Haywire blasters in 8th

Hi guys,
So having seen the rules leak and seeing a copy of the physical books in my local GW my first impression is that the haywire blasters aren't the tank wrecking gun they used to be in 7th.

Do any of you agree? I've not bought my scourges yet but now conflicted in how to arm them, I'm torn between the dark lance since it has the range to keep them safe from the repercussions and moving and shooting with heavy weapons is more only a -1 to hit. Or alternatively the heat lance since from what I've seen you seem to be able to choose what turn and where your scourges come on as long as it's not within 9" of an enemy the only worry with that is 9" is very close and the fire/charges the next turn would essentially make them a suicide unit

If the heat lances would only have 20"...

I tend to equip them with dark lances, maybe ignoring the Winged Strike and their nice movement and stay stationary as long as I can. I don't see any advantage in heat lances or haywire blasters at the moment.

My fear is that no enemy will be ignoring 4 scourges with heat lances heading for his tank. And if you are outside of 9" (Winged strike), you hit one point less after moving with dark lances, but wound rhinos on a 4 insteat of 5 with heat lance.
Haywire blasters seem unable to reliable destroy tanks or infantry. maybe useful at a very high toughness value.

I think I'll convert my Haywire scourges into heat Lance scourges.
Keep in mind that you can deep Strike into cover without penalty. But Haywire is dead.

Even against very high toughness I think the dark lance is still better since you can always wound on a 6 now at ap -4 vs ap -1 and d6 damage vs d3 mortal wounds only on a 6

Haywire will need changes in the codex to be useful it seems. It prob got the nerf bat because everyone was running nothing but haywire scourges. Maybe it should immobilise vehicles for a turn on a 4+ if it causes any wounds? With immobilisation gone from the damage table having it as a rare special ability would be interesting and quite tactical for the true kin. As it stands though haywire is useless unless it can mortal wound fleshies.

Good idea with the immobilise.

The "old" haywire really had two problems. First one was, that it was better than all other options. Not a good thing for a game.
The second one was, that it was too good. You deep strike and destroy a vehicle and your opponent can't do nothing against it. That was frustrating.

I don't understand how you could think that Haywire got weaker. It is our only option to reliably shoot mortal wounds at vehicles.

To wound rolls:
On 4+: Mortal wound
On 5+: Mortal wound + normal wound on T7 or less.
On 6+: D3 Mortal wounds + normal wound

Doing the mathhamer it shows that it does about the same damage than it used to do. Even better, mortal wounds completely ignore invul saves. And Haywire Scourges didn't even went up in price.

It is true that the alternatives got better. Blasters deal D3 damage and Lances can actually hurt stuff with D6 damage. But both of these options still have the disadvantage of either short range of being a heavy weapon.

And yes, we will need more Haywire shots to kill a vehicle now, but you shouldnt forget that vehicles also went up in price.
Overall I think they are still a very solid choice, but the alternatives have simply been made better.

I don´t know. The damage output feels so mediocre. But that´s probably because of the increased number of wounds for vehicles.
If you use them to kill a 10 Wound tank, you need how many turns 3?
That seems a bit much but maybe I´m thinking in old terms.

Well, I will try them before I rip them off, so let´s wait and see.

See I've not made mine yet so now really debating on what to put on them. I'm currently thinking dark lance and having them stationary most of the time but use the mobility to get then out of dodge if threatened or into a better position for shots with their mobility. But would I just be better off with a dark lance ravager for that? Would scourges just be better with their shardcarbines as anti infantry now?

Well, instead of dark lances, I think it´s better to use a Ravager. Haywire..I´m still not sold but I´d use heat Lances and deep strike against a lone vehicle or hide out of line of sight so the enemy doesn´t dare go near it.
Splinter cannons: Take the venom.

But that´s just my opinion. Haven´t tried it yet.

The Strange Dark One wrote:

I don't understand how you could think that Haywire got weaker. It is our only option to reliably shoot mortal wounds at vehicles.

To wound rolls:
On 4+: Mortal wound
On 5+: Mortal wound + normal wound on T7 or less.
On 6+: D3 Mortal wounds + normal wound

You are right, it is the only option to reliable do mortal wounds on vehicles. But it is not enough to destroy a vehicle in one turn (what a squad of scourges was able to in the 7th). That's ok, because 8th is a different game, transports are designed to survive longer.

But they are also compared to the dark lance, wounding nearly everything on 3+ and denying reliable any Armour Saves.

To wound rolls:
On 3+: wound with AP -4 and d6 damage
On 4+: wound with AP -4 and d6 damage
On 5+: wound with AP -4 and d6 damage
On 6+: wound with AP -4 and d6 damage

Because of that, I think haywire is weaker in their function than in 7th and weaker than the actual dark lance, even when the points for matched play are lower.

CptMetal wrote:

Well, instead of dark lances, I think it´s better to use a Ravager. Haywire..I´m still not sold but I´d use heat Lances and deep strike against a lone vehicle or hide out of line of sight so the enemy doesn´t dare go near it.
Splinter cannons: Take the venom.

But that´s just my opinion. Haven´t tried it yet.

I am still convined that Haywire Blasters can have a role in the army because they can reliably bypass Invul saves. But yeah, the Dark Lance seems to be the best choice for almost all situations.

