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I've seen some requests for a drop troop army list, so I thought I'd post my own for you all to review.

Doctrines: Iron Discipline, Special Weapon Squads, Veterans, Grenadiers, Drop Troops

Last Chancers-448
-5 Demolition Charges, 8 melta guns

Command Platoon-221
Junior Officer
-Plasma Pistol, Iron Discipline
Command Squad
-4 Plasma Guns
Special Weapons Squad-63
-2 Flamers, Demolition Charge
Special Weapons Squad-63
-2 Flamers, Demolition Charge

5 Hardened Veterans-75
-3 Melta Guns

5 Hardened Veterans-75
-3 Melta Guns

5 Hardened Veterans-75
-3 Melta Guns

Infantry Platoon-235
Junior Officer
-Plasma Pistol, Iron Discipline
Command Squad
-4 Plasma Guns
Infantry Squad-70
-Plasma Gun
Infantry Squad-70
-Plasma Gun

Infantry Platoon-235
Junior Officer
-Plasma Pistol, Iron Discipline
Command Squad
-4 Plasma Guns
Infantry Squad-70
-Plasma Gun
Infantry Squad-70
-Plasma Gun

Infantry Platoon-235
Junior Officer
-Plasma Pistol, Iron Discipline
Command Squad
-4 Plasma Guns
Infantry Squad-70
-Plasma Gun
Infantry Squad-70
-Plasma Gun

Basilisk-125

Basilisk-125

The Veterans and Grenadiers drop down to destroy tanks with their 15 melta guns, while the 7 demolition charges, 22 plasma guns, 4 flamers, 2 basilisks, and all the lasguns shoot up the infantry. The nice thing about this list is that it's good against anything. Against a skimmer army, everything but the flamers and lasguns can take out tanks, and the meltaguns can be used to take out the big targets like carnifexes while everything else whittles down the horde.

Interesting.

Just fyi, Grenadiers can't take doctrines.

It's an ok list, but the BS3 on the mass of infantry makes them suck hard.

I ran into two of these kinds of lists at LA.

They weren't competitive.

I'll agree with you that normally the BS 3 would be quite sucky, if it weren't for the fact that there's so many of them.... and they're armed with weapons that if they hit, they kill.
22 plasma guns=44 shots=22 hits=18.33 marines or 7.33 glances on skimmers.
15 BS 4 Meltaguns=10 Hits, and lets say it's against skimmers, so at 6"=9.72 glances, at 12"=5 glances, or 8.33 dead marines.
7 Demolition Charges= an average of 4.5 marines under template= 3.75x7=26.25 dead marines or 3.5 glances
2 basilisks= an average of 4.5 marines under template=3.75x2=7.5 dead marines or 1.33 glances.
4 Flamers=average of 3.5 marines under template=.58x4=2.33 dead marines.
63 rapid firing BS 3 lasguns= 7 dead marines
15 rapid firing BS 4 lasguns/ hellguns= 10 hits=3.33 wounds=1.11 dead marines

Total Amount of Death on Army Drop
-Only Targets Marines= 70.85 Dead Marines
-Only Targets Skimmers= 20.49 Glancing Hits
-Targets Both= 62.52 Dead Marines, 9.72 Glancing Hits

How is that ineffective?

So far I've played 23 games, lost once to an eldar player when I scattered half my army off the table, and tied once to a chaos player because he knew what I was bringing so he brought his own "fortified buildings" and hid his entire army in them so he could get a 3+ cover save.

My version of this army is posted.

It kills more by virtue of being smaller. (Edit: I should say by being smaller and more 'eliter' but that isn't a word sadly. lol)

Setting up in anti-deep strike mode, my Eldar army with roughly 30 models with a toughness value/2 falcons/1 fire prism faced off against 189 IG that dropped on me.

It had a whole bunch of plasma, demo charges, and lasguns--ya know, what you've got...and scattered not one unit into my lines or on top of his own stuff...


I killed 160 of them and lost 50% of my toughness value models.

They dropped, they got killed.

By the way, 'just' targeting Skimmers if I have 3 kitted out Eldar Falcons AND you can get near them (odds are, you won't--see anti-deep strike defense comment) those 20 glances won't happen all at once, or on one vehicle...and it won't kill them. It's just not enough.

