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I often see people dumping on Terminators and Land Raiders - and Terminators in Land Raiders.

What is it about the Land Raider that folks despise so much? Personally, I think its a rather good vehicle, with its high armor, assault ramp and lascannons so what gives? Is it the vehicle rules overall (vs. MC's) or something like the single shots from the lascannons instead of a hail of STR 6 weaponry?

I think it has to do with the price point to compared to other models.

I rather like mine. There are more competitive options for the points cost, which puts some people off.

Av14 doesn't impress when people go as much out of their way to ignore its properties, via Gauss, Grav, Haywire, Lance, etc. Then you have the fact there's limited capabilities; only 16 spaces doesn't help when deathstars are exceeding that on top of being bulky. THEN you have the matter that, once cargo is delivered should it ever get there, it has gak firepower. If you try to use it as a battle tank, be prepared to be disappointed when it only fires three weapons total unless you splurge even more.

Add on top how durable vehicles aren't in general this edition and it is pretty easy to see why they're 240+ points of Garbage.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Av14 doesn't impress when people go as much out of their way to ignore its properties, via Gauss, Grav, Haywire, Lance, etc. Then you have the fact there's limited capabilities; only 16 spaces doesn't help when deathstars are exceeding that on top of being bulky. THEN you have the matter that, once cargo is delivered should it ever get there, it has gak firepower. If you try to use it as a battle tank, be prepared to be disappointed when it only fires three weapons total unless you splurge even more.

Add on top how durable vehicles aren't in general this edition and it is pretty easy to see why they're 240+ points of Garbage.

Yep, especially if they get a lucky Melta shot and kill a 4 HP AV 14 vehicle in one shot.

Because AV 14 and lascannons both suck in 7th ed. 250 pts sucks even more. It's a 180 pt vehicle max, and even then, I'd balk.

Oh, and it immobilizes itself on a shrub 16% of the time.

You shouldtry them out to see how vulnerable, overpriced and restrictive they are.

It's not only their own price - it's also the price of their cargo that adds up. If you put something inside a landraider and the landraider gets stunned, immobilized or exploded, that's not only ~250 pts sitting there doing nothing, it's also the 300-ish price of what it's transporting sitting there doing nothing.

And boy, it's easy to stop a landraider nowadays.

I like mine, even though it’s the “worst” option (with the TLLCs).

There are a number of reasons why they are frowned upon in competitive scenes.

AV14, while great vs. a lot of things, also has a number of hard counters. Many of which are common. So while scatbikes can’t HP you out, any melta/gauss/strength D/haywire/etc. can pop you as easy as a rhino. And there is a lot of that stuff out there.

You pay a lot for abilities that are often at odds with each other. You have cargo and an assault ramp, but to use them you forgo decent shooting with your guns. The LRR/C work better here, as they are more pure battlefield taxies. The Phobos with the Godhammers is the worst for this. 40k promotes specialization, you don’t want to pay for things you aren’t going to use.

It’s a lot of eggs in one basket. A loaded box of pain is going to run you 450+ points. Probably more, if you stick a tooled up HQ in there. So you are looking at anywhere from a quarter to half your army, depending on the scale of the game and what you roll with. That’s a lot. Can it make its points back? Can it turn the battle?

LRs are only OKish at their job. The lack of dozer blades means that as a transport, you might just get hung up on a bush and have to bail early. The gun loads are also a little “meh”. The LRC brings more bolters (yawn), the LRR needs to be close to work (at which point the things under the flamers are probably going to be blendered by the cargo). The TLLCs are OK at AV work, but the big threats these days are MC/GMCs. So you are paying ~250 points for something that just sorta works at a whole lot of things.

And for the points spent, you can get things done cheeper, in other places. Need to get a unit somewhere? Drop pods do it for a fraction of the price more reliably. Sure, you can’t assault out of it, but you could probably buy two units for the cost of one in a LR. Need firepower downrange? Lots of other options.

One thing they do have going for them is the rock/paper/scissor nature of 40k. Because while there are a lot of things that make them irrelevant, there are also a lot of things that can’t even scratch their paint. The problem is that the things that can eat them for breakfast are pretty common. And with things like Imperial Knights and other SHVs out there, people need to bring at least some of them. Which makes the average table a very hostile environment for the pricy LR.

