r/WarhammerCompetitive • u/Jodread • 18h ago

40k Analysis What do you think is your faction's most useless Unit?

To the level that it almost never makes it into your lists, or seen others run them much except as a meme. Running a survey here, trying to find out whether other factions have these as well.

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u/ViorlanRifles 18h ago edited 18h ago

Necrons: The other day I had to look up what a tesseract vault does and man, at least an obelisk is cheap.

Tau: on reflection this codex has weirdly good internal balance so you'd think I'd say "tidewalls" but honestly I think I've cut strike teams out basically every list I've put them in. They badly need s6, ap1, heavy, or some combination of the above in the new codex.

Guard: I think even if they were half the cost and I owned 3, the deathstrike is in the running for "unit that most needs a dramatic rework". Area denial is fun and there's certainly an intimidation factor to these things but, it's one damage. It's supposed to be a 90s gulf war SCUD launcher, maybe it should be at minimum threatning to power armor (honestly it should be 3 flat).

Votann: Has anyone actually made good use of an arkanist evaluator? Every time I look at the datasheet I'm struggling to figure out what you're supposed to do with it.

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u/sackboy13 17h ago

Arkanist Evaluator is cracked. It's cheap, kills elites, kills light vehicles, pushes buttons.

Honestly Votann don't really have one. Even the Earthshakers, which are our worst unit by far, show up in competitive lists from time to time.

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u/wholesome_dino 16h ago

I’d say it’s the grimnyr honestly, its rules and profiles are fine but you’re just restricted to leading warriors and the job of that squad is usually done better by multiple other options

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u/New-Boss5956 14h ago

Idk, I’ve had my warriors with grimnyr tie up problem units for 2 sometimes 3 entire rounds if they refuse to fall back. Have been told many times that brick is annoying af

Edit: but I suppose compared to the rest of the spread, yeah he’s still a top candidate. Narrow uses.

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u/Deep_Film_861 16h ago

nah the vaults actually goated. it essentially asks your opponent "recklessly T1 bumrush everything or im gonna chuck this massive brick in the middle", its output is genuinely ok enough and its such a nasty blocker that sometimes picks up key units that its kinda cool.

you see them occasionally in teams.

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u/ViorlanRifles 16h ago

Well one of my local (and pretty good) chaos knight player fought a double Tvault list at Battle of Salvation and reportedly, did not have a terribly hard time killing them. I will say that knight armies tend to be good at tackling these kinda of titanic threats but even my local cron player who runs double monolith ended up getting tabled by orks recently. Stuff is killy; flying borg cubs are expensive.

I will say the blast dev wounds seems much better into a terminator spam list, so that makes sense for teams.

In either case: I don't see what you get out of a double Tvault list that you can't mostly get more efficiently out of a double monolith list - which is both cheaper and has broadly better offensive output (and even better melee, both from its own profile and from eternity gating in skorpex/lychguard right on top of the enemy) unless the 10 point battleshock aura + 1/2" movement for an enemy unit actually means something.

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u/Shed_Some_Skin 16h ago

Hasn't the Tesseract Vault been seeing some play recently?

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u/sharkjumping101 6h ago

IIRC the last time I saw a Tesseract halfway perform at a reasonably major event (i.e. not a 3/4-round fluke or like 3-2-0 or something) was I think the madlad who went 6-2 at Tacoma with "TSK + 2 Tesseract and whatever chaff I can squeeze into the last 600 points", but that would have been back in like, June or July at top of edition 3+ dataslates ago and before they got taxed an extra 20+ points each.

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u/TallNobody9357 17h ago

Deathstrikes doing 1 damage a hit with a Plasma warhead is obsurd

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u/Gryphon5754 15h ago

Plasma warheads in lore are Anti Titan I'm pretty sure. Anything it touches from C'tan to primarch should just go away lmao

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u/SolarianIntrigue 11h ago

In 40k plasma can mean plasma or fusion. The plasma reactors on Knights are compact fusion reactors for example. In the case of Deathstrike, you're shooting a thermonuclear warhead... And it's D1

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u/Gryphon5754 11h ago

There are different types of warheads. In "Steel Tread" they describe the difference. Basically, a plasma warhead will do catastrophic damage contained to a large courtyard. The other death strike warhead would level the entire shrine complex.

Basically, SPOILERS AHEAD. They had to aim the plasma warhead to kill the chaos warlord, but they acknowledged the other type of warhead just needed a general area. I think in 9th edition you could choose the different warhead types at the start of the battle

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u/NaturalAfternoon7100 10h ago

I decided to play 3 death strikes at a tournament last edition. I was against tau and he had a huge kroot blob that he moved into range of 2 of my death strike counters. Between the random number of hits and his 6++ I killed a single kroot. After this display of might for some reason he was still scared of what my third one could do to his tanks. The third one did 3 wounds to a hammerhead. The psychological effect is real. That’s about it.

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u/Kalnix1 16h ago

Double Tvault in Obeisance Phalanx (can give it -1 damage with a strat) actually saw play like a month ago and its why the Tvault so expensive and why the 2nd one is obscenely expensive.

