Parintachin wrote:
Honestly, I still don't get what all the hatred for the spiders is all about.
They're one of the most underpowered units in the eldar army; terrible against anything with even a bit of an armor save, or something in cover:
On space marines, that's 5 first strike hits, 2 ½ casualties. When the marines hit back, they are going to get shot so full of holes they will lose that assault. Terminators? Waste of your time.
Not sure about that, Spiders have 4+ armour and marines have their firepower concentrated in small numbers.
In fact an average of 2.5 dead devastators leaves 1.5 remaining, averaging 0.5 kills in return. Add +2 for inspiring, +1 or +2 for outnumbering and this is a pretty convincing "marines should lose" scenario. And you're rolling 10 first strike dice, so it could easily be a straight win for no loss.
Against tacticals it's similar: 2.5 kills compared to 0.875 kills, with the same +5 result.
Even against terminators it's far from a waste of time. On average each side will get 1 kill in FF though the Warp Spiders will still be up +2 for numbers and +2 for inspiring. Add blast markers from teleport and they look like a juicy target.
They might not be good against everything, but they're actually pretty good against a lot of stuff, especially out of the webway.