rvd1ofakind wrote: Doing a damage chart. Turns out - vanguard are pretty amazing as long as they don't fight terminators. They are better antitank than Neutron
I noticed that too. But then I remembered that they have 18" guns, 6" move, and awful CC (no pistols or chainsword/choppa-equivalent). They will pretty much auto-lose against any other horde army; strong CC is what makes a horde army work.
Verviedi wrote: Hm, you think a list of 200 or so Blandguard with supporting elements just walking down the field and eating everything would work? My worry is being hamstrung by leadership and Heavy Bolters.
honestly i think unless you run units of 20+ worring about leadership is overrated. 200 blandguard walking advancing and firing would be a threat. for one that's a lot of bodies to get through even with battleshock.
If you're really going to try this, you would need 10x units. This is because you are going to be doing Graia for the Warlord trait, which is your only saving grace against another horde army. You need to basically form a big line of Dunecrawlers and multiple ranks of Vanguard stretched as long as possible within 3" of the Dunecrawler and 6" of the Dominus.
Verviedi wrote: Hmmm... how’s this look as a concept? You can plug in supporting elements as you wish.
Spoiler:
Red Tide (Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition) [110 PL, 1418pts]
Forge World Graia
As I mentioned above, you need a Dominus to hold the Warlord trait and pimp hat. You can have 60x Vanguard for each Crawler if you march in ranks and 100x Vanguard if you march in columns, but you will need to keep in mind that not all of your guys will be shooting if you're organized in columns, and it's super vulnerable to melee; any more and your guys will fall out of the Dominus's 6" auras. Anyhow, I would actually do 120 Vanguard with 2 Crawlers; use the Enginseers for deep strike denial. With the remaining points, consider a Crusader; you have a ton of CP to spam Ion Shields with. EDIT: I misgauged how many Crawlers you need; you probably need half as many as I first suggested.
Aaranis wrote: Love how they've been considered garbage in this thread for MONTHS and now suddenly you all think they're a hidden gem :/
several pages back i tried to tell yall..... Their stats guns, and weapon load outs mimick stormtroopers from IG. only difference is they can't deepstrike... except if you go lucius or stygies, now that's how i'd run them.
The problem with vanguard was never their shooting, it has always been their ability to get into range and not be dead from heavy bolters before getting into that range. Against Eldar, your opponent will just play keep away all game. Space marines will stay in cover and get 2+ saves. Tyranids will be mildly concerned by the volume of fire, but will overwhelm the vanguard with genestealer's moving 14" before charging. And vanguard don't do anything but die against daemon primarchs. If you could get 60 vanguard into range of magnus, yes, you could kill him in a turn if he didn't have the FNPWLT and -1 to be hit.
EDIT: that said, I am trying to work something up for LVO that does include more dudes and less robots. I do think that STYGIES / CADIA is a counter meta list that can trade shots with gunlines and absorb charges better than most think.
Wulfey wrote: The problem with vanguard was never their shooting, it has always been their ability to get into range and not be dead from heavy bolters before getting into that range. Against Eldar, your opponent will just play keep away all game. Space marines will stay in cover and get 2+ saves. Tyranids will be mildly concerned by the volume of fire, but will overwhelm the vanguard with genestealer's moving 14" before charging. And vanguard don't do anything but die against daemon primarchs. If you could get 60 vanguard into range of magnus, yes, you could kill him in a turn if he didn't have the FNPWLT and -1 to be hit.
This. Unless we get some defensive auras or more consistent mobility, I doubt we will ever be competitive as a horde army like Orcs or Tyranids.
Wulfey wrote: The problem with vanguard was never their shooting, it has always been their ability to get into range and not be dead from heavy bolters before getting into that range. Against Eldar, your opponent will just play keep away all game. Space marines will stay in cover and get 2+ saves. Tyranids will be mildly concerned by the volume of fire, but will overwhelm the vanguard with genestealer's moving 14" before charging. And vanguard don't do anything but die against daemon primarchs. If you could get 60 vanguard into range of magnus, yes, you could kill him in a turn if he didn't have the FNPWLT and -1 to be hit.
This. Unless we get some defensive auras or more consistent mobility, I doubt we will ever be competitive as a horde army like Orcs or Tyranids.
If you were going to do it, it would have to be a super hokey LUCIUS brigade.
TPD + 2x1 enginseer, 3x1 Onager, 6x10 vanguard (all reserved for half your CP), 3x1 CDS, some Dragoons to screen gunline, and hopefully some CADIA spearhead for the better WLT and some artillery. EDIT: arguably you would get the deepstrike CP back on a 5+ if you put the 5+ WL on the table first.
Or when we get transports we could use the WAAC tactic to end all WAAC tactics. Move the transport, disembark with all the vanguard, shoot with all the vanguard, charge with all the vanguard and the transports and if they wipe out the unit consolidate back into the transport. Cheesy as hell but strong.
kastelen wrote: Or when we get transports we could use the WAAC tactic to end all WAAC tactics. Move the transport, disembark with all the vanguard, shoot with all the vanguard, charge with all the vanguard and the transports and if they wipe out the unit consolidate back into the transport. Cheesy as hell but strong.
Well, you can't move the transport and then disembark in the same turn. So not that cheesy. Also, you can't embark/disembark a unit in the same turn. All that is on p183.
Also, folks.... Vanguard are still bad. Low leadership, fragile bodies on mandatory footsloggers with short-ranged guns. This is just all bad without some sort of buffing aura (Stygies is as close as we get) or transports (come on Fires!).
And here I am having just gotten 20 Vanguard and 10 secutarii hoplites (who will be more vanguard!) in a secondhand trade. Yippee!
Now, the question I have is that in their current build, these guys are geared as 2 10-man squads, one with three Arc Rifles, one with three Plasma Calivers. I've been running Lucius (corpuscarii Priests using the DS stratagem is the best proxy for my Thallax I've figured out so far) and I'm wondering if I should tear the weapons off these guys to make more Carbines, or whether I could get away with the heavy upgrades if I dropped them to ensure I get use out of the Calivers.
lash92 wrote: I wanna play 2-3 maxed out plasma Vanguard.
Would you also throw in a TPD for rerolling 1´s or better just add more guys?
TPD, unless you want your Plasma guys to all die to bad rolls.
But for the price of a TPD I could almost get another squad. Decisions decisons....
TPD is a force multiplier though. Re-rolling ones helps immensely for all of your dudes and allows you another slim chance to roll a 6 for that sweet, sweet 2 damage.
Also, he is way easier to build and paint than a whole additional squad of Vanguard who are so immensely tedious to build and paint. My god, those robes made me want to scream. I slathered them in liquid green stuff and I still have a few dudes with some seams no matter what I did. The whole AdMech collection is an exercise in patience - fragile, fiddly, and poorly designed for building all around. /rant
TPD is a force multiplier though. Re-rolling ones helps immensely for all of your dudes and allows you another slim chance to roll a 6 for that sweet, sweet 2 damage.
Also, he is way easier to build and paint than a whole additional squad of Vanguard who are so immensely tedious to build and paint. My god, those robes made me want to scream. I slathered them in liquid green stuff and I still have a few dudes with some seams no matter what I did. The whole AdMech collection is an exercise in patience - fragile, fiddly, and poorly designed for building all around. /rant
How would kit out the TPD than?
Haha I know where you are coming from I remember the first Skitarii I tried to assemble, I instantly broke this cable thing on the robe whlile trying to cut it off the sprue.
But you have to admit the models are looking amazing ;-)
Quick tip, use superglue for standard building, but use multiple thin coats of plastic glue for your robe seams, and file them down. Plastic glue will melt the plastic and help make the seam less awful. Liquid green stuff kinda sucks in my experience.
lash92 wrote: I wanna play 2-3 maxed out plasma Vanguard.
Would you also throw in a TPD for rerolling 1´s or better just add more guys?
TPD, unless you want your Plasma guys to all die to bad rolls.
But for the price of a TPD I could almost get another squad. Decisions decisons....
TPD is a force multiplier though. Re-rolling ones helps immensely for all of your dudes and allows you another slim chance to roll a 6 for that sweet, sweet 2 damage.
Also, he is way easier to build and paint than a whole additional squad of Vanguard who are so immensely tedious to build and paint. My god, those robes made me want to scream. I slathered them in liquid green stuff and I still have a few dudes with some seams no matter what I did. The whole AdMech collection is an exercise in patience - fragile, fiddly, and poorly designed for building all around. /rant
Oh man, if you ever want to make your eye twitch you should ask me for the photos I took of the secondhand guys I just got. Every single guy had a horrible gap in their midsection because they didn't properly pair the legs with the cloak and huge cloak gaps. I wasn't too annoyed because monetarily I traded way up (I traded a necron battleforce that I had purchased at a garage sale for 10$) but great googly moogly were they in horrible shape. The Dragoon was my favorite - the rider was incorrectly posed so that he was sitting back and he had the pistol bit plus the taser goad from the Vanguard box in his other hand, so he looked like a character in a video game who had glitched out and reverted to the basic "legs straight arms straight out" pose.
I had to completely render them down to bits and re-assemble.
Verviedi wrote:Quick tip, use superglue for standard building, but use multiple thin coats of plastic glue for your robe seams, and file them down. Plastic glue will melt the plastic and help make the seam less awful. Liquid green stuff kinda sucks in my experience.
I never use plastic glue. Ever. I have had to reposition stuff far too many times and that stuff bonds for life. LGS works fine for me, provided I am not on my last nerve and ready to trash my army (so... about 10 Skitarii or one Dragoon into my project).
If you look here, you can see that my seams are gone. It just took a few layers and patience. LGS and Tamiya putty are lifesavers.
the_scotsman wrote:
Oh man, if you ever want to make your eye twitch you should ask me for the photos I took of the secondhand guys I just got. Every single guy had a horrible gap in their midsection because they didn't properly pair the legs with the cloak and huge cloak gaps. I wasn't too annoyed because monetarily I traded way up (I traded a necron battleforce that I had purchased at a garage sale for 10$) but great googly moogly were they in horrible shape. The Dragoon was my favorite - the rider was incorrectly posed so that he was sitting back and he had the pistol bit plus the taser goad from the Vanguard box in his other hand, so he looked like a character in a video game who had glitched out and reverted to the basic "legs straight arms straight out" pose.
I had to completely render them down to bits and re-assemble.
So if I did want to build an army around Kataphron Servitors, is Agrippina the best forge world without question? I feel like I'd run out of CPs very very soon.
Or Stygies and lucius. DS and infiltrating them so you avoid Alpha Strike is half success and they bring nice defensive stats with ignore ap1 and -1 to hit.
I actually considered that as well - CP cost is much lower, but the units don't regenerate (though they can be repaired as always), and the Lucius relic lets the Warlord or whomever bop about as they DS even if he's one of my 50% on the board.
My list composition would probably be 3 max-size units of servitors plus two HQs of some kind, then fill the rest with Imperial Guard or something. I only really like the Servitors so bringing other units just for filler is bleh.
3 10-man (?) units is probably too many anyways
Next question: breachers or destroyers? Destroyers seem ace, while breachers are bupkis, but 3 attacks instead of 2 plus access to real CC weapons means they make up for that failure in shooting with real CC threat, at least it seems to me.
So, trying to get away from the Mars+Cawl mold, here's a new list I've worked out for semi-competitive games. I have some limitations here based on the bits I have access to (Skitarii loadouts are limited by what I own as well as the number of say the Electropriest unit as I only have 9 Thallax I'm using to proxy them)
Detachment 1: Battalion (Forgeworld Lucius. Ap-1 becomes AP0, Unique Stratagem 1cp to give any unit standard Deep Strike, can be used any number of times.)
HQ: Techpriest Dominus, Eradication Ray and Macrostubber, Solar Flare relic (Allows you to pick him up and deploy him via standard deep strike once per game)
Detachment 2: Battalion (Forgeworld Stygies VIII, shooting attacks from 12" or more are -1 to hit, unique Stratagem allows a unit to deploy 9" or more away from the enemy before the first turn)
HQ: Techpriest Dominus, Volkite Blaster and Macrostubber
Troops: Kataphron Breachers, arc rifles and arc claws
Troops: Kataphron Destroyers, Grav Cannons and Phosphor Blasters
Elites: 5x Sicarian Infiltrators, Taser Goads and Flechette Blasters
Fast Attack: 3x Sydonian Dragoons, Taser Lances and Phosphor Serpentas
Heavy Support: Onager Dunecrawler, 2x Stubbers and Neutron Laser
Heavy Support: Onager Dunecrawler, 2x Stubbers and Neutron Laser
Heavy Support: 2x Kastelan Robots, triple Phosphor Blaster
The idea is I have flexibility in what I want to deep strike/sneak strike and I'll be planning on spending most of my 9cp turn 1 on things like Doctrina Conqueror, Doctrina Dakkadakka, Swap Robots to Shootmode, and deep strike/sneak strike. If I face heavy skew either in the infantry direction or tank direction, I spend my CPs to strike in the specialist units meant to kill that type, and hopefully deal a pretty hefty blow turn 1 to allow the solid Stygies gunline with the Lucius screen just sacrificing itself to carry the game home.
After two weeks of testing I can only validate the same results.
Maybe if you play 10*10 vanguard you might feel hordish but you are not since any any even guard that will charge you you loose. You don't have any combo. Cc horde will come with hq +1 attack run charge or survive enough to charge etc etc.
If you make a guard battalion 30 bodies and get them Catachans and add a priest etc they can move move attack dice numbers or make them pew pew etc. Your superior vang die from a breeze.
If your looking for horde armies don't play ad mech. Imo.
On to other results. My Dragoons swept tables and tables what a unit. From orcs till d eldar troops to vehicles . What a unit. Outrider stygies two balistarii 4 Dragoons what great games . I could easily do them even more.2*4 or even 3*4 . Extremely good but so far I'm fine with 6 of them.
Stygies breachers superb can't shoot but will hold their ground till the end . Or till enemy decides to waste good shots on them. Can't die from small arms ! I use them from now on.
Dominus dominus and dominus won't use enginseer again. Enginseer is a tax trash the end. Dominus with eradication warlord or with a relic can heal buff etc. Better than the trash...
Infiltrators unless I play solo Mars not even close to good.
Priests v v good. Hard to play but cheap and can be a force. If played right can be a force enemy can't ignore and cheap.
No Robots no fun. 2* neutron stygies 2* Icarus Mars seems to be the best for me now and current meta. Ofc 4+ Robots. I use 4 cause I like options and 4 are enough.
If only got 3 onagers 2-1 or 3 neutron depending on list.
Lasc balistarii won games for me. After game passed 3 rounds fast alive units become extremely valuable . 2d6 adv and then shoot even 5+ is extreme in round 4+ in any game. And their 10" move ensures stygies -1 hit is there.
Rust trash. Troop upgrades special weapons etc waste of points.
I'm ad mech and my heavy vehicle lists seems to bring problems to my enemies.
Battalions
Dominus
Enginseer
Breacher
Ranger
Vang.
Seems valid and all options in list. Cawl Robots Onagers ironstriders priest rock in any combination your playstyle likes.
Verviedi wrote: Quick tip, use superglue for standard building, but use multiple thin coats of plastic glue for your robe seams, and file them down. Plastic glue will melt the plastic and help make the seam less awful. Liquid green stuff kinda sucks in my experience.
Super glue > plastic glue. I use the Gorilla Glue brand super glue. It dries quickly, but not instantly and is not watery.
I find Liquid Green Stuff useful for adding texture to things for stuff like muddy boots and robes.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Spera wrote: Or Stygies and lucius. DS and infiltrating them so you avoid Alpha Strike is half success and they bring nice defensive stats with ignore ap1 and -1 to hit.
Unfortunately, you can't dodge alpha strike with the Stygies stratagem. But you do get to move before you charge.
My competitive lines have transformed into guard maxed out deployed . Behind them vanguard 5 man stock . And breachers or rangers third line with -1 to get hit. Same on the other 2-3 sides or an arrow Head. So it's 30 infantry 3*10 guard with a commander in a midish area for orders on all 3 units. Etc.
Rangers I try to get them snipers in my back field screener back row of points allow. Seems to be working fine. Breachers hold vs orcs for me so seems valid. If more shooting comes along then again their usage remains. If I face even more agreesive cc enemy Dragoons line up as well so it would look like guards men in z shape defence breachers front Dragoons sides behind guard infantry and snipers rangers as back up field side deep strike deny. So far this seems the most valid options.
1*3 breachers
2*5 vanguard
1*5 sniprangers
For me and my playstyle when I want dakka wall. But I don't use more than 4 robots 3-5 Dragoons 3-4 Onagers and I take dominus not enginseer if possible. That enginseer suck. Badly tax tax. While my 1-2 dominus act as cc units making breachers or Dragoons supplement. Healers in lines etc. And warlord even find Cawl there.
I'm starting to abandon the guard strat with company commanders etc! Our 6+ relic works in both enemy and ours command points and It seems my lists can work with out soup.
Start picking up canticles for your fights . Use them wisely roll later on. Unless you play solo Mars.
Automatically Appended Next Post: More and more I see a pattern for ad mech design to go second. Invest in toughness good saves rolls etc. More and more I don't like guard easy killed etc. Seems like we can make some smart combinations . And after the recent changes I don't consider guard giving me enough tools. While I can work better with dogmas . Seems like for me and how I play . Reduced troops to min. Start using better deployment started to use dominus to split forces and play second . Deploy in the back line for the table move shoot use all los buildings etc. Don't need bs 4+ don't need 10 wounds 5+ or simply put I prefer the setup I said. It has started to work for me and I prefer it if possible to single ad mech lists. A bs 4+ 108 point basilisk does not make me go crazy atm.
Someone who wants to remove 30 Guardsmen in one turn can also remove 15 Skitarii. I think the purpose of troops is well-served in either case.
The best protection is distance. Deploying as far away from your opponent is always your greatest advantage. It's also why I prefer Guard: 48" heavy weapons, which let you hit the enemy from afar without going into lasgun range. Basilisks are interesting because they are counter-artillery and great backfield campers.
Suzuteo wrote: Someone who wants to remove 30 Guardsmen in one turn can also remove 15 Skitarii. I think the purpose of troops is well-served in either case.
The best protection is distance. Deploying as far away from your opponent is always your greatest advantage. It's also why I prefer Guard: 48" heavy weapons, which let you hit the enemy from afar without going into lasgun range. Basilisks are interesting because they are counter-artillery and great backfield campers.
This also means creating distance. This means having a fodder unit to act as an infiltrator/deep strike buffer. I learned that the hard way once via Da Jump and having to fend off 30 Boyz that, thankfully, didn't chew through my Fulgurites (somehow) fast enough to get into my Robots (good spacing helped). Ever since, making sure I leave opponents with deployment shenanigans as little room/options as possible is paramount. Every turn we are not shooting, we are losing.
I have been thinking hard about cheap guard brigades and synergies with admech. I think there are massive synergies between a basilisk/mortar CADIA brigade and a plasma stacked LUCIUS battalion. Imagine this deployment, I put down my 5+/Relic of Cadia WL down first. Then my next 7 drops are LUCIUS 1CP deepstrikes. RAW I get the 5+ refund because 'while your warlord is on the battlefield' and he is on the battlefield. I start with 15 CP base, and spend 7 with 2 refunded. That puts me at 10 CP to start the game (with more refunds) and with 7 admech units in deepstrike reserve. Also, enhanced data tether is now 5 points and is an easy source of +2 to hit on one of my plasma teams. I think this list could be a meta buster because no one really prepares for mass infantry, and when they do they do it with -1 weapons (which LUCIUS ignores). And now that infiltrators are 22 points a piece, I think they have a role to play as 220 points that generate 50 wrath of mars shots (this is actually more efficient than the robots). This list would have the CP to spend the +1 hit modifier and WRATH OF MARS every turn. I can also Overlapping Fields of FIre hard targets when necessary. Only the Enginseer starts on the board and hey, what do you know, he can fix the basilisks if they have wounds and I have the CP to double fix them if needed.
EDIT: the extra vanguard squad and the infiltrators could be turned into a LUCIUS/STYGIES 4x1 dragoon squad. That would take some pressure off the shooting phase and give me a melee threat and a +1 leadership bubble for the troops.
MARS (-1 auxiliary) 10 Taser infiltrators - 220 [16+4+2 a piece]
CADIA budget Brigade 3x Commanders (orders and WLT and relic holders) - 90 3x Astropaths (still good at 30 points) - 90 3x Flamer scout sentinels (space out enemy deepstrikes, make space for my guys) - 162 6x Guardsmen (1 mortar per) - 270 3x Basilisks - 324 3x Mortar Teams (hide with commanders, get full reroll hit orders) - 99
EDIT2: I actually think just LUCIUS and CADIA is better
CADIA + LUCIUS + MARS
Spoiler:
LUCIUS TPD - 127 Enginseer - 47 10Vanguard 3P/Tether - 80 - 42 - 5 [tethers give me +2 to hit, breaks down hard targets] 10Vanguard 3P/Tether - 80 - 42 - 5 10Ranger 3P/Omni - 70 - 42 - 7 [omnies are better at killing infantry in cover, which is ranger role] 10Ranger 3P/Omni - 70 - 42 - 7 4x1 Dragoons (deepstrike) - 272
CADIA budget Brigade 3x Commanders (orders and WLT and relic holders) - 90 3x Astropaths (still good at 30 points) - 90 3x Flamer scout sentinels (space out enemy deepstrikes, make space for my guys) - 162 6x Guardsmen (1 mortar per) - 270 3x Basilisks - 324 4x Mortar Teams (hide with commanders, get full reroll hit orders) - 132
Suzuteo wrote: Someone who wants to remove 30 Guardsmen in one turn can also remove 15 Skitarii. I think the purpose of troops is well-served in either case.
The best protection is distance. Deploying as far away from your opponent is always your greatest advantage. It's also why I prefer Guard: 48" heavy weapons, which let you hit the enemy from afar without going into lasgun range. Basilisks are interesting because they are counter-artillery and great backfield campers.
This also means creating distance. This means having a fodder unit to act as an infiltrator/deep strike buffer. I learned that the hard way once via Da Jump and having to fend off 30 Boyz that, thankfully, didn't chew through my Fulgurites (somehow) fast enough to get into my Robots (good spacing helped). Ever since, making sure I leave opponents with deployment shenanigans as little room/options as possible is paramount. Every turn we are not shooting, we are losing.
Yup. Which is also why the Goondozer unit and Crawler scoot-and-shoot is useful as well.
Wulfey wrote: I have been thinking hard about cheap guard brigades and synergies with admech. I think there are massive synergies between a basilisk/mortar CADIA brigade and a plasma stacked LUCIUS battalion. Imagine this deployment, I put down my 5+/Relic of Cadia WL down first. Then my next 7 drops are LUCIUS 1CP deepstrikes. RAW I get the 5+ refund because 'while your warlord is on the battlefield' and he is on the battlefield. I start with 15 CP base, and spend 7 with 2 refunded. That puts me at 10 CP to start the game (with more refunds) and with 7 admech units in deepstrike reserve. Also, enhanced data tether is now 5 points and is an easy source of +2 to hit on one of my plasma teams. I think this list could be a meta buster because no one really prepares for mass infantry, and when they do they do it with -1 weapons (which LUCIUS ignores). And now that infiltrators are 22 points a piece, I think they have a role to play as 220 points that generate 50 wrath of mars shots (this is actually more efficient than the robots). This list would have the CP to spend the +1 hit modifier and WRATH OF MARS every turn. I can also Overlapping Fields of FIre hard targets when necessary. Only the Enginseer starts on the board and hey, what do you know, he can fix the basilisks if they have wounds and I have the CP to double fix them if needed.
EDIT: the extra vanguard squad and the infiltrators could be turned into a LUCIUS/STYGIES 4x1 dragoon squad. That would take some pressure off the shooting phase and give me a melee threat and a +1 leadership bubble for the troops.
