any love for the marauder destroyer?

[autek mor]

is there any particular reason why this unit is not mentioned much? i am aware that there are other flyers with more accurate shooting but for the amount of damage the destroyer can do while not being penalised for moving and not receiving any point cost nerfs since the release of the index, it does seem like a good option as two marauders would cost around the same for one super heavy tank(depending on which one). if i am overlooking something then please let me know.

 

and it looks awesome

[WLBjork]

All those autocannon will be efficient against Necron vehicles that's for sure.

 

Also good at blasting squads off the board with that much firepower :D

[autek mor]

All those autocannon will be efficient against Necron vehicles that's for sure.

 

Also good at blasting squads off the board with that much firepower

 

especially with all that split fire. which regimental doctrine do you think would be the best for it?

[Jolemai]

I like Marauders and I dearly with to own one one day. I imagine that the reason they aren't discussed often is that they are £210 from FW and they over 300 points (going up to almost 550 with the missiles).

[librisrouge]

 

All those autocannon will be efficient against Necron vehicles that's for sure.

 

Also good at blasting squads off the board with that much firepower

 

especially with all that split fire. which regimental doctrine do you think would be the best for it?

 

None, since they're aeronautica imperialis. I think that is one of the things working against them.

[Tirak]

The point of this changed drastically through the writing of this from a simple "Shadowsword UberAlles" post to one that ended up taking things apart and finding out some interesting trends. I don't do graphs and charts, so it's one giant text wall, but there is a TLDR at the bottom so just scroll to that if you want the conclusions of all this.

 

 

Your average cost effective superheavy is the bog standard Shadowsword at 404 points. Your minimum Marauder Destroyer is 309 points, so lets take a moment to compare the two since I find it a fun and interesting exercise.

 

So, lets talk about requirements. Both weapons systems are Super Heavy, requiring you either to be nuts and field a Super Heavy Detachment, cheap and fielding a Super Heavy Aux detachment, or smart and field a Supreme Command Detachment. The Super Heavy Detachment isn't worth looking at because no one is going to spend 927 or 1212 points to field three of the damn things. Now the Super Heavy Aux is interesting because it costs 1CP, but who cares we're the guard, we drown in CP, but doesn't confer a Regimental bonus. For the Shadowsword, that's a major problem because it is a regimental vehicle, it gets bonuses when in the right detachment and those bonuses can be hugely powerful. Losing access to that is a pretty major detriment, and so while you can do it, I don't recommend ever doing it. The Marauder on the other hand is Aeronautica Imperialis, and doesn't care about regimental bonuses. The only one it can ever get is the Elysian one, which applies to it even if it is in a Super Heavy Aux anyway, but if you're not using the drop boys (and you should) then there's no reason not to use this. The Supreme Command Detachment lets you drag along a Lord of War/Super Heavy so long as you bring 3HQ, not a big deal since Guard has lots of cheap HQ, especially generics which can be in any regiment type without conflicting with things. So by bringing your Shadowsword, you get access to any doctrine you want, without forcing you to bring a significant enough number of officers on a detachment that doesn't match the rest of your army for no real major cost. Now it'll still run you between 105 to 138 points if you go for Lord Commissars or Primaris Psykers, so while it's not the cost of a whole bloody battalion, it's still not insignificant, though those units will often be in your army anyway and it's just paper shuffling to bring them along.

 

When that's all said and done, the Marauder is easier to get on the field at its full power, just drag along a Super Heavy Aux (Elysian) detachment and you're golden, drop in from the sky with no trouble (Assuming that's your group/tourney's interpretation of the interaction between a minimum fly speed and deep striking) and you're golden. The Shadowsword is harder to get on the field at full power, requiring a minor investment, even if nothing more than paper shuffling, to latch it onto a Supreme Command detachment. With that said, this grants the Shadowsword innate abilities which drastically increase it's power, and we'll talk about those later.

