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the_scotsman wrote:
How many turns does a shooting unit take to pay for itself for you to consider it "fair"? At current points, where they are basically never-includes, vindicares take 3 turns to make their points back in perfect situations, more likely 4 turns.

ROI in terms of points is not that simple. I don't care about points return, but if I can take out your key force multipliers in the first turn or two, then I can shut down your armies gimmick. And even if I don't get a chance to kill them, I can reduce their effectiveness by forcing you to hide them or place them in less than ideal positions.

They are never includes because they take a full detachment for 3 of them without the new rules. Headshot + Stratagems is a pretty awesome addition for an increase of zero points.

"Do your opponents typically let you swap out models freely from your list when you see what they've got in theirs? "
Operative Requisition Sanctioned: 1CP to summon (not include) any one Assassin. You still pay the 85 points, and now you pay 1CP. But it doesn't cost you a detatchment (often limited to 3 detatchments in tournies).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You are doing a great job of showing why the sky isn't actually falling, though.

I think that there should be a operative set for each faction. Nids could get 3 specilized Lictors, choose one. Eldars could get Pay 100, and 1 CP gain a Phoenix Lord (still might be overcosted) Chaos already have Assassins, and No one cares about Orks and Tau’s.

 mokoshkana wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
How many turns does a shooting unit take to pay for itself for you to consider it "fair"? At current points, where they are basically never-includes, vindicares take 3 turns to make their points back in perfect situations, more likely 4 turns.

ROI in terms of points is not that simple. I don't care about points return, but if I can take out your key force multipliers in the first turn or two, then I can shut down your armies gimmick. And even if I don't get a chance to kill them, I can reduce their effectiveness by forcing you to hide them or place them in less than ideal positions.

They are never includes because they take a full detachment for 3 of them without the new rules. Headshot + Stratagems is a pretty awesome addition for an increase of zero points.

I'm not saying it isn't. I think increasing their damage was something that was strictly necessary, and the new stratagems are definitely interesting (IMO, somewhat better for the suicide bomb style assassins where you want to be using that stratagem to maximise their output in the single turn they'll be on the board, but I can see some use cases for Double Tap or whatever it's called)

What I am arguing is that people are judging the new vindicare assassin based on other sniper/assassin units that exist in the game that are currently almost universally underpowered.

If you were to take regular scouts with sniper rifles, they'd require 9.8 shots to bring down a single guard commander. Even if that guard commander is somehow the lynchpin of the enemy army (call it a primaris psyker or something, or an ork character of some sort) a 23% points return is evidently still too low for snipers to be particularly useful even in ideal conditions, of characters protected only by their keyword and not particularly by their own stats.

I say evidently because the only snipers we tend to see in any kind of competitive play are rangers, and even then, very rarely since the drukhari codex dropped.

So now we have these vindicare assassins on the field, which get about 20% better damage than scouts/rangers/deathmarks/most other character snipers. Not as much as Ratlings and a couple others in ideal edge cases, but still, generally a bit better.

And this is now suddenly going to topple the meta of having aura buff characters running around, or tip the scales heavily in the favor of imperial soup? I'm assuming the principle target people are imagining is like an eldar farseer looking to cast Doom, in which case you'd take 3 assassins and shoot him down with slightly above average rolling if he doesn't have Fortune or the +1sv spell up on him. That seems like a thing I could do before, but cheaper, with ratlings. I don't know. And if you want to bring them in via stratagem, you only get one, and then you're on a wing and a prayer to try and take that dude out in one shot, it's reeeeal unlikely.

the_scotsman wrote:
Mmm. Except that the 5++ ork and FNP ork aren't actually infantry, they're bikes, and they're T5, so you're killing less than one a turn with 255 points of vindicares.

You mean those things that are index only, and liable to be disallowed at any particular place the player plays at, and possibly discontinued as a whole in the future?

Ghazghkull gets dropped like a bag of dirt...in the two turns it takes them to kill him, assuming the ork player just...decides not to grot shield him? "hey, should I let these assassins do 4.7 damage to ghazghkull, or kill three grots? Eh whatever, feth it, they can just hit ghazzy."

