Tzeench psychic powers

One of the things that keeps cropping up in my group is how under powered chaos are.  In particular, how under powered Tzeench magic is.  The so called god of magic has one of the weakest spell lores out there.

I have attempted to remedy this with my own list.  See what you think.

Flickering fire of Tzeench.  WC 1+   Primaris Power
This is a witch fire with a range of 24 inches.  Declare how many warp charge points you want to attempt to cast this at.  This spell does a number of d6 s4 ap5 hits equal to the amount of warp charge declared.  Eg a WC3 cast would shoot 3d6 shots.  Any unit taking at least one unsaved wound will be affected by soul blaze.

Blessing of Tzeench WC 1   Spell number 1
Malediction.  On a successful cast of this spell transfer d3 warp charge points from your opponent’s pool to your own.

Bolt of Change WC 1 Spell number 2
This is a beam with a range of 24 inches.  Any target lying under the beam takes a strength 8 ap2 hit.

Future sight.  WC 1 Spell number 3
This is a Blessing affecting the caster and his unit.  The unit gains d3 rerolls which last through this turn, and the opponents next turn.  These may be used to reroll any single dice for to hit, to wound or save, or cast or deny spells.

Breath of Chaos. WC 2 Spell number 4
This is a witch fire.  This has a range of template.  Any model hit by this template must take a toughness test or take a wound with no armour or cover saves allowed.  Invulnerable saves may be taken, but successful saves must be rerolled.  Any unit taking at least one unsaved wound will be affected by soul blaze.

Transformation of Tzeench WC 3 Spell number 5
This is a witch fire with a range of 24 inches.  The target unit takes 2d6 s6 ap 4 hits.  If at least one model is removed as a casualty you may add a chaos spawn model to the table, one inch from the target unit.  It has a number of wounds equal to the amount of wounds inflicted by the spell.

Firestorm of Tzeench WC 4 Spell number 6
This is a witch fire.  Center the apocalyptic blast over the sorcerer casting this spell.  Every unit covered by the template take a number of hits equal to the amount of models under the template.  These hits are resolved at s5 ap4 with ignores cover.  Models with the mark of Tzeench, or Daemons of Tzeench are immune to this power, but models with the Mark of Nurgle or Daemons of Nurgle take two hits. Any units taking at least one unsaved wound will be affected by soul blaze.

Adeptus Mechanicus

The forthcoming release of Adeptus Mechanicus is something I have been waiting on for a long time.
They are the biggest faction in 40k to never really have a model range.  All the Forge World releases have been really exciting with the Horus Heresy range so it is good to see that they are finally doing a 40k version of this army.

From the sneak peeks it looks like they occupy a space around the eldar in terms of weapons and indeed in terms of statistics and points.  This could make them a very unusual imperial army.

The models themselves look solid.  Not forge world amazing but good.  I was hoping for some Johnny 5 type robots, or at least some tracked heavy weapons servitors, but nothing of that ilk seems to have been seen yet.

I plan on having a combined Ad mech and Knight army, but it is dependant on the codex options.

Just how accurate are blast weapons? The maths revealed

Its been a fair while between posts, I don't update as often as I used to do.  I have however been thinking about just how accurate a blast weapon is, opposed to a regular shot from a unit.  Consider some basic units;

Ork: BS2
Guardsman/fire warrior/termagant: BS3
Space Marine: BS4

These are some of the common basic unit types in the game.  They cover the three most common ballistic skill levels.  An ork has 1/3 chance of a hit, a guardsman a 1/2 chance of a hit and a marine a fairly high 2/3 chance of a hit.

So how does this compare to blast weapons?  Lets consider the two basic sizes, small blast at 3 inches and the larger one at 5 inches.

All blast weapons have a 1/3 chance of a hit, from the off.  This matches what Orks already get, but is worse than the other races standard BS.  So straight away, you might be thinking, why would you use such an innacurate weapon?

Well the good folks at GW allow you to take your BS into account when seeing if you hit.  As you know, you have a mighty 3/36 or 1/12 chance of rolling a double one, or a one and a two.  This is a bonus chance of hitting, should your shot scatter.

So you will find an Ork has roughly a 0.36 chance of a hit with a blast weapon.  Except that in reality he doesn't.  Because, as you know the template is bigger than 1 inch wide, so if it scatters only 1 inch, you will still hit at least the target model.  With the larger blast, you will still hit them if it scatters 2 inches.  So what does that do to the maths?  Well it improves the chance of the ork hitting to a mighty 0.39 for the smaller blast and a fairly impressive 0.50 with the larger blast.  You also have a chance of hitting other models in the squad!

So for orks, its an entirely positive experience using blast weapons.  Unfortunately, if you have more than BS2, they get less of a boost and with bs4 small blasts are less accurate than firing a normal gun.

Chance of hitting the exact model with bs 3 is 0.42 and with scattering the small blast hits 0.50 and the larger one 0.61.
Chance of hitting the exact model with bs4 is 0.50 and with scattering the small blast hits 0.61 and the larger one 0.75.

New Tyranids, a brief look at the new codex

There has been a lot of hate on the Internet about the new book.  But some crucial points have either been missed or brushed under the carpet.

A lot of units have a sizable points reduction.  Anywhere between 20 and 25% in some cases.  Their statistics mostly remain the same.

They now also gain a bonus attack from two sets of melee weapons.  Something they never used to have.

For me, most of the book is usable with a couple of exceptions.  The Tyranid Prime is massively over priced now, and I think everyone could see Tervigons being hit by the nerf bat.  Lictors, previously the worst unit are slightly improved now having infiltrate.  The Deathleaper is a really good unit.

