The Reaper: Discuss

SO FW has dropped the first DE eye candy plus the special rules, before I go and feedback to FW I would like to hear everyones feelings on the rules, before you comment though , can you roll some dice and compare it to a set of similar rolls for a Ravager.

Cheers.

I would use it to to help screw up my friend's Rhino Walls. Large Haywire Blasts will probably hit multiple Rhinos at a time.

Oh, so we discuss only Rules?

It's crap.

First of all, it is supbar choice to old Diss Ravager (3 plasmacannons), without considering
point cost. It is also bad when we compare it to "not new but new" 3 DL.

It have Sails. Using Sails prevent You from shooting. WHAT THE HELL? Is there any reasonable explanation? You have Aerial Assault already!

It have 1 weapon, which is... we know what this means for AV11 OT vehicle?

Next thing, Dildo... I mean cannon itself. It is terrible.
Let's rec(r)ap:

Blast. It is one Big Blast. Not so bad IF vehicle squadrons would have 2" coherency. Sadly, they have 4". this means You probably would pretty slim chance to get two vehicles. Against infantry... S5 AP4? That's nearly as good as freaking Biovore. Pinning? Good luck with codexes that literally take big dump of USR on Your head.

Beam. Good in 4th edition, utter crap in 5th. Oh and it actually work best vs... DE (OT AV10-11) and Nids (like shooting crap out of big guys with freaking poison guns wasn't enough). WTF?

Let's compare it to... Space Ork's Boomwagon (Looted Wagon with Boomgun, I don't have better candidate, with exception to PotMS+EA Vindicators that have AV 13, S10... way better.): S8, AP3, Blast 5", Ordnance for AT fun, cost ~100 points. Some minor problems with movement (like it would care), same armour, few times better.

Anyway I just can't see why You would that thing in first place. You have better tools to do it's job.

[edit]
The point of comparing it with BT "Bic Mac" Vindicator is similar cost. Just if someone would like to ask. IMHO those thing ARE bended, so my Purple Knights run three

My current observations are that it is worse , even mathematically than a ravager and costs around a third more , fail much ?

The blast needs ap3 to be tempting and the main beam needs d6 haywire rolls, then I 'might' run one , its a shame as they actually published that broken piece of {self edit} the Achilles, DE have no answer for that sadly, we pretty much cant kill it outside of freak luck....

Maybe just ap3 for blast ap1 for main beam, it almost always glances .....

as usual , the use obscure over complex rules (to give the impression of technological superiority) while actually ending up with a worse weapon, as local ork said, Vindicator ?

Keep it coming folks, Maybe we could organize a little forum letter to FW, they usually take on board constructive rules feedback, preferably supported with numbers and a clear, fair coherent argument. If everyone feels it is a piece of crud it will ultimately effect sales ?

Cheers

Selfquote from other thread:

Quote :

The point is a ravager gets 3 shots a turn, with BS 4 that's 6 hits in 3 turns, against 2 hits in 3 turns for the reaper. Assuming AV 12 thats 1 effective hit each turn. So a ravager should at least shake a vehicle per turn and has a 1/3 chance to penetrate. The reaper has a 1/3 chance to get 3 haywire rolls, that's true, but as these only penetrate on 6s the chance to penetrate is pretty low, 2/3 to hit, 1/3 to 3 Haywire rolls and 3/6 penetrating. That's only 0.11 to penetrate, plus the S7 hit that's about 0.25.
Since 50% off all glancing hits are shaken and 16% stunned, which don't stack, and the reaper has a 1/3 chance each round to do nothing at all, i'd think underwhelming is the right term if you have to pay 30 points more for it.

I just think pouring glancing hits over a vehicle is utter useless. Chances are you sent 135+ points just to shake the same vehicle 3 times.
And like Local_Ork said the blast is just not effective enough. S5 is just useless, even against AV10 and one Haywire roll is exellent against multiple vehicles, but hitting more then one is poor luck and/or stupid opponent.

