thing, but DE Raiders die to everything up to and including autocannons, snipers, bolt pistols, and stiff breezes. Even with Night Shields, it's a 3+ save on a 3HP vehicle with crap armor and open-topped. Without Night Shields it's 4+, and that's a 15 point upgrade. I can't speak for Eldar players, but for DE, jink is literally the only thing standing between your paper-mache boats and your enemy's pistols, for god's sake.

That and having more of them then your enemies can shoot

That certainly doesn't hurt! For bonus points, take the Realspace Raiders detachment and buy as many Raiders as you can, fit them with Shock Prows, and play SUPERSONIC SKIMMER DEMOLITION DERBY

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Ceramite plating should be reserved strictly for air units. it makes sense as it's basicly plating designed to protect against the heat of re-entry...

It is stupid on flyers too. Re-entry is hot, but not melta-hot!
One is a natural phenomenon, the other is a weapon.

Technically the sun is a natural phenomenon. Pretty sure it's hotter than a melta.

Re-entry is friction, nothing to do with the sun.

Either way, I believe Melta is supposedly high power microwave radiation? We already have stuff that protects against that or our innards would boil and kitchen cabinets fall off every time we heated some beans.

So, conclusion is that Wave Serpent is OP (like always ) and the Sicaran is strong? Check. I myself don´t like to spam WS´s (boring) but we don´t have five options like the Marines (Stormraven, Rhino, Razorback, Drop Pod, and a Land Raider), we have two, and one i haven´t seen in a batrep since the 5th edition (Falcon). I would LOVE to use something else to carry the troops, but unless you ally with the Dark Kin, there´s no solution to this.

Lost Vyper wrote:
So, conclusion is that Wave Serpent is OP (like always ) and the Sicaran is strong? Check

That's probably accurate. The Sicaran is expensive, particularly if you include legacies and sponsons and ceramite, as well as having limited/restricted availability. It's highly capable, but has a pricetag to match.

I think when you compared it to the WS the differences become apparent. The Wave Serpent has lower frontal armor, but also has the capability to jink for a 4+ or 3+ cover save even in the open whenever it feels it needs to. It has a wide array of weapons options, some of which are Twin Linked and one of which makes its other weapons Twin Linked, while its serpent shield ignores *all* cover saves, not simply Jink saves. The Wave Serpent is even more mobile, has a large transport capacity, can be taken in very large numbers, and is relatively cheap as a fully kitted Wave Serpent is only a hair above the cost of a naked Sicaran.

The Sicaran has a lot of highly capable firepower, and better frontal armor, but costs significantly more after kit & upgrades, isn't a transport, can only use Smoke Launchers (5+ cover, one-use only, prevents *all* shooting or moving Flat Out) instead of Jink, and taking more than a single Sicaran requires taking a specific, somewhat sub-optimal, HQ unit on top of being a Heavy Support unit instead of being a widely available Dedicated Transport.

We have talked about the future nerfbat (it will come) for the WS in our FLGC. We think that maybe d6 S6 AP6 36" range would be enough, with out the Ignores Cover rule...i think that would stop the Rhino wrecking and people would just cruise around with the shield on...or the "Once in a game" -hammer could come down for the WS...

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
Not as bad as Wave serpent, invisibility, unbound lists. 5 sternguard in a drop pod will kill it.

Actually they're look stronger than Wave Serpents from an Eldar perspective. They also cost a lot less, you don't have to buy underpowered units to unlock them, they can handle a lot of assault units, AV13, etc.

Sternguard may be worse against WS, but there are at least a dozen units that just wreck WS that cannot handle rear AV12.

In other words, that tank has a lot less weaknesses than WS, plus your comment about Sternguard shows you don't know what Ceramite plating does (it cancels the melta rule).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dark_red wrote:
It's a strong unit for the points but side armour 12 and being a big model can make it easy pray. Normally the only people that I've seen refuse to play against it are eldar or dark eldar, I find that quite amusing considering their options (mainly eldar)

That's because all of the Eldar WS durability is just based on cover saves, of which many end up being Jink saves.
And all of the non existant Dark Eldar durability just the same.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Technically the sun is a natural phenomenon. Pretty sure it's hotter than a melta.

Likely depends on what one calls hot. Do we just look at the temperature, or do we also care for thermal inertia? Melta will certainly have a lower total thermal energy, but they may very well have a higher temperature, for all we know.
Anyhow, that is irrelevant. My point was that the melta, contrarily to the re-entry friction, is especially designed to destroy vehicles. So when it was designed, it was obviously made in a way that makes protecting against it as hard as possible.

morgoth wrote:

dark_red wrote:
It's a strong unit for the points but side armour 12 and being a big model can make it easy pray. Normally the only people that I've seen refuse to play against it are eldar or dark eldar, I find that quite amusing considering their options (mainly eldar)

That's because all of the Eldar WS durability is just based on cover saves, of which many end up being Jink saves.
And all of the non existant Dark Eldar durability just the same.

