Tips for playing Saim Hann

So, I finally found some 40k people with which to unleash the doom of the Eldar. They meet every Tuesday, and yeah...I'm kind of excited about that. They don't paint very well. They share my disdain for Games Workshop (to the point that before the game, various models have to be identified as what they "really" are--"I'm using this Rhino as a Land Raider). But they have lot's of good scenery. They're not 12 years old, and damn, I'm playing 40k again.

I played my Saim Hann on Tuesday, and by that I mean that I really played Saim Hann. Everything I had was hovering. I used up just about every little clear plastic thing I could find to hold up my miniatures. I even played the Saim Hann personality character known as...oh, I can't remember his frickin' name. Let's just call him the crappy version of the Vyper that dies in about 2 seconds without doing anything.

And how did I do? I got my ass handed to me. It's true. No biggie. I can lose and still have fun. But damn, I watched a Falcon AND a Wave Serpent die in the first round of battle before I'd even had a chance to move, much less fire. My jet bike squadron went down like the Titanic, bit by bit by bit. It was very sad.

But from these ashes I have learned how to play the hover army and I figured out a few tactics that I figured I'd broadcast out onto the internet to help prospective Craft Worlders from getting utterly destroyed. So, here we go.

Look, the first thing you've got to do is make sure that nothing and I repeat that nothing can be seen by the enemy on the first round of combat. This can be done a number of ways, but the most important feature of this plan is that you have to set everything you have behind crap that blocks line of sight. Everything's good if you get the first move, but if you don't none of those special "fast moving skimmer" rules apply at all, and down goes Falcon and down goes Wave Serpent. My first piece of advice is one word: HIDE!

Now, having said that, here's another piece of advice. Put people in that Falcon--preferably HQ. That means that when you're first setting miniatures up on the table, the Falcon does not go down on the table first (thus allowing your enemies to set up with a bead drawn on the Falcon for their first round of the game). Another piece of advice, don't load any of your transports with hth troups. They cannot assualt on the round that they unload, which means they'll be sitting next to a tank for a whole round, waiting to be destroyed before they can do anything. Sadly, the Striking Scorpions will have to run into battle. Take this into account before deploying them.

Now, when it is finally you're turn to move, make sure that everything that hovers moves six inches at the very least, or ends their phase without line of sight. If you don't you are screwed. If you do, you're a little safer. And I cannot stess this enough, don't send your Vypers against area affect weapons. They get two hits every time they hit you. Holo fields will not protect you enough here. My new tactic is to employ that Crystal Targetting Matrix--jump out, get line of sight, shoot, move back, lose line of sight, safe for the enemies turn. I actually, do not recommend moving crap unless you can get back into hiding at the end of the turn, but if you have to choose a vehicle to be out in the open for the next turn, choose the Vypers rather than the Falcon. They're cheaper and they're in a squadron so you can elect to have one Vyper get totally f'd up and still have one or two Vypers in prestine condition.

Good. Now for the jet bikes. First of all, the new rules give jet bikes this 24" move that makes their save invulnerable. Bad news: they can't do crap but move. However, chances are that you're only going to be barely effective with the jetbikes on the first turn and they'll probably get obliterated before getting a chance to make an effective second turn (or their numbers will be so thin that they go from being dangerous to annoying, at best). However, if you get that invulnerable save rather than attack, your chances are better to make a devastating second round attack--and be devastating. Jet bikes don't survive long enough for you to be cautious with them. So, here's the basic tactic. Overburn the first round--get your invulnerable save. On the second round, assault and then move into hth--especially if you have Saim Hann wild riders. That's what they're supposed to do. Make sure you pay for and save the banner bearer. That way you're re-rolling missed hth attacks.

The actual kill ratio of space marine to wild riders is pretty high. On an Eldar turn, any of the Saim Hann riders can be expected to kill. Before combat, each rider has a 12.5% chance of killing space marines, or 1 in 8 shuriken armed riders will kill. As for cannons, there's a 41% kill rate for each cannon (already considered the 3 shots). In hth, charging riders get a 16% chance to kill, 75% for chief with power weapon (again counting for 2 attacks for charging and also for banner re-rolls). So, for instance if I have 11 wild riders--3 with cannons (actual make up of my squad), they will kill a 5 man squad--and that's not counting the warlock (41% in hth, 12.5% in shooting phase) . These figures are all based on average dice rolls.

I'm still trying to figure out what power to give to the Wild Riders warlock. But I'm betting that either enhance or destructor are going to be the best bet.

Regardless, I thought I'd include a picture of the Vypers for those who are bored by everything written above.

Cheerin' up Avram

Avram is feeling down.

What can I do?

Oh, wait, I know. Avram, likes trees!




Waitaminute, is that a tree?



Maybe, you need a better look.


...and from the back



Oh yeah, and I found your lictor's claw. Avram, buddy, I need your address so I can send you Treebeard. He is done and he is ready to go.

Intellectual stuff ahead

I'm teaching what our writing program refers to as Unit 2: Text Wrestling. The assignment is fairly routine. Take two writers from the "Text Wrestling" book and have the students apply the concepts of these writers to some aspect of their experiences. At least, that's the assignment as I understand it. It's a fairly common essay. Take theory A and use it to describe phenomena B. Really, this is the basis for most undergrad and graduate classes.

