Dark Eldar: The 'Leafsucker' and musings

Hello all

Played first game with Dark Eldar yesterday, using my Mechdar as proxy .

Firstly just to be clear, I built this list based on a conversation over @ 3++ we were joking about Using Vect in viable tourney builds or a 'Leafsucker' (thanks Chumbalaya for the lulz) in his Rolls Raep with all the toys including ideas for a Pirate ship theme with Heamo 'boozemasters' or Colombian drug cartel theme or South central gangstas at one point Coolio was being played, so yep a total death Derp-star.

The aim being to build the rest of the list in such a fashion that it supported and worked with the giant points anchor as best possible. The 'Leafsucker challange' was to be a throwdown to the people of the internet to build a list with Vect and his ride etc and to actually win a reasonably high      profile tourney.

So yeah for my first game I threw some stuff together to just start getting a feel for the army and what works etc so it was very much for a laugh, though I must admit I really really wanted to play with Vect. with the aim of developing a more serious list through progressive trial and playtesting so I look on this as a starting point, here is the list I ended up using such as it is.

Leafsucker MKI @ 1750

Asdrubael Vect, Dias with trophy racks , tormentor grenades, night and flicker fields, shock prow

Urpgor - Heamo with power wep and liquefier gun , Shattershard


Mengele -  Heamo with power wep and liquefier gun

Vects 'crew' - 7 TruBorn with 4 blasters and 2 Dark lances

4 Truborn with 4 blasters in a venom with 2 cannons

4 Truborn with 4 blasters in a venom with 2 cannons

10 warriors with blaster and Scannon in a raider with , splinter racks and sheilds

10 warriors with blaster and Scannon in a raider with , splinter racks and sheilds

Ravager with Sheilds

Ravager with Sheilds

Thoughts:

 Vect, when he finally got into combat, was a machine , his orbs adding to the firepower from the barge, he easily soloed two marine combat squads.

The barge itself was great ,went flat out first turn for a cover save, and due to a combination of being plain tough, immune to melta due to the night fields and my opponents poor luck with shooting  it hit turn two intact and opened fire, spent the rest of the game firing its combined 9 lance weps at various things,  oddly only actually killed one tank, but it kept others locked down for the entire game. the upgrades are all to buff it or to buff other things, the tormentor grenades make Vects orbs better and effects tank shocks which is nice considering the shock prow also has the potential to make it count as av16 for ramming, 5 points well spent I'm sure you will agree.

Note: you always need to to move your transports , Im not sure given the cost of a dark lance they are worth putting in a transport as you will almost never get to fire them.

The heamo's were in to bring some pain and those wonderful templates (that have a 33% chance to ignore FNP/armour) and being I 5 and str 4 power weps on the charge means that if they are in with Vects crew with Vect the whole lot can become a pretty nasty cc unit if needs be. Shattershard is an auto include for me.

The mini Trueborn squads are a bit odd to me. I have seen them on a few proposed lists so far and thought I would see how well if at all they work in practice,  they did kinda work  by taking out the landraider first turn (lucky), but were more expensive less deadly and easier to kill than fire dragons, I lost one venom first turn and half the squad died with it, in hindsight I think you really need night fields as the second venom just spent the whole game being stunned /shaken over and over by bolt rounds, very annoying. Other than the landraider the two squads did nothing else so it was just a points exchange , tho a favorable one as it left his Derp star unit on foot.

Maybe bringing more Venoms is the way forward , however I think a mix of raiders and venoms is important, you only need enough venoms to suppress devastator style units effectively, but will need the additional lances the raiders bring to stay mobile and effectively cope with mech at range.

So was actually underwhelmed with the venoms so far , the one time it did get to shoot I think it only killed a single marine, the joy of 3+ saves .....

Another observation from me is that I felt it was a mistake to disembark the trueborn squads from the venoms if you can possibly avoid it, as they are stupidly fragile and vanish shockingly fast, consider that each is a 27 point model with a blaster @ t3 5+.... without volume of shots blasters are definitely meh.

