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Hi all

This is my third Lords and it turned out to be pretty special.

For my list I really wanted to take the parts of the codex that are branded ´broken´by the 40k community.

Number 1 on my list was Legion of the Damned. I wanted lots of them.

Number 2 was Vanguard Veterans. Again I wanted lots.

So the list evolved. Firstly the Vanguard. I wanted beat sticks in there. A relic blade, thunder hammer and powerfist would do nicely. Then I wanted the ability to take punishment as initiative 4 aint that flash. Finally I needed some cheap(er) bodies to take normal wounds and who would bring 4 attacks on the charge.

Legion it was tempting to take 5 as they ARE expensive. But that was not a threat, after all small arms can take them down. So I needed more, and a power fist, and melta,combimelta and multimelta to take advantage of their outstanding deepstrike capabilities.

Now I needed Scout bikes, and terminators. Finally two troops and a drop pod with a locator to compliment the scout bike locator.

My manoeuvre would come from deepstriking in deployment, or gate of infinity from the librarian. Otherwise the only elements I had with any speed were vanguard with jetpacks and scouts on bikes.

So here is the final list.

Librarian with terminator armour and storm shield 140
7 Terminators with CML and 2x Chainfist 320
8 Legion of the Damned with combimelta, powerfist, meltagun and multimelta 300
10 tactical marines with combimelta, meltagun and multimelta 185
Drop pod with locator 45
10 Tactical Marines with combiplasma, plasma gun, plasma cannon 195
8 Vanguard Veterans with jumpacks, relic blade, thunder hammer, powerfist, 2x stormshield 365
5 Scout bikers with locator, grenade launchers, trip mines and powerfist 200

More to follow on missions and battle outcomes

Game 1 was against Necrons. I have his list somewhere but in essence there was a monolith, a bunch of wraiths, a triax stalker, something like 4 units of immortals, a HQ that could take my powers, destroyers with monster guns.. IN the end it was me that lost this battle in spectacular stupidity.

He deployed his whole army, I deployed scouts, plasma tacticals and terminators with librarian.

Firstly some photos

AWESOME... Dalekcrons, nice batrep so far

OK here is what happened

Game 1 was all about getting the opponents home objective (worth 3 mission points) and protecting your own (worth nothing to you, but 3 to him). There was 3 cental objectives each worth 1 mission point each. My goal here was deny him my home objective and tie up two central objectives, which would have been a win and about what I could hope for with so few troops choices.

Turn 1 my drop pod with melta marines comes down to melta his wraiths. My scouts move next to them. Librarian tries to gate and fails his psychic test. My melta team put 2 melta wounds and 4 bolter wounds on the wraiths, one dies and I cause a wound to a second. Storm bolter from Drop Pod, bolters and grenades from scouts all bounce off wraiths. My CML brings down an immortal. I now have 3 wraiths left about to put 9x S6 rending attacks onto one of two troops. Oh no.

His wraith gets hit and run from some character. His army jockeys around a bit. He has a ctan that faffs a bit. His monolith tries to template my scouts but it scatters off the board. His triax stalker tags my plasma tactical squad at the rear. His shooting shreds tacs / immortals rain fire each taking a marine or two, his ctan drops three. Then in comes his wraiths on my tacs up in his deployment zone.. I have 4 marines not in base to base so they go and do nothing. He uses some lash or something to turn my other guys into I1. His 12 attacks hit 8 times causing 2 rends and 3 normal wounds of which I save 2. I hit back 5 times and do nothing. 6 tacs in the melta squad remain.