 

Next up of course must be Dakka. The Marauder Destroyer is a varied weapon system 1x Twin Assault Cannon, 3x Twin Autocannons, 1x Twin Heavy Bolter and of course "Heavy Bombs", with the option to bring 8x Hellstrike Missiles (we'll talk about those in a bit). So on board, innately it's packing 6x shots at S5, 12x shots at S6 and 12x shots at S7 which also do 2 damage. All of that brings along the mediocre AP-1, so rather meh in terms of sticking power, but hell, that's a lot of shots. 30 shots is 30 shots, and they all get to nail a target on a 4+. Then you get to toss in some bombs and which are... well also really meh. You fly over a unit, and if that unit is Monsterous or a Vehicle you get to roll 3d6 for every vehicle you fly over up to a max of 12d6 and every 4+ is a mortal wound. That sounds great yeah, up until you think about just how many Monsterous Creatures or Vehicle keywords actually exist as part of a unit once actually deployed on the battlefield. Not to worry, you can also roll 1d6 up to 12d6 for every non Monsterous Creature or Vehicle you fly over, so Ha! Nuke them cultists baby! Well yeah, but you just did mortal wounds to.... cultists? a 50% chance at causing 1 mortal wound on a unit, most units where that's a big deal aren't very large. Sure there are some times when that'll be useful, but it is frankly meh, especially when you get to do that once per battle.

 

All told, you're looking at 30 shots, hitting half, so 15. Lots a dakka, lots of shooting, looks cool, why ain't it? Well because what are you killing. What is the point? You're not S8 or S9 so really, hunting heavy vehicles ain't in your job description, so you want elite infantry like Terminators and Obliterators and anything that has a high toughness and dies to a lot of shots. That's kinda niche to be spending a Super Heavy slot on, but hey, your army, your rules right? So lets fight some fictional units shall we? My go to for figuring out a heavy vehicle is T7/3+, but that's bad here because this thing isn't designed to hunt that. So then I go to my heavy infantry and my MEQ equivalents and GEQ equivalents. I'll check all of them because we're gonna be looking at the Shadowsword and a few other things so we want a good idea.

 

So, T5/3+: We get a whopping 30 shots of screw you dakka, so it looks like we've got some real kill potential. Immediately we hit with half of that, because our BS is 4+, we have no way of improving it, and Sky Fortress means we suffer no penalty from Heavy Weapons and movement. 15 hit, 3x Heavy Bolter Rounds, 6 Assault Cannon rounds and 6 Twin Autocannon shells. Now when we apply that to our T5 we come down to 1.5 Bolter rounds, 4 Assault Cannon rounds and 4 Autocannon shells. Still looking good. Enemy armor save kicks in, and here's where things fall apart. that 3+ gets modified to a 4+, hooray for armor pen, but what's that gonna do to our fire? .75 bolters, 2 Assault, 2 Auto. So we killed... 4.75 targets doing a grand total of 6.75 damage if focused on a single thing. Lets plug that in to how many points we spent on it for wound equations and all that. 309/4.75=65.05, if we're shooting single wound targets. If we look at raw damage, 309/6.75=45.78. Hey, that ain't bad, and that's on the upper end of the enemy scale right? Well T5/3+ is a plague marine, which means you killed 80.75 points of them. If the plane lasts 3.87 rounds you've earned your points back. (and that's not counting Disgustingly Resilient). So decent toughness, marine armor save is kinda meh, and that 45.78 damage efficiency is around bog standard Russ levels prior to stratagems and Doctrines, so we're not winnin' many awards, but hey, we ain't done.

 

T4/2+/3+: THE TERRRRRRRRMINATORRRRRRR. So we brought the shield because why not, doesn't matter our guns are -1 only so perfect for them. Once again we go 3/6/6 and this time we end up with 2/4/4. We're doin' good, Termies after all, come in small groups of 5 normally, so this is great, and now our HB is gettin' in on the action and smashing things on 3+. So the armor kicks in and now things break down. 1/1.3/1.3. Ouch, 1/3 of our stuff getting through really really hurt. We killed 3.6 single wound targets or managed to do a total of 4.9 total damage. That armor save gutted us. We shot lots, hit some, wound great, and then -1 takes all the teeth out of that. Our efficiency comes out at a whopping 85 points per kills on single targets or 63.06 points per total damage, we've slid right on out of Leman Russ territory sooo, not great.