Yeah, 12/12/10 on a transport is just awful.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Technically the sun is a natural phenomenon. Pretty sure it's hotter than a melta.

Likely depends on what one calls hot. Do we just look at the temperature, or do we also care for thermal inertia? Melta will certainly have a lower total thermal energy, but they may very well have a higher temperature, for all we know.
Anyhow, that is irrelevant. My point was that the melta, contrarily to the re-entry friction, is especially designed to destroy vehicles. So when it was designed, it was obviously made in a way that makes protecting against it as hard as possible.

Keep in mind, armored ceramite doesn't block the melta gun entirely, it just stops the melta bonus pen die. You're still hitting it with a S8 AP1 shot.

 Azreal13 wrote:

morgoth wrote:

dark_red wrote:
It's a strong unit for the points but side armour 12 and being a big model can make it easy pray. Normally the only people that I've seen refuse to play against it are eldar or dark eldar, I find that quite amusing considering their options (mainly eldar)

That's because all of the Eldar WS durability is just based on cover saves, of which many end up being Jink saves.
And all of the non existant Dark Eldar durability just the same.

Yeah, 12/12/10 on a transport is just awful.

For a mixed role MBT / Transport at 130+ points, yes it's garbage.

In comparison, the Imperial Guard gets 14/13/11, the Marines get 14/14/14 or 13/12/11 and the Necrons get pseudo 13/13/11.

So how is 12/12/10 any good in an edition where CC resolves against rear armor I wonder.

MARINES GET 14/14/14 FOR 250pts!!! No jink, no fast skimmer (which is a HUGE bonus to it's main battle tank/transport role), no serpent shield, less guns and still dies almost as easily to melta! How are you saying a serp is garbage? HOOOOOWWWWW??????


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Guard get 12/10/10 and the other marine transports get 11/11/10. I don't know where you think LRBTs and preds can carry troops from?

Its the rear armor 12 that seems a bit much to me. But less so, after this thread.

morgoth wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

morgoth wrote:

dark_red wrote:
It's a strong unit for the points but side armour 12 and being a big model can make it easy pray. Normally the only people that I've seen refuse to play against it are eldar or dark eldar, I find that quite amusing considering their options (mainly eldar)

That's because all of the Eldar WS durability is just based on cover saves, of which many end up being Jink saves.
And all of the non existant Dark Eldar durability just the same.

Yeah, 12/12/10 on a transport is just awful.

For a mixed role MBT / Transport at 130+ points, yes it's garbage.

In comparison, the Imperial Guard gets 14/13/11, the Marines get 14/14/14 or 13/12/11 and the Necrons get pseudo 13/13/11.

So how is 12/12/10 any good in an edition where CC resolves against rear armor I wonder.

The thing the wrongest poster on Dakka is most wrong about. Silly me for even bothering.

Every turn a Sicaran has a 2.8% chance to destroy a WS and will take two turns to glance it to death. But after you've taken a hull point or two from the first round of shooting, you can put your WS in cover, you know. If you only took 1 hull point, it should take another 2 rounds of firing for the WS to die if its user uses just intervening cover to stay alive.

So in one game, if the Eldar player doesn't want to ever hide in cover, the Sicaran (if never fired at) will destroy 2 WS by turn 6.

At the same cost, if it can get to side armour, the a WS will also destroy 2 Sicarans by turn 6... and even more if it gets into 24" range (which for a fast skimmer, isn't that tough). Two WS working together, should be able to kill a Sicaran before it gets even one of them.

So thats a DT running almost even with an almost unique Heavy Tank at roughly the same cost. If someone starts to dump upgrades into the Sicaran to make it stronger, that makes it only barely more durable and really doesn't increase its ability to kill the WS by much at all.

Against a Hammerhead, Leman Russ, or even a LC Predator the Sicaran (at the same cost) will kill them as quickly as they can kill it (so whoever fires first will win). Not sure how something that is basically on par at cost is so OP. Its only strength is that is puts WS on a closer to a fair footing, and I will concede, it reaps tears from DE (but don't they actually enjoy that anyway?).

If making an OP spammable unit have to function (briefly) at the same level as all other similar cost and stated units makes the a vehicle seem OP... I think that speaks to the silly OP nature of the Eldar codex, not the relative strength of the Sicaran

Are you factoring in sponsons and the hull HB (if relevant) or just the autocannon?

