Slightly Unnerfing

Maybe I'm leaving some detail out of my calculations, but it appears to me that if the rumored vehicle damage rules come true, it will actually be harder to damage eldar skimmers with holo-fields and spirit stones than in 4th edition.

In 4th edition, for a BS4 unit to do anything more than shake a vyper/falcon with holos and stones it takes, on average:

• 21/n bolter shots
(95%/n to shake or less)

• 10/n heavy bolter shots
(89%/n to shake or less)

• 4/10 plasma or autocannon shots
(74%/90% to shake or less)

• 4/6 krak missiles
(67%/82% to shake or less)

• 3/4 lascannon shots
(60%/74% to shake or less)

• 21/n bolter shots
(95%/n to shake or less)

• 11/n heavy bolter shots
(90%/n to shake or less)

• 6/25 plasma or autocannon shots
(80%/94% to shake or less)

• 5/14 krak missiles/6-12" melta/exorcist launcher shots
(75%/92% to shake or less)

• 4/10 lascannon/0-6" melta shots
(70%/89% to shake or less)

Notice those are shots, not hits. If the rumored 5th edition vehicle damage table is accurate, to do anything more than shake the same vehicles it will take the same unit, on average:

• 55/n bolter shots
(98%/n to shake or less)

• 15/n heavy bolter shots
(93%/n to shake or less)

• 6/25 plasma or autocannon shots
(83%/96% to shake or less)

• 5/14 krak missiles
(78%/93% to shake or less)

• 4/10 lascannon shots
(72%/89% to shake or less)

• 3/6 7-12" melta/exorcist launcher shots
(60%/81% to shake or less)

• 3/4 0-6" melta shots
(56%/71% to shake or less)

This assumes they moved 12", meaning they got the rumored "5+ cover save" for moving fast and were able to shoot at least one major weapon. Vypers will be only slightly more resistant to major damage from the higher strength weapons, but otherwise it looks like both vehicles are like doubly hard to bring down! Someone please prove my math wrong!

Besides the obvious boost to falcons as transport options, I predict fire prisms will start to pop up in more eldar armies, with sets of three being especially powerful. Other than close range weapons like fusion guns, singing spears, or haywires/meltabombs, it'll be the best gun to take down monoliths and land raiders that the eldar have at their disposal. At best they'll be glancing and doing no more than immobilizing them with S8. I expect both of those AV14 monsters to become more popular as well. I would bet that the Ravenwing flying land raider will be tougher, too.

edit: Thanks to Jim for pointing out my error in my 4th edition calculations. I was including the possibility of using the penetrating damage table, when only glancing is possible in 4th against SMF! I knew the rule but copy/pasting must have got the better of me. I put the corrected versions up. So basically lower strength guns will have a bit harder time, with Vypers obviously benefitting the most from this, but high strength guns will have the same odds or better. Good to know. I tried to reorganize the data a bit below. I also calculated meltagun and exorcist launcher odds. Those get much better at bringing down SS/HF skimmers in 5th.

To do more than shake a SS/HF vyper in 4th edition vs. 5th edition, it takes a BS4 unit:

• 21 vs. 55 bolter shots


• 11 vs. 15 heavy bolter shots


• 6 vs. 6 plasma gun/autocannon shots


• 5 vs. 5 krak missile launcher shots


• 5 vs. 3 7-12" meltagun/exorcist launcher shots


• 3 vs. 4 0-6" meltagun shots


• 4 vs. 4 lascannon shots

To do more than shake a SS/HF prism or falcon in 4th edition vs. 5th edition, it takes a BS4 unit:

• 19 vs. 25 plasma gun/autocannon shots


• 13 vs. 14 krak missile launcher shots


• 13 vs. 6 7-12" meltagun/exorcist launcher shots


• 7 vs. 4 0-6" meltagun shots


• 10 vs. 10 lascannon shots

Jetbag Assembled

A few months of scattered attention, a couple tubes of krazy glue, and more than one xacto wound later, the jetbag has assembled itself. I still need to get two more vypers and put the headbands on the shining spears, but I'm primed to start priming the main warhost here in the next couple weeks. I can't glue much together yet, since I still want to be able to get under all the nosepieces and cockpit canopies. Given my penchant for starting sloppy I need a little room to work and clean up the details later. I'm also planning on swapping out all the big bases for medium sized ones on all the jetbikes.