 

T4/3+: Screw termies, we're hunting Space Marines. We follow the same train back down to 2/4/4 and then the enemy only gets to save half, bringing us to 1/2/2 for 5 single targets killed or 7 damage total on space marines. Efficiency just went way up boys, be happy, we're all the way up to 61.8 for single wound targets or 44.14 for total damage, we've clawed our way back into Leman Russ range on that total damage figure.

 

T3/5+: Chaff, chaff everywhere and not an aluminum can. Your humble basic guardsman is going to get his teeth kicked in, I can tell ya. 3/6/6 but now when we go to the wound phase our Assault Cannons and Autocannons get to wound on 2s, drastically improving them over the 3+. So we end up with a beautiful looking 2/5/5. And then, little Mr. Guardsman's paper shield is only stopping 1/6 of that for a total of 1.67/4.167/4.167. We killed all 10 Guardsmen! Whoooo, 40 points DOWN baby! And a grand total damage of no less than 14.17(ish because i rounded some things and not others on my calc but you get the idea). We ripped them chaff infantry apart! And our efficiency, well take a look at this sexy 30.9(ish) points per single wound kill and 21.02(ish) per point of damage. Rocking the casbah with them numbers yeah!

 

For comparison's sake though, we also gotta look at what happens when this thing looks a vehicle and for my amusement (and because there's a Death Guard player in my group) Deathshroud Terminators.

 

T7/3+: So we go to the good old 3/6/6 and then... have some problems finding purchase through that armor. T7 means nobody hits well and the Autocannon is blasting on par so we go for 1/2/2. And then the armor gets involved and we hit .5/1/1, for 3.5 total damage or... 309/3.5=88.29 points per wound. It ain't a vehicle hunter in this configuration, so I don't expect that to go well, but it's a bit chilling.

 

T5/2+/5+FNP: 3/6/6 and then we get to nail them with 1.5/4/4/ and then that armor kicks in to be a pain to .5/1.3/1.3. Then to apply the FNP we have to convert to damage which just is a simple .5/1.3/2.6. Apply our FNP is .33/.867/1.73. Our grand total damage from all that is 2.927 damage total. Single wound stuff gets too complicated, not gonna bother, it'd be low but it's also not important because Termies need 2 wounds to die anyway. Our efficiency is 105.57... So Ironically, elite infantry are to be avoided and chaff sought after.

----------------------------------------------------

So... I've ignored a bit of an elephant in the room, that 8x Hellstrike Missile figure. Hellstrikes are some pretty damn good weapons. S8 AP-2 D6 damage and roll 2d6 take the better for that damage. They're strong... until you look at the price. They were good back before chapter approved, 20 points per missile is reasonable, but CA brought that up to 30 points. If you want to bring them your cost goes to 549 points. You've almost doubled your price to get this, but what did you buy? Oh yeah, 8 shots every turn at S8 AP-2 D6 damage... that sounds good, but is it worth that incredible price tag....

 

You guessed it, MOAR NUMBERS!

 

S7/3+ We are very FIRMLY in anti vehicle territory now folks so yeah, first one up is this rocker, we did all the numbers for these for the lotsa shot guns so we'll just calculate our Hellstrikes here and those go for a very reasonable 8 shot, 4 hit, 2.67 wound and screw your armor we're gonna punch through with 1.78. Rolling 2D6, and taking the highest result is a 4.47 on average (God I love and miss Hellstrikes) meaning you did 7.947 more points of damage!... for 240 more points. So we add that to our 3.5 total damage to get 11.447 damage and an efficiency of 47.864, welcome back to unmodded Leman Russ territory of damage. But let's not be churlish, 11.447 points of damage is going to absolutely hurt any vehicle you throw this sucker at. Will it kill? Not likely, but that's the average, and because of things like the Hellstrike, you're going to skew very high if you even do slightly above average.