MARS (-1 auxiliary)
10 Taser infiltrators - 220 [16+4+2 a piece]
CADIA budget Brigade
3x Commanders (orders and WLT and relic holders) - 90
3x Astropaths (still good at 30 points) - 90
3x Flamer scout sentinels (space out enemy deepstrikes, make space for my guys) - 162
6x Guardsmen (1 mortar per) - 270
3x Basilisks - 324
3x Mortar Teams (hide with commanders, get full reroll hit orders) - 99
This is a much more likely horde army, but how do you plan on resolving the CC problem? Horde armies work because they can absorb losses and get into CC, usually while the artillery sits pretty. Aside from your HQs, none of your guys even have a real melee weapon, pistol, or way to handle that moment when Boyz or Genestealers just charge straight into you.
Suzuteo wrote: Someone who wants to remove 30 Guardsmen in one turn can also remove 15 Skitarii. I think the purpose of troops is well-served in either case.
The best protection is distance. Deploying as far away from your opponent is always your greatest advantage. It's also why I prefer Guard: 48" heavy weapons, which let you hit the enemy from afar without going into lasgun range. Basilisks are interesting because they are counter-artillery and great backfield campers.
This also means creating distance. This means having a fodder unit to act as an infiltrator/deep strike buffer. I learned that the hard way once via Da Jump and having to fend off 30 Boyz that, thankfully, didn't chew through my Fulgurites (somehow) fast enough to get into my Robots (good spacing helped). Ever since, making sure I leave opponents with deployment shenanigans as little room/options as possible is paramount. Every turn we are not shooting, we are losing.
Yup. Which is also why the Goondozer unit and Crawler scoot-and-shoot is useful as well.
Wulfey wrote: I have been thinking hard about cheap guard brigades and synergies with admech. I think there are massive synergies between a basilisk/mortar CADIA brigade and a plasma stacked LUCIUS battalion. Imagine this deployment, I put down my 5+/Relic of Cadia WL down first. Then my next 7 drops are LUCIUS 1CP deepstrikes. RAW I get the 5+ refund because 'while your warlord is on the battlefield' and he is on the battlefield. I start with 15 CP base, and spend 7 with 2 refunded. That puts me at 10 CP to start the game (with more refunds) and with 7 admech units in deepstrike reserve. Also, enhanced data tether is now 5 points and is an easy source of +2 to hit on one of my plasma teams. I think this list could be a meta buster because no one really prepares for mass infantry, and when they do they do it with -1 weapons (which LUCIUS ignores). And now that infiltrators are 22 points a piece, I think they have a role to play as 220 points that generate 50 wrath of mars shots (this is actually more efficient than the robots). This list would have the CP to spend the +1 hit modifier and WRATH OF MARS every turn. I can also Overlapping Fields of FIre hard targets when necessary. Only the Enginseer starts on the board and hey, what do you know, he can fix the basilisks if they have wounds and I have the CP to double fix them if needed.
EDIT: the extra vanguard squad and the infiltrators could be turned into a LUCIUS/STYGIES 4x1 dragoon squad. That would take some pressure off the shooting phase and give me a melee threat and a +1 leadership bubble for the troops.
MARS (-1 auxiliary) 10 Taser infiltrators - 220 [16+4+2 a piece]
CADIA budget Brigade 3x Commanders (orders and WLT and relic holders) - 90 3x Astropaths (still good at 30 points) - 90 3x Flamer scout sentinels (space out enemy deepstrikes, make space for my guys) - 162 6x Guardsmen (1 mortar per) - 270 3x Basilisks - 324 3x Mortar Teams (hide with commanders, get full reroll hit orders) - 99
[/spoiler] This is a much more likely horde army, but how do you plan on resolving the CC problem? Horde armies work because they can absorb losses and get into CC, usually while the artillery sits pretty. Aside from your HQs, none of your guys even have a real melee weapon, pistol, or way to handle that moment when Boyz or Genestealers just charge straight into you.
I have 60 guardsmen as a screen. The idea would be that they hit the screen, what lives falls back, and then the deep strike and artillery come in and clear out the entire midfield. A tooled up skitarii squad should drop 10-15 boys/genestealers a turn and I am whoring mortars proper. I put up a second list which I think is superior that includes a 4 Dragoon goondozer specifically to shore up the melee weakness. I want to run admech, but if I was less admech inclined then a 6 strong Bullgryn squad for 252 points would do the same job as the dragoons. EDIT: bullgryns with a priest put out ~35 str7, -1, 2dam swings at 3+ on the charge [21 expected hits]. A goondozer does something like 22 expected hits (~30 if you are rerolling 1s). I think the bullgryns are tougher overall and can similarly 'deep strike' using the dagger of tallarn.
So you're basically saying your entire army needs to commit to handling the "clash of screens." That is a tough sell if you put yourself in the shoes of another player. I mean, take Orks as an example. I will likely have 9 Kannons and a squadron of Dakkajets. I see that my Boyz can jump right into the enemy line, which forces you to shoot them. However, I won't have to worry about shooting Skitarii with my heavy weapons; I will be shooting your Mortars. In the end, I will lose most of my screen, you will lose most of your artillery, and your screen is either stuck in CC that they cannot win or falling back. Sounds like I have a huge edge in the coming battles.
Furthermore, after you fall back, how do you handle Da Jump + Ere We Go or Hormagaunt's ability to move 8" and consolidate 6"?
Suzuteo wrote: So you're basically saying your entire army needs to commit to handling the "clash of screens." That is a tough sell if you put yourself in the shoes of another player. I mean, take Orks as an example. I will likely have 9 Kannons and a squadron of Dakkajets. I see that my Boyz can jump right into the enemy line, which forces you to shoot them. However, I won't have to worry about shooting Skitarii with my heavy weapons; I will be shooting your Mortars. In the end, I will lose most of my screen, you will lose most of your artillery, and your screen is either stuck in CC that they cannot win or falling back. Sounds like I have a huge edge in the coming battles.
Furthermore, after you fall back, how do you handle Da Jump + Ere We Go or Hormagaunt's ability to move 8" and consolidate 6"?
I think the 60 guardsmen and 40 skitarii combo is about as much dakka as an IMPERIUM list can possibly generate. Against a true melee horde army (mass guants, mass boys, mass genestealers), they won't be able to consolidate into the basilisks if I place the 60 guardsmen right, and the 40 skitarii are guaranteed to get a round of shooting off thanks to deepstrike. Yeah, I can't keep the mortar teams up against Kannons, but I have basilisks to return fire against the Kannons. The real debate here is whether 40 skitarii + TPD + 4x is better than 5 robots + Cawl. The robots can consistently drop 50 boys a turn when they get fed strategems. I think my 40 skitarii can drop a comparable amount but can play to the mission and pick at cagey opponents in a much stronger way. If my opponent has an answer to 5 robots + cawl, I just lose. I think 40 skitarii + TPD + 4x mortars is more flexible, and better even against the horde armies. EDIT: every imaginable 5x robot list has less screen than the 60+40 list, and the robots list autoloses as soon as something consolidates into the robots.
The points that used to be onagers is now the CADIA brigade, which sucks. Onagers really are great tanks point for point, but again, against a horde army I would rather have the brigade of shooting and rely on my skitariis to knock off the hard targets. The Onagers really kicked ass against hard targets hiding on the other side of the board behind a building and behind a screen. My list will struggle with a castle opponent because I don't have Onagers.
EDIT: Adding 1 neutron Onager would cost me pretty much all my mortars. I don't think that is a good trade.
On the subject of Tyranids, admech is well and trully countered by Tyranids. But I would take my 60+40 list over the dakkabots any day versus Tyranids. My CADIA brigade has a whole lot of non-LOS firepower to trade shots with the hive guard, and I have 100 T3 bodies that are quite happy to shoot into 120 T3/T4 guants/genestealers. Remember that I have scout sentinels in the brigade to scout up 9" and push back the deepstrikes for the first turn. The Dakkabots would be good for killing hive tyrants that fly into line of sight, but that is it. A cagey and/or good Tyranid player will counter the Dakkabots.
The thing though is that your screen is more like the core of your army in this list. But 60 Guardsmen and 40 Skitarii don't present as much a threat as 120 Boyz or Gaunts. =\
Definitely stick to the Mortars. Another horde army would be your biggest threat.
Suzuteo wrote: The thing though is that your screen is more like the core of your army in this list. But 60 Guardsmen and 40 Skitarii don't present as much a threat as 120 Boyz or Gaunts. =\
Definitely stick to the Mortars. Another horde army would be your biggest threat.
What are you thinking our answer to the new Tyranid codex is? Tyranids are crazy dominant in all the battlereports I have seen. Then have 30 man fearless blobs and double shooting 36" artillery. And they have the possibility of guaranteed first turn charges from the swarmlord. And they have T7 hivetyrants with 4++ and FNP psychic powers. Cawl + Dakkabots can plausibly drop a hive tyrant with Wrath of Mars, but tying up 800 points in models that can't ever shoot the non-LOS or 48" range Tyranid artillery sounds like a recipe for disaster. EDIT: it is worth noting that every flavor of CHAOS is weaker now due to malefic lord nerfs and wider use of RELIC OF CADIA. As much as daemon primarchs are bad ... they are made weaker relative to what they were 3 months ago.
It's tough to prepare against because there are so many different threats. Makes me fear what will happen when Orcs also get their codex.
Anyhow, Dakkabots seem to be the answer. They have a huge advantage in that they can shoot through that ridiculous cover bonus. Even Mortars struggle to do anything to Tyranids at this point because of that alone.
Suzuteo wrote: It's tough to prepare against because there are so many different threats. Makes me fear what will happen when Orcs also get their codex.
Anyhow, Dakkabots seem to be the answer. They have a huge advantage in that they can shoot through that ridiculous cover bonus. Even Mortars struggle to do anything to Tyranids at this point because of that alone.
Relic of Cadia needs a rules errata.
Alright, so if creative stuff isn't that great, I can save myself a lot of time and money by going with my template list. I only have to paint 3 models (the basilisks) for this list to be ready for LVO. It just feels so limited. Also, Tyranids and Daemon primarchs have made the Icarus worse than it was. 5 of its shots are str6, -2, which is a poop tier profile against T7, 3+/4++. I know how to play the list below. I get what it does and what it does well. It is tight on CP and has 30 gaurds and 4 dragoons as a screen between things that can't fall back out of combat. And this list can't get across the map to take things because the dragoons and the guardsmen are going to die for sure. Is this really the best that we can do?
Cawl- cawl is an expensive drain at this point that only really hits a handful of units. And can’t even affect half the army
Neutronager- just so much meh. For the same price you can get between 2-3 lascannons imbedded in 20-30 ablative wounds. Or a 2d6str 10 ap -2 weapon you can fire from cover that does on average one wound less but needs no los. Or for just 20 points more than the neutronager you can get 6 lascannon in hwt
Dragoons - I mean really what are these doing that ratlings or scout sentinels do almost as well? Cc? We’re a gunline. Hell the armored sentinel for the same price has t6 6w and a lascannon
Dakkabots- theses are great but as stated above realistically crawls overpriced if he’s just affecting these guy
In short: There replacements for the dragoons that work more synergisticly, cawls use continues to decrease with every point of guard you put in the board which is more and more each list. And neutronagers are decent but not amazing
Conclusion: it really is time to let the army rip. There’s one good unit, dakkabots, and they can either be supplanted with stuff in the guard codex or taken as an aux detachment.
gendoikari87 wrote: Cawl- cawl is an expensive drain at this point that only really hits a handful of units. And can’t even affect half the army
Neutronager- just so much meh. For the same price you can get between 2-3 lascannons imbedded in 20-30 ablative wounds. Or a 2d6str 10 ap -2 weapon you can fire from cover that does on average one wound less but needs no los. Or for just 20 points more than the neutronager you can get 6 lascannon in hwt
Dragoons - I mean really what are these doing that ratlings or scout sentinels do almost as well? Cc? We’re a gunline. Hell the armored sentinel for the same price has t6 6w and a lascannon
Dakkabots- theses are great but as stated above realistically crawls overpriced if he’s just affecting these guy
In short: There replacements for the dragoons that work more synergisticly, cawls use continues to decrease with every point of guard you put in the board which is more and more each list. And neutronagers are decent but not amazing
Conclusion: it really is time to let the army rip. There’s one good unit, dakkabots, and they can either be supplanted with stuff in the guard codex or taken as an aux detachment.
RIP Mechanicus.
Cawl helps Robots the best. Which is what he does here. With the re-roll and Mortal wounds from Wrath, they are one of the best shooting units in the game.
Neutronager is solid as a rock - the high strength, the AP, and the high damage make it a no-brainer. Being able to buff it with Protector Doctrina is gravy.
Really, that is what you take AdMech for. Those units. Our brand of soup isn't bad. Guard can't dish out mortals like we can with Wrathbots, so we have the edge there. Goondozer is added for mobility and while it doesn't benefit from Cawl's re-rolls, being able to almost always have Shroudpsalm does help them and when they to get into combat, you can toss on Invocation to bump their strength to help make wounding T8 stuff easier or Chant for the re-roll 1's to up chances of exploding attacks.
I think AdMech is RIP status, but AdMech soup is viable second tier material.
Yes but the question is are neutronagers better than what’s available in guard. Are dragoons better than what’s in guard? I don’t think so. And I don’t see tournaments bearing that out either. And they probably won’t until guard bodies are no longer 4ppm. Until then the ablative wounds the guard add is just an overwhelming barrier. Take the kastelan. For 10 points more you get two squads of guard with lascannons. Or just three bare squads. That’s 60 attacks at 12” and 30 wounds. .... or 120 with orders
Guard seriously should be bumped back up to 5ppm at minimum
gendoikari87 wrote: Yes but the question is are neutronagers better than what’s available in guard. Are dragoons better than what’s in guard? I don’t think so. And I don’t see tournaments bearing that out either. And they probably won’t until guard bodies are no longer 4ppm. Until then the ablative wounds the guard add is just an overwhelming barrier. Take the kastelan. For 10 points more you get two squads of guard with lascannons. Or just three bare squads. That’s 60 attacks at 12” and 30 wounds. .... or 120 with orders
Guard seriously should be bumped back up to 5ppm at minimum
This is getting into apples/oranges though. Neutronagers don't exactly compare to a Russ. Kastelans don't really compare to the squads. They aren't doing the same things the same ways. I think our best units are still solid choices over Guard choices. We do things they can't do. Especially Robots with the mortal wounds. We are one of the few factions that can nuke a daemon Primarch in one round. That is a big selling point for taking AdMech soup.
Maybe it’s apples and oranges, but the top winners are guard chaos daemons a few inquisition soups, and ravenguard(and ravenguard esque things)
Automatically Appended Next Post: The core of the problem is admech is a mess. Most other armies have a strategic theme and focus. Orks are hoard cc specialist. BA are elite cc specialists, guard are the quintessential gunline, ect.
Admech is just all over the place with very little synergy. Worse it’s trying to be guard but elite guard kind of. But scions exist so....
If gw want to fix admech they need to first address that problem
Automatically Appended Next Post: If I were at gw I’d make guard the ranged slow mobile army. Everything is bs 3+ and assault. Skitarii get assault 2 ap -1 lasgun with 2 attacks at ap -1. The advance, there’s nothing that dissaudes then from advancing. They are robots and won’t be stopped, slowed down or distracted.
Make the onagers feet power fists. Let the robots march half speed and fire twice. Instead of a 6+ invuln everything gets fnp 6+
Or better yet just let everything fire in the fight phase instead of fight
1) play solo mech
2) not use Dragoons as screener.
And yes I use priests and they eventually decimated Ork better than any other. That's why I got Dragoons and staff priest s in stygies to have options when I need to have more screener more counter units.
But my experience and I don't use math for it is that atm the only effective meat shields are rangers and infantry guard.
Breachers Dragoons and vanguard benefit more as second row defenders .and since I can't do only that vanguard go in front as well (nice overwatch) .
So to finish with the breacher Dragoons bla bla.
I didn't say Dragoons are not the best or guard not good.but.
I can defend my lines with cheap points that include.
Most likely a stygies battalion or outrider. That include breachers.
And if solo ad mech dominus stygies my warlord.
You most likely find 2*5 rangers 1*5 vanguard .rangers in front vanguard second line counter chrge with breachers and enginseers for healing and counter unit dominus and priests.
On my side second line will be lascblistrii. And again cheap troops that will 100% die. There is not been one game that rangers vnguard did not die till the last man.
The new edition split fire makes them dead. Flamers lascannons pistols cc you name it? They are in front and their job is to die so other units survive.
T5 troop 120 points second row along with hq and counters -1 to hit 50% won't even get shot from my enemies since they try to get them melle. And why shoot breacher. Sub par heavy arc rifle bs4+. Well guess what not only they get healed not only they semi ignore low shooting either with -1 for hordes or T5 or even their 3+ or better save. Most of the time. Either way if enemy uses big guns on them won't shoot other targets or just can't kill them one shot is enough for me to be a screener. And. Good one.
Yes if I face orks I LL use drgoons ofc. But I don't want my Dragoons all games in defence . That's it. Troops obj secure get buffed with stratagem for extra survival. Now if you don't have 3-4 onagers and you wonder to take breacher or an Onagers ofc onager. But if you don't want to play 30 guard and prefer a more elitish style army I believe 1*5 rangers 1*5 vanguard 1*3 breacher with canticles properly used can defend equally if not better. Or even if they defend a bit worse they definitely shoot better save better and can do more things as stygies on the table.
Solo ad mech I play and seems viable. Now if you ask me what would be a bit more optimal I'd say 10 man tether vnguard graia then 10 man rangers tether arc and then brechers keeping balistarii close for leadership buff if you take omnispex. Rest plasma snipers etc re nice but die easily. Extremely easy for me to invest so much. 92 points snipers rock and can be used backfield stygies depending on your lists.
If I take 60 guard troops 3 basilisk 2 companies etc. Then play guard . Get LL the tools needed go for it. Don't need ad mech.
So, guys, I'd like to take a Tech-Priest Enginseer with the Autocaduceus in support of my Superheavy Tank Company, and he needs to be in a mechanicus detachment to access the Stratagems so he can use Tech-Adept to get 2 repair rolls per turn. He'd also be my Warlord, for Necromechanic, to give a superheavy tank 4-8 wounds back in one turn.
My question is: what sort of force should be built around him that's fun & interesting & engaging? I like Kataphrons but I doubt a lowly enginseer would have many with him, and the regular elite servitors are badly overpriced.
Guard hit on 4+ los yes but.. many use -1 to hit defence now so guard shooting is bad for me.
Los is great but I don't like it. Nor they have 5+ invu reroll 1s and shroud for your tanks . With Cawl you got one of the best dakkalines in the game. I don't why Rip ad mech. Might now be extremely good but it's definitely competitive as shooting army. How you manage to keep shooting is the issue. If I shoot 3-4 turns it's tabled enemy. Robots Onagers Cawl ironstriders both Dragoons and balistarii snipers some times priests some others etremely good shooting.
Yoda79 wrote: Well the whole point was to change two things.
1) play solo mech
Solo ad mech I play and seems viable. Now if you ask me what would be a bit more optimal I'd say 10 man tether vnguard graia then 10 man rangers tether arc and then brechers keeping balistarii close for leadership buff if you take omnispex. Rest plasma snipers etc re nice but die easily. Extremely easy for me to invest so much. 92 points snipers rock and can be used backfield stygies depending on your lists.
If I take 60 guard troops 3 basilisk 2 companies etc. Then play guard . Get LL the tools needed go for it. Don't need ad mech.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I am actually quite happy your enjoying things Yoda. Have a good weekend
CADIA 2xCompCom + 3x10 guards + 1x3 Basilisks (this list can be 12 drops)
There is the competitive AdMech list post-CA.
Yeah, I mean, I have the models and it is a very straightforwards list. No shenanigans. Either you can crush my lines and eat my robots, or my robots blow you off the table. The big debate is whether to run the dragoons as STYGIES in a third detachment (I think this is yes but I hate the bookkeeping and I don't want to repaint my models), and when I should be spending a CP to get Kurov's aquila on the second commander. I think the answer is if my opponent has more than 6CP.
And to the above on Onagers, try pricing out other tanks in other armies. The neutronager is 140 points. Comparable lascannon armed tanks are 200 points and they don't have 5++invul saves and powerOfTheMachineSpirit. And Cawl's reroll ALL hit rolls aura is seriously boss in a meta rife with negative modifiers to be hit. Onagers are also extremely flexible at moving and shooting as most opponents don't think lascannon platforms can move and shoot at full BS. On top of this admech has the best ability to repair their tanks. Neutronagers are subject to cold spells on key dice rolls, but they are flatly devastating to things that are across the board and think they can't be hit and don't have an invul save (every non-LOS artillery platform). If Lascannon armed guards squads were really that awesome I think you see more of them. What you do see a lot of is mortars because they are cheap and provide firepower that your heavier vehicles can't provide.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So, guys, I'd like to take a Tech-Priest Enginseer with the Autocaduceus in support of my Superheavy Tank Company, and he needs to be in a mechanicus detachment to access the Stratagems so he can use Tech-Adept to get 2 repair rolls per turn. He'd also be my Warlord, for Necromechanic, to give a superheavy tank 4-8 wounds back in one turn.
My question is: what sort of force should be built around him that's fun & interesting & engaging? I like Kataphrons but I doubt a lowly enginseer would have many with him, and the regular elite servitors are badly overpriced.
You will want 2 troop units so you can put them in a patrol. I think you usually have around 500 pts to work with right? I would do a 5 man squad of rangers with 2 TAs, and a 3 man kataphron squad with grav / flamers, plasma is better with rerolls. A 10 man squad of rangers might not be bad for screening as the enginseer is very fragile.
If Peltasts ever make a return and get thier shrouding super heavy ability they will prob be an awesome choice as well.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So, guys, I'd like to take a Tech-Priest Enginseer with the Autocaduceus in support of my Superheavy Tank Company, and he needs to be in a mechanicus detachment to access the Stratagems so he can use Tech-Adept to get 2 repair rolls per turn. He'd also be my Warlord, for Necromechanic, to give a superheavy tank 4-8 wounds back in one turn.
My question is: what sort of force should be built around him that's fun & interesting & engaging? I like Kataphrons but I doubt a lowly enginseer would have many with him, and the regular elite servitors are badly overpriced.
Consider either:
LUCIUS battalion (287)
2x Enginseers - 47 + 47, make 1 the WL with Necromechanic and give him the 30" teleport relic or the reroll repairs relic
2x5 rangers hiding out of LOS on an objective if possible, otherwise body escort the enginseers
1x10 vanguard with 3x plasma and 1x datatecher for possible deepstrike of +2 to hit plasma rerolling 1s if you use the shooting canticle
SYGIES battalion (202)
2x Enginseers - Necromechanic + Reroll repairs relic
3x5 rangers hiding out of LOS and using the -1 to be hit to survive, keep 1 group near the enginseers
I played a game against new Dark Angels yesterday, and I've got to say we really get trashed by every new codex release. The game was a close defeat for me (3-4), so it was balanced, but there is one thing bugging me off. Azrael gives a better reroll aura than Cawl, first, and pays less points for it (around 180 if I remember it well). He gives a reroll to ALL failed hit rolls, including Overwatch and CC, and a 4++ save to boot. Now at least they don't have an equivalent to Kastelan in ways of volume of fire, but 10 Hellblasters are scary enough when getting rerolls + plasma stratagem for +1D, so when you place more units in his bubble you have an army that puts out almost the same dakka as AdMech, but with a complete codex with fast units and Terminators, and transports to boot.
Every new codex release just hits the nail harder on the AdMech codex, so I really hope GW have a plan to even things out before I sell my army. I don't even count on Fires of Cyraxus anymore, because, budget-wise FW will empty my pockets fast. I'm also afraid that with their post-CA policy towards FW units (which all got pretty points increase) we'll have either units that are overcosted from day one, or just get nerfed one month later because some tourney players tabled everyone with them.
The changes need to be from new plastic sprues for more units (more HQs, customisable Tech-Priests, Transports mainly) and codex changes in both point values and datasheets.