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u/Gryphon5754 15h ago

Bruh, it's implied in Steel Tread that a proper death strike missile could level an entire heritic controlled shrine and just wipe the entire chaos leadership. Instead it has a plasma warhead that absolutely pastes an entire squad of noise Marines but with vastely inferior range because the plasma is meant to be ANTI TITAN levels of destruction.

Death strike missiles should be HORRIFIC to even think about stepping into range of.

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u/Substantial_Owl_7392 17h ago

tbh i feel like strike teams should just get phased out in favor of pathfinders. better weapon spread, better buff, better shooting… they just kinda feel like how strike teams are supposed to

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u/ViorlanRifles 17h ago

I got like 120 strike firewarriors so nah, but also: different roles. Strike teams are supposed to be something like a firing lane battleline squad that can sit and shoot things; breachers and pathfinders are advance shooty troops. Strike teams are basically supposed to function similarly to a guard heavy weapon team but that requires their guns to get good enough to threaten standard battleline marines again.

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u/Substantial_Owl_7392 17h ago

that’s fair. i do feel like gw kinda wants everything to be advance shooty, so the strike team way is falling behind. issue is the only way they’re going to feel okay again is if they get s6 ap1, which is gonna cause some serious salt. ah well, i play tau for a reason…

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u/LostN3ko 16h ago

They want shooting armies to have to play the midfield and be interactable. The long range gunline style is something they want to discourage as much as indirect fire.

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u/Substantial_Owl_7392 15h ago

yeah, and i don't lol. it makes every army feel the same. i want to have battles where it's just fortifications blasting at each other from opposite ends of the board.

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u/LostN3ko 15h ago

Trouble is that is only a "game" for a handful of armies and even those armies would wind up only running a handful of their units and the game would just come down to a coin flip of who goes first.

"Lets play a game, we take turns kicking each other in the nuts. I'll go first!"

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u/Substantial_Owl_7392 15h ago

well, if we had better cover rules, less lethality, blast templates instead of precision indirect, alternating activations, and people actually brought mixed armies instead of skew, it would be a perfectly fun game. but that's a whole separate conversation.

also, i think you are misunderstanding just how much of an artillery-addicted freak i am. i LOVE static artillery emplacements

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u/LostN3ko 14h ago

Nothing wrong with that. But what is the world eater, emperor's children, daemons or even glass cannon eldar going to do? Tau and Guard both eat well in that world. I understand your thoughts, it simply is a style that is a very flat way to play, not that the current game is very deep, but it's just a different kind of stat check form of gameplay. A DPS check if you will. Great for a day of rolling dice as you hang out with friends, but with the player skill expression of a card game of War.

I am sure there are trench warfare games that support this better with mirror armies.

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u/Substantial_Owl_7392 13h ago

the world eaters and emperor's children would use drop pods and rhinos to push up the board early, daemons would use manifestations to try and poke holes in the defensive wall, and eldar would do cool ninja tricks to leap from cover to cover. it wouldn't be a stat check at all, since gunlines are reliant on overlapping fire arcs and area buffs that can be outmaneuvered and sniped. in fact i'd argue it's less of a stat check than say, the lion or victrix guard spam. melee players would just need to adapt, instead of gunline players getting their entire playstyle get nerfed into oblivion and lose all the fun bits. i do think it would have to lean more defensive, and its not gonna happen in 11e, but i do love my wall of martyrs dearly.

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u/SkeletonJakk 16h ago

Strike teams are a utility piece imo. They apply the suppressed debuff, do actions and have a markerlight. They’re also 5 points more than kroot.

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u/LostN3ko 16h ago

Death strike should be cool. Make it 1 damage per model in the strike zone. Leave your chaff here and it shall be wiped. It would still never actually trigger but it would function as a threat and make things scurry away from it. Being able to ignore it just makes it a single use fortification.

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u/UpNorthBear 15h ago

T vaults were literally meta a couple months ago rofl, they're too expensive now

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u/FauxGw2 15h ago

The Arkanyst is amazing! I take one or two every game. It even shows up in top lists.

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u/Lumovanis 11h ago

Guard is definitely the cyclops.

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u/ViorlanRifles 11h ago

I was trying to avoid the very large pool of forgeworld and legend units. Obviously you can find all sorts of jank in there.

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u/Lumovanis 10h ago

The Cyclops isn't legends, still somehow in the codex 

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u/miggiwoo 9h ago

Vault is hella drip though. A model that fundamentally defies gravity, transportation and use.

I've seen them at tournaments a few times, always fielded by an absolute chad who essentially just says, "Yes, it's shit, but..." then gestures at it.

And I have no argument. It's in a similar vein to stompers. Some madlad used to run 2 gorka/morkanaughts and a stomper at every event (before the glow up, like all of 10th ed).

1

u/Pengin_Master 8h ago

I play with 3 Arkynist Evaluators because they're genuine really good units. They're great transport fillers for Sagitaurs or Land Forts, and if you always commit to fully charging them at half range that's 6 attacks, on 2s, S8 ap-3 DMG 3, and sustained hits if you spend a yield point.

It's really good at doing damage to elite infantry and even vehicles, especially in Hearthfire Arsenal. And to top all of that off, hazardous only does 1 damage and he has 4 wounds, so you can technically shoot him for 4 turns even if you fail each hazard test.