 

T5/3+ Nothing changes from above for the missiles because well, same save and we didn't jump a threshhold, but now I've got to pay attention to pre damage numbers because we'll be hitting things with 1 wound at this rank. As a reminder we did 1.78 for shots through and 7.947 for total damage. We add that to our bullet numbers (4.75 and 6.75) we get 6.53 single wounds dead and 14.697 total damage, dragging our efficiency to 84.07 and 37.35 respectively.

 

T4/2+ Termies gonna die... hopefully. Doin' more damage so 4 hit, 3.3 wound, 1.67 penetrate armor and of course our always fun 4.45 damage, bringing us up to 5.27 single targets and 12.35 damage total and an efficiency of 104.17 and 44.45.

 

T4/3+ We hit harder, we have the technology, 3.3 wound and 2.2 punch through for an extra 9.83 damage bringing us to 7.2 single wound kills and 16.834 damage for efficiencies of 76.25 and 32.61.

 

Aaand finally, killin' Guardsman like we're the Commissariat; at the max threshold anyway so the missiles would 3.3 and then a 7+ armor, sooo, no save. 13.304 single wound targets killed, so that Infantry squad is officially deader than dead and a grand total damage of, drumroll please; 28.921! Bringing our chaff efficiency to 41.27 and 18.98.

 

 

Whew, done with the dakka on the bloody Marauder.

 

So what does all this bullcrap mean to us? Well we we gotta compare it a bit, don't worry, I won't break down all the numbers infront of you again, I'll let you work your own math to follow because this is a bit exhausting but: The marauder is not good for killing tanks, unless you kit it out with it's Hellstrikes, but then it's over 1/4th of your fighting force. Even when you do that, you come out with an efficiency your average Russ can beat with no doctrines. It's not good at vehicle killing. It's outright terrible at killing elite style infantry with high armor saves but its great at picking off chaff. But the issue with that is... there's other guns that do this better and for cheaper. If you want to stay flying, then hop in a Punnisher Vulture, you'll kill infantry in droves. That heavy 40 is a nightmare, against GEQ you murderize 9.56 at a time for an efficiency of 16.74! That's 20% more effective than the base version in terms of efficiency and  over 2 whole points more effective than the "I cost 1/4 of your army boy" Hellstrike version. Toss it at space marines and you roll out at 4.94 which compares to the 5 total Space Marines dead from the stock and 7.2 on the MAX version. So you dealt nearly as much damage as the version nearly twice your cost, your efficiency ends up being 32.36 which beats both Marauder versions.

 

Hell, I could end this right now just there, but the whole point of this originally was to look at it vs a Shadowsword, which I view as the budget main and only Superheavy worth ever bringing.

 

So. Shadowsword is minimalistic, she doesn't have 30 shots, she has 6 Heavy Bolters and 3d3 Volcano Cannon shots. Already we can see that the most infantry she can ever possibly kill is 15, and that's if the stars align, so odds are, Shadowsword ain't gonna murder infantry at all good. For the sake of time, and the fact I figure I've made my point already in the above paragraph about the Vulture, i'll condense this section, now all assumptions are made with the (in my opinion) best Shadowsword, the Vostroyan Shadowsword. Why? Because the Volcano Cannon is consistent. 3d3 averages 6, so the Catachan reroll doesn't get you much there, and the Cadian reroll 1s to hit is inferior to the Vostroyan +1BS stratagem. So we're assuming that our Volcano Cannon is hitting on 3s because of Vostroyans.