Boneswords being AP 3 didn't surprise me.  It doesn't affect MCs but warriors suffer.  But were you really expecting them to go up against terminators?  I didn't think so.

Daemons got similar points drops and they had reductions in statistics.  Their book is very usable and I really see no reason to not think the Tyranid one will be too.

Also, the Tyrant gets very cheap wings. Expect to see ALL flying tyrants unless someone stumps up the points for Swarmlord and Tyrant guard.

Wraithknight thoughts

So my attention has recently been turned towards the Eldar Wraithknight.  One of my gaming group is consistently telling me I need to buy one.  With the considerable price tag attached to this unit in both money and points, you need to ask and answer yourself a number of questions first.

1.  Do my armies have 240-300+ points spare for a large monster with just two guns?
2.  Will it synergise with my existing Eldar force?
3.  Is it really better than taking two Wraithlords or Fire Prisms who cost half as much?

The first question is very important.  How cruicial to the running of your army is having one or more of these creatures?  I play a fairly wraith heavy eldar army and I have no spare points, never mind slots for this to take part.

Its firepower, while on the face of it impressive, is really not.  If you think about it, the Wraithcannons are just a pair of longer ranged Wraithguard guns.  So it has the firepower of two Wraithguard.  Fielding this naked is the most points efficient, but should only be done if you really need two more long ranged anti tank guns.   I am fairly certain Fireprisms work out a lot better choices, because they can fire blasts as well as a powerful lance shot from their main gun.  Absolutely noone ever looks at the standard Landraider and goes "Wow, two twinlinked lascannons, thats a very powerful battle tank".  They buy it for its dual nature as a heavily armoured transport with guns.  This version of Wraithknight has roughly the same firepower, although it isn't twinlinked, nor can it fire any shoulder weapons, and can't transport either.

I would ignore the Sword/Shield entirely.  Paying extra points, lose both my guns, gain a shield and a single rerolled miss in close combat.  Really?  I think not.  I think this is the only chassis that would ever use both staggeringly over priced shoulder mounts though.

The third option, Suncannon/shield initially looks pretty viable.  You get more or less 3 plasmacannon shots, without gets hot and at s6 not s7.  So far so good.  But the price is an eye wateringly high, when you buy the nigh on compulsary scatter laser.    You also lose anti tank for a bunch of anti infantry shots.  This is horribly inefficient compared to the Fire prism also.  Do you really need more anti infantry fire?  Eldar are full of them!  Also, two Wraithlords with paired starcannons would throw down 8 shots between them, and can also have the sword.

Next up you need to check if it will synergise.  It is a very unusual unit.  It has very little firepower and its combat ability, while strong vs s3 or s4 units, it will fold like a soggy cardboard box in combat against something like Thunder Hammer terminators or anything armed with poison.    It is reasonably tough against shooting, but even kitted out with a force field, its better to keep in cover than rely on that.  Otherwise you could find a mere 6 krak missiles ending your day prematurely.

Thirdly you need to consider if other units can do its job better.  First to consider is the Wraithlord.  It is half as much and comes with half as many wounds.  It doesn't however come with built in heavy weapons, so you will need to purchase them.  Wraithlords are characters, so can challenge characters, unlike the wraith knight.  Wraithlords are also considerably smaller and easier to hide in cover.  Wraithknights are faster due to jump jets and can in theory deep strike, provided you want to risk it mishapping.  It can't however be in two places at once, and its firepower is pretty much worse than a pair of Wraithlords who can have flamers and swords without penalty.

That is all well and good, but they seem to come out much the same as a pair of Wriathlords really.  I think I would prefer two models over one big one, especially given theres not all that much difference between a brightlance and a wraithcannon, but each to their own.

No the biggest problem is the Fire Prism.  This tank, for a lot less points, even with the compulsory holofields works out at least a hundred points cheaper and is faster, tough, and can engage both tanks and infantry with ease on the same chassis.

My conclusion from this piece is that the Wraithknight is not an ultra competitive choice.  It may be in some builds, specifically Taudar or Eldau or wraithwing lists, that fielding three of them works out just fine for you. My issue is that their armour save is not all that ultra fantastic considering most weapons being aimed at it will bypass it entirely, and invulnerable saves are not brilliant on the two chassis which can have them.  I mean how often do non stormshield terminators fail their saves?  A lot!

Asurman and Dire Avengers. Why my opinion has changed

Anyone reading this blog for a long time will no doubt be laughing at the amount of backtracks I have made on actually using units, as opposed to just reading about them.  This is another such article.

Despite much trepidation I have been using both Dire Avengers, and Asurman in my lists.  Both seem over priced for what they do, yet in using them, I have won more games.

In football management terms, sometimes you can have a player in your team, who doesn't appear to do a great deal, but his inclusion means you have more wins, so you keep including him without knowing why.

This is the case with my Dire Avengers.  Everything about them screams over priced to me.  Yet they consistently do a job and do it well.  Perhaps its because I don't waste points on Exarchs and just field units of 8 normal warriors.  At the moment I don't really know, but I am endeavouring to find out.

Asurman on the other hand is solid as a rock.  This is the reason he is my Warlord.  He has worse shooting than half the other Phoenix Lords, and worse combat than pretty much all of the Phoenix lords, but is one of the most expensive.

