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Have any of the rest of you ever noticed this?
That there always seems to be that one unit that's somehow both a vital piece of your force - but never quite actually does much? Or doesn't feel like it's doing much?

This thought struck me during yesterday's 40k game.
My GKs vs Lamentors (Blood Angels rules). 2k pts.

The unit in question? My Stormraven.
What I use it for (often in hover mode):
●delivering 5 characters (atm 3 Librarians & 2 Brothrr Champions). And sometimes a Ven Dreadnought.
●mobile fire support.

What it did:
A) delivered its passengers to where I needed them
B) for all the dice I rolled for it? It only killed 1.5 Eradicators & then 2 Centurian Devastators in melee (a combo of tank shock + actual combat)
So about 171 pts of kills.
C) move blocked a unit of Blade Guard
D) caused my opponent a great deal of stress
E) didn't die.

Personally I don't regard any of that as being all that impressive.....
(Now what it's passengers do/did, THATS impressive)
And, othrr than C), this is how it usually goes.
Deliver units. Kill a handful of models. Be a big tough pest.
Yet everyone - me, opponents ive played, people watching - are all in agreement that this thing IS a vital part of my particular army. Concensus is that its because it makes my 5 characters better at doing thier job

So what's your "That one unit..."?

I wouldn't measure a transport by the damage it deals. A Stormraven is more than JUST a transport, true-but just because it doesn't deal its points in damage is no reason to say it's not doing much.

My biovores.

Said it before. The meta seems to suggest they're a lower performing unit, but they're an auto include for me.

Even though the logical thing for a unit to do is blow through a spore mine with a low chance of a kill, several opponents spend an inordinate amount of time and energy avoiding them.

This is why I don’t look purely at kill power or potential.

The Stormraven seemingly got characters to a position where they did hefty damage.

For C, D and E? It forced your opponent to react to its mere presence. Of course in the OP it surviving doesn’t necessarily mean it soaked up a load of damage, it could be it just wasn’t shot at much.

But blocking movement is in-game impact. Making your opponent worry about it, possibly over other, more Killy units is at the very least distracting them, which is in-game impact. And if it did indeed soak up a load of firepower, that’s in-game firepower, as it helped prevented other units being blasted.

And we can lean into that as players. If you know something is gonna be a distraction, despite reputation wise bark being worse than bite? Work with that, let your opponent fret about what a given unit might do, and they’ll miss what other units are doing.

Typically my 10 men lychguards. Every time I played them, while they did little damages, they turned into a linchpin of my army by playing distraction carnifex, guiving cover to half the army behind them if needed, sheltering my characters, repulsing or deterring charges... But live during the game, they rarely feel like they do much.

With my craftworlders, I feel like this is most of my units that don't have a bright lance and aren't the avatar.

My scorpions and rangers are infiltrating. Not to do damage and not necessarily even to score points, but to movement block the enemy so I can soften them up for an extra turn.

My hawks don't usually kill a ton, but they're aces when it comes to scoring secondaries.

My guardian defenders forget to shoot half the time, but generating a strand of fate each turn is clutch.

I'll even give an honorable mention to my howling banshees because my opponents haven't figured out how not-scary they are yet and always overcommit to killing the cheap squad running straight towards them.

I think the unit that does this the most for me, that I also tend to see a lot of people under rate, are Barbgaunts.

At 55pts they can easily sit back on an objective and take pot shots. They can lumber around doing secondaries if you position them at certain points on the board. They are pretty good at hosing chaff units if you can get a good line on them. They annoy stronger units by reducing their movement, if you can tap something like a unit of Deathshroud with them, that unit's doing nothing. They have large bases, so it's easy to spread them out and move block things if needed. One of my favourites though is if there's a game with high enough terrain, to stick them up high to get plunging fire and that extra pip of AP goes a long way.

