What's the dumbest unit ever created for Warhammer?

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**Lathe Biosas**

I remember when the DA had the Master of the Ravenwing on a Jetbike.

We thought this is amazing and unique. Never will any Marines have anything close to this.

Yep... never.

**Insectum7**

bullisariuscowl wrote:
The primaris devastators. There's like, three different 10 man squads to replace Devastators, each with their own weapon type. The Beauty of the Devvies, was that you could take them as close-range powerhouses (meltas), sharpshooter tank-hunters (lascannons) or more mid-board general threats (Missiles, Gravs, Plasma). But you also could only take 4 heavy weapons, meaning you could take 5 cannon fodder marines that would serve to protect the Devs, and also have shooting bonuses. Making that into a ten man heavy squad kind of neuters the nuance, and even lore wise makes it seem like they have an infinite supply of weapons, (a full plasma squad, for example is a bit unbelievable to me, because of how hazardous Plasma weapons on the infantry scale are). Not to mention, aside from the bloated codex, they just look a bit silly. Devvies had heavier leg plating, and held their heavy weapons as if they were, actual heavy duty equipment. A lot of the Primaris Devastators (hellblasters, desolators etc) don't really have the heavier look to them, or go way overboard like aggressors. They kind of hold their guns like foam props, like I get they are 10 foot tall superhumans, but heavy weapons designed for them are still heavy, there's no way around it.

Not to mention the Devastators flexibility of being able to Combat Squad your 10-man unit into different configurations if you want. Concentrate your Heavies into one group while your bolter boys become objective grabbers. Split Heavies evenly to cover different areas of the table. Or just keep them together for max bodyguard and Strat usage.

The Primaris heavy weapons example is prime territory for GW just being greedy. It means they can swap stats around a bit, changing the meta, and you're encouraged to buy entire new units to keep up, rather than just weapon swap a few guys or *gasp* just stick the other heavy weapons in the box onto very compatible extra Tactical guys you might have around.

You could build a solid army with just Devastator and Tactical boxes. You got all the parts in there to make a Captain, Lt, Command Squad, Sternguard, Tactical Squads and Devastators.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hellebore wrote:

For the last 20 years GW has made a concerted effort to mine their xeno armies for ideas and themes to put in marines to sell more of them.

Before white scars, if you wanted to play a fast bike army you played ork speed freeks or saim han eldar. Before marine hover tanks, you had to play eldar or tau to use them. If you wanted specialised single use elite units you played eldar aspect units, now you can just buy primaris units designed the same way.

Basically, GW only wants to maximise its profits so rather than investing in making their other armies more attractive, they've just been stripping their unique features and making a marine army that does the same thing so you don't have to ever not play marines.

If they could figure out how to make ork hordes in power armour, we'd be seeing a new marine chapter called the Space Horde that fights just like orks, but are still space marines...

Thunderwolf Cavalry popping up after the sunsetting of Ork Boarboyz was pretty irritating.

But it's not just Xenos, but other Imperial factions. They got a "Knight" in the form of the Leviathan Dreadnought. They got a Living Saint in the form of The Sanguinor.

**vipoid**

While we're talking about rules being pinched, can I just bring up the fact that DE vehicles used to be virtually the only ones that could move and fire all weapons at full effectiveness. Now every vehicle can do that.

But at least you can still disembark and assault from DE vehicles after they've moved. I mean, it's been a core part of the design since their inception in 3rd, with their crew often hanging off the sides so they can jump right into combat. GW wouldn't just take that away too, right?

Oh.

So having lost both of those aspects, I guess Dark Eldar vehicles are now set apart from the vehicles of other factions by... being spiky?

**Insectum7**

DE can't assault out of their vehicles after they move anymore?

I mean . . . Land Raiders allow that. . .

Because they have a ramp. . .

**Lathe Biosas**

Insectum7 wrote:
DE can't assault out of their vehicles after they move anymore?

I mean . . . Land Raiders allow that. . .

Because they have a ramp. . .

See... you answered your own question. Xenos have never been able to understand superior human ramp technology.

**StudentOfEtherium**

vipoid wrote:
While we're talking about rules being pinched, can I just bring up the fact that DE vehicles used to be virtually the only ones that could move and fire all weapons at full effectiveness. Now every vehicle can do that.

But at least you can still disembark and assault from DE vehicles after they've moved. I mean, it's been a core part of the design since their inception in 3rd, with their crew often hanging off the sides so they can jump right into combat. GW wouldn't just take that away too, right?

