Yes Yes, I know, bringing up old threads again...

Why not add Ignore Cover to the Banshee's current stats.

Then compared against the Striking Scorpion, it has less armour and less attacks, yet it has the First Strike Ignore Cover to represent the Banshee mask and the speed of attacks (agility) of these units?

It would be a small addition yet enough to make it a viable choice when needing to charge units in cover.

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Would give it a niche at least.

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What effect would ignore cover have in CC? It would just ignore cover saves, right? Because to-hit modifiers due to cover are not used in assaults. I don't think that's much of a boost, really.

It's too bad that the infiltrator special rule isn't 2 separate rules (based on its 2 effects): one rule for the doubled assault move, and another rule for ignoring ZoC while engaging. That way, you could give the banshees the latter ability (which seems appropriate for their background) and not give them the former (which doesn't feel right).

You could go crazy and lower their CC ability to 4+, keep all other stats the same, and give them all inspiring. Sort of a rules-lawyering cop out, but that would give the right effect in the end: "they might not have killed enough to justify winning the assault, but man, those damn shrieks are wigging me out, so I'm outa here." That's how pariahs work in the necron list (if I'm not mistaken), so there is a precedent of sorts.

Any consideration given to upping their FF ability? It would be hard to justify based solely on the 40k stats, but maybe you could explain it by saying they just turn their banshee mask speakers up to 11 or something.

Well yes, instead of jumping guard with 4+ saves you are now jumping guys with 0 save - doubles kills in the best case scenario.

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That is the point. A small boost to keep the costs the same.

It would matter as their role would fill a role that the scorpions don't - to tackle units that stay in cover and sit there.

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Inspiring sounds kinda neat.  That or a 4+MW.  

2+ seems too good in CC, while giving them armor 4+ is equivalent to power armor, and Howling Banshees are rather renowned for their flimsiness.

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Pariahs are 0-1 per formation; the idea of a whole formation of inspiring troops is hugely overpowered. They'd only be used for clipping engagements, which is completely contrary to their intended use.

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That much inspiring is *WAY* over the top... a formation of eight could clip a unprepped enemy and *start* with +8 to the resolution before any dice were rolled.

Macro weapon is only a *little* over the top for Banshees, as they are "infantry killers" not "tank hunters"... adding ignore cover to their CC weapon might be a nice little boost as it *only* has an affect on infantry targets when assaulting.

Anyone care to test this?

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Power Weapons are treated as MW almost everywhere else in Epic, are they not?  

Ignore cover just doesn't seem like a Banshee thing.

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Banshees have strength 3 and power swords. Character power weapons are macro-weapons as they often include power-fists. Banshees are meant to deadly infantry killers but have no anti-tank ability, MW would be too much of a boost.

Ignore cover (assumed to come from their banshee mask scream, which isn’t going to be too slowed down by a fence say) sounds like an interesting option and a good fit to me.

The problem with ignore cover is that it puts them into Scorpion country.  They become much better at killing things like Guardsmen who generally rely on cover and throwing lots of low quality dice.  Banshees then get to kill off a whole host of guardsmen, reducing the no of low quality dice coming back at them and actually being better at killing hoardes than scorpions, rather than high armour targets like space marines - to whome cover makes no difference, which is their traditional prey.

The best solution IMO is to boost the CC value to 2+ and give them an invulnerable save (To represent their acrobatic nature, shall we say).  They then get the chance to kill off units from fms with high quality but low no attacks before they strike back and have a greater degree of survivability, and can take on things like terminators in CC.  Scorpions are then left to dish out the high no of attacks needed to thin the hoardes.

The whole problem is that they are not taken in favour of Scorpions.

They fullfill a similar role as troop killers. Against Imp Guard, you may take Banshees instead now. Otherwise, the Scorpions win out each time as a selection in a list. First Strike without hitting power is over-rated.

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I would like to claim this as my idea, yet in reality, like most of my sensible ideas, they are Morgan's mad ramblings that I place up here once in a while  

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While I do like the idea of IC to provide a bit more of a niche against dug in infantry, I would really like to see better armour against perhaps slightly worse assault stats.

The point being that I think trying to improve the HB's hit ratio has already got as far as it reasonably can. The assault resolution of 8-6 hits (HBs on target and the return fire) is the same as 5-3 hits. So reducing the Banshees assault capabilities while improving their resilience should provide the same overall results while giving us more latitude to change the stats

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While ignore cover sounds nice in balance theory, it unfortunately makes them excellent guard killers rather than their actual role as marine killers.

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