 Lobukia wrote:
Every turn a Sicaran has a 2.8% chance to destroy a WS and will take two turns to glance it to death. But after you've taken a hull point or two from the first round of shooting, you can put your WS in cover, you know. If you only took 1 hull point, it should take another 2 rounds of firing for the WS to die if its user uses just intervening cover to stay alive.

So in one game, if the Eldar player doesn't want to ever hide in cover, the Sicaran (if never fired at) will destroy 2 WS by turn 6.

At the same cost, if it can get to side armour, the a WS will also destroy 2 Sicarans by turn 6... and even more if it gets into 24" range (which for a fast skimmer, isn't that tough). Two WS working together, should be able to kill a Sicaran before it gets even one of them.

So thats a DT running almost even with an almost unique Heavy Tank at roughly the same cost. If someone starts to dump upgrades into the Sicaran to make it stronger, that makes it only barely more durable and really doesn't increase its ability to kill the WS by much at all.

Against a Hammerhead, Leman Russ, or even a LC Predator the Sicaran (at the same cost) will kill them as quickly as they can kill it (so whoever fires first will win). Not sure how something that is basically on par at cost is so OP. Its only strength is that is puts WS on a closer to a fair footing, and I will concede, it reaps tears from DE (but don't they actually enjoy that anyway?).

If making an OP spammable unit have to function (briefly) at the same level as all other similar cost and stated units makes the a vehicle seem OP... I think that speaks to the silly OP nature of the Eldar codex, not the relative strength of the Sicaran

Well you just proved that the Sicaran is indeed excellent against Wave Serpents.
To begin, Wave Serpents are only really effective when they're spammed, so they don't get that much cover and the most you can really expect is 5+. Believe me, when you have 6+ WS on the table, you start to accept that you will not get cover.
It is NOT the same cost, you can get a Sicaran without buying any troops, and in anything unbound or Apocalypse, that means the Sicaran is a lot more brutal.
The cost is not comparable at all, and yes the Sicaran doesn't work better with upgrades.
Against anything that the Wave Serpent can't do gak against, the Sicaran will still be effective where the Wave Serpent is useless.
On top of that, you have armor 12 rear making you immune to S5- assaults, the bane of the Wave Serpent.

So in a nutshell, you have a tank that is cheaper, just as spammable in the conditions where a Sicaran would be allowed (i.e. relaxed army list building restrictions) and a lot more resilient.
Because in reality it's almost impossible to hit the side of a tank against a competent opponent.


And once more, the only real point making the Wave Serpent OP is its spammability within a CAD format.

That alone does not make a unit OP, it makes it OP in a specific format, which is why the Sicaran is certainly not worse than a Wave Serpent.

And that's why Eldar and Dark Eldar players feel that the Sicaran is ridiculously strong.
Because it is against Eldar and Dark Eldar.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you factoring in sponsons and the hull HB (if relevant) or just the autocannon?

Str 5 weapons can't hurt armor 12 and if I put LCs on it, its more expensive by comparison. But even with the LC the Sicaran will only just do two points a turn to a WC not in cover... guess the eldar have to play like the rest of us.

Morgoth, if for some reason a competent Eldar player CAN'T find cover (lol) and the competent SM player CAN keep his side armor protected (whatever)... use your own WS for cover. Have the one that took the hit first round fall back behind another fast skimmer... kinda 40k 101.

I've never seen anything other than CAD or tournament style play in any of the clubs or FLGS's around here. My apologies if you play a ton of unbound. Go grab a Lynx then.

 Lobukia wrote:
Str 5 weapons can't hurt armor 12 and if I put LCs on it, its more expensive by comparison. But even with the LC the Sicaran will only just do two points a turn to a WC not in cover... guess the eldar have to play like the rest of us.

That's precisely what I pointed out: Sicarans are a lot more resilient than Wave Serpents against a variety of threats.

And they have more firepower in many cases as well: 48" S7 AP4 heavy 6 always twin-linked (not most of the time, like the WS) is a LOT better against anything AV12+ and planes.

At 1400 points, you can field 10 Sicarans, or 7 Wave Serpents with DA. Care to guess who wins ?

morgoth wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
Str 5 weapons can't hurt armor 12 and if I put LCs on it, its more expensive by comparison. But even with the LC the Sicaran will only just do two points a turn to a WC not in cover... guess the eldar have to play like the rest of us.

That's precisely what I pointed out: Sicarans are a lot more resilient than Wave Serpents against a variety of threats.

And they have more firepower in many cases as well: 48" S7 AP4 heavy 6 always twin-linked (not most of the time, like the WS) is a LOT better against anything AV12+ and planes.

