Few people took them (not nobody; I do recall some batreps) because people like tanks etc. not because they were nessesarily a poor choice. The. We rapiers on the other hand are *definitely* a poor choice due to high cost combined with lack of range (making overwatch largely useless).

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I took them to work as a garrison formation that created a nice deterrent zone of AT fire. I found them especially useful on overwatch, with 45cm range, against mechanized companies. They were powerful enough to reliably tear up transports, meaning the mechanized units had to choose between coming in at speed, risking damage against transported infantry as well as the transports themselves, or slow down and advance on foot.

An analysis of saggitari.

As statted, the original intended main roles of the two saggitari formations were:

Rapiers- garrison AT, to act as a speed bump to enemy AV advances
Mole Mortars- garrison indirect AP light arty, can hit opponent's deployment zone

Vaaish has as far as I can see done the following:
- added a third type of saggitari armed with plasma cannons & ff3+
- changed rapiers to 30cm and given them better AP
- made mole mortars faster with some armour and ff3+
- some formation composition changes

The new roles would be...

Plasma saggitari- assault infantry (short ranged gun with slow firing and good ff means they must be used in assaults). Role seems a bit similar to praetorians actually.
Mole mortars - a more expensive arty garrison , easier to break due to less units
Rapiers - no idea. They don't seem to have a role other than self defence against teleporting or air assaults?

Plasma saggitari are in too small formation sizes to be likely to be much good at the role their stats have given them (engagement firefighters). Mole mortars are now easier to break but cost more. Rapiers are now too expensive to field and now have no clear battlefield role. The formation composition changes work further to marginalise rapiers (why add short ranged, slow units to assault infantry?)



Now Vaaish. What was your intention with all these changes and additions?
In your mind what use is a typical epic player supposed to be getting out of your three different saggitari units?

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There were never any sagitarii formations in the list prior to my changes, but if you want to retroactively call the Rapier and Mole Mortars that then whatever floats your boat. Sagitarii got added to the list as an outcome of the initial skitarii direction thread when I start as AC. I think it was actually Zobo's suggestion.

Originally, the purpose was to create a detachment that worked well in support of a garrisoned demi-century which is where they got the 3+ FF value and basically were treated as skitarii devastator detachment. To follow the fluff that they were hypaspists with heavy weapons that were not part of demi-century, they got plasma cannons and were a support rather than core formation.

Rapiers and Mole Mortars have been shuffled around to test the response to them as separate formations or upgrades and now clean swaps to sagitarii because I don't want to remove them entirely and they just haven't been a useful option anywhere else. Basically they are units that very few people even bother to try either because there aren't models or because they just don't fit in lists. I'm to the point that I'd just as soon see them out of the list entirely than hanging around as dead weight.

When I first put mole mortars as swaps to the plasma, I'd halved the number of weapons so you ended up with two types of formation. The first was plasma which gave you more direct shots to soften with overwatch fire and the capability to tag both infantry and vehicles making it a bit more offensive. The second gave you fewer shots and no AT but let you start firing further out and out of LOS with a bit better quality shooting making it a better defensive formation in prepping for an assault.

intended roles:
Sagitarii with Plasma: stronger shooting and AT, more offensive
Sagitarii with mortars: weaker shooting but longer range with no AT, more defensive
Rapiers: formation bulk and synergy with plasma. Not very useful with mole mortars.


Adding the second mortar probably wasn't the best decision, but that's the point of testing things. Going back to the original stats for the weapons, even with the plasma the formation is probably too expensive. It should be more around 125-150 points since it tends to go down fast if it's not in cover and we want people to be able to trick out the plasma versions to use them on offense. Doing that and perhaps dropping rapiers to 10 points with the new stats should give you the option for a cheap garrison or bulking it up a bit with rapiers and transport for supporting a more offensive army. Maxed out that way you'd have a sagitarii formation with 5x rapiers and a transport minorus for 350-375 points which would be 12 units with a WE and included AA support for about 25 points more than a untransported demi-century with flak. This is all just some ideas I've been mulling over. I'm still focused on the robots and secutors primarily at this point.

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-Vaaish

In other news we did the inverse of the last game updated to match the E test list rules. That meant that the Forge Knights were dropped along with the praetorians in favor of a second demicentury and a rapier added to the sagitarii. We both felt that the changes to the robots worked well. They seemed a bit harder to suppress and the easier activations worked well. The colossus mostly toasted speeders the whole game and didn't do a lot of moving but I spent a good bit of time strafing them and the crusaders to see how they held up. (this was mostly to the detriment of my winning the game ).


