Over-szied beast packs.. thoughts.

So yesterday I played 1750 vs necrons.

I ran:
hamonc
baron
3 lots of spinterborn in venoms
5 lots of wracks in radier, 2 lances, 3 dissies
3 ravagers, 2 lance, 1 dissie
and 2 beast packs
on with 4 masters and 8 flocks (ran with the baron)
the other wit 4 masters and 20 khymerae.

my opponent had:
stormlord in a barge
a 20 man warrior squad
4 night scythes (with a 5man immortal squad for each)
and 2 doom scythes

i was mostly wanting to see how viable going for a khymerae blob was, unfortunately the flier list didn't really give them a lot of targets. It was a 5 objective game, played lengthways with the short edges.

He went first and I lost first blood to stormlord's lightning. managed to lay down a lot of fire, almost killing the 20 man squad and knocking the stormlord out of his chariot. the beats both moved up.
Turn 2 the baron (at the head of my razorwings) have to make a single lightning save and flunked it so fell to instant death right away. the flocks then lost 2 bases to torrents of fire but managed to charge the stormlord and kill him and his squad (twice, he rez orb'd). The khymera took a lot of flier shots, and ended up failing leadership and falling back. Tho in truth there wasn't a lot for them to assault.
Once the squads had been picked up it was mostly a game of attrition and evasion. Since it went the full 7 turns we managed to wipe out each others troop units and tho all 6 fliers stayed in the air, I eventually managed to win 2-1 with warlord and linebreaker to his first blood.

The razorwings were a bit lightweight without the baron.. maybe harsh to judge them on this game. and the khymerae are difficult to call. What they did do was run around the middle of the table covering about 3 objectives (they'd assault and kill any small immortal unit that came down there) and blocking off flier movement helping to deny targets. That in itself was pretty useful, i'm just not sure if it was high 200 points level of useful.


anyone else run very large pure khymerae squads? how did it go for you?

Baron
4 beastmasters
20 dogs
allied farseer w/shard.

This unit will win you games, either through rolling up the enemy, or attracting a LOT of firepower, letting your other units roll up the enemy.

Skulnbonz wrote:

allied farseer w/shard.

Shard struck me as a bit lacklustre. might be useful in challenges, but with 4 BMs and the baron around, the seer's unlikely to end up in one anytime soon.

I did think about eldar allies, but for for a warlock than the seer. A warlock with conceal plus the baron would give the pack a 2+ cover save if moving up thru terrain. Trophies on a couple of venoms could give psychic test support to the warlock, so there's some synergy there.

bit dubious about the farseer. rerolls to hit from prescience is decent, tho that many beasts tend to kill most things. The other 2 random other powers could be very hit and miss.

eris wrote:

I did think about eldar allies, but for for a warlock than the seer. A warlock with conceal plus the baron would give the pack a 2+ cover save if moving up thru terrain. Trophies on a couple of venoms could give psychic test support to the warlock, so there's some synergy there.

bit dubious about the farseer. rerolls to hit from prescience is decent, tho that many beasts tend to kill most things. The other 2 random other powers could be very hit and miss.

You can't take Warlocks in allied detachments, only in primary. Also, the Farseer has access to some excellent psychic powers, plus you can guarantee getting both Guide and Prescience if you wish, so they are excellent force multipliers.

Guide when you're bs4 isn't actually that useful. That's why the majority of eldar lists have now discarded farseers. It used to be that guide, doom and fortune were vital, now they're bs4 and doom and fortune can't be attained reliably, so farseers have largely been dumped by the wayside.

DE have the same issue. There's no real need for guide, it's points to return ratio just isn't that good at bs4. Prescience could work well for the beasts, but they do already have enough attacks to make up for lack of rerolls. They may have access to some excellent psychic powers, but they also have access to some terrible ones. And none is more likely than the other.

eris wrote:

Guide when you're bs4 isn't actually that useful. That's why the majority of eldar lists have now discarded farseers. It used to be that guide, doom and fortune were vital, now they're bs4 and doom and fortune can't be attained reliably, so farseers have largely been dumped by the wayside.

DE have the same issue. There's no real need for guide, it's points to return ratio just isn't that good at bs4. Prescience could work well for the beasts, but they do already have enough attacks to make up for lack of rerolls. They may have access to some excellent psychic powers, but they also have access to some terrible ones. And none is more likely than the other.

