Currently a Void Spinner is a lot better than a Night Spinner formation. I play Ulthwé so I've never used one myself, but I've played against one a few times and it's definetly sexier.

Could 60cm range on Night Spinners be justified? It's a big difference vs 45cm as it allows the spinners to hit the opposing deployment zone. What makes the Void Spinner such a nobrainer is that it's both tougher AND more deadly - 60cm range on Night Spinners would make them a real option to the Void Spinner. Instead of +75 points to simply make them better it's +75 points to make them tougher, which is an actual decision.

Unless, of course, +75 pts to make a formation that likes to hide in the back tougher is too expensive. If so, would it work to bump the Night Spinners to 200 pts, or will it simply make the Void Spinner obsolete?

Not at all sure about this. On the whole, I think that things are probably Ok as they are.

The main issue with Night Spinners (and Firestorms) is their fragility in formations of three - one hit breaks them, they only have a 50% chance of rallying at best, and then only have 1 unit firing (as the other is suppressed).

At 45cm, their range is the same as Whirlwinds and with disrupt they can be very effective at deterring the enemy from leaving their deployment zone. Also, for 525 or ~ two Void spinners, you get three Night Spinner formations.

The point here is that they are very different from Void Spinners, and you have to use them differently. They are not an 'alpha strike' formation, but in sufficient numbers Night Spinners can actually be more deadly.

Now I have not tried this, but an 'interesting' popcorn army might well be something like the following
600 - 4x Guardians
1000 - 4x Falcons+ Firestorms (possibly swap one for some FirePrisms)
1400 - 8x Night Spinners

As you can see, this would offer a very different and somewhat unpleasant prospect to the opponent, at least initially until the Eldar lost sufficient formations. Used very cautiously in the first two turns there would be chances to use the remaining fast formations to objective grab in turn three.

I too couldn't see a use for Night Spinners other than a cheap activation and poor ranged artillery until I saw Rug play them aggressively. Here he doubled them forward (70cm) and then fired upto 45cm before dropping back behind a piece of terraine. This helped give the army a bit of impetus and I've used it in my Saim-Hann list ever since.

I used them for quite a while too, often using two formations. As said, they are not an alpha strike formation like the Void Spinner. There is always a dilemma with them: whether to get them into a good position in order to strike against good targets (but risk having them easily nullified), or hold them back in safety (but only strike opportunistically). Of course, they cause a dilemma for the opponent too: do they dedicate an activation to dealing with the threat of a 175 point formation, or do they restrict their movement to avoid the sphere of influence? Personally I think it's best to advance them forward towards the end of T1, which is sort of the best of both worlds.

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night spinners are like Avatars, they either do amazingly well and thoroughly annoy your opponent, or do next to nothing the whole game. 60cm range may push that more to the former, but the increase in points necessary to balance it would make the consequences of the latter more annoying for the Eldar player

I've never tried them rushing forward though, that sounds like fun, even if they'll then die like flies!

As with many Eldar formations, they seem to work better in greater numbers; used timidly in ones or twos they generally do not do much except die, but use three or more concentrating in an area can have quite startling effects.

Also, the Eldar tend to work best where they can engineer different options. While the opponent may well nullify one of them, the others will hurt. As Tim says, this tactic of rushing Night Spinners forwards presents the opponent with the dilema of whether to waste activations swatting 175 point formations, or to deal with them at the risk of something even nastier happening.

They also have a 48" range in 40k, which is equivalent to 45cm. 60cm would be pushing it on that front.

They do seem to either work well or fail miserably - a good indication of being in line with the 'glass hammer' aesthetic.

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Hmm, will have to try to play them aggressivly. Good thing I got to fms, so in case one of them gets blown away early I can try to make the other one useful!

But if you need 8 fms to make them useful like Ginger suggests, isn't that a good indication that they're underpowered

The Night Spinners are not underpowered, because they cannot hit the enemy deployment zone doesn't make them underpowered.
I've played lots of games testing all variant Eldar lists and they have been fine in those games.
You don't have to be aggressive with them, once the game is underway they are as deadly as a Void Spinner.
They are also useful as a deterrent to opponents garrisoning formations.

Please note, the "8 fms" is an example to show how powerfull the fms can be. In practice I don't think anyone would actually do this, any more than they might field some of the other extreme min-max variants. It is also a 'popcorn army' which is specifically intended to out-activate an opponent and use the extra activations to maintain the strategic advantages.

The main point is that Night Spinners have to be used very differently from Void Spinners, or indeed any other artillery. To work effectively, they need to be used much more flexibly and appropriately.

• Be prepared to be mobile, moving and shooting before hiding behind terrain on the table (and most people do not use sufficient terrain).
• Try to use several formations to compensate in part for the fragility of individual formations.
• Concentrate against specific points on the battlefield, where as dptdexys says Night Spinners can potentially be more potent than Void Spinners.
• Use them appropriately to create several tactical choices for the opponent to defend against, thus retaining the initiative for the Eldar to exploit.

don't get me wrong, nightspinners are fun to use. They're a cheap fm that is better at affecting the opponent's movement and actions by it's threat than it is at actually killing anything, and that's just fine by me. If they do actually kill something (which happens, most of the time) then I consider that a bonus

I understand that the immediate thought is that they have nearly the same weaponry and a similar role, so they are supposed to be the same, but that's not the case. It's not an even either/or trade-off of nearly equivalent formations.

The Void Spinner supposed to be a lot better. That's why it costs more than 40% more than the Night Spinners.

Not true.
The Night Spinenrs Twin Doom Weavers have a range of 12"-72" in Wh40k. 72" usualy translates to 75cm in Epic:
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Cus ... _Rules.pdf

Note that this is also the maximumrange to fiore indirect. The Whirlwind's Whirlwind Launchers maximum range is 48" in Wh40k, also for firing indirect. 48" usually translates to 45cm in Epic.

There is an Apocalypse Formation of several Whirlwinds and a Land Speeder acting as spotter. With this the Whirlwind`s range can be doubled (96" = 90cm in Epic).
So you could assume thatthe Eldarhave spotters for their artillery too which aren't represented as amodel in Epic. So you COULD justify a range of 75cm on the Doom Weaver with 150cm if firing Indirect.

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As a complete threadjack, I always thought it would be more realistic for night spinners to have an antiaircraft ability. They should be able to choke the skies with large clouds of lightweight monofilament that would just float around snagging wayward aircraft.

That's neither here nor there though.

Back to the topic at hand, stat-wise I think Spinners are good as-is. I'd rather see an option of having a 5-strong formation, which could produces 2 templates, even with a single blast marker on the formation.

Ahem. I guess I should say had. Regardless, I think they fit their role well enough, and what's more, alpha strike artillery is really more of an IG thing anyway. I don't see a pressing need to change them.

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