Any way to stop Harpy's from bombing our teams?

[bcasner50]

I've taken recently to staggering my troops to keep that blasted harpy from carpet bombing my guys. As far as I can figure out the space marines have no anti air units...

[WarMage]

Lore wise, there's a lot of anti air unit in the Warhammer 40k universe.

In game, none have been implemented. The Harpy special attack is that, a special attack, it'll always land afterward. There's no way to mitigate or avoid it.

Tactically wise, in this specific mission I suggest you refrain from crossing the 75% line in the map. It's scripted, whenever you come too close to the Harpy, it start doing it's bombing attack. So as long as you don't "trigger it" it won't bother you. You can then take your time wiping most Tyranids on the map and only when you're ready should you rush the Harpy and kill it ASAP.

It's nothing more than bad game design. This fight, while not being the worst, is irritating. The devs have made a lot of such decisions like the other scenario where you need to "rush in" to save Battle Sisters.... that are always 2 blocks aways from Tyranids much much more powerful than they are. Who are always in horrible positions..... as if the Battle Sisters had no idea about how to defend an area. Or should I talk about how puny the range of most weapons are ? What, wait, did I just heard Assault Cannon or Melta guns ? Naw, the dev certainly aren't forcing us into melee and flamer range are they ?

lol

[DiceWrangler]

You cannot stop the Harpy but you can encourage to do something else -- like use its turn to create "Spore Mines" (or whatever those things are called). The Harpy's strafing run is, essentially, an airstrike -- similar to Carleon's command ability -- and it cannot be defended against; just like enemies cannot defend against a Carleon-called airstrike.

If you have 4 units in a row the Harpy considers that a "juicy" target and will likely strafe it. If you have 3 units in a row (of 4 squares) the Harpy might strafe them but it ignores anything less than that and will likely use its turn to spawn a pair of floating spores that move slowly and explode on contact like a mobile mine.

I do not know if the Harpy airstrike has a recharge timer or it is more like Carleon's command ability which requires Momentum, not time, to recharge and an Action Point to use.

[WarMage]

Nice addition to the topic DiceWrangler. I haven't done enough testing to notice that as I usually made sure the Harpy didn't get three turn ever.

I believe the strafe ability can be used every other turn. It's deadly and somewhat spammable which is why I'm not surprised OP has taken issue with it.

For any players like me who takes pride in not losing a single unit per match it's also a huge bother ^^.

[Solus]

Finished this mission without any casualty. I can definitely confirm Dice Wrangler's strat. If you are careful and never have your units stacked in a horizontal row and instead keeping space (at least two squares) between them harpy won't bother to bombard you at all. Ofc i had countless spores spawned which can be lethal in close range but easily taken out from afar.

[Vathek1]

Originally posted by DiceWrangler:

You cannot stop the Harpy but you can encourage to do something else -- like use its turn to create "Spore Mines" (or whatever those things are called). The Harpy's strafing run is, essentially, an airstrike -- similar to Carleon's command ability -- and it cannot be defended against; just like enemies cannot defend against a Carleon-called airstrike.

If you have 4 units in a row the Harpy considers that a "juicy" target and will likely strafe it. If you have 3 units in a row (of 4 squares) the Harpy might strafe them but it ignores anything less than that and will likely use its turn to spawn a pair of floating spores that move slowly and explode on contact like a mobile mine.

I do not know if the Harpy airstrike has a recharge timer or it is more like Carleon's command ability which requires Momentum, not time, to recharge and an Action Point to use.

That's a great point you raise about unit positioning. For me, what makes the Harpy's strafing runs so annoying isn't the initial damage as much as the massive poison DoT on the next turn.

The best ways to mitigate that effect (in addition to good positioning) are to take an extra Sanguinary Priest (his healing skill removes poison effects), or to go with a more armour-heavy army since mechanical units are immune to poison anyway.

I was curious, however, about two things. First, what effect does the Harpy's other special attack (when it flaps around and screeches) actually have? I know from testing in skirmish mode that it's supposed to reduce your momentum, but I've never actually seen it actually do anything.

Second, how dangerous are spore mines anyway? They don't seem anywhere as damaging as the ones in Dawn of War II. Still, out of habit, I tend to take them out quickly, but I can't recall them even harming a melee unit.

[WarMage]

@Vathek1 - I can tell you they hurt bad. Not sure if it's an Aoe of 1 square all around them or simply a directed attack at a single unit (I personally believe it's the latter). I took the Lieutenant which I'm forgetting the name and ran into two of them one after the other and I was left with barely any HP left.

Harpy strats :
1- Best strat is to use a checkboard pattern leaving one space between every toop. That way, the harpy will never use it's strafing attack.
2- Secondary method, you can clean up most of the map without triggering the Harpy and then rush for the kill and end the mission before much harm has been done.
3- You can use a armor heavy army as the poison doesn't affect armored units and they do seems to take less damage from the strafing attack.
4- You can also bring 2 medic to mitigate the poison and heal up.

Medic last because it's more reactionary than proactive and also worst case the Harpy will damage and poison 4 units which is more than what you can heal in the same turn.

[Vathek1]

^Those are all great points about the anti-Harpy strategies! Keeping your units in a checkboard pattern is also an excellent way to maximize firing lanes. There's no friendly fire (except with flame weapons), but shooting through a friendly unit does result in accuracy loss.

[WarMage]

Accuracy loss can be mitigated a lot though. You can fire through all HQ units except the Dreadnought without penalties. Firing through normal space marines doesn't incur much impact. Gotta be careful about bigger units like the 3 man team terminator squad (sorry, forgot the name).

[Vathek1]

Originally posted by WarMage:

Accuracy loss can be mitigated a lot though. You can fire through all HQ units except the Dreadnought without penalties. Firing through normal space marines doesn't incur much impact. Gotta be careful about bigger units like the 3 man team terminator squad (sorry, forgot the name).

Aggressors? Would I that they were actually as tough as Terminators... and that they had a teleport homer as well :D.

You are correct that the unit size does make a difference in the accuracy loss when shooting through them, however. The Dreadnought has a bigger impact as he counts as a large-size unit, I think.