Whirlwind: which one should you pick ?

[SinnerBeta]

As a long time fan of missile based artillery I always try finding some points to bring a Whirlwind to the battle and I hope that thanks to this analysis you will decide to give the tank a chance as well. I won't list the exact stats to avoid potential issues, however I also assume that's if you're interested in fielding the unit you already have access to the books that list them. I appreciate any feedback regarding the analysis itself and formatting of the guide.

 

Table of content:

1) Introduction to the to the Whirlwind variants and their stratagem.

2) Analysis of the Whirlwind variants.

3) Stratagems and other buffs.

 

1) Introduction to the to the Whirlwind variants and their stratagem.

 

Thanks to Forge World we have three, or rather four, Whirlwinds to pick from which are:

- Whirlwind: the base model with two launcher options: the Castellan and the Vengeance launcher. Since in this edition you must decide which one you bring when building your list I will treat the two variants as separate units for the purpose of this guide.

- Whirlwind Hyperios: the AA variant of the Whirlwind tank, to whom I will refer simple Hyperios for the remainder of the guide.

- Whirlwind Scorpius: the "short" range variant of the Whirlwind that compensates this drawback with a higher killing power than the other tanks. As you might've guessed I will refer to it simply as Scorpius bellow.

 

With our codex, we have a number of Stratagems that apply to the Whirlwinds:

- Datalink Telemetry: the dedicated Whirlwind stratagem that turns all the potential hits you can roll into auto-hits. Requires a Land Speeder to use and creates some interesting effects we will discuss later. Due to the keywords used only the Whirlwind from the codex can benefit from this stratagem.

- Wisdom of the Ancient: allows units within 6" to reroll their to hit rolls of 1. If you're planning on using a rifleman Dread for fire support you can use this stratagem to buff units that hang out with it in the backfield, including Whirlwinds.

- The Armour of Contempt: a defensive stratagem that allows you to save again mortal wounds. Not much to say here.

- Reroll: the simple reroll from the core rulebook, it can be particularly useful when rolling for the amount of hits.

 

2) Analysis of the Whirlwind variants.

 

Let's start with the shared part of the variants: the Rhino based chassis of the Whirlwind itself:

- Mobility: the Whirlwind is a highly mobile tank, which allows it to work as a mobile artillery. While moving before firing is not optimal for it due to various penalties, it helps you to keep it alive, keeping it out of enemy LoS and helping it run from outflanking or deep striking enemies.

- Survivability: with it's high toughness and wound pool it can do well staving off small weapon fire, however don't count it on surviving focused anti-tank fire. Keep the Whirlwind hidden and out of sight.

- Offense: the attribute shared by all the launchers mounted on the Whirlwind is that they don't require line of sight to fire on an enemy. This greatly helps it's survivability and combined with it's mobility it allows the Whirlwind to harass the opponent without giving them an option to retaliate as long as you stick it behind an obscuring piece of cover.

 

Now for the distinguishing part of each variant that sets them apart:

- Castellan: the cheapest option, resulting with the cheapest variant of the Whirlwind. Thanks to it's high strength and high number of shots it excels at thinning out hordes while staying out of sight. Sadly as it possess no AP and lost it's old ability of ignoring cover it might have issues with entrenched enemies. However do not underestimate the it's potential 12 shots which greatly benefit from the stratagems and all sort of rerolls. While it can be used to pepper enemy tanks, it's strength is just one point short of being able to reliable threaten most of them. Land Speeders are fair game though. It is also the variant which benefits the most Datalink Telemetry due to it's potential number of hits.

- Vengeance: the heavier brother to the Castellan, resulting in the second cheapest variant of the Whirlwind. Where it struggles is the amount of shots, going from potential 12 hits to 6, but thanks to it's increased stats it's transformed from horde slayer to more of an elite hunter. The increase in strength allows it to wound tanks more reliably while staying out of their sight and the doubled damage statistic makes it more reliable in removing elite infantry like Terminators as well as making sure that each hit against a vehicle hurts it so much more. Overall it's the most balanced pick from all of the launcher and least reliant of the strategems. It does still however benefit from rerolling 1s.

- Hyperios: the second most expensive variant meant for shooting down enemy flyers, it suffers from having it's range decreased to nearly half of the cheaper variants and a penalty of to hit rolls against targets without the FLY keyword. Combining those drawbacks can result in a major to hit penalty if you have to move to get in range and don't have flying targets available. However note that there are plenty of units beside flyers that have the FLY keyword, such as jetbikes, skimmers and jump/jet infantry, making the Hyperios a great counter to mobile armies reliant on those units like various Space Marine, Eldar and Tau lists. Furthermore the launcher posses enough strength to reliable wound tanks as heavy as a Land Rider, higher AP than the two previous launchers and potential to deal up to 3 wounds per hit, albeit with a bit more random as the damage stat is not set.