The key to using him is to understand his Warlord trait ability.  D3 Warlord traits.  What you are hoping to roll is number 4.  This allows him to reroll his armour save.  A 2+ rerollable save, with eternal warrior and a 4++ invulnerable save rerolling 1s is insanely strong.  Small arms fire will bounce off him 35/36 times he is wounded which makes killing him virtually impossible outside of ap2 fire.

Stand at the front of the unit he is in, and tank everything.  You can look out sir any Ap2 hits and even if you fail, you are eternal warrior so its not the end of the world if a railgun hits you in the face.   In the event you don't get the Warlord trait you want, you can always hope you get Fortune.  You do have a farseer right?

His shooting attacks are pretty lame.  A pair of catapults making them twinlinked isn't really all that, considering his high bs of 7 would have made it kind of twinlinked anyway.

Get him into combat however and he shines.  His special Diresword makes him S5 AP2 striking on initative with a boat load of attacks.  He can and will carve through anything without a decent save, and if they have poor leadership, he will do an even more damage when they fail their leadership tests.  This special ability even bypasses eternal warrior!

To Exarch or not

The question is, should you take an Exarch in your aspect warriors?

This is actually more of a difficult question than it seems.  Not all Aspect warriors benefit as much from their Exarch as others.

The key is to look at the skills the bring along in the form of warrior powers.  Some Exarchs are nailed on essential in even a 5 man squad, while others are only useful in bigger units.   Remember Exarchs are your Sgts and Special weapons guys rolled into 1.  

In my opinion Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees and Shining Spears should always, always include an exarch, even in minimum sized squads.  The reason for this is that Exarchs have strictly superior weapons and statistics to their squad, and the cost to upgrade them is more than reasonable considering you get better WS and BS as well as access to much more powerful close combat weapons.  Always take Scorpions Claw, Executioner and Star Lances.

Swooping Hawks really don't get much mileage out of their Exarch.  Their special guns really are not all that great, and neither are their abilities.  I suppose you can attempt to blind someone, but I would rather just field 6 for the large blast and leave it there.

Warp Spiders maybe want an Exarch, but only if you want to use him with the Spinneret Rifle and maybe Power Blades.  Against certain armies he turns the unit into a reasonable melee threat.

Crimson Hunters should always be Exarchs.  Better BS, can snipe characters, weapon options.  All very worthwhile.

Fire Dragons it depends.  I always take one with a Firepike with fast shot, as his damage output is greater than  two normal dragons this way.  The Heavy Flamer wastes his exceptional BS to give some decent anti infantry firepower, but I suppose he can man a quad gun or something.  That said, the unit doing its primary objective of wasting tanks, don't actually need an Exarch.

Dark Reapers.  Again it depends, as a small squad of three is quite lethal vs marines and the Exarch pays all kinds of extortionate taxes on his upgrades. But the Exarch adds flexibility. With my favourite heavy weapon in the entire game in the Tempest Launcher, I always include him.  Fast shot is a must.

Dire Avengers.  Leaving the worst until last.  Their Exarch varies between being completely pointless and quite decent.  I would only ever include him if you have already got a full sized squad of Avengers, and then I would always give him the Power Weapon and Shimmer Shield combo to boost the entire unit.  He really doesn't have the statistics to go around assassinating multiple wound characters with a Diresword, a twin linked catapult is laughable compared to what it was in 4th edition and sword and pistol really doesn't make the squad a valid combat threat.

Now you might be wondering why I say the power blade option on the Warp Spider Exarch is a good idea, but the power weapon pistol combo on the Dire Avenger isn't.  The reason is the Warp spider keeps his considerably decent gun, and doesn't have a pistol.  He is also more liable to survive combat due to his better speed, and has hit and run.

Howling Banshees, can they be competitive in an Eldar list?

Howling Banshees.  Can they be a competitive choice in an Eldar list?

They are the unit which has virtually no love in the new book.  This article is going to compare them to units they compete against, within their own codex.  Specifically Striking Scorpions and Wraithblades.  All third units occupy the Elites slot, with Wraithblades having the ability to move into troops with a Spirit Seer.  Origonally I had included harlequins in this but they pretty much came last on everything.

For the sake of simplicity, we will take a ten man unit of each aspect and 5 wraithblades since they are quite similar on points.

10 Howling banshees
5 Wraithblades
10 Striking scorpions


These will be tested against MEQs, tau firewarriors and GEQs.  We are only including the melee ability of these units, not their shooting ability.  The reason being that all the units except Wraithblades have exactly the same BS and pistol weapon making this point redundant.

Fighting vs 10 GEQs
So, one of the more common match ups is against space marines.

Eldar Charge
Guardsmen stand and shoot.  They kill on average;

0.835 Banshees
0.184 Wraithblades
0.551 Scorpions

So Banshees are bottom for taking damage.  Lets assume that they all make it into combat though.
All of the eldar units strike before the guardsmen.  Banshee mask therefore contributes nothing to this combat.

Banshees kill 10.05 guardsmen leaving none to strike back.
Wraithblades kill 8.34 guardsmen leaving two to strike back.
Scorpions kill 3.35 with mandiblasters, and 9.023 with normal attacks, leaving none to strike back.

They all mop up guardsmen with ease, except the wraithblades.  Taking points into consideration, Banshees are cheaper than the other two, but kill 10 models all the same.  Banshees may win this round.


Fighting vs Firewarriors
This may be seen as quite an unusual choice of unit, but tau are increasingly common in games and fire warriors are perhaps the most points efficient troops choice in the entire game.  While pre 6th edition many players had never seen a tau army, they are everywhere like a bad smell these days.

