Land Speeders in Eighth, squadron or not?

[ShinyRhino]

They're ok, not great. They fill an anti tank/monster niche in the Fast Attack slot, but now that there's detachments that allow you too run whatever slot you want to your hearts content, filling FOC slots isn't all that important.

 

They're a"smoke em if you got em" unit now. Play with them if you own some, but people won't likely be lining up to buy new ones.

[ShinyRhino]

I've stubbornly continued to use my Speeders in various configurations.

Last month I ran a trio in a squadron with heavy bolters on all and two with assault cannons. This felt like the sweet spot for them.

 

The 20" move when in a full squadron allowed me to deploy them in out of the way places, then move and do things like grab an objective, block enemy movement, or just shoot things.

 

The heavy bolter and assault cannon combo is great, even when firing at-1 to hit. I was throwing nine heavy bolter shots and twelve assault cannon shots a turn. I found that volume of shots useful against MSU lists where I could point the guns at one or two units a turn and steadily reduce their numbers.

The T5 of the speeders was actually pretty good. People would have to decide if they wanted to throw missiles or lascannons into them instead of my Dreadnoughts (Venerable and Leviathan). Small arms was largely mitigated by the 3+ save and six wounds with no damage tracks.

Overall, I'm finding them pretty useful despite initial impressions.

[seriade]

Have you tried the scout speeder yet in 8th?

[Shadow Captain Vyper]

Have you tried the scout speeder yet in 8th?

I have. T5 with 7W and a 4+ save means its made of wet paper when shot at with any sort of AT weapon. That coupled with the fact that you want to get in close with it to make use of either the scouts to take objectives or use it as gun boat, means its exposed to a ton of small arms fire. (Anything higher than Strength 3 does a respectable job of pulling wounds off it).

 

I was not impressed, I think it needs to be somewhere closer to 40 points with a HB instead of its current cost.

[ShinyRhino]

Have you tried the scout speeder yet in 8th?

I've not tried one yet, as I don't own one. That 4+ save is concerning, as mentioned above.

[GreyCrow]

It really depends what points level we are talking about ! :)

 

There is a hidden metric when it comes to the effectiveness of units in 40k : it is model density, and this scales up with points level.

 

The game board does not scale up with points level, but the army size does. Therefore, you will have more model density, and more crossfire opportunities the higher model count you have.

 

Units that rely on speed and on small profile for survivability suffer heavily from high model density, because they simply can't use their main advantage to their benefit.

 

A fast moving unit is good to select its engagement and a small profile is good to hide. As soon as we reach the 1500-2000 points level, the Landspeeder can't really use either of those due to the game board limitation.

 

Typhoons for example would be extremely good at kiting, keeping the enemy at 48" inches and using their small profile to hide from serious AT, while the closer range versions would be good as cavalry meant to gank isolated targets with high power short range weapons.

 

If you play at 500 points on a 6x4, then you can totally use these to their advantage.

At higher points rate, they dramatically lose their effectiveness versus higher toughness, higher wounds models, just because of how crammed the table is.

 

In larger points games, they have a role of :

- Typhoon : very wide flankers, sneaky fire support

- Closer range loadouts : late game cavalry that moves in to finish off some units when they have less guns bearing on them