Leading me onto my next point, I had, erm, 27 str 8 ap 2 lance weps in that army, killing Armour was a slow process, stunning and shaking and immobilizing /disrupting my opponent was fairly easy but actually delivering a killing blow proved elusive, was really feeling the lack of ap 1. His predator must have been hit around 15 times or more and was still not actually destroyed when my friend conceded.

However if you stick to the principal of stun/shake and move on it seems it is quite possible to shut down the majority of your opponents vehicle based shooting as you close.

Needless to say once you have dealt with all the armour, using the massed lances to kill everything else is nothing short of hilarious in its brutality.

 I'm going to try and include some Melta lances based on this experience, possibly in an eventual, more sensible non-deathstar  army list.

The warriors were nice, I kept them in reserves and flew on later game as there was stuff that had been flushed from their transports  for them to shower in poison.

Having more lances show up in inconvenient places helped to really muzzle his shooting and means the unit has something to do if it lacks targets for the poison spam, splinter racks are a must for warriors, the raider units delivering far more hits than the venoms obviously without the benefit of 36" stand off range. If his troops had not got FNP in most cases they would have disappeared as was making around 9 wounds per volley plus blaster hits , I think using two units of Raiders like this to gang up on one enemy unit will prove quite effective, will be a staple troops choices at least for now as I experiment with other aspects of the army.

As was suspected, mobility is key in setting up favorable match ups, my speed allowed me to avoid his  powerful CC unit while ganging up the majority of my army on one section of his army. It is also key to getting your skimmers to be more resilient than they should be. I actually quite enjoy that aspect of playing with the DE.

Pain points , at least in this list seemed largely irrelevant, I think if you want units to get the benefit, you need to build the army around pain points as I only started really getting them at a point where the game was a done deal already.

Going forward, I will be dropping the Dark lances on the true born plus their users to free up some points, also the second heamo seems unnecessary, so I will drop him at least temporarily to also get a few more points , I really think I need a third venom in here , well lets see .....

Cant scrounge enough points to really do another venom but I can fit another ravager so it will look like this for the next game , possibly on vassal this week .

Leafsucker MK1.2 @ 1750

Asdrubael Vect, Dias with tormentor grenades, night and flicker fields, shock prow 

Mengele -  Heamo with power wep and liquefier gun + shattershard 

Vects 'crew' - 8 TruBorn with 4 blasters 

3 Truborn with 3 blasters in a venom with 2 cannons + Nightfields

3 Truborn with 3 blasters in a venom with 2 cannons + Nightfields

10 warriors with blaster +  Scannon in a raider with, splinter racks 

10 warriors with blaster + Scannon in a raider with, splinter racks 

Ravager with Sheilds

Ravager with Sheilds

Ravager with Sheilds                  Total = 1753

Finally just wanted to point people in the direction of these fantastic vids by GW on the things Kelly and Goodwyn have been upto with the building of the DE. I love all the concepts and ideas floating around, liking this book more and more as all this stuff is coming out in the rinse. Enjoyable, informative and entertaining go see I know I'm looking forward to more.

TTFN

Retro Review: Swooping Hawk Aspect Warriors

Back once again with teh Rant

Sorry for the lack of much this week, nurgle has invaded my head and lungs and is laughing at me.

 Its kinda late for me to be writing now, but duty and all that ..... and the smallest violin plays for Sorrowmartyr

Okaaay, Hawks

Some comments from this weeks poll have made me feel I need to enter a disclaimer at this point.  I am of the belief that the most solid and competitive of currently available Eldar builds are mechdar, with bike council mechdar included. All of my articles are written with the intention of giving critique and advice on units in the context of competitive ie, Mech Eldar play. Sure some other units/lists kinda sorta almost can be forced to work ok, but I'm not interested in that now, the solid bulk of my gaming experience and success to date is with a Mech list. Having said that I re-started with footdar over a year ago  (I have played eldar since 94' with some breaks) and through many games, trial and error and a process of elimination through playing with all the units ended up with a mech list in 5th, thats not because teh internet said "mek iz bezt" its because at least for me it IS.

