Illic and Rangers, the character killers

I'm trying to work out a sensible way to remove characters and feel we don't really have anything specific, so turning to Craftworld for some help. Problem is that nearly all characters have an invuln and/or a decent save. Illic and Rangers are the obvious choice still though, has anyone tried them? What do they work against and what don't they work against? Are they worth taking in an all comers list and if so, in what quantities? I was also considering plonking them inside a building for a nice solid shield. Bastion or Bunker basically.

Quick maths shows these guys up to be terrible. Lol.

10 Rangers (that's 200 points!!) shooting at T4 give you 1.67 unsaved wounds against a 4+ save or 1.11 unsaved wounds against a 3+ save. That's totally useless, seeing as most chars have at lest 4 wounds. It would take 2 turns of shooting to kill a single 30 point Commissar.

Any other solutions?

I deifnitely think they have potential, but haven't had a chance to use them yet.

If you're going to put them in a Void Shield, I think they'll ALSO need to be in some kind of cover within the shiled to make use of their own abilities properly.
I'd be tempted to say make it a Defence Line, so that your opponent can't just target the Fortification and make that explode on you.

But my best suggestion is obviously going to be FORTRESS OF REDEMPTION.
But thats just me.

(Also, I just notice that you're south-central UK. So am I. I'm curious where you are now.....)

I tried them last week and found them to be excellent. Are you counting the mortal wounds in their damage output?

Illic especially I found to be good. 2+ to hit, 2+ to wound, -3AP, D3 damage and a mortal wound on a 6 is very good against characters.

I have to agree with the Count's assessment. Rangers and Illic in particular have become a staple in my force. Mortal Wounds on a 6+ do make a huge difference and Illic is just nasty.

Deepstrike gives them additional flexibility and they are quite difficult to shift when in cover.

Whilst it is of course dependent on luck, the ability to inflict mortal wounds is very nice. Anecdotally, in my game last week a squad of 5 Rangers shot at some Death Guard in cover and rolled 3 sixes to wound, killing 3 of them straight off the bat before I even started on the normal damage.

Illic also killed off the Warlord and another champion-type.

Hellstrom wrote:

Quick maths shows these guys up to be terrible.  Lol.

10 Rangers (that's 200 points!!) shooting at T4 give you 1.67 unsaved wounds against a 4+ save or 1.11 unsaved wounds against a 3+ save.  That's totally useless, seeing as most chars have at lest 4 wounds.  It would take 2 turns of shooting to kill a single 30 point Commissar.

Any other solutions?

In my math they kill a commissar a turn with 9 guys (6 hits=> 4 wounds +1MW)
So 6 turns would lead to 6 dead commissars (or was there a farseer, lelith, a solitair of any of the other expensive HQ and whoops you just kill around 120 points in 2 turns)
Now against most weaker chars of around 30 points (often elites not hq you kill them in 1 turn) and most other squishy hq (often expensive and hard to kill otherwise since they are well protected) you kill around 60-120 points in 2 turns
Only the thougher (often cc monsters) you need more then 2 turns. But I find that if a warlord only has 1 or 2 wounds left he suddenly becomes a lot less usefull since he has to spend effort into protecting him

I don't like rangers too much, but I was thinking to have Illic as one of my HQs, not to kill big heroes but mainly for "secondary characters" like Commissars, beastmasters or apothecary.

Do you think he can work alone or will his damage output be too poor?

I found him pretty effective. He reliably does 1W a turn against pretty much any Infantry other than those with 4++ or better invulnerables. The ability to do 3 wounds plus a mortal wound in a single shot is potentially nasty too.

I used Illic in my first 4 games of 8th, just to shoot at Chars.  He managed 2 wounds total.  Shooting every turn across all 4 games.  Averaging a couple of wounds.  Didn't roll a single 6 to get a mortal wound, but with only 1 dice per turn, that's not surprising.  As I said earlier, nearly every char in the game has an invuln, so the -3 is pretty useless.  Depends on what you are fighting I guess, but there aren't enough armies that don't have invulns to both taking him I don't think?

Rangers have exactly the same issue.  Putting down 1 wound on a Marine for a 200points unit is pretty terrible.

Can anyone show me any mathhammer to show me otherwise?

Well he hits on a 2+ and wounds on a 2+ so that's 0.69 wounds before any saves. In order to only get 2 wounds through over the course of 24 shots would statistically mean a better than 2++ save on your target.

Each shot does, on average:

Save (wounds)
1+ (0.35)
2+ (0.46)
3+ (0.58)
4+ or worse (0.69)
2++ (0.12)
3++ (0.23)
4++ (0.35)
5++ (0.46)
6++ (0.58)

You then need to multiply the number in brackets by the result of the D3 and take into account any 'secondary save' that might apply.

And this is without scoring a single mortal wound.

TLDR: You've rolled freakishly badly!

