Reaver Loadout

Hey everyone

Reavers are looking mighty spicy in the new codex. But that has me wondering what to equip them with, so wanted to poll you all for thoughts.

Some thoughts of my own: A lot of their value is in cheap tying up squads on the first turn. As long as you can survive some overwatch, so keeping them cheap seems key. Also, they remain one of the more fragile elements in most armies (with lots of coven or transports), so investing a lot of points in them seems like a waste. On the other hand, They are easily able to close distances, so seem like a reasonable platform for shorter ranged anti-tank guns. Especially heat lanes seem interesting on them, both as they are cheaper than blasters, and since with their mobility you might reasonable get into melta bonus range.

Grav talons seem generally all-around better than cluster caltrops, since they cost the same and with such blinding speed you are almost guaranteed to be the one charging. And damage up front is much better than damage after you've survived a round of combat and fallen back. After all, dead models don't hit you.

Weapons on the squad leader seem like a trap, since you already are Str4 with Ap-1. Agonizers give you Ap-2, but may actually hurt your wounding against random grunts (and cost points), while powerweapons give even more AP but now you lose the benefit of str4. Most people seem to be running them with red grief so neither is really improved by obsessions.

It always seems better to put the blasters/heat lances on the same models as the grav talons, as you always want to keep those alive for last.

Possible loadouts:
3 reavers, 1 grav talon.
Cheap, good for tying up, maybe do a damage.

9 reavers, 3 grav talons, 3 heat lances
A little more of a commitment, able to somewhat effectively use the flyover strategem

How do people feel about giving them blasters/ heat lances? Do people have a preference within those 2? Or just keep them naked for tying-up-duty. If they are truly suicide squads, even the grav talons may be a waste. Thoughts?

If it is worth the points for a heat lance, it should be work the points for a blaster. Especially for late game tank hunting.

If I was running them as turn one suicide squads I would run them bare bones.

Grav Talons are definitely the way to go for me, whilst they're tough, I would much rather do mortal wounds upfront.

I'm currently running mine as: 9 reavers, 3 x grav talons, 3 x heat lances.

Running them as HQ and light vehicle killers at the moment. I've got enough blasters and dark lances with scourge and ravagers. The minus 5 means that characters are almost always reduced to their invulnerable saves and light vehicles are just buggered.

personal set up for me is going to be three squads of three no upgrades just to keep them as speedy tar pits. ive thought about going for a bigger pack of 9 but it seems more useful to be able to tie down 3 units.

with my cults i plan on using smaller units just to tie stuff up, so i should be able to get +toughness on two of the units.

My current list using them is 2x3 with only Grav Talons. I skipped the Blasters because they're Red Grief so will be Advancing Turn 1 and probably most turns anyway.

I like a squad of 10, no upgrades plus 3 grav talons. This gives you a nice opportunity to fly over something and use the strategem that on a 5+ each bike does a mortal wound. That's 10D6, averaging 3 mortal wounds. You can then charge that unit and with grav talons you are doing an average of another 1-2 mortal wounds. If the dice Gods are kind you could do an absolute ton of damage before you even get to CC

For me its either 9 Reavers with 3 Blasters and +1 T and 3 Grav Talons

or

9 Reavers no spec weapons +1 A and 3 Grav Talons

I'm really thinking that Blasters aren't worth it on them, especially if you're planning on charging ASAP - you'll likely be getting only a single round of shooting off with them, and that'll be at -1 to hit.

Every Blaster and Grav Talon that you take could be replaced by another Reaver, and my suspicion is that in general the additional Reaver will do more work.

Grav talons are an auto include I think no matter what size unit you're running. You're always going to be charging with reavers, and 3pts/m for the opportunity to stack on a mortal wound ain't bad. I'd never take cluster caltrops, useless compared to talons.

As for the special weapon really still not sure whether to take it or not. Heat lance still feels like garbage to me with s6 so I'd pass on that, but I'm taking 2 6 man units in my current list and the more blaster shots is always nice. That being said you're advancing than likely getting stuck in combat, and most opponents don't want to leave reavers alive so that's one turn of shooting really on a +4, which isn't great. Plus taking 4 blasters isn't cheap pts wise, could go elsewhere. I will likely experiment a bit more with taking blasters and not taking them, see how I feel.

On a side note I feel like 6 is a good size unit since it's small enough to take multiple units of them but also lets you make use of eviscerating flyby in some situations. Granted it's not a lot of mortal wounds, but in my last game this weekend I flew over a character with 2w remaining and finished him off, very nice since he was surrounded by other units so it would be difficult for something else in my army to get him.

I tried them in 12, from.RedGrief, completely naked. Yeah for 12 points 4 Talons are not bad, but I haven't so much points in my list and they were fine anyway for their role. I liked them.

But I'm curious about 12 Strife Reavers. I got some good feedback, and I like the idea of 4A Reavers !

Blasters are pricey certainly for a platform that is pretty much always advancing. Heat lances aren’t great, but they may be enough for multi-wound monsters and infantry like Custodes. Then again, they should probably be on 7 or 8 points. GW overvalues re-rollable damage, I feel like, especially on half distance guns like meltas/heat.

I also run them in a pack of 12 with 4 grav-talons, +1T drug and no special weapon. I'd like to keep them "cheap" and tough (for Dark Eldar anyway...) and not too killy to be able to wipe out my opponent in his turn to protect them. Right now I'm in love with the Eviscerating Flyby + Red Grief combo

Generally speaking I don't like to look at a unit in a vacuum but always in the context of the list I'd like to play. So, for example, leaving the blasters at home is not a problem because I've got darklight covered by other units in the list

It just really depends on what you want to do with the bikes. Multiple MSU units could work well. You can saturate the field. Take objective, Harass in multiple places etc. But suffer from being able to take ideal drugs.

Mid size squads are solid. Not a huge points investment and can do some cool crap. 6 man units are cool and benefit from good drugs more.

The large 9-12 units are solid. You can pick the best drug. The fly by strat is great and you can protect your special weapons more.

I just noticed today that the flyby strat is only usable when you advance. Kind of limits it's usefulness in some cases. I would think that just shooting would be a better option a lot of the time.

merse24 wrote:

I just noticed today that the flyby strat is only usable when you advance.  Kind of limits it's usefulness in some cases.  I would think that just shooting would be a better option a lot of the time.

That's why the Cult of Red Grief is soooooo good with Reavers! You flyby a unit and then charge it to (almost) finish it off and hide in close combat.

In my last game I void mined and flow over a unit of 20 Necron Warriors killing 16 of them and then charged an Overlord who was standing nearby. The Warriors automatically fled the field and I killed the Overlord. In retrospect I should have charged the Warriors too, surrounding them, without killing all of them to be still in close combat in his turn

The best thing of that Strat is to sniping Characters. 12 Reavers can dish out likely 4 mortal wounds out and then charge (with grav talons for other mortals).

Yes I'm running my reavers in packs of 10, 3 grav talons, red grief with +1 toughness. I'd rather maximise the fly by strategem with talons in favour of snazzy guns. We have other units that can blow thr enemy off the board with firepower

My experience has been 6 man units with 2 blasters works great (no grav talons).

I advance and take 2 shots at high priority targets with the blasters, then I charge a nearby unit and intentionally try not to do much damage (part of why I don't take the grav talons) so that I can wrap a model or two to prevent the opponent from falling back and keep my unit intact. Rinse and repeat for subsequent turns sniping characters and locking units in melee so they can't shoot and so my bikes can't be shot.

I'd be tempted to use a 3 man unit for it, but it would be too easy to lose a single model to overwatch/combat and then you can't wrap models to prevent them from falling back.