Now, since I have profiles on multiple 40k forums around the web, I always find plenty of tutorials on every army, the Eldar interest me most. While everyone always has a different opinion on everything, I have found one constant throughout the interwebs: people hate the Hawks. I have to one question to ask: why? I see no problems with this unit, it’s fast, it shoots, has a long range, can drop a large blast anywhere they want, and can penetrate a vehicle on a 6 in assault, with anything else but a 1 being a glance. That’s great, in my eyes.
First off, we need to look at their brother warriors they must compete with for our Fast Attack slots. These other units are the Shining Spears, Warp Spiders, and Vypers. The first thing to note is that there are only 4 total units to choose from, so if you want a large variety of units, you would only have to leave one unit out, and you can take 1 of all the others, which is nice. Second off, I believe the hawks can stand up against these choices. Shining spears are also very good, I have a unit of my own, but their low numbers and high cost means that you need to be very careful with them, and due to their size it won’t be easy to hide multiple of them out of site from heavy weapons, so use that Turbo Boost to stay safe!
The next unit is Warp Spiders. Most people I have seen say they are the best choice, but I have multiple problems with them. They have high strength attacks that can’t go through any armor, so the best unit for this unit is Ork Boyz, since they are a cheap, high toughness horde unit. This, however, is where the danger comes in. The Death Spinner of the Warp Spiders has a 12” range, meaning you have to go straight into the assault zone of Orks, in which they will get slaughtered; their 3+ save won’t last against the amount of attacks that Orks throw out. Sure, they have a chance of getting out with their 2D6 movement in the assault phase, but this range is way too inconsistent for my liking. If you roll a low number, and those Boyz can still declare a WAAAGH!, you’re in a lot of trouble. Why wouldn’t your Ork player want to charge right into a squad like that? Your average Warp Spider squad can cost a large amount of points for even a small squad(like all other Eldar units), and rely on speed for safety, so when a unit like this fails to get out of a bad situation like this, you better bet the other player will take advantage of this opportunity. Don’t forget even if you get out of assault range, you can still catch some pistol fire, as well as automatically losing one on a double. The Hawks, however, can remain at a 24” range and safely fire away. Now let’s look at the other side of the coin for a second. Doing the math, 10 Hawk shots can take out on average 2.22 Orks, while 10 Spider shots can take out 4.63 Orks, which is a big difference, and a Sunrifled Hawk Exarch can take out 1.67 Orks alone, while the double-Death Spinner can dish out 2.31 kills by himself, which means a grand total of 3.89 for a 6 man unit of Hawks against 6.94 for a 6-man Spider squad. But considering the box only comes with 5 spiders, and most people just play with one box or a whole squad, which brings it down to 6.01 for Spiders, but the difference it still huge. The big question for this part of the argument is whether the more killing power of the Spiders is worth putting the squad into risk of being killed outright by a squad of Boyz, and losing a few to Warp Jump Generators. But, there is one more thing that we have not talked about. The Hawks can drop a large blast anywhere they want when they come in from Deep Strike(which is what you should do). In terms of the damage output of this attack, it varies greatly, but with the template only scattering D6”, it’s going to hit something. Against any horde unit, like Boyz, Gaunts, etc, it works great. Even against MeQ it can force saves. This definitely makes up for their inferior shooting attacks, and the random pie template will let you hit 2 separate targets if you want, and keep your opponent guessing at where you’re going to place it.
Next, we’re going to look at a different kind of unit in the game: Tanks. Sure, Spiders have the ability to take out a Trukk or even the front/side of a Rhino if you’re lucky, but the ability to have an anti-infantry squad come out from deep strike and continue to use Haywire grenades to take out any armor vehicle is an element of surprise that can be invaluable. This is definitely something that Spiders can never do, unless you want to spend points on an entire HQ slot so an Autarch can use a fusion blaster to pop maybe one or two small tanks at most, anything else would be fully distracting them from the only thing they are built for. As said earlier, the Hawks can take out any tank no matter what the cost, all you need is anything but a one for the tank to start taking damage, from Trukks to Land Raiders. And with intercept, it doesn’t matter if it’s a skimmer that went at full speed, you’ll only need 4’s to hit at the most, it only gets better from there. The grenades alone turns the Hawks into decent tank hunters, able to deep strike near any tank and take it out (but I highly recommend Fire Dragons in a Serpent for dedicated tank killing, don’t make this their only job).
All in all, Hawks are slightly cheaper, can stay at a safe range and still perform, and are more versatile and are therefore a slightly less predictable unit, which makes them all the more dangerous.
