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I read about this list online. Generally touted net lists are not terrible but honestly I do not get this one. It doesn't look right to me and yet it has been winning a few games at tournaments and has a reputation of being a bit nasty. Then I never really liked the harliestar either. Sure it has stealth, shrouding, psychic defense and poison. But still ...

HQ: Baron Sathonyx - 105 [DE]
HQ: Asdrubael Vect - 240 [DE]
HQ: Eldrad - 210 [EL]
Elite: 3 True Born - 2 Splinter Cannons - 56 [DE]
Elite: 3 True Born - 2 Splinter Cannons - 56 [DE]
Troop: 15 Wyches - Haywire, Hekatrix PGL - 200 [DE]
Troop: 15 Wyches - Haywire, Hekatrix PGL - 200 [DE]
Troop:20 Warriors - 2 Splinter Cannons, Sybarite - 210 [DE]
Troop: 3 Guardian Jetbikes - 66 [EL]
Troop: 3 Guardian jetbikes - 66 {EL]
FA: 5 Beast Masters - 5 Kymerra, 8 Razorwings - 240 [DE]
HS: 1 Cronos Parasite Engine - Spirit Vortex, Spirit Syphon - 100 [DE]
Aegis Defense Line - Quad Gun - 100

TOTAL POINTS: 1850

I get the idea ... Warriors behind aegis. Eldrad casts invisibility like candy - I believe twice per turn possible. Eldard Vect with wyches, Baron with beasts. Cronos just irritating passing a few tokens out. But how does it even get into cc? How does it deal with flyers? Ignore them? How could it handle a baleflamer or DK? I'm told it is a pita to play against but it looks pretty weak to me on paper. Am I missing something?

Eldrad can't invisibility twice. 3 Warp charge a turn and thats a 2 warp charge power.

How the list works, I've no idea

Actually my bad - beasts get prescience and invisibility on the charge. Still ...

 felixcat wrote:
I read about this list online. Generally touted net lists are not terrible but honestly I do not get this one. It doesn't look right to me and yet it has been winning a few games at tournaments and has a reputation of being a bit nasty. Then I never really liked the harliestar either. Sure it has stealth, shrouding, psychic defense and poison. But still ...

HQ: Baron Sathonyx - 105 [DE]
HQ: Asdrubael Vect - 240 [DE]
HQ: Eldrad - 210 [EL]
Elite: 3 True Born - 2 Splinter Cannons - 56 [DE]
Elite: 3 True Born - 2 Splinter Cannons - 56 [DE]
Troop: 15 Wyches - Haywire, Hekatrix PGL - 200 [DE]
Troop: 15 Wyches - Haywire, Hekatrix PGL - 200 [DE]
Troop:20 Warriors - 2 Splinter Cannons, Sybarite - 210 [DE]
Troop: 3 Guardian Jetbikes - 66 [EL]
Troop: 3 Guardian jetbikes - 66 {EL]
FA: 5 Beast Masters - 5 Kymerra, 8 Razorwings - 240 [DE]
HS: 1 Cronos Parasite Engine - Spirit Vortex, Spirit Syphon - 100 [DE]
Aegis Defense Line - Quad Gun - 100

TOTAL POINTS: 1850

I get the idea ... Warriors behind aegis. Eldrad casts invisibility like candy - I believe twice per turn possible. Eldard Vect with wyches, Baron with beasts. Cronos just irritating passing a few tokens out. But how does it even get into cc? How does it deal with flyers? Ignore them? How could it handle a baleflamer or DK? I'm told it is a pita to play against but it looks pretty weak to me on paper. Am I missing something?

I would have thought that vect would go with the beasts and baron to make a beast star. Fearless, stealth, grenades, hit and run, rending, and 2 2++ saves for things that ignore cover.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
the cronos spits out pain tokens so things get FC FNP and Fearless as well.

I would have thought you would want vect with a large wyche squad but you may be right.

 felixcat wrote:
I would have thought you would want vect with a large wyche squad but you may be right.

vect is slow, but the beasts need to be fearless. also PE makes them rock: rerolling all those attacks with rending can get silly. You end up with a silly conga line to keep him in coherency but who cares. As if beasts didnt have enough models or something. Also remember that that unit has 7 characters for challenging.

This list won at Templecon earlier this month. I played against the guy who won templecon the week before, and it rocked my CSM PM army.

I talked a lot about how this list did well here on my blog.
http://www.simhammer.com/node/8

You can also read a long thread about the list here.
http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/beast-pack-of-cheeze-t4833.html

The list works by taking advantage of the rules mechanics of 6th edition. By stacking up the special rules, it can make a single beast pack nearly unstoppable. It removes the drawbacks of the beasts and replaces them with strong advantages.

Simply put, this is the best assault list in the game today. As more events are won by it, and more people are clobbered by it, people will start to see what it entails. Until then people will look at the list and scratch their head in amazement.

