Quote: (Lord Inquisitor @ 15 Dec. 2008, 20:31 )
I'd be willing to accept that a re-roll on the scatter might not be considered as good as the Deathwind (incidentally, in 40K, any drop-pod can have a Deathwind launcher and pure-Deathwind pods are still alive and kicking - they received a datafax in this month's white dwarf). That said, the ability to affect accuracy and/or placement of troops is often worth its weight in gold. This is a mistake GW makes quite often - for example (in 40K Chaos armies) the lash psychic power moves enemy troops and icons affect how much your own troops scatter when teleporting. Both are severely undercosted in Codex Chaos Space Marines - when Codex Daemons came out, both were more expensive and more limited.
Now, yes, I know just how nasty the Deathwind is, that said, you have to have enemy units within 30cm of your nominated LZ. If you've misjudged your LZ then the Deathwind attack is useless. Going back to Shermo's suggestion of increasing the range from the nominated LZ to 30cm: you can land your dreadclaw 30cm from the nominated LZ. You can effectively place your formation up to 15cm away from that, so that's 45cm away. You can then assault into base-to-base any enemy within a further 15cm. So 60cm total, as compared with 45cm normally. 60cm radius is an area of 11,300cm2. 45cm radius is an area of 6,350cm2. (Bear in mind there are only 22,300cm2 on the board!)
So the bottom line is that an increased 15cm range almost doubles the "strike area" of the pod. I'm not saying that's necessarily bad, just lets be aware of how much of an effect this will have. It's difficult to quantify how much of an effect this will have on the game, but obviously the Deathwinds are better if your opponent has lots of troops sitting right on the LZ, while if you've no enemy anywhere near the LZ the redirect will be better. Personally, I would guess the "redirect" is probably vastly more valuble than the Deathwind (but perhaps I'm just no good at placing LZs?)
Perhaps I did not explain myself correctly, my bad. What I was trying to say is that, once you have chosen your LZ, before the dreadclaw lands, you can move it 15cm in any direction before rolling the scatter dice. Once scattered you can place the dreadclaw in a 15cm radius. I don-t see it that overpowered...