Oh and Eldar are T3 so redo the math a bit.

It's only a surprise army when the other person hasn't played it before. The look on that guys face when I prevented a deep strike anywhere within 12" of my tanks was quite amusing.

Always is, really.

Here's that list I was speaking of:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/205346.page

I don't put PG on BS3 troops. You do.

I put Meltaguns on BS3 troops. You don't.

I don't bring basic infantry platoons. You do.

You bring Basilisks, which honestly are easily destroyed. I don't.

I bring Hellhounds, which are immune to small arms fire and are really just a bullsh*t unit against everyone. I also bring Demolishers, which is one of the best tanks since mech lists have a hard time getting it dead since it has very strong side armor; and it has a death cannon for everyone.

You can work out the math if you like but here's what the army boils down to.

29 BS4 Plasmaguns.
1 BS4 Plasma pistol.
4 BS3 Meltaguns.
2 Demo charges.
2 Flamers.
2 BS3 Grenade Launchers (ok should be flamers but I figured a little 24" flex wouldn't hurt, and it doesn't)
3 Hellhounds.
3 Leman Russ Demolishers.

Essentially this means I have 6 BS3 weapons. Note I don't count the las shots...they don't do much in such small numbers.
Everything else is either BS4 or scatter die (or Hellhound).

The army is undefeated for a reason, it's dead killy and with smaller unit sizes it's alot easier to drop where I need to without worrying about (my) 50 guys on the table getting in the way and killing me or preventing me from getting a good drop on the other guys army.

I drop, all the guardsmen usually die--in the process gutting the other guys army.

Leaving me with 6 vehicles and a handful of guardsmen standing around, wondering where all the marines/eldar/tyranids/tau went to.

29 BS4 Plasmaguns=38.66 hits=32.16 dead marines, 12.88 skimmer glances
1 BS4 Plasma pistol. = .55 dead marines, .22 glances
4 BS3 Meltaguns. =1.66 dead marines, 1.94 glances at 6" range, 1 glance at 12"
2 Demo charges. =7.5 dead marines, 1 glance at 12"
2 Flamers=1.16 dead marines
2 BS3 Grenade Launchers (ok should be flamers but I figured a little 24" flex wouldn't hurt, and it doesn't) =.833 dead marines, .16 glances
3 Hellhounds=.77X3= 2.31 dead marines from flamers, 1 dead marine from heavy bolters
3 Leman Russ Demolishers. =11.25 dead marines, 1.5 glances

Total Death
Everything on Infantry=58.423 Dead Marines
Everything on Skimmers=17.7 glances

Running the numbers, your list loses...... and that's not even taking into consideration that everytime one of your plasmagunners nukes himself, it's costing 4-6 points more than my own. Or the fact that while my "easy to kill" basilisks are going to be hiding in corners behind trees the entire game, your armor 12 on the side vehichles are going to have to be in view to fire.... and it only takes one lascannon shot to take one down. Also, how do you set up in "anti-deep strike" formation so that no enemy unit can land within 12 inches from a tank..... with eldar.... and remain that way for more than one round? Sure... you can deploy that way, but after turn one there's going to be two giant pie plate holes in your army from my basilisk shots. On turn two if my guys drop, over 75% of my army is designed to kill infantry AND tanks, so the majority will be able to kill off most of your T3 guys surrounding your tanks. Then you'll either do the smart thing and move your tanks away, or the guys on the ground walk to you and fire. Turn three more units drop right by your tanks that just moved and open up into them..... or am I missing something? And sure, it's hard to "down" a mobile falcon, but that's why you kill everything else in the army.... the falcon has what, 8 shots? so the most damage you could do to me with all 3 is 24 guardsmen a turn? Boo hoo...

howd the heck you get that many BS4 plasma guns :s cant you "only" have 15 and only 9 can deep strike
tel me your secret

See the back of the IG Codex for the Last Chancers. They can all be upgraded to specialists and then may select special weapons. If you take enough of them they also count towards your compulsory troops choices.

glowgos wrote:howd the heck you get that many BS4 plasma guns :s cant you "only" have 15 and only 9 can deep strike
tel me your secret

You can have up to 20 Last Chancers, if you upgrade them to Specialists they can take Plasma Guns and they're BS4. You then break them up into 5 sub-units any way you want. In addition, if you take more than 16 I believe, they count as 1 HQ and 2 Troop selections meaning you don't have to spend points on Infantry Platoons.

