Hey folks! Lately I've been bringing Nightspinners in my Eldar army, and I have been VERY impressed with what they can do. This has led me to wonder why I haven't seen them come up very often in lists and battle reports across the internet. I really am feeling like this is a very underrated unit, and I'd like to outline why I think you guys should consider bringing them to games in the future!
The first thing I want to bring up is I think the major selling point of these guys. Their main weapon, the Doomweaver, has a Barrage firing mode. I don't think I really need to go over why Barrage is so awesome this edition, but for those unfamiliar with the rule, I'll give you guys the low down. Barrage weapons can fire with line of sight to reduce the scatter of their blast (a 5" blast in the case of the Nightspinner) by their ballistic skill like normal, but If you can't get line of sight, that's no problem! You can fire anyways and hope for either a direct hit, or a low roll on the dice. The next thing Barrage does is it deals wounds as if you were firing from the center of the blast template, allowing you to ignore intervening cover (but not jink saves, area terrain and the like), as well as allowing you to essentially snipe out specific models such as special weapons or even characters. Lastly, Barrage weapons always hit vehicles on their side armour, which means that you don't even have to maneuver to get those side shots. Just lob away.
Now Barrage is great, right? But that's not all this baby has in store. Thanks to the Monofilament rule, your already impressive Strength 7 becomes a mighty Strength 8 against any models with initiative 3 or lower, which includes models with no initiative value (i.e any non-walker vehicle). So you take the Strength 8 blast, and put that against a vehicle's side armour and ignore any intervening terrain like say, an Aegis Defence Line, now you've got a pretty scary tank-hunting unit that can sit out of line of sight and pop tanks. It's also awesome for taking out infantry, even if they have a 2+ save. That's the other thing Monofilament does for you. Any to-wound roll of a 6 brings your AP down to 1 (which, indecently, doesn't hurt when rolling on the Vehicle Damage Chart!). This means that you can be hitting tons of guys, picking out the one you really want dead, and maybe even ignoring their armour saves AND cover that isn't area terrain! All this potentially from out of line of sight!
"But what if something starts to get close?" I hear you asking me. "You don't want to be firing a blast at close range. You might scatter into yourself!" Well fear not loyal reader, because your trusty Nightspinner has your back here too! It has an alternate firing mode, which transforms its Barrage weapon into a flame template, with the same Strength and same Monofilament goodness! Couple this with being a fast vehicle capable of driving up 12" to unleash your fury, and you need not fear even fast units packing Meltaguns!
Now, if all this still isn't good enough for you, consider what support you could give this unit. Why not take a Farseer? With Guide and/or Prescience, now you can also re-roll your scatters on your barrage weapon, dramatically increasing your odds of hitting the guy you want. In fact, with just one Farseer, you can have two Nightspinners both pounding the enemy with deadly accuracy, and forcing them to the safety of area terrain. This gives you terrific board control, and its not even that expensive. With the Holo-Field upgrade (you are taking Holo-Fields, aren't you?) a Nightspinner comes out to just 130 points.
Now, I've done a lot to pump up Nightspinners, but there are some downsides to this unit. Against higher initiative models, you're going to be Strength 7 instead of 8, meaning that for the most part you won't be getting to instant-kill characters. The next thing is that being a vehicle, you are prone to being destroyed in one shot here. Jink and Holo-Fields, with a (ruin to hide behind maybe?) will help mitigate this, but it does happen. Thirdly, there is the downside to any blast. You could scatter badly. We've all had games where we just couldn't get a direct hit to save our lives, and that can really hurt this model's damage output, as you don't really have any other weapon to fire instead. This can be mitigated somewhat if you want to get close enough to use your template instead, but that can be a risky move.
Overall, I have enjoyed great success with these vehicles, and I think that they are a very effective and deadly addition to an Eldar army. Do yourselves a favour and try one out!
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