Are Kabalite Warriors worth taking?

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

So that is 2 turns of not shooting. Are you counting that in?

Quote :

The only chapter tactic I see that affects survivability here is iron hands and none of the doctrines have any impact here. What is your complaint with this? Warriors and marines have the same leadership so ours aren't any more likely to fall back than theirs. Having two separate squads is still advantageous here because the odds of having two squads retreat is lower than the odds of having your only squad retreat.

Doktrines have an impact if you do the calculaton for bolter damage. Because if we assume that all shooting happens on turn 3 and we convinently switch between "embarked in vehicle" and not adding the cost of said vehicle, we can also assume marines using their advantages and transports, right?

Also Marines do auto rally and act normally on their next turn. No such bonus for Kabalites... or do we assume now turn 6 too?

Sure, I'll factor that in the same way I don't think the space marines will get to do their shooting every turn. Do you also want me to factor that into the grav cannon which has the exact same range?

You said it was messed up to not include doctrines and chapter tactics to my post about how it takes more firepower to dislodge kabalites than it does the tacticals. I fail to see where I've committed some grievous sin. If you think letting the bolters get rerolls to hit against the riptide are going to have a big impact on damage against the riptide, you're mistaken.

They can auto rally all the want, if the goal was to knock them off an objective for you to score you still only have to hit one marine unit while you have to force two kabalite units to fall back. I still prefer the strength in numbers.

The Shredder wrote:

You mean aside from the time you ran melta-marines against the riptide?

hahaha, so let me see if I've got this straight. You think it was dishonest for me to show space marines with melta guns against a riptide in the same post where i showed space marines with plasma guns against a riptide because for some reason, it's dishonest to give more data? How about instead of complaining about data I give to back up assertions, you provide some?

You keep saying I cherry picked the riptide like it was advantageous for me to do so but I chose it specifically because you said "warriors are not good against 2+ saves" and because you yourself said "I'd rather have plasma" for fighting a monstrous creature. If I wanted to pick units just to make the warriors look good I would have focused on the other units I cited like thunderwolf cavalry and biker command squads where the warriors do substantially better than the marines with plasma, melta, or grav.

lessthanjeff wrote:

hahaha, so let me see if I've got this straight.  You think it was dishonest for me to show space marines with melta guns against a riptide in the same post where i showed space marines with plasma guns against a riptide because for some reason, it's dishonest to give more data?  How about instead of complaining about data I give to back up assertions, you provide some?  

Good lord, you've moved the goalposts so far in this thread that I'm going to have to buy a car to keep up.

In any case, I said it was dishonest of you to say that you'd never compared meltgun marines to warriors against a riptide, when you did exactly that. By most definitions, doing something and then trying to say you didn't is classified as dishonest. But, perhaps you're using a different dictionary to me. One which also has a really weird definition of 'good'.

lessthanjeff wrote:

because for some reason, it's dishonest to give more data?

You mean like meltagun marines vs blaster warriors against a rhino? Or, hell, even plasmagun marines. Still waiting for that one.

lessthanjeff wrote:

You keep saying I cherry picked the riptide like it was advantageous for me to do

No I didn't.

lessthanjeff wrote:

"warriors are not good against 2+ saves"

Correct. Note the absence of the words "compared to marines" in that statement, which you consistently ignored.

lessthanjeff wrote:

and because you yourself said "I'd rather have plasma"

Actually, I said repeatedly that I'd rather have Grav.

lessthanjeff wrote:

 If I wanted to pick units just to make the warriors look good I would have focused on the other units I cited like thunderwolf cavalry and biker command squads where the warriors do substantially better than the marines with plasma, melta, or grav.

Yet you completely ignore vehicle targets - which make up a substantial portion of the game.

The Shredder wrote:

lessthanjeff wrote:

hahaha, so let me see if I've got this straight.  You think it was dishonest for me to show space marines with melta guns against a riptide in the same post where i showed space marines with plasma guns against a riptide because for some reason, it's dishonest to give more data?  How about instead of complaining about data I give to back up assertions, you provide some?  