AAh I see. Vect and the Baron start with the beasts and move as fast as possible. i thoiught you would start all the characters in the beast squad turn one and then split them off into the wyches. Once Eldard gets to cast invisibility and prescience on the beasts they will pretty much rip through anything no? I think the trick is you really want to get first turn with Vect. And still the list does not convince me.
I thought that Eldard maned the quad. So he is not always close enough to cast invisibility on the beasts? But your report seems to imply otherwise - he follows the beats with a pack of warriors.
Wow - metagaming at its finest.

 felixcat wrote:

I thought that Eldard maned the quad. So he is not always close enough to cast invisibility on the beasts?

with the number of models beasts have and the speed with which they can move they can easily conga line to over near eldrad to get invis. 24" + 18" conga is pretty far.

If not eldrad can walk around, letting some BS 4 chump man the gun if needed.

So what does it do when half the time it doesn't have Invisibility and Prescience?

 DarknessEternal wrote:
So what does it do when half the time it doesn't have Invisibility and Prescience?

It's not quite 1/2. He gets 4 rolls on the table. That's a 2/3 chance of getting the power he wants.

Also that list will crack a big big smile if it meets lascannons/meltaguns etc. The footslogging ellement means that they have very few targets for heavy weapons. True you can kill 15 wythes, perhaps even 30, but then you will have an insane unit of beats in your face. I think it will overwhelm with a lott of targets. It would be hard even withouth invisabilaty. Invisabilaty helps of course. Vs landraiders it will have 30 haiwire grenades. Vs flyers it will try to just survive.

I would say they would have problems with dragons but as labmouse42 points out in his battelreport...no. Also, the player is very good at spacing out. It is hard to land that dragon.

This is one of those cases where the proof is in the pudding.

Look at templecon earlier this month. Ordosean clobbered people with the DA beast pack.

As you say - the proof is in the pudding. And it really does not look that difficult to play. Most decisions are made for you. It is just a question of placing the models correctly when advancing. I'm leery of the lack of troops but I'm assuming the reserved jetbikes help.

So if you can survive the flyer spam (multiple drakes etc), necron scythes and barges, you should be okay.

 Niiai wrote:
Also that list will crack a big big smile if it meets lascannons/meltaguns etc. The footslogging ellement means that they have very few targets for heavy weapons. True you can kill 15 wythes, perhaps even 30, but then you will have an insane unit of beats in your face. I think it will overwhelm with a lott of targets. It would be hard even withouth invisabilaty. Invisabilaty helps of course. Vs landraiders it will have 30 haiwire grenades. Vs flyers it will try to just survive.

I would say they would have problems with dragons but as labmouse42 points out in his battelreport...no. Also, the player is very good at spacing out. It is hard to land that dragon.

it laughs off lascannons and meltagun with the 2+ cover save. Failing to get that, it has 3+ from the ADL+stealth. Failing that it has khymera with a 4++ or two characters with a 2++. The list will get first turn very often. The beasts will find somethign to assault turn 2. So you get 1 turn to shoot it with your lascannons and meltaguns(and plasma)

 labmouse42 wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
So what does it do when half the time it doesn't have Invisibility and Prescience?

It's not quite 1/2. He gets 4 rolls on the table. That's a 2/3 chance of getting the power he wants.

He only gets 3 rolls on Telepathy if he has Prescience.

You keep rolling on the table until you get invisibilty. Then you pick of prescience.

 Exergy wrote:
it laughs off lascannons and meltagun with the 2+ cover save. Failing to get that, it has 3+ from the ADL+stealth. Failing that it has khymera with a 4++ or two characters with a 2++. The list will get first turn very often. The beasts will find somethign to assault turn 2. So you get 1 turn to shoot it with your lascannons and meltaguns(and plasma)

Exergy is right on the money here. I've seen this in action. In worst case, the beasts are in assault on turn 3. Usually they are in assault on turn 2.

Invisibility is the icing on the cake -- though its nasty even without.
What makes the list work so well is that the special characters remove the disadvantage of beasts. In the game I played ordoSean, I assaulted the beast pack with 20 PMs. I won the round of combat by 10 doing a ton of wounds him. Instead of falling back and getting shot up, he did not care because he was fearless. In the following three assault rounds, the remaining beasts plus vect cleaned up a total of 40 plague marines.
Edit : I want to stress how hard this is normally. PMs are T5, 3+ with FNP. They are extremely durable in this edition. 40 PMs are tough as 64 grey hunters to dislodge with Vect. When attacked by STR 4 attacks that give normal armor saves, 40 PMs are as tough as 80 grey hunters to dislodge. The fact that the beasts did it so quickly is simply amazing.

 Niiai wrote:
You keep rolling on the table until you get invisibilty. Then you pick of prescience.

