Reavers, help me understand their utility

So after seeing lawerence the spider lay waste with reaver spam at no retreat 3 and everyone here seeming to say reavers are amazing, I feel like I am missing something every time I trial them they seem to get obliterated and not return the points. Someone care to explain their tactics that perhaps I'm doing wrong? Thanks

Understand their weakness and either avoid that situation or kill the threat.
Understand their strengths and maximize it. Speed (distance covered on a table), Redundancy (tonne of units), attacking strategy (are you shooting/sniping things with them or are you hyper aggressive and boosting them to 1" of the enemy. This is how you stop tanks (large blasts) shooting because if you are 1" away from the tanks, the large blasts can't shoot you.....

Army coherency; with out watching Lawrence move the models but understanding his commentary you can conclude that in his first game basically all the Venoms and Reavers landed 1" away from the tanks (avoiding the flamers) and attacked unscathed on turn 2.

If you listen to the Splinter mind podcast episode where he is interview about the No Retreat 3 victory, it helps understand the tactics, strategies and application of the units.

Oh, and watch/listen over and over and over and over and....you get the point

^^^Mostly this.^^^

I also recommend mushkilla's guides in the guides thread stickied at the top of this sub.

I think there is much more to be gained from having your own ideas torn a part so could you please tell us what you are doing with them thatway we can tell you why that approach isn't working.

Here's my take on reavers. A fully decked out min squad is 83pts and I feel confident making the claim that they are the best CC EJB unit point for point in the game, but more important than that is they can do pretty much anything. They screen; they block; they hold uncontested objectives; they chew through non-walker vehicles; more than anything, for all of this that they do they are dirt cheap. At T4 they usually will get their FNP, and perhaps most important of all they have hit and run.

In total we have a reasonably priced, mobile, moderately hearty (especially for eldar), scalpel; that's still just cheap enough for us not to mind when it get's blown away because that means something else didn't; or we can take them in sufficient numbers that we simply don't care.

The mistake a lot of people make is that they hear about Reavers being amazing and decide to try out a unit. One unit is not going to do anything. They'll get shot off the table in no time. That's why Reavers work best in MSU builds where not only will you have 6 units of Reavers but about 20 other units, none of which are worth much individually but together are capable of inflicting death by a thousand cuts. It doesn't matter if the opponent shoots one unit and destroys it because they've almost certainly committed more points to killing that unit than it costs and you've got 20+ other units still on the table.

My main tip with Reavers is to not bother with kitting them out for ranged combat. Give them cluster caltrops and call it a day. You're probably going to be jinking so your shooting is going to be pretty much worthless so don't waste the points. Concentrate on getting them into position to charge on turn 2 and don't hesitate to jink if you need to. And don't forget that you can jink against overwatch.

That might be my problem I try a 3 man squad and it does nothing

Ya, 63 pts is only 63 pts. If you expect it to kill 200 pt units, you will be in for some unpleasantness. Who do you think we are, Craftworlders?

One can hope. So I'm thinking of running 4 units of 6 with caltrops combined with a corpse thief claw and a kabal of warriors to taste and points sound pretty decent?

I'd change to 6 units of 3 and use the additional points to spam more Venoms.

Reasoning?

Lots of cheap units (see my earlier post for details).

fisheyes wrote:

Ya, 63 pts is only 63 pts. If you expect it to kill 200 pt units, you will be in for some unpleasantness. Who do you think we are, Craftworlders?

Wait, what's this about jinking overwatch?!

I feel I have missed a vitally important rule!

Veragon Saan wrote:

Wait, what's this about jinking overwatch?!

I feel I have missed a vitally important rule!

Yup yup. You can jink in response to being shot at in overwatch. Kind of a big deal when you also have Skilled Rider.

Extremely cheap, relatively durable (for a Dark Eldar), the most mobile unit in our army, and can hit quite hard for its cost.