Good lord, you've moved the goalposts so far in this thread that I'm going to have to buy a car to keep up.

In any case, I said it was dishonest of you to say that you'd never compared meltgun marines to warriors against a riptide, when you did exactly that. By most definitions, doing something and then trying to say you didn't is classified as dishonest. But, perhaps you're using a different dictionary to me. One which also has a really weird definition of 'good'.

lessthanjeff wrote:

because for some reason, it's dishonest to give more data?

You mean like meltagun marines vs blaster warriors against a rhino? Or, hell, even plasmagun marines. Still waiting for that one.

lessthanjeff wrote:

You keep saying I cherry picked the riptide like it was advantageous for me to do

No I didn't.

lessthanjeff wrote:

"warriors are not good against 2+ saves"

Correct. Note the absence of the words "compared to marines" in that statement, which you consistently ignored.

lessthanjeff wrote:

and because you yourself said "I'd rather have plasma"

Actually, I said repeatedly that I'd rather have Grav.

lessthanjeff wrote:

 If I wanted to pick units just to make the warriors look good I would have focused on the other units I cited like thunderwolf cavalry and biker command squads where the warriors do substantially better than the marines with plasma, melta, or grav.

Yet you completely ignore vehicle targets - which make up a substantial portion of the game.

Yes it was very silly of me to believe you were responding to my post 4 comments up, not the one several pages prior.  I was pointing out that my post immediately prior was specifically showing 2 plasma guns against the riptide when you said it wasn't fair for me to compare melta guns.  The post you're referring to clearly showed the numbers for both melta and plasma because I thought maybe people would find that useful since they frequently bring melta guns for multipurpose tools.

Here's are some of your quotes from earlier

"Yes, there are a few things in your list where Warriors are better than Grav (which you've cherry-picked here)"

"I'd much rather have plasma, Grav, pseudo-rending or other such to take them out."

And no, I haven't completely ignored vehicles.  Did you not read the part on the very last page where I said oh look, the 70 point kabalite warrior kills a landraider in the same amount of time it takes the 105 tactical squad to do it (giving them the benefit of 5 shots a turn)?  What I did say I didn't think was fair though was run grav numbers against creatures and then melta numbers against a vehicle.  I've said several times to pick a single setup and then I'll run numbers as you like, but you can't pick the best weapon loadout for each situation when you only get to take one of them into battle.  If you want to go with melta loadouts, then let's go back and I'll list all the targets where the warriors outperform the marines again.  Offhand, I'd guess the marines would do better against light vehicles like rhinos, it would probably be close on vehicles like wave serpents that downgrade the explosion chance, and the warriors may come out ahead on tougher vehicles like land raiders or those with ceramite plating like sicaran battletanks.

Here are the grav numbers you seem to want so badly even though I told you I just wanted you to say what kind of cover and such we could agree on.
5 shot grav into no cover riptide or 5+ cover: 2
3 shot grav into no cover riptide or 5+ cover: 1.26

5 shot grav into 4+ cover riptide: 1.54
3 shot grav into 4+ cover riptide: 0.98

5 shot grav into overcharge 3++ riptide: 1.08
3 shot grav into overcharge 3++ riptide: 0.71

13 kabalite warriors into riptide: 1.44

People keep wanting to include bonus from doctrines and codex rules. This is debate about a troop, not how good the codex is. Kabalite warriors have come ahead of tac space marines or at least comparable to them in the majority of exchanges. This is because tac space marines are not good. If they were good then you would see them in CAD lists, instead you see scouts because scouts provide pretty much every thing you actually won't out of marines with more special rules at a cheaper price.

lessthanjeff wrote:

 I was pointing out that my post immediately prior was specifically showing 2 plasma guns against the riptide when you said it wasn't fair for me to compare melta guns.  The post you're referring to clearly showed the numbers for both melta and plasma because I thought maybe people would find that useful since they frequently bring melta guns for multipurpose tools.

