What are they going to do with eldar?

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**the_scotsman**

grouchoben wrote:
Why is everyone dunking on Scorpions so much? Let's take the cheap as chips version: a biting blade/scorpion's sting exarch with 9 in tow for 91pts, in an expert crafters detachment.

They natively deepstrike, and ghost step is pretty easy to tag them with, hopefully giving them a 7+ charge. Nice.

Against a squad of 5 Intercessors, ignoring cover shenanigans (marines are out in the open) we see: 3 mortal wounds from mandiblasters, 2 wounds from scorpions, 2 wounds from biting blade for a total of 7 wounds average. The sarge is left untouched with a squaddie on one wound.

Marines strike back with 8 attacks, killing 2 scorpions. At the start of the next fight phase, if they're still in combat, the scoprions are in with a good chance to kill the remaining intercessors before they even get to swing, doing an average of 2.67 mortal wounds.

That's a great outcome for the Scorpions, no? Pretty nice for 91pts.

Are they the best of the best? No. But that's an unrealistic demand to make of a unit - a better question is, does the unit bring some utility to your list? Here the answer is yes, it does: turn-3 objective grabber, infantry or character hunter, disposable 3+ bodies that can sling mortal wounds very effectively.

You seem to be ignoring

A) the psyker you need to get over to them to improve their charge to a 7+

B) the fact that with a 7+ charge you have a 42% chance to do absolute diddly gak and get hosed immediately by Intercessors the following turn.

Nobody would take Intercessors, good as they are, if you needed to roll a 2d6 x 4 Spot Check to see if they can declare a shooting attack against a unit X" away.

Doesn't matter that that gives them a potential 48" range, a rule that requires you to roll dice to see if a unit gets to EVEN TRY TO MAKE ITS HIT ROLLS makes you pretty much garbage unless you're absurdly overtuned.

Which scorps are not.

Hence they are not part of the 5% of melee units worth taking.

**Iracundus**

the_scotsman wrote:
grouchoben wrote:
Why is everyone dunking on Scorpions so much? Let's take the cheap as chips version: a biting blade/scorpion's sting exarch with 9 in tow for 91pts, in an expert crafters detachment.

They natively deepstrike, and ghost step is pretty easy to tag them with, hopefully giving them a 7+ charge. Nice.

Against a squad of 5 Intercessors, ignoring cover shenanigans (marines are out in the open) we see: 3 mortal wounds from mandiblasters, 2 wounds from scorpions, 2 wounds from biting blade for a total of 7 wounds average. The sarge is left untouched with a squaddie on one wound.

Marines strike back with 8 attacks, killing 2 scorpions. At the start of the next fight phase, if they're still in combat, the scoprions are in with a good chance to kill the remaining intercessors before they even get to swing, doing an average of 2.67 mortal wounds.

That's a great outcome for the Scorpions, no? Pretty nice for 91pts.

Are they the best of the best? No. But that's an unrealistic demand to make of a unit - a better question is, does the unit bring some utility to your list? Here the answer is yes, it does: turn-3 objective grabber, infantry or character hunter, disposable 3+ bodies that can sling mortal wounds very effectively.

You seem to be ignoring

A) the psyker you need to get over to them to improve their charge to a 7+

B) the fact that with a 7+ charge you have a 42% chance to do absolute diddly gak and get hosed immediately by Intercessors the following turn.

Nobody would take Intercessors, good as they are, if you needed to roll a 2d6 x 4 Spot Check to see if they can declare a shooting attack against a unit X" away.

Doesn't matter that that gives them a potential 48" range, a rule that requires you to roll dice to see if a unit gets to EVEN TRY TO MAKE ITS HIT ROLLS makes you pretty much garbage unless you're absurdly overtuned.

Which scorps are not.

Hence they are not part of the 5% of melee units worth taking.

Exactly. The cost is no longer just 91 points. It also includes the cost both in points and opportunity cost of the psyker.

The introduction of possible points of failure means the results better be really powerful and worth the risk, not just "pretty nice". This is the same mistake that GW makes in requiring the Eldar player to jump through hoops to squeeze decent performance out of some units. The payoff just isn't worth the effort and trouble for the overall population of players so what happens is the units that are overpowered or that are reliably performing are spammed instead. Extra effort has to give extra reward for the risk, but I'm sure there would then come the screams of "Nerf this overpowered combo!"

