Chapter Tactics is a 40k podcast which focuses on promoting better tactical play and situational awareness across all variations of the game. Today Peteypab, Geoff, Reece, and Sean discuss their plans and lists for tournaments they are attending this summer season. They also cover the meta impacts that might effect their list building.
Show Notes:
- Head on over to 40kstats.com for more faction stats for all major ITC tournaments!
- Support us on Patreon, this month and get a chance to a free LVO High Roller Package.
- Click here for a link for information on downloading best coast pairings app where you can find lists for most of the events I mention.
- Check out the last episode of Chapter Tactics here. Or, click here for a link to a full archive of all of our episodes.
- Commercial music by Music by: www.bensound.com
- Intro by: Justin Mahar
Reece: “Tank Commanders moving out of cover, double shooting, moving back into cover are soooo much fun!”
Lol. So now Reeces is playing (the better T8 version) pre-nerf Ynnari Reapers (without the risk of failing the double shoot, nor being limited to only one unit), after complaining since 8th dropped that they are “super unfun” and “bad for the game” and “can’t have that in a limited action economy”?
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Leman Russes are priced with shooting twice in mind.
Dark Reapers are not.
Reece always made a point about fun and breaking the limited action economy, not points efficiency.
That said, they aren’t priced very differently (well, now they are, since Reapers only shot once now).
9 (ignoring the exarch) dark reapers double shooting with Yvraine to make it happen is 400 points for (incl. the double tap) 18 Str. 8 shots. And it only works roughly 60% of the time with Yvraine casting old-school WoP, so realistically 14.4 Str. 8 AP -2 shots per turn at roughly 400 points.
Double-tapping Tank Commanders average those 14 Str. 8 AP -2 shots at just 344 points or 21 Str. 8 AP-2 shots at 500 points (ignoring Heavy Bolters, Plasma Cannons, all the jazz) if they use orders to fire & fade or -1, not boost to their shots or re-roll 1s, with lower variance (depite being a D6 shot weapon) since there’s no failure point in the casting.
Assuming one Russ has the flat damage 3 gun (or you add Plasma, or you make them Cadian/Catachan, etc.), they are more efficiently priced for the damage they throw out than double shooting than Reapers ever were.
There’re differences, sure, Reapers hit better against Flyers, though Commanders bring 28 to 42 T8 wounds, instead of 9 T3 wounds, are not limited to 1 unit doing it, are in an army with much better board control, not losing chapter tactics, losing your free relic, etc..
Still, if anything, pre-nerf Ynnari Reapers as the thing that offended most people about Ynnari (rightly so) was less ridiculously priced than Tank Commanders are.
If Tank Commanders are priced roughly correctly for balance, Reapers (and/or similar units in non-Imperium armies) would need both native, CP free double-tapping and go down in points.
I’m going to take a wild stab at it and say, I don’t believe that you have actually played the game. That is the only viable reason that you would be comparing a lone tank commander which can be touched in combat, suffers modifiers to hit, and has tremendously variable damage to dark reapers which can actually make themselves unshootable and unassaultable.
It is either that or you are trolling for the sake of trolling. Either way, your opinion sounds uninformed and emotion driven.
Sure, they have different strengths and weaknesses. No comparison is ever perfect.
You can touch Dark Reapers in combat. You can also shoot them with a Wyvern or something and nix their damage completely by dealing half a dozen of wounds, which Tank Commanders laugh at. And Guard can put more screens into 100 points or so than Eldar can put into a 5 times that. Etc.., etc.. Not to mention fire-&-fade can at least be be Vected and WoP can be denied, while Tank Orders/Grinding Advance are completely non-interactive. Lack of interactivity tends to be the inferior side of game design (in my humble opinion).
You don’t even need to benchmark it against (double shooting) Dark Reapers. They are just widely hailed (and explicitly by Reece) as one of the most broken shooting things out there, thus something that is more point efficient than Reapers with more range and more resilience, etc.. while giving up far less and, for the point here specifically, has the same fire-&-fade trick and the same free-extra-actions-in-a-limited-action-economy which Reece explicitly describe as anathema to good game design, doesn’t seem perfectly fine.
Point efficiency of the unit is actually irrelevant to the argument Reece made. His argument was on the principle of Ynnari (allegedly) breaking core tenets of the game in unsustainable ways.