My turn 2 Vanguard Vets arrive! HUZZAR!! Legion of the damned decide to remain enigmatic this turn and stay in the warp. My vanguard deepstrike onto the drop pod locator and pounce on the wraiths. My librian casts gate of infinity on himself and the terminators, gating onto the scout locator. Unfortunately my opponent points out that one of my terminator bases are within 1 of one of his units so thats a deepstrike mishap. I roll on the misshap table and roll 2. My librarian and 7 terminators are out of the game, 460 points and my morale goes "poof".
My bikes put 2 wounds on his immortals, both saved, my plasma cannon overheats. In assault my relic blade hits 3 times and normal weapons 18 times, causing 1 relic wound and 5 normal, only 1 is failed killing the wounded wraith. He hits back causing 4 wounds, I fail 3. Wraiths hit and run 11 into middle of table. Unfortunately my powerfst and thunderhammer were not in this combat so could not whack wraith here. My scouts assault some of his immortals, I kill 2 they do nothing back but pass LD.

His 2 immortals walk into booby trapped terrain, 2D6 is 5 hits, 1 wound which is saved. hmm. His stalker shoots a marine in the plasma squad, his Ctan kills another 2. The monolith shoots a vanguard but I save it. In assault his destroyers charge into my vanguard and kill a storm shield. His wraiths charge my melta squad that came down in his deployment zone via drop pod, there are 3 left, he kills 1 leaving the SGT and multimelta. I run away. My scouts and his immortals keep punching each other, I kill 1 with a fist and they pass LD.

My turn 3 the Legion still dont come. 300 points still not on the table there and I ruined 460 with a bad gate.. and I wonder why it feels the battle is like fencing with a machine gunner. In essence here he walks immortals onto my home objective and wipes out my remaining tacs near his own. We call it here, I get 0 battle points he gets the max 20. Very humiliating first game.

Pics for next battle vs space wolves below

His list

Logan 270
Njal 270
5 wold guard with heaps of gear / in total 255 points
9 Grey Hunters with fist and melta 165
9 hunters with powerweapon and melta 155
9 hunters with PW and flamer 150
9 hunters w fist and plasmagun 170
9 hunters w PW and plasmagun 160
6 long fangs witb 2 lascannons, 3 heavy bolters 155

Game 2 was 4 objectives in the centre of each table quarter each worth a mission point, plus another 4 mission points were available by nominating 4 units of the enemy at the start of the game and wiping them out. I nominated Njal and 3 of his grey hunter squads, he nominated my legion of the damned, vanguard and my tac squads.



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OK so game 2 my strategy was to protect whatever he nominated, him whatever I nominated and get 2 of the 4 objectives. Because I had limited mobility, basically what I could deep strike, I decided to refuse a flank and take one of his table quarter objectives and hold my own.

I have played against Njal before and I wanted to neutralise him quickly. He is a beast but can be taken down in close combat so I nominated him and took my scouts and drop pod up next to him and then gated in terms in support, all on his extreme right flank. My vanguard walked onto the board on the right and are now close behind terminators and the drop pod.
A lot of his amy had walked on the board (night fighting in turn 1) and was effectively useless for the early turns while it trudged across to me.

WHen he deployed Logan with a hunter squad in the centre there was not really a lot of threat to me there. What was he going to do? Leg it over to me? That is what he tried to do but by then I had killed a lot of his other stuff so could focus fire before I had to take Logan in assault. But I jump ahead.

When I gate up my terminators they hit his right squad with njall with storm bolters and cyclone missiles causing 11 wounds, killing 2 hunters and the powerfist wolfguard.
His turn 2 his long fangs +run+ haha. Njalls squad rapid fires at me, killing 2 tacticals in my melta squad that came down with the drop pod. His second squad in range puts two wounds on my terminators but they bounce off.

My turn 2 my legion of the damned come in and deepstrike perfectly to his right flank / my left flank. In essence that is a distraction to draw hunters away from the main action on my right flank. He took the bait and charged a wolf squad into them w guard, and watched it get torn up by the legion. My terminators gun down another 3 hunters. My vanguard now pounce into assault, ripping up the squad Njall is with, leaving him with a wound and his squad smashed.