What do people feel is the minimum number of reavers/units needed to get reasonable use out of them?
I haven't had much luck with them, but I normally focus on other things and sprinkle in reavers afterwards. The lists have been working but the reavers themselves have not.

That's my experience too

I prefer hellions to jetbikes, the possible 5 str and 3 attcks is good.

how are you using them?

Edit sorrry guys, I was just fascinated by this possible insight.
As for numbers a single 6 is an escort, 2 3's for objective grabbing and 3+ units of 3 for general play 4+ units of 6 for reaver spam.

So to answer your actual question I wouldn't field less than 2 units, unless I was fielding 1 large unit as an escort, but 3 is exponentially better.

Is 3 units of 6 frowned upon no one seems to go that route

Xm0shcryptX wrote:

Is 3 units of 6 frowned upon no one seems to go that route

Multiple units of 3 or 6 are excellent.
I use 18 reavers MINIMUM, I own 27. Either 3x6 or 6x3, it depends on how many FA choices I have access to.

Reavers are the most tactically powerful single unit in our entire faction, bar none.

Painjunky wrote:

Xm0shcryptX wrote:

Is 3 units of 6 frowned upon no one seems to go that route

Multiple units of 3 or 6 are excellent.
I use 18 reavers MINIMUM, I own 27.  Either 3x6 or 6x3, it depends on how many FA choices I have access to.

Reavers are the most tactically powerful single unit in our entire faction, bar none.

You could argue that Talos's in the CTC are a contender for that, but otherwise yeah, Reavers are the best

Same question I keep asking: What do you intend to do with them?

6 body unit forsake a tiny footprint and the ability to hold 2 objectives/units up in favor of a single larger squad that isn't actually any more survivable, unless they are the target of some sort of force multiplier like a blessing, ignores overwatch, or a dude with a shadowfield.


I wouldn't say 3 units of 6 is frowned upon per se, it's more that in many formats the list building restrictions don't positively reinforce 3 units of 6. Since everyone who plays ITC/NOVA and many people above and beyond that, play to a ridiculous 3 detachment limit we are both subconsciously and consciously impacted by that limit when we make lists. 3 units of 6 is ALL the FA slots in a CAD, half of them in a RRD, and you're hard limited to 1 in a Purge Cotorie. If you take 2 of a combination of the above 3 your likely going to have either less than 6 units of 3 (same body and price count as 3 units of 6) or significantly more in order to fillout the FOC slots you've commited to.

TL;DR: 3 units of 6 is uncommon because you either want the FOC slots for other things or you want more disparate units not because it's bad.

I too never understood the utility of mass Reavers, but then I mostly play against Tau when I use them so their skilled rider and armor save go out the window. It's why I've trended towards things like MSU boat spam, Covens formations, Corsairs/Clowns allies, or just saying f*** it, swapping the weapons on my jetbikes, and making myself an 1850 Craftworld army instead.

Same. As soon as it meets a tau list you might as well pack your bags which makes me sad

@stevethedestroyerofwrolds- CTC are in contention for most powerful unit, not the most tactically powerful. Big difference.    

@amorrowlyda- I'm not very familiar with ITC, cant you not do dual CAD or 1 CAD + 1 RSR?
That's what I do when I want to run all 27 of my reavers.  

Either way when I only have 3 FA I don't hesitate to run 3x6. They work perfectly for me. Better offensive and defensive and better at cheeky tactics like screening, blocking, etc

@TeenageAngst & Xm0shcryptX
Tau are one of our worst matchups in general but Reavers still work for me vs tau.
"But ignore cover wipes them" I hear you say and you are correct, BUT you can out range them T1 and if you are running extreme MSU (which I often do vs tau) you can overload a flank and he has to choose carefully where to use it.

It only takes a handful of units to make it through and charge and he's crunchy fish fingers.  Also i'm gunning for these weapons ASAP and I have board control so I usually win on objs.