Red Grief - MSU Reavers Tactics & Tips

Ugh.
People have the perception that reavers are great! Sadly, they are not.
true, they are miles ahead of the reavers from the index. in fact, the improvement is so stark it is shocking, so you think you have to take them. The reality is that reavers sucked so bad before, it bordered on stupidity.

For the price, reavers are not worth it competitively. For fun games, yeah, take some and have a blast.

Now... I will withold complete judgement until I see the full rules for the webway gate. I am hoping it may help Hellions and Reavers. We will see...

I completely disagree with the last few posts, reaver units of 3-6 strong have been pretty handy in all 4 of the codex games I've had so far. 26" move is more than enough to get that first turn charge in, and I tend to deploy my reavers last so my opponent doesn't know what they are going after during deployment. Granted yes your deployment can hug his table edge and save his most valuable units, but I rarely see that as the optimal choice unless it's a full gunline you're up against.

Plus on the damage side of things, I think a bigger unit of reavers, around 9 or so with the +1 attack drug actually isn't bad for damage, pretty much matches wyches output with the extra added ap.

Totally agree with Lord Asvaldir.

Just played a game with 3 squads of 3 reavers. The 171 points I spent, prevented a long fangs (aka devastator) squad plus a razorback from firing the entire game after turn 1 (he went first).

I had actually tied up a second razorback on turn one, but he was able to heroically intervene with his hero and wiped out the squad that had engaged it so he didn't need to fall back (bad placement on my part during my charge)

I've yet to try the larger blob for the eviscerating-flyby. I expect that to be ok, but not devastating.

If you're looking at overall combat effectiveness, there are probably better options for your points in the codex. But the tactical flexibility the reavers provide, coupled with the little better survivability from this codex makes them extremely effective.

I have to say I'm surprised people are finding them not worthwhile - I've taken 2-3 units of 3 with a blaster and a grav talon and they have been the MVP's every game.

Sure, they eventually die, but the ability to turn 1 charge something with ease has been extremely useful. Last game vs a guard gunline they managed to sneak in a crack in the line and charge a basalisk and a heavy weapons team. It not only saved me from getting shot from those two units, it forced him to spread out his gunline and wasted an entire round of his shooting (I used the -1 to hit strategem to make it harder). Also, on the way in I put wounds on a hellhound and blew up a sentinel.

This enabled the rest of my army to clear out the now spread out screens just enough that my Archons and Succubus were able to charge through the lines to get to the delicious delicious characters in the back. Had I not had reavers in his lines turn 1, the gunline castle would have been intact and my characters would have been fighting waves of guardsmen.

I can see them being less useful if you play like Teenage Angst, which sounds like more of an attrition type force, but I tend to lean in to the whole speedy glass cannon angle myself.

@Teenage Angst - Not to go too off topic, but curious how you're running your Voidravens? I have three painted up that I used in the index but I'm struggling to find a purpose for them post-codex.

I had a conversation with the GSC player i recently tabled about something related to this.. He's a great player but not competitive, so he has similar experiences to me. Some people can't win at this game if you hand it to them. They're so bad at the game they can't see beyond the end of their nose. People who allow a turn 1 charge of Reavers to ruin their plans are those players.

And I use my Voidraven as anti-tank with a turn 1 bomb drop to obliterate a screen. Usually I'll park the Bomber in their back line because once the bomb drops it gets ignored for the next 5 turns. There's no point shooting at it after it's party piece is gone.

TeenageAngst wrote:

I had a conversation with the GSC player i recently tabled about something related to this.. He's a great player but not competitive, so he has similar experiences to me. Some people can't win at this game if you hand it to them. They're so bad at the game they can't see beyond the end of their nose. People who allow a turn 1 charge of Reavers to ruin their plans are those players.

And I use my Voidraven as anti-tank with a turn 1 bomb drop to obliterate a screen. Usually I'll park the Bomber in their back line because once the bomb drops it gets ignored for the next 5 turns. There's no point shooting at it after it's party piece is gone.

Fair enough, I guess my tournament scene isn't all that "hardcore" which makes sense why I generally place decently. (I used up all my "hardcore" gaming energy in WFB, since starting 40K my job has dominated my life so I'm usually not putting in the time with practice games)

One last follow up question on your Voidraven usage - do you take the missiles or no? I'm assuming given your usage you probably save the points but thought I'd ask.

TeenageAngst wrote:

I had a conversation with the GSC player i recently tabled about something related to this.. He's a great player but not competitive, so he has similar experiences to me. Some people can't win at this game if you hand it to them. They're so bad at the game they can't see beyond the end of their nose. People who allow a turn 1 charge of Reavers to ruin their plans are those players.

Well....it's fair at half. It is true that an opponent can avoid any CC in first turn with your reavers.
But it's also true that you're forcing your opponent to avoid this. First charge Reavers is not strong because you're going to actually engage, but because you're forcing your opponent to play as he won't play.

It's a tactic, nothing mandatory, flyers can do something similar.

Cerve wrote:

TeenageAngst wrote:

I had a conversation with the GSC player i recently tabled about something related to this.. He's a great player but not competitive, so he has similar experiences to me. Some people can't win at this game if you hand it to them. They're so bad at the game they can't see beyond the end of their nose. People who allow a turn 1 charge of Reavers to ruin their plans are those players.

Well....it's fair at half. It is true that an opponent can avoid any CC in first turn with your reavers.
But it's also true that you're forcing your opponent to avoid this. First charge Reavers is not strong because you're going to actually engage, but because you're forcing your opponent to play as he won't play.

It's a tactic, nothing mandatory, flyers can do something similar.

So the question you have to ask yourself is this; would I rather have seven Reavers without any upgrades, or a Razorwing?

I know what my answer to that is.

I always take missiles on my voidraven. If they kill 1 model they earn their 10 points and since the plane is either shot out of the air turn 1 or allowed to go unmolested the rest of the game, that's 5 full turns of missiles.

@Burnage: depends. In some lists, a Razorwing, in some others 7 Reavers

Any T1 charge unit can be screened/blocked but does that make T1 charge units bad?
Hell no!

Most armies cannot completely screen all their good shooting units especially after you drop buckets of splinter on said screen.

Even if your opponent can castle up perfectly they have surrendered board control and in many missions, the game.

I play reavers in nearly every game. Sadly they don't kill much. Most of the time they just race from one objective marker to the next or prevent some tank from shooting. But they are very useful for that. And since they don't cost that much anymore I always take 6 in my army.

EDIT: Plus, for some reason I don't understand most people (I play with) think they are really dangerous and try to kill them. With +1T they are quite resilient.

Painjunky wrote:

Any T1 charge unit can be screened/blocked but does that make T1 charge units bad?
Hell no!

Most armies cannot completely screen all their good shooting units especially after you drop buckets of splinter on said screen.

Even if your opponent can castle up perfectly they have surrendered board control and in many missions, the game.

Exactly, just because you can't tie up that devastator squad with reavers turn one doesn't mean that reavers are bad. In fact with the +1 attack drug I find that they are actually reasonably killy, 3 attacks s4 ap-1 a piece is better than splinter fire at taking something out like a guardsmen screen.

I'm even findind Strife Reavers pretty good, with 4 attacks each one. No charge on first turn, but they still move 18"...more than any other non-veichle unit of the game.

I could see that being not bad, but I can't pass up on that extra 8" move, that high a movement value is just too huge.