They are iconic, and a great focal point for a mechanized list. But it’s firmly in the fluffy and fun camp.

There are multiple reasons why they are seen as sub-par, particularly in this edition.

1. Vehicle rules in 7th ed. As you pointed out already, AV14 means increasingly little when weapons like Haywire, strength D and other things bypass the only thing that is really keep your transport alive. And while 4 HP isn't bad, it doesn't compensate for it either.

2. High points cost. GW has been too adamant in keeping the price of the Land Raider and its variants too high as you're effectively doubling the cost of terminator squads to transport them which simply isn't point efficient. Drop pods and rhinos are way more popular simply because they're only a fraction of the cost the squad they're usually transporting. And for a vehicle that can be potentially popped T1, means that it's a heavy investment that may or may not get your unit across the board.

3. Transport capacity. Normal Land Raiders are almost never seen since 10 man squad capacity means that you can't fit the supporting characters you usually need for Terminator squads. Its TL-lascannons and heavy bolter makes it seem schizophrenic in terms of what it wants to do and overall is a very confused design of trying to be a jack of all trades. The LRR and LRC are better, with the LRR having issues mainly with being able to actually catch enemy units with their side flamestorm cannons (might need something like torrent to make them worth it) and LRC being the most seen LR variant because its the only one that's focused on actually being a transport, with its weaponry being focused on only anti-infantry.

4. Meta change. 7th ed. does not reward you for the old 4th-5th ed. tactics of charging in with the LR-Termie rush anymore. Maelstrom of War in particular promotes lots of MSU objec sec. units that Gladius gives and if you want to go into a death star, biker conclaves and ally shenanigans give you far more reliability and speed that the LR-termie combo can provide.

Every thing a Land Raider does, can be done better by cheaper units.

Sure it has the armor 14 and such but its heavy firepower is miss matched and often a simple Predator can offer the same amount of fire power for much less.
Rhinos can move troops just as well, if under less armor.
Sure it can transport Terminators, but that's the only thing going for it.

Not to mention its expensive points wise. That and armor 14 all around does do much against stuff like grav, or haywire.

I've popped Land Raiders with a Vanquisher in a single shot more than once, popped another with a Neutron Laser in a single shot from my Onager. and then some.
For their points and bulk, they are strangely easy to kill with a good roll.

For its cost it is terrible. The ability to be one shot and it's inability to project it's already marginal firepower while on the move make it fail as a battle transport.

If you reduce it's cost to 180 points and give it some special rules that allow it to ignore explosion and immobilized results (treat them as stunned) + be able to fire all it's weapons on the move - It would start to be good.

vehicals in general need a lot of work - not having access to any form of save other than cover is their biggest weakness.

The Spartan Assault Tank, by the way, is pretty much a Land Raider+. It costs 50-70 points more, (depending on how you kit it,) but ignores Melta, has 5 Hp, carries 25 models, and fires twice the number of Lascannon shots, even on the move. (Rather than having more guns, it just gets guns that fire twice as many shots.)

All in all, though, 250 points is already a massive investment, 250+ the cost of the unit inside is simply too huge for what you get. 500 points can get me a full Librarius Conclave, or a decked out Thunderstar, or an Imperial Knight and change.

The Landraider has not changed much at all over time.
Due to how the rules work for vehicles (AP 1 on the chart...), melta and grav and the weapons of choice which AV 14 has a hard time with.
Assault is at a disadvantage in the current meta and that is pretty much what the tank is designed for.
Deep strike / drop pods seem to be the more reliable means of getting where you need to go.
It all boils down to as a troop transport, it is expensive for what it does (monetarily and points).
As an actual tank, it is not very effective.
Aircraft have taken over what little utility the vehicle had.

Every time I build a list I look at that model and think it would be neat to use and then as you select everything there just is no room for it.

Land Raiders in general are schizoid and underarmed for their cost.

As for getting down on Terminators in Land Raiders they'll usually get in with and kill one, maybe two targets; you'll have those one or two targets killed very, very dead, but you'll have dumped 500+pts into killing them. You need to be in an environment where there's something your Terminators can kill and where it's actually worth the massive chunk of points to do so.