Eldar charge
Tau Firewarriors stand and shoot.  They kill on average;

2.78 Banshees!
0.363 Wraithblades
0.92 Scorpions

That is really, really bad for Banshees.  Nearly 3 die on average charging just ten fire warriors.  Assuming some kind of miracle, and everyong makes it into combat, this is what happens.

Banshees kill 10.5 Firewarriors, leaving none to strike back.
Wraithblades kill 8.34 Firewarriors, leaving two to strike back.
Scorpions kill 2.5 with mandiblasters, and 6.734 leaving one to strike back.

Banshees out perform scorpions here.  Power swords make short work of the reasonably good tau armour, where scorpions struggle somewhat.  Wraithblades are consistent but don't kill a lot.  Still I expect them to wade through the remaining tau in the second turn with no losses.

Finally we will look at Fighting vs Marines
Still the most common unit type on the table, we need to consider how effective each type of eldar is against the humble tactical space marine.

Eldar charge
Marines stand and shoot.  They kill on average;

1.19 Banshees
0.184 Wraithblades
0.746 Scorpions

Again, the Banshees do badly here taking more damage.  Their lower armour is really hurting them.  Assuming they all make it over to combat, again, highly unlikely and we will run the numbers.

Banshees kill 4.95 marines, before the marines swing.  Not good for a unit designed to kill marines.
Wraithblades kill 6.225 marines before they swing.  They are super consistent vs any unit.
Scorpions kill 2.21 with mandiblasters and 2.475 with attacks.

None of them kill ten marines. 

Conclusion.
Which is best?  Well in all honesty there is not much to pick between Scorpions and Wraithblades.  Banshees die far too easily to be considered.  If I had taken their deaths into account on the maths, they would have come consistently bottom, and that is without factoring in any turns of shooting they may suffer on the way in.

Picking an effective HQ and Warlord for 6th edition 40k

This might seem quite obvious, but the key to having a good chance at victory, is designing a good list. I think I covered this topic a long time ago in 5th edition, but I am writing an update on it now. This particular article concentrates on HQs and why you shouldn't just dish out being the Warlord to just anyone. First and formost, every single army needs to include two troops choices and a HQ. This is mandatory across all armies. So when picking an army to collect, please pick one where you actually want to include these choices! You really dont want to be in a position where you don't like any of the troops choices, or worse, that you can't get them to work as effectively as you would want. Picking an effective HQ can often be a case of picking the cheapest and being done. There is nothing wrong with this strategy if the HQ is just there to hit the minimum HQ limit. Just try to keep his points down and hope for the best. In an ideal world, this cheap HQ brings something useful to the army, like the tau ethereals and cadre commanders.

Spending more on HQs, then you generally want him as a force multiplier. While there is nothing wrong with a combat character, I often use a Bloodthirster in my daemon army for example, he needs to do something other than hit things with a large stick. The reason I say this is because tooled up lords who do nothing else [generally space marine captains are the best fit here] are very cost ineffective. Ill explain. You have a tactical squad [pretty common in marine armies]. You buy a multimelta and a flamer, along with a sgt who has a powerfist. All very common and I belive this unit comes in around 195 points. You get 8/16 bolter shots, a multimelta and a flamer, you can score, and if you do get attacked in close combat, you get 9 marines attacking at an average ws/s/t and 2 powerfist attacks to threaten pretty much anything in the game. Krak grenades too, for monsters and dreads.

A tooled up marine captain, with terminator armour and a thunderhammer/stormshield has no shooting, and a meagre 3 thunderhammer attacks, which are near enough identical as powerfist attacks. This guy will set you back best part of 150 points. He has no ranged threat, and is very slow. He has far less going for him than the tactical squad, and has nothing else to offer but his limited close combat potential. He is however reasonably hard to kill, so in that respect, he may keep your warlord death victory point safe. Compare to a Bloodthirster.

He also can only fight in close combat, bar short ranged shooting attack, and costs an astronomical 300 points when upgraded. The Bloodthirster is also suspiciously vulnerable to shooting attacks, relying heavily on his toughness and power armour to see him through. Any s8+ ap3 or less weapons will destroy the Bloodthirster, and he can't join units and has problems hiding. Surely the Bloodthirster is a worse choice, especially as Daemons have an entire army devoted to killing things in close combat, where marines are more balanced and the combat ability of the captain is more appreciated? I say no. The Bloodthirster is a massive threat. People hear the name and it causes fear. Actual fear on the player, not that version included in the rules. They often concentrate fire on it to kill it off, before it gets to close combat. Another common feature is that people seem to want to be able to brag their X killed a Bloodthirster, so you can control the game in intangible ways with it. Its fast, and very hard to kill once it gets into close combat. Apart from Thunder Hammer equipped assault terminators, I don't think there is a unit or indeed character in the game who would fancy their chances, without some special monster hunting loadout. I hasten to add that a Bloodthirster really has no business being your Warlord. It atttracts far too much firepower, so outside of mono-khorne lists I would always have someone else being in charge. This frees the Bloodthirster up to go attack the enemy with impunity.

The most common utility HQs, which make the best Warlords, are psykers in my opinion. Provided you get access to some of the buff lores [divination and telepathy specifically from the big book] they can influence the game from relative safety. A few rerolls from divination can easily do more damage in one shooting phase than a combat lord can do in an entire game, without the risk of putting your lord on the front line. The flip side is you have to randomise your powers, so ensure you pick a lore with some good primaris powers. I would nearly always avoid pyromancy, unless your army has very limited shooting.

