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I am really really really sick of all skimmer lists. It is nearly impossible to make an all comer list when you really have to account for the all skimmer tau or eldar. It comes down to how lucky one can get on the glancing table if you dont get first turn. Honestly, that is just too much. So on the glancing table 123 and for tau 5's dont do jack in the end game terms...

After a tourne yesterday, my final game again was against all skimmer tau. I knocked 3 of the heavies out and one of the transports... however, by the end of the game with ultimate mobility the tau grabbed objectives and left me scrambling with the scraps that were left of my army.

NOW... If I would have gotten first turn, the game would have been won as 6 oblits would have made short work of half the army and the other half would have been dropped by Str8 eye lasers! As that would have been horrible for my opponent, how is that good in terms of a quality game? I suppose chosing the list he chose puts him in that risk, so be it...

Would it be so difficult to come up with a vehicle/skimmer rule/table that works???

Perhaps some sort of sacrifice for the vehicle to BECOME glancing would be just fine... If any vehicle moves Fast it can only be glanced. If it moves fast, it cannot shoot or deploy. DONE AND DONE.

Ok... rant over. I just enjoy the hobby so much and really get frustrated by the skimmer rules... They make me become quite the jerk when having to roll on that table agains an opponents multiple skimmers.

Simply changing it so that the model has to move more than 12" would do it, and make it par with bikes doing something similar.

The hammerhead is a predator. Just like the Falcon, glance it and don't worry about it the rest of the game. Unlike the falcon, it doesn't have stones, fields, or CC monsters it wants to unload. LIke you said, they are pretty fragile and hammerheads rarely survive all game. Sounds like you're more frustrated at the mobility of the tau list in general; most people I know worry about the gundams more than hammerheads.

I still don't understand why people group Tau skimmers with eldar's harder-than-monolith vehicles.

I only group them together because of the redundancy of skimmer tanks. One or two... sure... 7-9... ICK. And with tau and their decoy launchers... 123 and 5 becomes a waste.

3 isn't a waste...Tau skimmers have no extra armor, so they can be stunned, then penned next round.

Even 1&2 aren't a total waste on Hammerheads. Unlike the falcon, they depend on actually killing things to win points back.

Perhaps my tactics for "shoot it until its dead" is my downfall against Tau... I know better with Falcons and do the "just shake it and move on"... but hammerheads and devils i just hate not finishing the job.

You can run lots of Skimmers in Tau and Eldar. Excessive amounts, really. 15 is a bit much, however...you can still take down lots of skimmers since most of them are AV10-12. I run balanced armies, and I can take hordes of guard and hordes of skimmers out.

I guess my question to you is about your tactics. You have Oblits. You can stun Hammerheads. Next turn, they should die. Unless they deep strike Crisis suits at your Oblits, or have Broadsides...you should be able to outrange Sniper Drones, and ignore everything else they shoot at you with your 2+ save. Since Tau (unlike Eldar) can't stop Psychic powers, TS champs can help you bolt down devilfish. So can EC, and Chaos vets, 10 man basic marine squads, Demon Princes with Warptime, bikers with double meltas, Nurgle plasma death, the list is almost endless on how to deal with it. Piranha's die to every decent AT shot. Devilfish get stunned, then you pen next round....

Eldar are different, but you really can handle them too. They're a pain, but if you rely only on Oblits to take out tanks it isn't going to work. You need your basic troops to help out. That means avoiding basic CSM and Khorne troops, but those should be avoided since they're pure sh** anyway. EC, TS, and Nurgle all have the ability to kill tanks for you.

Is it easy? No. Is it doable? Yes.

If you really want to stick it to Eldar, play some Nurgle units. They're pretty much invulnerable to most of the Eldar units. I recommend 14 mans with PF and 2 PG.

I really can see that my tactics of "if its worth shooting once, its worth shooting til its dead" works everywhere but in the case of all skimmer lists.

The frustration ultimately comes from this:

Roll to hit, Doh miss... (BS4 Hit 2/3 of the time)
Roll to hit, HIT, roll to glance... nothing. (str9, only glance 1/3rd of the time)
Roll to hit, Hit, roll to glance, glance, roll a 2...
OK>... repeat.

So... 2/3(hitting) * 1/3(glancing str9) * 1/2(greater than stunned) = 2/18 = 1/9 ... good god now I am depressed. Hopefully my math is wrong. A 1/9th chance of hurting it with a single lascannon shot... ick???