 

T7/3+ we fire 6 Heavy Bolters, 6 Volcano cannons, hit with 4 and 4. Wound with 1.3 heavy bolter and 5. Armor is .67 and 5 (Because AP-5 Good Night Son). We killed 5.67 singletons, but we dealt 30.67 damage because the Volcano cannon is S16 AP-5 2d6 damage. We factor our efficiency at 71.25 for single targets and 13.17 for damage.

 

T5/3+: 2HB wound, and then 1 gets through the armor and the Volcano cannon does 5 because S16AP-5. So 6 Singletons and 31 total damage, we're up to 67.33 and 13.03

 

T4/2+ 2.6HB wound and then .33, plus 5 Volcano for 5.33 singletons and 30.33 damage, which sits our efficiency at 75.80 and 13.32.

 

T4/3+ pushes us out to 1.3, 5 volcanos for 6.3 and 31.3 giving us an efficiency of 76.23 and 12.91

 

And finally of course T3/5+, which is 2.2 heavy bolter wounds cutting through armor and.... you guessed it 5 volcano rounds going through giving us 7.2 singletons and 32.2 damage for a total efficiency of 56.1 and 12.55.

 

 

 

So, as we can see the Marauder frankly, gets blown out of the water. For damage it can't compete. The Hellstrike Marauder is 4 times less efficient against tanks than the Shadowsword, and deals around 1/3 of the total damage and costs more in absolute terms than the Shadowsword. It does even that up when you get down to GEQ where you hit a singleton efficiency of 41.27 against the Shadowsword's 56.1, however against MEQ the Shadowsword matches it in efficiency rolls, and for 1/4 of your fighting force the Marauder is only stealing 2 more kills at that level. At Terminator level the Shadowsword is now beating it on absolute numbers of kills. So the Marauder Destroyer with Hellstrikes is never worth taking in my opinion. If you want to hunt chaff, buy a Vulture, if you want to hunt tanks, buy a Shadowsword, if you want to do both, literally buy both for only 24 points more than a Marauder with Hellstrikes.

 

How about the gun only version, how does it stack up? Well much better. Against Guard the Marauder gun version beats out the Shadowsword 30.9 points per single wound kill vs a massive 56.1, seems great in comparison, so maybe the gun Marauder sits on the generalist mid line, can't fight tanks, but can deal with light infantry better than a superheavy tank and kick butt against light vehicles perhaps. MEQ says 61.8 marauders vs 76.23, so maybe we found our niche? Terminators, how do we do on those? 85 against 76, again, we're doing rather well! All is right in the world, and then against vehicles welll... you know where that's going. So clearly the marauder is there to fight heavy infantry that things like the Shadowsword can't handle, but then if you're bringing it to only hunt infantry, the Vulture will do it cheaper and easier. The sad fact of the matter is it's weak, it doesn't shoot enough to match our maximum dakka jets and it doesn't have enough firepower to take on light vehicles better than something like a Shadowsword. Split firing isn't a good idea on a 4+ because it'll take all your firepower to knock down even just a single guardsman squad. And that is why the Marauder isn't used.

 

TL:DR

Without even getting the survivability factor of this aircraft, the Marauder is a poor choice for any role. It doesn't deal enough damage to justify its cost compared to other guard alternatives. If you want to hunt Infantry, the Vulture is half the cost, you can bring 2 of them for nearly the cost of a Marauder. If you want to hunt tanks, the only game in town is the Shadowsword for that price point and the Marauder version that can do that will cost you 1/4 your army and you won't get much bang for that buck. It looks good on paper when you just glance and see that it gets 3 Twin Autos and a Twin Assault Cannon, but when you crunch the numbers down, lack of AP means none of the damage sticks to elites, and the massive airframe cost means that it's hilariously over engineered to take on chaff. It doesn't do anything that smaller, cheaper and less cumbersome units to bring can't also accomplish. I ripped apart the Aeronautica Imperialis options last year in the run up to Adepticon, the only plane worth bringing is the Vulture with Punnisher cannons, and if you're a suitably obsessed flyboy you can argue the Lightning with Hellstrikes is an artistic, if sub optimal choice. Everything else is an overexpensive boondoggle.