There was a noticeable jump in effectiveness when I switched to pure mech. I have since been constantly refining and tweaking my tactics /list since.

So this article is written about hawks based on 1. how they work if at all in 5th. I will try to include some help for those that just gotta play with them. masochists :oP And 2. how they work in relation to tourney build mechdar.


21 points for a flying vet guard?! oh dear. Lets be honest, they aint good, too many points for a pitiful drizzle of str 3 fire and a str 4 ap 5 large blast 'when' they come in, 4+ armour is actually pretty good, not being a meq player I appreciate these things, and with fortune its pretty good vs small arms, heavy bolters/flamers are another thing altogether .....they are not going to hold up under any determined effort to be rid of them..

Against most meq opponents hawks are no good, the aim being to keep as far outta range as possible and I assume hosing Doomed marine targets from out of rabid fire range, its not going to do alot, the template attack has worked for me on meq, but it really requires doom and an opportunely bunched target to get much out of, I felt lucky when it paid off, however, the same tactic on non meq is lulz. Im not too sure what hawks were supposed to specialize in really, unless it is slaying guard and spammy orks/nids , if over 50 percent ALL of your opponents are marines  its pretty much auto disclusion form any list you care to build for a mixed competitive environment.

They are fairly good at suppressing stun-locking and sometimes destroying vehicles with the intercept rules and EMP grenades, let it be known I love EMP grenades and for me alongside the ability to hit even fast moving vehicles on a 4+ they come really close to saving Hawks from the toilet. I did say 'close', they be toiletdar  due to the nature of the grenades the more hawks you can get into contact the better, in fact, volume is needed for any of the Hawks attacks so max size squads all the way if you are planing on doing anything other than Rubberhawking with them.

If I HAD to use hawks I would commit bukakke, or is it seppuku....  or had run out of other slots for AT, I would run hawks as another anti tank option (or for finishing immob walkers) sadly at least 8 will be needed for volume, but just taking intercept for the exarch, so 185 points , which is oddly more or less the same price as 5 dragons in a serpent. they will do a fairly adequate job on tanks IF you can get them there(try flying up behind a serpent for cover then popping out, its obviously much better for finishing stuff thats been stunned or immob'd before hand, auto hits really lets EMP's shine.

Rubberhawking is not a porn training vid  the term for using the exarchs sky leap to drop and go up back into reserve in the same turn. rinse and repeat over and over to get a grenade attack pie plate without any fear of retaliation to the hawks.

Assuming you are not using any other FA slots 3 x minimum squads with Exarch and skyleap can serve to really piss your opponent off, which admittedly is gold. 

However dont expect much hot death from your 400 points worth of yo-yo units, I suppose you can look on it as 400 points denied to your opponent,  needless to say you will want an Autarch or possibly 2 to get the shenanigans to start nice and early/reliably, although I prefer Doom from a Farseer to get the most out of those blasts,so tend towards one of each HQ.

Oh btw, remember, it only scatters d6 ;o)

 Im not sure I can think of much more to add at this stage, In my standard mech tourney lists this lot will never be seen, mostly because even if I do hop them around behind the vehicles for cover they will attract all the anti infantry fire my opponent cannot shoot at everything that is all cosy in their serpents Also points spent on them is not points spent on tanks, with mech you want as much armour as you can possibly get in without gimping the effectiveness of what is inside, also my prisms have the blasts covered there too.