His turn 3, he guns down a terminator and charges them, he guns down a damned legionaire and then charges them too. In the first assault my relic blade vanguard vet kills Njal while the rest of the vanguard take apart what is left of the hunter squad. In the wolf v terminator assault, he puts 3 invul and 2 armour saves on my guys, and 3 more die. I hit back and wiff, causing 1 powerfist pink mist but pass LD. In the LoTD battle, he causes 4 wounds and I fail 3. He loses 2.

My 3, most of my units are tied up. My scouts move and pour fire into Logans squad which is advancing on my plasma tac squad, killing 2. My plasma squad then open up killing another 3. In the terminator assault I lose another terminator, but in reply my remaining tactical dreadnaughts splatter his unit. The legion commence punching the proverbial out of his hunters, I cause 4 wounds and 2 die, he causes 2 and I lose 1.

His 4. He shoots my vanguard with a hunter squad and gets my powerfist. He then charges longfangs into vanguard! They must have had a wolf guard attached as they cause 4 wounds and an invul save, I lose 2 + a storm shield. In reply my vanguard kill 4. In the Legion combat, I kill a wolf, he get none of my guys.

Pretty much from here I mopped up. My legion killed the squad they were engaged with, Logan and his squad were gunned down, the vanguard took down the long fangs, my melta squad walked onto his objective giving me 2 objectives to his nil and I got all 4 nominated target units to his none, so 20 to me and zero to him.

Game 3 was against Daemons. All about kill points here with secondary to have more table quarters with scoring units.

His list
Bloodthirster with unholy might, blessings of the dark god
Great Unclean One with cloud of flies, breath of chaos, unholy might
7 blood crushers with fury of khorne, instrument of chaos, hellblade
9 bloodletters w fury khorne, instrument, hellblades
9 plague bearers w noxious touch, instrument and plague swords
14 pink horrors with bolt of change, warp fire and the changling
Daemonprince with mark tzeentch, bolt, breath , unholy might and soul devourer
Daemonprince with mark tzeentch, bolt, breath and unholy might

I will freely admit I was terrified of those blood crushers, their stats were pretty amazing and I figured just about everything I had would go down to them. In deployment I spread out a lot so his deepstrike was a little more difficult and waited.



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His pink horrors land next to my vanguard and fire 45 shots at them! He rolls poorly though, getting 16 hits and 5 wounds, killing 1. The bloodthirster, blood crushers also come in, the bloodthirster scatters a little away from me, thank the emperor! The prince vomits (breath) and does bolt onto my vanguard, killing a dude and a stormshield. So 3 vanguard go down.

My turn 2. My legion remain out.
The scouts put a wound on the crushers. My vanguard shoot down 4 pink horrors and charge. My tacticals plasma gunner kills himself however the squad manages to gun down one of the princes! The vanguard then smash through the pink horrors, killing 9 and taking no casualties in reply. The pink horrors then wipe out due to fearless wounds.

His turn 2. His DP, Great Unclean One both come on, the plague bearers and bloodletters stay off.
The DP scatters but closer to me, his bloodthirster takes a wound flying out of terrain, which is great, but then it assaults my tactical squad out front, killing 4, while my little champions somehow manage to hit back 3 times, wounding the mighty daemon twice and both are unsaved! They pass LD.

My turn 3 my legion come on. Scouts, Legion and terminators shooting together kills the second DP. I also put 3 wounds on his crushers, which he farms out to various guys. The bloodthirster kills 2 more marines and takes nothing back, I pass LD.

His 3. Plaguebearers appear next to my Vanguard. His great unclean one vomits onto the legion killing 2, then assaults them. I cause a wound, he causes a wound. The blood thirster eats the last tactical marine.

My 4. Scout fire bounces off bloodthirster, but the terminators gun him down. My remaining tacs put 3 plasma cannon and 4 normal wounds on the plague bearers, 3 are saved. My vanguard then charge the plaguebearers and annilhate them. The Legion of the Damned lose another spectre, hitting back for two unsaved wounds, the great unclean one then takes a fearless wound! He is down to 1 wound now.