- Scorpius: the most expensive variant of the launcher, which combined with the cost of it's platform results with a Whirlwind that costs roughly double of it's brethren. Whether it's worth it is up to debate however, combining some of the best and the worst that the other launchers could offer: it has the shortest range of all the launchers putting it into potential danger without a sufficient amount of cover to hide it behind, same strength as Castellan making it unreliable at wounding tanks, but to compensate it was given better AP and a damage value that helps it excel at taking out light vehicles and two wound elites such as deep striking terminators or even quickly approaching Land Speeders. The most interesting and powerful ability of this variant is however it's ability to shoot twice if it remained stationary, increasing it's potential number of hits to 18, the most of all of the variants. This means you really want the Scorpius to get where it needs to be and not move from that spot as much as possible, absolutely massacring anything short of Land Raiders or Monoliths.

 

3) Stratagems and other buffs.

 

Coming soon.

 

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Thank you for reading and may the Emperor be with you.

Edited January 18, 2018 by SinnerBeta

[mika_angelus]

Before you do the stratagems please note that data link telemetry only works on Whirlwind, not WHIRLWIND .

It's a small but significant difference which means the forge world variants don't benefit from that stratagem.

[G8Keeper]

Before you do the stratagems please note that data link telemetry only works on Whirlwind, not WHIRLWIND .

It's a small but significant difference which means the forge world variants don't benefit from that stratagem.

Is that in an Faq? Seems overly picky lol.

[Helycon]

 

Before you do the stratagems please note that data link telemetry only works on Whirlwind, not WHIRLWIND .

It's a small but significant difference which means the forge world variants don't benefit from that stratagem.

Is that in an Faq? Seems overly picky lol.

 

 It's the way keywords work.

[G8Keeper]

What they base it on font now?

[Helycon]

It's used to differentiate between a unit name and a keyword, yes. It's in the rulebook somewhere. Edited January 16, 2018 by Helycon

[G8Keeper]

Ok so maybe im confused. Do you mean the forgeworld book whirlwind do not have the keyword "whirlwind"? Or the more crazy notion that they have it but it's on uppercase lol?

 

It's late.. Ish and I'm tired

[Brother_Darius]

LOL.

 

But to get on topic, I actually am a BIG fan of the W.W. ever since the datacard only came with the second edition Angels of Death book.  Kind of felt it made it a DA kind of thing.

 

I believe it is a highly under used entry, and can be a real annoyance to the enemy forcing them off their game plan.

I'm looking forward to some of the feed back on this.

[Helycon]

If it's bold and all upper case, it's a keyword, if it's not, it's a unit name. That is the exact difference. If the wording of a rule stratagem is written without it, it only applies to a unit. If it's bold and upper case, it applies to a group of units with the keyword. A Predator for killshot needs to be an actual Predator unit. For Blood Angels, a Baal Predator would not qualify as an example. The stratagem is written in lower case and not bold, implying the unit. A Baal Predator is different in naming, even when it also has the PREDATOR keyword. Hellbrutes also have this specific issue, which was addressed in an FAQ after the release of the Chaos Codex to stop people using a strategem on units it was a lot more powerful for.

 

That said, I've bought two of them to play around with. My backlog is very angry with me though. I really have a lot of building and painting to do, not even talking about magnetising some of the things :X .

Edited January 16, 2018 by Helycon

[Chaplain Lucifer]

I fondly remember when Whirlwind used to lay minefield templates. I used to field 3 of those to teach my tape-surfing tyranid friend a lesson.

Anyway, thanks for the guide, gives food for thought! I hope to see updates!

[G8Keeper]

I see, wow honestly never picked up on that.

 

Every game should have a healthy backlog Helycon, what's the point otherwise

[Helycon]

I see, wow honestly never picked up on that.

 

Every game should have a healthy backlog Helycon, what's the point otherwise

Edited January 16, 2018 by Helycon

[SinnerBeta]

Forgot that it's not WHIRLWIND, thanks for pointing it out. At least it's still LAND SPEEDER.

[G8Keeper]

I knew that, I swear haha!

[Solrac]

Correction on the Scorpius. It fires 3D3 shots so max potential of 9 shots, 18 shots when shooting double.

 

Being on the receiving end of three of these tanks in the past they are brutal. Weight of fire combined with re-rolls to hit and re-rolls 1s to wound make them good enough to kill T7 or higher.