And whats this pinning and insta kill crap? "We give you a weapon that excells in killing vehicles, but insted of making it supereffective against vehicles and useless against anything else, we just make it slightly above average and give it silly AI and MC-killing possibilities.
A beam configuration kill shock has a chance of around 10% off killing something instantly and almost everything that would be targeted will get a save against it, either 2+ or anything++.
10 warriors with nothing more than Splinterrifles have an average of 3_1/3 wounds per round, a Venom even 4. The warrior have inferior range and cost 90+ points, but they have 10 wounds, the ability to double their shots and are a scoring unit. The venom is equal rangewise, even cheaper with 65 points and doesn't fill a slot. So taking a reaper to kill Infantry or MCs is just supid²!

Luv'ly model, as always from FW.

As a weapon platform? It has one main weapon and no secondaries. It’s single weapon has just one shot, and it has no extra protection.

It should not cost any more points-wise than a regular Ravager. A Thunderfire Cannon has 4 shots at twice the range, for 5 points less than a Ravager. C’mon.

a) If it does cost more than a Ravager, even just 10 points more, it should have a choice of two side mounted Splinter Cannons or Haywire Blasters and the option to swap out the main weapon for a Void Lance.

b) If it were to cost 20 points more than a Ravager, it should also include Flickerfield and Nightshields automatically. It says that the Storm Vortex Generator "is a massively powerful electromagnetic wave cannon" and the gubbinz takes up nearly the entire deck space of the vehicle, so it should be good for generating a defensive shield of some kind as well.

c) For all it’s powerful electromagnetic-ness, it's really not that much more effective in Blast mode than the hand-held version carried by my 22-point Scourge. Comparing it to the old Dissie rules, if we had AP2 rather than 3 for the Beam and Heavy 3 rather than 1 for the Blast at such short range, it would be great.

I really, really hate to be negative about new toys, but this could have been thought out a whole lot better before release, even if it is experimental. For 135 points, compared to many other existing vehicles, I think that including a), b) and c) above would not be unreasonable.

Sorry I didn't notice it earlier, but as it seems I'm not the only one. So everyone do me a favor and look up what aerial assault actualy is and tell me to these rules are no april's fools joke everyone knowing off died, befor they could tell anyone.
Whatever the rulesdesigner smoked, I want some, but I'm afraid it has something to do with grinding up and snorting a whole warhound titan.

Spoiler:

Correct Tiri, the Aerial Assault rule is pointless. It only applies to Ravagers and this thing apparently used to be referred to as a Raider, so I guess that they felt they were doing us a favour by including it when in fact it is completely unnecessary.

Yeah I don't really get FW they very rarely seem to hit the happy medium everything they do falls into either underpowered but pretty or redonkulous and pretty. LR Achilles, Lucius Drop Pod, Ceastus Assault Ram, Hades Breaching Drill redonkulus. Reaper a bit poo that said I'll probablly end up with one.

1. Give him some secondary weapon.
2. Blast as heavy 3, same stats.
3. Beam AP 1 to actualy do somthing( I made some math and id dosnt look good) and/or d6 haywire hits.
4. Or make it a little bit as fire prism....so beam is actualy smal blast.

Beam: heavy 3.
Blast: I don't know, make it useful (ap 2/3 or ignores cover or something).

As it stands it's just another pretty model from FW, and once again it's a completely failed set of rules for a Xenos model.

The blast seems kinda odd. Might be useful aginst vehicle squadrons, but in general you have a mediocre blast weapon that has the added bonus of dealing glancing hits to vehicles. The beam suffers from being single shot. Miss and that's it. Being quite fragile, you probably won't get a secodn chanse. I'd say turn the beam into a multishot HWB and increase the blast's strenght and ap, makign it a decent anti infatry weapon, and maybe also give it the D3 haywire hits form the current beam.

My way to fix it - make it gunboat with 3 Haywire Cannons, just like Ravager. Then skip Sail (yes, we *get* You want to sell it to us FW, thank You.) and add... I dont know, 5 points to NOT make it too cheap?