Honestly, just the sheer amount of things that ignore AV right now is enough to make it bad. Haywire (which even comes in different flavours), grav, lance, gauss, destroyer. All of which are suprisingly plentiful. Combine that with the fact that the land raider most likely won't have a save and you can see how vulnerable it is these days.

And csm especially, you get to pay more than loyalists and get none of the benefits. No grenade launchers and not enough space and no PotMS, fun times... And only one version. Unless you go to forgeworld. Those are slightly better but still are just as vulnerable, except maybe for the spartan.

The problem is their points cost prohibits armor saturation of them and they have no super special rules to keep lone land raiders alive like other vehicles in the SM armory and other codexeseses. Why shoot at a Razorback with a MSU heavy in it by comparison?

So, gigantic expensive AV14 BAWKS can transport an expensive deathstar (and attract every anti armor shot possible) and hopefully make it to where you want/need it.

If it had special rules from many other vehicle/codexeses, it could be worth it. As is, it's an expensive deathtrap that does not do much of anything else unless you get lucky and play against someone that has no anti-armor capability.

Personally, I think running a naked 'standard' Land Raider without a unit in it is about the only option worth considering. Still a big points sink for 2 TL LC and a TL HB mobile AV1r terrain piece, but at least you don't have a unit tied up in it as well.

BA currently have the best land raiders because of fast. And that requires an expensive formation.

It costs too many points(250 pts) for what it does and for how fragile it is. It is a symptom of the bigger problem of vehicles being bad in general. But the Land Raider lacks offensive capability on level for its points. Compared to vehicles that do similar things, such as the Wave Serpent (110 pts) or Falcon (125 pts), the Land Raider is only minutely more defensively capable, and not all that better in terms of offensive capability (definitely not worth 2x the points). For 45 pts more, you can get a frickin' Wraithknight.

Orks can take the Battlewagon which is AV14 in the front, can actually take a ram to reroll terrain checks, and can carry 20 infantry (12 if you slap on a killkannon which is a more practical weapon that whats on any of the Land Raiders). At base cost the Battlewagon cost half the points of a land raider and even then many will argue that the Battlewagon isn't worth it. When a unit is being compared unfavorably to something in the Ork codex that many will argue is overpriced then you know you have a stinker of a unit on your hands.

As a transport the Land Raider is overpriced, AV14 isn't what it use to be, it can't handle terrain effectively, its playing top points for weapons when its almost always being taken for its terminator/centurion transport capability, and its usually transporting extremely expensive models which means it becomes a massive points sink.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
It costs too many points(250 pts) for what it does and for how fragile it is. It is a symptom of the bigger problem of vehicles being bad in general. But the Land Raider lacks offensive capability on level for its points. Compared to vehicles that do similar things, such as the Wave Serpent (110 pts) or Falcon (125 pts), the Land Raider is only minutely more defensively capable, and not all that better in terms of offensive capability (definitely not worth 2x the points). For 45 pts more, you can get a frickin' Wraithknight.

Wraithknights are criminally low on point cost. Even eldar elites slinging destroyer weapons when termi's are still using combi bolters, what the heck you know. Necrons and tau are out of whack as well. In my opinion the only way to fix the balance of the game is to massively increase the point cost of some of these factions units. You could decrease the point cost of the others or nerf their capabilities but I think both of those are not ideal.

Extreme rates of power creep its just that simple.

I'd probably use my Land Raider a lot more if it was 150 points.

I don't think you can blame power creep on the Land Raider's woes. I've been playing since 3rd ed, and not once in all that time has it ever been good.

In addition to the aforementioned problems, it's firing arcs suck. It's extremely difficult to get both lascannons to bear on a single target, and most things you'd engage with lascannons are going to shrug off heavy bolter fire, making that weapon relatively useless. It would help the LR enormously if it could fire at separate targets with each of its weapons. If it could do that plus fire everything to full effect regardless of how far it moves during the movement phase, then...well, it'd still be overpriced at 250pts, but not as badly.

It's not power creep. Even in 5th, when vehicles were at the height of their power, Land Raiders sucked. It's main problem, I think, is that it was designed 20-odd years ago and as far as I'm aware its rules haven't changed in all that time even though the game has evolved. I don't think its points cost has either.