So to summarise :

IG 'Car park - FAIL

5th Edition Evolution


Looking at the reavers and Bomber in the DE book, I think turbo boosting  hawks that drop grenades as they pass over will be the way to go, I would like to see different 'flavour' grenades to choose from.

would give em a 3+ turbo save and get rid of Rubberhawking while making the grenade attacks useful

I cant see the problem with keeping intercept and EMP grenades on them , but perhaps making it part of the fly past ?

The exarch weapons could do with some improvement , maybe make them ap 3 to balance out the amount of anti meq fail the hawks have. I cannot see a way or reason to change the lasblaster, tho guard currently have access to a much superior las weapon which does rankle a little.

What do people feel to lasblasters gaining rending ? say 20 shots from a unit , thats only 2 rends on average , around 4 with doom ? throw in cover and I dont feel that is terrible.

Also the idea of them being a move-shoot-move unit fits and is appealing.

I also like the idea of the exarch giving the unit a dodge bonus to cover saves when they move, something like re roll rolls of a 1 for a cover save when it intervenes, to represent the increased difficulty of shooting such small fast targets with cover between them and the firer . I introduce this as an idea as I feel improving cover saves to a possible 2+ for Tboosting might be a bit much, the other alternative is to give em a permanent 5+ invun dodge save ?

Well  thats it for now as 'The ILL' is taking its toll , I can hear the honey and lemon calling for me.

Hoping to get in some much promised hobby v soon, however, this miserable filthy illness has kinda prevented it this week :o( , hoping to do the first of my DE army unit 'Rave' reviews mid week, I'll be going through the book in the opposite direction so up first is the DE Archon and any SC's that fit that description.

Lastly, I'm still fishing for feedback on the blog, Poll is still up on the right, clicky clicky five dorrah ? me love you long time...  please have a poke at the previous post 'Speak to me Goose' would love to hear your thoughts.

TTFN

PS, Apologies to those that discover/suffer the hidden link,it made me lol

Speak to me Goose....

Hello Bloggees

Been A little worried as hits and comments have died off recently, people also seem to be reading but not Commenting joining/following ? I suspect it has nothing to do with it being so Awsomroxscorxz !! that you are left wordless and welling up.

Is it something I said :'o(

Anyway, to try and nip this in the bud I have set up a poll for the lazy people over there on top right, Would be great to get some feedback from you lot.

Would be even better to get some suggestions in regards to Eldar /DE specific stuff I can do/cover for you on here ?

Bat reps are in the pipeline , but to do that I REALLY need to finish painting the army.......

Anyway, look forward to hearing from you :o)

Edit:Well I'm making this edoit some months after posting , here's a little treat for anyone who has bothered to read this far back ;o) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekXxi9IKZSA

Laughed my ass off .

Retro Review: Vyper Attack craft

Good evening

As there is now a proliferation of DE information on the internet, I have really wanted to start my unit by unit analysis of Mr Kelly's latest and possibly greatest.

Having given it some thought, I have decided to hold off for a bit rather than jumping on the bandwagon immediately. In the name of good 'journalism' I have decided to make it a priority to get a chunk of playtesting, both on a real table and also on vassal to allow me to try some crazy builds against a fairly bizarre variety of opponents. ok, so some days on vassal you just play against the dice

I'm hoping this will allow me to give you folks some solid feedback based on actual experience rather than theory hammer, which is mostly what you will be getting atm.

For this weeks retro we have moved into the fast attack section. The Vyper is an odd one, there are few vaguely sane and more than competent players that advocate the use of these in competitive play.

I cannot for the life of me work out why ?! Yeah you can dumbass, 'Special snowflake syndrome' Despite some fairly hard testing prelude to attempted self harm I cannot successfully get these things to do anything but die / serve kp's hand over fist to my opponents.*weeps* Mmm, Yes your tears sustain me....

Not that these are the worst steaming heap of suckfail in the book, they even feel like they 'should' kinda support a Mechdar army fairly well.

