300Pts for a single Warhound look reasonable actually.

With the repricing of SM tank formations, maybe there will be some tempting alternatives.

What would you do, give them the Reaver & Warlord critical hit effect?

_________________
Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Actually I do like the take only pairs option - by far the simplest and most marine armies take two anyway. Cutting marines activations down by a third and giving them a relatively fragile BTS would be interesting. And they get 50 points to spend elsewhere



To be fair it is currently 18% to 27% of a marines points. Hardly a niche - thats a mainstay.

Critical - Walks off table in shame - Blows up like a shadowsword - trips over in random direction removing from game and maybe crushing stuff - hell even the current crit with always taking an extra point of damage instead of just if they crash into something!

But I do like the only in pairs thing.

Extra point of damage would be a start, and in a lot of cases finish the hound off anyway.

But if a fix is really necessary I'm leaning towards pairs only for marines. But doing so may make 3 termies/thunderhawk armies the norm again.

I'd see removing singletons only for marines as odd. Better to do something else like critical hits or points costs first IMO.

If only singletons are worth taking, it's because duos are too expensive or, more likely, singletons too cheap.

_________________
Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Well the upside would be at least they were marines

Raises two questions I guess - if you simply up termies by 25 points again you would end up with 2 warhounds, 2 termies as always at the same cost and one less activation - impact of that?

And more importantly - are marine armies without terminators or warhounds viable? And if not, why not?

very hard to kill WE without them. given the small range of the marine army in general, the terminators (teleporting or air-dropped) and warhound are the units giving them the reach and punch to kill WE, specially long range WE like enemy titans and stuff like that, who may stay far away, and deny an objective and probably BTS while still pounding marines from afar.

This reliance on terminator and Warhound to fight WE on reasonable terms has been around since the very begining of the list.
I know many players were a bit disappointed to learn that Terminator assault or "take your own titans" were the only answer they'd usually get concerning "how do I manage titans".
Usually the corollary is "if you don't like it, ignore them". Not only this isn't a very satisfying state of things, but without terminators and Titans, a marine player usually give his opponent ample opportunity to deny him BTS and an objective just by getting a Titan.

So, mass teleport/air assault became the norm to gain some reach, and warhound were an ideal complement, to set up crossfire/support Assault/etc.

I think the warhound prevalence is at least in part due to the same reasons why Air assault/drop/pod/Teleport tactics are prevalence in the marine list : it's hard going without it.

TRC : By niche, I didn't mean in term of army point, I mean in term of battlefield role. There are not many marine tools that allow you to deal with WE. They have very few MW outside of characters, and the only one with good reaches are LS (but 5+ hitting LV have their limits too), teleporting/air-dropped terminators and warhound.

Now, I don't see an easy fix to that matter; so i think we have to live with the fact that it's an integral part of the way marine lists are going to be played. A price bump might be needed, but I'd be wary of dramatic changes.

Warhounds have very little role to play in killing enemy WE. Their main contribution is trying to drawn the WE fire whilst frolicing in cover. 2 MW2+ shots every two turns does not a titan slayer make. A warhound advancing on a baneblade is unlikely to kill it (on average doing just over 1 point of damage only).

Instead they get to get resilant activations, fast units, handy support, good small formation killers (further boasting their activation advantage) and with the MW great at hitting those mdeium targets like marines, non reinforced vehicles and the like. Warhounds can also support a turn 1 drop and while preds are a better choice for AT the warhounds have the excellent AP as well and a good chance of being around turn 2.

Or as a compromise, only allow one singleton Warhound. Most of the above comments on WH effectiveness is due to multiple singltons 'frolicing' as TRC puts it. The points hike to 275 was due to the excessive effects of spamming, but IMHO it could reasonably be 'nerfed' a tad further.

One option I saw proposed at one point was that Warhounds could/should be bought in groups.

i.e. If you buy one Warhound, you get a Warhound. If you get two Warhounds, you get a pack of two Warhounds. Buy three Warhounds, get a pack of two and a single. Etc.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

Is the general consensus that a Warhound simply is too good for it's points or is it only a problem when facing several "single" models?

Well, this isn't even an issue in other lists.

So what are the variables:
Strategy rating
Initiative of fellow formations
Other WE choices
Other long-range MW

Any others?

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

Ability to take thunderhawks of doom.

Does anyone else feel they are just about at the right power level?

I am not to sure about that; the Chaos Feral was even more powerfull, and we are still balancing that (increased cost and reduced stats). However it is not so much the power of the Warhound or Feral, but rather the differences in the other components of the other lists.

In IG or LatD, the reduced strategy rating, different army strategies and a number of deep strike alternatives all reduce the profile of the WH and Feral, consequently they tend to be less usefull.

In BL, the other chaos WE tend to reduce the profile of Ferals in the list, and they also compete for the restricted Titan and Spacecraft points. Consequently Ferals tend to be less used.

The point is that in a straight comparison with other Marine formations, Warhounds are better and often significantly so in their niche. Consequently they have a high profile in the Marine list as others have pointed out. That does not make them 'indispensable', but it almost does. It has only been the recent improvement in Reaver stats together with the increased cost of the WH that has tended to change the WH profile in the list and in the armies of those who tend to take them.

Are they 'balanced'? IMHO almost.
What should change? That seems to depend on personal preferences and subjective opinions as much as anything else.

As TRC has pointed out, WH and Ferals are a reasonably resilient activation boost that can provide a good punch and reasonable support. I would argue it is actually the activation boost effect of several individual 'scout' titans that is the only real issue that remains. By contrast, the Eldar Revenant titan fills the same position in the Eldar list, but is much less of a problem because they must be taken in pairs.

So IMHO, the only change needed to all races and lists is simply to reduce the activation boost effect of singlton 'scout' titans by requiring that 'Scout' titans must be bought in pairs, limiting singlteon 'Scout' titans to one per army.
(And I would also suggest that singlton Eldar Revenants be permitted at ~350pts )

Making lone titans 0-1 is pretty background representative too. Warhounds are always deployed in pairs, a lone one would just be the single survivor of a previous battle, and would hook up with another lone warhound if possible.