If you do the math 3 Specialists w/ 3 Plasma Guns costs 3 points more than 5 Vets w/ 3 Plasma Guns. Since they're designed to hit and die anyway you don't miss the 2 extra ablative wounds you get.

The downside is you have to pay 110 points for Schaffer and Kage.

Edit: Alpharius Walks beat me to it.

Angron wrote:Running the numbers, your list loses...... and that's not even taking into consideration that everytime one of your plasmagunners nukes himself, it's costing 4-6 points more than my own. Or the fact that while my "easy to kill" basilisks are going to be hiding in corners behind trees the entire game, your armor 12 on the side vehichles are going to have to be in view to fire.... and it only takes one lascannon shot to take one down. Also, how do you set up in "anti-deep strike" formation so that no enemy unit can land within 12 inches from a tank..... with eldar.... and remain that way for more than one round? Sure... you can deploy that way, but after turn one there's going to be two giant pie plate holes in your army from my basilisk shots. On turn two if my guys drop, over 75% of my army is designed to kill infantry AND tanks, so the majority will be able to kill off most of your T3 guys surrounding your tanks. Then you'll either do the smart thing and move your tanks away, or the guys on the ground walk to you and fire. Turn three more units drop right by your tanks that just moved and open up into them..... or am I missing something? And sure, it's hard to "down" a mobile falcon, but that's why you kill everything else in the army.... the falcon has what, 8 shots? so the most damage you could do to me with all 3 is 24 guardsmen a turn? Boo hoo...

1) Those are great numbers. Somehow my list with a higher number of BS4 shots loses out versus your lower number of BS3 shots.

Amazing.

I wonder what armor the demolishers only get 1.5 glances against. lol quite funny.
Not sure how you worked out the math for the hellhounds either.

Also, when you fix your math for your list, we should compare again.

2) By the way, why have 'Iron Discipline' on a Plasma Pistol toting Junior Officer? Seems a bad combination.

3) What happens to your list when you can't deep strike? How badly do you lose? I can infiltrate the whole shabang, you cannot infiltrate anything.

4) What armor 12 on the side vehicles? The Hellhounds? They are 12 on the front, what's the side got to do with it? Since you've apparently not run Demolishers before, they are 13 on the sides mate.

5) You do realize that if YOU deep strike, *I* can deep strike? Here's how it works. I run my vehicles up the sides, forcing you to split your force into one group or the other--and yes, my armor 10 will be against the board edge so you won't be shooting that. Then, I pop smoke and await with baited breath your drop. Then we play you-drop, I-drop. Or I-drop, you-drop. Maybe you didn't read that list I posted...

6) Who said my IG army would be in anti-deep strike formation? I meant my other armies! Essentially the way you deploy is like this:

1 and 3/4" from the board edge. 2 and 3/4" between my units. Put the tanks in the back, and spread the infantry out in 2" dispersed formation. Believe me, you won't get anywhere near my tanks and by the time you do--most of your army is dead, and I can blow past your units with my Eldar vehicles.

I covered my entire quarter with 4 vehicles and 30 models. In larger armies, I'd have lots and lots of crap for you to shoot at before you got anywhere near my vehicles.

Btw, I run exactly 1 Fire Prism. Granted, I was very lucky in my LA game but it hit 6 times, and killed 60 Guardsmen in template formation. Boo hoo hoo yourself.

Oh and Falcons have 2 PL shots, 4 Scatter Laser shots, and 3 Shuricannon shots. After your small squads fry themselves, it won't be too difficult to pound your command squads into nothing.

Last but not least, if you don't get your command squads on and in the place you need them, good luck shooting whatever you want to--those IG don't pass leadership tests very easy without them. Hell even with them, they don't. If only Iron Discipline made a big difference in the army, but I don't see you with any Voxes sooo when you misdrop your juniors...yeah, good luck holding the army together on LD7.

7) Where is the lascannon in your list? I swear I don't see it.

8) You can NOT drop troop Grenadiers, so please stop trying.

9) I don't fear pie plates when I'm spread at max coherency, and you are hiding so roll double scatter. Good luck making that math work, the reality is different.