 

Now in fairness, I did not count the mortal wound dealing bombs, however since it's a once per game power, and completely random and the only thing you'd want to target would come in small size numbers, they just don't seem to stack up based on the games I've played. If you want to bring a Marauder, have a fun time, but you're not being competitive at that point, you're just having a laugh, and there's nothing wrong with that, but she's not useful in any role if you're playing in a more competitive atmosphere.

[sairence]

That'a a lot of numbers. o.o

 

Very well researched numbers I think. Nevertheless...mine is currently being shipped. Because regardless of anything else it's a damn sexy model. :D

[autek mor]

 

=][= snip =][=

 

TL:DR

Without even getting the survivability factor of this aircraft, the Marauder is a poor choice for any role. It doesn't deal enough damage to justify its cost compared to other guard alternatives. If you want to hunt Infantry, the Vulture is half the cost, you can bring 2 of them for nearly the cost of a Marauder. If you want to hunt tanks, the only game in town is the Shadowsword for that price point and the Marauder version that can do that will cost you 1/4 your army and you won't get much bang for that buck. It looks good on paper when you just glance and see that it gets 3 Twin Autos and a Twin Assault Cannon, but when you crunch the numbers down, lack of AP means none of the damage sticks to elites, and the massive airframe cost means that it's hilariously over engineered to take on chaff. It doesn't do anything that smaller, cheaper and less cumbersome units to bring can't also accomplish. I ripped apart the Aeronautica Imperialis options last year in the run up to Adepticon, the only plane worth bringing is the Vulture with Punnisher cannons, and if you're a suitably obsessed flyboy you can argue the Lightning with Hellstrikes is an artistic, if sub optimal choice. Everything else is an overexpensive boondoggle.

 

Now in fairness, I did not count the mortal wound dealing bombs, however since it's a once per game power, and completely random and the only thing you'd want to target would come in small size numbers, they just don't seem to stack up based on the games I've played. If you want to bring a Marauder, have a fun time, but you're not being competitive at that point, you're just having a laugh, and there's nothing wrong with that, but she's not useful in any role if you're playing in a more competitive atmosphere.

 

thank you for this write up, i will give it a good read. the last time i looked, it was 276 points with all the guns and only two missiles. i'll check the index points cost again after i read your post.

 

and yes it is still sexy.

[Tirak]

 

thank you for this write up, i will give it a good read. the last time i looked, it was 276 points with all the guns and only two missiles. i'll check the index points cost again after i read your post.

 

and yes it is still sexy.

 

 

Please don't quite text blocks in their entirety, it makes navigation a pain. Also, you cannot take the Marauder Destroyer with 2 missiles, you must take all 8 if you equip it as such.

[walter h]

This seems like a place where ( regimental adviser, Fleet,)would ,or should be a buff. I'm not sure if everyone will follow this ,but it would be a perfect opportunity for this particular adviser.

[Are Verlo]

I love them numbers Tirak. But i found two small errors in your "reasoning".

The first one is : 

 

 

So, lets talk about requirements. Both weapons systems are Super Heavy, requiring you either to be nuts and field a Super Heavy Detachment, cheap and fielding a Super Heavy Aux detachment, or smart and field a Supreme Command Detachment. The Super Heavy Detachment isn't worth looking at because no one is going to spend 927 or 1212 points to field three of the damn things. Now the Super Heavy Aux is interesting because it costs 1CP, but who cares we're the guard, we drown in CP, but doesn't confer a Regimental bonus. For the Shadowsword, that's a major problem because it is a regimental vehicle, it gets bonuses when in the right detachment and those bonuses can be hugely powerful. Losing access to that is a pretty major detriment, and so while you can do it, I don't recommend ever doing it. The Marauder on the other hand is Aeronautica Imperialis, and doesn't care about regimental bonuses. 