The series of rolls really drops the odds that Multiple AV units that skim (glancing only) will actually be damaged. Even rolling average, to actually down a skimmer with the best of weapons only cause permanent damage less than half the time... eldar, the case is MUCH worse.

Now, I would think, as in most other things in 40k, there would be the answer for the skimmer... But there isnt. In a single turn, an auto hitting STR10+ weapon (if there was such things) glances just a well as a str12 (again if there was such a thing)... everything else... it would matter. Hell, you need 6's to hit in CC because of the skimmer rules... so monsters, one of the best way to rip open a vehicle, is rendered nearly moot.

Examples:
Multiple wounds answer: the force weapon and instant death stuff.
Armour 13/14 answer str 10 weapons or a carnifex/monsterous creature
Toughness answer: witchblades and poisoned weapons or turn into chaos spawn

My point is that there is ways to really damage MOST things in the game with a certain amount of regularity. Skimmers... moreover, falcons, are just a crap shoot. 90% because of the Skimmer rules and 10% from the player strategy.

You could give anyone 3 falcons and they would accidently win most games as there is 600+ points that just wont die and will be there at the end of the game.

summary... I hate skimmer tanks.

The imbalance in skimmers comes down to the ones who can deliver payloads of doom. If a falcon cant fire, its not so important, as the 6 harlequins getting ready to jump out and attack pretty much whatever the eldar player feels like killing. Same with fire dragons. As said before tau tanks that arent killing things arent worth their points. In all honesty, it should be space marines and chaos rolling up in unkillable transports depositing the most deadly close combat units where they would like, however due to bad rules that is not the case. Also the glancing tables were changed, that was a huge oversight on GW's part. If they would rewrite just 3 things in 40k, namely one chart for vehicles, losing entangle and replacing with pinning, and stupid skimmer invincibility I would be alot happier

theblklotus wrote:You could give anyone 3 falcons and they would accidently win most games as there is 600+ points that just wont die and will be there at the end of the game.

Hilarious!

Especially with Tau, it's not fair to blame the list or rules for your ineptitude.

Firing your entire army at a negligible threat (which a Hammerhead is once it's glanced)?

Focusing on killing Wave Serpents and Devilfish which aren't even scoring units?

If a Tau list has 15 skimmers (not counting Piranhas which are fairly easy to bring down with AV10 and open-topped) then there's not much else there. Kill off the infantry, keep the Hammerheads glanced until you've dealt with the rest and they'll have nothing left to contest objectives with.

stonefox wrote:I still don't understand why people group Tau skimmers with eldar's harder-than-monolith vehicles.

I think the issue with Tau skimmers is numbers - Tau can typically have more skimmers than Eldar. It's a lot of fairly-hard-to-kill Tau instead of a few very-hard-to-kill Eldar. Either way, the overall progress with basic tactic of shoot-until-dead is very limited.

theblklotus wrote:

Roll to hit, HIT, roll to glance... nothing. (str9, only glance 1/3rd of the time)

So... 2/3(hitting) * 1/3(glancing str9) * 1/2(greater than stunned) = 2/18 = 1/9 ... good god now I am depressed. Hopefully my math is wrong.

Your math is wrong. Against Falcons, your need a 3+ to glance, which is 4 of out 6 results on the dice (2/3.) Against Hammerheads it's 1/2 (4+ to glance.)

So the odds are 2/3 x 2/3 x 1/2 = 2/9, which is twice as good as your old result, and which means a Marine wielding a lascannon has almost a 25% chance on his own to do "significant" damage to an AV12 skimmer.

The Holo Fields on Falcons make it much, much, worse, though.

So basically, you are proposing that 40k became only a game of infantry versus infantry? Are you sure you want that?

As it stands right now with the metagame, most armies rarely bother with tanks because they blow up so easily. When was the last time you saw someone field a rhino that they thought might last more than two turns (because it was smoked turn 1)?

I've read a lot of posts by people that say the reason they play is for the chance to model and play with lots of cool vehicles. Hell, I'm one of those people. But the 4th edition nerf to vehicles has made most all treaded vehicles a liability (or minor elements) in most competitive tournament quality lists.

Skimmers are good, but if you make them suck like most other vehicles, we won't see hardly any vehicles in any tournament armies.