Remember, Vect gives perferred enemy to the beasts. Prescience is not as important as invisibility, so you can completely skip prescience if you wish.

With invis, your hitting on 3s, and rerolling 1s. That's nearly as good as prescience, and even better when you include that perferred enemy works on 'to wound' rolls as well.

I read your BP. Why did your Helldrakes Hover? They wouldnt get assaulted if you didn't hover them.

This list relies on getting Psychic powers, and if you dont get them, the Beast unit will die to shooting like it already does.

I play a large Beast squad and know its limitations.

The list is not bad by any means. But relying on getting Invisibility and such is not a sound "tactic." Neither is having an opponent who Hovers their Helldrakes.

I never hovered the hell drakes. I after they flew past his beast pack I used them to burn wytches, true born and jetbikes

Howd the Helldrakes get assaulted then?

They never did. Where are you reading this battle report?

Your link you posted....

http://www.simhammer.com/node/8



Automatically Appended Next Post:
"But I will just...
Helldrakes
I brought two helldrakes. My opponent spread out his razorwings. I only hit 3 per helldrake, had to eat a Khymerae or Beastmaster before I could eat a Razorwing flock. I managed to kill 5 of them before he got into assault with my helldrakes -- and it was not enough to stop him from wiping the CSM."

On, that was a mistype. I ment he got into assault with my PMs
I'll correct that.

Did he just string this squad out in a long line? Thats the only way Vect could keep up. And is he did string it out, so many of those beasts would not make it to combat for atleast a turn or even 2.

This is from a private conversation I had about the beast pack earlier. I hope this helps explain what I saw.
What he did was spread his birds out around the pack so I could not get to them first. Let me show you, as pictures are worth 1000 words.

On turn one, he moved forward and kept all his models in area terrain. With invis this gave every model a 2+ cover save.

On my turn one, I shuffled my rhinos around to delay the time until contact. The game was KPs, so I was working to deny KPs and use my drakes to score them from him.

On turn two, he continued his advance. Notice how Baron and Vect are both hanging out in the back?


ON my turn 2, I came in and flamed the s*** out of his beast pack. Notice how my vector strikes kill all the beasts around it. I then was able to get 3 beasts per flame template. He LoS'ed three of two and took the rest on the baron -- who made all his shadow field saves.


I dropped what I had out of my rhinos to open up with bolters and accept the charge. My plan was to do enough damage to wipe out the beasts.
At the time I told myself 'I got this, Ill lose about 1/3 my PMs, but Ill take em down' I've used PMs to take down terminators before, so expected 40 of them to do the job.


On his turn 3 he moved past the drakes. As you can see, he was setting himself up for an assault.


This is his assault on the bottom of my 3. I brought my additional two squad in to help reinforce my lord. His wytches bounced off my PMs (no suprise there) and his dogs did jack -- but his birds rended out a full squad by themselves. On this turn I did 12 wounds to his squad, and won the combat by 8. If he was not fearless he would have ran and let me bolt him again..


After the game we talked more about it. He said he would never place all of razorbirds next to each other but spread them out. I said I would go after his achilees heel -- Vect. Were both more prepared for this game. He also said he would go for the 4++ divination spell next time we played. I told him that would cost him in the assault, as one of the problems my PMs has was hitting on 5s.

PM-Conversation wrote:Next turn hoover (as this gives you the mobilaty to "catch up" to the beasts you just vector striked) would give you some more kills, assuming he does not manadge to charge you before his turn 3.

If I hovered the drakes, wytches would have haywired them to death. There is no way I would have tried to do that for the few shots.

Also, note that he was in assault by turn 3. I could have stretched it to turn 4 by huddling on the other side of the board, but I would have been boxed into my rhinos badly. I was trying to save as many KPs as possible.

PM-Conversation wrote: The rest of his list did not seem that impressive. Wytches will tie you up in CC, but that is about it.

Again, thats stuff that looks one way on paper but plays out another. His trueborn killed my havocs on turn 1. His guardian jetbikes were moving to avoid getting shot (but acted as objective grabbers) HIs warrior squad acted as a big shield for Eldrad, so I could not snipe him out.

His trueborn killed my havocs on turn 1

How dis 4 splinter cannons from across the board do that?

He was 36" away. 3 havocs where in range, and he killed all 3 of them. I stuffed the last 2 havocs into a rhino to prevent him from scoring the KP

< Taken by the void dragon. >

 Che-Vito wrote:


A Colossus or two would wreck face on this list. As would a Deathwing force (Vect/Eldrad/Baron in the back? Deep Strike on that side of the unit, and fire away.)

Eldrad is with the warriors

Baron can be up with the beasts

DS and try and kill vect
Vect LOS 2+, whatever gets through goes on vects 2++.
Better hope the str6+ gets through as the dude has 4 wounds and can heal.