Saim Hann Redux #527.2

After their first 2000 point game last week against c2’s chaos, I want to playtest a new arrangement with my Saim Hann army that changes the warlocks to shining spears and the farseer to an autarch. In order to use the warlocks’ destructor ability, they really had to get in close, which meant getting assaulted by any decently fast unit, which in turn meant they went squish after maybe two turns. Even wounding on 2’s, they just couldn’t get the job done with only 1 girlyman attack each. The spears’ higher initiative and high strength power weapons might work out a little bit better, plus they’re even a little cheaper. Sure, the power weapon effect lasts only for the initial assault, but hell at least they can hit and run! I figure I have enough anti-tank and a decent amount of anti-horde, so I wanted to throw a different kind of threat in the mix. I think assaulting is more fitting to the wild rider theme than a farseer and warlocks anyway. The autarch can ride with the spears, buffing their leadership, adding attacks, and getting the hit and run ability in return. Or, if necessary, he can break off and melta something to slag.

I’m going to use my warlock models for shining spears, rip one of the arms off and replace it with the jetbike autarch’s right arm to make the exarch’s star lance. Then I’m going to take the farseer off his bike, mount a fusion gun under the canopy, and put the metal autarch on there with another dire avenger spear arm to represent his laser lance. Other than his singing spear, I wasn’t really digging my farseer model anyway; the flow from Eldrad’s body to the jetbiker arms and legs was sort of weenie looking. I’ll keep him around for later. I know the vypers are fragile and expensive, but I figure by adding stones, fields, and cannons to them, stunned and weapon destroyed results no longer have a drastic effect, so instead of 50% chance of them being destroyed or neutered for each glance, there’s only a 25% chance. Maybe later if I get a hold of two more of them, I’ll drop all the upgrades and go for higher numbers of main weapons instead. So, without further ado:

edit: I added in two more vypers, dropped all their holofields as well as the shuriken cannons from the ones with bright lances, changed the shining spears' exarch to have a normal laser lance and a shuriken cannon, and changed the wave serpent's scatter lasers to shuriken cannons.

Autarch – jetbike, mandiblasters, laser lance, fusion gun

5 x 3 Guardian Jetbikes – 1 shuriken cannon each

10 Dire Avengers – Exarch with twin avenger catapults and bladestorm
Wave Serpent – twin-linked shuriken cannon, shuriken cannon

3 Vypers – star cannons, shuriken cannons, spirit stones

3 Vypers – bright lances, spirit stones

4 Singing Spears – Exarch with shuriken cannon, skilled rider, and withdraw

3 Fire Prisms – holofields, spirit stones

That Sound...

It's either junebugs buzzing at my back door, or it's an incoming Saim Hann warhost. Either way, my dog will probably eat them if given the chance, and then sick them back up in the middle of the night. I picked up a third fire prism at the tournament saturday so I figured I should just finish up their assembly, including the wave serpent. I only had to pin one of the prism crystal arms to the plastic axle piece, but I'll probably have to go back in the future when the other two break and reinforce them too.

I also put the warlocks together. They came out pretty much like I planned. After the bitz program shut down at GW I gave up on the idea of obtaining shining spears control pads for them. First I hollowed out a bit into the guardian jetbike leg pieces with just the tip of a 3/8" drill bit, then used a pin vice to drill a small hole into the bottom of the new guardian body as well as into the hollowed out bit in the legs. I actually had to trim a muscle off of the guardian jetbike left arm in order to fit the more forward-fitting warlock body. I still have to replace the lower piece of the one guy's sword handle; I think it was an early candidate for my farseer's right arm, and I had trimmed it down for some reason. A ribbed paperclip piece might work, plus a little rune on the bottom or something.

All I need is 5 dire avengers, get them all primed, and I'm set for my first 2000 point game.

Farseer - runes of warding, singing spear, spirit stones, mind war, doom, jetbike

4 Warlocks - 3 singing spears, 2 destructors, 1 enhance, 1 embolden, jetbikes

5 x 3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

10 Dire Avengers, Exarch with 2 shuriken catapults, bladestorm
Wave Serpent - twin-linked shuriken cannon, shuriken cannon, spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 starcannons, spirit stones, holofields

2 x 1 Vyper - bright lance, spirit stones, holofields

3 Fireprisms - spirit stones, holofields

Weekend Update

No real big news to speak of this week, other than the usual messing around with various conversions and army lists.

I thought modelling so many little identical bike squads in my SH army might be a little lame, so I've decided to ditch one of them for a 4-man squad of Warlocks with destructor, singing spears, and enhance. They'll all have panel steering left arms, dire avenger exarch right arms, new guardian bodies with greenstuff runes on the chestplates, and helmet-less eldar heads, with white kamikaze bandannas flapping in the wind behind them. I'm hoping they will really evoke the Wild Rider theme. And it's only right for a jetbike army to include Shining Spears as well, so I'm including them for now in my updated 2000 point list:

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, spirit stones, singing spear, doom, edritch storm, runes of warding

4 Warlocks - jetbikes, 3 destructors, 1 enhance, 4 singing spears

TROOPS

5 x 3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

10 Dire Avengers - exarch with twin shuriken catapults and bladestorm
Wave Serpent - shuriken cannon, twin-linked shuriken cannon turret