Grot shield is a Stratagem, that it can only be used to protect one unit a turn. If a player using grot shield to protect Ghaz (or some other character), then I'm not using it to protect my loota ball. In addition, since ranged attacks are not required to all be allocated before rolling dice it would only one shot is saved (assuming 2+ is rolled) then the other two snipe out a different character.

I guess the question I have for you is: What level of points return would you consider to be OK for a sniper unit to have? It seems like in a perfect situation like you describe, with them thwunking into naked buffer HQs, their points return seems to be about 40-50%, with about a 33% points return being more of a normal matchup. They get worse if their targets have 3+ or 2+ armor saves, and much worse if your opponent has bodyguard units that can tank lost wounds (or they get a first turn and their opponent hides the units or puts them in a transport).

How many turns does a shooting unit take to pay for itself for you to consider it "fair"? At current points, where they are basically never-includes, vindicares take 3 turns to make their points back in perfect situations, more likely 4 turns.

In "perfect" situations, a Vindicare makes it's point back instantly, because dice don't roll average every turn and a single vindicare getting 4 wounds output is much easier compared to even squads of snipers in other armies, and do so independantly of most defensive stats. What makes the Vindicare good is he has a much larger reward compared to his risk and cost.

 Marmatag wrote:


Fine. Keep the Weirdboyz in trukks. If i stop you from casting Da Jump I win.

If i stop you from running a 5++ Ork up the table, that's a win.
If i stop you from leveraging the FNP ork that's a win too.
And of course Ghaz will get dropped like a bag of dirt.

Meanwhile a double-shooting Wyvern is ripping apart boyz every turn to the tune of 8d6 shots with sexy rerolls.

It's a little known fact that there is a weirdboy behind this trukk. It just happens to be out of line of sight.



There is a lot of exaggeration here. Ghaz has 8 wounds on a 2+ and an option to heal D3. If the enemy spends 255 points all game on him that's a win.

There are morks and wazbombs, which make great Deathskullz candidates. A double tapping wyvern kills 7 KFF'd Boyz or 9 without KFF. That's not much to write home about.

"if he doesn't have Fortune or the +1sv spell up on him"
Fortune: Farseers actually have a built-in FnP vs Mortal Wounds. It's much stronger vs Perils MWs than others, but it's still there.

+1sv spell: Caps out at a 3++. Which is good.

I think you're right that people are overselling it, though.

Recall that, while Rangers are taken, they aren't taken for their sniper rifles. They're taken for their durability (Alaitoc Rangers in cover aren't easy to shift, and are relatively cheap). Generally, their sniper rifles are incidental.

Exaggerating is assuming any Ork player runs trukks.

They already can't compete with IG, how exactly do you expect them to diminish the effectiveness of their core list to get the potential to protect their psykers?

(That said, the +1sv Warlock and the Quicken warlock and the Conceal warlock are each great targets for the Vindicare.)

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Grot shield is a Stratagem, that it can only be used to protect one unit a turn. If a player using grot shield to protect Ghaz (or some other character), then I'm not using it to protect my loota ball. In addition, since ranged attacks are not required to all be allocated before rolling dice it would only one shot is saved (assuming 2+ is rolled) then the other two snipe out a different character.

Yes they do. All shots from a unit must be declared before rolling any dice.

 AndrewC wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Grot shield is a Stratagem, that it can only be used to protect one unit a turn. If a player using grot shield to protect Ghaz (or some other character), then I'm not using it to protect my loota ball. In addition, since ranged attacks are not required to all be allocated before rolling dice it would only one shot is saved (assuming 2+ is rolled) then the other two snipe out a different character.

Yes they do. All shots from a unit must be declared before rolling any dice.

From a unit, not from an army. Vindicares are all individual models (therefor different units) if more than one is taken.

 AndrewC wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Grot shield is a Stratagem, that it can only be used to protect one unit a turn. If a player using grot shield to protect Ghaz (or some other character), then I'm not using it to protect my loota ball. In addition, since ranged attacks are not required to all be allocated before rolling dice it would only one shot is saved (assuming 2+ is rolled) then the other two snipe out a different character.

Yes they do. All shots from a unit must be declared before rolling any dice.

Each Vindicare is a separate unit.