Primary complaint for me is actually the cost, they are fairly over priced @ 50 points for the cheapest of cheap load outs , bearing in mind its fairly easy to kill these with even the most basic of weapons in the game due to being av10 open topped, I doubt you need me to spell out why this is a bad bad thing.

Also again for its cost and price and the fact all eldar weps are stupidly overpriced (apparently something to do with Meq cry babies )boo fucking hoo hoo, man up, get a real army the bs is a pretty significant failing on the Vyper as I feel being able to hit your opponent reliably and cause damage would actually help somewhat with the fragility issue, the base points would certainly be easier to swallow. I would even consider an EML loadout once in a while if it was bs 4.

As the bs is fairly pitiful and the weapons priced like a banking crisis I cannot honestly say you should ever consider any weapon load outs other than either duel Scannons or Scatlas + Scannon, two reasons really, one, the multishots help you to actually hit once in a while and two, they are ok points wise.

If I was going to run em the best load out has to be twin cannons for me , they are the same range and the cheapest option to get a good amount of shots, as I would also use them to generate cover for my tanks they are often forced to be up front anyway, the single extra shot @ 10 points from the Scatter and the unrequired extra range seem a bit Herp da Derp, Im not inclined to heap unnecessary extra points on something made of wet toilet paper. Eldrad says "wipe with Wraithpaper"

If you want scats just run it with a scat and sit outta range and possibly in cover,  ping away.

Spelling ?!

Bare bones cheap, for three runs you 180 points for 18 str 6 shots, its not bad on paper, however, being in a squadron makes em die even easier, any pene roll of a 3 or more sees one gone  (these things vanish fast), it also means a single unit can kill multiples with one volley . you may or may not be seeing a fair few long fangs or dakka preds / hydras these days ?

Some people love str 6 spam, I'm not a big fan as by necessity and assuming your opponent is not a bit 'special' ideal you will often find yourself taking shots at front armour, as av12 is the new black glancing on 6's can sometimes be a bit of a stretch. I hate relying on luck that much..... sure IF they live long enough AND you can get behind some targets s6 spam is pretty good.

Ok for me Vypers do have a use , if I have some spare points I would consider two Mc Cheapo specials for blocking and as a

IF you can get them to work, good for you , I strongly suggest you look to upgrade your opponents. Points are far to precious for 5th Eldar to be pissing around with something overpriced and stupidly fragile, 3 Vypers nearly pays for two Serpents your list WILL be better without them unless you are into comp.... Perverts

Oh yeah NO upgrades, none,jack shit, nadda, nil, zip, zero, bugger all Too much ?

 I give you yet another stupid but somehow apt summary picture.

Om nomma nom nom

 5th Evoloution


The fix for 5th is pretty easy, drop the open topped and the price, give an option to either TL the guns or improve BS , assuming they Fix and sensibly re price the Eldar H weps  (I have made suggestions for fix in previous rants)

It would be cool to have them able to outflank and/or deepstike.

I have also previously discussed a Holo fields 'fix' and think that priced appropriately they could be an excellent upgrade for vypers as I envisage them.

Assuming the vehicle upgrades get fixed they may also see some use , I'll be discussing those when I get onto the Waveserpent as it seems more fitting to do so there.

Well thats it for now , I hope you enjoyed at least a little ;o)

Hopefully back in the week with some painted shizzle and getting my rant on with the Swooping Hawks

TTFN

Retro Review: Eldar Support Weapons

Well this is going to be short , The picture below says all I could ever wish to about the support weps ...

Bleh I suppose I best write something...

For starters, they are artillery which in 5th = suck, especially when the two crew die at the slightest provocation. It really does not take much to silence these guns and for this reason alone besides anything else I would never take them , especially when they are in hot competition for slots with Falcons and Prisms.

The main weapons are a showcase for some of the more Exotic eldar weapon technologies And usually if someone told me I could spam an advanced form of vortex technology, sonics or omnicidal candyfloss I would weep tears of geek joy.