**JNAProductions**

Yeah, a 91 point squad that comes in T2 or T3, requires a psychic power to have an about 60% of making it (dropping to less than 30% without that power) and will hurt, but usually not kill, an 85 point unit... That's not worth it.

**grouchoben**

You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one 45pt warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

And with a CP reroll, you have an 80% chance of making that 7" charge. Just how reliable do you want a deepstrike charge to be before you'll consider it as a possibility?

**JNAProductions**

grouchoben wrote:
You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

And with a CP reroll, you have an 80% chance of making that 7" charge. Just how reliable do you want a deepstrike charge to be before you'll consider it as a possibility?

The issue is not being able to make the charge reliably-or at least, that's not the whole issue.

The issue is that that squad is no longer 91 points-or, if you don't count the cost of buffers and CP, then the Marines have a CM and Lt with them.

If they fail their charge (fully possible even with Ghostwalk) they eat 10 shots, close to 9 hits, about 7 wounds, and right around 4-5 failed saves. From that one squad.

**Hellebore**

grouchoben wrote:
You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one 45pt warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

And with a CP reroll, you have an 80% chance of making that 7" charge. Just how reliable do you want a deepstrike charge to be before you'll consider it as a possibility?

Because Eldar are the only army were doing something normal like being a competitive melee unit requires 3 hoops and rolls before you can achieve it for.... No reason except "flavour"?

**grouchoben**

As for whether it's worth spending 91pts on a unit that can beat up a 5-man intercessor squad (I chose the example because of their prevalance and their toughness for CWE infantry to deal with) out of deepstrike, that's a decision you'll have to make I guess.

Making back nearly 100% of your points is handy, but so is native deepstrike, ten 3+ bodies, 10 shuriken shots, and some mortal wounds output. They are a tool in the box, use them if you wish. Just don't act like they're rubbish, because they're not.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Passing a WC6 test is actually a very low bar to get a 7" charge from DS. CWE are lucky to have that capacity at all, it's pretty damn rare.

**Hellebore**

It makes the army unnecessarily complicated to play for no reason. It ensures people go looking for units that don't need to jump through hoops to get equivalent use out of instead.

It is directly responsible for the cheesy spam competitive players use that gets all the hate.

And it's for no reason, except that GW have decided that Eldar are the army that has to do everything the hard way

**grouchoben**

What are you talking about? Ghostwalk? You don't like a power that adds +2" to your charge because it makes you 'jump through hoops'?

**Hellebore**

grouchoben wrote:
What are you talking about? Ghostwalk? You don't like a power that adds +2" to your charge because it makes you 'jump through hoops'?

Use them without Ghost walk and tell me they're still good.

In any other army Ghost walk would make the unit GREAT at what it does.

In the eldar it's used to allow them to do it at all

**grouchoben**

JNAProductions wrote:
grouchoben wrote:
You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

And with a CP reroll, you have an 80% chance of making that 7" charge. Just how reliable do you want a deepstrike charge to be before you'll consider it as a possibility?
The issue is not being able to make the charge reliably-or at least, that's not the whole issue.

The issue is that that squad is no longer 91 points-or, if you don't count the cost of buffers and CP, then the Marines have a CM and Lt with them.

If they fail their charge (fully possible even with Ghostwalk) they eat 10 shots, close to 9 hits, about 7 wounds, and right around 4-5 failed saves. From that one squad.

That's pure whataboutery. The squad is still 91pts. You might start them on the board. You might DS them onto an objective. You might use them as a screen vs an asault rush. If you think me mentioning an easily cast power from a 45pt unit (which is in 90% of CWE lists already) that works well with another unit disqualifies discussion of that unit's usefulness, I don't see how we'd ever have any useful discussion about 40k tactics. That's sucha low bar. It's a bit silly isn't it?

**Hellebore**

And why would you bother when you could apply this rule to a unit that's better and would work better using it?

Everyone can come up with a way to get any unit to'work' in isolation to 'prove' point, but as you see, most people wouldn't bother trying to get Scorpions to work.

They're just spam shining spears and get units that are easier to use, more durable and more effective.

Like I said, this mentality of trying to get units to work just pushes players to take units that are better and you get the spam lists people hate.

**JNAProductions**

grouchoben wrote:
JNAProductions wrote:
grouchoben wrote:
You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

And with a CP reroll, you have an 80% chance of making that 7" charge. Just how reliable do you want a deepstrike charge to be before you'll consider it as a possibility?
The issue is not being able to make the charge reliably-or at least, that's not the whole issue.