But that wasn't the point that I made.

What I actually said was that if you're using marines dedicated anti-vehicle weapons in your comparison (which you did, even if you also did plasma), then it seems disingenuous not to do any comparisons vs vehicles.

lessthanjeff wrote:

"Yes, there are a few things in your list where Warriors are better than Grav (which you've cherry-picked here)"

Indeed. Which did not refer to the riptide. What it referred to was Wraiths (a unit with a 3++) and a Flyrant (a flying unit with Jink).

Considering that your original list contained a plethora of units with 2+ and 3+ saves without any invulnerable/jink saves, yes, I would call that cherry-picking.

Also, you keep saying that we should include cover saves and the possibility of overcharging the WK, but where does it end? Should we also include Fortune on the various Eldar Wraith models? Should we include a character with a 2+ save tanking wounds for the TWC?

lessthanjeff wrote:

"I'd much rather have plasma, Grav, pseudo-rending or other such to take them out."

What are you trying to prove with this quote? That I've somehow misinterpreted my own opinion?

lessthanjeff wrote:

And no, I haven't completely ignored vehicles.  Did you not read the part on the very last page where I said oh look, the 70 point kabalite warrior kills a landraider in the same amount of time it takes the 105 tactical squad to do it (giving them the benefit of 5 shots a turn)?

Is that the one where the Warriors suddenly have a sabrite with haywire grenades - a model who'd been conspicuously absent from all your other comparisons.

Also, I'm not even sure about your math there. By my calculations, it takes 3 turns to kill the LR with Grav, and 4-5 turns with a blaster and haywire (doing 8/9 hull points per turn).

lessthanjeff wrote:

 What I did say I didn't think was fair though was run grav numbers against creatures and then melta numbers against a vehicle.

I was happy to use Grav for everything. You were the one who initially refused to use it at all. I merely said that if you were going to use meltas, you could at least compare some vehicles.

In terms of running numbers, I'll show you what I mean tomorrow.

At this point, I relent. I'm quite sure at this point that there is nothing I could say to convince you guys of anything other than the opinion you have already formed and I fail to see the point in trying when there is no evidence or data coming back to support your stance.

I don't understand the logic behind arguments that it's unfair to consider FNP when it's something all warriors have for 3-5 turns in the game but then say I should consider doctrines that not all armies have and the ones that do only have them for 1 player turn. I also fail to understand dismissing stats against T5 and above creatures because there are other units for that job but then not applying the same logic to having other units for the job of taking down tanks.

My stance comes from having 8 armies in this game, so I've played with a number of different troop options in this game. I encourage you guys to make sure your stance isn't stemming from the grass seeming greener on the other side, because I can assure you I've never taken more tactical marines than the bare minimum, but I have on frequent occasion used 3-5 warrior squads in a list.

lessthanjeff wrote:

My stance comes from having 8 armies in this game, so I've played with a number of different troop options in this game.  I encourage you guys to make sure your stance isn't stemming from the grass seeming greener on the other side, because I can assure you I've never taken more tactical marines than the bare minimum, but I have on frequent occasion used 3-5 warrior squads in a list.

Maybe I'm taking this the wrong way, So I'll try and be civil.  You do realize however that you are probably at the most knowledgeable place on the internet to talk about dark eldar? and that almost literally everyone here plays (or has played) many armies? and that many of us have been playing for 20+ years?

To assume a differing opinion (which literally every 40k player I know shares, and we've all had turns with the dark kin both before and after the 2011 update), is caused by bias and inexperience is a bit... We'll I'm honestly not sure if trolling, 6 pages in.

You mention flatly that you've never played MSU tactical marines yourself.  Maybe it's MSU you find so effective and not kabalites?  Try it and find out.  That battle company formation is insane if you have the *free* transports to make the most of it.

As a long time chaos marine player I can assure you 5 man MSU plague marines ruled the table long before the dark eldar could take venoms (and venoms were horrible kitbashed things only harlies had   ).