10) About my IG army, maybe you didn't notice the Hellhounds and Demolishers wipe out IG by the handful? I'd love to see you in template formation, makes killing all of them easy. You use weapons that require to-hit, only wound on a 4+, I have my 5+ save, and you need to drop alot of guys dangerously close to each other and to me to get within range....I use weapons that autohit, wound on 2+, and you get no save.

11) Less apples, more oranges. Please don't compare my list vs your list vs my Eldar vs some mythical Marine army. They don't wash.

My army vs your army would be (A) who goes second, (B) can you knock my vehicles out as I can easily gut your armor 10 vehicles while you can't gut mine easily.

My Eldar vs your army would be can I engage 5 of your units in close combat, beat them, and crush them all at once with a rundown of 2xI5vs I3--and repeat it as more of your troops arrive? Yes, I can. The Farseer + Seer Council can take a huge amount of your firepower, esp your sissy combat squads, and survive unscathed.

My Tyranid army is easy. I'll park my Stealers and my Gaunts in front of my Gunline of MC. You kill the little guys, my big guys wipe you out at 18". Rinse, repeat. I'll eat the Basilisk bombardment the whole game. If you play smart, you might even win--if you don't drop anywhere near me. Hard to say really, most IG are hard pressed to take down the Godzilla list.

Let's see, the Thousand Sons in my Chaos list will bounce your plasmashots off, and they'll be closest. Between the 6 Plasma Cannon shots and the 2 EC squads, if I can protect them long enough...you'll have a hell of a time as those will rip your template formations to ribbons. Let's see, 4+6 partials per plasma? The EC get a similar blast, then of course gun what's left down. Again, I'll have to suffer through the Basilisks but the Demon Princes will go after them. And I'm sure, you'll drop squads to try and stop them. Which works out well for my army core. If only basilisks were AP2, I'd worry about my Oblits.

The Dark Eldar would just laugh at you. Nightshield. Disintegrators. I shouldn't have to say more.

My Tau would have a problem, but since you can't deep strike till turn 2...I'd make sure I deep struck a couple Tau Crisis suits to take your Basilisks down, and I'd park my skimmers to give me a nice terrain piece. Sure, they'll die...and my other suits will JSJ your army. Now if there is no deep strike, well, good luck getting across the board. So far, no one's made it across with ground troops.

Now if you were using the IG I use, I'd certainly be more afraid since your whole army fails if there is no deep strike; while mine continues on it's merry way if there is infiltrate.

Alpharius Walks wrote:See the back of the IG Codex for the Last Chancers. They can all be upgraded to specialists and then may select special weapons. If you take enough of them they also count towards your compulsory troops choices.

Kadun is also correct.

The difference is, with the doctrines I've selected...ALL of the regular IG can deep strike and infiltrate.

The Last Chancers get deep strike and infiltrate by default.

So you get the command squad (4 meltaguns), two special weapon squads (flamer, Grenade launcher, demo charge), 3 vet squads (3 plasmaguns each), and 5 units of 4 plasmagun specialists (4 uhh plasmaguns each hehe), and Schaeffer with a Plasma Pistol.

The good point is, the units are small. So even a bad scatter, usually nothing happens and they don't get in the way of each other.

So you get 8 units of Plasmaguns, they're simply more concentrated but they hit like bricks. And Alpharius is correct about one very important thing--they drop, they do their damage, and if they live--woohoo. Usually, they just die the next turn. I have had several games where they didn't die, because I shot up one side of an army and the other half was out of position. Most people locally put their armies in anti-deep strike formation now, but it still hurts since I can remove alot of ablative units in my way with the hellhounds and the demolishers...and deep strike at the squishy stuff.

the "demolisher" doesn't get 1.5 glances against any armor.... 3 "demolishers" get 1.5 glances, however I did it using leman russes, I didn't see the demolisher status.... so a demolisher is str 10, so you get 2.5 glances out of three shots.

Did the hellhounds just as the flamers, average of 3.5 hits, except str 5.... is it str 6?

Also, our meltaguns should have slightly fewer glances. I multiplied the number of hits by 35/36, instead of 34/36, so you have 4X(3/6)X(34/36)=1.88 meltagun glances, and I have 15X(4/6)X(34/36)=9.44 meltagun glances.

