All about Reavers

So just studying the reavers in the codex and thinking of strategies they seem pretty useful. Being new to the game though, I can't say for sure whether or not I'm right. So do any more experienced players have good ideas/advice about reavers? I was thinking and equipping them with caltrops then just letting them dart out from cover, over a target unit and behind some other building so they can't be shot out. And if I had to I could equip them with DL as an antitank unit. How effective are they though?

I'd recomend to choose a role beforehand, kit them out acordingly and stick to the plan.
Basically there are two roles, they can fullfil. Either anti tank or anti infantry.
For anti tank equip them with blasters or heat lances. That's mostly a choice of preference. I prefer blasters, because of their greater threatrange, but admittedly heatlances are more powerfull, if in meltarange.
Caltrops are a good anti infantry boost, but are also pretty expensive, so I'd only include them, if I don't need the points elsewhere, but their bladevane attack is more powerful, more reliable and definitely safer, than CC, so I suggest to not take an arena champion.

So, while it might be tempting to give them caltrops and heatlances, I'd abstain from it, since you can't use both. If you shoot, you can't turbo boost and if you boost you can't shoot, so the points are mostly wasted.

^I agree with this 100%^
I'm not keen on equipping them for everything. I find that giving them HL's really gives them a great AT option(I prefer to shoot-n'-scoot them). They still do well running over infantry without caltrops if you need to go that way, though I find that they don't seem to run out of armor to shoot at and don't usually have them use their bladevanes until the 3rd or 4th turn anyhow(if they live that long!)

webway portal + two sets of 4+1 reavers @ two caltrops. = epic slaughter

Personally I use them for AT duty, and here is why.

The heat lance is our only AP1 weapon, which gives us a great chance to kill a tank. To get the 2d6 pen though it has to be within 9" Scourges are sitting ducks that close to a tank, and a talos takes a HS slot. Reavers on the other hand take a FA slot (only alittle competition in that slot) and after they melta something, they get a 6" movement during the assault phase, which in turn pulls them 15" away. Safe from most charge ranges.

Also even with heat lances, they can still bladevane things, and are T4 models, which can move into cover with their skilled riders without worrying about dying.

Shadows Revenge wrote:

Personally I use them for AT duty, and here is why.

The heat lance is our only AP1 weapon, which gives us a great chance to kill a tank. To get the 2d6 pen though it has to be within 9" Scourges are sitting ducks that close to a tank, and a talos takes a HS slot. Reavers on the other hand take a FA slot (only alittle competition in that slot) and after they melta something, they get a 6" movement during the assault phase, which in turn pulls them 15" away. Safe from most charge ranges.

Also even with heat lances, they can still bladevane things, and are T4 models, which can move into cover with their skilled riders without worrying about dying.

My thoughts exactly. Usually you can turbo boost them up a flank turn one and then get good flank shots turn two with an AP1 melta/LANCE weapon (I don't know how I missed the Lance rule on this thing for the first three months of playing them ) If your opponent reacts to your move in the first turn your Reavers are still doing their job by pulling their armor out of position while taking heat off of your Raider transports.

In my opinion the Heat Lance is one of the most underrated weapons in the 'Dex. I run three Reavers with a HL and Cluster Caltrops, for peanuts. I almost always 1st turn turbo them and try to do some early damage, and then move in for some flank shooting turn two as mentioned before.

They tend to either get ignored due to the turbo boost save and then wreck vehicles, or attract far more attention than they deserve in the 1st turn, saving some of my Raiders/Venoms a headache.

Evil Space Elves wrote:

..still do well running over infantry without caltrops if you need to go that way, though I find that they don't seem to run out of armor to shoot at and don't usually have them use their bladevanes until the 3rd or 4th turn anyhow(if they live that long!)

Har har, so much truth. I'm surprised Baron Tordeck hasn't popped in yet to exalt the merits of fielding 2x6 HL Reavers. I used to prefer Blasters myself, but recently I've turned back to the good ol' HLs and so far I'm not disappointed - so much more killyness!

Marquis Vaulkhere wrote:

So would most agree that heat lances are more likely to wreck a enemy tank than blasters. Its only 'S6' but with ap1 and lance/melta you have an avrage roll of 7 so more often than not you will be penning. with ap1 thats a good deal.

That's not a good deal-It's THE deal! On average you are getting a penetrating AP1 shot=Awesome.

Marquis Vaulkhere wrote:

So would most agree that heat lances are more likely to wreck a enemy tank than blasters. Its only 'S6' but with ap1 and lance/melta you have an avrage roll of 7 so more often than not you will be penning. with ap1 thats a good deal.

