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Eldar makes me want to hurt people.

That's why Gladius and Slyhammer exists.

 Torus wrote:
Howling, freaking banshees... look great but seriously can we have furious charge please, I'd like to wound something at some point

I've been using 20 of them in my list for a few months now, just because they are great models. I've found them to be not quite as bad as people make them out to be -- but they are still not great.

Perks
They have a few perks.
* They are wicked fast, with a 15" run on turn one if you are running the pale host formation.
* They have a reliable 10" (85%) charge with the 3" extra charge range. There is even a 39.81% of a 13" charge!
* The fear can be handy to help prevent incoming damage from armies that are effected by fear. The exarch helps with this.
* They have 'offensive grenades'.
* They are cheap (for aspect warriors)

Uses
I've used them to assault weaker units. In my last game with them, I used them to assault an IG CCS that had 4 flamers. My opponent was rather surprised when I made a 10" charge and ignored his "Wall of Death". Even though I had 3 banshees left for this assault, they still broke and swept the CCS.

I've used them to negate overwatch for my wraithknight. Lets say I want to assault that squad of grav cents with the wraithknight. I will assault with a banshee to negate the overwatch and then hit them with the wraithknight. This only works if the banshees make it in, as they can still overwatch the next if the initial charge was failed.

I've used them (with the executioner exarch) to assault light vehicles or war walkers. It's not ideal compared to spiders or hawks, but I've ticked off hull points before and killed eldar war walkers with the exarch.

I've used them for their shuriken pistols. Sure, it's not an ideal situation, but I've used the pistols to shoot at (and wound) wraithknights before. A lot of people forget the pistols, which are still half a guardian worth of firepower per model.

Overall
I doubt I'll keep them for the long term. I'm building another unit of hawks and spiders now and I'll probably swap them out for the others -- as the hawks and spiders are just to good to pass up. For now they are beautiful models that turned out really well when painted.

MathHammer
Charge Chance Ranges with and Without Fleet

3 97.22% 99.92%

 Torus wrote:
[Oh God, running a charging a unit of Banshees with Jain Zar would be great, but the standard girls would still just bounce off anything with 4+ toughness

If you look at the above numbers, and I can tell you from the games I've used them in, they are always in assault on turn 1 or 2 (depending if the opponent moved forward on turn one).
Having an effective range of 31" assault range by turn two means your going to get to most targets.

The biggest problem is the STR 3. Against bikes they are wounding on a 6. This means that 6 banshees w/Exarch assaulting bikes will look like this. (A realistic number as you will lose some when moving up on turn one)
2/3 (hit) * 1/6 (wound) * 15 attacks = 15/9 +
2/3 (hit) * 1/2 (wound) * 3 attacks = 1
or an average of 2.6 dead bikes. That's rather laughable. Against MEQ they do better, or about ~5 MEQ dead.

If you could give the girls furious charge from an Avatar or +1 STR from a spirit seer, then things start to change dramatically....

 Vankraken wrote:

 Lammikkovalas wrote:

 Torus wrote:
Wraithknights... fantastic models, bought 3 when you could have them as heavy support but try and use them now and you get beaten up with a metal dreadnought in a sock

I hadn't read anyone complain that WKs had terrible rules in a while, I guess since Dman last posted on the board.

I think the problem he is saying is that fielding a Wraithknight makes others want to hurt him.

Yeah, I understood that part. I still wouldn't call WKs lousy, maybe aggression-inducing could be a more applicable term. The Dreadsock is a multi-purpose model though, no matter the rules.

 Torus wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:

 Lammikkovalas wrote:

 Torus wrote:
Wraithknights... fantastic models, bought 3 when you could have them as heavy support but try and use them now and you get beaten up with a metal dreadnought in a sock

I hadn't read anyone complain that WKs had terrible rules in a while, I guess since Dman last posted on the board.

I think the problem he is saying is that fielding a Wraithknight makes others want to hurt him.

Hmm. Maybe all the imbalance in 40k has been due to the switch to plastic. If you no longer need to fear the DreadSock, the cheese leaks out.

Bring back minis that can double as a murder weapon, and we might see more fair games!

Hellions. So much Hellions...

Sadly a good chunk of the Ork codex falls under this umbrella.

Boss Zagstruk and Kaptin Badrukk are amazing sculpts...but their rules are doodoo.

Similarly, the majority of the Ork walkers suffer the same issue as well, as well as normal Nobz and stormboyz.

wolf priests all the way, shame too as regular chaplains are ok.

dishounourable mention to shining spears as the models are pretty awful too.

It's been mentioned before, but I'll reiterate Deff dreads and Orkanauts.

I wasn't in love with the orkanaut model at first, but it's grown on me, and I've always loved deff dreads.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, I think I have a new one - Gargantuan squiggoths.

Jaw-dropping, fantastic model, but is, no joke, worse in CC than a warboss. Same strength, I, AP, one more attack, 3 worse WS. That's right, a space dinosaur has the same WS as a grot.

Stomps are ok, but unreliable. Its gun is decent, but I'd like more weapon options, and by that I mean any weapon options.

And I personally feel as if the T8 is utterly insufficient. It's somehow only as tough as weedy eldar wraith units, but it's a mountain of meat. It should be at LEAST T9, maybe T10.

This discussion can't be complete without the Coldstar Commander. A T4 FMC with literally all the good rules taken away, poor shooting, worse defensive options and no ability to pass off wounds.

Absolute garbage.

 raverrn wrote:
This discussion can't be complete without the Coldstar Commander. A T4 FMC with literally all the good rules taken away, poor shooting, worse defensive options and no ability to pass off wounds.

Absolute garbage.

T4? Does that mean he dies when he fails a grounding check?

 labmouse42 wrote:

 raverrn wrote:
This discussion can't be complete without the Coldstar Commander. A T4 FMC with literally all the good rules taken away, poor shooting, worse defensive options and no ability to pass off wounds.

Absolute garbage.

T4? Does that mean he dies when he fails a grounding check?

Yep, wounded one with swooping hawks moving over him to add insult to injury he suffered instant death when he failed the grounding check...

 Torus wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:

 raverrn wrote:
This discussion can't be complete without the Coldstar Commander. A T4 FMC with literally all the good rules taken away, poor shooting, worse defensive options and no ability to pass off wounds.

Absolute garbage.

T4? Does that mean he dies when he fails a grounding check?

Yep, wounded one with swooping hawks moving over him to add insult to injury he suffered instant death when he failed the grounding check...

That's crazy cinematic though. Silly, but cool.

My favorite is the fact as a MC - despite not having Smash, Vector Strike or Fear - you can still use Melta bombs against him.

And they also cause Instant Death.

 Torus wrote:
Yep, wounded one with swooping hawks moving over him to add insult to injury he suffered instant death when he failed the grounding check...

Wow....just wow. That's horrible.

I think chaos takes the cake for beautiful models with god awful rules. Raptors and warp talons capture that bad ass baroque chaos style perfectly but I get headaches imagining how they came up with the rules.