The super-heavy aux does not cost 1 CP. There is no cost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, T5/3+: We get a whopping 30 shots of screw you dakka, so it looks like we've got some real kill potential. Immediately we hit with half of that, because our BS is 4+, we have no way of improving it, and Sky Fortress means we suffer no penalty from Heavy Weapons and movement. 

 

 

The officer of the fleet disagrees ;-P

 

None of these will influence the conclusion. The shadowsword is hands down better :-)

[Tirak]

The Officer of the Fleet is incompatible with an Elysian Marauder last time I checked, and his ability to give a reroll 1s within 18in of himself is much less powerful than the ability to hide in deepstrike. I've tried using OoTF and they always run afoul of almost never being in range, and almost never being useful, better in my opinion to give such an expensive asset an invulnerability shield on turn one.

[librisrouge]

The Officer of the Fleet is incompatible with an Elysian Marauder last time I checked, and his ability to give a reroll 1s within 18in of himself is much less powerful than the ability to hide in deepstrike. I've tried using OoTF and they always run afoul of almost never being in range, and almost never being useful, better in my opinion to give such an expensive asset an invulnerability shield on turn one.

The FAQ made it so that his ability would work with Elysian if he was also Elysian, fyi.

[duz_]

From memory at one of the recent large high profile events a well ranked ITC player ran a list that used 3

Can't recall how well they did, but it was attempted nonetheless :D

 

I actually want one too, theyre soo sexy 

[Tirak]

 

The Officer of the Fleet is incompatible with an Elysian Marauder last time I checked, and his ability to give a reroll 1s within 18in of himself is much less powerful than the ability to hide in deepstrike. I've tried using OoTF and they always run afoul of almost never being in range, and almost never being useful, better in my opinion to give such an expensive asset an invulnerability shield on turn one.

The FAQ made it so that his ability would work with Elysian if he was also Elysian, fyi.

 

 

Which would require you to bring a detachment of Elysians, defeating the ease of getting them on the field. Lord Commissars of the Elysians don't provide their leadership buff to non Elysians, and there are no Psykers on the Elysian list, so in order to bring it you either are carting around useless Elysian officers, mediocre Elysian Lord Commissars or an actual detachment of them, which I frankly don't recommend because of their expense.

[noigrim]

Like most fw stuff is overpriced in 8th

[autek mor]

@Tirak

 

thanks again for the write up, i finally managed to read through it. not having access to doctrines is definitely a pain in the ass. i should have been more clear in my first post in regards to comparing costs between two marauders and one superheavy, i should have stated a fully decked out superheavy tank. the bottom line is that you are right, i still love the model so perhaps in terms of giving it a job i'll explore what to do with the weapons it has(minus the rockets) and let other units handle anti horde and anti tank. 

[Tirak]

@Tirak

 

thanks again for the write up, i finally managed to read through it. not having access to doctrines is definitely a pain in the ass. i should have been more clear in my first post in regards to comparing costs between two marauders and one superheavy, i should have stated a fully decked out superheavy tank. the bottom line is that you are right, i still love the model so perhaps in terms of giving it a job i'll explore what to do with the weapons it has(minus the rockets) and let other units handle anti horde and anti tank. 

 

A fully kitted Superheavy is also a bad choice. The reason I went with a minimalist Shadowsword is because it is the only Superheavy that makes any competitive sense. A number of Leman Russes at an equal point cost out shoots and out survives any and all of the Baneblade variants, especially when you start throwing on additional equipment. In running the numbers on the Marauder, we found it didn't have any role at all in comparison to other, cheaper options. It ends up playing just as a big target, but large targets with concentrated wounds are extremely vulnerable to high damage output units like the very Shadowsword we compared it against. Without an invulnerable save, the -1 simply isn't enough to keep it alive past turn one shooting. Without an AP better than -1 none of its shooting sticks, and with a BS of only 4+, so much of its dakka never actually sees the target. For a unit so expensive, the amount of damage that sticks at the end of the day is so incredibly disappointing, and with the repricing of Hellstrikes the aircraft has gone so far outside of a reasonable price it's unfunny.  Narrativly  it's an interesting choice, and the wannabe B-24 looks cool, though it needs a serious overhaul to be any good on the table itself. 309 points is 2 Leman Russes apiece that fill the same role, except the Russes do swing role elite delete far, far better than what we found the Marauder Destroyer could.