Personally I think we are comparing apples and oranges. I also don't rate maths hammer for this type of comparison. Don't get me wrong its handy for getting an idea about the possible merits of a unit but it lacks context, which is what really matters.

When I don't run pure coven I don't mind fielding 2 squads of msu warriors in venoms. Venoms are awesome, and warriors aren't bad. They are cheap and disposable can be used to hide behind LOS and sit on objectives, add some reasonable shooting can be sacrificed as blockers or charge large entrenched units to pull them off objectives. The best troop choice in the game? No. But not bad by any means either.

Disposable units have huge tacticle and strategic use.

lessthanjeff wrote:

At this point, I relent.  I'm quite sure at this point that there is nothing I could say to convince you guys of anything other than the opinion you have already formed and I fail to see the point in trying when there is no evidence or data coming back to support your stance.

You say that, yet I've still seen nothing to support your original assertion.

Possibly you've forgotten (since we've gotten bogged down in marine comparisons), but the point you originally made was 'Warriors are "very powerful" vs all these units'.

I challenged that because, against many of the units you mentioned, Warriors do an absolutely pitiful amount of damage. Even for their cost, I just don't see how you can call them "very poweful" when they fail to even average a single wound against their target.

lessthanjeff wrote:

I don't understand the logic behind arguments that it's unfair to consider FNP when it's something all warriors have for 3-5 turns in the game but then say I should consider doctrines that not all armies have

Eh?

But marines do have it, that's the point. I mean, not all armies have poison weapons - so shall we ignore those when comparing Warriors to other armies?

lessthanjeff wrote:

the ones that do only have them for 1 player turn.

Usually more than that. They start with 3 doctorines (each usable once per game), two of which would let the tacticals reroll 1s, and the third lets them reroll all misses. But, there are several ways - including the Gladius Strike Force - which give the marine player extra uses.

That aside though, it seems fair to assume that the marine player would be using an appropriate doctrine in a critical turn. I mean, I can't see many Marine players thinking to themselves "Nah, I don't want to waste this doctrine on killing a Wraithknight - I'll save it for the real threats."

lessthanjeff wrote:

 I also fail to understand dismissing stats against T5 and above creatures because there are other units for that job but then not applying the same logic to having other units for the job of taking down tanks.

That was my exact point, albiet in reverse.

lessthanjeff wrote:

My stance comes from having 8 armies in this game, so I've played with a number of different troop options in this game.  I encourage you guys to make sure your stance isn't stemming from the grass seeming greener on the other side, because I can assure you I've never taken more tactical marines than the bare minimum, but I have on frequent occasion used 3-5 warrior squads in a list.

Well, if you'd like to tell me how you actually use those 3-5 warrior squads, I made a thread for that:

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t13201-how-do-you-equip-use-msu-warriors

Never let it be said that I'm unwilling to take advice.

I don't believe I've said I never played MSU marines, unless you're referring to me never playing the Gladius Strike Force. When I run marines I tend to run 5 man squads with a melta and combi-melta because they're good general purpose units that can hit a tank hard or still get some damage in on a big creature making it a good TAC choice. MSU is the only way I play tacticals.

My assertion I was backing up with damage output and damage taken comparisons. I showed damage comparisons against several loadouts of tactical marines in various settings using one of the examples that comes out worse math-wise for the warriors than the others I listed (since the riptide does have a 2+save).

I say marines don't all have combat doctrines because one of the squads you asked me to run numbers against (Grey Hunters) has no chapter tactics nor combat doctrines and cannot be in a demi-company. Generic Space Marine armies are not guaranteed doctrines either because I (for example) play my white scars with forgeworld units, which cannot be fielded in a demi company so I have to take a CAD. That was my basis for pointing out that it seems weird to say I shouldn't count FNP when it's there for the majority of the game for all warriors automatically while marines are not guaranteed tactics/doctrines and if they do have them it's only for 1 player turn. I don't get why you would exclude poison now either. That is also something the warriors always have.