I disagree that guide is not worth it. An ability that increases your hits by 33% in a shooting army not worth it?  

I'm not sure what Eldar lists you've been seeing but I don't recall any tournament lists since the new codex came out that did not include a Farseer. Case in point, the winner of the recent Golden Throne Tournament, and author of the excellent The Spirit Chamber blog. His list was:

HQ
Farseer
Spiritseer

Troops
Wraithguard
Wave Serpent

Windrider Jetbike Squadron

Windrider Jetbike Squadron

Fast Attack
Warp Spiders

Heavy Support
Dark Reapers
Wave Serpent

Night Spinner

Fortification
Aegis (Icarus Lascannon)

Tau Allies
Commander

Riptide

Kroot

Broadsides

If you read his battle reports you'll see he makes use of both Guide and Prescience pretty much every turn.

I think the OP answered his own question when he said that he's not sure if it's high 200pts of useful. The second poster offered a ministar clocking in at over 500pts and still only able to kill one unit in melee each turn. Yeah it'll probably do it, but most ways of spending 500pts in a DE (or Eldar) army would be able to do that. The real advantage of the beast pack is the survivability of so many wounds and 4++.

My experience with melee units is that you want to try to just barely kill the opposing unit because if you're overkilling then you're wasting points. You won't be in combat every turn on account of needing to close the gap and charge range, but if it killed 3-4 units then I'd say you're pretty lucky. A smaller beast pack would be able to accomplish this as well with sweeping advances and two rounds of combat every turn you get. If you wipe out a unit in one turn and are left standing in the middle of the enemy army, T3 and 4++ isn't going to get you very far.

It is for this reason that I would suggest trying 5 Khymerae and 4 Razorwings for point efficiency and just enough survivability to get to combat. You could add another 5 Khymerae, or trade out 2 Razorwings for them if you don't find the unit is doing what you want.

eris wrote:

Shard struck me as a bit lacklustre. might be useful in challenges, but with 4 BMs and the baron around, the seer's unlikely to end up in one anytime soon.

CWE take Shard in deathstar units to make them fearless. The other stats are incidental, but still good in a challenge.

eris wrote:

I did think about eldar allies, but for for a warlock than the seer. A warlock with conceal plus the baron would give the pack a 2+ cover save if moving up thru terrain. Trophies on a couple of venoms could give psychic test support to the warlock, so there's some synergy there.

I imagine you meant for a spiritseer? Warlocks can't be taken in allied attachments and can only be attached to particular units from CWE book. Warlocks aren't independent characters so the only deathstar they can be in is a Seer Council. If you did mean Spiritseer then just be aware that they can't take a jetbike and will really slow down the beast pack (I would say cripple it).

eris wrote:

Guide when you're bs4 isn't actually that useful. That's why the majority of eldar lists have now discarded farseers. It used to be that guide, doom and fortune were vital, now they're bs4 and doom and fortune can't be attained reliably, so farseers have largely been dumped by the wayside.

What? Nobody has discarded farseers, in fact a lot of Eldar players think they're the only useful HQ choice in the new codex and the other choices are good only under certain conditions. There is a grain of truth to what you're saying insomuch as Guiding BS4 is not as good as Guiding BS3 units. But in the new Eldar codex, Guide has 24" range (instead of 6") and can be taken in addition to Prescience. The third power is randomly generated but Doom is pretty amazing. Basically every Farseer is now Eldrad from last edition, but can also be put on a jetbike. You just need to figure out how you're going to generate powers so that you get what you want, but worst case scenario you have Guide and Prescience which is far from bad.

As far as the efficacy of Guide in with BS4. Guide used to net an additional 50% hits on a War Walker squadron, but now it nets an additional 33% hits on the same squadron. The difference is that the new Farseer can do it on 2 units and thus clocks in at half the cost compared to taking Eldrad or 2 jetseers. Basically the new Farseer is much more efficient than the old one. Also in 6th edition, having the ability to TL the rolls of any shooting squad doubles the chance to hit flyers which is immeasurably useful to have. In my Allied CWE/DE army I use Guide on Warp Spiders and Ravagers to try to get more hits on flyers instead of taking flyers of my own or an ADL.

eris wrote:

Skulnbonz wrote:

allied farseer w/shard.

Shard struck me as a bit lacklustre.

Shard is for fearless only... all other atributes are simply a bonus.