I'd rather have regular meltas @ S8, but hell I'll take it

I took a unit of 3 Reavers with HL in a tournament cause I didn't have much else to spend the last 100 or so points. They worked a lot better than expected. Sure, in some of the games they got assaulted or flamed ot death by a LR Redeemer, but they fulfilled their role as a cheap harssment/AT unit veyr well, and in one game blew up half of an IG player's parking lot by lancing the tanks in the side armour and retreating in cover.

Marquis Vaulkhere wrote:

Fast attack- three reavers-98pts.
heat lance, cluster caltrops.

Fast attack- three reavers-98pts.
heat lance, cluster caltrops.

Fast attack- three reavers-98pts.
heat lance, cluster caltrops.

Sounds like a good fast attack selection to me

I'd be inclined to agree! Although I like to save a slot for deep striking Scourges... with Heat Lances!

Scourges aren't really any slower if the purpose is to use RJBs as a shooting platform though. They are more expensive, but when you consider you're getting 2 guns as opposed to one...the price differential becomes a bit more balanced - in fact the Scourges are cheaper - and have a better armor save.

If you prefer MSU then I will say Reavers have a potent place - but if you like Tordeck's 6 man Reaver squads I think the 5 man Scourge squad is seriously worth checking out - especially since it can net you Haywire Blasters, which are superior really to either HLs or Blasters.

Thor665 wrote:

especially since it can net you Haywire Blasters, which are superior really to either HLs or Blasters.

Icky statement. Stunlocking =/= pulverising. Though it's the only weapon that makes Scourges worthwhile, if at all.

Raneth wrote:

Thor665 wrote:

especially since it can net you Haywire Blasters, which are superior really to either HLs or Blasters.

Icky statement. Stunlocking =/= pulverising. Though it's the only weapon that makes Scourges worthwhile, if at all.

+1 on that. Scourges and reavers play a different role. If you want to get lances to pulverise tanks, I'd pick reavers over scourges everyday, but Haywire blasters are a superb support weapon, so generally I like to include on squad of 5 with two of them, but reavers are hands down the best all purpose, cheap FA choice.

Blasters and HL =/= pulverizing either, while we're at it. The value call is - to 'pulverize' something for the DE generally is a matter of attrition, and involves a lot of lances. The haywire blasters allow a fairly assured stunlock at a relatively minor targeting cost, which is the value. Believe you me - if Ravagers could take 3x Haywire Blasters, it would be a worthwhile build option, and I would not say the same for if they could take 3x Heat Lances (though that might get the Duke more play...)

I think Scourges can work 'well' with Heat Lances coming out of a WWP - functionally a 22" melta threat bubble from somewhere near the center of the table? Not shabby.

I don't care what anyone says 9 reavers 3x caltrops + WWP = dead marine squad.

Thor665 wrote:

The haywire blasters allow a fairly assured stunlock at a relatively minor targeting cost, which is the value.

True enough, but with a plethora of new Wardex's essentially ignoring Stun/Shaken results it seems like an increasingly redundant tactic. Nowadays I want to know something is going to go down, regardless of Codex specific shenanigans.

Ergo; Heat Lances.

At 250+ points I *hope* they can handle a Marine squad. Let's consider it for posterity's sake though, Marine squads are pretty tough to kill;

Bladevanes - d3 Str 4 AP- per bike
Caltrops - d6 Str 6 AP- per Caltrop

With average rolls we're looking at
9 Bladevane hits
9 Caltrop hits

9 Bladevane hits - 4.5 wound - 1.5 dead after armor saves
9 Caltrop hits - 7.5 wound - 2.5 dead after armor saves

On average (and this is presuming the Marines did no trickery with wound allocation) the RJBs will kill about 4 Marines. Which is not shabby, and if it's an MSU squad is almost assuredly a sweep of them (though at an egregious point sink). It will bloody the nose of a bigger squad, but they should survive okay.

Cam300 wrote:

True enough, but with a plethora of new Wardex's essentially ignoring Stun/Shaken results it seems like an increasingly redundant tactic. Nowadays I want to know something is going to go down, regardless of Codex specific shenanigans.

Ergo; Heat Lances.

Good point, my counter point would be most of those builds specialize in short range firepower, at which stage Heat Lances are playing to their strengths and it's quite potentially Lances and Night Shields that are the appropriate answer.

I do think versus GK Psyrifle spam that overwhelming alpha strike is the only real answer - and heat lances can't give that to me.

I have played with Reavers in rush lists and wwp lists and hands down they come to their own out of a portal - even a poorly placed or conservatively placed portal can allow the bikes to caltrop where you need them. Also I want to add that they can not be blocked from coming out of the wwp - had a space wolf player who thought he was being so sly when his units surrounded the portal only to be caltropped.