Oh.

So having lost both of those aspects, I guess Dark Eldar vehicles are now set apart from the vehicles of other factions by... being spiky?

deep strike on vehicles is still pretty exciting. space marines don't get that pushes drop pods and storm speeders out of frame

**Haighus**

Hellebore wrote:
.

If they could figure out how to make ork hordes in power armour, we'd be seeing a new marine chapter called the Space Horde that fights just like orks, but are still space marines...

*Cough*Black Templars*cough*Space Wolves*cough*

**Insectum7**

StudentOfEtherium wrote:

deep strike on vehicles is still pretty exciting. space marines don't get that pushes drop pods and storm speeders out of frame

The Storm Speeder I don't much care about, but Drop Pods are a core piece of the Space Marine concept, and were part of their identity since the first version of Epic game at least, sometime during Rogue Trader itself. Starship Troopers being the obvious inspiration.

**Leopold Helveine**

vipoid wrote:

And before any one chips in to say that those hammers are actually made of Mithril or something and are actually super light, please bear in mind that making them out of a lightweight material would undermines the entire point of using hammers in the first place. The weight is what gives a hammer the force to penetrate or deform armour and cause significant damage to the person inside it. So they would be far better off using sensibly-sized hammers made out of ordinary steel than spending 10,000gp of Mithril on what amounts to little more than one of the inflatable hammers you can win at a fairground.

/Rant

It is also impractical to use a flat hammer over a rounded or pointed one, so there is no reason to walk around with such mallets other than ehm.. looking exotic I guess. If its all you got, sure, use what you have (peasant militias did that all the time), but in actual battle using flat hammers would make no sense.

**Lord Damocles**

Let's make a new faction which is built entirely upon consisting solely of superheavies (one unit with different weapons)
Oh bugger, turns out the core rules can't cope with entire armies of superheavies. Who could have forseen this?
Well let's add in (a) smaller unit(s).
Then let's increasingly pivot the entire faction to actually focus on the smaller unit.

You know they're going to end up adding Men-at-arms to Imperial Knights eventually...

**vipoid**

Insectum7 wrote:
DE can't assault out of their vehicles after they move anymore?

I mean . . . Land Raiders allow that. . .

Because they have a ramp. . .

Exactly.

Assaulting out of vehicles is a Marine rule.

GW doesn't want filthy Xenos cramping their style, do they?

**Insectum7**

^Yeah, so when did the open topped charge rule dissapear?

That's definitely another selling point of those early editions again. Orks and DE had the fairly unique ability of long-reach charges from vehicles, and the vehicles were cheap and therefore could be numerous. Marines *could* do it, but only with their most expensive vehicle, so it became a huge target.

**Lathe Biosas**

What do you think of units that work against the common Lore of 40k?

My friends and I were discussing the Ole Tyranid planet eating bits and how all the tyranids end up being tasty slurry at the end of a conquest to be sucked through the magic straws into the gullets of mama Tyranids in space.

When it struck one us... how do tyranids have named special characters? If the tyranids win those special folks end up as chunky milk shakes like everyone else.

If they were so wonderful, Mama overmind would make entire groups of them.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

**Overread**

The only true individual in the lore is the Swarmlord; otherwise all others are named but are more rare breeds.

The main theory is that whilst Tyranids control their DNA and creation there are

1) Clear examples of them relying on evolution of specific unique traits. Their DNA creation appears imperfect which they rely on as it allows them to hyper evolve to specific situations; but also means every so often they get something unique that's very hard to replicate.

2) Unique individuals are more very rare strains that are used for specific purposes but not generally put into breeding. This might represent them being harder to create; relying on specific resources/materials and the like. So "Old One Eye" might be the name in the book for what was once a unique sighting; but its a kind of Carnifex with regeneration that can appear elsewhere.

3) Remembering that the names are a human attribution. What might be a named individual one year could be the start of a new main-line strain that appears en-mass in the future.

Part of it is the alien nature of Tyranids and the fact that the specific mechanics of them are unknown. Everything is humans (for the most part) trying to interpret and understand them.

**Tyran**

I wouldn't call the Swarmlord a true individual, considering it is a lore point in Warzone Octarius that the Hive Mind spams Swarmlords all over the galaxy at the same time.

It is only "special" in a relatively small warzone scope, not so when you zoom out to the galactic scope.