None of these things are terribly impressive on their own, but the flexibility of all this random stuff at a low points cost means that pretty much no matter what list I'm running, they always do something moderately useful for a small investment. It's rarely enough to catch my opponents attention, but when you stack it all up at the end, it's often an important, if unflashy contribution to the army.

Plus you can always split their fire to slow down multiple enemy units if needs be. And that loss of movement can always be the difference between your opponent’s squad reaching an objective in the first place, or being out of charge reach.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Plus you can always split their fire to slow down multiple enemy units if needs be. And that loss of movement can always be the difference between your opponent’s squad reaching an objective in the first place, or being out of charge reach.

Pretty sure that got errata’d out. Choose one unit damaged…

Ah fair enough

stroller wrote:
My biovores.

Said it before. The meta seems to suggest they're a lower performing unit, but they're an auto include for me.

Even though the logical thing for a unit to do is blow through a spore mine with a low chance of a kill, several opponents spend an inordinate amount of time and energy avoiding them.

Casualties lol I'm far more concerned with spore mines screening out reserves than 3 Guardsmen getting killed.

Repulsors. I went with them when they weren't meta in 8th-9th, and they serve me well both as a transport for units I want to live and a general fire support platform.

I don't know about "vital", but whenever I field my Heavy Intercessors they tend to not do very much at all, except stand on an objective for a turn or two while getting killed off by surprisingly light enemy fire...

My infantry squads. They tend to just get evaporated, but while they do so, they do take up space.

My weirdboy is used how people normally use Stormboys; zipping around the battlefield and grabbing easy VP, holding a backfield corner or objective, or baiting people into chasing a potentially easy kill when there's better stuff to kill.

I like the weirdboy over Stormboys just because it's slightly cheaper and it's easier to squeeze a single mini into a gap than a whole unit. It was also easier to convert to fit my "everything is or has squigs" army theme.

I don't think my weirdboy has ever made an attack of any kind since 10th started, but has been punching well above his points cost in VP scored.

Nice army theme

There's always a guy playing 5-a-side who looks unbelievable in training, all skillful flicks and flair, and you think, "This guy's handy, we'll win this easy." Then you get to the end of the game and he's done nothing, no goals, no assists, no defensive work. Weird.

My unit is the Solitaire. Granted I don't play much but in 6 games over about 3 years I think he's killed 2 scouts and a few ork boyz....

My, 2 games a year is a low count.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
My, 2 games a year is a low count.

Don't think I've even managed that. Think I've played once in the last 2-3 years. Haven't played 10th yet. Maybe had half a dozen games of 9th at most...

The Omni Painter wrote:

My unit is the Solitaire. Granted I don't play much but in 6 games over about 3 years I think he's killed 2 scouts and a few ork boyz....

I don't think you understood my question.
I didn't ask you about your most useless/ineffective/poorly played unit.

I asked about that unit that's actually doing usefull things, maybe even very important things - but somehow doesn't feel like it

ccs wrote:

The Omni Painter wrote:

My unit is the Solitaire. Granted I don't play much but in 6 games over about 3 years I think he's killed 2 scouts and a few ork boyz....

I don't think you understood my question.
I didn't ask you about your most useless/ineffective/poorly played unit.

I asked about that unit that's actually doing usefull things, maybe even very important things - but somehow doesn't feel like it

isnt your question pretty much "what are your faction's action monkeys"?

This was the original example. No action monkey.

ccs wrote:
The unit in question? My Stormraven.
What I use it for (often in hover mode):
●delivering 5 characters (atm 3 Librarians & 2 Brothrr Champions). And sometimes a Ven Dreadnought.
●mobile fire support.

What it did:
A) delivered its passengers to where I needed them
B) for all the dice I rolled for it? It only killed 1.5 Eradicators & then 2 Centurian Devastators in melee (a combo of tank shock + actual combat)
So about 171 pts of kills.
C) move blocked a unit of Blade Guard
D) caused my opponent a great deal of stress
E) didn't die.

Personally I don't regard any of that as being all that impressive.....
(Now what it's passengers do/did, THATS impressive)