Reavers, help me understand their utility

Reavers are better for what they do tho so... I dunno what they are on about.

There's only 3 viable categories of eldar jetbikes. CC, Ranged fire support, and Courier

CC is:
Reavers
Harlie jetbikes
Shining Spears
3 Man Cloud Dancer All Sgts with venomblades

CC is divided into 2 sub-categories. Light and Heavy. Light are Reavers and Harlie jetbikes. Light CC jetbikes have access to AP2, HNR, and a bad armour save. Heavy CC jetbikes have access to AP3 and a 3+ armour save. No HNR leads to them getting bogged down. For this reason reavers are the best CC jetbike available.

Ranged fire support is
Windriders with better weapons than catapults
Cloud dancers with better weapons than catapults

Best options here are scatbikes on the windriders and scatbikes or splinter cannons on the cloud dancers.

Courier is:
Windriders with catapults
Cloud dancers with catapults

Take CWE and windriders if just looking for objective grabbers. Cloud dancers pay a 9 point premium over them and only a 15pt premium over their base cost to take 3 splinter cannons and then just have them pull double duty.

Corsair Bikes are amazing!

But I used DE 3rd Ed ones with Eldar bikes to make mine

Honestly Corsairs have a amazing Melee Bike set up (A friend of mine runs it that way) With the Prince in that unit, he takes Reaper of Outer Dark (So he can Shoot 1 unit and charge another) that gives an additional attack.

Yeah its just S4 Power weapons, but in this meta (SM, Drop pods, Rhinos, Bikes bascially MSU spam) it just wrecks.

I personally like Cloud Dancers for there Outflank, I take them with Shuriken Cannons, outflank, Shoot move, and then Assault move, they always in cover. But I like to play the field alot and I normally have units all over the table with Corsairs so I have threats in all directions.

amorrowlyday wrote:

Light are Reavers and Harlie jetbikes. Light CC jetbikes have access to AP2, HNR, and a bad armour save. Heavy CC jetbikes have access to AP3 and a 3+ armour save. No HNR leads to them getting bogged down. For this reason reavers are the best CC jetbike available.

One for one I'd have to argue that Skyweavers are better by your definition. They have better armour save, higher WS, higher S and guaranteed AP2. Of course, they're also considerably more expensive, although they do have 2W each. They also have much better firepower and an invulnerable save (1/game).

Hehe. In my Harlie/DE force I am planning to use one unit of Skyweavers and one unit of Reavers as their roles nicely overlap but they are a bit different beasts. Worthy combo IMO and better than 2 units of tis or 2 units of tat.

Just finished painting 6 Skyweavers and looking forward to testing them out.

I went to a local tournament and Ive been playing Harlequins lately (My corsairs need a lot of work modeling).

I like the skyweavers now, ALOT. I was using them ... differently but I start to just be hyper aggressive and its working great.

@CountAdhemar

Oh that one is absolutely contendable, but given that they do not get the full benefit of some of those, such as how the WS boost should only be considered a defensive boon due to reavers utility being almost entire centered on HoW autohits. Of course contervalingly the reavers are tempered with the # of S6 hits being random. At the end of the day though you're paying a 9ppw premium and are hard limited to no more than 2 units per detachment no matter which you take. To me those factors make skyweavers strategically situational, and thus reavers a better metric/baseline choice.

I also would like to elaborate on the heavies, they are simply tactically situational. I think both shining spears and Corsair squads are very under rated but reavers are applicable in the widest of circumstances for the lowest premium.

Well I believe your analysis is right.
But I have better experience using two different, but overlapping units. Messes with target priority. Choosing between Reavers and Reavers is easy. And the part that is not overlapping is important too.

interesting conversation.

My take on it is that if you are going ot invest in jetbikes to optimize their usability that you have to invest in it. By that I mean making sure that nothing in your army has less than a 24 move or access to it as they will quickly outpace your slower troops.

someone said that windriders/scatt are situational. on an opposite side remember that the situation for your opponent is that you have windriders. That in an objective based game means that the unit becomes so high priority of a target that the enemy may leave your other things alone for a turn or three or rish late game objective captures.

four groups of three jet bikes seems to be a magic number to make this work.

giving the opponent a hard option like trying to chase down some scat bikes or reavers versus leaving a corpse thief claw in the center of the table are the kinds of decisions that can make or break you.

3 turns chasing bikes?
3 turns hacking away at 5 t7 models?
both are going to earn you points if left alone.

win win.

I disagree with the specifics about speed differential but your central point: that what we are discussing is merely one piece in a much larger puzzle and the pieces we choose to use should be based on the puzzle at large is sound.

@Aurynn I take your point about differentiation creating layers of complexity being a force multiplicative effect.

Reavers and Skyweavers are just 2 completely different unit, their type might be Jetbike, but they are far to different honestly.

I dont compare them the same at all, to me they both are played, gear, used and just over all looked at completely differently.

And I also think 4 groups of 3 Reavers is ideal, this is what I do.

End Game wrote:

giving the opponent a hard option like trying to chase down some scat bikes or reavers versus leaving a corpse thief claw in the center of the table are the kinds of decisions that can make or break you

True, but your scenario is not the case IMO. Bikes are not a good target for Anti-Tank as they can jink. Ppl shoot them with AT only to make them jink and then disregard them. Taloi are much better target. So given that most armies have their Anti-Infantry part and Anti-Tank part, there is no hard choice. People will just shoot AT at Taloi and AI at bikes.

huh? I was implying that they just be used to grab objectives, not what they can kill. that's the scenario, rapid response being their utility.