Don't you think your reply is a tad on the tardy side?

Unless you're planning to win this argument by out-living us.

lessthanjeff wrote:

My assertion I was backing up with damage output and damage taken comparisons.  I showed damage comparisons against several loadouts of tactical marines in various settings using one of the examples that comes out worse math-wise for the warriors than the others I listed (since the riptide does have a 2+save).

Don't take this the wrong way, but I no longer care.

lessthanjeff wrote:

I say marines don't all have combat doctrines because one of the squads you asked me to run numbers against (Grey Hunters) has no chapter tactics nor combat doctrines and cannot be in a demi-company.  

But, you weren't running the numbers against grey hunters, you were running them against tactical marines.

lessthanjeff wrote:

That was my basis for pointing out that it seems weird to say I shouldn't count FNP when it's there for the majority of the game for all warriors automatically

But they don't have it for the entire game, and won't have it at all if they don't survive the initial turns (when they're most vulnerable and when the enemy's firepower is the most intact).

It just seems wrong to go in with the assumption that Warriors will always have their full FNP.

lessthanjeff wrote:

 I don't get why you would exclude poison now either.  That is also something the warriors always have.

I was responding to your statement that we shouldn't count chapter tactics because "not all armies have it", and pointing out that, by that logic, posion should also be discounted because not all armies have that either.

lessthanjeff wrote:

 Generic Space Marine armies are not guaranteed doctrines either because I (for example) play my white scars with forgeworld units, which cannot be fielded in a demi company so I have to take a CAD.

Fair enough.

What prevents you from fielding them in a demi-company? This has nothing to do with our argument - I'm just curious.

Nah, I replied a lot originally when I was home sick for a few days with strep throat. It was more likely you guys were going to outlive me lol.

I didn't know which faction to use because I asked a couple times for you guys to pick one weapon loadout and chapter tactics but you didn't respond. The only specific faction you ever named was grey hunters.

Does it make more sense to you to use the no FNP for stats when that's the case for 1 turn of the game while have 5+ FNP is for 3-5 turns? I would generally consider it more reasonable to use the stats for what applies the majority of the time.

I don't mean all armies in the game, I mean not all space marine armies have chapter tactics. When I'm running numbers for tacticals, they are not guaranteed those bonuses so I'm more wary of running their averages with those bonuses while all warriors do have access to the FNP. They don't have to be in a specific detachment or faction to have the benefit.

For the demi company, the main deterrent to me has been that I want to use my forgeworld units which I can't do outside of a CAD. The other deterrent is that even though I have 4 rhinos/razorbacks and several more drop pods (which I consider a large number of transports) I'm still not able to take full advantage of the free bonuses making it seem less appealing to run 6 units of tacticals that I consider lackluster at best. I like having more freedom to pick units and I consider the space marine bikes far superior to tacticals.

lessthanjeff wrote:

I don't believe I've said I never played MSU marines

lessthanjeff wrote:

I've never taken more tactical marines than the bare minimum.

Don't really care any more. Don't even know why I'm typing right now.

I like my Warriors and I prefer those over chaos Marines and other troop units.

stilgar27 wrote:

lessthanjeff wrote:

I don't believe I've said I never played MSU marines

lessthanjeff wrote:

I've never taken more tactical marines than the bare minimum.

Don't really care any more.  Don't even know why I'm typing right now.

I think we have different definitions of MSU. I've heard multiple abbreviations but the one I go by is minimum size units. So the tacticals squads I take I run at the minimum number of 5.

MSU stands for MULTIPLE Small Units.

Having 2 squads of 5 Marines do not qualify.
Venom Spam and Lictor Shame are examples for MSU.

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

MSU stands for MULTIPLE Small Units.

Having 2 squads of 5 Marines do not qualify.
Venom Spam and Lictor Shame are examples for MSU.

Yeah, it's not just about having minimum squads, it's about having lots of minimum squads.