**Col. Dash**

I thought it was lore that certain higher level individuals in the Hive mind are in fact placed in a cocoon like stasis until the next invasion. While yes, your rippers and gaunts and such get re-absorbed, we know in the novels hive tyrants, Old One Eye, and likely other big level brainy bugs like the zooanthropes use too precious of DNA to just waste them in the digestive vats. By the end of the invasion, genestealers are mostly gone having hitched rides on escaping ships to try and start the process over again, to the point it almost doesnt make sense for GSs to even be in the regular nid army codex except in the early stages of the invasion to run distraction and ambush to make the invasion easier for the hive fleet.

**StudentOfEtherium**

in my mind, tyranid special characters work akin to legendary pokemon; that is, they're very rare, but not always actually unique. there are multiple Swarmlords and Red Terrors and Old One Eyes, but the average guardsman, or even space marine, is unlikely to ever personally encounter more than one in their lifetime. for all we know, there's one incredibly unpleasant planet somewhere in the galaxy where Deathleapers are as common as normal lictors, but that commonality won't spread beyond there

the real difficulty is with GSC named characters. GSC are inherently limited to human lifespans, and most will never leave their home planet (there is a thing in Day of Ascension that allows a little wiggle room, but it's still not much); the patriarch, the army's sole unique unit, is very much unique within a cult, but plentiful on a galactic scale

**Overread**

Genestealer Cults might only allow the Patriarch to survive if the Tyranids come and eat the world; but there's many situations where Cults will grow and grow and attack other worlds and expand without a Swarm coming to feast.

It's a win for the Tyranids because the more a Cult grows in power the more it weakens the host-race they are invading. So you can easily have generations of Cultists building an ever growing civilization of their own.

Plus even if a Swarm is coming; some will abandon the world just before the swarm hits (or when it hits); thus allowing the Cult to spread

**Lathe Biosas**

You're right about the GSC forces.

I guess they could be generic archetypes of what to expect, much like ::shudder:: space marine Primaris Lieutenants.

But I can't see named characters, unless they are tied to a specific place or time.

I guess, this is why I'm not a fan of special characters outside of scenarios to begin with...

It strains the credulity of games to know that I have personally run over Cmdr. Dante at least 20 times with an Inquisitorial Chimera.

I think GW games work better, where you are the general, leading Your forces across the galaxy.

I'm fine with the Emperor's Champion, not so much with Helbrects galore.

/rant

**Overread**

To be fair that's how they used to be for quite some time. Named heroes were even "with opponents permission" only and could be broken in terms of power.

Of course the more heroes you create the more people want to use those in games and from GW's point of view selling models its a LOT easier to sell a hero model if people can use it rather than just have it collecting dust on a shelf.

**Col. Dash**

One of the older stories I liked was one where Nids were invading a world and this administratum guy and a henchman were trying to escape this town right after a convoy of bane blades rolls out and gets mauled by Carnifexes, one of which literally flips a baneblade over on its back like a turtle and this net like thing falls on the running humans. They wake up inside one of the hive ships and a warrior is grabbing random people out of the pin and a hive tyrant is doing some sorts of experiments on them on a table. The guy and his henchman get grabbed next and then space marines blast their way inside, kill the warriors, and fight their way into the center of the ship leave a bomb and then retreat to their breaching pod and the two humans follow and one marine at the last minute holds the hatch open to let them in. The Marines cant destroy the fleet and save the world but are doing what they can to hurt it, one hive ship at a time so maybe the next world wont have it so hard. Some story from the 90s. The point though,is that only the lower level bugs are absorbed, the higher functioning ones are maintained for both their complexity and experience.

**RaptorusRex**

Lathe Biosas wrote:
What do you think of units that work against the common Lore of 40k?

My friends and I were discussing the Ole Tyranid planet eating bits and how all the tyranids end up being tasty slurry at the end of a conquest to be sucked through the magic straws into the gullets of mama Tyranids in space.

When it struck one us... how do tyranids have named special characters? If the tyranids win those special folks end up as chunky milk shakes like everyone else.

If they were so wonderful, Mama overmind would make entire groups of them.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

Same way Wraithlord characters can exist. Disembodied 'souls'.

**Lathe Biosas**

Wait, there are wraithlord characters?