Yea. I got that. I was just trying to point out that its not about tough choice as to what to shoot at. :-) Nothing wrong in tough core and fast grabbers. Lots of lists are built with this concept in mind, but I believe that if you want to present a tough choice, all the "choices" have to both deny one type of shooting and be equal as target priority. Like a list full of bikes. Thats a tough choice through target saturation. CTC with Bikes is two totally distinct targets, so the enemy will not have a tough time to decide where to shoot.

I am surprised (or didnn't notice anyone mention) big groups of reavers with an Autarch on a jetbike wearing your choice of goodies but most importantly the banshee mask.

Oh in terms of independant characters it may have came up once or twice but on that end I feel it is a very personal decision. The answer is 6 or 9 bodies for the reaver squad. Farseer, Autarch, or Prince as the character, Autarch has 2 builds: fusion gun and laser lance, or shard of anaris. Farseer takes singing spear obvs. Prince has about 3 different builds based around drugs, shard of anaris, and reaper of the outer dark. Which of these six options you put in the squad is style dependent.

If only we could have jetbike Archons or Succubi. A 2++ to tank, or some glaive hits would be amazing for a Reaver squad

stevethedestroyeofworlds wrote:

If only we could have jetbike Archons or Succubi. A 2++ to tank, or some glaive hits would be amazing for a Reaver squad

We should. We dont b.c they dont make a model for it. Literally the reason why.

Lol, my banshee mask is actuallly a magnetized banshee head from VC lol

stevethedestroyeofworlds wrote:

If only we could have jetbike Archons or Succubi. A 2++ to tank, or some glaive hits would be amazing for a Reaver squad

This many times over. When I started playing again, all my HQ models were either converted to bikes or skyboards, and despite having about 3000 points of miniatures I couldn't field a legal army (except for a really roughly painted Haemonculus).

amishprn86 wrote:

I like the skyweavers now, ALOT. I was using them ... differently but I start to just be hyper aggressive and its working great.

How do you use them 'hyper aggresively'? I've played harlequins on and off since the codex came out and I've never found them to be very good. Sure they have strength 6 shooting (or haywire) but so do Death Jesters and they are cheaper and can run units off the table. Without skilled rider or grenades I have really struggled to make them work aggressively. I typically keep them on the flanks and harass stragglers/objective grabbers. Figuring why they don't work for me and they do work for you might give me a clue on how to play DE better.

mattblowers wrote:

amishprn86 wrote:

I like the skyweavers now, ALOT. I was using them ... differently but I start to just be hyper aggressive and its working great.

How do you use them 'hyper aggresively'? I've played harlequins on and off since the codex came out and I've never found them to be very good. Sure they have strength 6 shooting (or haywire) but so do Death Jesters and they are cheaper and can run units off the table. Without skilled rider or grenades I have really struggled to make them work aggressively. I typically keep them on the flanks and harass stragglers/objective grabbers. Figuring why they don't work for me and they do work for you might give me a clue on how to play DE better.

I was trying to play them like Eldar, Corsairs and DE bikes at 1st.

Now I dont even care about the S6 or HWC shots. I take them either The Blades of Fate or Faolchu's Blade for Re-roll Jinks. (depending on Point size)

My last game I had 1 Faolchu's Blade and the Blades of Fate.

Then I basically Rush them to spots that I know I can get a T2-3 charge but at the same time without his whole army shooting me. I've been using them as Bullet Sponges and making them really scary. While trying to keep them alive to charge something.

My last game with them I had both of my 2 units Charge some 5 man SM's on turn 2 and just completely destroyed them. He focus some bolters at them b.c those other 2 units where the ones that had his flamers. He killed 1 bike out of 4. I then charged both units, the solo bike didnt kill them, but was able to stay in combat for 1 more turn the other 2 swiped the unit and survived for the rest of the game actually B.c at this time I had 4 Troupes and a solitaire charging.

I honestly only shot with them 1 time up to turn 4, then turn 5 the unit that was left alive was sitting on an objective. he got a shot off 1 more time.

Example game 2.
I played a Tournament last week too, the 1st player was a GK player playing a HYPER aggressive teleportation Melee army (His idea was teleport 4-5 Large strong units to do enough damage so his 2+ guys dont die from over fire).

I told him about the Re-roll Jinking bikes. SO what I did was Place them on my front line, one on each side of my deployment about a foot away from the rest of my army. I had my 3 Heavys placed so he coupled TP to my Troupes (He had ALOT of flamers I was scared).

Sense he went 1st and he couldnt TP to my troupes, he took the bait put 1 unit on each side of my deployment for the bikes and 2 more unit kinda close to them but also close to my heavies.

I used my ML's for 4++, he killed 1 unit of bikes. but it spread his forces so much and he couldnt kill the other unit. I tabled him in 3 turns. The other Bike unit shot to kill the Flamer guy then charged and kill that 230p unit of dudes, it took 2 turns to do it tho I killed 6 out of 10 first round.

Honestly that was a bad match up for him I would say.

Well played! GK are a painful experience whenever I've run against them. But if I can get a Harlequin charge off against them, heh heh!

For a long time I've neglected my Reavers. I really missed the old bladevanes. However, trying "The Lawrence" strategy, they did do significant work in a hyper aggressive first turn gambit at my local. Getting rending hits onto an Imperial Knight was very cool! The reavers were so hyper mobile that I managed to keep my opponent within about a 2ft x 2ft piece of table space the whole game.