Wave Serpent

Oh the rage...

The Wave Serpent is the Eldar's dedicated troop transport, an anti-grav skimmer that flies through the battlefield, blasting away with a twin linked turret weapon while rushing to get your troops right into the heart of the army.

Like all Eldar vehicles there is not much difference between it and say the Falcon or the Fire Prism besides some variation in weapons. This is basically the Eldar are shameless cut-corner-ers who won't fix what ain't broken. That Or Games Workshop can't be bothered to produce multiple different molds and uses the same one as the staple Eldar one.

On The Tabletop

Thanks to the 6th Edition Eldar Codex, the Wave Serpent is currently regarded as a massive chunk of cheese on the tabletop thanks to three factors: A massive amount of accurate long ranged mid-strength shots, being incredibly hard to kill, and extremely spammable.

• How much firepower? The basic Wave Serpent has a twin-linked shuriken catapult, a twin-linked shuriken cannon, and the Serpent Shield, which wouldn't be so bad if it couldn't upgrade the twin-linked shuriken catapult to a shuriken cannon and the twin-linked shuriken cannon into a twin-linked scatter laser. What'll happen is it fires the scatter laser, it hits, and now the shuriken cannon and serpent shield are both twin-linked, meaning in total you are now firing four twin-linked S6 AP6 shots, followed by three twin-linked S6 AP5 shots (where 6's wound automatically and are AP2) followed by D6+1 twin-linked S7 shots that ignore cover and are pinning (the Serpent Shield itself also has 60" range). Now while the AP values of the shots are nothing special, regular GEQ's will still be ID'd by every weapon (and the Shield ignores the walls they're hiding behind), TEQ's will still be wounded on 2's and will take so many wounds you can count on them failing armour saves, so only MEQ's can afford to ignore it.

• How hard are they to kill? For starters the Wave Serpent's front and side armours are AV12, which doesn't look that bad until you see the Serpent Shield, every penetrating hit gets downgraded to a glancing hit on a 2+ (provided it hasn't fired its shield yet). Those lascannons you brought along? They're not going to do anything except chip off one or two hull points IF they get past the 4+ Jink save (or 3+ if your opponent bought holo-fields for it.

• How spammable are they? Everyone on foot excluding Harlequins and Rangers may take them as a Dedicated Transport. They cost 115 points base and with the above gun upgrades cost 130 points. Seeing as how they are the Eldar's ONLY dedicated transport, and seeing as how there's no reason to not take Dedicated Transports you'll typically be facing 3-6 of them on the field.

Now, with the incoming 7th Edition Eldar: Craftworlds Codex, Wave Serpents have been moderately toned down, unfortunately, the Codex still is a balancing nightmare.

• How much firepower? Still has the classsic Twin-linked Shuriken Catapult, shuriken cannon, but the Scatter laser no longer gives Laser-lock, and the Serpent Shield's rape-tastic shooting is now a once per game S6 Ignores Cover, Heavy 2D6. Result? Now have slightly less dakka than before, but are still spammable and can put out quite a few shots if you get lucky with the Serpent Shield.

• How hard are they to kill? With front and side AV12, fairly moderate AV, but as of now, no word on whether or not the Serpent shield still turns pens into glances on a 2+ or if you lose it when you use the one-use Serpent shield.

• How spammable are they? To make up for the lack of laserlock and the new Serpent Shield, it's now only 110 points and can still be taken by anything on foot. Still facing 3-6 of them in a list.