Its ok, there's now something called an IMPLOSION missile for me to play with and VOID bombs.

For ME ?! whythankyouverymuch

 So quickly:

D Cannon: Its an Eldar vortex projector  with great damage potential, it's even taken a boost in 5th as you get more hits per blast, I would moan about scatter dice but I think they should actually work out as slightly more accurate than before. Most people, myself included, feel that they are crippled by 'short ' range. 24 is not terrible but it is for a SUPPORT weapon made of wet toilet paper and its evidently terminally ill crew.

Vibro Cannon: Used to be ok/ good, but due to glancing hits being subjected to Dante's pedo-smile mask are no longer really viable I suppose some people will like the auto glance , but its three units totaling 150 points and eating a precious HS slot to get one glancing hit, thats assuming you always get at least one hit.

Shadow weaver: Possibly the best by dint of its cheapness and IF for some strange reason you have a HS slot spare.

The 48 range is nice, this is a proper support weapon and coupled with its ability to fire indirectly from so far away it may actually survive past rolling for mission (crew taken sick again). At str 6 its a troop killer that may be useful against open topped vehicles once in a while, but having ap - means it is pointless on the majority of armored targets, again, 5th has given it a slight boost with the template rules as unit of three has the potential to generate a fair few wounds. might be fun to wheel out in the odd 'hard' friendly for funzies.

Warlock: really expensive and largely pointless unit upgrade, he can fire a gun @ bs 4 , conceal used to be ok but is pretty worthless in 5th especially so on suppt weps as they gain no benefit from going to ground.

And thats it, so to summarise, Eldar Support weps I give you another wonderous illustration, remember a picture can say a thousand words.

Normally I would do a 5th evoloution , but for these the core mechanics of the game for artillery need a jiggle. Mostly these need to be taken out of heavy support and made an option for defenders, dunno

I'll think about it and maybe edit em in later.

Next week will see the first of the fast attack retro's , the Vyper, should be interesting ;o)

*This post is dedicated to Iggy :oP

Something Something something Dark Eldar ....

Ok Just going to throw this up here before starting work on this weeks retro.

Made it into town today and was allowed to sit for some hours and comb through the New DE book.

The Fail :

Defo giving the golden turd award to mandrakes they are made of lame and aids.

At first glance the Talos seems to have changed very little, given my feelings on the wraithlord and that the talos is only str and T 7, not a fan ... The chronos may infact prove to be the more useful of the two , tho they will have to turn out to be something something spectacular to nudge out the fighters/bomber.


Most of the special characters seem good at first glance but actually suck for what you pay/they should be good for. Main culprits are Lelith and especially Drazhar, who is essentially just a phoenix lord , yes this means he is many many points and possesses no invun and is frankly a real disappointment.

Shame... as he looks like this:

No bikes for characters now *sad panda* Loads of really cool sounding / looking wargear that is largely pointless/crap on second glance , just dont get distracted and the army is fine.

Tho there is a sniper rifle that removes the target from play, oh ho ho ho Lysander ho ho *jabba voice*

There are some pretty nice vehicle upgrades giving em all access to 5+ invun and the old - 6" from the range jobbie. Oh and deepstrike ability can be bought to, given that DE vehicles can now shoot EVERYTHING even at cruising speed = godly Alpha strike.

Im very excited about the aircraft, the fluff for which is excellent and made me crack a dark smile. Especially on how Deathscythe missiles are described to work, the lulz

Does anyone have a tissue ?

It will be interesting to see how DE will handle the current mech spam, though I think the various str9 lance weps on the bomber may be funzies ;o)

Talking of which I'm not sure if the ravager is going to be a particularly great heavy support choice, av 11 and three standard h weps which I think is either Dark lances or disintegrators with no plas cannon setting :o(

 I guess it depends on cost effectiveness, given the flyers carry various Dark lance weps and bombs and some bonkers missiles. I may hold off on the ravager and pick some up cheap when some clueless idiots rieg quit after discovering that DE are not just 'pointy' marinez.