Other HQs worthy of mention are those who bring unique or useful powers to the table. Should they be the Warlord? Well it depends. Being Warlord means a lot of the time, they get the bonus of the Warlord power, rather than your army. So you want to look at the charts you can roll on and work out how many of the abilities would be useful to you. I would normally avoid making someone like Master of the Forge, or a Spiritseer my Warlord, because I don't think they are survivable enough. The same goes for Tyranid Primes, Guard Primaris Psykers, Chaplains and most other low wound/toughness/saves based HQs. Include them by all means, just please dont make them your Warlord! As a kind of conclusion, I would suggest picking a Warlord who is either a.cheap and can hide, b. more expensive and heavily protected or c. brings a crucial army buff you need. Don't just make your hardest combat unit a Warlord, as he is going to be in harms way.

Eldar Codex Review: The Avatar

The first none aspect warrior unit I am reviewing is the Eldar Avatar.

Anyone familiar with Avatars knows it traditionally comes with certain rules.  You know, Molten Body, Wailing Doom, Daemon etc.

Predictably, it still comes with these.  No sign of the "Court of the Young king" unit that I saw posted on various rumours websites.  Perhaps these will come out with a Biel Tan expansion.

So what changes does it have over a 4th edition Avatar.  I am sure this is why you are all here.

Well it has a good stat line.  Four stats hit 10, and I bet you can guess which ones they are!  It lost a point of invulnerable save and gained a wound, which is exactly in line with what Chaos Greater Daemons have in terms of protection.

It is very similar to a Bloodthirster, but considerably cheaper.  However it can't fly.  It does however have Battle Focus and a fearless bubble making it an ideal focal point for assault based armies.

You can interestingly buy it Exarch powers.  I think Fast Shot is a good buy here to fire Wailing Doom twice.  For the second power you will maybe find a few different combinations working.  Monster Hunter and Disarming Strike could be plain nasty!  Crushing Blow looks fairly pointless on an Avatar to me.

The only real kicker with the Avatar is it seems to have gone up in points by around 33% for a base model.  When you start factoring in upgrades in Exarch Powers it is approaching Land Raider and Bloodthirster costs.

Eldar Codex Review: Shining Spears

The third of the fast attack aspect warriors I am reviewing are Shining Spears.

As I mentioned in other articles, they have dropped quite a few points.  Perhaps not as many as I had initially claimed, but they are around 60% of their previous points cost.  They also do not seem to have changed at all in their abilities.

You may around 7 points a model on top of a jetbike and you get an aspect warrior with the same gun, same save, and same BS as a guardian.  So far, nothing impressive.

You also get the laser lance and skilled rider.  Skilled rider improves your units cover save, which is always a good thing.

Laser lances are as far as I can tell exactly the same as before.  They are good on a charge against anything not in terminator armour.  They are pretty dire should they not get to charge or get stuck in combat.  They can still shoot.

So you want an Exarch.  He wants hit and run.  He might even want a Star Lance, which turns him into a credible anti tank threat and should make short work of most walkers in close combat with it.

Oddly in the Iyanden expansion, it mentions there is a Phoenix lord of the Shining Spears, but that hes gone missing.  I am a bit disappointed that none of the "new" aspects, such as Spears, Spiders and Crimson Hunters get a Phoenix Lord.

Eldar Codex Review: Warp Spiders

The second Aspect Warrior I am reviewing are Warp Spiders.

Ill start with this.  Warp Spiders are insanely fast.  Absolutely incredibly fast.  I don't think there is a unit of infantry in the game with this speed.

Lets look at the nuts and bolts of this claim.

They can deep strike
Move 6 because they are jump jet infantry in the movement phase
Run/shoot or shoot/run a further d6 inches rerolled.
The either move 2d6 as jump jet infantry or 6+2d6 with a warp jump in the assault phase.

In theory they can move a whopping 30 inches in a turn.  The best any other infantry unit can move is 18.

Armour wise, they come with heavy aspect armour, which is the best available for Aspect warriors.

They keep their guns from 4th edition but have a slight tweak.  Mono-filament rule makes them kind of rending, and against low initiative, or indeed no initiative opponents their guns gain a point in strength.

So basically they got better.

Now the exarch can get a twin spinner or a spinneret rifle.  I think the rifle is the best bet here.  Its got a better range than before, indeed its quite decent range for such a low AP gun on a Unit champion.  He is probably a better buy than the hawk exarch, because he adds quite a lot of value to the unit.  Power blades are nice, but not really needed, but they may possibly get you out of a pickle.

These along with Swooping Hawks and Shining spears are vying for the most improved Aspect Warriors in this edition.  All three of these fast attack choices are good.

Eldar codex review: Swooping Hawks

Now I have to say, at first read, I was fairly disappointed by Swooping Hawks.  They didn't seem all that good.

The reality is blindingly different.

For a cost of three points more than a Dire Avenger you trade in your Avenger catapult for an assault 3 Lasgun.  While this is not massively impressive, the numbers back this up as being as effective against anything up to toughness four as a storm bolter, and better if their armour saves are worse than power armour.

The unit arrives by deep strike and does not scatter.  It throws a grenade with the same stats as a plasma missile with either a small or large blast depending on squad size.

It can also skyleap as before, allowing it to do this multiple times per battle.

Hawks also have haywire grenades and plasma grenades, meaning they can assault dreadnoughts better than any other unit in the eldar book.  While plasma grenades are not great, they are better to have than not.

I am unsure just how useful the Exarch will be to the squad, but he can add some harrassment value if he has one of the two upgraded guns.  One makes the three shot gun s5 and the other gives it blind.

