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So I’m a noob to Eldar and I bought dark reapers on the understanding that they were awesome to the point of OP. I use one squad of ten for fire and fade and then two squads of three to hide in cover with the tempest launcher.

However, the articles and forum posts that rate Reapers seem to predate the points hike and/or the nerf to Soulburst and Word of the Phoenix as they no longer have the ability to fire twice. I’ve noticed that they don’t come up so much in more recent articles and posts. Is that because they’re just not that good without the ability to fire twice?

In my games they have been good at taking out big powerful units - provided they are given psychic support via doom, guide and jinx which itself costs points. I always do a lot of damage turn one and two but start to run out of steam by turn three. I am cognisant that Reapers are very expensive points-wise and my games feel almost like there are just too many targets and I’m not playing with as many points as my opponents!

Not commeting rest but keep in mind for those support elements is that you would have them anyway. Or you planning to play with zero HQ's? And those can also be used to be buffing others.

tneva82 wrote:
Not commeting rest but keep in mind for those support elements is that you would have them anyway. Or you planning to play with zero HQ's? And those can also be used to be buffing others.

Well yes but then that’s part of the point - if I took fire prisms they wouldn’t need babysitting with psykers, who would then be free to help buff other units eg deep striking guardians.

I’m happy to be wrong here as it means buying less new models, plus I really like reapers.

I still use them, but only have a squad of five and they always at minimum make their points back in every game. Even with the nerf to soulburst, Craftworld Reapers using fire and fade is extremely useful for hiding and moving them out of LoS.

They're pretty good stand alone, but with guide, doom and jinx you have a really effective means of killing things.

They're expensive but worth it in small points games too. Maybe not as worth it and they compete with other things in the heavy support slot.

Well, I still use two units of five.
They are still extremely destructive if used right.

They are useful for what they do. I find that the normal reaper launchers will kill almost anything and that the Tempest Launcher more often than not gets rid of annoying objective controlling chaff.

I'm almost always taking tempest launcher exarchs now, chaff clearing is great.

I personally do not take them and never have, but that's because they've never fit my personal army theme of fast moving units that stay mobile all game, either using a transport or, preferably, on a bike. I've already had to break this theme with Rangers because my preferred Troop is no longer a Troop (Windriders)

But yes, Reapers are still great IMO. I really like how they've been subtly toned down. No unit should be OP, but when one it I hate when they get nerfed into uselessness. That hasn't happened to Reapers, or Spears for that matter. It's amazing how a few points increase makes a unit balanced

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If a competitive-level OP unit is what you were looking for then no, reapers are no longer worth it.

The Ynnari nerf essentially halved their damage output. The fact that reapers are still a strong pick in casual just goes to show how powerful they used to be when Ynnari was dominating the meta. Nothing survives 20 guided shots @ S8 flat 3. Or 40 shots @ S5 flat 2.

Nowadays 10 S8 shots is still good but no where near OP.

 Galef wrote:
I personally do not take them and never have, but that's because they've never fit my personal army theme of fast moving units that stay mobile all game, either using a transport or, preferably, on a bike. I've already had to break this theme with Rangers because my preferred Troop is no longer a Troop (Windriders)

But yes, Reapers are still great IMO. I really like how they've been subtly toned down. No unit should be OP, but when one it I hate when they get nerfed into uselessness. That hasn't happened to Reapers, or Spears for that matter. It's amazing how a few points increase makes a unit balanced

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Well, I'm to using Rangers as they are mostly meh and with Serpent spam make use of Biel-Tan.
Dark Reapers are much more killy and there are ways to protect them.

I think they are still very strong. But as others have said your army composition can determine if they are the best option or not. If you played biel tan then i would say take an autarch, make him your warlord, give him auto reroll warlord trait and a reaper launcher and then use them to your hearts content. This leaves your psycers free to go do whatever they want and gives you a way to get cp back as well as an additional reaper shot and cc support if something gets near them.

Outside of flyer spam they are still point for point your hardest hitting anti tank. They suffer greatly against indirect fire, but in most games if you can position them well with fire and fade they are very difficult to kill, and can smash a tank commander to it's final bracket every turn if run in a max squad with no psychic support. Nearly as Important for me was their utility for forewarned. Well positioned max reaper squads keep deepstrikes far away from your lines. It just bullied a smash captain list at my last tournament.

 Galef wrote:
I really like how they've been subtly toned down. No unit should be OP, but when one it I hate when they get nerfed into uselessness. That hasn't happened to Reapers, or Spears for that matter.

Well, duh, of course it didn't happen, because Phil Kelly doesn't let anyone touch his pet broken army. Remember how comically OP Wave Serpents of 6th edition got teeny tiny nerf that still left them among top 5 units in game (just like Dark Reapers now) while everything else with pointy ears was buffed into the stratosphere? So much so that if Wave Serpents fell out of top 5, it was due to avalanche of broken garbage Kelly put into 7th edition book, not due to said nerf?

Compare this to treatment of poor assault cannons (especially in light of their Eldar equivalent...), or say conscript/commissar duo that was far less problematic than Dark Reapers yet got 3 knee jerk nerfs in a row, each of which was bigger than all the Reaper nerfs combined (and I say it as someone who doesn't really like IG)? I don't even know if I'd call Dark Reaper change a real 'nerf', because it wasn't, really. It was simply changing point cost of something with space marine statline to space marine points (up from comically undercosted guardsman cost they had before), and upping something that was much better than imperial missile launcher from less points to actual cost of missile launcher. Even so, they still kept their undercosted guns and get one of the best rules in game for free, so yeah, some "nerf"...

 Galef wrote:
I really like how they've been subtly toned down.

If by "subtly toned down" you mean their damage was literally cut in half, then yeah

Azuza001 wrote:
I think they are still very strong. But as others have said your army composition can determine if they are the best option or not. If you played biel tan then i would say take an autarch, make him your warlord, give him auto reroll warlord trait and a reaper launcher and then use them to your hearts content. This leaves your psycers free to go do whatever they want and gives you a way to get cp back as well as an additional reaper shot and cc support if something gets near them.

Interesting...

Would it be a terrible idea to take the avatar out of retirement for this rather than the autarch? Same immunity to (most) shooting and he would actually be a credible melee threat to anything that got too close to the reapers.

The avatar is a big point sink for such a job, but you could do that i suppose.

Azuza001 wrote:
The avatar is a big point sink for such a job, but you could do that i suppose.

I suppose he would be. Then again I often play against chaos players who can pull off turn one charges with quite Killy melee units. An autarch won’t scare a maulerfiend, but an avatar might. Maybe?

 slave.entity wrote:

 Galef wrote:
I really like how they've been subtly toned down.

If by "subtly toned down" you mean their damage was literally cut in half, then yeah

What in the world do you mean? How does a single digit points increase "cut their damage in half"?
CWE Reapers get the same amount of damage for those points.

If you are referring to Ynnari changes, that "army" should never have existed as it has in 7E and early 8E. All they needed to do is give the Ynnari keyword to CWE/DE/Harlie units so they could share a Detachment, add some Stratagems and call it a day. Shooting twice was broken for Reapers and I'm glad it's dead so people will stop complaining about it

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Yeah I'm talking about the Ynnari changes. That's what Krusha is asking about.