**Col. Dash**

Stasis cocoons for those long intersystem journeys. Besides, Necrons have the same issue, someone has to take care of the ships during transit and wake up(and also necessitates) a guard force in case of boarding parties of marines trying to blow them up. As for the genestealers, the true form genestealers probably almost to a bug, when its a civilization that actually has spaceflight, they probably hit the road as soon as momma hive mind sends happy thoughts that the hive fleet is on the way and they kick in the day of revelation or whatever they call it. Then they infiltrate the space port and evacuate with the refugees to wherever planets they are going to set up more homing beacons for the hive fleet. They are smart enough to not need to do the whole go into stasis in random directions and hope for the best when they can just escape with the biomass to more biomass. As for the rest of the GSC, they are toast unless there is a means to spread the cult beyond the planet.

**Hellebore**

Leopold Helveine wrote:
vipoid wrote:

And before any one chips in to say that those hammers are actually made of Mithril or something and are actually super light, please bear in mind that making them out of a lightweight material would undermines the entire point of using hammers in the first place. The weight is what gives a hammer the force to penetrate or deform armour and cause significant damage to the person inside it. So they would be far better off using sensibly-sized hammers made out of ordinary steel than spending 10,000gp of Mithril on what amounts to little more than one of the inflatable hammers you can win at a fairground.

/Rant

It is also impractical to use a flat hammer over a rounded or pointed one, so there is no reason to walk around with such mallets other than ehm.. looking exotic I guess. If its all you got, sure, use what you have (peasant militias did that all the time), but in actual battle using flat hammers would make no sense.

this argument isn't unique to that elf faction though. GW and virtually all fantasy IPs are obsessed with cartoony comically oversized warhammers (and weapons in general but it's more obvious on the warhammers) that would not be liftable, let alone swingable.

Warhammers are deliberately designed to be smaller than construction hammers, because they need to be used to fight with, not apply a single swing's force to one stationary area.

So if you're giving literally every oversized warhammer in all GW media a pass except the elf one, then it's knife ear bigotry my friend.... :p

**vipoid**

Hellebore wrote:
Leopold Helveine wrote:
vipoid wrote:

And before any one chips in to say that those hammers are actually made of Mithril or something and are actually super light, please bear in mind that making them out of a lightweight material would undermines the entire point of using hammers in the first place. The weight is what gives a hammer the force to penetrate or deform armour and cause significant damage to the person inside it. So they would be far better off using sensibly-sized hammers made out of ordinary steel than spending 10,000gp of Mithril on what amounts to little more than one of the inflatable hammers you can win at a fairground.

/Rant

It is also impractical to use a flat hammer over a rounded or pointed one, so there is no reason to walk around with such mallets other than ehm.. looking exotic I guess. If its all you got, sure, use what you have (peasant militias did that all the time), but in actual battle using flat hammers would make no sense.

this argument isn't unique to that elf faction though. GW and virtually all fantasy IPs are obsessed with cartoony comically oversized warhammers (and weapons in general but it's more obvious on the warhammers) that would not be liftable, let alone swingable.

Warhammers are deliberately designed to be smaller than construction hammers, because they need to be used to fight with, not apply a single swing's force to one stationary area.

So if you're giving literally every oversized warhammer in all GW media a pass except the elf one, then it's knife ear bigotry my friend.... :p

Oh, don't get me wrong - I think oversized hammers are universally stupid.

It's just more noticeable when said hammers are being wielded by skinny elves, as opposed to, say, 2-ton Terminators wielding Thunderhammers.

**Lathe Biosas**

Uhhh it seems that it would be odd for units not to have large hammers in a game called Warhammer.

**Hellebore**

Magic covers a multitude of sins. AoS has even less grounding than WFB, everyone lives in a plane of pure magic. real world physics is a vague suggestion...

**Leopold Helveine**

Hellebore wrote:

So if you're giving literally every oversized warhammer in all GW media a pass except the elf one, then it's knife ear bigotry my friend.... :p

Hey! I have elf friends!

Honestly though, the Chaos warpsmith hammer (I just bought one of these cooldudes) looks a lot more practical with its pointy bits.

Anyway it was definately about how it looks and functions on a graceful, silky, prancy, fleet' Elf compared to mech armed mountain giants.

**Gardensnake**

I'll add the old school Ork Shokk Attack Gun. It's a slightly controversial choice as it fit very much into the Ork ideology of the time and could be devastating IF it worked. The problem was that the chances of it working was so slight that I never actually saw it used in a game. I never fielded one when they were a thing just because they had such a low chance of success. I say that as an Ork player that feasted on every army of the time except genestealer heavy Tyranid forces. It was a good idea and could produce funny results, but I think it was just too meta and no where near practical.

Gardensnake