I played a game against new Dark Angels yesterday, and I've got to say we really get trashed by every new codex release. The game was a close defeat for me (3-4), so it was balanced, but there is one thing bugging me off. Azrael gives a better reroll aura than Cawl, first, and pays less points for it (around 180 if I remember it well). He gives a reroll to ALL failed hit rolls, including Overwatch and CC, and a 4++ save to boot. Now at least they don't have an equivalent to Kastelan in ways of volume of fire, but 10 Hellblasters are scary enough when getting rerolls + plasma stratagem for +1D, so when you place more units in his bubble you have an army that puts out almost the same dakka as AdMech, but with a complete codex with fast units and Terminators, and transports to boot.
Every new codex release just hits the nail harder on the AdMech codex, so I really hope GW have a plan to even things out before I sell my army. I don't even count on Fires of Cyraxus anymore, because, budget-wise FW will empty my pockets fast. I'm also afraid that with their post-CA policy towards FW units (which all got pretty points increase) we'll have either units that are overcosted from day one, or just get nerfed one month later because some tourney players tabled everyone with them.
Yeah Dark Angel is a tough one, especially now with the codex. I have to "infiltrate" my kataphrons destroyers and shootout my opponent's hellblasters and use my dakka bots to pew out the remaining and other mahreens. but as soon as the metal boxes move outta of the Azrael's bubble they are toast. My opponent also brought the annoying talon thing that grants -1 to hit. but I sniped it out turn 1 with neutron laser.
Fear not, admech is not that that. I tabled a couple of players with my admech.
Also infiltrate your electro-priest and make the charge and kill something to get 3++/5++, then watch ur opponent rage as a blob of blue man group prances through their line wacking their pricey tanks/infantry apart with nothing but their rave batons.
Exactly Azrael was nerfed and I've erased dark angels prior to codex when. It was broken. We got better shooting than them and I removed his char with snipers. Onagers kills the -1 and from that point on it was a walk in the park each round.
Play your army you got enough tools to win. Then complain.
gendoikari87 wrote: Yes but the question is are neutronagers better than what’s available in guard. Are dragoons better than what’s in guard? I don’t think so. And I don’t see tournaments bearing that out either. And they probably won’t until guard bodies are no longer 4ppm. Until then the ablative wounds the guard add is just an overwhelming barrier. Take the kastelan. For 10 points more you get two squads of guard with lascannons. Or just three bare squads. That’s 60 attacks at 12” and 30 wounds. .... or 120 with orders
Guard seriously should be bumped back up to 5ppm at minimum
This is getting into apples/oranges though. Neutronagers don't exactly compare to a Russ. Kastelans don't really compare to the squads. They aren't doing the same things the same ways. I think our best units are still solid choices over Guard choices. We do things they can't do. Especially Robots with the mortal wounds. We are one of the few factions that can nuke a daemon Primarch in one round. That is a big selling point for taking AdMech soup.
gendoikari87 wrote: Maybe it’s apples and oranges, but the top winners are guard chaos daemons a few inquisition soups, and ravenguard(and ravenguard esque things)
Automatically Appended Next Post: The core of the problem is admech is a mess. Most other armies have a strategic theme and focus. Orks are hoard cc specialist. BA are elite cc specialists, guard are the quintessential gunline, ect.
Admech is just all over the place with very little synergy. Worse it’s trying to be guard but elite guard kind of. But scions exist so....
If gw want to fix admech they need to first address that problem
Automatically Appended Next Post: If I were at gw I’d make guard the ranged slow mobile army. Everything is bs 3+ and assault. Skitarii get assault 2 ap -1 lasgun with 2 attacks at ap -1. The advance, there’s nothing that dissaudes then from advancing. They are robots and won’t be stopped, slowed down or distracted.
Make the onagers feet power fists. Let the robots march half speed and fire twice. Instead of a 6+ invuln everything gets fnp 6+
Or better yet just let everything fire in the fight phase instead of fight
Yes. Neutron Crawlers are one of the best direct fire tanks in the Imperium. The only things that came close were Razorbacks. That being said, there are a lot of qualitative differences between say a Neutron Crawler and a BC Lemon, including range, codex synergy, movement characteristics, etc.
Yes. And actually, I would argue that Dragoons are the best melee unit in Imperium right now. With Doctrina, they punch ridiculously above their weight.
I am personally surprised that Conscripts went up to 4 without Guardsmen going up to 5. But I think 4 is the right cost.
And what do you mean we lack a focus? We are the shootiest army in the game right now. We have tons and tons of mid to high toughness vehicle-based artillery.
axisofentropy wrote:I play both factions and Cawl has the better aura because you can reroll anything, not just misses before modifiers.
I don't understand what you mean, why is Cawl's aura better when he just gives rerolls in the Shooting phase ? And how do modifiers intervene in this ? You reroll failed Hit rolls, modifiers just increase the chance of failing you roll, but the aura still allows you to reroll it nevertheless, so I don't understand what you mean. Azrael gives rerolls to failed hit (and why would you reroll successful hits anyways ?) at anytime in the game, be hit to shoot or in CC, it's just plain better is it not ?
fr3ddy wrote:Yeah Dark Angel is a tough one, especially now with the codex. I have to "infiltrate" my kataphrons destroyers and shootout my opponent's hellblasters and use my dakka bots to pew out the remaining and other mahreens. but as soon as the metal boxes move outta of the Azrael's bubble they are toast. My opponent also brought the annoying talon thing that grants -1 to hit. but I sniped it out turn 1 with neutron laser.
Fear not, admech is not that that. I tabled a couple of players with my admech.
Also infiltrate your electro-priest and make the charge and kill something to get 3++/5++, then watch ur opponent rage as a blob of blue man group prances through their line wacking their pricey tanks/infantry apart with nothing but their rave batons.
Hmm I did infiltrate 5 Electro-Priests and 5 Ruststalkers, but he got first turn and went on to kill them. The Ruststalkers held up two turns but didn't do anything. Using Infiltrate is really dependent on the configuration of the terrain and the enemy's deployment, it's quite tricky to use.
Yoda79 wrote:Exactly Azrael was nerfed and I've erased dark angels prior to codex when. It was broken. We got better shooting than them and I removed his char with snipers. Onagers kills the -1 and from that point on it was a walk in the park each round.
Play your army you got enough tools to win. Then complain.
Oh I almost tabled him, he still had 4 Hellblasters, Azrael and 3 Devastators, but won on objective at the last turn (4-3). But he hid Azrael all game so my snipers just shot at Scouts and the Bastion.
The thing is, AdMech is near unplayable as a mobile offensive army with nice CC except with either a load of Dragoons or 20 Fulgurites, and they are EASILY shot down, don't be fooled, they still have to kill something to grab their 3++. I'm not interested at playing a static gunline, because then I lose on objectives, because nothing remotely mobile survives the whole game to cross the board, kill what is hidden and grab the objective.
I should buy Maelstrom cards to see if that's better.
CADIA 2xCompCom + 3x10 guards + 1x3 Basilisks (this list can be 12 drops)
There is the competitive AdMech list post-CA.
Yeah, I mean, I have the models and it is a very straightforwards list. No shenanigans. Either you can crush my lines and eat my robots, or my robots blow you off the table. The big debate is whether to run the dragoons as STYGIES in a third detachment (I think this is yes but I hate the bookkeeping and I don't want to repaint my models), and when I should be spending a CP to get Kurov's aquila on the second commander. I think the answer is if my opponent has more than 6CP.
Why are you spending CP for Kurov's? That seems pretty mandatory. We are a CP starved faction since we make up for all of our deficiencies with Strategems. Also, no need to repaint! Just paint up a token you can stick on the base with the Forge World specific emblem on it. That way you can switch with the meta and not be stuck (which is what I have to do because.... Metalica).
I think that is contextual. Cost + Mobility + Durability + Strategems. When you look at the whole package, it is really pretty ridiculous. I would be loathe to say "best". but it is certainly up there.
axisofentropy wrote:I play both factions and Cawl has the better aura because you can reroll anything, not just misses before modifiers.
I don't understand what you mean, why is Cawl's aura better when he just gives rerolls in the Shooting phase ? And how do modifiers intervene in this ? You reroll failed Hit rolls, modifiers just increase the chance of failing you roll, but the aura still allows you to reroll it nevertheless, so I don't understand what you mean. Azrael gives rerolls to failed hit (and why would you reroll successful hits anyways ?) at anytime in the game, be hit to shoot or in CC, it's just plain better is it not ?
Because modifiers are applied after re-rolls.
If you have BS 3 and shoot a target that is -1 to hit, you do not get to re-roll the 3s because they are not failed rolls before modifiers. Cawl on the other hand allows you to re-roll those 3s. And you would want to re-roll hits if you are banking on 6s for mortals or other such abilities.
axisofentropy wrote:I play both factions and Cawl has the better aura because you can reroll anything, not just misses before modifiers.
I don't understand what you mean, why is Cawl's aura better when he just gives rerolls in the Shooting phase ? And how do modifiers intervene in this ? You reroll failed Hit rolls, modifiers just increase the chance of failing you roll, but the aura still allows you to reroll it nevertheless, so I don't understand what you mean. Azrael gives rerolls to failed hit (and why would you reroll successful hits anyways ?) at anytime in the game, be hit to shoot or in CC, it's just plain better is it not ?
Because modifiers are applied after re-rolls.
If you have BS 3 and shoot a target that is -1 to hit, you do not get to re-roll the 3s because they are not failed rolls before modifiers. Cawl on the other hand allows you to re-roll those 3s. And you would want to re-roll hits if you are banking on 6s for mortals or other such abilities.
Bingo. Despite 8th being out a fair amount of time, I still see people doing re-rolls wrong. This is a huge benefit for us that I feel is overlooked a lot. The re-roll to-hit aura is much less flexible than our re-rolls in the shooting phase, as Octovol demonstrated. Such a major perk and a big reason to run Cawl over a TPD. Especially now that every single army is packing some means to negatively modify hits rolls.
I’d call dragoons middling at best as far as imperium cc units go, especially after the blood angels drop. Context is key but in cc there are these things called power fists and they love sub t8 multi wound models. Str 8 is nice but it needs paired with ap -3 to be a real tank killer. 3 attacks from a70 point model is kinda lackluster even at str 8 with exploding 6s.
Dragoons really rely on that +2 to hit strategem and it’s 2cp
gendoikari87 wrote: I’d call dragoons middling at best as far as imperium cc units go, especially after the blood angels drop. Context is key but in cc there are these things called power fists and they love sub t8 multi wound models. Str 8 is nice but it needs paired with ap -3 to be a real tank killer. 3 attacks from a70 point model is kinda lackluster even at str 8 with exploding 6s.
Dragoons really rely on that +2 to hit strategem and it’s 2cp
CDI is 1CP unless I missed an update.
And four of them tossing around 24 attacks is pretty gross. They wound on 3's against most stuff or 4's on T8 and while AP -1 isn't crazy, it is 2 damage a pop. Every failed save is painful. Against a lot of tanks that is a 4+ save against about 16 wound rolls, which translates to 16 damage after saves. That is enough to nuke most any Rhino chassis tanks and Dreadnoughts, which is the goal.
I wouldn't throw them at other dedicated combat units with things like power fists. You don't have to measure a CC units abilities in combat against other CC targets, but against their preferred targets. In this instance, our awesome melee unit is really a tank hunter unit. They shine there and at taking out GEQ units or low save MEQ.
I'm curious - why do you include Fulgurites in the discussion of good melee units and exclude Sicarian Infiltrators with flechettes and goads? They don't require CP to alternative-deploy, whack six GEQ with their shooting attack, and then if they get to melee whack another GEQ squad without expending any CP.
The standard setup I see for GEQ screens these days seems to be the infantry squad with 1 lascannon - both their shooting and their unbuffed melee attack does an average of 6.5-7 wounds to a squad like that, which then (again, on "average" but an average of a single D6 roll so..yeah...) should usually kill the last couple models through morale.
70 points for each GEQ squad would be 140 points total - would seem to be not too shabby for a 110 point unit? Not to mention they have great synergy with mars if you take them out to a full 10-man squad. Show up, wrath of mars, drop 6 mortal wounds on something you want dead. Not quite a squad of dakkabots, but doesn't have to wait til turn 2, and costs less than 1.5 robots.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I know my list includes the goondozer, because those models are beautiful disasters and I've always loved them and you bet your ass I'm going to field the biggest unit I can get, but I also include a squad of Infiltrators and a squad of jazz hands priests with Lucius (which are more of a "charge because you might as well" unit, but still often get to combat)
The core of my list is still a bit of a gunline, but over half the actual points are on more flexible close range/melee units with some mobility and I've had no problems taking on more competitive lists.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So, guys, I'd like to take a Tech-Priest Enginseer with the Autocaduceus in support of my Superheavy Tank Company, and he needs to be in a mechanicus detachment to access the Stratagems so he can use Tech-Adept to get 2 repair rolls per turn. He'd also be my Warlord, for Necromechanic, to give a superheavy tank 4-8 wounds back in one turn.
My question is: what sort of force should be built around him that's fun & interesting & engaging? I like Kataphrons but I doubt a lowly enginseer would have many with him, and the regular elite servitors are badly overpriced.
You will want 2 troop units so you can put them in a patrol. I think you usually have around 500 pts to work with right? I would do a 5 man squad of rangers with 2 TAs, and a 3 man kataphron squad with grav / flamers, plasma is better with rerolls. A 10 man squad of rangers might not be bad for screening as the enginseer is very fragile.
If Peltasts ever make a return and get thier shrouding super heavy ability they will prob be an awesome choice as well.
Could you do a BN? Or do you think that'd be too expensive?
The only unit in the imperium that competes with a 4x1 dragoons (272) are 6 stacks of Bullgryns with Priest backup (252+35).
A 4 stack of dragoons lands ~22 hits [str8,-1,2dam] on average with the strategem [5.5 x 4].
A 6 stack of Bullgryns lands ~21 hits [str7,-1,2dam] on average on the charge (2/3 of 34?).
Only roboute guilliman can do a comparable number of wounds on a swing, but his attacks are fewer in number and higher in quality [not really a good thing if the target as invul saves]. An imperial knight with the WLT for 5 attacks can do about 1/2-2/3 the damage of a dragoon stack.
Wait, okay, the real competitor are 10 stacks of sanguinary guard. They actually do real damage now, but they require like 270 points of support characters and cost 350 for the 10 stack, and they all die after their charge if your opponent has good AP weapons.
axisofentropy wrote:I play both factions and Cawl has the better aura because you can reroll anything, not just misses before modifiers.
I don't understand what you mean, why is Cawl's aura better when he just gives rerolls in the Shooting phase ? And how do modifiers intervene in this ? You reroll failed Hit rolls, modifiers just increase the chance of failing you roll, but the aura still allows you to reroll it nevertheless, so I don't understand what you mean. Azrael gives rerolls to failed hit (and why would you reroll successful hits anyways ?) at anytime in the game, be hit to shoot or in CC, it's just plain better is it not ?
Because modifiers are applied after re-rolls.
If you have BS 3 and shoot a target that is -1 to hit, you do not get to re-roll the 3s because they are not failed rolls before modifiers. Cawl on the other hand allows you to re-roll those 3s. And you would want to re-roll hits if you are banking on 6s for mortals or other such abilities.
OMG. Somehow I never understood it that way, just because it is unusually complicated in an edition where simplicity is prevalent in terms of rules (with the few exceptions and GW's hazardous phrasing considered, of course). Even more amazing is that I knew the rule and used it positively when rerolling for plasma overheat, but never for hitting with modifiers, because I simply never got to reroll ALL hits, I never played Cawl more than a couple of times.
Thanks for enlightening me However I still firmly believe Azraël got the best aura, simply because of the reroll in Overwatch. His Hellblasters killed more of my guys in Overwatch than by shooting me in his phase. And rerolls in the Fight phase are no joke neither. Also, he's waaaaay easier to hide, he just hid it in a ruin and my snipers couldn't target him once.
You want to play competitive and you play Rustalkers??
Don't cry afterwards. Same goes for infiltrators why ?? On!y if you use solo Mars.
What is the real quality you can depend in ad mech vs other armies.
Mars.
Cawl rerolls all hits not only misses only in shooting but Robots overwatch with double shots.
That is not just one of the best auras on the game it's the best aura vs fliers -1 to hit defence and extremely broken with current meta.
Making ad mech one of the best shooting armies not because you can't find a bs3+ rerollable you can even find it with reroll also wound but you won't find anything better vs -1 to hit targets than Cawl wh40k wide. Placing you popably with neutron laser just below Titan shooting. Won't find a neutron gun able to hit like this and str 10 and -4 and 3-6 leaving lasc way back.
Dragoons. Fast -1 or -2 68 points bla bla. The real gem of this unit as with Cawl and vs other armies their versatile role.
They can defend they can be a fast obj grabber or they can assault. 1cp for 4+ explodes is broken good. Str 8 -1 2d is one of the best for it's cost. And it can also use 2d6 advance shoot for late game balltistrii etc.
And none prohibits you to make a Cawl list with Onagers and play a moving army. Only robots are stationary . Take grav take plasma take onagers 140 super gun able to hit even -1 with rerolls move shoot gem to hit top tier even damged healing min damage and with 6 stubber shots 5+ invu reroll 1s wtf.
So much info in this threat. 5 man priest?? No need to 10 then you LL see the real utility. Again staff priests with so much invu and fnp able to assault and counter.
That said if you really want to play ad mech think versatile.leave the 4 robots (max 4 I think) to guard their 36 area and play a moving army. But play serious you can get a stygies detachment and have in there all you need for 70% of the maps. Most armies don't even have that. You can decide to play Dragoons office or screener same for priests you can invest in Robots or you can make a superb Cawl onager neutron icarus spamm list. Durable moving. You can even make a knight elitish list to play first with dominus healing and knights roaming.
It's good enough as we see with other armies. All got a broken combo and they play it competitive then balance seems good enough. The game will get more as we move along.
Forge world more units bl bla. Atm there are enough to play if you play it properly. If we take anything on top of Robots Cawl onages Dragoons it will be op. Some utility sure some new units sure. Some tactical options like go horde list fliers etc sure. But I don't accept more crying? The point reduction even if I don't want to to admit it seems ok so far to play games! Not superb but close to other lists.
I want changes as you all do but I can't ask broken things. If you play only our good units . Meaning high vehicle count low troops range pew pew we got a strong army. Yes it can get locked in combat but that's what you need to work out. To begin with I stressed the matter of taking dominus.
You can split your army with a dominus . Keeping bs4+ with Cawl and take bs3+ with dominus. That alone gives you a chance to not get locked.
Same goes for testing more fun lists or knights.
If you come cry while try to win with 5 man groups general unit count in d mech then you are clueless . We benefit largely from big units even troops atm. And focusing on. Plan cause we can change dogmas and strategies with the some units. That said you need to utilise properly the units their number
Yoda79 wrote: I don't understand what it the problem really.
Spoiler:
You want to play competitive and you play Rustalkers??
Don't cry afterwards. Same goes for infiltrators why ?? On!y if you use solo Mars.
What is the real quality you can depend in ad mech vs other armies.
Mars.
Cawl rerolls all hits not only misses only in shooting but Robots overwatch with double shots.
That is not just one of the best auras on the game it's the best aura vs fliers -1 to hit defence and extremely broken with current meta.
Making ad mech one of the best shooting armies not because you can't find a bs3+ rerollable you can even find it with reroll also wound but you won't find anything better vs -1 to hit targets than Cawl wh40k wide. Placing you popably with neutron laser just below Titan shooting. Won't find a neutron gun able to hit like this and str 10 and -4 and 3-6 leaving lasc way back.
Dragoons. Fast -1 or -2 68 points bla bla. The real gem of this unit as with Cawl and vs other armies their versatile role.
They can defend they can be a fast obj grabber or they can assault. 1cp for 4+ explodes is broken good. Str 8 -1 2d is one of the best for it's cost. And it can also use 2d6 advance shoot for late game balltistrii etc.
And none prohibits you to make a Cawl list with Onagers and play a moving army. Only robots are stationary . Take grav take plasma take onagers 140 super gun able to hit even -1 with rerolls move shoot gem to hit top tier even damged healing min damage and with 6 stubber shots 5+ invu reroll 1s wtf.
So much info in this threat. 5 man priest?? No need to 10 then you LL see the real utility. Again staff priests with so much invu and fnp able to assault and counter.
That said if you really want to play ad mech think versatile.leave the 4 robots (max 4 I think) to guard their 36 area and play a moving army. But play serious you can get a stygies detachment and have in there all you need for 70% of the maps. Most armies don't even have that. You can decide to play Dragoons office or screener same for priests you can invest in Robots or you can make a superb Cawl onager neutron icarus spamm list. Durable moving. You can even make a knight elitish list to play first with dominus healing and knights roaming.
It's good enough as we see with other armies. All got a broken combo and they play it competitive then balance seems good enough. The game will get more as we move along.
Forge world more units bl bla. Atm there are enough to play if you play it properly. If we take anything on top of Robots Cawl onages Dragoons it will be op. Some utility sure some new units sure. Some tactical options like go horde list fliers etc sure. But I don't accept more crying? The point reduction even if I don't want to to admit it seems ok so far to play games! Not superb but close to other lists.
I want changes as you all do but I can't ask broken things. If you play only our good units . Meaning high vehicle count low troops range pew pew we got a strong army. Yes it can get locked in combat but that's what you need to work out. To begin with I stressed the matter of taking dominus.
You can split your army with a dominus . Keeping bs4+ with Cawl and take bs3+ with dominus. That alone gives you a chance to not get locked.
Same goes for testing more fun lists or knights.
If you come cry while try to win with 5 man groups general unit count in d mech then you are clueless . We benefit largely from big units even troops atm. And focusing on. Plan cause we can change dogmas and strategies with the some units. That said you need to utilise properly the units their number
Well for one I don't play competitively tournament level or fluff-ripping level, just serious games against strong but fluffy lists. I'll never hit the tournament scene because I find it repulsive to my playstyle and how I see the game, however I don't hold it against anyone who loves tourneys and optimisation, good for them.
I only own 5 Fulgurites, I know well enough they're useless unless taken in groups of 15+, I don't usually play them because I think they're hideous, have no mobility and are a pain to paint well, I won't buy any more so they're kinda a dead unit to me. Ruststalkers however I had really decent successes with them enough times to justify keeping them in my lists, just not with Infiltrate because it usually leave them all alone with no support so they get gunned down or other shenanigans.
Cawl's aura doesn't work in Overwatch, Overwatch is not "your shooting phase", it's a shooting phase, during the opponent's charge phase, there's the catch.
If I play AdMech it's to play pure AdMech, because it is supposedly damned well supposed to work like that, it was fine in 7th, it should still be now.
I'm not asking for broken changes if that's what you meant (I'm sorry but I sometimes have difficulties understanding the way you write), just that a fluff player can play his army the way he likes without it being a huge handicap because the design team balanced Imperium as a whole and not as individual factions. Give me Scout back, a transport, more aura characters (with at least a few different auras) and I'll already be really happy. I don't have to win against optimised lists with this, I just want to be able to have a fun two-sided game with an army of similar balance and stop having to remove my 8 Vanguards unit because a squad of 10 Intercessors looked at it and opened fire once.
Why are you spending CP for Kurov's? That seems pretty mandatory. We are a CP starved faction since we make up for all of our deficiencies with Strategems. Also, no need to repaint! Just paint up a token you can stick on the base with the Forge World specific emblem on it. That way you can switch with the meta and not be stuck (which is what I have to do because.... Metalica).
.
Relic of lost cadia is pretty huge. It is basically an auto-win if you run against chaos and the reroll 1s to wound against non-chaos actually makes it one of the best relics, even if only for a turn. If you play the abuse interpretation, then you can keep spamming it every turn. Kurov's is not as good as the relic if your opponent has less than 6 CP as you can't spend 1 CP can get as many rerolls as relic of lost cadia is going to get you in even 1 round of shooting.
