Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 25

I've got something a little bit different for you this week.  This is actually closer to what I intended FNIF to be like when I conceived of it.  Today's fight basically just consists of 2 people.  This is a rarity, as everybody on the Internet has an opinion about everything.  Special thanks to everybody's favorite Kindermörder, M., for e-mailing me this fight.  To be honest, I usually avoid looking into threads that are over 400 pages long, but since he gave me specific page numbers and the fight was fairly self-contained, editing this became almost doable, although if you look at the actual thread and see how much quoting went on, you'll understand that this was a true nightmare to put together. 

Now that we've got all of that out of the way, let's move this week's fight.  Coming from page 439 of Warseer's V5.0 Eldar Tactica, which is apparently a hotbed of petty arguments- who knew?- we get a wonderfully idiotic argument over the worth of the Nightspinner.  Sadly this vehicle suffers from not being a falcon or fire prism, and most people don't seem to get that.  I've not seen too many people call the vehicle an outright piece of shit, but when your codex is old, outdated, and needs its heavy support slots to deal with transports and other vehicles, using up a precious heavy slot on an infantry killer is a pretty dumb idea.  Enough from me, I think you'll see what I mean soon enough.  Sufficed to say, somebody earlier in the thread asked about Nightspinners and this is what happened.

As always none of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, but their avatars have been for my amusement.  There will be a poll at the upper right hand side of the screen where you can chime in on who you think is this week's winner.  Remember, if you don't vote, the terrorists win.  Before we begin, since the header picture is even more esoteric than my normal incredibly esoteric pictures, it's based on probably the funniest thing ever posted at the now defunct emails from crazy people dot com.  Details here.

Kraken- I tried spinners and despite having the $0k ~whoa boy, ease up on that there shift key Equivalent of war and peace for special rules I was completely underwhelmed , it is pants on anything with an armor save, so pretty much useless in tournaments 2 linked prisms will put a bigger hole in a unit of marines than two spinners @ the same cost ~it's almost as if you don't believe in punctuation.  Are you the Cormac McCarthy of Warseer?

Irisado- The Nightspinner is based on the Doomweaver, and this weapon was designed to slow down and kill infantry, ~dur, really?  I hadn't noticed that a medium strength blast might be intended to shoot infantry.  it was not a genuine anti-armour weapon, so why do you imply that it should be? ~Haven't you heard.  Not only is bird still the word, but mech is still kind of king or some shit.

It might not kill that many Marines, but this does not, by default, make it a poor choice, ~true.  It's that combined with sucking dick against transports that makes it a poor choice as its main role is to slow the opposition down, and block off attack routes, making it very handy if you want to hinder a flank attack being executed by your opponent, or hinder opposing infantry from taking an objective. ~also great for sitting and watching your opponent role up on you in transports that you have no chance to crack  It's a great way to buy you some time,~time to ponder your impending doom? so I suggest that you think about it a bit more deeply, rather than just complaining that it doesn't inflict enough casualties. ~not sure about the rest of you, but I think not inflicting enough casualties is generally a pretty bad thing, unless it does something else for support.  Oh it has nothing else to offer?  Well shit.

Kraken- Nope, It does not even slow things down significantly just about anything trying to get to grips with you is in a transport these days. '~match and point

Irisado- I've seen a wide range of lists at Warhammer World ~the epicenter of 40k's competitive scene, no doubt.  Jervis still hangs out there right?, so I disagree with you that just about everything is riding in a transport. ~methinks ye not be understandin' hyperbole me matey Even if it is, you can blow a transport up with something else first before firing the Night Spinner. ~such as your awesome 12" range fire dragons?  Low strength shuriken weapons? The fireprisms or falcons you don't have because you took a dumbass spinner?  Well I guess you have a few bright lances to work with, but that just means that heavier armor is not being dispatched if you're shooting your big guns at transports.

Kraken- If you can provide some genuine Examples of where it offers at least a semi reliable all comers applicable tactic that you have used and provably works over a range of competitive opponents/armies Im not likely to change my opinion. ~dude, seriously... your grammar is really working against you here.  Remember punctuation is good.  Also having a sentence with a premise that makes sense- pretty good idea.  "If you can provide...examples...I'm not likely to change my opinion."  Quick let me get some examples so you can still be a prick. 

 

Irisado- I'm not looking to change your opinion, ~well this should be the best "debate" ever I'm offering the person who asked the question a different perspective by contesting your argument ~poorly. It's up to the questioner to decide which perspective (s)he prefers. ~the inherent problem with all forums.  Who is a new player with no experience to trust?

Kraken- Loads of people think it is a poor choice, maybe there is a reason for that ? ~one would hope Thats not saying it is always rubbish , just more often than not , though thats really mostly a meta issue.