I have a painted Space Marine SAFH. It's never lost. It sits in my closet because I got bored with setting up my models and rolling dice until my opponent ran out of models. Don't get me wrong. It was fun for a while, especially those first couple of turn 2 wins versus the club guys. But I got bored with it, and decided I wanted to play an army that actually moved more than once or twice a game.

If space marine landspeeders got nerfed alongside other skimmers do you think we'll see them anymore? I don't. People will just put in an assault squad and call it a day.

A falcon with holo-field/spirit stones is no more imbalanced to other vehicles than a traited space marine is imbalanced to other types of infantry. Instead of making falcons worse, I think GW needs to make other tanks better so they can finally compete with infantry.

Ebon wrote:Skimmers are good, but if you make them suck like most other vehicles, we won't see hardly any vehicles in any tournament armies.

Ebon wrote:A falcon with holo-field/spirit stones is no more imbalanced to other vehicles than a traited space marine is imbalanced to other types of infantry.

Buh?

IMHO there is a REALLY easy fix, change it so that vehicles in 50%+ cover are always glanced that way it puts all vehicles on the same page.

There is no reason to nerf the Tau and Eldar skimmers because they have one/no monstrous creatures (and the avatar isn't that great anyway) which are just as 'broken' as skimmers (Note: I don't think that MC's are broken but many people contend that they are)

Another fix that would be just as easy would be to have GW continue with the Apoc. route and kill the idea of VP denial which makes for a yawner of a game which then makes skimmers less valuable.

Wouldn't it be nice to field a landraider again... I guess that is another bone of contempt. The landraider is nearly useless against any sort of competent player, while a Falcon can tankshock across an entire enemy line with very little to worry about.

I like the idea of concealment giving auto glance... That would open the door to all vehicles having some sort of use again with thought to placement and movement.

Ebon wrote:I have a painted Space Marine SAFH. It's never lost. It sits in my closet because I got bored with setting up my models and rolling dice until my opponent ran out of models. Don't get me wrong. It was fun for a while, especially those first couple of turn 2 wins versus the club guys. But I got bored with it, and decided I wanted to play an army that actually moved more than once or twice a game.

I hear ya.

They used to have that rule Happypants.

They got rid of it, it wasn't a good fix.

bejustorbedead wrote:

Ebon wrote:Skimmers are good, but if you make them suck like most other vehicles, we won't see hardly any vehicles in any tournament armies.

Ebon wrote:A falcon with holo-field/spirit stones is no more imbalanced to other vehicles than a traited space marine is imbalanced to other types of infantry.

Buh?

I agree on buh, I think some people that play eldar either have no idea what its like to play another army, or just dont hear what is coming out of their mouths (or read what is coming off their keyboards).

theblklotus wrote:I am really really really sick of all skimmer lists. It is nearly impossible to make an all comer list when you really have to account for the all skimmer tau or eldar. It comes down to how lucky one can get on the glancing table if you dont get first turn. Honestly, that is just too much. So on the glancing table 123 and for tau 5's dont do jack in the end game terms...

After a tourne yesterday, my final game again was against all skimmer tau. I knocked 3 of the heavies out and one of the transports... however, by the end of the game with ultimate mobility the tau grabbed objectives and left me scrambling with the scraps that were left of my army.

NOW... If I would have gotten first turn, the game would have been won as 6 oblits would have made short work of half the army and the other half would have been dropped by Str8 eye lasers! As that would have been horrible for my opponent, how is that good in terms of a quality game? I suppose chosing the list he chose puts him in that risk, so be it...

Would it be so difficult to come up with a vehicle/skimmer rule/table that works???

Perhaps some sort of sacrifice for the vehicle to BECOME glancing would be just fine... If any vehicle moves Fast it can only be glanced. If it moves fast, it cannot shoot or deploy. DONE AND DONE.

Ok... rant over. I just enjoy the hobby so much and really get frustrated by the skimmer rules... They make me become quite the jerk when having to roll on that table agains an opponents multiple skimmers.

Sorry man but your rant is akin to people who cry cheese when they loose and are trying to find something other than thier own choices and tactics to blame for thier loss.