Unit1126PLL wrote: So, guys, I'd like to take a Tech-Priest Enginseer with the Autocaduceus in support of my Superheavy Tank Company, and he needs to be in a mechanicus detachment to access the Stratagems so he can use Tech-Adept to get 2 repair rolls per turn. He'd also be my Warlord, for Necromechanic, to give a superheavy tank 4-8 wounds back in one turn.
My question is: what sort of force should be built around him that's fun & interesting & engaging? I like Kataphrons but I doubt a lowly enginseer would have many with him, and the regular elite servitors are badly overpriced.
You will want 2 troop units so you can put them in a patrol. I think you usually have around 500 pts to work with right? I would do a 5 man squad of rangers with 2 TAs, and a 3 man kataphron squad with grav / flamers, plasma is better with rerolls. A 10 man squad of rangers might not be bad for screening as the enginseer is very fragile.
If Peltasts ever make a return and get thier shrouding super heavy ability they will prob be an awesome choice as well.
Could you do a BN? Or do you think that'd be too expensive?
gendoikari87 wrote: I’d call dragoons middling at best as far as imperium cc units go, especially after the blood angels drop. Context is key but in cc there are these things called power fists and they love sub t8 multi wound models. Str 8 is nice but it needs paired with ap -3 to be a real tank killer. 3 attacks from a70 point model is kinda lackluster even at str 8 with exploding 6s.
Dragoons really rely on that +2 to hit strategem and it’s 2cp
Please do provide me a ranking of your top 5. No characters or super-heavies please.
It's 1 CP. And it puts out high-volume, high-hit S8 attacks. Nobody else can do that. And forget AP. Volume is more important than AP, especially when you're fighting things with invulnerable saves.
Wulfey wrote: The only unit in the imperium that competes with a 4x1 dragoons (272) are 6 stacks of Bullgryns with Priest backup (252+35).
A 4 stack of dragoons lands ~22 hits [str8,-1,2dam] on average with the strategem [5.5 x 4].
A 6 stack of Bullgryns lands ~21 hits [str7,-1,2dam] on average on the charge (2/3 of 34?).
Only roboute guilliman can do a comparable number of wounds on a swing, but his attacks are fewer in number and higher in quality [not really a good thing if the target as invul saves]. An imperial knight with the WLT for 5 attacks can do about 1/2-2/3 the damage of a dragoon stack.
Wait, okay, the real competitor are 10 stacks of sanguinary guard. They actually do real damage now, but they require like 270 points of support characters and cost 350 for the 10 stack, and they all die after their charge if your opponent has good AP weapons.
I would put Bullgryns at #2 for sure. They are pricey though, especially since you need to bring transports to get them in range, and that sort of sucks since they're supposed to go after vehicles. That's what separates them from Dragoons. Anyone can bring a unit of Dragoons for a massive boost in CC power without any strings attached. Bullgryns require you to build a component of your army around their use.
Dagger of Tusahk lets you outflank/deepstrike 1 character (the priest) and 1 infantry unit (bullgryns are infantry). And yes, I think dragoons are largely superior because they can more reliably get up the board an go on offense, whereas the bullgryns sort of require your enemy to attack you or rely on a 9" charge from the sidelines. Bullgryns are the A+ guard meatwall tho.
Also, really glad they're killing Smite spam and character spam.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wulfey wrote: Dagger of Tusahk lets you outflank/deepstrike 1 character (the priest) and 1 infantry unit (bullgryns are infantry). And yes, I think dragoons are largely superior because they can more reliably get up the board an go on offense, whereas the bullgryns sort of require your enemy to attack you or rely on a 9" charge from the sidelines. Bullgryns are the A+ guard meatwall tho.
Right. What happens when the transport you're hunting just runs away? XD
Dark reapers all have a 1 shot Str8, -2, flat3 damage weapons that always hit on a 3+, or a 2 shot str5, -2, flat2 damage weapon, both at 48".
So the top meta list in the world right now is 30 dark reapers, yvraine casting the ynarri spell one block of 10 ynarri dark reapers, some swooping hawks, and some wave serpents. The dark repears can disembark, shoot, and remebark using the eldar 'move again after shooting' strategem. The ynarri dark reapers can deep strike and yvraine lets them shoot twice with a spell. The swooping hawks all deep strike. Only things on the board are wave serpents which are point for point the toughest transports in the game. The various smite and character nerfs made this list stronger.
Dark reapers pee on dragoons, and also kill kastelons pretty easily. they flatly counter all -modifier strategies. The wave serpents pretty consistently get 6+ FNP, -1 to be hit, and reduce each instance of damage by 1 (so 2 damage weapons are terrible against them [basilisks and plasma]).
Anyone got any ideas? I faced someone with just 1 of these units and I had to blow my only good turn of wrath of mars robot fire to kill them or I would have just lost right there.
My 60+40 deepstrike skitarii list is actually borderline viable against these monsters since I can keep the killy troops off the board until the reapers expose themselves. Basilisks are of course good at firing at dark reapers when they are exposed, but usually face a -1 penalty to hit.
Wulfey wrote: Dagger of Tusahk lets you outflank/deepstrike 1 character (the priest) and 1 infantry unit (bullgryns are infantry). And yes, I think dragoons are largely superior because they can more reliably get up the board an go on offense, whereas the bullgryns sort of require your enemy to attack you or rely on a 9" charge from the sidelines. Bullgryns are the A+ guard meatwall tho.
Check the AM errata you will find it can only be given to an officer so no priest and that means it can only target regiment infantry so no bullgryn
Unit1126PLL wrote: So, guys, I'd like to take a Tech-Priest Enginseer with the Autocaduceus in support of my Superheavy Tank Company, and he needs to be in a mechanicus detachment to access the Stratagems so he can use Tech-Adept to get 2 repair rolls per turn. He'd also be my Warlord, for Necromechanic, to give a superheavy tank 4-8 wounds back in one turn.
My question is: what sort of force should be built around him that's fun & interesting & engaging? I like Kataphrons but I doubt a lowly enginseer would have many with him, and the regular elite servitors are badly overpriced.
You will want 2 troop units so you can put them in a patrol. I think you usually have around 500 pts to work with right? I would do a 5 man squad of rangers with 2 TAs, and a 3 man kataphron squad with grav / flamers, plasma is better with rerolls. A 10 man squad of rangers might not be bad for screening as the enginseer is very fragile.
If Peltasts ever make a return and get thier shrouding super heavy ability they will prob be an awesome choice as well.
Could you do a BN? Or do you think that'd be too expensive?
If I just do a Patrol I need 1 troop is all.
What's a BN?
Slang for Battalion. I made a list with this boss repair warlord and 3 IG superheavies that has 13 CP and 3 detachments at 2k points with 52 models
An army full of missile spammers definitely seems scary to an army full of vehicles/MCs (like ours, Razorback spam, or Bash Brothers), but how does that list intend to beat horde armies? I think going forward, every army needs to be able to handle Tyranids.
Wulfey wrote: Dagger of Tusahk lets you outflank/deepstrike 1 character (the priest) and 1 infantry unit (bullgryns are infantry). And yes, I think dragoons are largely superior because they can more reliably get up the board an go on offense, whereas the bullgryns sort of require your enemy to attack you or rely on a 9" charge from the sidelines. Bullgryns are the A+ guard meatwall tho.
Check the AM errata you will find it can only be given to an officer so no priest and that means it can only target regiment infantry so no bullgryn
Looks like I missed that. That makes me wayyyyyy less likely to to buy any boxes of bullgryns.
i'm sorry did i miss people comparing the dragoons to bullgryns.... i mean bullgryns aren't bad. but they're kind of in that same "okay" zone dragoons are. also if you're saying dragoons are good CC but not against other CC units and are just good anti tank... and then turn around and glow about how good neutronagers are.... why not just take more neutronagers or drop them for more dragoons? I mean i can see an argument for dropping the neutronagers and going with dragoons in a stygies brigrade.
hell with the drop in points. do dragoons backed up with a pair of battalions
Automatically Appended Next Post: hell vanguard -1 T would come in handy in unison with the dragoons. doesn't work on vehicles but it'll work on monsters and T5 infantry
I've been wondering for a bit if Eradication Beamer Onagers are now cheap enough to justify their inclusion. Only 25 points cheaper than the Neutron onager, but with the same survivability, and an alright weapon.
ph34r wrote: I've been wondering for a bit if Eradication Beamer Onagers are now cheap enough to justify their inclusion. Only 25 points cheaper than the Neutron onager, but with the same survivability, and an alright weapon.
i mean that's like what, 2 dragoons now? it's got a healthy chunk of wounds, a good invuln, could litter the field with them. by shear weight of mass they'd be hard to shift. But thats still putting a lot of wounds in single basket.
flip side is the auto blow up strategem on those is nice, the damage is better than dragoons and they have more range. Not to mention an actual gun.
IDK might be worth a shot. I'm not volunteering to be test subject 1 though.
gendoikari87 wrote: i'm sorry did i miss people comparing the dragoons to bullgryns.... i mean bullgryns aren't bad. but they're kind of in that same "okay" zone dragoons are. also if you're saying dragoons are good CC but not against other CC units and are just good anti tank... and then turn around and glow about how good neutronagers are.... why not just take more neutronagers or drop them for more dragoons? I mean i can see an argument for dropping the neutronagers and going with dragoons in a stygies brigrade.
hell with the drop in points. do dragoons backed up with a pair of battalions
Automatically Appended Next Post: hell vanguard -1 T would come in handy in unison with the dragoons. doesn't work on vehicles but it'll work on monsters and T5 infantry
Again, if you think they're just "okay," please share what you think are the top 5 CC options for Imperium.
kastelen wrote: Saint celestine, rowboat and cawl probably. Some space wolves and GK options are also probably pretty good for their points.
and now BA all just get +1 to wound. I actually wouldn't be surprised if your bog standard BA tactical turned out to be pretty good. Death company are like 20 points with chainsword pistol and Jump pack get three attacks hitting and wounding most things on 3... so good night irene.
also for half that. Blood angels scouts. 2 attacks a piece. same profile, with a 4+ save. how insane is that?
I mean imperium encompasses all marines, inquisition, custodes and assassins. That's a long list of really good CC units before you even start getting to ogryns and Dragoons.
At this point I think admech can take most lists on equal or better footing if you run the normal meta units of Cawl / Robots / Dragoons / Neutronagers. The template all firepower admech list can hang with any other list in the game. We have horde killing from the robots, mortals from the robots, non-LOS from basilisk, and anti-modifier/anti-armor save from the neutronagers, and dragoons can provide a take all comers melee option that threatens everything in the game.
What has me worried is the dark reaper spam. Nothing in the game can erase dragoons like dark reapers.
Also, having run celestine many times, no, she is not at all comparable to a stack of dragoons. She is faster and can pick easy targets much more easily, but she she never does as much damage as the dragoon stack. She has 6 swings with no rerolls on a 2+ that are str7, -3, 2dam. That is usually 5 hits and she wounds a whole lot of hard targets on 4s. EDIT: I am considering not even worrying about the dark reaper list and just conceding if I run into it. It is like the 45 warp spider list from 2 years ago.
kastelen wrote:Saint celestine, rowboat and cawl probably. Some space wolves and GK options are also probably pretty good for their points.
Unique characters aren't scalable at all. And I actually am pretty sure 4 Dragoons with CDI outperform Celestine and 2 BFFs, mostly because the difference between Ardent Blade and Power Swords makes for inconsistencies in usage. Until Space Wolves get a codex, they're pretty mediocre. GKs are probably the only codex that has had it worse than us.
gendoikari87 wrote:and now BA all just get +1 to wound. I actually wouldn't be surprised if your bog standard BA tactical turned out to be pretty good. Death company are like 20 points with chainsword pistol and Jump pack get three attacks hitting and wounding most things on 3... so good night irene.
also for half that. Blood angels scouts. 2 attacks a piece. same profile, with a 4+ save. how insane is that?
I mean imperium encompasses all marines, inquisition, custodes and assassins. That's a long list of really good CC units before you even start getting to ogryns and Dragoons.
Technically, we don't have the BA codex yet. I will say that it looks pretty good for an assault-focused army, but I would have to wait and see.
Dragoons with CDI are way better than Tactical Marines and Custodes. The Inquisition options were never good, aside from their goons, which were a shooty option that got nerfed. Eversors are good, but they have a different role than Dragoons.
gendoikari87 wrote: i'm sorry did i miss people comparing the dragoons to bullgryns.... i mean bullgryns aren't bad. but they're kind of in that same "okay" zone dragoons are. also if you're saying dragoons are good CC but not against other CC units and are just good anti tank... and then turn around and glow about how good neutronagers are.... why not just take more neutronagers or drop them for more dragoons? I mean i can see an argument for dropping the neutronagers and going with dragoons in a stygies brigrade.
hell with the drop in points. do dragoons backed up with a pair of battalions
Automatically Appended Next Post: hell vanguard -1 T would come in handy in unison with the dragoons. doesn't work on vehicles but it'll work on monsters and T5 infantry
I think you really can't compare a neutron onager with Dragoons.
The neutron got one job: Kill high wound high toughness stuff, whereas the dragoon can threaten pretty much every unit through sheer number of attacks (that's also what makes them good at anti tank, cause they can compensate ap -1 by number of attacks)
I'm not saying the neutron onager isn't great, it's a superb tank hunter. You really just can't compare both imo.
Also, having run celestine many times, no, she is not at all comparable to a stack of dragoons. She is faster and can pick easy targets much more easily, but she she never does as much damage as the dragoon stack. She has 6 swings with no rerolls on a 2+ that are str7, -3, 2dam. That is usually 5 hits and she wounds a whole lot of hard targets on 4s. EDIT: I am considering not even worrying about the dark reaper list and just conceding if I run into it. It is like the 45 warp spider list from 2 years ago.
She also has AOF which gives her roughly 15 attacks if you're using them all as melee which is pretty amazing.
PSYCHIC FOCUS
With the exception of Smite, each psychic power can be attempted only once per turn, rather than once per psyker per turn. In addition, subtract 1 from the result of any psychic test taken when attempting to manifest Smite for each other attempt (whether successful or not) that has been made to manifest Smite during this Psychic phase. For example, if a psyker attempts to manifest Smite during a Psychic phase in which two other psykers have already attempted to manifest Smite, then you would subtract 2 from the result of the psychic test.
Is this a good strategy; Get 10 man unit of vanguard with the data tether and just carbines and maybe a pistol. Their forge world doesn't matter but metallica works well. Protector doctrina imperative and 30 shots will automatically hit (If the a roll of 1 always fails rule doesn't exist like I think it does). If you're using mars combine it with wrath of mars to get on average about 5 mortal wounds per turn. Not as good as dakkabots but still pretty sold I think. With how cheap vanguard are ATM and protector doctrina imperative only costing 1 CP I think it's pretty good but I don't play competitively.
kastelen wrote: Is this a good strategy; Get 10 man unit of vanguard with the data tether and just carbines and maybe a pistol. Their forge world doesn't matter but metallica works well. Protector doctrina imperative and 30 shots will automatically hit (If the a roll of 1 always fails rule doesn't exist like I think it does). If you're using mars combine it with wrath of mars to get on average about 5 mortal wounds per turn. Not as good as dakkabots but still pretty sold I think. With how cheap vanguard are ATM and protector doctrina imperative only costing 1 CP I think it's pretty good but I don't play competitively.
rvd1ofakind wrote: Might want to reread the current rule, dude. It was always "can only try every spell once". No idea what rulebook you've been playing with lol
Automatically Appended Next Post: Smite is the only thing that changed
You are both correct. Matched play is once per power per turn. open play was once per power per psyker per turn.
The Psychic Focus rule is Matched Play only, so the new rule is still specific to that style of play. Da Jump will still be spammed mercilessly in open and narrative.
Hey folks,
so atm I'm building a combined force of AdMech and Imperial Guard, with loads of Guardsman as canonfodder some skitarii and all of this backed up by some heavy hitters.
Regarding those heavy hitters: I'm not quite sure whether I should include some Dunecrawlers or Leman Russes (talking about the Battle Tank / conqueror)....
So yeah what's your opinion on both of those "tanks)?
lash92 wrote: Hey folks,
so atm I'm building a combined force of AdMech and Imperial Guard, with loads of Guardsman as canonfodder some skitarii and all of this backed up by some heavy hitters.
Regarding those heavy hitters: I'm not quite sure whether I should include some Dunecrawlers or Leman Russes (talking about the Battle Tank / conqueror)....
So yeah what's your opinion on both of those "tanks)?
point for point the battle tank slightly edges out neutronager in my book. but it depends on how you build it what you're using it for ect. Battle tank is however FAR more customizeable and versatile.
point for point the battle tank slightly edges out neutronager in my book. but it depends on how you build it what you're using it for ect. Battle tank is however FAR more customizeable and versatile.
Im looking for something to threaten my opponents big things, be it other tanks or monsters etc.
The thing with the Onager is it´s low number of shots. While a BC can be ok at firing at MEQ or TEQ a Neutron Onager is pretty much a waste (imo).
So thats whats holding me down atm.
But on the other hand a Crawler is also more durable I guess?
Crawler also is less likely to be screwed over by the more and more common -1 to hit abilities. Which the onager can take as well, which means onagers can generally outshoot IG tanks head to head.
Icarus is sub-optimal against tanks, alright against infantry, decent against light vehicles and very good against things with "fly" (especially if they aren't flyers).
It's a pretty solid choice, unless you're up against a few specific armies (and amazing if you're up against certain others).
SilverAlien wrote: Crawler also is less likely to be screwed over by the more and more common -1 to hit abilities. Which the onager can take as well, which means onagers can generally outshoot IG tanks head to head.
actually cadians can get +1 to hit for the whole army with 2cp.
as for threats. it really depends. a single neutron laser is certainly a threat. a fully kitted out plasmacutioner with +1 to hit rerolling 1's and rerolling turret dice for no of shots. is also a major threat.
as was said the battlecannon isn't as impressive as the neutron, but it's 2d6 shots a turn vs 1d3, and that makes a difference against 2W and 1W heavy infantry Neutrons are all but usless against MEQ they're hard line anti tank. but a plasmacutioner is better per point at anti tank than a neutronager and also far superior against infantry of ALL types.
SilverAlien wrote: Crawler also is less likely to be screwed over by the more and more common -1 to hit abilities. Which the onager can take as well, which means onagers can generally outshoot IG tanks head to head.
actually cadians can get +1 to hit for the whole army with 2cp.
as for threats. it really depends. a single neutron laser is certainly a threat. a fully kitted out plasmacutioner with +1 to hit rerolling 1's and rerolling turret dice for no of shots. is also a major threat.
as was said the battlecannon isn't as impressive as the neutron, but it's 2d6 shots a turn vs 1d3, and that makes a difference against 2W and 1W heavy infantry Neutrons are all but usless against MEQ they're hard line anti tank. but a plasmacutioner is better per point at anti tank than a neutronager and also far superior against infantry of ALL types.
To be fair, you have to first of all score an unsaved wound on a model/unit and then you get +1 to hit against only that unit.
It´s really the versatillity of the Russ vs greater survival chances of the Crawler for me. (trust me, despite T8, W12 russes are dying pretty quickly to dedicated anti tank high AP)
true the downside is you have to get the wound and it's only against that unit. the upside is it works on every cadian unit on the board that round. which means it can hit multiple units. so say like six infantry units firing lascannons now at BS3 plus a plasmacutioner.
it's a great way to nuke any single unit that MUST DIE THAT TURN. For instance Magnus.
rvd1ofakind wrote: Might want to reread the current rule, dude. It was always "can only try every spell once". No idea what rulebook you've been playing with lol
Automatically Appended Next Post: Smite is the only thing that changed
I feel incredibly dumb now. Haha. There is actually a formal rule on P215. I always thought that the "one attempt per turn" thing was an informal rule.
It's funny how it has never come up for me in all this time though. I mean, I don't use psykers, so I never had an opportunity to be corrected. And everyone else who did play Psykers just spammed Smite, which seemed optimal, so I never questioned it.
gendoikari87 wrote: You are both correct. Matched play is once per power per turn. open play was once per power per psyker per turn.
Nope. I was totally wrong.
rvd1ofakind wrote: No, only I am correct because open play doesn't exist :p :p :p aka I doubt he plays open play
lash92 wrote: Hey folks, so atm I'm building a combined force of AdMech and Imperial Guard, with loads of Guardsman as canonfodder some skitarii and all of this backed up by some heavy hitters.
Regarding those heavy hitters: I'm not quite sure whether I should include some Dunecrawlers or Leman Russes (talking about the Battle Tank / conqueror)....
So yeah what's your opinion on both of those "tanks)?
point for point the battle tank slightly edges out neutronager in my book. but it depends on how you build it what you're using it for ect. Battle tank is however FAR more customizeable and versatile.
Lemons don't play nice with AdMech because AdMech often build around Cawl + 5-6 Kastelans, which is already pricey. Having to invest in Pask or a Tank Commander is inefficient; might as well bring the tanks already supported by your HQ. Basilisks are really strong though. You can make them Cadian since they get the Catachan bonus already. Just park them in the backfield to deny deep strike and pummel units that try to hide from your Kastelans.
lash92 wrote: Is the Icarus Array worth it? Thought about maybe adding two Neutrons and one Icaurus.
Icarus Crawlers sort of fill the same role as Kastelan Robots; they kill mid-toughness and below infantry and Daemon Primarchs. The difference being that they have 48" range, can move and shoot, and have a bonus against Fly.
lash92 wrote: Hey folks,
so atm I'm building a combined force of AdMech and Imperial Guard, with loads of Guardsman as canonfodder some skitarii and all of this backed up by some heavy hitters.
Regarding those heavy hitters: I'm not quite sure whether I should include some Dunecrawlers or Leman Russes (talking about the Battle Tank / conqueror)....
So yeah what's your opinion on both of those "tanks)?
Both are good at different things.
Use Crawlers giant beam of death to direct fire just about anything dead. Two of these suckers have little trouble killing a land raider over a few turns. The anti air doodle, is excellent. Even with its penalties to shooting non air things it large number of high strength shots make it a threat to just about anything. Though best used to kill non dedicated flyers such as stuff on discs or jump unit with fly keyword.
Leman Russ is a workhorse. Tough, lots of wounds and a huge variety of weapons it can take. If you're clever you can actually get most of the weapons out of a single box (magnatize or make a work around) and you can hotswap all your weapons. Lemon Russ is NEVER a bad choice. Just about all of its guns are good and its so flexible you can build it to do just about anything.
Lemons don't play nice with AdMech because AdMech often build around Cawl + 5-6 Kastelans, which is already pricey. Having to invest in Pask or a Tank Commander is inefficient; might as well bring the tanks already supported by your HQ. Basilisks are really strong though. You can make them Cadian since they get the Catachan bonus already. Just park them in the backfield to deny deep strike and pummel units that try to hide from your Kastelans.
Good points about the Basilisks, have to try some of those out.
Tbh I haven´t played Cawl + Robots yet, just some Stygies, cause I´m kind of deterred of this complete stationary playstyle. (we use lots of LOS blocking terrain and we play according to German tournament rules, i.e. you play an Eternal War and Maelstrom at the same time)
So how do you effectively play the objective game?
Lemons don't play nice with AdMech because AdMech often build around Cawl + 5-6 Kastelans, which is already pricey. Having to invest in Pask or a Tank Commander is inefficient; might as well bring the tanks already supported by your HQ. Basilisks are really strong though. You can make them Cadian since they get the Catachan bonus already. Just park them in the backfield to deny deep strike and pummel units that try to hide from your Kastelans.
Good points about the Basilisks, have to try some of those out.
Tbh I haven´t played Cawl + Robots yet, just some Stygies, cause I´m kind of deterred of this complete stationary playstyle. (we use lots of LOS blocking terrain and we play according to German tournament rules, i.e. you play an Eternal War and Maelstrom at the same time)
So how do you effectively play the objective game?