Irisado- Loads of people? Where? I've hardly seen a massive number of Eldar players queuing up to complain about the Nightspinner on any forums that I visit, ~are there in sum total a massive number of Eldar players?  and I very doubt that your gaming group qualifies as loads of people. ~I very doubt your opinion is any more valid Even a forum the size of Warseer does not really represent the gaming community as a whole, ~oh thank god.  There is still hope for humanity and krootmanity alike let alone a gaming group ~I'm really glad you had the balls to question his sample and make assumptions based on no information.  Also to use a defense from the great supreme court trial of Rubber v. Glue, you do realize that you made assumptions about mech in lists earlier based solely on your experience at Warhammer World, a smaller group than even Warseer.

Kraken- In an Eldar army making your opponent dead first Is your defence.~sure why not?

Irisado- It's not as simple as that. ~unless you're trying to simplify things... Timing is critical, as is ensuring that your units are not destroyed utterly by reprisals after taking out opposing units in a particular area. ~I'm going to give this a 3 on a 10 point relevancy scale In objective based missions, it's also important to remember that being in the right position at the right time can, in my experience, often be far more critical than actually killing opposing units. ~you know, unless you have to move somebody off of one of those objectives

Kraken- my method of 'killing them first' involves positioning and timing greatly but it is usually to kill targets or remove threats or blunt reprisals, you pretty much implied the same thing with your post without agreeing with me, my fault for not being more specific in that post I guess. ~in the future could you generalize more specifically

 I live not far from WH world ,I am there from time to time , I may even be visiting on Weds, the majority of the lists there are average to poor. ~since you both like Warhammer World so much, you should meet up and duke it out.  'You're a wanker.' 'No you're a wanker, you berk.' 'I'm not a berk and your opinion is dog's bollocks.' 'No it's not, you twat.' etc until a slapfight ensues.

Irisado- It is the commander who makes the list more than the list which makes the commander. ~ooh I agree with you on something.  Maybe you're not so bad after all If the lists are, in your view, so very average to poor, I await to read tales of your unbroken winning streak with baited breath ~nope, looks like you still suck. 

Kraken- Weather someone can construct ~and I will bring the world to its knees with my weather constructor.  seriously, do they still teach English in the UK for fuck's sake?  I know they stopped doing it a while back in the states, but come on... a decent list or not is usually the first sign of someone being a good commander or not, I say usually because I do admit there is a certain wild card factor and there are some 'freaks' who seem to be able to get certain units to really work for them,them being the exception rather than the rule.

I went undefeated with My Mechdar for months until my club switched to 1750 which has admittedly caused me some headaches , ~blame the points, not the player.  Nicely done winning has become hard work and my luck seems to have dropped into the abyss , but ill find my groove again. ~coming this holiday season: How Kraken got his groove back
 
Arguments aside I would usually encourage someone to test it for themselves, my playtesting experience is worth far more to me than some (more than likely) opinionated blither on the internet

Irisado- Yet, you want to conduct a poll ? ~I would like to conduct electricity from a car battery through a poll and into your ballsack

Kraken- Yes a poll, hopefully asking people who have actually played (so playtesting experience) ~oh sweet- an open poll, the best way to avoid response error ever.  Tired of statistics jokes yet? with a spinner a few times to give their opinion, the aim would be not to provide a definitive answer but to show how feeling are running on it.

As for loads of people, I think the last negative stuff I heard about the spinner other than myself was either one of the webcasts or someone's blog. ~best citations I've ever seen.  Would not have expected anything less from somebody with such a great grasp of composition

Irisado- One webcast and one blog does not equate to loads of people I'm afraid. ~you're right again.  Now I'm afraid

Kraken- No it does not, but again I did say it was just one recent example that came to mind that shows that at very least 'some' people find it to be meh. ~an example sans examples.  Well played Kraken

My gaming group is pretty big and we currently have 4-5 Eldar players of differing skill levels at my home club but I have ready access to several more. ~Eldarmon, gotta catch 'em all

Irisado-  This doesn't equate to loads of people either. ~as with many others out there, I think you've misunderestimated how small our hobby really is  5+ eldar players probably make up a pretty decent fraction of a percent of all Eldar players.  Really not a bad sample to be honest.

If you want to argue, however, that you and your gaming group don't think the Night Spinner is very good for reasons x, y and z, that's fair enough, but trying to extend the point to the gaming community as a whole when you don't have enough evidence to do so isn't a very good idea in my opinion. ~unless of couse you also mention various blogs and podcasts outside your gaming group.  Face it you monkey pirate- nothing will ever be good enough for you.

Kraken- I do not need to do a survey of the whole eldar community to know the smell of poo emanating from a set of rules, especially when I give them the benefit of the doubt and actually play several games with it/them.

