For you folks that don't know what a Web Way Portal is, or how it works, or how it used to work this article will be particularly enlightening, and may give you a few wtf moments. Rest assured, this is the reaction I'm looking for!
Web Way Portal "fluff": Commorragh is the "capital city" if you will of the Dark Eldar, but referring to Commorragh as a city is doing it a great injustice. If a Hive World of the empire can be considered a city, then Commoragh would be a metropolis. It spans a major part of the Web Way. The Dark Eldar are the Eldar that fled their empire before the Fall and made home within the Web Way. So the Dark Eldar existed prior to the Fall, and for the last time, no they are not Slaanesh worshippers....Anyway since the Dark Eldar live within the Web Way when they go to battle oftentimes they will leave a huge portion of their army in reserve back in Commorragh then on the battlefield they will drop a device that creates a portal back to the Web Way, thereby letting their fellows pour onto the battlefield from an advanced position. Pretty crafty!
Web Way then: The WWP used to be completely disgusting, but you had to build an army completely around it. The way it used to work you declared what units would be entering the game through WWP "reserve" and then that unit couldn't enter any other way except by WWP, even vehicles could enter through it. So if you didn't put down the WWP until the last turn, your opponent couldn't do anything about them except kill the bearers of the WWPs. However all units used to be able to bring along a portal (except Mandrakes). So what you did was take a big heavy hitting close combat units in Raiders with Dark Lances and a couple of throw away Raider squads to deploy a WWP round 2 or 3 and all of a sudden the enemy has no target and you get your entire army on them turn 3 or 4, because if a unit rolled its reserve roll and the WWP wasn't down, it got to wait till a webway was out then the unit became available!
Web Way now: Well now things have changed. They obviously saw that the WWP was a little too good, because they really toned it down. It deploys the same way as it used to, but now only a few HQ choices have the ability to take it, and instead of a "WWP reserve", once the portal is deployed it is treated as a seperate board edge. Not that impressive really, because now I can't hold units back and specifically know i'll get a good portal drop before they become available...boooo!
However, with all that being said, there are still some nasty ways to deploy a webway that I think could be effective.
Consider Harlequins.
Harlequins with the Shadowseer make your opponents roll 2d6 x 2 for night fighting everytime you wish to target them. So they are hard to see. Also consider that a 50 point Haemonculus + a 30 point WWP will be able to join the Harlies giving them FNP and a WWP to deploy. Its a pricey way to deploy a webway, but its the safest route to follow for WWP deployment.
Now if you just had some fast assaulty units to pour out of the WWPs....Oh! Beastmasters and packs you say? Hellions you say? Even Wyches or Incubi? Wow, I hadn't thought of that ;)
I have been mulling over the new WWP and I still get stuck on the same thing...can I get it far enough across the table and placed on turn 1 so that my reserves can use it on turn 2? Because, otherwise, my units get stuck coming on my board edge and would have been better on a Raider, not to mention even if I get awesome placement of the WWP, poor reserve rolls may result in my units getting to combat later then they would have if I just deployed them (albeit in one piece).
ReplyDeleteYeah I don't think WWP will be that competitive, but they are the best delivery system for Beast Packs and probably will show up in some lists. I wish they hadn't nerfed the vehicle portion of the WWP entry, that is a tragedy.
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