Eldar Unit Review: Spiritseer

The spiritseer is the leader of the Eldar dead. However coming in at 70pts, the spiritseer is clearly a budget HQ choice for Eldar armies. The spiritseer is a mastery level 2 psyker who knows powers from telepathy and runes of battle. Runes of battle is a nice table, offering reversible powers meaning that there is almost always a target. However perhaps the biggest reason to take a spiritseer (especially at larger point values) is due to their ability to make wraith units troops. This is great, as it makes taking the expensive wraith units far easier now that they fulfil a compulsory slot. To help the wraiths the spiritseer also has the spiritmark special rule. This lets you nominate a close enemy unit and all wraith units re-roll 1s to hit, increasing accuracy.

However there are no true upgrades to speak of, with only the remnants of glory available. However the stock weapon is basically a whitchblade with added soulblaze and the have a 4++. The spiritseer is a great HQ choice for eldar at 600pts (especially if you plan on taking wraiths) as it leaves you plenty of points while still providing some support for your army.

Of course the units which the spiritseer best complements are wraith units as they make full use of the spiritseers rules. However other units can still benefit greatly from the psychic abilities as the spiritseer is effectively a ML2 warlock who knows telepathy.

Sample Armylist: Spiritseer based
Spiritseer                                                                                                                       70
5x Wraithguard with D-sythes in a wave serpent with shuriken cannon and scatter lasers      340
8x Rangers                                                                                                                     96
3x Shadow weaver support battery                                                                                    90
Total                                                                                                                              596

The wave serpent would move forward with the wraithguard to take down the nastiest enemy unit, which they can almost certainly kill. The shadow weavers can cause some serious problems for enemy troops and can generally be a nuance.

Ratings:
Solo: 3/10
Combo: 8/10
Slightly less versatile than the farseer but can still provide a solid psychic backbone to your army.

Chaos Daemons Codex Review: The Gods

The most fundamental aspect of the Chaos Demon codex has got to be the special rules that binds everything in the army to one God or another. Each God comes with their own special rule that defines the characteristic and play style of their demons, and in 600 points nothing is more important than making sure you've got the right units in the right place.

Firstly, all four of the Special Rules contain the 'Daemon' Special rule, which grants every model in the codex a 5++ save, and Fear (when you can remember to use it). Another special rule to which is codex wide is Daemonic Instability. This rule means that whenever a unit loses a combat, the units in that combat must take a Leadership test, which doesn't seem to harsh until you remember that most of our units are Leadership 7-ish. The upside to this rule is that we gain a special sort of fearless, as in we pass Morale, Pinning and Fear checks automatically, which is actually better than Fearless as this cannot be removed by pesky powers or anything else.

The first of the actual Special Rules is the Daemon of Khorne special rule. Now, the Blood God has seen fit to grant his minions Furious Charge, which means a wonderful +1 Strength on the charge, which allows all of his already high-strength minions to become more hard hitting. He has also allowed his Chariots to resolve their Hammer of Wrath at Strength 7 instead, which seems nice until you realise that he has two chariots, one of which you don't really want in assault. And the signature, but largely irrelevant, spite with his rival Slaanesh has allowed his minions to gain the Hatred (Daemons of Slaanesh) special rule. Overall, Khorne's rule definitely show you where his minions should be, up in the fray, charging screaming 'BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD.'

The next of the rules is the Daemon of Tzeentch special rule, which gives the compulsory Daemon, and Hatred (Daemons of Nurgle) special rules, and also +3 Ld for Psychic tests. It's a wonderful rule if you're a Pink Horror, but it is largely irrelevant when you are a Lord of Change. Luckily, most armies don't use a Lord of Change in 600 points, so this aspect of the rule is more beneficial at this level of play. And then comes the wonderful part of this rule. In addition to your 5++ save, you can reroll rolls of a '1' on ANY save. Armour, Cover, Invun, all are slightly better due to this rule. It's sometimes worth it just to roll a '1' on an important save, and then as your opponent saves 'Failed' you can say the timeless line: 'Nope, Daemon of Tzeentch', and then reroll it to a pass. All in all, Tzeentch's rules make it clear where their expertise lies, which is in the Psychic attacks, which lies mostly in shooting and buffing, so the Daemons of Tzeentch are surprisingly versatile, but in these low points values you really want to keep back your Horrors for shooting, and potentially use Heralds to buff some other units.