As with other eldar units, you gain increased speed with battle focus allowing this unit to dance about at extreme ranges if needs be, and the wings along with skyleap allow full redeployment of the unit to where it is needed.

A very flexible unit in a codex full of units which only do one thing well.  I think Swooping Hawks have gone from a terrible unit in 4th edition to a top unit in 6th.  Their only real competition comes from Warp Spiders who do a similar thing, and will be reviewed by me another day.

For anyone following my blog, you will notice a trend that the Eldar are appearing to be better and better as I get better understanding on just how they work.

GW vs Chapterhouse studios

As someone who studied law for five years and has a law degree, I find the case between Chapterhouse studios and GW to be quite an interesting one.

As this case is still ongoing at the moment, it would be wrong of me to make any further comments.  Other sites may contain more information than this one, but I am keeping my opinions to myself until the case is resolved.

Eldar 6th Edition Codex Review: The good units

So far my previous two articles on the Eldar Codex have given it a complete battering.  I have read the rules through three or four times now and I think I may be coming round to the idea they are not quite as terrible across the board as I had initially thought.

First of all, there are good units in the codex.  That is, out and out, value for money units compared within their own book, and even across the other codexes out there.

Farseers.

These are very good value for their points cost.  Come in at the same cost as a Marine captain in the 5th edition book, are level 3 casters with access to Divination, Telepathy and Runes of Fate.  You want Runes of Fate, and you might want Divination.  I wouldn't personally consider Telepathy a useful use of their time.

They have access to Runes, Ghosthelms etc which are all slightly changed, but not significantly so from what they did previously.  Singing Spears seem better.  No longer specialist weapons/Two handed so as far as I can tell you have no reason not to find the small amount of points to upgrade.  I believe its the same as in the 4th edition book in cost.  Still not Force Weapons.

I think one Farseer is nigh on mandatory.  The Eldar book needs the buffs they provide to become viable and drag some units to become competitive.  In fact there is only one reason I can think, in a standard FOC setting when you wouldn't want to take two.

The reason is the Spiritseer

Spiritseer

A cut price, two wound Farseer.  I believe he is a level 2 psyker too with same Lore access as the Farseer. Comes with a witch staff.  What you include him for is making Wraithguard and Wraithblades scoring Troops rather than Elites.  So good for Iyanden Craftworld armies.  If you are including a unit of Wraithguard or Wraithblades, take a long hard look at this character, expecially if you haven't ear marked the second HQ slot.  Compared to the other troops choices, Wraith units are very hardy.  No longer any requirement for ten either to be scoring.

Jetbikes

These are cheap.  I believe they got a price cut of around 5 points and have the same options as before.  Tough and fast scoring units with jink to throw in a cover save.  Guns are short ranged as ever, but good for winning the movement phase.  Expect to see a lot of these.   The only real downside is the old model.  The same jetbike exists from when I started playing in 1994.  I have no idea when it came out, but it was nearly two decades ago.

Shining Spears

Got a huge points reduction.  Nearly 20 points a model cheaper, or half price I believe!  Same stats as before, but are now reasonably priced.  No longer do laser lances seem an over priced piece of tat and the one attack on the stat line doesn't annoy me so much.  Come with a whole range of abilities to keep them alive.  Skilled Rider is nice on them.

Striking Scorpions

Not the unit as such.  I don't like how mandiblasters became far more complicated.  As I mentioned in my previous posts, they now function like a permanent Hammer of Wrath attack, rather than giving the model a bonus attack.  The effects of this are that the strength of the hit is lower, because it doesn't use the chainsword. but it does automatically hit.  I have not run the exact numbers at this time, but I suspect they may actually be more effective now.

No, the main reason for the inclusion of the Striking Scorpions on the good list is this.  The Scorpions Claw wargear item for the Exarch.  It is simply insanely decent.  It gives the same stat bonuses as a regular old powerfist, you know like it used to be in 4th edition, and has a built in Shurican catapult.  Now I am not a fan of the new weapon on Guardians and Dire Avengers, but as a backup weapon to the main combat weapons, it is fine.

The truly great part of the claw is that the scorpion exarch can stack with an exarch power, making his fist the same strength as a marine using a powerfirst.  However the best bit is it is not a specialist weapon, nor is it unwieldy.  This means he hits nearly everything first, and gets a bonus attack from his chainsword, making up for losing a fist attack to the mandiblasters.

Wave Serpent

It has to be said, I didn't see why this was so good.  But it turns out the actual "shield" on the tank can be fired, and it seems exceptionally good when combined with laser lock.  It may make all of the other eldar tanks redundant given it doesn't take up slots and it also carries the most troops into battle.

Eldar 6th edition Codex Review in more detail

I have had a proper read through this now.  Here are my thoughts.

Im pretty sure at best the Eldar are the worst 6th ed codex. Perhaps even worse than Chaos marines in terms of useful units.

HQs

Farseer and Spiritseers are the only decent HQs. Pretty much all the special characters are over priced. All the relics are rubbish, beyond some possible uses for the wing thing that allows a super run.

Avatar is over costed and nothing special. Greater daemons without wings are a bad idea. Autarch is kind of okay, nothing spectacular. He will die horribly vs any proper melee Lord. The only real use I can see is give him a jetbike and either a fusion gun or a reaper launcher.

Warlocks I kind of like. Since you get free powers and don't need to pay for them. However you do have to cast them now. On fairly shoddy leadership.