At 1400 points, you can field 10 Sicarans, or 7 Wave Serpents with DA. Care to guess who wins ?

So Orks are OP because at 1400 points boys will kill Honour Guard or IG is OP because at 1400 points veterans will kill Tacticals or any other silly pointless comparison in a vacuum? I'm sorry your incredibly powerful codex with psudo-rending, extra movement, MBT DTs, extra kill MCs, psykers and cheap troops on jetbikes, and a billion other tricks had one of its many OP units brought down to a reasonable level when facing off against ONE specific unit that in the vast majority of games it will only face one of. Guess you have to push the easy button twice now to win against marines.

 Lobukia wrote:

morgoth wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
Str 5 weapons can't hurt armor 12 and if I put LCs on it, its more expensive by comparison. But even with the LC the Sicaran will only just do two points a turn to a WC not in cover... guess the eldar have to play like the rest of us.

That's precisely what I pointed out: Sicarans are a lot more resilient than Wave Serpents against a variety of threats.

And they have more firepower in many cases as well: 48" S7 AP4 heavy 6 always twin-linked (not most of the time, like the WS) is a LOT better against anything AV12+ and planes.

At 1400 points, you can field 10 Sicarans, or 7 Wave Serpents with DA. Care to guess who wins ?

So Orks are OP because at 1400 points boys will kill Honour Guard or IG is OP because at 1400 points veterans will kill Tacticals or any other silly pointless comparison in a vacuum? I'm sorry your incredibly powerful codex with psudo-rending, extra movement, MBT DTs, extra kill MCs, psykers and cheap troops on jetbikes, and a billion other tricks had one of its many OP units brought down to a reasonable level when facing off against ONE specific unit that in the vast majority of games it will only face one of. Guess you have to push the easy button twice now to win against marines.

lol. The Sicaran is the easy button against Eldar, that's all the OP question was about and as an Eldar, I confirm that it's one of the scariest enemy units out there.

But hey, keep on thinking Eldar is OP, it's not like the meta is shifting and things are changing and combos are disappearing one by one.

I've never seen anyone saying the wave serpent is not over powered, and then going as far as saying it's not good for its points.. Come on morgoth, the WS is ridiculous! It's not just its spammability, it has too much of everything (survivability, mobility, shooting) for its cost. There is a reason it's widely regarded as broken, it's not just one persons opinion. Debating that is just meaningless.

Also, you cannot base an opinion of being undercosted on the case of 1 vs 1, in your case specifically comparing it to a Serpent. In the case of a MBT you have to look at survivability and killability, and for its cost I'd say its pretty balanced, but on the good side of effectiveness/cost against most armies. It just happens to be a very good match against WS, just the same way Blastmasters are vs SM Bikes and the way every weapon has its optimum enemy. But even vs the Serpent it will not be that effective which says something..

Anyone talking about ceramite plating can remember that the Sicaran is close to 200 pts with that (and lascannon sponsons which anyone using it as antitank will take), and over if you want to take the legacies/schism things. A tank at around 200pts with 13/12/12 is NOT stupidly hard to kill - come on even without the second melta dice you can kill it. You CAN also play the Sicaran without those upgrades. Come on, if you have trouble killing that how can you deal with Russes (which have higher AV and are cheaper)?

Serpents on the other hand are way less points and (for weapons that do not ignore jink) way harder to kill. Stupid comparison.

I find it almost provoking/humouristic that it is Eldar players of all people that are complaining. Given that they have several more OP choices and generally access to both Lance and Haywire weapons both of which make short work of the Sicaran. So I will regard any Eldar player actually complaining as just trolling.

The Wave Serpent is excellent for its points cost.

It's just that when facing Wave Serpents, Sicarans are extremely good.

And they cost 140 points, they don't need the upgrades or less powerful selections to be fielded.


Point being: the Sicaran is fine but really tailored to Please find a better way to express yourself. Reds8n Eldar Skimmers, which is why the OP had the impression that it was broken.

Eldar and Dark Eldar players have just as many reasons to call the Sicaran OP as the other races have reasons to call the WS OP.

You said above that the wave serpent was garbage.
The waveserpent is OP against everyone (it's just as good at taking out serpents than the sicaran), the sicaran only seems OP against the two types of eldar. This means it is not OP in the context of the game as a whole, therefore it is not a unit which can be labelled OP.
Flamers are extremely good against guardsmen, would a guard player call them OP?
Lances are extremely good against AV14, would a LR spam player label them OP?
Poison/snipers are extremely good against MCs, would a nid player label it OP?
Just because a unit is a counter to a persons list does not mean that that person can legitimately call it OP.