I too wish that it was decent, I really do, Im right there with you on that .... but no amount of rose tinted counter arguments are going to change the fact that its just a bit too pants to take over other choices in non friendlies. ~you almost nearly got close to what you need to say to practically kill this argument: the Nightspinner suffers from being a not Falcon and a not Fireprism

Irisado- Okay, but it still is not going to be representative enough for you to draw a universal conclusion which is true in all, or indeed most, cases.  ~H0:  Nightspinner sucks.  H1:  go fuck yourself!  Now are you sick of statistics jokes?

I'm perfectly happy to accept your play testing results, in the sense that you have discovered that the Night Spinner does not work for you, because it would appear you face a lot of fully mechanised MEQ armies, and the Night Spinner will, clearly, not be at its best against such armies. For players who face a wider range of army type and style, however, it is likely to be more effective, so my disagreement with you has nothing to do with the fact that you don't find it effective, but everything to do with the fact that you have given the impression (which you probably did not intend to do, so I'm not criticising you) that all armies are going to be mechanised MEQ armies, as this simply is not the case. ~and what makes your opinion on this more valid?  Why would I trust that you say there aren't going to be lots of mech or MEQ armies?  Behold, the Swiss cheese of arguments

Kraken- I'm pretty sure my post alluded to 'general feeling' rather than the definite so we do not really need to re-say that again in a different way do we ?



Back to my original point ~for those keeping track, he's yet to have actually raised his original point in any concrete way, Im not trying to imply it is the worst thing ever but its just not good enough against a spectrum of enemies to warrant dropping that HS choice for ~oh no, somebody is advocating a take all comers approach.  Quick shit all over it!

Irisado- I simply disagree with you on this point. It might not be the right choice for every Eldar army, and as I said previously, it's going to struggle against fully mechanised MEQ forces, ~not seeing a disagreement yet.  I think your opinion is correct, but allow me to be difficult for a moment but against certain armies, especially those with horde infantry, it's a very useful addition to the long ranged firepower of Eldar forces. ~oh so it only works when you're list tailoring.  Fuck! 

Kraken- Out of how many armies in your average tourney are horde infantry ? out of those how many place highly with any regularity, orks ? ~quick fetch me a statistician......stat I would rather take one vehicle that always has some utility than one that is random most of the time and good vs one or two armies. ~swing and a hit folks.  about fucking time
 

Irisado- I don't know, and I'm not concerned. If you want to make a case for the Night Spinner not being effective at tournament level, go ahead, I won't debate it with you, because I avoid tournament play. ~ughh, this is going to go south really quick.  I'm arguing against universal application of your dismissal of the Night Spinner, because not everybody plays in tournaments, as has been debated in this thread in the past ~just because you're not in a tournament doesn't mean you shouldn't have take all comers options.  When will people grasp this concept.  I'm guessing some time around never.  Oh shit, flying pigs, duck!
 

Kraken- I would say upto about half of my games are Meq, but regularly I play guard , various nid and ork lists, deamons, chaos marines,SoB, other eldar. It only really shines against ork foot spam and certain nid builds. ~Probably would be decent against IG too, with weak foot models and AV 10 side transports (Spinner is a barrage weapon, so always hits the side, but that -1 on the chart fr AP- still sucks)

Irisado- From that list, I would be interested to know why you don't find it effective against Imperial Guard, so if you would elaborate, I would like to hear your thoughts on that




 

Kraken- Ig in chimeras, valks etc have little to fear from a spinner ~for the last time, punctuate your fucking run on sentences str 9-10 prisms though is another story, its not like they move enough to make the dangerous terrain check anything but a pointless novelty.

Both wound guard on two's which makes makes the spinner identical in terms of killing massed guard as a prism, in fact in the open they get a save vs the spinner so the prism actually wins due to being AP 4 not - .

The falcon (davu) is a better choice too as it can kill av12, and better survive guard firepower + claim, as are shuri or scatter walkers as they generate more hits which also makes them more viable against the inevitable wall of vehicles. ~why did it take you this fucking long to finally bring up specific examples of opportunity cost?  notice how Irisasshole doesn't reply to you much after this?

It really is not a good choice against a modern guard list. ~honestly in the vacuum of theory hammer it's not that awful against IG, but still suffer from not being as good as the alternatives in a generalist way not saying it wont do anything at all but compared to the alternatives in my opinion it is to be found wanting.