Ancient doom is kind of poor. How many slaanesh armeis are out there? Battle focus is possibly good, possibly average. Its certainly not bad.

The Warlord chart is bad. Absolutely nothing stands out as good. A lot of it is lame.

Troops

Dire Avengers are MORE expensive, despite being worse. No the false rending on the guns is not great. If they had their ability to increase rate of fire as well, then maybe they might be acceptable. I suppose the clue is in the name.

Guardians. Well they got better BS and WS and I think Initiative. They did not get Tau fire warrior better, and they cost the same. However they are less terrible than Dire Avengers and get at least reasonably costed heavy weapons. The combat guardians are still bad.

Jetbikes are good. Cheaper and same as before from what I can tell.

Rangers seem awfully expensive for t3 models with sniper rifles, and cost even more when path finders. Did GW not learn from over pricing Waywatchers? Clearly not.

Wave Serpent is kind of a battle tank and not a transport now. Ive seen suggestions it should be using its shield to attack, but then it will open itself up to dying a lot more. Seems very pricey but I suppose it does now have the improved BS along with all the other guardians.

Elites

Wraithguard. I like. They got cheaper and now have weapon options for something which appear to be d-cannon flamers. Expect to see a lot of these, more so if the Iyanden suppliment is any good.

Wraithknights. "Combat" troops with 1 attack base. For more than chaos terminators. I think not.

Scorpions. I kind of think these got better. Mandiblasters got turned into hammer of wrath that works every round, where as the Scorpions claw is decent expecially with the strength boosting exarch power.

Banshees. Still too low strength to reliably kill power armour. Not as good as scorpions at all. Banshee masks now worse.

Harliquins. A bit odd. Veil of tears is back as it was in the old codex, but you need to cast it. Still expensive. Will die in droves should you fail to cast the spell or the enemy gets to shoot them. Not as good as scorpions.

Fire Dragons. Huge price increase. Improved saves. Still good value in all honesty.

Fast Attack.

Wow, finally got to a slot where there is competition for slots!

Swooping Hawks. Became better, and cheaper. Still have haywire grenades, fly and their guns are slightly better.

Warpspiders. I think they also became better. Against tanks their guns are better. The only real downside is most units can now "jump" away with the shoot/run option so their own gimmick is not so good.

Shining spears. Became considerably cheaper. I think otherwise they are the same. A very decent unit now.

Vyper. I think they are too expensive for how fragile they are. They can however use the laser lock rule, but since their other weapon isn't very good, I don't see many of these being used, especially given the other fast attack options are good.

New aircraft. I know one isn't in fast attack slot, but I am including them here for completion. Both are the lowest armour in the game going and will die. Too expensive by half. The Crimson hunter Exarch has perhaps something going for him, but hes really quite expensive. The Wraithfighter thing, I really just dislike. Terrify power is nothing special.

Heavy Support.

Dark Reapers. I quite like them. They are slow and purposeful and can have krak missiles. In some absurd fashion they are unable to take skyfire missiles, unlike marine and chaos marine devastators. Reaper exarch will need a mortgage to buy his gear and skills as per the last edition.

Warwalkers. I like. Powerfield makes them a bit tougher, and they can get some mileage from the laser lock.

Falcon. Probably the worst battle tank now. Out classed by the Wave serpent that doesn't take up a slot.

Fire Prism. Its pretty good, but pricey for a one gun tank. Due to deaths from glancing, rather than penetrating hits, the prism cannon will likely survive with its gun in tact. A solid choice.

Wraithlord. Still good. Can now take two heavy weapons without having to twin link them. Honestly I think this is better than the Wraithknight.

Wraithknight. Stupidly expensive jumpjet monster. Has high toughness, the same as Wraithlords, but will need to sacrifice one of its two big guns for a shield for a much needed if quite poor invulnerable save. Oddly you can't choose a mix of weapons, you have three combinations and that is all you can pick from. Can take two identical shoulder heavy weapons. Wants to take scatter lasers, so you can use laser lock on the main gun you have left with the shield.

Night spinner. Became worse I think. I don't really like it. Just take a fire prism.

Support platforms. Still good. D-cannon is expensive, but possibly very scary. All D-weapons are very decent.

Eldar 6th Edition Codex Review first impressions

I have the new Eldar codex.  If I had to pick one word to describe it, I would say, disappointed.

Now, lets start with the good.  Farseers and the new Spirit Seers are both solid choices.  The Runes of Fate lore is very similar to the old Eldar spells from the 4th edition book, but with two new powers.

Warlocks are now very similar to Royal Courts.  You buy them as one unit, and split them off.  Some debate exists on whether you generate spells before or after splitting them up.  There is also an absurdity where a jetbike warlock splitting off counts as being an infantry unit.  I expect that to be errataed.

Swooping hawks became better.  Their guns became marginely better and they became a bit cheaper.  In fact, most of the improved units, are improved by virtue of being cheaper.  Shining Spears, Guardian Jetbikes and Wraithguard also feature in this section.

All shurikan weapons got a kind of false rending.  Guardians got a boost on WS and BS.  Still got pistol ranged rifles.  Not sold.  Their heavy weapons became cheaper though and they can take more than one in a unit.

They have some nifty run/shoot or shoot/run option available to most of the living eldar units.  Time will tell if this is a gimmick, game breaking, or more probably something in between.  I suppose its kind of like having the jetpack rule, but better.  Will need some games to decide if I like this.  Dark Reapers can even use this.

Dark reapers can have the option for krak like missiles, but no skyfire, unless I misread something.  Huge opportunity lost.