If not, then add +1 glance to your side, and add .22 glances to my side because I didn't do the math for schaeffers pistol, and my list still wins.... want to know why? It's not just the fact that I have MORE guns, it's what the guns are and who they are on.

You have 29 Plasmaguns, needing 3's to hit, and 5's to glance, 4 melta guns, needing 4's to hit and anything but a 1,1 and 2/1 dice combination to glance at 6", 2 demo charges, which not taking into account scatter, need 4's to glance, 2 krak grenade launchers needing 4's to hit and 6's to glance, and 3 demolishers that disregarding scatter need anything but a 1 to glance.

For a total of 40 weapons capable of glancing an armor 12 vehicle.

I have 22 plasma guns needing 4's to hit and 5's to glance. 15 meltaguns needing 3's to hit and anything but a 1,1 and 2/1 dice combination to glance at 6", 7 demolition charges which not taking into account scatter, need 4's to glance, and 2 basilisks which ignoring scatter need 3's to glance.

For a total of 46 weapons capable of glancing an armor 12 vehicle.

The main difference here are your choices of what to put where. As you see from my math, meltaguns are capable of glancing a armor 12 vehicle on everything but a 1,1 and 1,2 dice combination, so 34 times out of 36 dice combinations on 2, 6 sided die. As such, meltaguns are much better at glancing vehicles at 6" that plasmaguns are. With that in mind, it's easy to see how my 15 meltagun shots can out glace even your 44 plasma gun shots. I once thought like you did and put plasmaguns on my BS 4 troops, then I did the math one day in finance class, and I couldn't argue with the figures.

2) The iron discipline is there because most of my squads are small and it's only 5 points. This will allow me to attempt to regroup below half size squads, and allow the small plasma and meltagun squads to keep fighting. Too many games I've had a single plasma gunner running backwards by himself when I could have been using him. I had to drop close order drill in order to take grenadiers, and I've been debating whether or not to replace Iron Discipline with Close Order Drill.

3) When my list can't deepstrike, the game becomes challenging. This has happened a couple times in friendly games when rolling for mission level, but I have yet to play in a tournament game that didn't allow deepstriking. I still have only lost once, and that was when I had the ability to deepstrike. The thing that saves the army is the numbers. I may not be able to get right to the enemy, but I can still advance across the table with 129 guardsmen and hope for the best. I used to take autocannons "just in case" in the infantry squads instead of just plasmaguns, and had them deploy on the table at the start of missions, but I learned that it was much more effective to deepstrike in force that to leave 10% of your army on the table to be killed in the first turn. But mostly I've been lucky. The three times I haven't been able to deepstrike were against a mechanized IG list, a mech eldar list, and a space marine "white scars" list. With the IG game, I had my autocannons still and somehow (I got really, really lucky), blew up 3 of his chimeras, and 2 of his leman russes, and 1 hellhound on turn 1 (basilisks took out the russes). With the eldar player, I just walked across at him, pulling off handfuls of guardsmen at a time, but by the time I got their I still had over 65% of my army left (eldar, while incredibly survivable, aren't very deadly), I had popped 2 wave serpents with basilisks by the time I got to him on turn 3, and following a cover fire pattern of shooting, (1/4 of the squads sit still to fire on the enemy while the other 3/4's of the squads move forward 6", then the 1/4 that remained still last turn moves up, 2/4's of the squads in the front move forward, and 1/4 of the squads in the front sit still to fire on the enemy), I had manage to immobolize 1 of his falcons and blow up the other, and kill his jetbikes, (he killed his own autarch by trying to move him through woods to fire his pistol at one of my basilisks and failed his dangerous terrain test). By the time I got there, he only had 3 more waveserpents (1 with banshees, 2 with dork avengers), 2 units of harlequins (one at half strength after their falcon died), and a fire prism..... I managed to shoot one squad of harlequins to death before it got to me, killed the half strength squad in one round of combat after it charged one of my squads to death and whiffed, and managed to roll double ones on my leadership check after losing combat to the banshees (I know it's not fantasy, there's no "insane courage", but luckily my leadership wasn't "that" bad), and fed the banshees enough men that I was able to kill them off on the top of turn six in his turn. At the bottom of turn six he called it as the only thing he had left was a empty wave serpent. And then against the white scars player the mission was to have the most squads left on the table. I started the game with 25 scoring units... he started with 9. He had tailored his list to kill guardsmen, specifically me (not one anti-tank weapon in the entire army), and so he was able to whittle me down to only 6 scoring units left on the table on turn six, he however, only had 2.