His 4. Bloodletters finally come on but mishap off the board! His bloodcrushers assault my terminators, although only 4 can hit. They deal out 10 wounds, my librarian fails both his 3++ invuls and dies, and the rest of the terminator squad except the cyclone missile launcher terminator is wiped out! OUCH. In the Great Unclean One assault he kills two, I whiff and add insult to injury when both remaining legion die to fearless wounds.

At this point we ran out of time and it was called dice down. I had dealt out 1244 kill points on him, him 785 on me, so victory marines! In addition I had killed all his troops and I still have tacs in 1 quarter so I got the bonus there too, so 20 pts marines, 0 to Daemons.

Game 4 was day 2. An objective mission, with only two objectives, one in each deployment zone, ie very easy to get a draw here. Secondary was to kill the opponents general.

My strategy here was simple. I had no mobility past the drop pod, so to have a hope of winning I needed to get my second tactical squad to his objective and camp my other tacs on my own objective. The rest of the army would try and ensure that outcome.

His list was awesome, equal to mine as top for comp score.

Captain on bike with relic blade and hellfire rounds, artificer armour 190
Master of the Forge on bike 135
Techmarine on bike with servo harness 110
6 bikers, 2 flamers, with HB attack bike 170
6 bikers with HB attack bike 155
6 bikers, flamer, with HB attack bike 160
6 bikers, flamer, with HB attack bike 160
6 bikers, flamer, with MM attack bike 175
6 bikers, 2 flamers, with MM attack bike 175
2 Attack bikes with 2 MM 100
2 Attack bikes with 2 MM 100
3 Attack bikes with 3 HB 120

If you can imagine more dakka from a 1750 space marine list, with that much manoeuvre, then play it, because this thing was ferocious. The blistering amount of dakka he rained down was horrible.

Here are some photos



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Hopefully the images above give you a good idea how it felt. I had 8 terminator models and 10 tacticals against that horde. They copped 7 heavy bolters a turn, every turn.

SO I won the roll off and made him deploy, which he did. My trip mines were useless. I deployed tacs and terminators.

His 1.
Everything surges forward. The weight of models almost tips the table, just kidding. His first HB kills 2 tacs. Second nil. Third nil. Fourth kills a third. Thats a leadership check so he switches to my terms. Melta squad kills 1. Second melta squad puts down 3 wounds but I make my saves. His final heavy bolter team also bounces off my terms. My tac pass LD.

My 1.
Down comes my desperate drop pod, scattering into the large ruins. My melta team stumbles out amongst his thousands of bikers and tries to neuter his heavy bolter attack bikes (3 heavy bolters) with melta weapons. The melta and combimelta roll snake eyes to hit and the bolters cause a wound. Oh dear. My plasma squad kills to bikers and puts a wound on the attached attack bike in that squad. The term shooting is dissapointing putting a wound on an attack bike.

His 2.
He puts 11 flame hits on my drop pod tacs. Including bolters I take 6 wounds and three die. That was from his first unit. The Master of the Forge joins a biker squad and together they gun down 3 more. He shoots my plasma team on my objective, killing the plasmagunner. Then another bolter marine goes down. Finally he kills my SGT and plasma cannon, leaving 3 tacticals on my objective. Its turn 2. His master of the forge and captain charge into my tacticals that came out of the drop pod. The captain wastes no time with initiative 5 and kills 2. After all said and done i have 4 left in that squad, 3 in the other. Both are heroic so pass LD.

My 2.
My morale is rock bottom here as I cannot see how I can rescue the situation. I need something special. Surely my vanguard can do something when I roll and they show. My terminators kill 3 bikers with shooting. My legion of the damned is in and kill 2 bikes with shooting, and his bikes they hit auto fail LD so the terms cannot charge them next turn. In assault I lose 2 of the 4 tacs left, my attacks bounce off but I make LD. My vanguard have located onto the ignored drop pod and assault the captain´s squad that is ripping up my tacs, with my relic blade putting 2 wounds on the captain while the others kill a biker. My Thunder hammer puts another 2 wounds on the captain for instant death however he makes both invul saves.