Exarches have similar upgrades and maybe better powers than before. Again, its something that will need to be played.

Scorpions claw is not a powerfist and doesnt strike last.  With the exarch being able to up his strength on exarch powers, he will be quite good.

Eldrad can run and is the same toughness.  Thats something I guess.

I think that is about it for improvements.

Downsides, where do I begin?

Avatar, is a whole bunch more expensive, gains a wound, reduces his invulnerable save to the daemons standard.  Oh and he can buy options.

Phoenix Lords.  Terribly over priced.  Pretty much across the board.  They are all the wrong side of 200 points.

Guardians.  Yes they are better.  No they are still not very good.  Same price as Tau fire warriors despite being considerably worse.

Guardian defenders.  An even worse unit than they used to be.  Can for some unusual reason take two with power swords, but no champion.

Dire avengers are more expensive, probably due to the false rending ability.  They may be possibly acceptable, but they are only one point cheaper than a dark angel tactical marine.

Banshees are utterly lame.  Mask has been nerfed into a slaanesh like reduce the enemy initiative ability.

Mandi blasters are now basically the same as hammer of wrath in every round.  Not as good as before.

Reaper exarch lost his ultimate killing ability with the tempest launcher and crack shot, unless I am missing something.

Fire dragons went up in points, by a fair amount and gained slightly better saves.

Thats it for now. Please find the other articles written on this subject below;



6th Edition Eldar in more Detail
6th Edition Eldar the good units
6th Edition Eldar Swooping Hawks
6th Edition Eldar Warp Spiders
6th Edition Eldar Shining Spears
6th Edition Eldar Avatar
Can Howling Banshees be competative?
To Exarch or not?

Tau 6th Edition Troops Review, aka Firewarriors, Firewarriors, Firewarriors

This is a really really straight forwards review.  Lets start with this.  Tau Firewarriors are probably the best troops choice in the entire game.  You can probably ignore Kroot entirely, since they are no longer a combat unit.

Let me explain my thoughts.  Tau firewarriors went down in points to less than ten points each, the same points as Daemonettes, Plaguebearers and Pink Horrors.

For the low, low cost of 99 points, you can get 11 Fire warriors.  If they shoot at 7 Dark Angel tactical marines, which come to 98 points, in a book also written by the same author, then you can see what I mean.

11 Firewarriors at long range kill 2.39 Tacticals.  In rapid fire range they kill 4.79.  This is the equivelent of 33.46 points killed at long range and 67.06 points killed at short range.

The 7 Dark Angels only kill 1.57 Fire Warriors at long range, and 3.14 at long range.  In terms of points killed, at long range Dark Angels kill 14.13 points and at short range 28.26 points.

So yeah.  They are 2.37 times more points efficient at killing the cheapest marines, than the marines are at killing them back.

Painting Slaanesh Daemons

I have over the years really struggled with painting Daemons of Slaanesh.  I was never happy with them being flesh coloured and I admit I am not a good enough painter to paint them in the grey colour scheme that GW uses on its official models.

So instead I decided to take a different approach and go for a much darker theme.  In the past my Slaanesh units have been very bright such as the very bright and poorly painted chariot I did around six years ago which can be found towards the bottom of this article, along with the new and improved scheme.

 So while painting up my 40k Daemon army, I decided to go with something a little different.  A darker, more serious theme, while still maintaining the key Slaanesh colours to embrace the fact that this is my favourite Chaos god, and I really wanted to do it justice.  Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeench schemes are simple, quick and easy to pull off.

This new Slaanesh one is quite time consuming, as it involved several layers of washes to add highlights which you have to wait to dry.  I am not a pro painter by any stretch, but I do like my models to at least look passable!

Step 1.

Spray the models White.  I used GW white undercoat spray, but really any will do.

Step 2.

Paint the whole model Slaanesh Grey.  It is actually a purple colour when it dries.  Very strange naming convention really.

Step 3.

Paint all the spines in Dheneb stone, or some other bone colour.  I still have the old foundation colour so that is what I used.  I painted the horns this colour as well.

Step 4.

Give the flesh areas a Purple wash.  I used Leviathan Purple.  I then used Nuln oil on the black areas, giving the claws two separate coats.  You need to leave an hour to two hours for the washes to dry.

Step 5.

Paint the details.  I painted the eyes white and tongues pink on the Fiends.  I used the same purple wash on the tongue.  On the Keeper of Secrets I painted the eyes red and the Sword bronze before giving it a black wash.

Step 6.

Once the model is dry it is time to base it. I use a fairly time intensive process for this. If you have a better method please do use that instead. I first coat the base in Calthan brown. I then dip this in slate for model railways which I purchased from my local modelling shop. This is then left to dry for two hours. I am sure you can leave it less time, but I like this to be totally dry for the next stage.

Step 7.

After it is totally dry I then apply a watered down layer of PVA glue over the whole base. Allow all the excess glue and water to drain off. This should be left an hour to partially dry before the next stage. The reason I do this is because in the past I have had bad experiences of the basing coming off models.

Step 8.

The final stage, apply small amounts of static grass to the base. I find this is best to apply once the glue is partially dry so that the grass doesn’t move around too much. I then left this overnight, as the PVA takes around eight hours to totally dry.

Now for something a little different

On my adventures through the internet, I see a lot of 40k related things.  Most of it is bad, some of it good and just occasionally a real gem appears.

This could quite easily be one of those gems;

The Trails of Draigo. Safe for Work version
The Trails of Draigo. Not Safe for Work version