Usually, you just move your Kastelans in range of your opponent's objectives. Force them to come into range. If you need something to grab objectives, you can advance Skitarii or use Dragoons; let your artillery clear the objective for them. But of course, it depends based on deployment zones, your opponent's army, etc. Sometimes, you just won't win the objective game, and your strategy then is to table your opponent. Sometimes, objectives don't matter, and you should just castle up and react.
Here are some concepts that most lists in this thread have found useful:
1) Cawlstar: Cawl and 5-6 Kastelans are anti-everything, especially characters and infantry.
2) Crawlers: Neutron are anti-tank that covers Cawlstar's weakness to Lascannons and Missiles. Icarus complement Ballistarii if you want to run Stygies.
3) Screen: Guardsmen with CC recycling, Skitarii, or MAYBE Electro-Priests. Deploy in >3" layers against assault armies, spread them wide against deep striking armies. These guys are just here to create distance.
4) Goondozer: Take 4 or 6 Dragoons per unit; Dragoons are longer than 3", so you have a pile-in issue for 6 Dragoons if they are moving single-file. Use CDI and blow up one tank per turn. Always make these Stygies, and always deploy them last to make your opponent deploy for Infiltrate.
5) Basilisks/Earthshakers: Complements the Crawlers and Cawlstar by forcing your opponent out of their hiding places. Makes tabling much more viable.
6) Ballistarii: Take a loner or pair for fire support. Take 6 Ballistarii per unit if you go Stygies. CPI and Dominus make them really solid shooters; they can replace a Crawler very easily.
My list:
Spoiler:
Cadian Battalion Detachment - 522
HQ - 60 1x Company Commander - Lasgun, Chainsword, Warlord: Grand Strategist
1x Company Commander - Lasgun, Chainsword, Kurov's Aquila
5+ invuln save is easily overlooked but pretty legit on the Onager... and recently caused my Shadowsword playing opponent to get super salty about him taking 3 turns to kill it. He assumed it would evaporate in T1 but nope! 33% chance of ignoring your 2D6 damage.
Silentz wrote: 5+ invuln save is easily overlooked but pretty legit on the Onager... and recently caused my Shadowsword playing opponent to get super salty about him taking 3 turns to kill it. He assumed it would evaporate in T1 but nope! 33% chance of ignoring your 2D6 damage.
Suzuteo wrote:
Usually, you just move your Kastelans in range of your opponent's objectives. Force them to come into range. If you need something to grab objectives, you can advance Skitarii or use Dragoons; let your artillery clear the objective for them. But of course, it depends based on deployment zones, your opponent's army, etc. Sometimes, you just won't win the objective game, and your strategy then is to table your opponent. Sometimes, objectives don't matter, and you should just castle up and react.
Here are some concepts that most lists in this thread have found useful:
1) Cawlstar: Cawl and 5-6 Kastelans are anti-everything, especially characters and infantry.
2) Crawlers: Neutron are anti-tank that covers Cawlstar's weakness to Lascannons and Missiles. Icarus complement Ballistarii if you want to run Stygies.
3) Screen: Guardsmen with CC recycling, Skitarii, or MAYBE Electro-Priests. Deploy in >3" layers against assault armies, spread them wide against deep striking armies. These guys are just here to create distance.
4) Goondozer: Take 4 or 6 Dragoons per unit; Dragoons are longer than 3", so you have a pile-in issue for 6 Dragoons if they are moving single-file. Use CDI and blow up one tank per turn. Always make these Stygies, and always deploy them last to make your opponent deploy for Infiltrate.
5) Basilisks/Earthshakers: Complements the Crawlers and Cawlstar by forcing your opponent out of their hiding places. Makes tabling much more viable.
6) Ballistarii: Take a loner or pair for fire support. Take 6 Ballistarii per unit if you go Stygies. CPI and Dominus make them really solid shooters; they can replace a Crawler very easily.
My list:
Spoiler:
Cadian Battalion Detachment - 522
HQ - 60 1x Company Commander - Lasgun, Chainsword, Warlord: Grand Strategist
1x Company Commander - Lasgun, Chainsword, Kurov's Aquila
Heavy Support - 324 3x Basilisk - Earthshaker Cannon, Heavy Bolter
Mars Spearhead Detachment - 1070
HQ - 240 1x Belisarius Cawl
Heavy Support - 830 1x Onager Dunecrawler - Neutron Laser, Cognis Heavy Stubber, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
1x Onager Dunecrawler - Neutron Laser, Cognis Heavy Stubber, Broad-Spectrum Data Tether
5x Kastelan Robots - 3x Heavy Phosphor Blasters
Stygies VIII Auxiliary Detachment - 408
Fast Attack - 408 6x Sydonian Dragoon - Taser Lance
Total: 2000 points 6 Command Points
Thanks for the input!
3) Electro Priest as a Screen? Seems pretty expensive for that purpose.
Silentz wrote:5+ invuln save is easily overlooked but pretty legit on the Onager... and recently caused my Shadowsword playing opponent to get super salty about him taking 3 turns to kill it. He assumed it would evaporate in T1 but nope! 33% chance of ignoring your 2D6 damage.
Haven´t overlocked it, in fact I wrote about this a few posts ago, because a Russ isn´t really that durable imo.
Silentz wrote: 5+ invuln save is easily overlooked but pretty legit on the Onager... and recently caused my Shadowsword playing opponent to get super salty about him taking 3 turns to kill it. He assumed it would evaporate in T1 but nope! 33% chance of ignoring your 2D6 damage.
You get to reroll if you have a buddy too.
Sadly, the re-roll is only for 1's. Really not sure why GW couldn't have left it how it was pre-8th. A 4++ on our Crawlers would be insane.
No. Before, each Weirdboy can manifest Da Jump once per turn. Now, only one Weirdboy can manifest Da Jump once per turn.
it boggles my mind how many people think the first part of the new rule is a change when they printed the "new" and "current" psychic focus rules right next to one another and that first line in new PF is word for word identical with the first and only line in the current rule.
Currently in matched play you can only attempt each power one time per phase.
No. Before, each Weirdboy can manifest Da Jump once per turn. Now, only one Weirdboy can manifest Da Jump once per turn.
it boggles my mind how many people think the first part of the new rule is a change when they printed the "new" and "current" psychic focus rules right next to one another and that first line in new PF is word for word identical with the first and only line in the current rule.
Currently in matched play you can only attempt each power one time per phase.
lash92 wrote: Hey folks, so atm I'm building a combined force of AdMech and Imperial Guard, with loads of Guardsman as canonfodder some skitarii and all of this backed up by some heavy hitters.
Regarding those heavy hitters: I'm not quite sure whether I should include some Dunecrawlers or Leman Russes (talking about the Battle Tank / conqueror)....
So yeah what's your opinion on both of those "tanks)?
I think the neutron crawler is out and out better. It gets better saves due to the 5++ and more consistently gets cover saves from shroudpsalm. It effectively more mobile due to not taking the penalty from moving and shooting. You have better repair options with the crawler. The neutron laser profile is generally better than anything on the leman russ, except for the all lascannon LemanRuss Annihilator forgeworld variant, which is pretty decent. The annihilator is 170 points for 2x turret lascannons and a hvbolter in the hull. Don't bother with any of the other upgrades since they don't shoot twice and take heavy movement penalties. But that is 30 more points than a neutronager for 4 lascannon shots at BS4, possibly rerolling, whereas a MARS neutronager is expected 2 neutron shots at BS3 with full rerolls and possibly +2 to hit rolls. Every other leman russ is just inferior to the neutronager. Their weapons are either too short range or too unreliable or subject to a rotten 5+ to hit with trouble getting rerolls.
EDIT: IMO, there is nothing that a leman russ provides to a mixed admech list that a neutronager can't provide better. Give me a neutronager and 30-40 points of troops every time over the annihilator. And the annihilator is the only variant that is even close to the neutronager. As an admech/AM mixer myself, I think a 108 point basilisk and 40 points of guardsmen provide a lot more utility to an admech list than the lemanrusses. We need non-LOS firepower and screen bodies much more than we need more krak-missile style shots.
Guys, PSA, point for point the leman russ kicks the neutronagers butt as anti tank. here's the math. Trans is transport T7 3+, tank is T8 3+ LR is land raider T8 2+.
as you can see the plasmacutioner is a full 25% more efficient. Ignore the battlecannon results, had to make room in the calculations sheet for shotguns. so that's without the battlecannon there.
Edit: there we go updated to correct and simplify. all numbers are point per wound inflicted I.e. Wound inflicted per turn on average divided by the point cost of the model.
also i have the shadowswords data if anyone wants it. it really outclasses everything but it's still just nuking a single target.
gendoikari87 wrote: Guys, PSA, point for point the leman russ kicks the neutronagers butt as anti tank. here's the math. Trans is transport T7 3+, tank is T8 3+ LR is land raider T8 2+.
as you can see the plasmacutioner is a full 25% more efficient. Ignore the battlecannon results, had to make room in the calculations sheet for shotguns. so that's without the battlecannon there.
Edit: there we go updated to correct and simplify. all numbers are point per wound inflicted I.e. Wound inflicted per turn on average divided by the point cost of the model.
also i have the shadowswords data if anyone wants it. it really outclasses everything but it's still just nuking a single target.
I don't really buy it. Points in a vacuum are useful to a point. 5++ makes a big difference. Plus, our improved BS. Plascutioner also as the mortal wound drawback. We do consistent damage too thanks to the Neutron special rules vs just 1-2 damage per shot from the Plascutioner.
A better comparison for role also may be the FW Vanquisher, btw.
The FW Vanquisher is garbage. The regular battletank russ outperforms every anti-tank Russ platform except for the Annihilator against tanks.
THAT SAID: I can't speak highly enough of the neutron onager. Three of them (with a cawl bubble) have one-shotted one of my Baneblades in a single shooting phase before.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The FW Vanquisher is garbage. The regular battletank russ outperforms every anti-tank Russ platform except for the Annihilator against tanks.
THAT SAID:
I can't speak highly enough of the neutron onager. Three of them (with a cawl bubble) have one-shotted one of my Baneblades in a single shooting phase before.
Two (if it doesn't move) S8 -3 D6 damage shots that can roll 2 dice when inflicting damage (discarding lowest) and can shoot at 3+ to-hit (if it didn't move) and re-roll any hits (via Co-Axial) is actually pretty good as a comparison to our Neutronager.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The FW Vanquisher is garbage. The regular battletank russ outperforms every anti-tank Russ platform except for the Annihilator against tanks.
THAT SAID:
I can't speak highly enough of the neutron onager. Three of them (with a cawl bubble) have one-shotted one of my Baneblades in a single shooting phase before.
Two (if it doesn't move) S8 -3 D6 damage shots that can roll 2 dice when inflicting damage (discarding lowest) and can shoot at 3+ to-hit (if it didn't move) and re-roll any hits (via Co-Axial) is actually pretty good as a comparison to our Neutronager.
Vs. one of my Baneblades:
LRBT Vanquisher:
2 shots, 1.67 hits, .83 wounds, (x4.5 damage for 2d6/highest) = 3.76 wounds done to my baneblade per shooting phase.
Neutron Onager:
2 shots, 1.33 hits, .89 wounds, (x 4.5 damage for 1d6 min 3) = 4.1 wounds done to my baneblade per shooting phase.
And the Onager can move while doing it. And benefit from Canticles, which help it far more than Regimental Traits. And benefit from Forge World Dogmas (my Baneblade is -1 to hit it back, for example), and benefit from Cawl re-rolls, and can be repaired by the Tech-Priest Dominus without requiring an Enginseer, and has an invuln save for a >16% increase in durability that is always on (T8 is only a 16% increase in durability and only sometimes... e.g. it is useless against lascannons).
3) Electro Priest as a Screen? Seems pretty expensive for that purpose.
I personally have not tried it. (I don't own any.) But people report that a single unit can be a decent counter-charger.
They are good for that almost exclusively. I wouldn't use them as my first line screen, that is for sure.
Sure that's what guardsman are made for ;-)
Btw are we talking about the shooty or the punchy version? And what unitsize?
Wulfey wrote:
EDIT: IMO, there is nothing that a leman russ provides to a mixed admech list that a neutronager can't provide better. Give me a neutronager and 30-40 points of troops every time over the annihilator. And the annihilator is the only variant that is even close to the neutronager. As an admech/AM mixer myself, I think a 108 point basilisk and 40 points of guardsmen provide a lot more utility to an admech list than the lemanrusses. We need non-LOS firepower and screen bodies much more than we need more krak-missile style shots.
How are you running your mixed force? I'm still struggling a little bit with finding a good concept for my force. (Doesn't need to be mega competitive, semi-competitive is ok)
Maybe something like a infantry based force, with loads of Guardsman as a screen or to flood the enemy. Backed up by some skitarii infantry and heavy hitters like the dunecrawler.
Not sure yet.
Lemons are better if you're attaching them to Guard. But since we already take Cawl, we should take Crawlers because they get the force multiplier. Makes them a lot more point efficient once you factor in the need for a Punisher Pask or BC Tank Commander.
How are you running your mixed force? I'm still struggling a little bit with finding a good concept for my force. (Doesn't need to be mega competitive, semi-competitive is ok)
Maybe something like a infantry based force, with loads of Guardsman as a screen or to flood the enemy. Backed up by some skitarii infantry and heavy hitters like the dunecrawler. Not sure yet.
There are a few basic ways. I think way (1) helps all imaginable admech lists. That last 500 points in admech doesn't scale well due to CP limitations. Admech has the best line of sight shooting on a point for point basis in the game from Cawl+WrathofMars+Dakkabots. So you are looking for screen, CP, and non-LOS support.
(1) CADIA - CP and LOS battalion [~504 points] 2x Company Commander (60) - take 5+ refunding CPWLT and either Kurov's or Relic of Lost Cadia 3x10 Guardsmen (120) - take mortars if you can, these are the front rank that do the dying 3x1 or 1x3 Basilisks (324) - shoot at things the neutrons can't see
(2) CADIA - CP and screen Brigade [~950 points] 3x company commanders 3x astropaths (still good psykers for 30 points) 3x scout sentinels with flamers (use scout move to push back deepstrikers) 6x10 guardsment (mortars are good upgrades here) 3x1 Basilisks (non LOS support, consider more mortar squads here)
The admech section should be as many Neutronagers as you have with either (1) Cawl + Robots or (2) Deepstriking Lucius plasma teams that you feed CP
EDIT2: I think that the other big competitive list for admech besides the obvious template one is something that masses deepstrike with Lucius and (2) CADIA brigade. That CADIA brigade lets you keep even your onagers off the table for the first turn, which is a huge advantage.
gendoikari87 wrote: Guys, PSA, point for point the leman russ kicks the neutronagers butt as anti tank. here's the math. Trans is transport T7 3+, tank is T8 3+ LR is land raider T8 2+.
as you can see the plasmacutioner is a full 25% more efficient. Ignore the battlecannon results, had to make room in the calculations sheet for shotguns. so that's without the battlecannon there.
Edit: there we go updated to correct and simplify. all numbers are point per wound inflicted I.e. Wound inflicted per turn on average divided by the point cost of the model.
also i have the shadowswords data if anyone wants it. it really outclasses everything but it's still just nuking a single target.
I don't really buy it. Points in a vacuum are useful to a point. 5++ makes a big difference. Plus, our improved BS. Plascutioner also as the mortal wound drawback. We do consistent damage too thanks to the Neutron special rules vs just 1-2 damage per shot from the Plascutioner.
A better comparison for role also may be the FW Vanquisher, btw.
Vanquisher is really hot garbage FW version or not and I'll take the versatility the russ brings over the 5++ of the neutronager any day. Neutronagers aren't really threats to MEQ or GEQ, a Battlecannon russ with some nice sponsons, that'll threaten literally anything on the board.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The FW Vanquisher is garbage. The regular battletank russ outperforms every anti-tank Russ platform except for the Annihilator against tanks.
THAT SAID:
I can't speak highly enough of the neutron onager. Three of them (with a cawl bubble) have one-shotted one of my Baneblades in a single shooting phase before.
Two (if it doesn't move) S8 -3 D6 damage shots that can roll 2 dice when inflicting damage (discarding lowest) and can shoot at 3+ to-hit (if it didn't move) and re-roll any hits (via Co-Axial) is actually pretty good as a comparison to our Neutronager.
problem is there's just no comparing the vanquishers 2 shots even at double the damage and better AP to 2D6 shots from a cheap ol Russ. The difference in damage is negligible (with the FW version because of the BS Buff) but 2D6 shots vs 2 makes a huge difference when talking versatility.
How are you running your mixed force? I'm still struggling a little bit with finding a good concept for my force. (Doesn't need to be mega competitive, semi-competitive is ok)
Maybe something like a infantry based force, with loads of Guardsman as a screen or to flood the enemy. Backed up by some skitarii infantry and heavy hitters like the dunecrawler.
Not sure yet.
There are a few basic ways. I think way (1) helps all imaginable admech lists. That last 500 points in admech doesn't scale well due to CP limitations. Admech has the best line of sight shooting on a point for point basis in the game from Cawl+WrathofMars+Dakkabots. So you are looking for screen, CP, and non-LOS support.
(1) CADIA - CP and LOS battalion [~504 points]
2x Company Commander (60) - take 5+ refunding CPWLT and either Kurov's or Relic of Lost Cadia
3x10 Guardsmen (120) - take mortars if you can, these are the front rank that do the dying
3x1 or 1x3 Basilisks (324) - shoot at things the neutrons can't see
(2) CADIA - CP and screen Brigade [~950 points]
3x company commanders
3x astropaths (still good psykers for 30 points)
3x scout sentinels with flamers (use scout move to push back deepstrikers)
6x10 guardsment (mortars are good upgrades here)
3x1 Basilisks (non LOS support, consider more mortar squads here)
The admech section should be as many Neutronagers as you have with either (1) Cawl + Robots or (2) Deepstriking Lucius plasma teams that you feed CP
EDIT2: I think that the other big competitive list for admech besides the obvious template one is something that masses deepstrike with Lucius and (2) CADIA brigade. That CADIA brigade lets you keep even your onagers off the table for the first turn, which is a huge advantage.
Thanks mate. I know that Cawlstar is OP I'm just not really a fan of the idea. Also 30 man guardsman screen is nothing. I played nids last weekend and had most of my 80 dudes screen wiped out 3 turns.
But I really like your (2) combined with the Lucius deepsttike, so some questions regarding that option:
(a) so you deepstrike basically your whole AdMech stuff (maybe excluding characters) , to keep them save from turn 1 shenanigans?
(b) do you bother deepstriking in a TPD with your plasma for those rerolls?
(c) Squad composition: Ranger or Vanguard? 10 man squads with datatether or 5 man squads?
(d) thinking about this idea: why shouldn't I just take scions?
a) Preparing a good defensive position is key for the 50% that you need to deploy.
b) No, not unless you bring Plasma, which is not necessary.
c) Rangers if you are filling out a tax. Vanguard if you expect to use them to fight.
d) Vanguard are more efficient than Scions, and you don't have much else to waste CP on.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The FW Vanquisher is garbage. The regular battletank russ outperforms every anti-tank Russ platform except for the Annihilator against tanks.
THAT SAID:
I can't speak highly enough of the neutron onager. Three of them (with a cawl bubble) have one-shotted one of my Baneblades in a single shooting phase before.
Two (if it doesn't move) S8 -3 D6 damage shots that can roll 2 dice when inflicting damage (discarding lowest) and can shoot at 3+ to-hit (if it didn't move) and re-roll any hits (via Co-Axial) is actually pretty good as a comparison to our Neutronager.
Vs. one of my Baneblades:
LRBT Vanquisher:
2 shots, 1.67 hits, .83 wounds, (x4.5 damage for 2d6/highest) = 3.76 wounds done to my baneblade per shooting phase.
Neutron Onager:
2 shots, 1.33 hits, .89 wounds, (x 4.5 damage for 1d6 min 3) = 4.1 wounds done to my baneblade per shooting phase.
And the Onager can move while doing it. And benefit from Canticles, which help it far more than Regimental Traits. And benefit from Forge World Dogmas (my Baneblade is -1 to hit it back, for example), and benefit from Cawl re-rolls, and can be repaired by the Tech-Priest Dominus without requiring an Enginseer, and has an invuln save for a >16% increase in durability that is always on (T8 is only a 16% increase in durability and only sometimes... e.g. it is useless against lascannons).
My point was that they are about as close in form/function as you can get for a comparison in that they are high strength, low shot count, decent AP anti-tank style weapons. I am purposefully not including Cawl or repair or Canticles, because those force multipliers would add to overall point investment (driving up points-per-damage cost). The next best comparison to the Neutronager is the basic Battle Tank, but that has versatility we don't have (because it tosses 2d6, it can go after tanks or dudes).
So to me, comparing a Neutronager to a Plascutioner isn't going to paint a good picture. The former is a tank-hunter, the latter is a TEQ/MEQ hunter. Hence my whole mentioning of the Vanquisher - because that is the closest in form/function.
I have a really nooby question relating to the below. A.) Are you guys buying the boxes of cadian to assemble these guys?
1) CADIA - CP and LOS battalion [~504 points]
2x Company Commander (60) - take 5+ refunding CPWLT and either Kurov's or Relic of Lost Cadia
3x10 Guardsmen (120) - take mortars if you can, these are the front rank that do the dying
3x1 or 1x3 Basilisks (324) - B.) where does one buy these models I can’t find them anywhere.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ie do you need to eBay extra weapons and that for the cadians or is the standard boxes x3 enough?
Where do you get basilisks from as I can’t find them on the store.
gendoikari87 wrote: Well... that TEQ/MEQ Hunter is a better tank hunter than the tank hunter
Only if it supercharges and rolls a decent amount of shots, because it has a lower strength (7 and 8 vs 9), worse AP (not that that matters that much), lower damage output (per shot) and a worse BS.
The Executioner SC'd does about 4 damage to T8, while the Neutronager can do between 3-6. This is not counting any re-rolls and factoring in averages for the variable shots. The swing on random shot weapons is pretty annoying though. The Plasma can randomly toss out like 12 shots, which would be amazing, but so is our 3 shots.
The key though is that whole context thing. Cawl being such a force multiplier, along with the other perks, it makes our option more appealing. 5++ can't be understated.
a) Preparing a good defensive position is key for the 50% that you need to deploy.
b) No, not unless you bring Plasma, which is not necessary.
c) Rangers if you are filling out a tax. Vanguard if you expect to use them to fight.
d) Vanguard are more efficient than Scions, and you don't have much else to waste CP on.
a) Sure. Guardsman at the front, basilisk / HWT in the back I guess?
b) Why is it not necessary? Seems like pretty solid weapon to me. Or is it mathematically better to just bring Radium Carbines / Galvanic Rifles?
c) Nope in my concept they are included to actually fight, so Vanguard.
gendoikari87 wrote: Well... that TEQ/MEQ Hunter is a better tank hunter than the tank hunter
Only if it supercharges and rolls a decent amount of shots, because it has a lower strength (7 and 8 vs 9), worse AP (not that that matters that much), lower damage output (per shot) and a worse BS.
The Executioner SC'd does about 4 damage to T8, while the Neutronager can do between 3-6. This is not counting any re-rolls and factoring in averages for the variable shots. The swing on random shot weapons is pretty annoying though. The Plasma can randomly toss out like 12 shots, which would be amazing, but so is our 3 shots.
The key though is that whole context thing. Cawl being such a force multiplier, along with the other perks, it makes our option more appealing. 5++ can't be understated.
overcharging is not an issue. Cadians can negate the mortal wounds entirely if they sit still. Tank orders give rerolls of 1. Guard has a lot of ways to avoid or outright negate the dangers of overcharge. Even without that it’s a good trade off.