Daemon of Nurgle is next on the list, and it could not paint a clearer picture of where these units are meant to be. With Shrouded, Slow and Purposeful, and Defensive Grenades, these units are designed to sit there, preferably on objectives, and wait to be assaulted, potentially moving closer to enemies at a very, very slow rate. They do also have the compulsory Hatred (Daemon of Tzeentch), but as always, this can largely be ignored. They have two main areas where they shine with a slightly sickly light: In cover, on objectives, Shrouded giving them an easy 3+ cover save (which can often be 2+), or tar-pitting down any unit that strays too close to your deployment zone, as Linebreaker can often make all the difference to the winner in close games. Largely, for these low points values of 600, you want them to be your immortal objectives holders, as nothing else in the codex is quite so good at holding them down.

Finally, the Daemons of Slaanesh. The classic Daemon and Hatred (Daemon of Khorne) special rules are accompanied by wonderful Fleet, Rending and +3” run movement (+6” if Cavalry!) which with fleet allows them to get where they want to go, and fast. They want to assault, and they will assault, and wonderfully quickly. In low points values, these Daemons allow you to pick a target, kill that target quickly, and then die due to their fragile nature. Overall, they want to be in the same position as Khorne's dogs, but they'll get there faster, kill their target faster and die faster. Speed is the name of the game with this special rule.

So, there you have it. Four very distinct special rules, with four very distinct positions. Use Khorne to kill in assault, use Slaanesh for speed, utilize Nurgle's survivability to hold down your objectives, and use Tzeentch's Psychic mastery for shooting, and wherever else it's needed. Overall, the Daemons codex is very versatile, but in low points values you want to make sure that you keep the right stuff in the right place, and a large combination can often bring great success. So, I hope that's given you a nice quick view of the Daemons codex's compatibility with low points values, and I'll provide an in-depth view of the Warp Storm table and the rewards and powers in the next article.

Eldar Unit Review: Farseer

The Farseer is seen by many to be the stereotypical eldar, and it does have many uses in an eldar army. With a mastery level of 3 and access to 3 tables (the eldar runes of fate, divination and telepathy) Farseers are one of the most powerful psykers in the game. Divination is a very powerful table, generally providing support to other units. Telepathy is much more aggressive, hopefully using the enemies poor leadership against them. Runes of Fate is much less focused and though it has a few good powers (doom that lets you re-roll to wound, guide which lets you re-roll to hit and fortune to re-roll saves) the rest are generally useless or just inferior to those from the telepathy or divination disciplines.

The farseer does not have a wide range of upgrades though. Other than the remnants of glory they may take either a singing spear and/or a bike as well as two sets of optional runes. The singing spear provides a S:9 AP:- shooting attack and so is well worth it if you have the points spare (there is literally no downsides to it).
The bike is another great option. Granting +1 toughness and 3+ armour as well as crazy speed the bike is perhaps the best option in the entire codex. Making the farseer much less vulnerable to instant death massively improves the units survivability and the extra speed allows it to keep up with what ever you want.
However in contrast to these two great options the two runes are far less attractive. Costing as much or close to the bike they provide some one use psychic effects. The runes of warding are probably a waste as the boost to your deny the witch is  rarely critical. Meanwhile the runes of witnessing is better as it does let you guarantee that you will pass a certain power.  However it is probably only worth it is you have the points spare or your strategy relies around these powers.
The other wargeer which the farseer comes with stock are rune armour (providing a 4++) and a ghosthelm (allowing you to negate a perils for a warpcharge).

At 600 points a single farseer has the capability to buff nearly you entire army if you take a blend of powers from runes of fate and divination. This can be particularly useful if you are are using many cheap models (such as guardians) as the entire unit will benefit from each power. The option to use the farseer offensively is also incredibly powerful at 600pts. With a wide range of telepathy maledictions you can cause havoc to low leadership armies. The best bit about this is that you do not need to choose the tables you roll on until you have seen you opponents list. This means that you could expect to use the farseer to buff your other units, but if your opponent is particularly low leadership ('nids once synapse is killed) you could instead take several telepathy powers.

Units which make the most of the farseers abilities are either large squads (such as guardians) who will benefit the most from the re-rolls or units which you have to rely on not to fail, such as wraithguard.
 The farseer is also one of the few units which I feel can be used as a successful ally at these points. If used with a Tau army of fire warriors and an ethereal the bonuses that the farseer can give out are immense and can completely negate the use of margerlights at this level.