Now, of course, the arguments made by the writers in the "Text Wrestling" book are sufficiently complex so as to merit the student's use of their concepts. Most of them are about society or ideas about one's self, and so on. Pretty standard stuff for late twentieth century. They are not, for example, asked to read someone's treatise on geo-centricisty or anything, and if they are, the term probably doesn't refer to Earth's sacred position as the center of the universe. It's probably and environmental thing now.

So, the two essays I chose are Berger's "Ways of Seeing" and Miller's "Deride and Conquer." Here's the main crux of their arguments: people are stupid. It's a common assertion. In Berger, people are so bombarded with experiences that they achieve overload and no longer are able to stop, think, and interpret. All they do is take experiences in without thought concerning what they mean. Worse yet, the experiences themselves, having been duplicated ad nauseam, are no longer up for debate. In effect, "why are you trying to figure out what's going on when it's been going on for so long without complaint."

Miller goes one step further. He says that the only time you ever interpret anything is to determine whether or not the experience jibes with your feeling about the experience. That is to say, a television commercial works best when it makes plain that, like you, the makers of the commercial hate commercials. This creates a feeling of bond, and in doing so, tricks you into trusting the guy who's selling you the product.

Between the two critics, an image of the common man is made. He has no desire, nor ability, to analyze anything past the point of knowing whether or not an experience is designed around his acceptance of his experience. If you hate art museums, the art museum should design itself with self-loathing in order that you see your feelings echoed back at you, in order that you feel a sense of camaraderie. After all, that's all you can feel.

Yes, it is insulting. It's incredibly insulting. But this is the way of modern education. It tells us over and over again that we have been tricked, that we have been duped, that our actions that we feel are self-generated are actually programmed--either physically through biology, or through our brainwashing by our culture. We are nothing more. And so there is no ability to question. There is no ability to interpret or analyze.

It sours me.

In effect, these theorists (of which Miller and Berger are only representatives) divide all of humanity into two groups. Those who are unwitting dupes, and those who know that they are being duped, but who are still duped anyway. No individual idea or action or belief can escape these frameworks, as any dissention whatsoever is already described in terms of the system one hopes to rebel against. Do you want to be an individual? Of course you do, because that's what society tells you to want. There is only subservience. There is no possibility of a better way.

I want to rail against these ideas. I want to scream "bullshit!" at the top of my lungs. I want to tell these theorists that the only reason that people see the world in these terms is that because everywhere they turn, the experts are describing the world in these terms; that the only ubiquitous experience is that one always can find someone making an argument about the hopelessness of ubiquitous experience.

I want to say these things, but it's hard. Miller and Berger have insulted my students by saying that they don't interpret anything. I have just spent my fourth hour explaining this to my students. Unlike Avram, I can't complain that this despondency is a result of the weather. It's still freezing here in Massachusetts. Something else is at work here.

My students are living proof that these critics are correct. They respond to these essays on a purely visceral level. They don't like them. And it's not that they don't like these critics because the critics are insulting the students, but rather because the critics do not seem aware of the boredom which they are causing. I'm paraphrasing, but in effect, Berger says, "You dullards can't interpret jack shit," and I ask them what he means, and they can not say. After four hours of explanation, even if they understand the insult, they can no longer respond with outrage--only shame.

But I wonder what this all really proves. True, it may be just as all of these critics have described, but if that's true, why bother with education at all. If you are uneducated, you do the society-prescribed actions of the uneducated; if you are educated, you do the society-prescribed actions of the educated, and worse, you know that your actions are prescribed. Evidentially, the best thing about being a robot is knowing that you are a robot--this seems the only justification for education under this schemata.

But there are other schema. Consider, for instance, the possibility that the reason my students don't bother is because they are told that there is no reason to bother. No amount of effort on their part will make them better people, they will simply be the types of people that their society and culture and genetics have fashioned them to be. They can gain no wisdom, because wisdom has now been degenerated into one postulate: there is no such thing as wisdom. Honor? What's honor but a culturally constructed term? Integrity? Meaningless.

In short, what is there to gain by interpreting such critics except a recognition of the cultural net which enmeshes all humanity--whether it is recognized or not? In this sense, I can not help but think that the students lack of desire to interpret Berger or Miller is, of itself, a healthy choice. Why listen to another talking head telling us that we are without choice? Why not simply choose not to listen to them, and if they are right, suffer the same fate as those who have never heard of these critics or those who have spent years studying the various manifestations of these arguments.

But here lies my greatest fear. I believe that there, in fact, are people who deserve to be read, who actually can, when meditated upon, produce wisdom, integrity, honor--who can in short, make their students better people. But they will never be read. The system is already too prescribed. We either read those who would tell us of our inescapable condition of conformity, or we tire of them, and read nothing at all.

Are my students bored because they cannot interpret and thus cannot feel the excitement of interpretation, or are they bored because they can interpret and have nothing worth interpreting? How can we view the quest for knowledge as anything but shameful, when all that is available to us is shameful to know?