His 3. He flames my legion killing 3. He kills the last remaining drop pod tactical marine, best I can hope for now is a draw. Two heavy bolters bounce off my 3 tacs cowering on my objective. Then he kills 2 of the 3. He assaults my legion of the damned with techmarine and biker squad, my legion do nothing, no does he, weak. In the battle with his captain and my vanguard, his captain hits 3 times with his relic blade, I save 2 of the wounds with storm shields but a vanguard goes down. My squad then pulverises the captain and remaining bikes in that squad.

My 3. We were going very slow with this game so it was dice down half way through my turn. In essence my terminators got a charge onto his squad, my vanguard moved to assault a new squad and my bikes came in and assaulted yet another.

At the end, when it was dice down, I had a single tac marine holding my objective, he had his own, it was a draw. Had we gone to say turn 5 or 6 its possible I could have pulled out a win by chopping him up, which I was starting to do, but there was not way I would be able to win the mission as my tacticals were lucky to survive as long as they did. Otherwise I got his HQ, so I got 15 battle points, he got 10.

Battle 5 – space wolves (again)

This guy was pretty aggressive with his list. Again I have it somewhere however it was a razor spam list with thunderwolf cav and lord with thunderhammer on wolf- The lord had something that meant every wound or casualty he caused he got another attack. This is a mission where we get night fighting turn 1 then roll to see if it continues 4+, 3+ then auto daylight turn 4. Otherwise its kill points.

Here is the one photo I got



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He went first and deployed a troop in razor
I deployed plasma squad in the high terrain feature
I steal initiative and roll everything on
Other tacs run towards cover – my tacs had minimal involvement in this game
Terms walk forward – turn 2 they gate forward
Scouts head up left flank
Pod comes down on left flank
Vanguard head up left flank
There is a theme here, like last space wolf battle
His turn 1 is similar, he rolls on – little shooting as night still

My 2
No LOD, still night
I gate terms forward.
My scouts get a glance on a razorback but I roll 1.

His 2
His razorback TLLC kills my term captain and lights them up with searchlights
His longfangs put 10 frag wounds onto my terminators and one onto my scouts, resulting in a dead scout biker and a wound on the librarian. One of his grey hunter squads has 2 plasma guns. They roll up to the terminators and kill 3 and the librarian. Ouch.
His second razorback hits terminators however they have cover and I make it.

My 3.
LOD deepstrike on scout bikes.
My plasma cannon dies to gets hot.
LOD explode a razorback killing 2 of the grey hunters inside. My terms shoot another dead and charge whats left. My scouts destroy a razorbacks weapon. The Vanguard Vets multicharge those hunters and the plasma group. My vanguard kill 3 hunters in one group and one in the other, while the terms killed 5. His plasma squad has 2 left and runs away from terms.

His 3.
His plasma squad needed to run 7 to leave the board, it runs 5 and turns to fire at terminators. Damn. They do that and kill a terminator.
Long fangs kill a bike.
Other long fangs kill my drop pod.
A troop of grey hunters kill remaining scouts, third kill point to him.
Lascannon bounces off my terms, however some grey hunters gun the last two down, fourth kill point to him.
My vanguard finish off one of his troops, second kill point for me.

My turn 4.
We have minutes left before its dice down. I charge my LOD into his fleeing troops, which are mingled with other tattered grey hunters squad and destroy both! That takes me to 4 kill points.

We call it, its a draw.

Found his list
Wolf lord bjorn
10 wolf guard
4x 5 grey hunters
1x10 grey hunters
2 wolf cav
2x ML long fangs (both had wolf guard with CML too)

Were you guys playing 5E or 6E? Because if it was 6E, then your terminator unit shouldn't have died in game #1 because now a mishap destroyed only happens on a '1'.