I did the mathhammering and even with the -1 to hit modifier the Lance is the best choice. Not only will it do the most damage, it also does the most damage/points.

Some corner cases exist where Heat Lances are more point efficient (when within 9" range) or against invul saves when Haywire.

Of course, you might want to take a Ravager instead. You only get 3 Lances at the same price, but it is also more survivable and always hits on 3+

Deep striking with heat lances means staying away more than 9", wounding T7 on a 5+ and dealing d6 damage, unable to use the ability to use a 2nd damage die or do we have any way to close the gap into 9"?

I'm really tempted to leave the anti vehicle to the ravagers and voidraven and go either shardcarbines or blasters with these guys and infantry/ heavy infantry hunting

A squad of haywire scourge (4 weapons) is going to put out somewhere in the region of 4 wounds a turn. Even if they're mortal that's not a lot. Lances (both kinds) can do tat damage in a single shot, and with 4 shots per squad not only are you likely to match that, you're probably going to surpass it the majority of the time. Haywire can't compete with heat or dark lances in any way. Yes Haywire bypasses invul saves but on vehicles have you sen anything better than 5+ yet?

If you can keep your haywire scourge pumping out shots the entire game taking no casualties themselves then they *might* pump out more dependable wounds over the entire course. But a dark or heat lance squad can easily keep up with them in the same scenario, has a chance to get lucky and rek a completely rek something in one volley and will perform better after casualties are taken. Unless we see 2++ or 3++ vehicles I don't see how haywire can compete at all.

Haywire needs something else. A 4+ immobilisation for a turn is one way to make them useful.

Anyone considering blasters or you keeping those for trueborn?

Keep those for true born.
Take heat lances for a suicide squad to do really much damage or lances to stay out of the enemy's Range.

But there are so much t7 tanks that I do not like suicide squads. Since they are real suicide squads now. Before you threw them in and they killed something. Now they average at about 3.56 wounds for blasters and close3.97/far3.11 for heat lances. But the chances that the heat lances don't do anything is much bigger than that the blasters don't do anything. Blasters can quite reliably take the last wound of, heat lances have a (for me) much too big chance of failing.
I am in favour of cold calculated suffering, I am not one of the dark eldar that love a gamble.

Str 6 without the old melta rules it's a little bit of a kicker. Wounding most vehicles on 5+ when that close to them is a scary prospect

Hm. Fair point.

The 5's to wound on heat lances are offset by the high chance of scoring 4+ wounds per weapon. You've got a 75% chance to score 4 or more wounds (that's how the maths works right?) and you can burn a CP if you want to offset a bad roll. If two lances hit and you're prepared to burn a reroll you could very well take 10 wounds off a tank with one unit of these guys. Blasters would have to be very lucky to reach those levels, but then if the heat lances roll lucky you could take in the region of 20 wounds. Heat Lances are more of a gamble, and more of a risk, but the potential rewards are significantly higher. Their power won't be in their reliability to blow up a tank in one salvo, it'll be in telling your opponent that these babies have AP-5 and dropping them behind his tanks. If he takes the bait and focuses them then other things kill his tanks. If he doesn't take the bait and they roll hot, then he loses his tank anyway. Blasters on the other hand are much more reliable to taking the last 3-5 wounds off a tank that you''d like removed but that you could live with being crippled if you can't spare the firepower.

I just looked over the costs again and realised that Dark Lances are cheaper than Heat Lances. This seems like an error to me, that extra AP and melta rule is offset badly by the lower S of the weapon. But as things stand Dark Lance Scourge are cheaper than Heat Lance Scourge and outperform them in the theatre of tank busting. Even moving, they're hitting 50% of the time, only 16.6% worse than heat lances, but they have double the range and quadruple the actual impact range of heat lances, plus they wound all vehicles 16.6% more than heat lances. If they stand still then they just outperform them. Dark Lances look to be the new hotness with Scourge but then for the same cost as a squad of these you could get a lance Ravager. It's one less shots but you get assault lances and a much tougher chassis to carry them. I feel like you should be taking weapons on the Scourge you can't get elsewhere but those Dark Lances are tempting.

The heat lance sqourges are there to drop in that small space near his characters and blow them up with some luck.

Scourges are the new Hellions?

At least in that they look cool, but don't offer anything that couldn't be done better elsewhere.

On one hand, 5 Scourges are easier to hide than a Ravager.

After giving it some thought I think I'm going to take one 5 man squad of scourges with dark lances and one with heat lances have the dark lances focus vehicles from back field moving if needed and have the heat lances drop in 18" away (preferably in cover) from terminators/characters and use them to burn down those with vehicles as targets of opportunity if they survive that long

My problem with using heat lances for character removal is that it's only really particularly useful for getting rid of characters with 2+ saves (since those characters will get a 6+ if you fire a dark lance at them), but how many characters with 2+ saves do not have some kind of invun? Drazhar in the last edition didn't have one, but I'm not aware of any in this edition. And even if you are within 9" and get the extra roll to wound, is it really worth sacrificing the range to turn what would usually be a 2+ with a dark lance (for T4) into a 3+ pick the highest? I really don't see it.