 

At the end of the day, it is your army, and we all make choices that are sub optimal because of the rule of cool. I took 2 Lightnings to Adepticon because I love jets, and the Voss Pattern Lightings look absolutely badass. It wasn't a competitive choice, but I wanted to do it because i thought that a Catachan force with heavy air cover ala Vietnam was badass. And it was, I regret absolutely nothing about bringing them, and I still love putting them down on the table when I play. So if you're content with knowing that you're bringing a gorgeous centerpiece that will likely under perform on the table, then I wish you clear skies and happy hunting!

[WLBjork]

There is one issue the Shadowsword can face that the Marauder can alleviate to a degree: Target overload.

 

The bombs aren't brilliant because Vehicles and Monsters (certainly Tyranid ones) no longer operate in units, meaning you'll generally score 1.5 wounds per Vehicle/Monster attacked. However, a good flight path could result in the attacking of a dozen such units in a Tyranid army - obviously that's not going to kill or cripple any one Monster on it's own but add in the rest of the army and the potential is there. Plus, whilst the wingspan is improbably short, it still adds to the area passed over by the Marauder :)

 

Even without that, the Marauder Destroyer has 5 weapon systems, with the option for a further 8 for a total of 13. Whilst it would be foolish to split that fire too much, it isn't unreasonable to target one or two vehicles with the missiles, heavy infantry or bikes with the autocannons and standard infantry with the heavy bolters and assault cannon.

 

For example, against Guard, I'd look to salvo all 8 missiles at a Russ tank (good chance of crippling but not killing), target at least two of the twin autocannon against a heavy weapons squad (would also be effective weapons against Sentinels and Taros vehicles) then the heavy bolters and assault cannon come into play with a range of options themselves combined or split.

 

An Ork army - especially one based around the Kult of Speed - wouldn't be too happy to see the Marauder Destroyer either. The guns can kill or cripple a couple of vehicles on their own. The missiles would add another couple of light vehicles to the list, or allow the targeting of something a little heavier.

 

Or how about Necrons? Quantum Shielding laughs at the Volcano Cannon (23% chance of inflicting damage low enough to fail a Quantum Shielding save - with the skewed nature of Quantum Shielding, wouldn't be surprised if it's a 5-10% chance over all of inflicting damage), but such units fall apart to the guns of the Marauder Destroyer.

 

Anyway, I'm digressing a little here.

 

In short, the Shadowsword is great for killing one unit per turn - but don't expect any more than that. Great if your opponent takes one or two big units that can be brought down with a volley or two, not so much use against an Ork or Guard horde.

 

The Marauder Destroyer on the other hand is a disruption unit. It can at least cripple a couple of units per turn when equipped with missiles. The bombs are a bit odd - mortal wounds are great at killing big stuff, but the damage output is too low for that. Again, it's going to be very effective against hordes - units of 10 are probably going to lose 4-6 wounds. Hit half a dozen units with a bombing run - not overly difficult - and that could well be a game changer.

[Tirak]

Except you're not doing it with any level of efficiency when compared to a Leman Russ, and for anti hoard work you're woefully inferior to a Vulture. The simple fact of the matter is you're spending 1/4 of your army on a centerpiece who's only mitigation is a -1 to hit. It'll die the turn it comes on. And bombs only let you bomb one unit, once per game. It's not dealing any damage that sticks, we crunched the numbers and there's no place where it really does a very good job against anything. 13 attacks mean nothing to be blunt, as concentrated fire is the name of the game when you have a BS of 4+.