This is a game of averages and in anti tank the neutronager scores 3-3.5 wounds to vehicles per turn. The plasmacutioner does 5.5-7. That’s just a fact. Yes that’s over charging. But guard has ways to not have to worry about that. Simply put the plasmacutioner does 2x the wounds against most vehicles at not twice the cost
Automatically Appended Next Post: And it shouldn’t be that surprising, 8th heavily favors plasma
Automatically Appended Next Post: And if you want to truly cry at how badly admechs been neglected. Go look at twin lascannon tarantula for the guard and realize they’re cheaper than kataphrons
This is a game of averages and in anti tank the neutronager scores 3-3.5 wounds to vehicles per turn. The plasmacutioner does 5.5-7. That’s just a fact. Yes that’s over charging. But guard has ways to not have to worry about that. Simply put the plasmacutioner does 2x the wounds against most vehicles at not twice the cost
Not sure how you are getting averages like that, when I counted supercharged Plasma on straight averages and it was much closer. Are you adding in some re-rolls or something? Because I am not, but that single 1 that would be re-rolled isn't likely to turn into damage.
Also, it appears I rounded for common sense because we can't do 3.5 or 5.5 damage (or even 7 damage with Plasma, since it goes in increments of 2) in a turn.
Leman Russ has a hull lascannon. firing twice with the d6 and two d3 plasma cannons gives you a total average of 11 plasma shots 5.5 of those hit 3.66 to 2.75 wound depending on t7 or t8. 16% chance to save with 2 damage gives you 4.5 to 6.11 average damage from those depending on toughness. Then the lascannon is good for an average of .98 or roughly 1 average damage. Without moving or any modifiers that’s 5.5 to 7 average damage before factoring in any bonuses whatsoever. And average of 2 mortal wounds taken. Throw on overlapping fire and cadian and you can pretty much negate those mortals and also move up to half speed.
Or if you don’t care about mortals and just want to dakka everything. Go catachan for insane firepower bonuses
gendoikari87 wrote: Leman Russ has a hull lascannon. firing twice with the d6 and two d3 plasma cannons gives you a total average of 11 plasma shots 5.5 of those hit 3.66 to 2.75 wound depending on t7 or t8. 16% chance to save with 2 damage gives you 4.5 to 6.11 average damage from those depending on toughness. Then the lascannon is good for an average of .98 or roughly 1 average damage. Without moving or any modifiers that’s 5.5 to 7 average damage before factoring in any bonuses whatsoever. And average of 2 mortal wounds taken. Throw on overlapping fire and cadian and you can pretty much negate those mortals and also move up to half speed.
Or if you don’t care about mortals and just want to dakka everything. Go catachan for insane firepower bonuses
I am not comparing the secondary weaponry, as that is all subjective, since it is optional weaponry.
gendoikari87 wrote: Leman Russ has a hull lascannon. firing twice with the d6 and two d3 plasma cannons gives you a total average of 11 plasma shots 5.5 of those hit 3.66 to 2.75 wound depending on t7 or t8. 16% chance to save with 2 damage gives you 4.5 to 6.11 average damage from those depending on toughness. Then the lascannon is good for an average of .98 or roughly 1 average damage. Without moving or any modifiers that’s 5.5 to 7 average damage before factoring in any bonuses whatsoever. And average of 2 mortal wounds taken. Throw on overlapping fire and cadian and you can pretty much negate those mortals and also move up to half speed.
Or if you don’t care about mortals and just want to dakka everything. Go catachan for insane firepower bonuses
I am not comparing the secondary weaponry, as that is all subjective, since it is optional weaponry.
except it exists. You DO have to take it into account. Technically speaking the neutron laser is optional, should we be comparing a russ to eradication Beamer onager?
Automatically Appended Next Post: The only real advantage to the onager is it can move and fire without any sort of penalty, and it has a decent invuln save. Which against most threats generally speaking evens out to make it russ like in toughness.
gendoikari87 wrote: Leman Russ has a hull lascannon. firing twice with the d6 and two d3 plasma cannons gives you a total average of 11 plasma shots 5.5 of those hit 3.66 to 2.75 wound depending on t7 or t8. 16% chance to save with 2 damage gives you 4.5 to 6.11 average damage from those depending on toughness. Then the lascannon is good for an average of .98 or roughly 1 average damage. Without moving or any modifiers that’s 5.5 to 7 average damage before factoring in any bonuses whatsoever. And average of 2 mortal wounds taken. Throw on overlapping fire and cadian and you can pretty much negate those mortals and also move up to half speed.
Or if you don’t care about mortals and just want to dakka everything. Go catachan for insane firepower bonuses
I am not comparing the secondary weaponry, as that is all subjective, since it is optional weaponry.
except it exists. You DO have to take it into account. Technically speaking the neutron laser is optional, should we be comparing a russ to eradication Beamer onager?
Automatically Appended Next Post: The only real advantage to the onager is it can move and fire without any sort of penalty, and it has a decent invuln save. Which against most threats generally speaking evens out to make it russ like in toughness.
Disingenuous there, man. You assume a Lascannon, when it could be a Heavy Bolter. The Neutron isn't optional on a Neutronager, but the second CHS is. Notice I don't factor them into the equation.
It’s not disingenuous you have the option to take them....as in you can control that. You aren’t randomly rolling for weapons on your russ. Just admit it, you’re wrong on this.
gendoikari87 wrote: It’s not disingenuous you have the option to take them....as in you can control that. You aren’t randomly rolling for weapons on your russ. Just admit it, you’re wrong on this.
I am not wrong, given my comparison is between the two primary weapons without re-rolls. You are adding other variables.
Trust me, I have learned it the hard way that it is always better to bring more russes instead of kitting them out with sponsons (especially such expensive upgrades like lascanons and plasma canons)
gendoikari87 wrote: It’s not disingenuous you have the option to take them....as in you can control that. You aren’t randomly rolling for weapons on your russ. Just admit it, you’re wrong on this.
I am not wrong, given my comparison is between the two primary weapons without re-rolls. You are adding other variables.
im not adding other variables I’m using what’s on the sheet. Stop trolling.
gendoikari87 wrote: It’s not disingenuous you have the option to take them....as in you can control that. You aren’t randomly rolling for weapons on your russ. Just admit it, you’re wrong on this.
I am not wrong, given my comparison is between the two primary weapons without re-rolls. You are adding other variables.
im not adding other variables I’m using what’s on the sheet. Stop trolling.
It isn't trolling. If it was me running Guard, I would be running the Executioner with just a hull HB, because why would I sink more points into guns when I can add just more Russ to a list?
gendoikari87 wrote: Well that’s you. Good for you. Other people have other options. It’s on the sheet.
Sorry, I was going for what would be "optimal". Taking a 20pt Lascannon that hits on a 5+ when it moves is less than stellar. That is why you go bare-bones and just spam tanks. That also ensures that, since the Russ has no invuln, each loss is less painful and you put more wounds on the table.
Again, that is why I was comparing the main gun, as that is more fruitful for the comparison.
gendoikari87 wrote: It’s not disingenuous you have the option to take them....as in you can control that. You aren’t randomly rolling for weapons on your russ. Just admit it, you’re wrong on this.
I am not wrong, given my comparison is between the two primary weapons without re-rolls. You are adding other variables.
im not adding other variables I’m using what’s on the sheet. Stop trolling.
It isn't trolling. If it was me running Guard, I would be running the Executioner with just a hull HB, because why would I sink more points into guns when I can add just more Russ to a list?
You'd be running an executioner russ with a HB? Why that loadout, out of curiosity? I play purely bareones russes, but I don't think I'd bother with an executioner if I wasn't also taking it with plasma cannons and some kind of re-roll access (usually by taking it as a Tank Commander and ordering himself to reroll 1s). Also keep in mind the lascannon is 20pts but it's only 12 over the mandatory HB, if you're going for a build that's got the improved BS and the reroll you may as well go for it.
There's plenty of reasons to put extra upgrades on your russes. a three-HF punisher in my experience is far better than a base bolter punisher because its practically impossible to tie up at the range it typically engages. If I'm going for a barebones russ, I generally run Battle Cannons because they don't wound themselves about twice per turn.
gendoikari87 wrote: It’s not disingenuous you have the option to take them....as in you can control that. You aren’t randomly rolling for weapons on your russ. Just admit it, you’re wrong on this.
I am not wrong, given my comparison is between the two primary weapons without re-rolls. You are adding other variables.
im not adding other variables I’m using what’s on the sheet. Stop trolling.
It isn't trolling. If it was me running Guard, I would be running the Executioner with just a hull HB, because why would I sink more points into guns when I can add just more Russ to a list?
You'd be running an executioner russ with a HB? Why that loadout, out of curiosity? I play purely bareones russes, but I don't think I'd bother with an executioner if I wasn't also taking it with plasma cannons and some kind of re-roll access (usually by taking it as a Tank Commander and ordering himself to reroll 1s). Also keep in mind the lascannon is 20pts but it's only 12 over the mandatory HB, if you're going for a build that's got the improved BS and the reroll you may as well go for it.
There's plenty of reasons to put extra upgrades on your russes. a three-HF punisher in my experience is far better than a base bolter punisher because its practically impossible to tie up at the range it typically engages. If I'm going for a barebones russ, I generally run Battle Cannons because they don't wound themselves about twice per turn.
Because more tanks > extras. Spamming them, essentially. They aren't that hard to kill, so if you load up on goodies, you lose a lot when your tank goes boom. I'd rather saturate the field with T8 wounds, personally.
And we aren't talking TCs or with orders, etc. Well, I am not. I am comparing the Russ to the Dunecralwer.
I do concur though, that bare bones the LRBT is ideal. But the Executioner came up, so that prompted the discussion.
I think it’s time to stop debating with em. You can’t just take worst case scenario up against best. I could compare a bare bones russ up against an eradicator if that’s the case. Or a neutronager at 2 wounds. There’s always a way to fudge the numbers so you win if you aren’t debating in good faith. I think em has proven he is not. So back to ignore
gendoikari87 wrote: I think it’s time to stop debating with em. You can’t just take worst case scenario up against best. I could compare a bare bones russ up against an eradicator if that’s the case. Or a neutronager at 2 wounds. There’s always a way to fudge the numbers so you win if you aren’t debating in good faith. I think em has proven he is not. So back to ignore
Who is talking worse/best case scenarios or anything? I am comparing weapons. You are comparing a specific build of Russ, which I find a bit misleading.
These are two different things. You said I was wrong, but I was not, because I was not talking about all the frills. Hilariously, you are fudging numbers by adding in stuff like Lascannons. That isn't on the base model, that is an expensive upgrade that really isn't something I see on competitive Russ loadouts often.
But whatever. Bow out of a discussion. You do you boo-boo.
The basilisks that everyone is raving about taking...Sold out online. Can’t find them other than direct games workshop page.
Are these old out of production models or have they just had a brief stock issue.
Thanks
they are older but are in production (hence webstore only) and they're getting hit with a combination of the stock issues everything is having, and the stock issues that come from an older less popular kit that was terrible for like 4 editions suddenly becoming the meta hotness (See: What happened with Vauls Wrath batteries for Eldar last edition)
The fact that theyre older makes them pretty dang easy to find on ebay though. Maybe check there if you're OK with stripping paint you can buy them assembled for about 40 bucks easily.
If you are new though, one word of caution: Kits are expensive, and time consuming, and a giant, giant pain to swap out for something else usually, and the rules change drastically. If you're buying something for the sole purpose of getting the rules attached to it and you don't look forward to painting it and you don't think its concept is particularly interesting...pass it up. in a year, you'll be much happier buying a varied army of stuff you really like than having a spam list that's an edition or a FAQ or a chapter approved behind the competitive curve.
Ask 90% of tau players how they like their 5 Riptides now.
I have a really nooby question relating to the below. A.) Are you guys buying the boxes of cadian to assemble these guys?
1) CADIA - CP and LOS battalion [~504 points]
2x Company Commander (60) - take 5+ refunding CPWLT and either Kurov's or Relic of Lost Cadia
3x10 Guardsmen (120) - take mortars if you can, these are the front rank that do the dying
3x1 or 1x3 Basilisks (324) - B.) where does one buy these models I can’t find them anywhere.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ie do you need to eBay extra weapons and that for the cadians or is the standard boxes x3 enough?
Where do you get basilisks from as I can’t find them on the store.
Cheers
Basilisks are extremely hard to source. Physical stores don't have them anymore and I got the last 3 off of frontlinegaming. And the kits you do find have the wrong instructions and the kit itself is actually kind of bad. If you are up for a conversion project, hoard of bits is back up on ebay and he delivers fast. I would recommend the following bits:
This is like ... 25 bucks of bits per basilisk. You will need some kind of gun platform from a terrain kit for the cannon. Maybe get the duncrawler hull for 3.50.
I have a really nooby question relating to the below. A.) Are you guys buying the boxes of cadian to assemble these guys?
1) CADIA - CP and LOS battalion [~504 points]
2x Company Commander (60) - take 5+ refunding CPWLT and either Kurov's or Relic of Lost Cadia
3x10 Guardsmen (120) - take mortars if you can, these are the front rank that do the dying
3x1 or 1x3 Basilisks (324) - B.) where does one buy these models I can’t find them anywhere.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ie do you need to eBay extra weapons and that for the cadians or is the standard boxes x3 enough?
Where do you get basilisks from as I can’t find them on the store.
Cheers
I am using Skitarii-counts-as-Guardsmen for now. Vanguard and Rangers for now, but I want to do a mass conversion with leftover bits to get 30 Guardsmen.
Which brings me to my AdMech-related conversion question, which I have moved here.
I am going to take some spare bits and some Anvil parts that came in to make a bunch more infantry. I am leaning toward option 1 in the event that I ever need cowled Vanguard, but option 2 seems right when I look at Mars pattern lasguns.
I don't have as much time to play (or build... or paint... sigh) as I normally would these days. Work work work.
Anyhow, proxies are not the same thing as conversions. Proxies are the use of any object, not necessarily even models, to represent a model. They are disallowed in every tournament I know. Conversions are models specifically made to simulate another model with creative integrity.
Conversions are fine in tournaments, though some organizers want to take a look beforehand.
Some rules of thumb that I know of:
1) Should be roughly the same size as what you are modeling. For infantry, use the exact same base. For unbased vehicles, you can either not use a base if it is the same size or err on the larger side with a base. If a vehicle comes with a base (like our Crawlers), you have to base them, even if it's a pain to pack those 130mm dinner plates into your transport solution.
2) Must follow WYSIWYG. If your PHEAR Crawler (see my previous post if you don't know what this is) is a Basilisk, all PHEAR Crawlers should be Basilisks; you can't use one as a Neutron Crawler stand-in. If one has an extra Heavy Stubber, that one needs a Heavy Stubber modeled onto it. Another example, if I am bringing Skitarii-counts-as-Guardsmen, I am not bringing any other Skitarii, only Guardsmen.
3) You need to explain to your opponent exactly what your conversions are before you start. The burden is always on you to clarify. The more homogeneous your army is, the easier this is going to be.
Cadian Brigade 3x CC 6x Infantry Squad
3x Scout Sentinel with HF 2x Basilisk
1x HWT with Mortar
2x Command Squad with Mortar
1x Astropath
Lucius Battallion 2x TPD with Eradication Ray & Phospher Serpenta
2x 10 Vanguard with 3x Plasma and Data Tether
3x 10 Vanguard with Data Tether
2x Neutron Onager
1x Icarus Onagaer
What do you think? (remember the list is ment to be semi-competitive, not ultra competitive!)
lash92 wrote: So my take on the Lucius and Cadia combo:
Cadian Brigade 3x CC 6x Infantry Squad 3x Scout Sentinel with HF 2x Basilisk 1x HWT with Mortar 2x Command Squad with Mortar 1x Astropath
Lucius Battallion 2x TPD with Eradication Ray & Phospher Serpenta 2x 10 Vanguard with 3x Plasma and Data Tether 3x 10 Vanguard with Data Tether 2x Neutron Onager 1x Icarus Onagaer
What do you think? (remember the list is ment to be semi-competitive, not ultra competitive!)
I was thinking along a very similar line of thought for LUCIUS and CADIA. Mine was similar, but has 1 TPD + 1 Enginseer (fix basilisks, hide), and had 4x1 dragoons in place of 2 extra vanguard squads and the icarus. You can't give +2 to hit to more than 1 squad a shooting phase, so going all in on drop plasma has its limitations. I am very skeptical about the utility of the icarus in light of the new codexes. The nastiest FLY things in the game right now are T7 wave serpents, hive tyrants, and daemon primarchs ... and the icarus has 5 shots that are str6 with no access wound reroll mechanics. If people just brought more T6 fliers then the icarus would have its day again. I kind of want to bring this kind of list to LVO, but it is so technical to play that i would need a lot more practice. You can keep 8 something admech units off the board, or maybe not!!! Huge flexibility there.
lash92 wrote: So my take on the Lucius and Cadia combo:
Cadian Brigade 3x CC 6x Infantry Squad
3x Scout Sentinel with HF 2x Basilisk
1x HWT with Mortar
2x Command Squad with Mortar
1x Astropath
Lucius Battallion 2x TPD with Eradication Ray & Phospher Serpenta
2x 10 Vanguard with 3x Plasma and Data Tether
3x 10 Vanguard with Data Tether
2x Neutron Onager
1x Icarus Onagaer
What do you think? (remember the list is ment to be semi-competitive, not ultra competitive!)
I was thinking along a very similar line of thought for LUCIUS and CADIA. Mine was similar, but has 1 TPD + 1 Enginseer (fix basilisks, hide), and had 4x1 dragoons in place of 2 extra vanguard squads and the icarus. You can't give +2 to hit to more than 1 squad a shooting phase, so going all in on drop plasma has its limitations. I am very skeptical about the utility of the icarus in light of the new codexes. The nastiest FLY things in the game right now are T7 wave serpents, hive tyrants, and daemon primarchs ... and the icarus has 5 shots that are str6 with no access wound reroll mechanics. If people just brought more T6 fliers then the icarus would have its day again. I kind of want to bring this kind of list to LVO, but it is so technical to play that i would need a lot more practice. You can keep 8 something admech units off the board, or maybe not!!! Huge flexibility there.
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Thats what the second TPD is for, so you can drop him with both plasma squads for rerolling 1´s (not as good as +2 to hit, but still better then nothing).
Also nice idea with the Dragoons. I guess you include them in a Stygies auxillary detachment? Mh don´t know about the Icarus, it still offers a bit of versatility in comparison to the Neutron, especially when you spent a CP for +2 to hit. So are you running 2 or 3 Neutrons?
Well you still got more than a month time to practice ;-) Did you already tested this kind of list? If yes how did it work?
I found deep strike plasma to be less good than anticipated in ITC missions. I ran wads of deepstriking plasma elysians one time and they tended to feed. They did damage for one turn, but set me back the rest of the game and they reallllly suffer from opponents who are good at spacing.
THis is of course why I think that LUCIUS will do better than ELYSIANS. Admech plasma is 18" for 2 shots instead of 12" for 2 shots, which is a huge deal. And admech have +2 to hit with the tether or ignore cover with the omnispex, and we have more bodies in the deep strike squads. And the admech drop teams come with 7 additional non-plasma bodies, instead of being 4 man command squads with only a 5+ save.
On the second TPD, I don't think you need it because the one TPD you drop down won't be your warlord and if it dies, you can always use the canticle for rerolling 1s to hit on the next turn. If you get desparate, you can use all those CADIA brigade CP to just spend 2CP and get reroll 1s by force using the strategem.
The trouble with drop plasma is that you can easily overcommit and not kill enough in range, or undercommit and fail to kill the big baddie that needs to die. Having played it, the bigger risk is undercommitting. If you have something to shoot at with your deepstrikes, and they can plausibly kill their points in damage, then you MUST deepstrike them. Holding back isn't that great. Especially if your opponent has a lord of war. If you have a shot at a lord of war, then drop all your deepstrike and put every shot into it to kill it in 1 turn. Holding nothing back .
lash92 wrote: Sure just every half decent player will screen their LOW against short range alpha strikes.
This actually makes Deep Strike or Infiltrate a lot more important because it keeps the opponent from deploying more aggressively than they usually would.
lash92 wrote: Sure just every half decent player will screen their LOW against short range alpha strikes.
This actually makes Deep Strike or Infiltrate a lot more important because it keeps the opponent from deploying more aggressively than they usually would.
And that plays into our whole army! We already have one of the nastiest gunlines at 36". People deploy with that in mind. You start giving them reasons to fear their backfield and they will deploy in a veritable castle - which suits our entire strategy perfectly.
I have some more AdMech models coming in the mail this week - so I will be back to testing lists and ideas instead of playing my 2k League list that was not at all optimized.
Sadly, this means I need to build and paint more models, which I am not excited about. Especially the Dragoons.
Hmm, makes me wonder, anyone ever tried infiltrating Kastelan Robots with Stygies to place them really close to the opponent ? Imagine, you get first turn, you spend a CP to make them double shot and boom, rain of fire from behind. Of course you'd better have the first turn. It shouldn't be used in every situation and against every army, but I'll try to place it sometimes with my two Robots.
lash92 wrote: I don't know, that's a lot of points for effectively one round of shooting, because next round they just get tied up by some chaff.
Yes of course, which is why you wouldn't do this against a horde list, problem is most good lists are horde lists :/ Or infiltrate a counter-charge unit like Infiltrators or Fulgurites ?
Note that I'm not saying this would be a useful tactic, just that it may be interesting in case you're playing against a backfield army that outranges you or something.
Aaranis wrote: Hmm, makes me wonder, anyone ever tried infiltrating Kastelan Robots with Stygies to place them really close to the opponent ? Imagine, you get first turn, you spend a CP to make them double shot and boom, rain of fire from behind. Of course you'd better have the first turn. It shouldn't be used in every situation and against every army, but I'll try to place it sometimes with my two Robots.
I think the best thing to do with infiltrating Stygies robots is make them fisticuff-bots and go Conqueror protocols with Binharic Override. Then you get what, like, 6 or 8 attacks per bot that are flat 3 damage, AP-3, strength 10?
Also, no one ever replied, but I think I've chosen Graia as my superheavy repair battalion Forge World.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I think the best thing to do with infiltrating Stygies robots is make them fisticuff-bots and go Conqueror protocols with Binharic Override. Then you get what, like, 6 or 8 attacks per bot that are flat 3 damage, AP-3, strength 10?
Also, no one ever replied, but I think I've chosen Graia as my superheavy repair battalion Forge World.
I've talked about this idea of Punching Bots way earlier, the problem is they'd probably be a one-shot unit, seeing as they'll be focused early on (which you can use to your advantage by moving your army forward in the meantime), and with a proper screening unit you won't be able to pierce through the chaff to get to your target (a high Toughness model, likely). So it's really hard to place too, and the obscene price of the Fists is disheartening. I still want to run a pair of Punching Bots, their theoretical damage output looks insane, but I've yet to do the maths (dunno the formulas). Other problem is that the only way to amp up their damage is by reroll 1s to Hit doctrina.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I think the best thing to do with infiltrating Stygies robots is make them fisticuff-bots and go Conqueror protocols with Binharic Override. Then you get what, like, 6 or 8 attacks per bot that are flat 3 damage, AP-3, strength 10?
Also, no one ever replied, but I think I've chosen Graia as my superheavy repair battalion Forge World.
I've talked about this idea of Punching Bots way earlier, the problem is they'd probably be a one-shot unit, seeing as they'll be focused early on (which you can use to your advantage by moving your army forward in the meantime), and with a proper screening unit you won't be able to pierce through the chaff to get to your target (a high Toughness model, likely). So it's really hard to place too, and the obscene price of the Fists is disheartening. I still want to run a pair of Punching Bots, their theoretical damage output looks insane, but I've yet to do the maths (dunno the formulas). Other problem is that the only way to amp up their damage is by reroll 1s to Hit doctrina.