Yeah, see that now, thinking that they were a unit of three. My bad.

Carry on.

 Marmatag wrote:
Exaggerating is assuming any Ork player runs trukks.

They already can't compete with IG, how exactly do you expect them to diminish the effectiveness of their core list to get the potential to protect their psykers?

That's what is interesting about all of this - everyone is affected.

I have frequently advocated the use of snipers to swing the meta.

It's 110 points for 20 IS and a CC. If you kill the CC you have in someways killed 55 to 70 points of value, because those IS are now half as good (generally). Killing a priest in a Catachan list is huge - if you can get through the ogryn bodyguard.

So now any IG list that wants to be flexible needs multiple bodyguards.

With 2 OBG and 1 assassin we're already at 10% of an IoM list. That's two wyverns out right there. If people were not running transports before they should be now.

Honestly the Keller and Sanctum have better odds at killing characters (psykers for the Sanctum) so people should have been changing their lists before these assassins were even viable.

I agree with The Scotsman that people just don't want snipers to work in Warhammer because people hates when their characters and keystones to the army strategy can't be used as they want. Nothing irks someone the wrong way than to have their combo negated (Thats why so many people hates Vect)

Thats why people hated snipers in real life too. Because they killed you without a chance to retaliate.

Perhaps this will bring Vox Casters back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hide behind a transport, Vox our orders. Sounds good to me.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
That's what is interesting about all of this - everyone is affected.

I have frequently advocated the use of snipers to swing the meta.

It's 110 points for 20 IS and a CC. If you kill the CC you have in someways killed 55 to 70 points of value, because those IS are now half as good (generally). Killing a priest in a Catachan list is huge - if you can get through the ogryn bodyguard.

So now any IG list that wants to be flexible needs multiple bodyguards.

With 2 OBG and 1 assassin we're already at 10% of an IoM list. That's two wyverns out right there. If people were not running transports before they should be now.

Honestly the Keller and Sanctum have better odds at killing characters (psykers for the Sanctum) so people should have been changing their lists before these assassins were even viable.

Surely in an IG vs IG mirror match it's just a race to see which snipers die first? Which is pretty lame. Why is an IG player not taking a Vindicare to attempt to take out the priest or CC or whatever else his opponent decides to bring when his Imperium aligned opponent has brought them?

Of course they'll both bring them.

Ironically Imperium are affected the least by this, because they will have access to it. It's those of us who don't have access to these assassins that will be most affected and it makes our lists weaker. When Imperium is already the top faction.

Insanity.

 Galas wrote:
I agree with The Scotsman that people just don't want snipers to work in Warhammer because people hates when their characters and keystones to the army strategy can't be used as they want. Nothing irks someone the wrong way than to have their combo negated (Thats why so many people hates Vect)

Thats why people hated snipers in real life too. Because they killed you without a chance to retaliate.

They probably hate them because they are imbalanced. It's hardly fair for the lucky, favourite factions to get access to meta changing abilities such as Vect and/or Sniper units.

It's really fair that the keystone to my army strategy can't be used how I want, but you can use yours exactly how you want because I have no similar abilities to stop it. Excellent balance there.

Thats why all factions should have usable and good anti character units.

GROTS SNIPER WHEN.

Are people this crazy about Rangers with Transuranic Arquebuses? You can get double the shots and hit nearly as hard as a Vindicare on a Troops choice. With the right Canticle in effect, they are about as effective. And they are cheaper.

People just ranting because its Imperium. Not a single person complaining has play tested this, just theory crafting their own doom.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
Are people this crazy about Rangers with Transuranic Arquebuses? You can get double the shots and hit nearly as hard as a Vindicare on a Troops choice. With the right Canticle in effect, they are about as effective. And they are cheaper.

Consider the following with the Vindicare:
1. An additional foot of range, which granted won't come into play a lot
2. A BS2+ in the first place that won't go lower, compared to using a Canticle (AKA a CP) on a 5 man squad.
3. A wounding on a 2+ for most important targets
4. More mortal wound shenanigans

There's a lot going for the Vindicare now.

Weird to me that people on this forum are getting freaked out by the worse assassin but by in large calling the best assassin overrated. Look I love the vindicare as a concept, but he’s really not that good. One just doesn’t do enough, as even fragile characters will on average survive a single shot (I’m not taking a unit with the hope I’m getting lucky, dice are far too fickle for that).