Also, any mission that you can't deepstrike (atleast in friendly games), you also can't infiltrate.... and I think I've only ever seen one tournament mission where you could do one but not the other.

Wow, this is a long post and I'm only on part 3

4) Yup, thought they were just normal leman russ. However the problem with demolishers is you only have a maximum of 30" range with the cannon (24" + 6" movement), and if you do that it scatters twice. Also if you upgrade it to have plasma cannons, that's 30 more points that you may never use, and that the enemy will get when he destroys the tank. With only hellhounds and demolishers... you can bet every enemy anti-tank weapon will be pointed at the demolishers. You can counter this of course by only revealing them when your troops drop, but then that's negating their effectiveness. I'd much rather have a basilisk, who may have weaker armor, but won't be seen all game, and who may have weaker str and AP, but big deal... I'll hit the terminators with plasma/melta instead, be able to use my gun all 6 turns, and only pay 125 points for it... and have the 125 points at the end of the game too (unless the enemy chooses to go after it with something fast, or they're space wolves.

5) Oh, if you and I are playing with our deepstriking armies, then the game is decided by a single die roll. "Who gets to decide to go first". Whoever deepstrikes second wins. It's that simple. Though if the person going first doesn't pass any or very few of their reserve rolls on turn two, then they'll win if the other person brings on their army. Whoever is unlucky enough to deploy the majority of their army first loses. Also, going in more depth against YOUR list, even if my list were to go first and my entire army deepstruck on turn two, I'd probabally win according to the math, or at very worst it would be a draw. You're able to kill 58.423 marines a turn.... and the only difference in the math between the marines and guardsmen would be for the flamer and las weapons, and I suppose your heavy bolters on the hellhounds. The 58.432 number is including the pie plates from your demolishers though, and the "flamecannon" or whatever it's called and heavy bolters from the hellhounds.... And if I drop first, those are dead, dropping you to being able to kill a little more than 43.872 guardsmen (I say a little more because your lasguns, grenade launchers, and flamers should do more damage against the guardsmen), so you'll prolly be able to kill around 50 guardsmen in total on the turn you drop, assuming you drop with everything. You might fire back with "but the tanks won't be dead", but my 6 squads with meltaguns deepstriking behind them say differntly. The 15 melta guns average 9.44 penetrating hits and .56 glancing hits on the back armor 11 of a demolisher, resulting in 4.81 destroyed results, 1.57 weapon destroyed combined with vehicle stunned results, .09 regular weapon destroyed results, and 5 results in which the vehicle can't fire next turn. You could put the vehicles butt to butt, but then I'm averaging 8.88 penetrating hits and .28 glancing hits...... ending up with 4.48 dead demolishers, 1.48 weapon destroyed combined with vehicle stunned results, .04 regular weapon destroyed results, and 4.58 results in which the vehicle can't fire next turn. I'd do the math on what they'd do to the hellhounds, but I think you get the point. Thus, when you drop, you'd only be able on average to kill 50 out of my 129 guys, and that's if you didn't devote time to killing my basilisks. This leaves me with 79 models on the table. If you're smart, you'll focus on the small squads with lots of special weapons, but then that means you'll kill even fewer of my men as you'll be over killing the small squads. Then you'll have to withstand my return fire.... and from what it looks like you only have somewhere around 60 infantry models. I'll retaliate by firing my remaining special weapon squads into you, throwing the demolition charges at you, flaming you, ( assuming I still have those models, if you killed them instead of the plasma/ melta gun guys, you'd be getting more of those and less of the ordnance... probably the better of the two moves), while my remaining infantry squads charge your small squads to either beat them in combat, or hold them up so you can't shoot in your turn.

6) I was talking about your eldar army set up in anti deep strike formation like you mentioned before, if your IG army was in anti-deep strike formation... I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near your side of the board.