Sagitarii did nothing the entire game mainly because my friend tried to maneuver with them on foot rather than garrison the formation. They were caught by a strafing run which toasted 5 of 6 stands and did nothing the remainder of the game.

There was also a rather amazing shot from the quake minorus. They managed to catch a template on my thunderhawk and unscathed devastator detachments and when the dust settled one hit was scored on the landed thunderhawk causing a critical which destroyed the thing and on top of that he rolled hits for 7 of 8 shots on the devastators. There really wasn't much I could do at that point except force a draw.

Overall thoughts:
Robots: I like how these work right now. Point tweaks may be in order but the stats and rules seem right for the detachments.

Sagitarii: Probably need a significant point drop as well as adjustments to the alternate loadout to drop the second mortar, maybe even dropping the techpriest entirely for a 5th sagitarii unit. They are extremely fragile on their own which is fine for a formation sitting in cover or protected by an AA bubble with something more dangerous nearby. It seems to be a theme with these guys that they get wiped out before contributing anything.

AA: The list really struggles with AA outside of mechanized formations. Don't know that this is a bad thing, but we could return the Praetorian AA option to add a AA method for un-mechanized formations or add in the defense laser. More on this later I think.


Focus:
Robots
Secutors
Sagitarii
AA
Majoris additions
Minorus balancing.

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-Vaaish

It's playing semantics to say that infantry on foot lugging heavy weapons (rapiers and mole mortars) weren't "saggitari" as the ad mech would understand the term. All that was missing was the bright spark to rename the formation.

Your new plasma saggitari don't have much synergy with Rapiers because they are a mixed shooting/engagement unit whilst the Rapiers are a short ranged slow shooting unit with no armour and poor firefight (=generally a liability in anything other than the smallest of engagements). Being aggressive with the Rapiers (leaving cover) is generally going to be suicidal. Conversely, with your new stats (30cm range) being defensive is also going to be suicidal.

It's a pity that you're looking at removing truly iconic ad mech units (Rapiers and to a lesser extent mole mortars) in order to replace them with a more generic unit type that you just made up (plasma cannoneers) which has no long history of being associated with the ad mech that I am aware of.

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EC, I don't care to debate whether or not they truly were sagitarii, it's entirely immaterial and pointless. If you want to call the old infantry support detachments that then fine.

Now to the meat of this. Just because a unit has a good FF value doesn't make it primarily an engagement unit. You say that there isn't very good synergy and it's suicidal both ways. I disagree. In shooting there is very good synergy with rapiers especially now that both share the same range and same AP value as well as both having AT. This means there is little to no efficiency lost due to units being unable to fire at the chosen target. The ability to be transported allows you to negate the slow speed of the rapiers so that the unit can be used offensively and maintain a cover save by being in contact with the transport. Right now this is a bit expensive but that will change once the base formation points are worked out.

The FF value is what it is to allow them to support an assault by another unit or deter assaults on the sagitarii themselves. It came about by modeling them on devastators originally, however it doesn't NEED to stay. Strictly speaking we can just give them the exact same stat line as hypaspists with the exception of the weapons they carry. That will definitely focus the unit on shooting which it's quite capable of with the current stats. I really don't see how you can imply their focus is engagement and therefore do not synergize with rapiers when you have 9x ap 5+ shots out of the formation or 8x AT5+. The five units in the formation put out nearly as many shots as a full demi-century! if that's not a focus on shooting, I really don't know what is.

Last, you keep throwing around the "iconic" catch phrase. I'm really struggling to see how that applies to either Rapiers or Mole Mortars. Raipers are more an IG unit than an admech one. In older fluff they show up attached to Space Marines and IG frequently and I can't see much reference to any exclusive or predominant use of them by AdMech. Even the modern version recently released by FW is crewed by Cadians and marines. They simply put aren't iconic to admech from any source I can find. By the same token, the old wargear book states mole mortars were developed by the squats and adopted by the IG. The compendium says nothing about who uses them, and the modern FW mole depicts Krieg using them. None of this points to them being iconic units of the admech. Both being used by the Skitarii is definitely possible, but certainly not "iconic". Truthfully the only things I can see that are in any way iconic to admech are the Titans, Ordinatus, Skitarii, and Robots.

