On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, Neil R. Thomason wrote:
First, to come clean. This is not an attack on you Neil. You are only the
messenger. Now on with the Eldar Bashing rant.
> It'll be in WD soon, but in summary, Hawk detachments can be deployed as if
> from drop pods. They're too slow to be used exactly like fliers, but this
> rule makes them more useful than the basic rules allow. A second house rule
More useful? Yeah, like that's what the Eldar needed out of their Hawks.
They're already the fastest, hardest hitting infantry in the entire game.
With those jump packs they can move 75cm on *assault* and their 45cm charge
allows them to get you from out of your weapon range.
And it's not like the Eldar really *need* Drop Pods when they get a transport
aircraft that hits as hard as a bomber.
> in the same article allows fliers to evacuate troops from the battle,
> allowing them to be redeployed elsewhere on the battlefield in a subsequent
> turn. If Hawks could be considered as fliers performing their own transport
> missions, this rule could be applied to them too. WD (sort of0 suggests
> this though recommending that extra points should be paid, since the units
> are far more powerful.
"... could be applied to them ..." I'm sorry but this house rule was written
specifically *for* Swooping Hawks. Let's look at a typical flying transport
mission shall we:
Turn 2 Thawks come in with lots of Assault Marines [earliest flyer arrival]
Turn 4 Thawks have refueled and come in for dustoff
Turn 6 Thawks have refueled and can drop the troops again
Gee, too bad the game ended a couple of turns ago. Now let's look at the
only real way to make this work.
Turn 2 Thawks arrive and pick up some troops already on the ground
Turn 4 Thawks have refueled and can drop those troops off.
Err. wouldn't it have just been better to keep them offmap and drop them
on Turn 2?
All told, this house rules set is intended to represent the "flying high"
rule that Hawks have in 40K. Gargoyles share this rule, but they became
full flyers so that the Tyranids didn't just lose everytime they brought
Harridans along. At least they acknowledge it makes Hawks more powerful.
Did they mention how many points to pay, or is it up to our imagination?
At least GW figured out that Eldar didn't need *another* flyer. Under these
rules the Hawks can essentially be anywhere on the map pretty much at will.
Of course, that's essentially the case now but I see no reason to make an
almost-broken unit even more powerful.
Perhaps if GW would occasionally throw a bone towards *any* other army this
wouldn't have been so bad.
OK. I'm done now and thank everyone for their patience while I vented.
Swooping Hawks are powerful units in 40K and I personally feel that GW has
in fact captured their use in E40K. Unfortunately, this still doesn't solve
the problem of them being too powerful in 40K. So it was a good job in the
translation, but Hawks needed to be toned down before they did it.
Lastly, Hawks are not indestructible. They just require special care as they
will force you to use range 60+ weapons to take them out. Of course, this
means that they *are* indestructible for certain armies.
As with all things GW, the best way to a good game is moderation. Hawks
don't get really abusive until they show up in numbers. Small detachments
of a small number of Hawks should be no major obstacle. I've fought an
Eldar force with 60 (!) stands of Hawks in it. It wasn't fun and I only
prevailed for two reasons.
1) Eldar's first game of E40K and was still playing in SpMar style
2) 980pt of Guard Artillery
Sean U
---------
Sean A Upchurch |
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~sau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory | EPIC /spmar/spmar.html
sau_at_... | WH40K /wh40k/40k.html +others!
Received on Wed Oct 01 1997 - 17:39:36 UTC