The vanguard detachment makes more sense, but now you are putting up a heavy investment which can’t be swapped out. This means your are in trouble when A) your opponent hides his important character out of LOS (Easier then it sounds thanks to concepts like daisy chains) B) your opppenent has no super important characters that need to be killed or C) all your opponents important characters blank the vindicare (deamon princes, G-man, bike captains, etc). If any of these scenarios come up (highly likely during a 5+ round tournament) then your vindicare bomb is simply a liability to your list. Maybe if your Army has other sniping tools they could be interesting, but in my mind people are heavily overating the vindicare

The eversor however, is a stone lock. Not only does he do what his box says (he will kill an infranty squad a turn without fighting twice), but he also has extremely high mobility thanks to his 6 inch consolation and his ability to fight twice (giving him an 3+3+6+6 = 18 inch threat range after charging). Add in some real durability thanks his 4+++ stat, means that the eversor will be a blackline terror in games to come. If you only have money for 1 I’d for sure buy eversor over a vindicator (or honestly wait and see which one is better over the coming months).

Salt donkey wrote:
Weird to me that people on this forum are getting freaked out by the worse assassin but by in large calling the best assassin overrated. Look I love the vindicare as a concept, but he’s really not that good. One just doesn’t do enough, as even fragile characters will on average survive a single shot (I’m not taking a unit with the hope I’m getting lucky, dice are far too fickle for that).

The vanguard detachment makes more sense, but now you are putting up a heavy investment which can’t be swapped out. This means your are in trouble when A) your opponent hides his important character out of LOS (Easier then it sounds thanks to concepts like daisy chains) B) your opppenent has no super important characters that need to be killed or C) all your opponents important characters blank the vindicare (deamon princes, G-man, bike captains, etc). If any of these scenarios come up (highly likely during a 5+ round tournament) then your vindicare bomb is simply a liability to your list. Maybe if your Army has other sniping tools they could be interesting, but in my mind people are heavily overating the vindicare

The eversor however, is a stone lock. Not only does he do what his box says (he will kill an infranty squad a turn without fighting twice), but he also has extremely high mobility thanks to his 6 inch consolation and his ability to fight twice (giving him an 3+3+6+6 = 18 inch threat range after charging). Add in some real durability thanks his 4+++ stat, means that the eversor will be a blackline terror in games to come. If you only have money for 1 I’d for sure buy eversor over a vindicator (or honestly wait and see which one is better over the coming months).

Yeah I'm not sold on the vindicare either. If you only get one then pretty much everything is better than the vindicare. The Callidus is extremely helpful against Tau, Orks and generally any CP hungry army. They will never have to move just stay hidden and tax both the first turn and then most likely 2nd or 3rd turns. Celexus for psyker heavy armies and the eversor exploding a backline. If none of those are relevant, take the vindicare, it will always have something to do. Doesn't eat up detachments, costs 85pts and minimum 1 cp (most likely 3-4 but they have a unique CP farm ability to help compensate.)

Salt donkey wrote:
Weird to me that people on this forum are getting freaked out by the worse assassin but by in large calling the best assassin overrated. Look I love the vindicare as a concept, but he’s really not that good. One just doesn’t do enough, as even fragile characters will on average survive a single shot (I’m not taking a unit with the hope I’m getting lucky, dice are far too fickle for that).

The vanguard detachment makes more sense, but now you are putting up a heavy investment which can’t be swapped out. This means your are in trouble when A) your opponent hides his important character out of LOS (Easier then it sounds thanks to concepts like daisy chains) B) your opppenent has no super important characters that need to be killed or C) all your opponents important characters blank the vindicare (deamon princes, G-man, bike captains, etc). If any of these scenarios come up (highly likely during a 5+ round tournament) then your vindicare bomb is simply a liability to your list. Maybe if your Army has other sniping tools they could be interesting, but in my mind people are heavily overating the vindicare

The eversor however, is a stone lock. Not only does he do what his box says (he will kill an infranty squad a turn without fighting twice), but he also has extremely high mobility thanks to his 6 inch consolation and his ability to fight twice (giving him an 3+3+6+6 = 18 inch threat range after charging). Add in some real durability thanks his 4+++ stat, means that the eversor will be a blackline terror in games to come. If you only have money for 1 I’d for sure buy eversor over a vindicator (or honestly wait and see which one is better over the coming months).