The issue is that that squad is no longer 91 points-or, if you don't count the cost of buffers and CP, then the Marines have a CM and Lt with them.

If they fail their charge (fully possible even with Ghostwalk) they eat 10 shots, close to 9 hits, about 7 wounds, and right around 4-5 failed saves. From that one squad.

That's pure whataboutery. The squad is still 91pts. You might start them on the board. You might DS them onto an objective. You might use them as a screen vs an asault rush. If you think me mentioning an easily cast power from a 45pt unit (which is in 90% of CWE lists already) that works well with another unit disqualifies discussion of that unit's usefulness, I don't see how we'd ever have any useful discussion about 40k tactics. That's sucha low bar. It's a bit silly isn't it?

So it's not a 91 point unit, it's a 136 point unit. Especially since Warlocks (correct me if I'm wrong-I legitimately am not sure) only get one cast per turn, so they ain't buffing anything else.

In addition, doesn't that draw more into the issue of fluff and theme? Should you really be using Striking Scorpions as chaff to eat a charge?

**grouchoben**

Yeah you're right about Warlock casting. But it's a 91pt unit that can synergise with a 45pt unit in your army in an interesting way that is generally overlooked.

As to fluff, well, I guess I'm talking primarily about the game of 40k, not about how fluffy or realistic it is.

**Iracundus**

grouchoben wrote:
Yeah you're right about Warlock casting. But it's a 91pt unit that can synergise with a 45pt unit in your army in an interesting way that is generally overlooked.

As to fluff, well, I guess I'm talking primarily about the game of 40k, not about how fluffy or realistic it is.

That's not synergy. That's having a unit dependent on another to function.

synergy (from dictionary):
"the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects."

Like my earlier post in this thread several pages ago, synergy is 1+1=3. That's not what this situation is described as. This situation is more like 1+1=1.

**grouchoben**

Hellebore wrote:
And why would you bother when you could apply this rule to a unit that's better and would work better using it?

Everyone can come up with a way to get any unit to'work' in isolation to 'prove' point, but as you see, most people wouldn't bother trying to get Scorpions to work.

They're just spam shining spears and get units that are easier to use, more durable and more effective.

Like I said, this mentality of trying to get units to work just pushes players to take units that are better and you get the spam lists people hate.

1) CWE don't have another unit that does what Scorpions do. Other factions have much better units in the role of cheap backfield disrupter; CWE do not.
2) People don't use units ... until they do. Netlisting groupthink is real in the community. I think Scorpions are not a write-off competitively, and you don't.
3) if you'd rather take 3 Spears instead of 10 Scorpions, fair enough. Either unit is interesting, I'm a fan of Spears too. But they're very different units...
4) The mentality of getting underused units to work is what makes people take overused units? That's tortured logic.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
"That's not synergy. That's having a unit dependent on another to function." ... But both units do stll function.

The Scorps *in that situation* still make the charge over 50% of the time with a CP.

The Warlock still have value casting on another unit, or using another power, etc.

Put them together and they do something interesting. If you don't like the word synergy, alright. I don't care enough about that to argue the definition, honestly.

**the_scotsman**

grouchoben wrote:
You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one 45pt warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

And with a CP reroll, you have an 80% chance of making that 7" charge. Just how reliable do you want a deepstrike charge to be before you'll consider it as a possibility?

....Because you took the ghost step power specifically to improve the chances of this unit getting into combat, because what other eldar CC units are you taking, Storm Guardians? and he increases the cost of the squad by 50% (45pt warlock to buff a 91pt unit)?

Why do people quibble over any buff being given for free when you analyze units?

How reliable does the charge roll need to be? Well, let's see, if 136 points of deep striking Striking Scorps kills 51pts of intercessors, and the exact same number of points buys me 2 5-man swooping hawk squads, who kill the exact same number of intercessors (an EXTREMELY sub-optimal target for them) and they don't have to make a charge roll at all?

The charge roll would have to be 100%. Charging intercessors doesn't decrease their offense, it actually increases it from 2 S4 Ap-1 D1 shots to a total of (Edit, sorry, forgot shock assault) 7 S4 AP- attacks between my turn and theirs, so it's not like charging them is "locking them down", killing them in shooting is much more effective at doing that.