Everything in the game that you use to better one aspect of your army weakens it elsewhere.
tau and eldar armies (especialy tau) NEED skimmers to be effective competative armies because they lack so much in other areas.
skimmers may benefit from being fast or shooting as fast vehicles with the SMF rule but compared to tracked vehicles they usually have
1.less guns
and/or
1.less armor

I play mech tau with 5 FOF and 3 hammerheads. i also play nids, dark angels and sisters of battle. the rules for skimmers are fine, you just need to learn how to deal with them. my tau are a good build but i have low model count and i most certainly do not win every game. and some armies like necrons would eat me alive.

challenge yourself to do better, remember the game isn't supposed to be that the othe army is so weak that you can steamroll it.

instead of looking at it as a negative, look for ways to overcome the pecieved obstacle to your list.

Nurglitch wrote:Simply changing it so that the model has to move more than 12" would do it, and make it par with bikes doing something similar.

QFT! This is close to genius...or at least genius enough so that GW didn't come up with it...

Truely and honestly... I never really thought of treating a hammerhead like a falcon and just stun/shake... ignore, then destroy later. I can see how its not nearly as terrible as I keep finding it to be.

I still think the skimmer rules need tweeking as the falcon is B R O K E N... tau... maybe not so much with further thought.

My eyes have been opened.

theblklotus wrote:Truely and honestly... I never really thought of treating a hammerhead like a falcon and just stun/shake... ignore, then destroy later.

I also recommend that approach for Leman Russes, Predators and any other tank where it's only role is to contribute firepower.

How could you ignore any Hammerheads...they are probably the best tanks in the game. :S

Asmodai is right - and also tells us, why tanks are actually infirior to infantry at many points of the game:
they are shutdown with very little effort.
(I hope you didn't recommend the 'ignore, then destroy later' part...)

PS: For that Falcon scenario: Harlies can't disembark if you block the hatch...but this might be no news for most of you. Just run a mobile unit or two in every army you field.

PPS: They are still way too good objective grabbers. Nerf please!

happypants wrote:IMHO there is a REALLY easy fix, change it so that vehicles in 50%+ cover are always glanced that way it puts all vehicles on the same page.

There is no reason to nerf the Tau and Eldar skimmers because they have one/no monstrous creatures (and the avatar isn't that great anyway) which are just as 'broken' as skimmers (Note: I don't think that MC's are broken but many people contend that they are)

When Tanks in cover were auto-Glanced, they become almost unkillable. AV13+ Tanks such as Land Raiders, Leman Russes, and especially Predators become *very* strong with auto-Glance. Better, than SMF, in fact, because they are so much cheaper.

The Eldar have the Avatar and Wraithlord. Now that PFs are invisible and the game has moved on towards focus on mobility, both of these units suck pretty badly, but they do exist. Tyranid MCs are the ones that are (comparatively) "broken" because they can field 6+ in a standard list.

As I've said before, all it takes to fix Tanks is to make the Pentrating chart less punitive, with only 2/6 chances for Vehicle Destroyed.

A lot of the value of skimmers comes from being able to move in to contest each objective in the last turn of the game. Skip around the field and trade casualties with the other guy, both of you losing maybe half you stuff each, then swoop your skimmers in on each objective. You can put units on every objective, so they’re either contested or outright points for you, giving you the win more often than not.

As well as being unbalanced, it’s also pretty stupid. A helicopter can’t hold an objective on the modern battlefield, because it has to keep mobile to keep alive. If it’s managed to destroy everything else on the field it can hover there and claim the objective, fair enough, but if it’s just scooting up to the objective as the game ends, that’s crap. I’d change the rule so that holding objectives meant holding objectives, you have to be there by the end of the fifth turn, and be there at the end of the sixth turn for it to work. This means skimmers could hold objectives, but they’d have to hover there for a turn, potentially exposing them to all kinds of penetrating fire.

I don’t really have a problem with skimmer’s survibility. For their payload and points cost they’re pretty reasonable. But being able to claim an objective by doing a drive-by on the last turn… that’s really goofy.

All the complaints about how overpowered Tau skimmers are have come since the revised Eldar Codex release. There were no complaints before then for a period of nearly three years.

So what is it about the Eldar Codex that suddenly made Tau Skimmers overpowered?

Kilkrazy wrote:All the complaints about how overpowered Tau skimmers are have come since the revised Eldar Codex release. There were no complaints before then for a period of nearly three years.

So what is it about the Eldar Codex that suddenly made Tau Skimmers overpowered?

People loose to them and think it shoud be easier to beat them, while they fail to understand how to deal with them through tactics or army composition.
no army is unbeatable, no army is broken. there is always a counter out there that will be the antithesis of anything you build.