There is no emotion driving it beyond witnessing a person (Reece) express diametrically opposite views on the same game mechanic (a hyper-efficient shooting unit scooting in and out of LoS/cover, denying interaction with the opponent), for no other reason than the game pieces with (formally) these rules come in different shapes (and he himself plays with one of them, not the other).
If anything, it’s observing this type of emotional bias at the expense of rationality, which puzzles me.
I play with both units, haha, as I said. I have a unit of 10 Reapers in my Eldar list which I have mentioned several times. I lovingly collected a full unit of the 3rd ed version, my favorite aesthetically.
Compare the Russ to the Fire Prism, that’s apples and apples.
While I appreciate the analysis, it’s apples and oranges my friend. Comparing an Infantry unit to a Tank is silly.
And I still use my Dark Reapers in my Eldar army as well, and they’re still amazingly good, can ride in a transport, go into ruins, etc.
And 28 to 42 T8 wounds? Russes have 12 wounds and you can only take 3 Tank Commanders so it’s 12 to 36, max. Unless you have crazy terrain you’re not going to be able to use their JSJ ability on all of them, and only 1 gets the relic battle cannon.
Yeah man… I’ve been running Pask + 3xTCs for a looooooong time now (I actually think I’m putting Pask out to pasture after my latest tourney), and they hit super hard, don’t get me wrong… but they’ve never been in the same neighborhood as pre-nerf Ynnari Reapers or the Castellan.
As most everyone else has pointed out, the fact that they can be booped is a massive disadvantage to them when compared the Castellan(native fallback & shoot)/Reapers(feigned retreat), add in the ability for Reapers to move through walls as infantry combined with Fire and Fade and they way more slippery than Tallarn TCs imo.
I will say that they’re definitely a very good unit though, but there’s at least a few other Imperium units that can compete with them in their role, and certainly platforms from other factions as well. I would say Knight Crusaders, and Caladius Grav Tanks can contribute similarly to a list while bringing some other advantages. Outside of the Imperium faction, 3xFire Prisms + Linked Fire has very similar dakka proportional to the points/investment with similar resiliency, and Riptides have some very similar output, but come at a higher cost coupled with a lot better resiliency through drones (as mentioned).
Very nice Episode.
I always like it when Geoff and Reece are on the air.
Glad you enjoyed it =)
Oh sure, leman russes can move-shoot-move, but tau don’t get to.
They can with a relic.
Tau are doing great right now. I understand the frustration as they used to get it but Russes don’t have access to wound eating drones like Tau do. If you could JSJ with suits AND get Drone wound absorption it would be too much, IMO. One or the other is a great defensive strategy but both would be OTT.
Reece flying in with the correct take.
PS. I hate the wound conversion mechanic for drones. Taking a 6 dmg shot and only having to make a 5+ savior protocols FnP save suuuuuuuuuuuucks. Either making them take that 5+ on every point of damage or not getting it for anything with more than 1 DMG like Nurglings.
It’s definitely not the most fun mechanic, but the faction is balanced around savior protocols. It’d take a drastic redesign of their defense or offensive output to change that.
Yeah, it is annoying but needed for the army to function.
They really should’ve just kept it with drones joining the unit they were purchased for. Works fine for Deathwatch and Space Wolves.
Dalyth anybody?
A terrible stratagem that is strictly worse than all other versions of the same ability in a really bad subfaction.
I just read up on it again. You have to declare its use at the start of the phase (that makes it worse than fire and fade) but you don’t have to shoot with that unit right away (It’s like IG orders that you have to execute immediatly but the wording lets you do stuff later).
You move 6″ and you cannot advance, same as FaF. You could even charge if you wanted to as opoosed to FaF.
Apart from having to declare it at the start of the phase and the move being only 6″, how is it worse?
Am i missing something obvious here?
They should look into the Imperial Fist Centurions more, lot of people seem to miss the point. 6 man Imperial Fist centurions with strats, +1 to hit (warlord) and re-roll 1s (capt. / lt.) can deal about 27 mortal wounds, plus force that many saves and more to a vehicle. That will kill a knight a turn.
Damnit, now I have to prove Geoff wrong. Guess I need to play at Socal…