Sample Armylist: Guardian Based
Farseer with bike, spear and Mantle of the laughing god  160
Warlock x2 with spears x1                                            75
18x Guardian Defenders with bright lance                       182
18x Guardian Defenders with bright lance                       182
Total                                                                            599pts

This list would work by rolling at least 1 runes of fate and 1 divination power on the farseer who would fly solo. By using the primaris of each discipline each squad of guardians would have shrouded (from the warlocks) to increase their survivability and would be able to re-roll to hit, increasing their damage output.

Ratings:
Solo: 4/10
Combo: 9/10
With very little true offensive power, the strength of the farseer lies in increasing the effectiveness of the rest of your army.

Unit Reviews

The following unit reviews will follow the basic structure laid out here.

There will be a brief summary of what the unit can do and useful wargeer followed by how this is useful specifically at 600pts. Following this I will outline some combinations with other units to make full use of this unit to make sure they are not wasted, and if possible, give a sample army list based around this unit.

At the end I will rate the unit out of 10 both out of context of the army and when you take into account the other units.

The aim of this post is to try and make clear the structure of them and to make them easier to follow.

Allies and Fortifications

Allies have become a very important part of 40k at larger points values. However at 600 points they are much less common and more limiting. As mentioned in the previous post the force organisation chart can be very limiting due to the mandatory nature of some units. Adding allies to this just increases the amount of things that you have to purchase.

However saying that, allies can still work for some armies (especially those with cheap troops). You can easily fit in a Eldar Farseer and some bikes into a Tau army to provide psychic support (and even offence) to the otherwise markerlight reliant Tau as well as some fast troops.

Fortifications however would be much easier to fit into the points limit. However I admit that I have not had much experience at all with fortifications and so the following will just be reasoned assumptions. 

Cheap durable buildings such as the imperial bunker could be incredibly useful. They would allow a unit to hide in relative safety, and due to fire points be able to provide some decent supporting fire (eg. Imperial guard heavy weapon teams).

The only other real fortification of note would be a void shield generator. Many armies would struggle to strip the shields and it could give you a turn or two of immunity from fire. However I have not tried these and so could be wrong.

The Force Organisation Chart

The restrictions imposed by the force organisation chart is very different from those placed at higher points games. Normally it is limiting your army due to the maximum number of selections that you can take in each slot. However at 600pts the reverse is true.

Often you will have only a couple of hundred points left, to purchase the more elite units, once you have filled out your mandatory HQ and 2 troops. This then leads to an important concept of army building at this level, is it better to take the cheapest HQ and troops (to leave more points spare for other units); or to make them (the troops and HQ) do the heavy lifting. Now there is very rarely an absolute answer to these questions and it varies between each codex how viable each strategy is (ie. marine troops are much better at dealing with multiple types of units compared with Tau fire warriors).

However the main risk of using minimal troops is that the missions are still mainly objective based. This means that if there were not enough troops in your list, then you may find that they have all been killed by the end of the game, forcing you to win on secondary objectives or by wipeout.

I personally like taking a cheap HQ (preferably who provides support such as a librarian) and then spending about half my points on troops. I feel that this gives the army a strong objective holding backbone as well as leaving points to buy a more specialised unit (such as sternguard veterans with a couple of combi-meltas).

What this is about

Having collected warhammer 40k now for over 2 years I have found that there is very little, if any, advice or even discussion about low point games (particularity in the region of 600pts). Now I am aware that these games are unpopular but having played many I feel that they have their own benefits as well as downsides.

Firstly the most obvious benefit of these games is there short duration. A full 7 turns can often be played in under an hour and often games take far less time. Another benefit that these games have is that they are much more inviting for new players, being able to play them after just a few months of buying their first model.

Recently the 40k community at large has been upset by the recent developments from Games Workshop, with a flurry of new rules (allies, supplements and escalation to name a few). However these changes have had almost no impact at low points levels (after all you can hardly fit in a 500pt superheavy and an HQ and 2 Troops).

I feel that it is this removal from the majority of 1500+ pt games which discourages experienced players from playing at this level (game balance is no further broken than at higher levels) and which results in there being less small games and above all makes it harder for new players to enter the hobby.

The aim of this blog will be to provide advice in general about this points level as well as eventually doing a unit by unit review of every codex. Most of these will be based on either my own experiences using the unit in question or from watching them used against others.

I will endeavor to write often but this may not always be achievable. I hope that you will find the following advice useful and interesting but I am certian that there are far more (and often effective) uses of these units.