FAST ATTACK

3 Shining Spears - exarch with star lance

2 Vypers - spirit stones, starcannons

2 Vypers - spirit stones, bright lances

HEAVY SUPPORT

3 Fire Prisms - holofields, spirit stones

I also did a little work on my bugs. I ripped all the guns off my tyranid warriors and replaced them with genestealer scything talon arms. I think they'll fit in pretty well in my newest tyranid 2000 point list:

HQ

Hive Tyrant - 2 twin-linked devourers, toxin sacs, enhanced senses, warp field, wings

Broodlord
6 Genestealers - extended carapace

ELITES

Lictor

Carnifex - 2 twin-linked devourers

TROOPS

5 x 6 Genestealers - extended carapace

FAST ATTACK

2 x 3 Tyranid Warriors - adrenal glands (+1 WS), toxin sacs, talons, rending claws, wings

HEAVY SUPPORT

2 x Carnifex - venom cannon, barbed strangler, enhanced senses, extended carapaces, reinforced chitin

3 Zoanthropes - psychic scream, warp blast

Cut and Paste

For some reason I glitched out and didn't realize there was a Saturday tourney at BFG this weekend; I hear there was a 3-monolith army there and no big bugs at all. Interesting shift in the meta, wish I'd been there.

Instead I was impatiently mucking about with jetbikes today, concentrating mainly on converting shuriken cannons to mount up to 6 jetbikes and 2 vypers. With the bikes, I first made a couple of cuts to the original weapon, sawed off the cone portions of the shuriken catapult mounts, and put the catapult barrel on one side and the ammo canister on the other. There were actually 2 different versions of the cannon but they both looked pretty cool underslung in this manner. For the Vypers, I put the cannon barrel in the place of the center stabilizer that normally barely pokes out from underneath the front canopy.

I also toyed around with an old cut up Eldrad model I had in the bitz box, sawing it up even further and attaching it to guardian rider legs to mount him on a bike. His sword arm was cut off and replaced with a guardian arm, and his staff top was replaced by the blade and handle-guard from the metal jetbike autarch model to make a singing spear. On the lower half of the staff I put the little power generator from the base of the bike autarch's laser lance. I cut in deep lines in his bike's wings to set his ride apart a little bit from the rest of the troops. I think he's going to look pretty cool, although I still have to dig out the dreaded greenstuff to clean up his robes.

So, yeah, I was thinking I'd put off the Wild Riders until I was done painting Tyranids, but it looks like that's going to be pretty difficult.

Here's the latest 1500 list I'm working with, updated after several helpful comments from visitors. It's got 11 scoring units, some good anti-vehicle and anti-horde, great on movement, and the big guns are generally resilient. At the very least it should be a lot of fun!

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, guide, doom, runes of warding, spirit stones

TROOPS

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon
Warlock - jetbike, destructor, singing spear

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

3 Guardian Jetbikes - 1 shuriken cannon

FAST ATTACK

2 Vypers - 2 starcannons, 2 spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 bright lances, 2 spirit stones

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

To Cheese or Not To Cheese

Holo-fields are pretty expensive, and I worry that putting them on Vypers is like putting lipstick on a pig. Fritz at Way of Saim Hann uses them on his 3 squadrons to what sounds like good effect, and quickly put them back on for good after he played a few games without them. Still, if I take them off, I can just about afford to fit a third Fire Prism in my 1500 list! What's not to like about that?

Well, there's the one thing: cries of cheese. The main 3-falcon player in town is constantly under attack for using 3 gravtanks, and though I've experienced the frustration of losing to that list myself, I don't really begrudge him for what is technically a legal (and probably fun) list. My question is this: does the fact that they're Fire Prisms and not Falcons make the list less cheesy, ie, will people keep their pouty little mouths shut? Somehow I doubt it. I love Fire Prisms and I've never seen anyone using three before, and only rarely have I seen two in the same list (around the Austin community anyways). I'm drooling just thinking about bank-shooting three Prism cannons together to get that S7 AP2 large blast! Also I want to see if the triple focus(sed) beam creates an actual black hole on the table. I mean, it's AP0! What does that even mean?

Kingsley emailed me with a few ideas, including dropping those holo-fields, but probably the most interesting notion was changing the 3 squads of 6 jetbikes to 6 squads of 3. I'll probably give this a whirl starting out. Not only will this give me more scoring units (very important for alpha missions), but it will make them easier to hide and thus make their little pop-up attacks easier to manage.