Squallish- I've had success against chimera and rhino walls with the Night Spinner. If your opponent makes a true wall, you can get the template to hit 3 tanks. ~so unless there is some spinner rule I'm forgetting, you do realize that vehicles that aren't under the template hole get hit on half strength, right?  So you can't breach the hull.  even with rending the odds are absolute shit.  So lucky shot + lucky rend = nearly statistically impossible
Since it's a barrage, it hits side Armour.. so the main target gets S6 on AV10. Then the side targets get S3 on side armour, with Rending.. so two chances at a 6 for a Rend, and then you have a 2/3 shot at a pen, or a glance at minimum on that 6. What other weapon can hit 3 tanks and actually hurt them? S10 plates, that's about it. ~Inferno cannon, blood lance, anything shooting at vehicles squadrons, earthshaker cannons, melta cannons (if the targets are packed in super tight and you scatter perfectly, but hey we're in the land of make-believe, so why not) and need I go on?

Then on top of that, those Chimeras will be Immobilized on a 1 if they move. ~you do know how unreliable a 1/6 chance of that happening is, right. Especially after the lowish chances of hitting How is that not awesome? It's like a free glance, really, since they don't care much about weapon destroyed or shaken, and at AP- they can't even immobilize on a glance anyway.

So if I hit 3 tanks I have a 50% + 16.6% chance of damage, and then a 16.6% + 16.6% chance of damage on two other tanks.. I should do *something* to that Chimera wall. ~that's great, but you're ignoring how unlikely it is for your magic bullet to hit  targets, even if they're sardined in there If the spread out to avoid the damage, then that's what the Eldar *want*, since we like to pick off weak flanks and prevent their whole army from getting to us with our speed.

If they're a mixed mech army or you can pop some tanks first with other shooting, then the Nightspinner is even *better*, because it is useful against all infantry with 2+ to wound, Rending, and Dangerous Terrain adding up to a lot of casualties. ~you know what?  Fuck it.....

In a doubles match, I've had one shot from my Spinner hit:
- two BA Assault Marines squads, killing one in each squad
- one Loganwing Terminator squad, killing one with a Rend


When they moved the next turn:
- two Terminators died from Dangerous Terrain
- 1 Melta Assault Marine, 2 Normal Marines and the Sanguinary Priest died in one squad
- 1 Marine and the Librarian took a wound


He killed almost 320pts worth of models with only slightly higher than average rolling in one shot. Then, the opponents spread out for the rest of the game, allowing us to isolate and eliminate them.

Kraken- err rhinos are 11 on the side ..... also due to being Ap - it gets a further -1 on the chart

horribly unreliable against vehicles....

My last game with the spinner I managed to get 2 vindicators and a razor under the template, total effect was the razor could not move or shoot the following turn,
underwhelmed.

You had a good game with it there , however if you had got the same hits on the same units with a prism would it not have killed more ? mine often kills almost entire de meched squads of Meq, the nature of a one in 6 chance for the dangerous terrain check is so random it is worthless relying on it to do something.

Infact because any of its effects are based on either a six to wound or a roll of a one you could do that entire game again and bounce....

Something that reliant on chance is no good , I even tried supporting it with doom to offset that a bit. was still underwhelming.

A linked prism shot and doom would have been MUCH better even factoring in a second spinner to shoot at the squad (which would be a waste as you cannot stack the dangerous terrain effect)

you are aware you get ward saves against dangerous terrain ? ~so much actual evidence based on experience.  Refute that Internet dickwads....

Squallish- It's definitely less effective against Rhinos.

You still got a damage effect with your shot, and had the potential to damage all 3 tanks.. considering that the weapon is not designed to even target vehicles, that's a good result, if you ask me, especially since that's about average. ~way to kill your own argument

The chances of hurting at least one Side 10 tank on 3 hits (assuming they move): 1 - (1/3 * 2/3 * 2/3) = 85%. ~you math just went from sketchy to awful real fast That's pretty solid in an objective game where movement is king, and about 1/2 those results will be immobilized from the Dangerous. ~I never knew that 1/6 = 1/2.  all these years of doing math wrong....

A linked Prism shot costs double at minimum the cost of a Spinner, and would not have done anything to the Terminators, really. It also has almost no chance of picking out unique models, which the Dangerous does wonderfully. ~please just shut the fuck up

Adding Doom only improves a Spinner too, thanks to the ability to re-roll all wounds for increased Rending chances. I'm not saying Prisms are bad, I'm just saying that instead of a 3rd Prism, it's often way better to take a solo Spinner against most lists. ~pro tip, it actually isn't better

Against full mech, that third Prism isn't going to do much with a scattering S9 shot that the Spinner doesn't have a chance of doing to multiple tanks as well. ~if only you didn't suck at math and saw the error of your logic

Yes, you get an Invulerable save.. but most models that a Rend/Dangerous Terrain is good against (2+/5++) will fail that 2/3 of the time. fuck it, I'm done.  I can't sit through this anymore.  Enjoy being an idiot, I hope never to have to see you again.