 BBAP wrote:
It's not power creep. Even in 5th, when vehicles were at the height of their power, Land Raiders sucked. It's main problem, I think, is that it was designed 20-odd years ago and as far as I'm aware its rules haven't changed in all that time even though the game has evolved. I don't think its points cost has either.

Yes and no.

In the 3rd edition codex they were mostly the same. Just the basic LR, as the LRR/C weren’t around yet. 250 points, 2xTLLC, TLHB. No PotMS, and also no smoke/searchlight; those had to be purchased separately. No option for the MM, Not an assault vehicle, but that wasn’t an issue then IIRC. You could however take dozer blades as well as smoke/lights/HKs/SBs. Which helped with the getting stuck on a bush issue.

4th was much the same (still at 250), with the inclusion of the assault ramp and PotMS (which worked differently). 4th also saw the LRC introduced. It came stock with the MM and extra armor, at 265. Only held 15 guys. Could still take dozer blades

5th was much like today’s LR, but with a 12 man capacity. Also introduced the LRR. No more dozer blades, but free smoke and searchlights.

6th-7th we are all familiar with.

Since Tau lost the ability to spam Strength 10 shots, I've hated the Land Raider.

But I haven't tried out a Stormsurge yet.

Doesn't take much to make the Land Raider a decent option it's just hard to get those extras.
I use a Land Raider in the Ironwolves formation - 6' boost for Flat Out movement and -2 penalty to Leadership for Enemy units suffering a Tank Shock.
That thing is a beast, it doesn't seem much bigger than a Rhino until people are trying to get their stuff out from underneath it but even then Dozer Blades would make it so much better.
For most armies though the Land Raider is a really, really expensive Distraction Carnifex.

 Nevelon wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
It's not power creep. Even in 5th, when vehicles were at the height of their power, Land Raiders sucked. It's main problem, I think, is that it was designed 20-odd years ago and as far as I'm aware its rules haven't changed in all that time even though the game has evolved. I don't think its points cost has either.

Yes and no.

In the 3rd edition codex they were mostly the same. Just the basic LR, as the LRR/C weren’t around yet. 250 points, 2xTLLC, TLHB. No PotMS, and also no smoke/searchlight; those had to be purchased separately. No option for the MM, Not an assault vehicle, but that wasn’t an issue then IIRC. You could however take dozer blades as well as smoke/lights/HKs/SBs. Which helped with the getting stuck on a bush issue.

4th was much the same (still at 250), with the inclusion of the assault ramp and PotMS (which worked differently). 4th also saw the LRC introduced. It came stock with the MM and extra armor, at 265. Only held 15 guys. Could still take dozer blades

5th was much like today’s LR, but with a 12 man capacity. Also introduced the LRR. No more dozer blades, but free smoke and searchlights.

6th-7th we are all familiar with.

I used to run a LRC in 3rd/4th with my Black Templars (with the TAR which prevented unloading and assaulting). Folks routinely said it was a point sink, but I ran it with dual heavy flamers, and frankly, there wasn't a unit I could auto delete with that thing. Roar up, dump tl bolters and PoTMS the assault cannon to dump for fire into a foe. Then jump out and dual heavy flamer them. It was 'all the wrong options' by popular logic, but holy smokes did that thing eat units for breakfast.

I still like my land raiders, but for what they are, they are over priced.

Its my opinion that a number of the larger vehicles throughout the game: land raider, monolith, defiler, gorka/morkanauts, etc would be more representative and more worthwhile is they were made superheavies.

Keep in mind, there is alot of weirdness with what is or isn't a super heavy, particularly with Forgeworld. Like the Malcador which is only as long as Land Raider but as narrow as a Leman Russ... it is a super heavy. Land Raider Spartans not super heavies, but Cerberus and Typhon which are built on the same chassis. are.

I somehow ended up with Four Land Raiders because apparently my house is like a museum for donated 40k stuff. xD

But unfortunately, I've yet to use them because the Stormraven is just way better as a delivery tool. Maybe if they lowered the cost to no more than 200 or gave it ceramite plating and somethings to make it immune to haywire, it'd be worth it.