So the final score was Battle 40%, Presentation 30%, Composition 20% and Sports 10%

While I was equal 4th in battle points, I made up ground with the other elements and so took out top spot.

http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=139829&st=0&

Key messages I took out:

1. Vanguard can be very very awesome
2. LOD can be very good too, although I think they were less a fit in my list they still worked well with their deepstrike near my two locators and being hard and shooty
3. Terminators are awesome all rounders. Never let anyone tell you assault terminators do the same job better, the contribution my tactical terminators made through shooting alone was often solid, and their surivabiltity and those powerfists make them superb all rounders.
4. How good were my scout bikes. Fast, carrying locator, with fist. These guys really mess with opponents who think in straight lines.

So hopefully a few of you reading this will put down some of the hate for these elements of the space marine codex. They can be used effectively in a highly competitive tournament environment, you just need to think a little harder how to use them well and respect what they can and cannot do.

Very nice batreps Loricatus.

Me to I ask you if you were playing 5th or 6th.
It looks like still 5th ed with just some special rule regarding mission objectives and the application of the nightfighting (again in a custom way) in this last game.

You are both right, one of the final 5th ed tournaments in Australia I believe.

Not losing those terms would have made a huge difference in game 1. My vanguard were chomping through his immportals and had the terms been able to get a few chainfists into his monolith, then gate back on my scouts to look after my home objective, may have been a different outcome. Still this is what happens when you dont play and games between February and July and then turn up at a tournament, silly mistakes.

Talk here is there will be no comp scores from here as TOs uncertain what will end up being the uber and what gets neutered in 6th, so next few tourneys will be unlikely I will take fluffy lists and instead probably go something solid and dependable, which I imagine many others will be thinking similar. 30 marine terminators anyone?

Well, I sincerely loved to see a fluffy GW style list doing so well. As the most part of occasional-tournaments players I'm drammatically tired of super power house lists.

Now we will see the more and more those Deathstars-Is-The-Law setups and it's a little shame if you ask me.

I don't think 30 C:SM Terminators (between 1200 and 1420 points) would be a funny setup, effecftive? No doubth but well.. better stay home maybe.

I would have like to see your list right now, in 6th ed.
I consider 200 pts on a scouts biker units a little too much but I'm curious about what they could do in this new ed.

Hey Toban

Thats just it. None of the units were developed with x% of list thinking, rather i wanted vanguard legion and scout bikers and the cost what they cost to do their role.

Vanguard i wanted to remain effective after first kill
Bikers needed to survive till turn 2 and needed a fist to disrupt deployment. In that sense the thinking is still the same my end. Often opponents had far more units, but more effective? Clearly not, at least not a 'certain thing'.

Appreciate your comments about the list. I dont like so many named characters in our game. There is one vulkan yet there is always at least 2 at all tourneys I have been to. Now I cheer when i see lots of uber characters. If i can avoid them or otherwise minimise their contribution then a good chance game is mine. Njal is the exception, he sucks death and i always go after him aggressively early on.

Nice batreps Aurora, and congratulations on your win.

I particularly liked your inclusion of units usually considered sub-par, it's great to see interesting lists that defy conventional wisdom about effectiveness.

Thanks K42, everyone should run crappy units in their codex, i first got that idea and running no named characters, from Sanctjud here actually.

Having done it myself I can tell everyone its a massive hoot. If i turned up with a list conventionally agreed maxes the codex, guess what, there is a sister and cousin list already there and my opponents dutifully play me but no one is really getting into the game. This way i was challenged and my opponents not once neutered my strengths because none of them understood what my strengths were. Those locating beacons were my centre of gravity, so why leave the drop pod? Sure it only had a storm bolter, but it also meant vanguard, legion and 8 terminator models could appear within 6 with no risk.

For those with time on their hands have a play around with the 'never use' elements of your codex. Enough thought and they will not only be usable but your opponent will change from experienced to unfamiliar with your army, and that is otherwise known as manufacturing a competitive advantage for yourself.