It goes back to the days when armies actually had to keep to a single FoC, with no extra detachments, formations or other nonsense.

Anyway, it was based around the 1+1 principle - whereby you had a lot of units in transports. Especially with stuff like venoms and razorbacks, it gave you a lot of extra firepower. And, of course, this was also when troops alone could score - so having more let you capture more objectives and gave you more redundancy if some were killed.

Other traits included letting you portion out your firepower better, and also being far less vulnerable to death stars.

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

MSU stands for MULTIPLE Small Units.

Having 2 squads of 5 Marines do not qualify.
Venom Spam and Lictor Shame are examples for MSU.

Sweet Jesus. I honestly didn't know that. And I say MSU.

Another minor point regarding MSU - I know in 5th there was some confusion about whether it referred to Multiple Small Units or Multiple Scoring Units (since it was done pretty much exclusively with troop choices).

My apologies then, I have definitely been using the term incorrectly. Often running minimum size squads had the same effect because it meant I spent less on upgrades and then took more of the units as a result (like running 6 warriors squads in venoms), but in the case of space marines yeah I've probably never taken more than 20 into a game and I usually don't take any at all. I generally find bikers more efficient and run those MSU.

I never leave home without 2 Raiders, 10 Kabs on board each 8 with Rifles, 1 with a Splinter Cannon, 1 with a blaster. Splinter racks of course and a night shield. 22 re-rollable poison shots per turn! They are the core of my army and tend to shred enemy infantry for fun. I leave armour up to the rest of the army.

The "problem" with this approach is numbers.

For 400 points (assuming Dark Lances on the Raiders) you get:

16 twin linked poison shots (that is roughly 14 hits)
4 Lance shots
12 Salvo Poison shots (as you will move a lot, this will be 8 shots a lot of the time)

For only 20 points more you get:

20 Poison shots (not twin linked, still roughly 13 hits)
no lance shots (but you still can add up to 4)
48 Salvo poison shots that do not get reduced due to moving

in my games, these 4 venoms (68 poison shots or 88 when in 12") do a lot more damage and are harder to kill (invul save, 4 different targets - also 8(!) scoring units, even ObjSec with CAD) than 2 Gunboats (24 TL poison shots or 40 when in 12") while costing pretty much the same.

Why the Blaster in the gun boats? If you shoot your Splinter fire the Blaster is wasted and vice versa.

Any thoughts on how Kabalite Warriors compare with Corsair Reavers?

- +2pts per model over than Kabalites.
- Have Plasma Grenades and Defensive Grenades.
- Worse Ld when regrouping.
- Sergeants are 5pts and have WS5.
- Don't have Night Vision or PfP.
- Have Reckless Abandon (if they shoot an enemy within 12", can move 6" away afterwards).
- Squads can have any combination of lasblasters, splinter rifles or a Brace if Pistols (the latter counts as 2 splinter pistols and 2 shuriken pistols, which can be used in any combination).
- Can take 2 special weapons per 5 (flamer, fusion gun, shredder, blaster), and pay just 10pts for blasters.
- Can take Jet Packs at +5pts per model, which give them 4+ saves and +d6" to Reckless Abandon moves (in addition to Jet Pack movement).
- Can take Haywire Grenades at half the base cost of a 5-man squad.
- Can take a Corsair Venom if they don't have Jet Packs.

Corsair Venoms are probably worse (just 5pts cheaper than a DE venom, but lack both Flickerfield and DS ability), but can take Shuriken Cannons and/or a Scatter Laser in place of Splinter Cannons.

They're certainly a lot more flexible than Warriors, and (with Jet Packs) can probably work without transports. But, they're also going to be a but more pricey than Warriors.

Any thoughts?

It's pretty clear that Corsairs are much more versatile than Kabalites, even if they're more expensive. The choice and number of special weapons, ability to take Haywire, add more armour, change unit type etc all makes them far more useful than Kabalites. I can certainly see MSU with 5-man squads kitted out with 2 specials and either jet packs or Venoms.