I mean, you could take like 6 of them and keep them in Aegis if you're worried about durability, and that way they could flamer through the screen and charge something behind it (remember, you can move closer to the enemy than 9" after using the stygies stratagem, as it lets you move on your first turn). Hell, you could infiltrate a bunch of Grav Servitors and get 15 Str 5 AP-3 shots to evaporate screens, even using the elimination volley stratagem if you really wished, and punch a hole in the screen wide enough for bots to charge through. In fact, if you brought like 6 bots in one squad, you could leave them in Aegis, charge the screen across a huge frontage with 6 bots, have them swapped to Conqueror, but it doesn't take effect until the next turn - meaning you're still in Aegis when the screens fall back and you are shot, and then you tick over to Conqueror just in time to get to the meat behind the screens.
Can the lucius deep strike stratagem be used more than once?
I have 2 castellan robots, and 10 fw castellax robots that I'm going to use as castellans...and deep striking 12 robots in sounds like a fun thing to do.
I've played one game of 8th with my admech, and got crushed, but I didn't know rules or how many eldar psychic planes were...I had no anti air in my list...or psychic defense...grr...but it seems like kataphrons are a bit pricey. Points wise.
What's the best loadout for kataphrons? I have 6 with heavy grav and 3 with heavy arc rifles. The arc rifles are cheap, but I'm thinking changing them out with torsion rifles might be better.
Total: 1995 points ~~ need to calc again but close to this 8 Command Points
already made a list with 7 staff priest instead of 1more basilisks and the extra 5 points. also valid since i got the priests and they perform well while i still fixing my basilisk. 7 priests make the list 1999 (1995 -108 + 112)
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
then how is he ever useful? Or was before that range buff he got in the dex. That’s a lot to fit in 6”
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
then how is he ever useful? Or was before that range buff he got in the dex. That’s a lot to fit in 6”
Within 6" isn't too bad - you need just a sliver of each Onager base and one sliver of a Robot base for the whole unit. It isn't entirely within 6", which would be ridiculous.
Yeah but is anyone even using that much? 800 points is like six robots and a onager. That’s just to break even. If you then have dragoons running all over the place.....
You could cut the Dunecrawler for a fifth Kastelan (more consistent against a Daemon Primarch, though it is a bit riskier to have so many eggs in one basket) and 3x Mortars (takes pressure off your Kastelans against horde). Your call though.
I had considered something like it earlier because I was worried about only having 6 CP:
Spoiler:
Cadian Battalion Detachment - 399
HQ - 60 1x Company Commander - Lasgun, Chainsword, Warlord: Grand Strategist
1x Company Commander - Lasgun, Chainsword, Kurov's Aquila
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
2 Neutronager and 4 robots covers that easily lol
I’ve been tempted to take incendine combustors along with twin phosphors to deter people who think they can just charge the robots and tie them up. 4 robots is 8D6 heavy flamer shots in dakka-mode, ought to be enough to make em think twice for 24 points more than another heavy phosphor each. Now I just have to find a way to position my robots so that gits can’t abuse los blocking terrain to charge with Overwatch immunity :\
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
A dunecrawler herd doesn't need Cawl. Another dunecrawler would get more hits for the point difference.
A robot herd is only even a thing with Cawl. 4+ or 5+ rerolling 1s sucks. You need the full cawl rerolls bad.
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
A dunecrawler herd doesn't need Cawl. Another dunecrawler would get more hits for the point difference.
A robot herd is only even a thing with Cawl. 4+ or 5+ rerolling 1s sucks. You need the full cawl rerolls bad.
I dunno. Missing that one or two shot Neutron can be a game-changer. Being able to re-roll is huge.
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
A dunecrawler herd doesn't need Cawl. Another dunecrawler would get more hits for the point difference.
A robot herd is only even a thing with Cawl. 4+ or 5+ rerolling 1s sucks. You need the full cawl rerolls bad.
I dunno. Missing that one or two shot Neutron can be a game-changer. Being able to re-roll is huge.
that might be partially confirmation bias. adding 50% more shots is the same as rerolls for BS 4. less for BS 3. That's how guard does it. Weight of fire can and will outweigh accuracy if you have enough. Understanding where that line is however is mildly time intenstive.
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
A dunecrawler herd doesn't need Cawl. Another dunecrawler would get more hits for the point difference.
A robot herd is only even a thing with Cawl. 4+ or 5+ rerolling 1s sucks. You need the full cawl rerolls bad.
I dunno. Missing that one or two shot Neutron can be a game-changer. Being able to re-roll is huge.
Yeah, especially with Cawl ignoring the blank rolls from negative modifiers. I Have never run a non-Cawl onager in a ocmpetitive setting. But I am saying that the mathhammer makes a STYGIES dunecrawler that rerolls 1s only like 10% less accurate than a cawl-Onager that is rerolling 1s and 2s.
Hmm I think I'm going to use 2-3 Inquisitors as psychic defence. I could convert them to look like the Ordo Mechanicus (I think that's the name), they're cheap (55 stock) and provide nice powers. Terror looks nice to support a CC unit, as it prevents the target from firing in Overwatch. The power to auto-pass morale tests could be nice too, I think I'm going to use Greyfax near my precious units to deny better, and one Inquisitor on each side wherever they're needed. They also have access to some nice weaponry, I should really try this out.
The Inquisition psychic discipline is more interesting for me as it affects Imperium units instead of Astra Militarum like the Psykana discipline, which is better for me since I don't run Astra Militarum in my army (except a small patrol of Scions sometimes). Also, if needed I can ditch them in a Null-Maiden Rhino with a few Sisters of Silence of mine so they can move around and make an anti-psyker force.
Aaranis wrote: Hmm I think I'm going to use 2-3 Inquisitors as psychic defence. I could convert them to look like the Ordo Mechanicus (I think that's the name), they're cheap (55 stock) and provide nice powers. Terror looks nice to support a CC unit, as it prevents the target from firing in Overwatch. The power to auto-pass morale tests could be nice too, I think I'm going to use Greyfax near my precious units to deny better, and one Inquisitor on each side wherever they're needed. They also have access to some nice weaponry, I should really try this out.
I really don't know if I like it. Sure the idea is great, but it's also very costly (~ 200 points), eben without gear.
I think I would rather take 200 points more of AdMech stuff.
Heafstaag wrote: Do people use datasmiths to repair robots, or are they a waste of points?
I take one when I dont have the points to generate enough CP to blow 2 of them on binharic override. They've generally done nothing though. The matches I've played I pretty much clear out anything from the backfield asap then my robots are left to just be shot at. I do sometimes put the overwatch relic on the datasmith for when something charges my robots, but i've found it pretty ineffective.
Datasmiths are good for filling out cheap elites slots for bridages. If they were an HQ choice i'd take them over an enginseer any day.
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
A dunecrawler herd doesn't need Cawl. Another dunecrawler would get more hits for the point difference.
A robot herd is only even a thing with Cawl. 4+ or 5+ rerolling 1s sucks. You need the full cawl rerolls bad.
I dunno. Missing that one or two shot Neutron can be a game-changer. Being able to re-roll is huge.
that might be partially confirmation bias. adding 50% more shots is the same as rerolls for BS 4. less for BS 3. That's how guard does it. Weight of fire can and will outweigh accuracy if you have enough. Understanding where that line is however is mildly time intenstive.
True enough, but because we are taking Cawl for the Robots, his benefits stacking with already solid units is just gravy. I have 550-660pt in Robots and at least 2-3 Dunecrawlers, the former requires the re-rolls, the latter is improved for it as well, even if less so.
Either way, Cawl is still just a fantastic force multiplier.
Yeah, especially with Cawl ignoring the blank rolls from negative modifiers. I Have never run a non-Cawl onager in a ocmpetitive setting. But I am saying that the mathhammer makes a STYGIES dunecrawler that rerolls 1s only like 10% less accurate than a cawl-Onager that is rerolling 1s and 2s.
Has anyone run the numbers on Wrath of Mars for a full squad of Infiltrators vs. Dakka Kastelans?
I'm thinking of using some Infiltrators as "deep strike" meltas in a pinch. If I can get that for 110pts, that'd be awesome (although splurging for more isn't too bad for that ability).
Basically, is a 3+ or 2+ BS from Infiltrators with 25+ shots better than Dakka Kastelans with 3+ or 4+BS with 36 shots (and if you throw in Cawl, re-rolls)? That's currently 110pts vs 440pts+, so keep that in mind.
I'm thinking Infiltrators might be awesome in that regard - basically, meltadrop and cc for cheap.
Ravemastaj wrote: Has anyone run the numbers on Wrath of Mars for a full squad of Infiltrators vs. Dakka Kastelans?
I'm thinking of using some Infiltrators as "deep strike" meltas in a pinch. If I can get that for 110pts, that'd be awesome (although splurging for more isn't too bad for that ability).
Basically, is a 3+ or 2+ BS from Infiltrators with 25+ shots better than Dakka Kastelans with 3+ or 4+BS with 36 shots (and if you throw in Cawl, re-rolls)? That's currently 110pts vs 440pts+, so keep that in mind.
I'm thinking Infiltrators might be awesome in that regard - basically, meltadrop and cc for cheap.
Yes, a 220 point 10 stack of MARS infiltrators does like 8 mortal wounds if they are getting 2s to hit rerolling 1s [protocol strategem, rerolling 1s to shoot canticle, wrath of mars]. That is more damage than 220 points of robots, but they die after the deepstrike and don't do as much damage as 550 points of robots per volley.
Automatically Appended Next Post: While I was on the toilet today I was thinking ... our forgeworld dogmas aren't that great. When you think about it ... what is the MARS double canticle really doing? 2 shots at shroudpsalm? I care, but not really. And a lot of the time shroudpsalm doesn't matter because they are shooting lascannons at my onagers / robots and I am taking saves on my invul anyways. What if we just gave up on dogmas? The forgeworld specific strategems don't require that the detachment be mono forgeworld, only that the unit be from that forgeworld. And I really need troops for more CP. I still get canticles since my admech detachment is all admech units ... but I don't get the dogma bonus.
MARS / LUCIUS Battalion - no dogmas, but yes strategems MARS: - Cawl + Enginseer - 2x Neutronager with extra stubber - 5x Robots - 1x6 Rangers (hide out of LOS somewhere) LUCIUS - 1x10 Vanguard, 3x plasma, 1x tether - 1x10 Ranger, 3x plasma, 1x omnispex
This lets me deepstrike the two LUCIUS squads. On the turn I know I am dropping them in, I just pick the rerolling 1s in shooting phase canticle, give the vanguard the +2 to hit protocol, and have the rangers shoot at some valuable infantry in cover. This list starts with 9CP and spends 2 to deepstrike (that i might convert on a 5+).
Ravemastaj wrote: Has anyone run the numbers on Wrath of Mars for a full squad of Infiltrators vs. Dakka Kastelans?
I'm thinking of using some Infiltrators as "deep strike" meltas in a pinch. If I can get that for 110pts, that'd be awesome (although splurging for more isn't too bad for that ability).
Basically, is a 3+ or 2+ BS from Infiltrators with 25+ shots better than Dakka Kastelans with 3+ or 4+BS with 36 shots (and if you throw in Cawl, re-rolls)? That's currently 110pts vs 440pts+, so keep that in mind.
I'm thinking Infiltrators might be awesome in that regard - basically, meltadrop and cc for cheap.
Yes, a 220 point 10 stack of MARS infiltrators does like 8 mortal wounds if they are getting 2s to hit rerolling 1s [protocol strategem, rerolling 1s to shoot canticle, wrath of mars]. That is more damage than 220 points of robots, but they die after the deepstrike and don't do as much damage as 550 points of robots per volley.
Indeed. And that’s only at 12” range, robots do it from safety across the board and with cawl support you’re not spending additional cp to increase their efficiency.
ph34r wrote: Very interesting thought Wulfey. I once considered putting a non-admech unit into the admech detachment but would lose the Dogma AND the Canticles.
With only mixing forge worlds, you keep the Canticles, but lose only the Dogma?
With the benefit being, no Dogma, but at least you get the Stratagems?
Could be good.
The basic problem with the admech battalion is that MARS skitarii suck. They don't want two canticles since they can't melee for crap, and they don't get any defensive benefits. And the MARS forgeworld trait is useless in most games until turn 2-3 when my MARS dragoons get in melee and I get a lucky roll on the double canticles. But I always pick shroudpsalm first turn anyways. The LUCIUS dogma is good (ignore -1 armor pen), but the real reason you take LUCIUS is so you can deepstrike. The deepstrike strategem only says LUCIUS UNIT, not LUCIUS UNIT in an all-LUCIUS detachment.
Deepstrike changes everything when it comes to skitarii squads. They stop being terrible because you can guarantee that they do damage on the turn they come in. If I drop the mortar squads (which may be free kill points anyways), I could even go whole hog and have 3x10 LUCIUS plasma drop teams. That is some scary stuff for armies that are relying on the 12" away -1 to hit tricks. On the round I know I am going to drop, I pick the reroll 1s canticle and put the boys on the table.
EDIT: the ditching dogmas trick gets you out of paying for the second enginseer. That is a 47 point savings. And that the 1 enginseer you bring can be MARS so he can fix the onagers and robots, wheras if you bring 2x enginseers in a LUCIUS battalion, those 2 LUCIUS enginseers can't fix any of your MARS tanks for some baffling reason. The point savings makes it easy to strap 3 more plasmas onto your third deepstrike squad.
EDIT2: I think this last list is actually what i wa slooking for. I think that dragoons are not going to be that great in the upcoming LVO meta due to the presence of eldar reapers. But 3x deepstriking squads with lots of high AP and ignore cover ... yes ... that is viable against reapers and great against LOW / artillery lists. Even against tyranids, at least I can guarantee 1 turn of shooting from my infantry before they are tied up thanks to the deepstrike.
EDIT3: now here is the super soup cheese nonsense play, make the 1 enginseer GRAIA. Then I can use the GRAIA 4+ 24" deny for 1CP if I am desparate to stop a game winning psychic power. The 1 enginseer can still fix the basilisks, and Cawl should be enough for 5x robots and 2x neutrons.
As interesting and useful as this is, sounds like a major headache keeping track of each unit and what FW they’re from...though I guess with no dogmas it doesn’t make that much difference.
Keep in mind that when you're deciding between Cawl and TPD, it's not just a TPD. You practically have enough points to put another Dunecrawler in. You lose a 1/6 chance to hit (maybe 1/3 against a -1 to hit), but you gain a 2/3 to hit with that new Crawler, ontop of the extra wounds, split shooting, and whatnot. That or another Kastelan Robot.
Somewhere above 700-800 points, the force multiplier exceeds the performance of an additional unit.
Ravemastaj wrote: Has anyone run the numbers on Wrath of Mars for a full squad of Infiltrators vs. Dakka Kastelans?
I'm thinking of using some Infiltrators as "deep strike" meltas in a pinch. If I can get that for 110pts, that'd be awesome (although splurging for more isn't too bad for that ability).
Basically, is a 3+ or 2+ BS from Infiltrators with 25+ shots better than Dakka Kastelans with 3+ or 4+BS with 36 shots (and if you throw in Cawl, re-rolls)? That's currently 110pts vs 440pts+, so keep that in mind.
I'm thinking Infiltrators might be awesome in that regard - basically, meltadrop and cc for cheap.
Yes, a 220 point 10 stack of MARS infiltrators does like 8 mortal wounds if they are getting 2s to hit rerolling 1s [protocol strategem, rerolling 1s to shoot canticle, wrath of mars]. That is more damage than 220 points of robots, but they die after the deepstrike and don't do as much damage as 550 points of robots per volley.
Indeed. And that’s only at 12” range, robots do it from safety across the board and with cawl support you’re not spending additional cp to increase their efficiency.
If only princeps were still characters :(
Except you've simply compared 440pts to 110. Also, with everyone important getting -1 to hit after 12 inches, the close range nature of infiltrators becomes more of a boon than a liability. Think of it this way:
An eldar tank managed to survive your Laser Onagers, and only has a few wounds left. You infiltrated your dudes within 12 inches of the vehicle, and within 9 inches of one of his screening forces. If you managed to find a decent spot for 10 infiltrators, it gives you the opportunity to essentially Melta a tank and get locked in close combat with someone else. With 550pts of infiltrators, you can have one "melta" squad of 10, and 3 more 5 man squads to guarantee at least one charge goes off. Against eldar T3 and invul saves, the amount of damage you can put out at Str6 and taser goads is phenomenal. It also locks up their annoying infantry combos (characters turning their -3ap dakka into -4ap dakka is murder against any allied vehicles - their whole ARMY is a Wrath of Mars in that respect).
Other than that, I really just don't want to play Dakkabots if that's all we have. -1 to hit against all targets makes it virtually useless, and getting within 12in simply gets them charged by Tyranids, infantry, anybody. All they can do in this meta is sit in the back and miss with Cawl until he gets sniped out by mortal wounds. Then they just sit there doing nothing. It's pathetic.
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
then how is he ever useful? Or was before that range buff he got in the dex. That’s a lot to fit in 6”
It's 9" with the warlord trait which is what you're probably taking
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
then how is he ever useful? Or was before that range buff he got in the dex. That’s a lot to fit in 6”
It's 9" with the warlord trait which is what you're probably taking
Nobody should ever be making Cawl their Warlord...
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
then how is he ever useful? Or was before that range buff he got in the dex. That’s a lot to fit in 6”
It's 9" with the warlord trait which is what you're probably taking
Nobody should ever be making Cawl their Warlord...
Why?
He's difficult to kill, has some of the best weapons in the game and will almost always be behind your artillery line. Giving more units rerolls is always good.
Why?
He's difficult to kill, has some of the best weapons in the game and will almost always be behind your artillery line. Giving more units rerolls is always good.
He is not particularly difficult to kill, honestly. And he is pretty mediocre in combat. And only has a 5++. All he is good for is the re-roll, really. He really should be about 200pt or have a better save.
Except you've simply compared 440pts to 110. Also, with everyone important getting -1 to hit after 12 inches, the close range nature of infiltrators becomes more of a boon than a liability. Think of it this way:
An eldar tank managed to survive your Laser Onagers, and only has a few wounds left. You infiltrated your dudes within 12 inches of the vehicle, and within 9 inches of one of his screening forces. If you managed to find a decent spot for 10 infiltrators, it gives you the opportunity to essentially Melta a tank and get locked in close combat with someone else. With 550pts of infiltrators, you can have one "melta" squad of 10, and 3 more 5 man squads to guarantee at least one charge goes off. Against eldar T3 and invul saves, the amount of damage you can put out at Str6 and taser goads is phenomenal. It also locks up their annoying infantry combos (characters turning their -3ap dakka into -4ap dakka is murder against any allied vehicles - their whole ARMY is a Wrath of Mars in that respect).
Other than that, I really just don't want to play Dakkabots if that's all we have. -1 to hit against all targets makes it virtually useless, and getting within 12in simply gets them charged by Tyranids, infantry, anybody. All they can do in this meta is sit in the back and miss with Cawl until he gets sniped out by mortal wounds. Then they just sit there doing nothing. It's pathetic.
I'm also not a fan of the Cawl + Dakkabots so I kind of like the idea I don't know how the rest of your force is looking but maybe you could just take the 10 man squad for the Wrath of Mars and back it up by some assassins (maybe Eversors?) since they are much more likely to make the charge, also make mincemeat of screens and are quite durable.
If you wonder how to include them:
Just take a Vanguard led by a psyker / inquisitor or Greyfax and add those assassins. (You could even add your infiltrator squad here if you want to main other forgeworld)
I did the math awhile back. Cawl is less efficient than TDP at 1000 points if we're just comparing the effect of the aura on average dice outcomes. You need roughly 700-800 points of artillery to make him worthwhile.
then how is he ever useful? Or was before that range buff he got in the dex. That’s a lot to fit in 6”
It's 9" with the warlord trait which is what you're probably taking
Nobody should ever be making Cawl their Warlord...
Why?
He's difficult to kill, has some of the best weapons in the game and will almost always be behind your artillery line. Giving more units rerolls is always good.
1) The Mars Warlord trait sucks.
2) You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Cawl is a valuable force multiplier. Once he is gone, your Dakkabot line is much less powerful.
3) You want to be able to throw your Cawl into your enemy's CC in the event of an emergency.
And yeah, nothing is invulnerable in 8E like in 7E. I have Peltasts gathering dust. That Cawlstar was obscene.
Mars Warlord Trait seems alright to me and I've yet to have Cawl die in the small handful of games I've used him in. 9" allows for him to give his great re-roll to a couple of squads of transuranic arquebus Rangers at the top of a ruin as well as more spread out Dunecrawlers and Kastellan Robots, if a Battalion is what you're doing with your Mars contingent.
Except you've simply compared 440pts to 110. Also, with everyone important getting -1 to hit after 12 inches, the close range nature of infiltrators becomes more of a boon than a liability. Think of it this way:
An eldar tank managed to survive your Laser Onagers, and only has a few wounds left. You infiltrated your dudes within 12 inches of the vehicle, and within 9 inches of one of his screening forces. If you managed to find a decent spot for 10 infiltrators, it gives you the opportunity to essentially Melta a tank and get locked in close combat with someone else. With 550pts of infiltrators, you can have one "melta" squad of 10, and 3 more 5 man squads to guarantee at least one charge goes off. Against eldar T3 and invul saves, the amount of damage you can put out at Str6 and taser goads is phenomenal. It also locks up their annoying infantry combos (characters turning their -3ap dakka into -4ap dakka is murder against any allied vehicles - their whole ARMY is a Wrath of Mars in that respect).
Other than that, I really just don't want to play Dakkabots if that's all we have. -1 to hit against all targets makes it virtually useless, and getting within 12in simply gets them charged by Tyranids, infantry, anybody. All they can do in this meta is sit in the back and miss with Cawl until he gets sniped out by mortal wounds. Then they just sit there doing nothing. It's pathetic.
I'm also not a fan of the Cawl + Dakkabots so I kind of like the idea I don't know how the rest of your force is looking but maybe you could just take the 10 man squad for the Wrath of Mars and back it up by some assassins (maybe Eversors?) since they are much more likely to make the charge, also make mincemeat of screens and are quite durable.
If you wonder how to include them:
Just take a Vanguard led by a psyker / inquisitor or Greyfax and add those assassins. (You could even add your infiltrator squad here if you want to main other forgeworld)
Just tried it out. The 10 man squad of Infiltrators managed to kill an 8 wound demon in a single round of shooting with Wrath of Mars (they did exactly 8 wounds on their 50 dice). They took up a fuckton of board space, though, and I couldn't put them on the enemy side of the table due to positioning. If only I had wiped out his preds on turn 2 so I could be in better spots on round 3...Laser Crawlers, why do you betray me so!
One of the 5 man squads that COULD fit in the back got wiped out by Eldar interceptor shenannigans, so that was something. The other two couldn't deploy in the back lines by turn 3, so they just ended up shredding some infantry and clearing the middle objective of most enemies. For context, it was a 2vs2 game with 2000 points a player, and 4000 points a side. Here was my list (it was soup for command points):
1xTPD w/Eradication Ray and Macrostubber
2xEnginseer
3x5 Rangers, one plasma rifle total
3xLaser Crawlers
1x10 Infiltrators
3x5 Infiltrators
1xBunker
Total, 1410pts
Altogether, 1985pts
I could've managed points better, but I was in kind of a rush and didn't care about the last couple points. It wouldn't have done much, anyway - most of my skitarii infantry sat on objectives or got blown away. I had more luck moving up my soon-to-be skitarii Guardsmen, though. I mean, they still died, but they moved more.
Side note, bunkers are GREAT for shortening the number of drops you have. Throw all your characters in one and BAM, you just dropped all those extra bodies instantly. Primaris psykers are also surprisingly angry old men in a fight phase, too. 3 attacks each for 50 pts a pop is nothing to sneeze at!
xlDuke wrote: Mars Warlord Trait seems alright to me and I've yet to have Cawl die in the small handful of games I've used him in. 9" allows for him to give his great re-roll to a couple of squads of transuranic arquebus Rangers at the top of a ruin as well as more spread out Dunecrawlers and Kastellan Robots, if a Battalion is what you're doing with your Mars contingent.