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-Vaaish

You give a unit a short range slow firing weapon and good ff, and don't see how it's being forced into the role of firefighting?

You combine that with a unit that is slower and has no armour and moderate ff at best, and don't see how that's a poor synergy?

Even the new forgeworld releases mention Rapiers as being commonly used by the ad mech.

Anyway, as usual you've made up your mind so it seems rather pointless to continue pointing out how you've gimped all three unit types. Now that you've downgraded them so much that they don't work anymore (they were fine before you started making loads of changes IMO) you might as well go ahead and remove them and just have your own new heavy weapon infantry instead I guess... Thereby picking the one unit type out of three that has never had a gw model produced to be the one to focus on, and the two units that have had models to marginalise and then remove.

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When was the last time you actually looked at the list EC, plasma isn't slow firing anymore. we switched it to minervan stats because it would have been a pain to track on the formation several test versions ago. You also seem to like ignoring the parts that don't fit your premise. There is great synergy with using rapiers and sagitarii. The slower speed isn't an issue if you are garrisoning the formation nor is it one if the formation is transported. No armor (why is that again? shouldn't they have the same save as the crew manning them?) and poor FF are downsides to using rapiers, but then again, we do want things to have downsides right?

I don't have access to the latest FW releases. I simply don't have the budget to purchase them as they come out these days. In light of that, at best, it shows that rapiers are pretty common to Marines, IG, and AdMech. Heck, even squats developed the things which makes it pretty unlikely to be the iconic unit you keep throwing up there.

Second, I am not removing them at this point. There are still things to try with them but when it comes down to it, if nobody uses them why have them? You like trimming fat but sometimes it seems you are rather eclectic in your application.

Third, the changes have come about due to discussions with other AC's about crossover units. This was what was decided on to test a standardized stat line for rapiers.

Last, it's not just about "making up my mind." When you aren't even reading the stats for a unit right combined with your past attitude, it makes it rather difficult to keep an open mind to what you are saying. Stop beating around the bush. Instead of these little games, just post the stats you want the unit to be and we can discuss from there when we focus on sagitarii after nailing down the Robots.

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-Vaaish

Not to muddy the waters intentionally but we have the Mole Mortars as such in Squats:

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Sorry, since the past two IG champions have said lists should use the slow firing stats I assumed you'd not be using stats that were shelved four years ago. My mistake.

As to trimming the fat, I want to see the thousands of Titan configurations reduced. Core elements like ordinati, Rapiers etc. should stay.

The armour and speed (and all stats) of the Rapiers came from the official gw rapier units. Since you've changed everything else about them you might as well change that too.

You keep repeating that people don't use Rapiers. That's patently not true. Ive seen old batreps featuring them, and signal used to use them until you made them useless for overwatch.

10cm speed & 30cm range Rapiers are going to be pretty useless unless transported, garris on won't fix their inability to do anything useful (they'll constantly be forced to double move to even have a chance of hitting the enemy, by which time they'll be hitting on 7's with their AP - 5's with AT but I doubt you'd reliably catch AT targets).

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Those seem like good stats.

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Thanks, I'll look them up and see how things compare. The changes made were based on the fluff as discussed by the AC's so pulling the stats on the old and new versions will help.



Then you keep failing to read what I type. I've said over and over they show up rarely or few if any people take them



Nothing here's been done in secret, if there was an issue why didn't you bring it up during the discussions?

I really hate to do this, but now to housekeeping. I've been very patient with you EC, probably far more than I should have been, because of the work you've done for the community but I am reaching my limit. However, I'm growing tired of leading questions, misquotes, baited remarks, and general divisive tone. Thus far most of the comments you have made about a unit or option in the list has been an attempt to tear down anything that isn't on your agenda. Your responses have made it clear you are more interested in attacking me than creating a balanced list. If you wish to contribute in an intelligent and constructive fashion, great, I'm all for it! If you want to continue posting snide remarks and act in a destructive manner please take it somewhere else; it won't be tolerated any further.

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-Vaaish

Righto, Well I don't see my comments that way at all and I'm sorry you feel that way.

I guess I'll just sit back and wait to find out if you do intend to return the ACship after six months as AC as you agreed to, I'm sure you'll hold to your word.

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E&C, that last looks a hell of a lot like you're saying "fine, do what you want, I'll just ignore it all in six months anyway."

EDIT: Which is neither becoming nor particularly helpful.

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