**grouchoben**

That's a weird example. 10 swooping hawks shooting do less damage vs 5 intercessors than 10 Scorpions in CC.

The also can't hope to tangle with them in CC and live, so can't tie up units, and so they fulfil a different role.

Hawks aren't bad, take em if you want.

**Galas**

Dysartes wrote:
Galas wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:
Galas wrote:

Bolter marines have always been ablative wounds for the special/heavy weapons guys. Heck in devastators even the sargeant is the first to go. Theres nothing wrong with that. Someone has to die first.
Disagree. The members of Aspect squads should be pretty competent themselves, esp. as this was their original design and legacy.

Also, the basic Bolter guy is pretty solid these days. With the ability so split fire and use of Doctrines, they're doing great. They sure seem to fare better than the Aspect Warriors that they used to be in the same league as.

Banshees should be worth more, and cost more, than Scouts.

Why? Theres many more banshee on the universe than scouts.

You keep making this assertion - what's your source?

Well. The amount of space marines on the galaxy is aprox 1 million. Theres much less scouts than that number. Lets put 400.000. A single Craftworld has a population much higher than that. Eldar are a Dying race at a galactic scale. That doesn't mean they are low in number, theres probably billions of eldars (Craftworlders, even more if you count dark eldar and exodites). Each Craftworld is nearly the size of a continent, and theres a bunch of them. Is just a matter of galactic squale and the ridiculous small canon numbers of space marines. Not only that, probably theres many Eldar that were banshee but stopped to become other things.

**grouchoben**

If you don't like 80% charge success, I don't know what to tell you. If it's reallllllly such a big deal to you stick them in a Headstrong detachment: a 6" with a cp is 90% success.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anyhow, I guess I'll stop responding to these posts, as they seem to be very whataboutery. I've made my point, which was pretty limited: Scorpions aren't a write off, you can make them work pretty well if you want to.

**JNAProductions**

grouchoben wrote:
If you don't like 80% charge success, I don't know what to tell you. If it's reallllllly such a big deal to you stick them in a Headstrong detachment: a 6" with a cp is 90% success.

Swooping Hawks (5-man, one is an Exarch with a Talon) for 68 points, put out...

16 S3 shots
32/3 hits
32/9 wounds
32/27 unsaved

4 S5 shots
8/3 hits
16/9 wounds
16/27 unsaved

For 48/27 or 1.78 damage. Plus, they also get an average of .83 mortal wounds, for a total of 2.61 damage.

Two squads are 136 points-the exact same as a 10-man squad of Scorpions with a Warlock buddy. They put out, assuming a successful charge (but no shooting-don't want to make the charge harder)...

18 S4 attacks
12 hits
6 wound
2 failed saves

and...

3 S5 AP-1 D2 attacks
2 hits
4/3 wounds
2/3 failed saves
4/3 damage

For a total of 3.33 damage, plus the Mandiblasters (on a 5+ thanks to the Exarch) for another 3.33 damage.

6.66 total damage, as compared the the Hawks' 5.22 damage.

So they're better, by about 20%. Assuming they make their charge. Assuming they don't suffer any serious losses to Overwatch. Assuming the Warlock manages to get within 6" of them to cast Ghostwalk.

Edit: Also, I didn't know till I looked at Battlescribe that Ghostwalk had a 6" range. I thought it was a long-ranged buff. Something you could really rely on, and not be within easy denial range, or might just be out of range entirely of your intended buff target.

**Iracundus**

grouchoben wrote:
If you don't like 80% charge success, I don't know what to tell you. If it's reallllllly such a big deal to you stick them in a Headstrong detachment: a 6" with a cp is 90% success.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anyhow, I guess I'll stop responding to these posts, as they seem to be very whataboutery. I've made my point, which was pretty limited: Scorpions aren't a write off, you can make them work pretty well if you want to.

If anything you've proven that Scorpions are a write-off if by your argument they require an additional Warlock to boost, or the allocation of a CP. This is the fundamental concept you seem to be missing: If a player has to allocate more resources to accomplish the same result that can be achieved by something else that does not require those additional hoops, then the player will choose the option that requires less effort or allocation of resources. Resources can be points, it can be the opportunity cost of taking up the attention of another unit, it can be CP, it can be assuming the risk.

That is what is seen on a large scale player population level. People gravitate to the option that gives best bang for the buck. Hence why your very scenario shows Scorpions are a write-off as they stand. There is insufficient reward to incentivize people to put in that additional effort and investment of resources.