 Especially since GW are charging a fortune for the damn model.

The Scourges have had a cool fluff re jig and now look teh Awsomzrocksorxz, they will be packing some amazing firepower it seems, one of the few sources of Ap1 in any quantity in the book

Evil tengu will shit on your Car Rhino

I'm thinking that the Bikes are going to be a fun choice, they are good but expensive and if you ever stop turbo boosting likely to die, torrent is really going to sting these chaps, going to need much practice and a little artistry to get the most from these perhaps.

The Elites section is pretty packed but at least to me the Elite Kabal warriors look solid , 4 special weps and 2 heavy per squad ? they will turn any raider they are in into a filthy gunboat.

Hmm trying to think of anything else that caught me.

Ah yeah you know each book has a character you tend to see alot of ?

 For the DE I think that just might turn out to be Sliscus, hes a fairly solid archon build with a bunch of army/squad improving special rules. It seems Vects Ex wife may be hanging around with him quite a bit, the drama.

Right I'm going to leave it there for now as I need to do this weeks retro, I'll post that a bit later , this was just to get some musings on the page and make a wee report for anyone who may be interested.

L8rZ

Moo hoo huh hu ha haaa haaagh !

*gibbering They'd all laugh at me if they knew what I was trying to do... to create a new strain of super-list in a half an hour with a fraction of nature's resources and out-dated designs eldar book ? and a FOOL for an assistant. "Shard ? he's mad," they'd say. "He's insane. He's dangerous." Well I'll show them! I'll show them all!


Yup I bought the ENTIRE Dark Eldar release today (except for the over priced bikes) My safety settings have been deleted/lost in the warp.


 let the wallet BURN !!


For all you soft pampered skill-less :oP Marine/BA/SW/IG players/ball bags out there, a brief yet deserved statement if I may, as we move (very briefly no doubt) into a reign of Eldar ascendancy.

And does the picture below remind anyone else of a certain DE character ? whodda thunk he had a handbag dog ?

Mr Foofy loved to help daddy with his work

Back soon with this weeks retro also let it be known that I shall be doing an anti retro (Rabid review ?) for the DE book when it lands so will be jumping up to 2 articles a week plus a deluge of hobby Inbetween.

Retro Review: Don't Fear The Reaper

Velcome Back for another Dose of Emo Geek bitterness

Today I'm a little late, I was going to write the review earlier but caught up re reading other parts of the book which lead to another bout of my trying to self harm with guardian models......

If DE work out nicely maybe I wont send Kelly san to the deathcamp for a nice 'shower' ......

Fighting major painters block ATM 7 tanks just seems like a hideous task .....

Reapers:

I just gotta fluffmobile this BS drivel:

  "The Dark Reapers are the most menacing of the warrior aspects. to non mech marines  they exemplify the war god as destroyer  and their skull-masked costume echoes that of their founder, the harvester of souls. Their amour is a complex set of interlocking plates. Although the dark reapers are comparatively slow as a result so what the Fuck happened to relentless then ?, this is of little consequence, for their role on the battlefield is long - ranged fire support. No, you Twatcocksukkerfuckercunt a basilisk is long ranged FS, LONG FANGS are LR FS also but Reapers are SPECIALIST long ranged anti meq unit thats it , thats all , load shot ......

