Post by Trollock on Oct 25, 2017 6:49:52 GMT
I think Fennblades are somewhere between kriel warriors and longriders. They hit harder and more accurate than kriel warrioirs, but cost more, so if their only purpose is to be jammers, kriel warriors do it cheaper. But fenns are way better to kill enemy infantry. Unless on madrak2 they wont kill heavies, but no troll infantry kill heavies outside madrak2 (champions with cold-stone are quite good hitters with pow14 wm). Comparing them to longriders is harder, cos they do really different role. Longriders with arm20 resist shooting way better (especially pow10/12 shooting) but can fall to boosted high pow shooting and losing one is significant loss. (boosted pow14 do average 4p damage, so two will kill) Losing two fenn to boosted jack-shots is no big deal. And then longriders have to be on stone range. Fennblades on the other hand wont get help from stone, so they can spread out better.
Fenns and Kriels do NOT do the same thing. Kriels can... block lanes and do chip damage at things that has already committed. Kriels are SPD 5 with 1" reach. Fenns are effectively SPD 8 (for threat range purposes) and possibly SPD 11 (with vengeance) and have a 2" reach to boot. They get in there WAY faster than Kriels do. IMO, Kriels can not be used for jamming outside Jarl (quicken) and Grissel 1 (hoof it). Dash from Grissel 2 only makes them average. They can just block access to your models. Fenns can actually charge a long way and get places your opponent does not want them. After moving 11" with a charge, they can reposition 3" further in, so they can remove parts of the front lines and then go even deeper. Kriels can not realistically do this, because they are too slow to get the charge in the first place. Even if running they only get 10".
I do not think longriders are super susceptible to boosted guns either. As you say, two high POW boosted guns can kill (tough) a long rider. that is a 4 point model. The same two boostable guns could kill (tough) two fennblades. You get 11 (12, but the drummer doesnt really count) fennblades for 20 points, so that is 3.6 points worth of models. No big difference. Note that it does not really matter if the long riders are inside the kriel stone or not, because all but the most high POW guns still require two shots to kill one.
If it were POW 10s, things swing in favour of the Long riders, BUT if you keep the fenns inside the stone aura, POW 10 guns needs to roll 7s to kill a fennblade. 42% of the time, they fail to kill. Even at DEF 12, it is possible to miss them too. Rifle core with a +2 to hit from Joe will need to roll 5s to hit, then a 7 to kill, then there is tough. This means that if 10 Rifle Core shoot your fennblades (with no concealment, but also with no aiming bonus) they should kill 3.24 models. This would trigger vengeance, and guess who threatens more than the 14" the rifle core shoots? Thats right.
I think the perception that "all single wound infantry get shot off the table" has been vastly exaggerated. Granted there ARE lists that can shoot single wound infantry at alarming paces, but we all seem to be worried about the 10 heavy jack lists all the time. The opponent cant have both 10 heavies AND swarms of POW 10 shooters at once.
I think i lost my train of thought a while back, but i guess my point was something about fennblades not being bad. Make sure you give them some kind of buff, be it to speed, survivability or to hitting power and you can probably make good use of them.