An Eversor with 8 attacks and using Neuro-gauntlet will kill on average 5 guardsman, 5 more attacks brings it up to 8 dead. He then likely can't consolidate into a new squad because you leave the 2 closest models on the table and he gets shot off the board.

I remain unconvinced.

Am not sure that comparing the point efficiency of IG to most things in w40k is the good thing to do. Because if we do that, we soon arrive at the point where all we need to play is IG and a castellan.

Surprised to see complaints.

Hobby as hard you hate, people!

 Ordana wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:
Weird to me that people on this forum are getting freaked out by the worse assassin but by in large calling the best assassin overrated. Look I love the vindicare as a concept, but he’s really not that good. One just doesn’t do enough, as even fragile characters will on average survive a single shot (I’m not taking a unit with the hope I’m getting lucky, dice are far too fickle for that).

The vanguard detachment makes more sense, but now you are putting up a heavy investment which can’t be swapped out. This means your are in trouble when A) your opponent hides his important character out of LOS (Easier then it sounds thanks to concepts like daisy chains) B) your opppenent has no super important characters that need to be killed or C) all your opponents important characters blank the vindicare (deamon princes, G-man, bike captains, etc). If any of these scenarios come up (highly likely during a 5+ round tournament) then your vindicare bomb is simply a liability to your list. Maybe if your Army has other sniping tools they could be interesting, but in my mind people are heavily overating the vindicare

The eversor however, is a stone lock. Not only does he do what his box says (he will kill an infranty squad a turn without fighting twice), but he also has extremely high mobility thanks to his 6 inch consolation and his ability to fight twice (giving him an 3+3+6+6 = 18 inch threat range after charging). Add in some real durability thanks his 4+++ stat, means that the eversor will be a blackline terror in games to come. If you only have money for 1 I’d for sure buy eversor over a vindicator (or honestly wait and see which one is better over the coming months).

An Eversor with 8 attacks and using Neuro-gauntlet will kill on average 5 guardsman, 5 more attacks brings it up to 8 dead. He then likely can't consolidate into a new squad because you leave the 2 closest models on the table and he gets shot off the board.

I remain unconvinced.

If your using the Eversor just for infantry squads he wont get his points back, however he actually earns back more than twice his points in ork boyz. He kills a bit over 9 ork boyz when he charges, then if you fight twice he ends up killing 19 total, destroying an entire 30 boy squad (due to moral) by himself. If you shoot off another 20 ork boyz with the rest of your army only one of those squads can CP moral so yeah, he's pretty efficient againgst the right targets.

-claims that index options in Ork roster are invalid because muh index not allowed anywhere

-complaining about options in brand new Index: Imperial Assassins.

Pick one?

Surely if I'm in a meta where index rules are not allowed, I would not be allowed to use Index: Imperial Assassins?

the_scotsman wrote:
-claims that index options in Ork roster are invalid because muh index not allowed anywhere

-complaining about options in brand new Index: Imperial Assassins.

Pick one?

Surely if I'm in a meta where index rules are not allowed, I would not be allowed to use Index: Imperial Assassins?

One has a codex, the other does not.
There is your difference.

 Ordana wrote:
An Eversor with 8 attacks and using Neuro-gauntlet will kill on average 5 guardsman, 5 more attacks brings it up to 8 dead. He then likely can't consolidate into a new squad because you leave the 2 closest models on the table and he gets shot off the board.

I remain unconvinced.

That's a pretty narrow margin. If he kills 6 instead of 5.2 then he gets 6 more attacks, which kill 4. And you still have morale, which to be safe they would need to spend CP to stick. And then you'd need to clear a 6" bubble around him.

And then to take out 6 4++/4+++ wounds it would be about 35 FRFSRF IS within 12".

Knocking down 40 points, 2 CP, and the shooting from that many models for 85 points is not bad, but then I probably would still aim for sniping CC against IG.