The Strange Dude wrote:

Yeah I don't really get FW they very rarely seem to hit the happy medium everything they do falls into either underpowered but pretty or redonkulous and pretty. LR Achilles, Lucius Drop Pod, Ceastus Assault Ram, Hades Breaching Drill redonkulus. Reaper a bit poo that said I'll probablly end up with one.

Oddly all the crazy stuff you listed is not Xenos .... how strange it's like there is some kinda favoritism thing at work .....

I'm just going to cut and paste all the good responses into my feedback letter to FW, this thing is a long way from publication yet, FW are good guys, if it is put accross the right way and explained well I see no reason why the eventual rules cannot be good, then we can all go and buy some with a smile on our faces.

For me FW was always about buying something the existing army could not really offer, my ravagers supple plenty (too much) stunned and shaken already thanyouverymuch.

Thanks for doing this Sorrowshard.

The haywire weapon on the shadow spectre exarch glances on 2-4 glance, 5-6 pen with ap3. That would go along way for the reaper.

The model is shown with a rider, transport 5 or 6 like falcon would give it unique niche.

The blast would be good if it ignored cover and penetrated on 5-6 ap3(emp pulse flooding area like flamer makes sense). The beam as heavy 2 with d3 haywire that penn. on 6 and ap1(makes sense the emp would ignore armour, and +1 on damage table fits well), or 3'' blast heavy 1 w/ d3 haywire that pen on 5-6. It would then be better anti-tank then ravanger, but more points and vulnerable to a single weapon destroyed disarming it.

I'm not suggesting both transport and the better gun, one or the other should be enough. Combining both would need points increase to high for something armour 11.

5 things I would change

Storm Vortex Projector needs to be twin-linked or the beam setting needs to retain "blast" (small) to be worth even thinking about taking a single shot weapon option. Its in essence a one trick pony.

Increase range from 24 to 36 and 36 to 48.

Storm Vortex Projector ignores cover saves.

Nightshield standard instead of Enhanced Sails; even though a Nightshield is a reduced price upgrade (5pt vs 10pt) on the Reaper it should be standard. Paired with longer range on the SVP it would make the Reaper interesting as a true stand-off option.

Splinter cannon as an aux. weapon

The model has the sails, so it will likely stay standard, nightshield could also be standard though.

They could make beam use flamer template(beam making sweep across ground) fired 36" out, and blast could use hellstorm (touching muzzle). Buying extra template not to bad compared to model cost, and forge world is odd enough non-standard template wouldn't be out of place. The test rules with just the template/marker size upgraded would be worth the points (probably worth point increase to around void raven w/ missiles cost).

I personally hate most rules development threads. Mostly because it brings back bad memories from working on Battlefield 2.

Regardless... I feel the whole thing is weaksauce compared to other FW vehicles. The gun isn't that good, the rules aren't that great and the pointcost makes it prohibitive. I'd rather spend a few points more and field a tooled Razorwing.

Forge world sucking at rules writing, whatever next?

The cannon itself looks like it should plough into the ground. Nice idea, too small a vehicle.

I think they really missed a trick not making the gun something powerful, it should be a vehicle used for hunting super-heavies (and monoliths grrr).

SirTainly wrote:

I think they really missed a trick not making the gun something powerful, it should be a vehicle used for hunting super-heavies (and monoliths grrr).

Does anyone else feel like all they really had to do was have the Blast a 7" instead of 5" and Beam a 5" Blast?

No, I feel like it needs to be a whole lot better ....

I think the 7" blast would work. I still find it odd that the smaller shadowwraith exarch haywire is more likely to penn., but the larger blast would make it worth taking. Doesn't make it worth fw price, unless you really want the model.
I would rather have the warp hunter, to bad its craftworld, better gun, better armour, and fewer points, still looks cool. Hopfully the final rules are better, so I have to resist buying 3, and cut back on food

Someone eloquent should write FW our concerns... its much easier to affect change with FW than GW.