The Father of the dark reapers, Maugan Ra, teaches that the kiss of death can be delivered from afar. It is this credo that is central to the way of the reaper. I think he needs to be booked in for a 'refresher' course 

their sacred weapon is the reaper Launcher, a long barreled missile weapon that can create a blistering firestorm pathetic dribble with a single salvo. The armour Marine piercing missiles it fires are powerful enough to take down all but the most heavily protected of foes  Marines Not to mention their awsome vehicle destroying potential with them thar 'armour piercing' rounds....... nerf

The Dark Reapers pride themselves on their accuracy. RoffL  LOLgasm, I mean Bs 4 is okaaay marine transports shoot better tho. 'hey don't be sad, whatcha guys doing with those guardian models ?'

there skills are increased still further by powered limb supports that absorb the recoil of the reaper launcher, advanced sensor vanes upon their helmets that can lock onto a fast- moving target stolen by guard for their hydras, sorry chaps here you may have more self harm success with this old DE warrior..... , and mind-links that allow a reaper to see from the muzzle of his weapon. you'll go blind their superb aim enables them to dominate the battlefield, pinning down enemy forces and destroying chosen targets at will. gonna call EPIC rulesfail at that point after laughing so much that some wee escaped.


Right I'll flesh out on my general scorn after this brief interlude:

Ok , Reapers are my favorite Aspect, seriously. I have two units and a list I designed to wring the most out of them in 5th that I sometimes break out for competitive casual games, they actually do ok.

Reapers were a bit pants in the book in the first place, being priced like they each carry 'doom cock' and are only honestly useful for shooting marines. If we are being really honest, things were not looking so peachy for them in terms of being a feature in a competitive list.

 I also find them a bit underwhelming as they only really 'work' properly in their meq killing role when the enemy are not in cover and you use fortune and doom on them the only thing, that makes them even a possible choice now is that the tempest launcher has taken a bit of a boost in terms of killing potential with the increased hits generated with the 5th blast rules, chuck in being on a bs 5 platform that re-rolls to wound rolls and ignores cover with ap3 and there is some fun to be had. When it works whole squads of marines can vanish. Sadly the hypercosting of them , which I can only ascribe to GW's asslicking attempt to keep meq players happy in their little fuzzy bubble of GW beblowjobbedness.

 Shit why not just give em relentless and EML's ? they will kill LESS marines and be useful vs FnP marines and other targets (like actual LR fire support)*beats head on keyboard.

Currently I have found them to work best in 5th abusing the tempest as much as possible, as you more or less have to assume that reaper launchers will be at least 50% less effective than they were previously,which makes them shitter  more expensive heavy boltersmost of the time.

 FNP marines in cover laugh at you.

The Exarch costs a gajillion points so does the temp launcher so total of twogajillion points plus ten points for crackshot, which, lets face it, is one of the best buys in the damn book ignoring cover and re roll failed wounds is just epic. Sadly the cost for the whole package/squad does kinda ruin it, plus they fall over in a stiff breeze ... 

The basic premise of making them work is as follows , 2 units of 3-4 reapers in the list, each with a crackshotting tempest launcher within, buy em a transport with EML which is handy for getting them in and set up somewhere useful in DOW missions, can also be used to provide cover for /rescue em. I personally fire em forward to start firing their missiles at side and rear armour asap alongside whatever else you can find to start popping transports, once a unit is forced to bail out and they are all nice and packed together show them the tempest launcher, I have seen whole squads go poof under this, tankshocks can also be used to bunch opponents up for similar 'anal intrusion therapy'

*note: reapers are utter fail Vs Ba  

5th Evoloution

Pretty simples really. 

Keep stats/points the same, give em relentless, give em all EML's , the reaper helmet allows you to either shoot weps as twin linked or ignore cover saves.

 At cost they can purchase Melta missiles (ah sweet 2nd ed how I miss thee) which are one use only and get ap1 and + d3 to penetrate

Exarch gets same wep options as before minus the reaper launcher , he gets crack/ fast shot and can give the squad stealth and the ability to split fire, I kinda like the idea of giving him access to a single vortex missile (expensive) ?

In conclusion I feel the above changes would bring them more inline with the fluff and 5th edition , they are still an expensive easy to kill unit I just feel they might be worth the points/get taken this way, melta missiles will further inflate that cost.

Next weeks Retro is the support wep battery :oS who's looking forward to that ?

Rant off.

*Click*