 

The problem with all the Whirlwinds is the random shots. Even though you can average it out it's not always going to be like that.

 

In saying that Chapter Approved brought their cost down to 95pts total for a Castellan variant. That is incredibly cheap. That's 2.5 standard Castellan Whirlwinds compared to the Scorpius. I'm gonna play around with the Castellan/Vengeance Whirlwind this tournament season. I feel it has some potential.

[sneakybamsen]

Latest iteration of my 2k semi-competitive list has a couple of speeders and a whirlwind castellan to help against hordes. Im actually contemplating making a speeder dual heavy flamer, as you'd need one within 12" to use the stratagem, and advancing with SotR means even heavy flamers get to auto hit. 2d6 heavy flamer auto hits plus the whirlwind. Even blobs have to think about the casualties they can take from that.

 

What do you guys think of kitting out a speeder for the task like that?

[SinnerBeta]

Correction on the Scorpius. It fires 3D3 shots so max potential of 9 shots, 18 shots when shooting double.

 

 

Now I just feel embarrassed, I don't know how I could've misremembered that even when starring at the statline.

[march10k]

I love my WW.  Removing gaunts and conscripts by the pieplate made it an auto-include in the past. 

 

Sadly, 2D6 shots that still have to roll to hit (unless you pay for a landspeeder and pay a CP tax...that's a fantastic deal...not.) just isn't horde control.  You'd get more out of a pair of stormbolters.  That's how bad the Castellan is now.  Not needing LOS is the only benefit to the WW, and that's pretty much negated by not really threatening anything as you hide behind the hill.  Sadly, I think hurricane bolters and massed stormbolters (especially using DWA) are our only real horde control tools.  An average of 7 shots just isn't in the same universe as auto-hitting whatever's under the pieplate.  7 shots against a dispersed unit of 5 MEQs is probably an improvement over the pieplate, but that's never really been the point, the point is the horde that's bunched up to either hug cover or surge through a gap between two pieces of terrain, so you get 10+ auto-hits.

[Berzul]

I usually bring a Castellan Whirlwind. I find them particularly useful in tactical objective missions. Most times, your opponent will bring a squad or two of light infantry, for cheap, to babysit objectives on their side, while the bulk of the fighting takes place elsewhere on the board. These are squads that will usually be hiding, in deep cover, and quite unreachable by your regular units. A Whirlwind can reach them easily, and just focus on them 2D6 shots a turn. On a BS of 3+, and hitting at S6, even without AP you will be wounding on a 2+/3+ most of the time, and that makes for some good results most of the time.

 

I have never regretted taking the whirlwind along.

 

I have yet to try pairing it up with a Flamer Landspeeder, though. But I do believe this would be a good combo for any astartes army. A double flamer speeder, along with a whirlwind, using the telemetry, could clear up hordes quite effectively indeed. I think I might get one for my army.

[SnakeChisler]

After the points drop + stratagem and Berzul singing thier praises I've dead the cheapest version in most of my lists.

It's not a spectacular unit by any means but it chips in where no other can & I keep coming back to it, running Talon Master & Sammael gives you a couple of bites at databank telemetry, there is an awful lot of things generating negative modifiers these days it's also strength 6 for the 2d6 version.

Number one use is splattering hiding units that block targeting characters, number 2 is auto hitting with databank on targets with multiple neg hit modifiers

Edited January 18, 2018 by SnakeChisler

[Xenith]

All Whirlwinds are WHIRLWINDs but not all WHIRLWIND's are Whirlwinds.

 

[Berzul]

Wait, does the Talonmaster allow for the Whirlwind to use Datalink Telemetry?

[SinnerBeta]

Yes, I will discuss that in the third point but the stratagem uses the DARK ANGEL LAND SPEEDER keywords, meaning that all codex land speeders are game. I will need to check the IA land speeders as well to make sure all of them have the appropriate keywords.

[Helycon]

Yes, I will discuss that in the third point but the stratagem uses the DARK ANGEL LAND SPEEDER keywords, meaning that all codex land speeders are game. I will need to check the IA land speeders as well to make sure all of them have the appropriate keywords.

The Land Speeder Tempest and Relic Javelin Attack Speeder have have both keywords, so they're fair game as the targeting parties.

[SnakeChisler]

Just triple checked the book and 'Land SPEEDER' is the generic term across the range from SableClaw to the DarkShroud

 

Bog standard land speeders are 'Ravenwing Land SPEEDER'

 

Didn't dawn on me it would work for the Dark Shroud as well you learn something every day :)