Eldar Jetbag

Today I finally got my first Apocalypse formation together: the Eldar Jetbag. GW is still putting the final touches on the formal datasheet, but from what I understand, deploying a full Jetbag lets you scatter all the pieces out across the entire board, and any model it touches is immediately dipped in brake fluid and scrubbed to its original pre-painted state. How cruel the arcane magicks of the Eldar are!

Obviously I kid. This is what 2 Windrider Hosts look like cut out of the sprues. Reassembled (over the next several months) they will constitute the larger part of my next project: Saim Hann. Below is my initial 1500 list that I will use to cut my teeth. I anticipate the learning curve will be fairly steep with such a small and delicate army, but I've always wanted to field a bike force and finally decided to go with an Eldar version. The 2000 list will most likely add Wave Serpent-ed Dire Avengers along with either Warp Spiders or possibly a small but expensive Warlock bike squad with enhance, multiple destructors, and singing spears. As an aside, I have a great T-shirt idea that I really need to put together on Cafepress. More on that later. Also let me point your attention to an interesting Saim Hann blog that I recently found and added to my links section in the sidebar. Nice guy, cool army, and great pictures from the Baltimore GT.

HQ

Farseer - jetbike, singing spear, spirit stones, runes of warding and witnessing, guide, mind war

TROOPS

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons
1 Warlock - jetbike, singing spear, destructor

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

6 Guardian Jetbikes - 2 shuriken cannons

FAST ATTACK

2 Vypers - 2 scatter lasers, 2 shuriken cannons, holofields, spirit stones

2 Vypers - 2 bright lances, 2 shuriken cannons, holofields, spirit stones

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Fire Prism - holofields, spirit stones

Action Report: Space Wolves vs. Eldar 8-19-07

When word reached the Fang that a small group of Eldar pirates were ravaging farmland on the nearby titheworld Nipir, Trefain the Elder and Tor the Giant of Lors the Grim’s Great Company were dispatched to repel the invaders. The aliens were led by an enormous Avatar of Khaine, fighting side by side with an ancient Wraithlord. The few small squads of accompanying infantry were further supported by a fire prism tank. Though our heroes were briefly given pause by the appearance of such powerful entities and armor leading what appeared to be a small reconnaissance force, they nevertheless relished the chance for battle and quickly boarded their transports. Trefain and Baldur the Marked led a pack of Blood Claws and attack bikes towards the enemy’s right flank. Emerging from their speeding rhino in the midst of a thick fog of dreamsmoke, they cut through an entire squad of Dire Avengers with impunity. Then the Avatar joined the fight, immediately launching a flurry of blows at the aged Rune Priest. Several times the creature’s awesome flaming blade was deflected by Trefain’s antiquated force shield, but eventually the demon’s speed was too much and the old wolf suffered a grievous wound and fell. The rest of the pack fought on to the death, nearly bringing down their gigantic foe, but in the end the mighty Avatar strode away alone. On the other side of the battle, Tor the Giant and Hurki’s Grey Hunters descended into the midst of the enemy’s left. Emerging from his drop pod, Tor purged nearly an entire squad of aspect warriors with shot and flame, when a delicate eldar grav craft appeared suddenly behind him and disabled him with a single powerful shot. Hurki and his pack lasted longer, their plasma and bolter fire completely wiping out a unit of harlequins prancing their way through a nearby forest. When the towering wraithlord jumped into their midst, the most experienced grey hunters struck back hard with their powerfists. The pack was close to victory when the indomitable spirit inside the wraith construct surged one last time and wiped them out. A bitter defeat for the Space Wolves!

Jumping on the Gravwagon

I've had a small secret store of old metal eldar figs for some time, including Baharroth painted up in my own particular... idiom. After witnessing the power and grace of McEldar firsthand, I figured I'd draft my own variation on the theme. It's a dream list that makes the most of the figs I already own and incorporates Avengers and 4 of those skeevy little tanks. Given the fact that I'm still way behind on my bug painting, maybe it could be done by next spring. I need to cut it down by 16 points but I haven't decided where yet.

HQ

Baharroth

ELITES

8 Striking Scorpions
Exarch - scorpion's claw, shadowstrike

TROOPS

10 Dire Avengers
Exarch - twin shuriken catapults, bladestorm, defend
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter laser, shuriken cannon, spirit stones

10 Dire Avengers
Exarch - twin shuriken catapults, bladestorm, defend
Wave Serpent - twin-linked scatter laser, shuriken cannon, spirit stones

FAST ATTACK

10 Swooping Hawks
Exarch - sunrifle, skyleap, intercept

8 Warp Spiders
Exarch - twin death spinners, powerblades, surprise assault, withdraw

HEAVY SUPPORT

Fire Prism - shuriken cannon, spirit stones, holofield, vectored engines

Fire Prism - shuriken cannon, spirit stones, holofield, vectored engines

4 Dark Reapers
Exarch - fast shot