Thursday, November 15, 2012

Flamers of Tzeentch - OP?

Flamer's of Tzeentch - painted by me

The reaction I've been getting of late is absolute fear or loathing of my flamers.  Among the myriad screams of "Daemons are OP" the two data points people use to express their frustration with my army is Fateweaver and my Flamers.  I'll discuss the king chicken in another thread, but I'm starting to agree that the Flamer is a really good value.

Points to consider:
  • I have not yet found a compelling reason to waste 5 points on Pyrocaster upgrades (no one will charge them, so I can't use it as a character bait/challenge and look out sir provides no real value with this unit).
  • When taken in squads of 3-4 (even 5) they are suicide units.  If a single model makes it to turn 2 then I'm thrilled.  At 1750 points I've been taking three squads of 3 (69 points).  The value proposition changes when we're talking about squads of 6-9 models.
  • In order to maximize points  return you have to deepstrike them for a direct hit.  Which means you will scatter 7 inches in a random direction 2/3 of the time.  Which means you will deepstrike mishap somewhere between 17.5-33% of the time (based upon your enemy's positioning).  Let's go with a moderate 25% mishap.  This means you will loose 69 points about 8% of the time.  69 points is now 75 points (thanks to the mishap tax).  So, aside from the 33% of the time when you direct hit, the rest of the time you're likely going to scatter far enough that you're shooting warp fire instead of a flamer.  Warpfire is what your 17 point Pink Horrors have, but you get at 23 points.  Factor in the increased BS and you have a 20 point Pink Horror.
I don't know.  I don't think they are over powered.  They are one-dimensional and then they stick their landing they are deadly.  The rest of the time they get to jump across the board while getting shot up, or you loose them off the table edge.  I could see 25 points, even 28 points a piece if you really wanted to push it, but not OP.  At least not crazy OP.

1 comment:

  1. Since cover saves have increased in importance with the advent of 6th edition, I can see anything that ignores cover as being declared OP on some level or another. And most people aren't used to the in-you-face presence of daemons, which tends to make them larger than life in game terms at times. I like disposable units as well, and a one hit wonder can do some impressive damage.

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