Are you winning all of these games? You might be doing something wrong if your Cawl never dies. That or your opponents don't know what to do. I mean, does nobody charge your gun line? Do you never use Cawl in CC?
xlDuke wrote: Mars Warlord Trait seems alright to me and I've yet to have Cawl die in the small handful of games I've used him in. 9" allows for him to give his great re-roll to a couple of squads of transuranic arquebus Rangers at the top of a ruin as well as more spread out Dunecrawlers and Kastellan Robots, if a Battalion is what you're doing with your Mars contingent.
Are you winning all of these games? You might be doing something wrong if your Cawl never dies. That or your opponents don't know what to do. I mean, does nobody charge your gun line? Do you never use Cawl in CC?
As I said I've only played a few games with Cawl but if I remember correctly I won most of them, maybe lost one. I've mostly been using my Orks so far in 8th and do not claim to be a top class player, nor do I play in tournaments and was just posting my thoughts on the subject. I use units of Skitarii and Dragoons to screen my heavy firepower from early game charges and have had enough luck to not have my Dunecrawlers or Robots in any combats I've not wanted them in (used Dunecrawlers to tie up units late-game if necessary, on a couple of occasions). I've used Cawl in combat in two games to clear out partially weakened units that have made their way to my side of the board or have been on a nearby objective in the latter turns of the game. Other than that, he's not been needed as my screens and firepower have taken their toll from my opponents.
1) deep striking in with the appropriate forgeworld or as a counter charge threat
2) Lucius or Stygies
3) the one that gives you the 3 up invulnerable if you wipe out a unit
4) you really need at least 10 (in my opinion) - but its a lot of money for a unit that will be mostly shot to death and rarely get into combat, or make their cost back
Brass eye wrote: 1) deep striking in with the appropriate forgeworld or as a counter charge threat
2) Lucius or Stygies
3) the one that gives you the 3 up invulnerable if you wipe out a unit
4) you really need at least 10 (in my opinion) - but its a lot of money for a unit that will be mostly shot to death and rarely get into combat, or make their cost back
Yep. All this. Fulgurites are pretty great, when they actually do their thing. The issue being you have to bring big units and build around their strategy (Deep Strike or Infiltrate).
Thanks first of all.
Since I´m using Lucius anyways I don´t need to worry about deepstriking options.
But a charge from deepstrike isn´t that likely, so I should bring at least a 10 man unit? (more = better?)
lash92 wrote: Thanks first of all.
Since I´m using Lucius anyways I don´t need to worry about deepstriking options.
But a charge from deepstrike isn´t that likely, so I should bring at least a 10 man unit? (more = better?)
Honestly, like 15-20 would be ideal, imo. That way, you can eat some firepower and not lose everyone (you probably still will though). It is a major risk and I am not sure it is worth it for competitive games. Fun games? Sure, go for it.
Want real dakka? Take mars shootPriests ... but then you can't get them up the board.
Want safety? Take LUCIUS and deepstrike them ... but then you won't get rerolls and rely on rolling a 9 on a charge (only like 45% assuming you use a CP reroll).
Want it all? Take STYGIES, but then if you go second all your guys die if you put them up the board. And you usually get second.
Want rerolls to hit in melee? NOPE! The Omniscient mask only affect SKITARII, not CULT MECH.
Want some kind of reroll to wound mechanic in melee like every other viable melee unit in the game? LOLNO GTFO unless you take the gimp forgeworld that is so bad no one even bothers theorycrafting it.
Want to have something to throw in against BOYS or GAUNT herds? Absolutely not! Staff priests only have 2 attacks and usually only land 1 wound after hit/wound rolls.
Staff priests cost like an intercessor ... but are as tough as a 2xGuardsmen (I forgot the 5+FNP) against basic bolter fire. If they were 10 points your opponent could still play around them by shooting them with str4, ap0 shots.
Wulfey wrote: Everything about electropriests is frustrating.
Want real dakka? Take mars shootPriests ... but then you can't get them up the board.
Want safety? Take LUCIUS and deepstrike them ... but then you won't get rerolls and rely on rolling a 9 on a charge (only like 45% assuming you use a CP reroll).
Want it all? Take STYGIES, but then if you go second all your guys die if you put them up the board. And you usually get second.
Want rerolls to hit in melee? NOPE! The Omniscient mask only affect SKITARII, not CULT MECH.
Want some kind of reroll to wound mechanic in melee like every other viable melee unit in the game? LOLNO GTFO unless you take the gimp forgeworld that is so bad no one even bothers theorycrafting it.
Want to have something to throw in against BOYS or GAUNT herds? Absolutely not! Staff priests only have 2 attacks and usually only land 1 wound after hit/wound rolls.
Staff priests cost like an intercessor ... but are as tough as a 2xGuardsmen (I forgot the 5+FNP) against basic bolter fire. If they were 10 points your opponent could still play around them by shooting them with str4, ap0 shots.
All of this. ALL OF IT.
Not to be that horribly salted person, but I feel like the WarConvo roflstomped some of the playtesters in tourneys and they went out of their way to wreck AdMech as a faction. Seriously.
One list i like to use at 1000 points is the set up below. I run them as Stygies and occasionally swap out a couple of things to get a couple of ironstriders in. Fun list but i dont think its perfect and has its flaws - which makes it more interesting in a friendly game
Troops Skitarii Rangers Omnispex and 2 Transuranic Arquebus
Skitarii Rangers 5 man squad with a plasma caliver and omnispex
2 x Skitarii Vanguards with enhanced data tether and plasma caliver
Elite’s Cybernetica Datasmith
Heavy Kastelan Robots - dakkabots
Onager Dunecrawler Neutron and extra stubber
Onager Dunecrawler Neutron and extra stubber
The way I've been playing Electropriests is my shooty lucius version. I bring a TPD with the lucius relic and the eradication ray and I deep strike those suckers and a unit of skitarii loaded up with plasma. Then when they come down, the TPD solar flares up and drops down with them. The priests make a very solid horde killing unit, and I get most of the rerolls I would get with Belligerent Carl but anywhere I want them on the board.
I prefer the shootypriests because melee is kind of a bonus for them, not a requirement, and since I have no way to get any better odds to get in than a single die reroll I can't get above the 48% chance to get in.
I'm unlikely to be wiling to drop that many points on a 48% chance that I have a melee unit that does damage and survives a single turn. shootypriests are a suicide squad but they give me a very solid pressure play.
I really need to decide where i want to take my admech army next. I now have 5 ironstriders, 2 onager and 4 robots with regular troops and tpd/enginseer. Mix in some melee or add more shooty. Im leaning towards edstroyers if i’m honest as the multiplying factor elimination volley gives with robots plus their inherant shootiness seems to fit better.
Or i hold off and see what fires brings...
I really want more melee goodness to give me a more balanced force...but it does kinda feel like id be gimping myself. 1500 points feels so restrictive lol
Kataphron anything are pretty awful choices. Why are the Robots in units of two? That is some pre-Index stuff there. You want a fat single unit to max out Wrath of Mars with.
Why 8-man dual Plasma and not 10-man triple? Might as well go overboard if you aren't going bare bones. Also guessing those are Neutronagers, which are always useful. Why a TPD in the second detachment? Wasted points really.
All around the list feels very casual, which is fine. I wouldn't take it to a tourney though - at least not a high-end event with any amount of WAAC players (which I tend to see here in NC).
the_scotsman wrote: The way I've been playing Electropriests is my shooty lucius version. I bring a TPD with the lucius relic and the eradication ray and I deep strike those suckers and a unit of skitarii loaded up with plasma. Then when they come down, the TPD solar flares up and drops down with them. The priests make a very solid horde killing unit, and I get most of the rerolls I would get with Belligerent Carl but anywhere I want them on the board.
I prefer the shootypriests because melee is kind of a bonus for them, not a requirement, and since I have no way to get any better odds to get in than a single die reroll I can't get above the 48% chance to get in.
I'm unlikely to be wiling to drop that many points on a 48% chance that I have a melee unit that does damage and survives a single turn. shootypriests are a suicide squad but they give me a very solid pressure play.
Yes, shooty LUCIUS is the best possible way to play them. All the other options are subject to easy counterplays that render them useless. At 14 points a piece for an average of 3 str5 hits they compete on pretty even terms with a deepstrike of 8 point a piece vanguard or 7 point a piece rangers. I would prefer the skitarii teams because i have them painted and love the models, but mathwise they are pretty close. The electropriests are little tougher after you factor in morale. But the skitarii teams can hit at 18" instead of 12" and can bring plasma weapons.
EDIT: another lame lack of synergy with electropriests: they have 6+ armor and a 5++ invul, so they will never benefit from being in cover (shroudpsalm).
EDIT: another lame lack of synergy with electropriests: they have 6+ armor and a 5++ invul, so they will never benefit from being in cover (shroudpsalm).
Kataphron anything are pretty awful choices. Why are the Robots in units of two? That is some pre-Index stuff there. You want a fat single unit to max out Wrath of Mars with.
Why 8-man dual Plasma and not 10-man triple? Might as well go overboard if you aren't going bare bones. Also guessing those are Neutronagers, which are always useful. Why a TPD in the second detachment? Wasted points really.
All around the list feels very casual, which is fine. I wouldn't take it to a tourney though - at least not a high-end event with any amount of WAAC players (which I tend to see here in NC).
I fail to see how in your meta your opponents dont have a way to deal with a unit with no cc but a lot of shooting.
Curious why people are anti destroyers. I get they are fragile but for they are awesome shooting.
And don't say take Astra Militarum. Any joe blow knows that cadian infantry makes their army that much better. Your not a tourney player because you know this, it's common knowledge. There is not one army for imperium that does not benefit from Astra Militarum.
Incognito15 wrote: Curious on why one blob of kastellans when you can just tie them up with rhinos. Then your falling back and doing nothing.
The shooting from kataphrons is impressive i find. What do you usually have in its place?
Well, for the cost of 3 kataphrons destroyers, I can have 2 kastellan robots. 15 grav cannon or 10.5 culverin shots plus 3 phosphor blaster shots..... or you could have THIRTY-SIX phosphor shots. I know which option sounds better to me. Oh, and the robots are also 1000x more durable.
If a target is in my line of sight, the best DPS I have access to is robots with cawl. If the target is out of my line of sight, admech literally doesn't have an option so I consider my Basilisks to be AdMech for all intents and purposes. If the target is out of my line of sight and 100% priority needs to die, then I send in the sacrificial Elysians with their plasma guns or a unit of Lucius skitarii with plasma guns deep striking.
But, the target in line of sight? Can't think of anything I would rather shoot it with than robots.
Destroyers are the worst unit BY FAR for durability we have. It's crazy how bad they are. And the damage they deal is just OK. They have to go OC plasma to do any real damage and then on a 1 (yes yes re-rolls) they just straight up die - that's a 3 wound 70pts model dying btw...
It's also worth noting that as -1 at 12"+ traits become more and more common, long ranged plasma weaponry without adequate close range delivery or mobility becomes less and less desirable.
Fafnir wrote: It's also worth noting that as -1 at 12"+ traits become more and more common, long ranged plasma weaponry without adequate close range delivery or mobility becomes less and less desirable.
I think it's already common enough that some lists are starting to shift in response. Lascannons are always in fashion anyway.
Kataphron anything are pretty awful choices. Why are the Robots in units of two? That is some pre-Index stuff there. You want a fat single unit to max out Wrath of Mars with.
Why 8-man dual Plasma and not 10-man triple? Might as well go overboard if you aren't going bare bones. Also guessing those are Neutronagers, which are always useful. Why a TPD in the second detachment? Wasted points really.
All around the list feels very casual, which is fine. I wouldn't take it to a tourney though - at least not a high-end event with any amount of WAAC players (which I tend to see here in NC).
I fail to see how in your meta your opponents dont have a way to deal with a unit with no cc but a lot of shooting.
Curious why people are anti destroyers. I get they are fragile but for they are awesome shooting.
And don't say take Astra Militarum. Any joe blow knows that cadian infantry makes their army that much better. Your not a tourney player because you know this, it's common knowledge. There is not one army for imperium that does not benefit from Astra Militarum.
You do one big unit of Kastellans because Wrath of Mars is once per turn and can only be used on one unit. So you go for broke. If you are getting tied up with a Rhino, you are a very bad player.
And Kataphron firepower isn't the issue - their complete lack of mobility, durability, BS and cost make them lackluster.
Also, saying "take Astra Militarum" is common knowledge. Duh. That is why it gets said though when a mediocre or lackluster list is posted, because that is what AdMech needs now to be competitive. We need fodder and as CP hogs, we need the recycling. Posting lists without it should elicit a "take Astra Militarum" response, because that is the best competitive advice.
What to run instead of kataphrons? Skitarii. All day every day. Any troops slots in an admech detachment should be skitarii. with the points buffs from CA I really have been loving them, they're cheap, they're cheerful, they screen, they go get objectives.
I'm most likely biased towards liking them more because I play non-mars (I know it gimps me a bit on average but god DAMN is robo-blob the most boring thing in the universe, it's like showing up to 40k day and then just eating a whole sleeve of saltines with no water) but my pure admech lists are now running 40-50 skitarii and they frequently do the actual winning of the game through scoring, alongside my big blob o' goons. The games usually end with just my onager+TPD+Dakkastelan gunline alive, but all the scoring I do during the game is generally all my skitarii.
I am marking this down now: forgeworld will not be for plastic 40k anymore. Forgeworld will be for the 7.1th edition horus heresy stuff they put out. Plastic GW does not want Resin taking over their tournaments. New GW management is not happy with resin because shop buyers can't buy it. New GW takes the tournament scene seriously because tournament players are the real addicts that buy everything and keep them in business. New GW does not want the old style of resin nonsense and non-GW chinaforge crap dominating tournaments. Everything i just said are a series of facts that I want you to consider for my next assertion:
Fire of Ciraxus will not be for 8th edition 40k. Resin mechanicum will not be allowed in GW's new plastic tournament future. If you want to run resin mechanicum, play horus heresy.
Wulfey wrote: I am marking this down now: forgeworld will not be for plastic 40k anymore. Forgeworld will be for the 7.1th edition horus heresy stuff they put out. Plastic GW does not want Resin taking over their tournaments. New GW management is not happy with resin because shop buyers can't buy it. New GW takes the tournament scene seriously because tournament players are the real addicts that buy everything and keep them in business. New GW does not want the old style of resin nonsense and non-GW chinaforge crap dominating tournaments. Everything i just said are a series of facts that I want you to consider for my next assertion:
Fire of Ciraxus will not be for 8th edition 40k. Resin mechanicum will not be allowed in GW's new plastic tournament future. If you want to run resin mechanicum, play horus heresy.
What about finecast? I mean most of CWE is finecast.... there is no plastic there
Wulfey wrote: I am marking this down now: forgeworld will not be for plastic 40k anymore. Forgeworld will be for the 7.1th edition horus heresy stuff they put out. Plastic GW does not want Resin taking over their tournaments. New GW management is not happy with resin because shop buyers can't buy it. New GW takes the tournament scene seriously because tournament players are the real addicts that buy everything and keep them in business. New GW does not want the old style of resin nonsense and non-GW chinaforge crap dominating tournaments. Everything i just said are a series of facts that I want you to consider for my next assertion:
Fire of Ciraxus will not be for 8th edition 40k. Resin mechanicum will not be allowed in GW's new plastic tournament future. If you want to run resin mechanicum, play horus heresy.
Chapter approved makes GW's intent pretty clear: plastic 40k is competitive 40k, stop running resin in our tournaments. They out and out double the points cost of the giant resin centerpieces in competitive play. GW doesn't want resin to be so dominant. GW gets that the tournament scene meta influences what models get bought and sought after down the line. When you lose at 40k, you think of what models you should have bought and brought instead. The lesser players emulate the great ones, and GW doesn't want resin running the show anymore.
Thus, Fires of Ciraxus is not going to provide anything for the competitive player.
Yeah. Earthshaker Batteries got hit way too hard. Though I am not sure if forcing us to convert Basilisks is the solution. (These things were discontinued in what? 2013?)
Wulfey wrote: Chapter approved makes GW's intent pretty clear: plastic 40k is competitive 40k, stop running resin in our tournaments. They out and out double the points cost of the giant resin centerpieces in competitive play. GW doesn't want resin to be so dominant. GW gets that the tournament scene meta influences what models get bought and sought after down the line. When you lose at 40k, you think of what models you should have bought and brought instead. The lesser players emulate the great ones, and GW doesn't want resin running the show anymore.
Thus, Fires of Ciraxus is not going to provide anything for the competitive player.
...But the Fire Raptor went down by 60 points and will certainly be a lynchpin model for both SM and CSM.
Well, a few weeks ago, since Malefic Lords are FW...
Don't forget Earthshakers and Elysian Drop Troops for the other top tier army.
At the same time Ynnari, Mortars, Brimstones, Conscripts, and Primarch Spam were all things. Forgeworld managed to get a few top tier units in, but they don't define the entire meta in ways some players seem to think they have.
Wulfey wrote: Chapter approved makes GW's intent pretty clear: plastic 40k is competitive 40k, stop running resin in our tournaments. They out and out double the points cost of the giant resin centerpieces in competitive play. GW doesn't want resin to be so dominant. GW gets that the tournament scene meta influences what models get bought and sought after down the line. When you lose at 40k, you think of what models you should have bought and brought instead. The lesser players emulate the great ones, and GW doesn't want resin running the show anymore.
Thus, Fires of Ciraxus is not going to provide anything for the competitive player.
Well, a few weeks ago, since Malefic Lords are FW...
Don't forget Earthshakers and Elysian Drop Troops for the other top tier army.
At the same time Ynnari, Mortars, Brimstones, Conscripts, and Primarch Spam were all things. Forgeworld managed to get a few top tier units in, but they don't define the entire meta in ways some players seem to think they have.
Ynnari and Primarchs are essentially plastic specials, so of course they would be OP.
Mortars were a thing because Brimstones and Conscripts were a thing. Brimstones and Conscripts were a thing because Malefic Lords, Earthshakers/Renegade Artillery, and Elysians were a thing.
Wulfey wrote: Chapter approved makes GW's intent pretty clear: plastic 40k is competitive 40k, stop running resin in our tournaments. They out and out double the points cost of the giant resin centerpieces in competitive play. GW doesn't want resin to be so dominant. GW gets that the tournament scene meta influences what models get bought and sought after down the line. When you lose at 40k, you think of what models you should have bought and brought instead. The lesser players emulate the great ones, and GW doesn't want resin running the show anymore.
Thus, Fires of Ciraxus is not going to provide anything for the competitive player.
...But the Fire Raptor went down by 60 points and will certainly be a lynchpin model for both SM and CSM.
I have a fire raptor. I love that model. It has never seen the tabletop because i don't think it has a place in a competitive enough list in a circumstance where it goes second. They are good for their points in terms of firepower per point, especially with roboute. But they are easy targets if you have a counter for fliers. Every shot at them is always a good shot to take. And the only defenses they have after the Azrael nerf are darkshrouds and the -1 from tigerius. And those defenses don't count against dark reapers. So I get that they are good for their points, as are sicaran venators. But those also happen to be top selling forgeworld models. Everything else that was good that they don't really sell (infernal lords, greater chaos spawn, earthshaker batteries) got nerfed hard. And all the super stuff (taunar, warhounds, orcas, thunderhawks) also got nerfed hard. The exceptions here prove the rule: GW doesn't want forgeworld dominating tournaments. And Fire raptor / sicaran lists are not going to take any tournaments. THey don't work in spam lists. One of them can provide a good for its point shooting platform in a codex space marines list. But codex space marines lists are not taking any tournaments and a 50-60 point cheaper shooting platform isn't going to put codex space marines into top tier.
Yeah, this may be the single most baseless speculation I've ever seen. Fires will almost certainly be for 8th, because T'au aren't getting ported to Horus Hersey and we know it involves them still as part of the wait is for the T'au codex to drop pre fires, so FW can make everything work with it.
Some of FW point adjustments are over reactions, as are some GW point adjustments (conscripts for example have been savaged somewhat). It happens, and FW balance has clearly been more hit and miss this edition. So that's not unexpected.
SilverAlien wrote: Fires will almost certainly be for 8th, because T'au aren't getting ported to Horus Hersey and we know it involves them still as part of the wait is for the T'au codex to drop pre fires, so FW can make everything work with it.
Watch. Fires will be accompanied by a Horus Heresy book is about the Tau time-traveling to the 31st millenium. They then end up introducing Ephemerals to themselves in a bizarre Grandfather paradox.
SilverAlien wrote: Yeah, this may be the single most baseless speculation I've ever seen. Fires will almost certainly be for 8th, because T'au aren't getting ported to Horus Hersey and we know it involves them still as part of the wait is for the T'au codex to drop pre fires, so FW can make everything work with it.
Some of FW point adjustments are over reactions, as are some GW point adjustments (conscripts for example have been savaged somewhat). It happens, and FW balance has clearly been more hit and miss this edition. So that's not unexpected.
not to mention that the other reason we're waiting for fires is that it IS being updated from 7th to 8th.
I think what he means is that way may well get some cool stuff in Fires, but he believes it being FW will be intentionally pointed out of being competitive for tournaments.
Octovol wrote: I think what he means is that way may well get some cool stuff in Fires, but he believes it being FW will be intentionally pointed out of being competitive for tournaments.
Yes. There we go. GW understands that the major tournaments are the only big buzz events they have. GW wants those tournaments to feature GW models/products that plebs can buy (i.e., no more chinaforge tourney winners). Fires isn't going to provide some out of whack buff to resin admech that puts it at the top tier. And if for some reason it did, it would be quickly nerfed like they did with chapter approved.
However, I could see a few good things coming out of fires. A Skitarii Prime HQ like they had in the burning of prospero resin book would be amazing. Some 8th ed rules at all for peltasts/hoplites would make me much less bitter about buying those kits.
Simply put wulfey you're wrong. If GW sees tournaments as the only viable sales avenue they aren't going to shut down forgeworld out of that market. that's kicking yourself in the balls. Much better to let forgeworld go defunct or strictly HH/7ed.
so either you're wrong about GW focusing solely on tournaments, or wrong about forgeworld. Pick one. because they aren't going to sabatage one of their own releases. at least not intentionally, like the admech codex.
gendoikari87 wrote: because they aren't going to sabatage one of their own releases. at least not intentionally, like the admech codex.
I like how you make an assertion and then immediately contradict it. Anyhow, there is a ton of stuff they release that doesn't make it to the tournament table. For example, a lot of Primaris stuff is awful, and they're gone full tilt at that for the past half-year.
gendoikari87 wrote: because they aren't going to sabatage one of their own releases. at least not intentionally, like the admech codex.
I like how you make an assertion and then immediately contradict it. Anyhow, there is a ton of stuff they release that doesn't make it to the tournament table. For example, a lot of Primaris stuff is awful, and they're gone full tilt at that for the past half-year.
I'm not the one contradicting myself, wolfboy did.
also as for primaris, don't know if you caught this. GW dropped their points in Chapter approved. Name of the game is balance. they want everything to sell so it all has to be equal. making that so takes time. and Oh, don't know if you caught this is warhammer community, GW released their plan to bi annually balance armies specifically for this purpose.
I caught the point changes. They're still not good. Elite infantry don't really have a strong role to play due to how powerful anti-infantry weapons are. You're investing in durability when it's much more worthwhile to invest in more damage output. >_>
Name of the game is repeat sales. They have essentially convinced everyone to spend $35 every 6 months for what are essentially errata.
that's because GW's going for incremental balancing. they don't want to over/under nerf anything in one go. they're literally seeing what gets used at tournaments nerfing the things that get spammed and buffing the things that don't get used, I.E. Don't sell.
gendoikari87 wrote: that's because GW's going for incremental balancing. they don't want to over/under nerf anything in one go. they're literally seeing what gets used at tournaments nerfing the things that get spammed and buffing the things that don't get used, I.E. Don't sell.
We must not be reading the same Chapter Approved then.
Also, you can't embark/disembark a unit in the same turn. All that is on p183.