Have I though? At a 0.35 chance to wound, I don't think it's totally unsurprising that I didn't wound is it?

Hellstrom wrote:

Have I though?  At a 0.35 chance to wound, I don't think it's totally unsurprising that I didn't wound is it?

On one shot, no. But on 24?

Putting it this way: 24*0.35= 8.4. Which is prior to Mortal Wound Count.

Chance of a Mortal Wound per shot: (5/6)*(1/6)=0.138888888888...

Therefore you should have caused 24*0.1388888888...=3.333... Mortal Wounds.

Which totals to 12.733.. Wounds against models with a 1+ Armour save. Which is more than half a Wound per shot. Against Terminators in cover, that's hardly amazing, but it's a damned sight better than the attrociously poor luck you seem to have had with your rolls.

Illic and the Rangers suffer from the Sniper problem, that being that they are expensive and don't really have the volume of fire to carry out the threat that they should represent.

ratlings are however only 7pts per model compared to rangers 20 and just as good at shooting things

#^|*]£#^{]£^[£~^{^}*]€}£}^{£#^}£^#^#^{%%]%}}*]*] IMPERIAL BIAS!

My experience mirrors Hellstrom... Absolutely bugger all damage across 3 games

They are to costly for me, i just throw a Solitaire at them or try to kill its bubble quickly lol.

Used Illic and 2 squads of Rangers again last night. I was going second and my opponent decided he didn't like the look of Illic and 1 of the Ranger squads and opened fire with:

3 SM Centurions (ignores cover)
2 Squads of 5 Sniper Scouts
Telion
3 Windriders (it was a doubles match so 2 x 1000 point armies)

At the end of that, Illic and the Rangers were no more but they had absorbed an ungodly amount of firepower (6-700 points worth), sparing the rest of my army from too much damage. Not bad for 188 points!

amishprn86 wrote:

They are to costly for me, i just throw a Solitaire at them or try to kill its bubble quickly lol.

Problem is, that the people I play against aren't crap, so the just put their characters in the middle of large squads, or even multiples of squads, so I literally can't assault them ... or shoot them from any angle. So combat or "clever deepstriking" doesn't work at all.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Used Illic and 2 squads of Rangers again last night. I was going second and my opponent decided he didn't like the look of Illic and 1 of the Ranger squads and opened fire with:

3 SM Centurions (ignores cover)
2 Squads of 5 Sniper Scouts
Telion
3 Windriders (it was a doubles match so 2 x 1000 point armies)

At the end of that, Illic and the Rangers were no more but they had absorbed an ungodly amount of firepower (6-700 points worth), sparing the rest of my army from too much damage. Not bad for 188 points!

This is excellent for you, but it's terrible target prioritisation from your opponent

Never said they are crap... many of them go to tournaments and are always positive win/lost ratio.

Its just you can blow a hole easily with DE and charge them, you can target Characters for charging just not shooting.

amishprn86 wrote:

Never said they are crap... many of them go to tournaments and are always positive win/lost ratio.

Its just you can blow a hole easily with DE and charge them, you can target Characters for charging just not shooting.

How easily? It takes me at least 1000 points of DE shooting to kill 20 Necron Warriors. That's a troop squad. If I leave 2 alive, they can easily be positioned so that the Character still cannot be charged, as the defender decides which models to remove.

Love your Avatar btw

For Necrons its a bit different, for SM, IA, Orks, IG, Nids etc.. even Eldar you can easily pop holes.

Thats what necrons do they survive, its suppose to take extra points to shoot and kill units, you need to play the movement game with them and focus down a unit until its dead.

Also Harlequins can charge over units, this is one of the reasons why i dont have a problem as much, sense i play Harlequins/DE (harlequins as my Melee, im trying DE ones the past week and if you kept up i didnt like DE melee as much, going back to Quins as my melee), I also been using Flocks to overwtach soaks.

Sense you can multi charge (even with 1 model) and the way melee is, its easy to to get where you want.

Example:
You target the 3 warriors left and multi target the Cryptek in the back an (lets say he is 10" away the warrirors are 5" away) you declare a multi charge on those 2, you roll a 7", you move over the Warriors to stay within 1" of your 1st charge (the warriors, sense you only need the 1st model to be within 1") the other models move the full 7" closre to the Cryptek but your still out of range, you then "pile in" 3" into the Cryptek making you within the 1" mark and now you can target some on the warriors and some on the IC.

This is what i've been doing and so far it has been working great for me.

Edit: CC has so many shenanigans its insane, anyone that says CC is boring and not tactical thought hasnt play the game enough, it has some of the most crazy things i've seen in 40k yet

Your example is illegal I'm afraid. If you don't have any model within 1" of the Cryptek, you cannot select him as a unit to fight with in the Fight Phase, so you don't get the 3" Pile In. (read Step 5. Fight Phase).

I'll take a look at the Quins for CC, I haven't really investigated them yet.

Your right, then make it >charge kill > Consolidate