**harlokin**

Galas wrote:
Well. The amount of space marines on the galaxy is aprox 1 million.

There would appear to be far far too many marine codexes considering how few Astartes there are. If numbers in the lore mattered a jot, Flayed Skull should have their own codex, as there's more of them than all the Unforgiven Chapters combined.

**grouchoben**

JNA, Scorpions do:

2 damage from their chainswords.
3.3 mortal wounds from their mandiblasters
1.8 from the biting blade (using expert crafter rerolls)
2.2 from the shuripistols.

For an average of 9.3 damage to the 10 health intercessors. 10 man squad should be able to be equidistant to 2 intercessors to stop the charge range being lenghtened by the pistol kill.

**JNAProductions**

grouchoben wrote:
JNA, Scorpions do:

2 damage from their chainswords.
3.3 mortal wounds from their mandiblasters
1.8 from the biting blade (using expert crafter rerolls)
2.2 from the shuripistols.

For an average of 9.3 damage to the 10 health intercessors. 10 man squad should be able to be equidistant to 2 intercessors to stop the charge range being lenghtened by the pistol kill.

Except then you need a high roll on the charge to make them all into Close Combat.

And even with that (I won't check your math on the Biting Blade, despite your math on the Pistols being wrong) it's still not that much superior. Not enough to be worth the effort of getting a Warlock within 6" of your deepstriking squad, not enough to be worth risking a failed charge, not enough to eat overwatch...

Edit: Pistol Math, for reference:

10 shots
20/3 hit
20/9 at AP0, 10/9 at AP-3
20/27 damage from AP0, 25/27 from AP-3
45/27 total, or 1.67

**Galas**

I'll say that in WTC with how close (scenography speaking) tables are , in general small infantry units are much more valuable (Thats with banshee are great, very easy to have them out of LOS jumping from ruins to shut down everything for measly 55 points), so the different perception in how eldar work is fundamentally different if you play in ITC-USA meta than in UK or Europe. Theres value to units besides how much they do kill, much more here than on ITC.

And I'll say that I can understand for people that wants their eldar specialists to be much better and costs more points and be in general more elite. Thats what I would want for nearly everything in the game. But I seriously doubt it will ever happen.

**PenitentJake**

grouchoben wrote:
You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one 45pt warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

And with a CP reroll, you have an 80% chance of making that 7" charge. Just how reliable do you want a deepstrike charge to be before you'll consider it as a possibility?

Because it's just disingenuous to argue that the value the warlock contributes is somehow a part of the scorpion's effectiveness. It isn't. That ability is contingent upon the warlock; it is not an inherent property of the scorpions, so it can't be counted as an advantage for them in a comparison between one unit and another.

If you're going to factor in a support characters effect on a unit when determining its effectiveness against another unit, the comparison is only fair if it includes a support character for the squad to which they are being compared.

No one is beefing about the cost of the warlock. We're saying you don't get to include him when you're comparing scorpions to intercessors because he isn't a scorpion.

**Sarigar**

Turnip Jedi wrote:
if they did hopefully the weapons would stay on theme, my aged Reaper Exarch cares not for his web of skulls

Look at the Phoenix Awakening Reaper Exarch power options. One of those deals specifically with assault (Deadly Touch). It's at least an indicator of what GW has been testing out. Maybe the Web of Skulls will return.

**Gene St. Ealer**

Groucho, you also ignore the fact that this 45 pt Warlock is a) 2 wounds and therefore super fragile (even if your opponent doesn't have snipers) and is b) casting a 6'' range power to boost that charge. How are you getting him there? Well, that means you're probably taking a 62 pt Warlock Skyrunner instead.

**vipoid**

grouchoben wrote:
You're quibbling the inclusion of a warlock in a list, with ghoststep? That's such a cheap unit, and taking that power has almost no opportunity cost, and the power has a WC of 6! And of course, you'll be bringing at least one 45pt warlock in most CWE lists. Why quibble over this?

I don't think the inclusion of a Warlock is necessarily an issue in these comparisons.

The issue is that a Warlock can only buff a single unit, and even with multiple Warlocks you can still only cast ghsotstep once per turn.

Hence, the opportunity cost lies not in the inclusion of the Warlock but rather in the fact that it's having to buff the Scorpions over any of the other units in your army.