"We use to think of them as wandering vagrants. Well, does vagrants held up my whole platoon for five days." -Lieutenants Pharaik on Eldar Rangers.
I Finally Finished my first Squad of troop choice for my Saim Hann Army, the Rangers! From the very start i knew that i would have to paint a squad of these. Not only do i like their looks and abilities, but also the options you get with these die hard scouts.
Lets look at their abilities.
Rangers:
- Counts as troop choice
- costs 19 pr. model and can be upgraded to Pathfinders for an additional 5 points pr. model.
Fleet of foot:
Fleet gives the unit the ability to run AND assualt in the same turn.
Mastery of stealth:
Rangers have the infiltration rule, move through cover and stealth speciel rules.
Pathfinders:
Rangers have the option of getting upgraded to pathfinders, which means. They may ignore difficult terrain. They will have the scouts special rule. Any cover save they take will get +2 instead of the normal +1 from conferred by the stealth rule
Wargear
Ranger long sniperrifle:
Rangers are equipped with these beauties with the following stats:
Range 36 | S= x | AP= 6 Heavy 1, sniper, pinning.
The Plan is ill use these guys to hang in the back, intering a place with cover. If its an objective match, ill put an objective in the back in cover, so my rangers can score it. With the possibility of a +2 Coversave(if i upgrade em to pathfinders), these guys will be almost unkillable(unless im very unlucky with dice rolls). Ill try and slow advancing units down with the pinning ability of theres.
Getting outflanked or deepstriked: Incase i get a outflank or deeptriked from my opponent to take out the rangers, ill divert another unit back to help the rangers. As im playing a heavy skimmer army, in teory it should be okey.
Another option is to use em offensive. Ill infiltrate my rangers some where near a unit, that i have chances on pinning and eat abit of every turn. Preferly in one of the sides of the board, so i can swing the rest of my army in the other direction to take em out meanwhile having a dangerous unit slowed long enuff(hopefully) for it to do its thing. In this case, i would for certain upgrade em to Pathfinders to be able to take that extra beating.
Abit about my colors choice and the models:
Now some people might say that rangers are surpose to be camocolored as they have their camelioncoats on. Yes, yes i know, but if what camo? jungle camo.. hmm but what if they are hiding in ruins of a city with no trees? or i paint them same camo and they hide in the trees..? Yeah, i wanted them to look as they are. Vagrants, outcast, a hardy people, who roames the galaxy in the shadow. The brown worn coats are my way of trying to symbolise this.
The red armour, white and black is Saim Hanns colors and while its not very hidden, i wanted to show, that they are from that specific crafworld.
If you have experiances with Rangers feel free to share them. Would be very nice to get a debate going as i know, that some people are a big fan of them and uses them frequently while others consider them a poor troop choice.
I think that the brown cloak+red armor combo works out quit well.
SvarSletIn regards to rangers on the gaming table, I'm kind of biased against them. Back in ed4 when I started collecting my (still unfinished) eldar army, I got my hands on ~15 of the new models. Right now only 3 of those guys are still left in my box, the rest got sold over the last 2 years.
So let me give you a reason, why I got rid of models I liked in terms of look.
1. My play style evolved into heavy mechanized one and rangers don't work that well in such an army. I played them once in a mech-heavy tournament list and they just didn't impressed me. In half of the games they didn't worked well, thanks to a lack of proper targets and in the other half I just failed to pass those rolls to wound for the Ap1 hits.
2. The german gaming scene, esp. tournaments or player using competitive builds geared for tournament play, also uses a lot of mech units and those few armies, who don't do that are in most cases fearless, so no pinning tests.
3. GW added a lot of cheap/free flamers in the new codices + a couple of other weapons, who deny cover saves. And against any kind of flamer rangers die just as easy as guardians do.
But that is just my own opinion and depending on your own play style and the armies you face on a regular basis, ranger may do well. At least I would skip the Pathfinder upgrade, because if they catch too much fire you can always go to ground and get the the same 2+ save pathfinders have. And in terms of price-performance ratio ranger also beat pathfinders, thanks to having more guys shooting.