Great review. You did a nice job exploring the codex and not giving into the very easy knee jerk reaction that has been so prevalent in
CWE reviews.
I actually did an analysis on the different windrider unit's damage output against different targets vs the old waveserpent.
Here
I will just hit on some of the points in your very thorough review.
The new waveserpent has a decent burst damage for the turn it fire's it's serpent shield but that will be less than the damage the old waveserpent put out over 2 turns (ie
2d6 vs
2d6+1) and every hit is of significantly lower quality.I think that redesign is a fair assessment as the new serpent is clearly a APC with a shock and awe burst weapon.
For the banshee's section the negate overwatch ability is from the banshee mask on all of the models (and an upgrade for an autarch) not an ability tied to the exarch.
For the Vaul's wrath batteries you may not have considered then entirely in context of some of the other units. For the shadow weaver battery they are 30 pts a piece for 4 T7 wounds vs shooting that can
GtG. They are also 48" barrage meaning they can be hidden in ruins and behind walls anywhere on the board and contribute.
Why this is a big deal is that they make excellent turn 1 presence if you need to reserve most of your force. Many of the aspect based and saim hain style forces are going to be extremely fragile to a solid alpha strike, in my own test games and simulations an average Imperial Fists
SM Drop Pod list can kill 25% of a saim hain army turn 1 and reduce the return firepower to less than 1/3 of what the army should be shooting (utilizing distributed killing to force jinks and morale tests) there are actually several of my common top tier builds which can wipe more than 50% of these types of builds off the board turn 1 if I go first. This fragility of certain build types and the
DE DS shenanigans both lend themselves to reserving a majority of your army and depending on an autarch and/or comms relay to get a beta strike with the majority of your army. Therefore the addition of 2-3 shadow weaver batteries gives you some not only an efficient source of barrage firepower but also unlocks an entire reserves based strategy.
The D cannon batteries are as you say excellent for an aggressive play style as they can own the center very easily. I think you are underselling their damage to some degree. They are barrage and thus for the purposes of cover and ion shields you trace from the center of the hole of the blast. What this usually results in is bypassing most vehicle's cover and the ion shield on imperial knight. Small blasts also have an extremely hard time missing GMC and Super heavies as the models are so large. So for a cost of 165 pts you can negate the greatest advantage of most super heavy walkers and GMC; their ability to walk into the middle of the board and own that space letting the opponent claim objectives and herd you away from sensitive areas. Very few of the super heavies can withstand taking 3 D strength shots. The consideration of how these do against hordes is somewhat meaningless as you have a plethora of super efficient Str6/4 shooting which can truly decimate hordes that leave cover.
The crimson hunter taking a bright lance vs starcannon is actually a meta consideration. Against flyrants (and indeed most
FMC) the starcannon is 20% better against
FMC than the bright lance while the brightlance does 22% more
HP damage to AV12, starcannons actually do 25%more
HP damage against AV11 flyers. I would always take a starcannon on the exarch as the precision shots make the vehicle a great
TAC threat. On the basic crimson hunter it is entirely dependent on the ratio of
FMC/AV11 vs AV12 flyers in your meta. It also depends on how risky you want to be with your flyer as with vector dancer the 4 Str6 shots are a greater threat to most rear armours.
I will try to finish the rest of your review and make some more commentary later. Thanks again for the very good review.