Tried them in a non-portal and they didn't do as well, where more like 50/50 productivity wise. If the opponent sees bikes, beasts or monstrous creatures they tend to freak but usually its the bikes that are the softest and get picked on first.

Tried them 9 strong with 3 caltrops and 3 heatlances - as expensive as they are I think I prefer them like this as they can adjust to whatever target that needs attention when their time is ready to emerge. I know they are not "optimized" but when you got the uncertainty of the reserve roll I need to be able to balance with the other units that emerge at the same time so they have to adjust.

Even 6 reavers with 2 heatlances and 2 caltrops spell duality and the unit can bat from both sides of the plate depending what I need at that time. My experiences have usually led the unit to caltrop more than the heatlance - the 36" movement, the caltrop and the cover save is too good to pass up.

As for Scourges, I also go "MLU" here and found 10 Scourges with 4 lances to be fun as well - only in a wwp list with the option to deepstrike. Again, depending on what the targets are and what is emerging from reserves determines what role these guys will play (but I prefer them doing AT as a priority). They are not blocked from coming out of the portal and if the portal is not where I need it I can always deepstrike (which I have had good luck with so far). If I had to choose between bikes and scourges, I would take the scourges and would normally take them in squads of 5 with two heatlances. As for the squad of 10, I have only used them twice so far and I am very surprised on how well they survive focused fire - I haven't lost the squad to one round of shooting yet so I will experiment some more.

But that is what I think about all of our Fast Attack slots - they are perfect and quite natural using the portal, only the beasts can be blocked from coming out but if you were smart about using 2 portals then the beasts should be able to charge what ever is blocking the other portal. Also, all the FA slots can deal with armor in their own way, even the Hellions with the number of st4 attacks can damage light transports so I tend to enjoy the duality of all the units.

Just a quick note on the bikes caltrops - imagine 3 caltrops bloodvaning a squad of scarabs, I can't believe we get a pain token for raping them!

Thor I had the same outlook on my FA slot choices until I actually sat down and looked at what Reavers bring to the table (and the abundance of GK players that popped up at my store... and now its Crons...) Pretty much what I came out to is this.

for 130 points you get 5 Scourges w/ 2 haywire blasters. Your getting 5 T3 4+ 6++ models that have a 12" movement and 24" range (effectively 36" range) Meaning T1 in a pitched battle game they are most likely going to get to contribute. Their gun pretty much = 1 stunlock vehicle (2*.667*.833=1.111 results). The problem being is you are most likely going to sit them in cover, which gives them a 4+ anyway (so their armor is now null-in-void unless against flamers) And being T3 means they get murdered by bolters (9 bolters shots= 2 dead (9*.667*.667*.5=2.002) and as you know it gets worse if they get within DT range, so thats a Ld check.

Now for 156 points you get 6 Reavers w/ 2 heat lances. Only for 26 more points your getting 6 T4 5+ models with 12" movement and a 18" gun (effectively 30" movement, but seriously who doesnt try for the melta, so its actually 21") They have the ability to turbo-boost 36" (and gaining a 3+ coversave with it) as well as an Eldar Jetbike they get a 6" move if they do not charge and do not turbo-boost in the movement phase, and skilled riders. So esencially you move up with the turbo-boost, then move 12" to get within melta range, pop a tank with the 2d6 pen (lance lowers anything higher than AV12 to a 12, then 2d6 average is 7, so almost always pen) then jetbike move into cover with the safety net of skilled riders. Then you have 6 T4 4+ coversave models just waiting to soak up bullets, and are 15" away, well out of most charge range (and even if they have fleet, they still have to assault through cover). Now lets take the same 9 shots from a bolter and turns out you only lose 1.5 models (9*.667*.5*.5=1.5) which losing 1 model is not a LD check on them.

On top of all that Reavers have the AI with their bladevanes (good to use when repositioning them to shoot at a new tank. And can actually hold themselves in assault with their Combat Drugs and pistol ccw (although not reconmended)

So in conclusion, here is the pros and cons for both:

Scourges
Pros: 2 special weapons for 5 man, 4+ in the open, 6++ save, able to contribute T1, One of two units with access to haywire blaster (most under-rated weapon in our dex)

Cons: T3 models, needs 10 for more than 2 special weapons, haywire blaster is weak against the two newest codex's (GKs and Necrons)

Reavers
Pros: 1 special weapon for 3, T4 models, turbo-boost (and a 3+ coversave) eldar jetbike move, skilled riders, bladevane ability, combat drugs (if they get into assault), pistol CCW.

Cons: 5+ save in the open, need 6 for 2 special weapons, cant contribute T1, weakness to flamers, need to get close to be effective.

I love scourges, and would gladly field them against almost any army, but I found in an all comers list Reavers are by far a better choice.