And as far as the eldar are concerned, I have to problem with dropping down with 129 models, heck... lets say half of t hat because I only get units on a 4+ on the second turn, so we'll go ahead and cut my the number of infantry I can kill on the drop in half.... so 70.85 becomes 35.42 dead marines.... against eldar it would be more around the 40s.... and you have 30..... next turn the rest of my army drops and your tanks go bye bye. Except the falcons, who can fly around killing 5 guardsmen a turn for the next 3 turns and it won't bother me much.

8) Didn't think you could, I did think that you could deepstrike them tho.... but apparantly you can't. Oh well, they were new to the list, I haven't even bought the models yet, so it looks like the 15 grenadiers with 6 meltaguns are going to become 8 last chancers with meltaguns.

9) The scatter is double, but according to you you'respread out the entire quarter, so I really can't miss. Also, it's not "double", it's roll two dice and pick the highest. Scatter only doubles when you deepstrike

10) Do your hellhounds really ever survive a game? Do they even make it to turn 3? I've honestly never seen a hellhound in a competitive list, because they are always dead before they get to do anything.... unless the guy is nothing but tanks and he takes one, but with only 3 tanks besides hellhounds? Why the guys are unable to deal with them wherever you play is beyond me.

11) I compare everything to killing marines when doing math because that is the majority of what people play, and the majority of what you'll be facing. More competitive players will have an eldar or tau list, but most of what I see is marines, only facing off against mech eldar and tau (which is what I built the list in order to beat, I got tired of skimmer cheese) in the third turn of the tournament. I also do this because marines are one of the toughest things to kill, which is also why I do math to see how many eldar skimmers it can take down. If you're looking for numbers against eldar infantry, just add around 10 to the death tally and there you go. Against guardsmen? Add 10-20 compared on what weapons are being used.

Other notes:

I'm glad we both basically came to the same conclusion about the importance of who goes second.
I have shown that it would be relatively easy for me to knock out 6 non skimmer vehichles in one round.
Your 6 vehicles with no upgrades besides plasma cannon sponsons on the demolisher (everyone put them on, but if you don't, subtract 60 points) comes out to 870 points. That's 47% of your army.
My two vehicles make up 250 points, that's 13% of my army.
So where by if you go first, you'd only be able to kill 13% of my army ( and that's if you choose to risk deepstriking your units near the corners as I'll have one basilisk in each corner with a row of trees infront of it, so you could only drop into the trees, or scatter off the table or behind the trees and not be able to see past).
Where as if I go first, I'd still be able to knock out 47% of your army.

Eldar: You're forgetting a lot of things. #1, I'm deepstriking, therefor I shoot you first, then you get to charge me.... and that's if you weren't in the wave serpent that just blew up and is entangled. #2, you can engage 5 units, I have 25. #3 Your Farseer+Seer Council? Which doesn't exhist anymore..... Warlock bodyguard you mean? Can withstand half of the shots that they recieve. They get a 4+ invulnrable, and if they're wounded once by anything str 6 or above (plasmaguns, meltaguns, demolition charges, you know, everything I have in my army), they're insta-killed.

Tyranids: No problem, stealers and gaunts die when I drop, or suffer so many losses they get beaten in combat when they charge. You open up with your MC's..... what do you have 6 Carnifexes, 2 Hive Tyrants? First they'll have to pass their target priority tests to shoot at my special weapon squads, then they'll get to hit on 5's.... how many dead do you think that is? Not enough.... even if all 8 of your squads do everything perfect and kill 8 of my squads, I've still got 17 left to move up and fire at you.

Don't even get me started on a chaos list... Chaos is pathetic, and would die a horrible, horrible death. The Thousands sons will be able to shrug off half of the plasma wounds they're hit with.... and at what, 300 points for a squad of 8 or so? I'm causing 18.33 regular marine deaths with plasma guns..... so what, that's only 9.165 dead thousand sons a turn due to plasma? Yes please. Especially when you consider the fact that that 8-10 man squad is double the ammount of points what a normal 10 man squad of space marines are, and is not able to put out as much firepower as two regular squads... I'll gladly face a thousand sons list any day. Also, with a chaos list including thousand sons, 6 plasma cannons, (obliterators?), and EC, you won't be able to spread out far enough to anti-deepstrike, and obliterators die REAL good to melta guns. And your using deamon princes? Yay! I won't have to whittle down the squad before I put down your characters. And I don't think your daemon princes will be wanting to run to the other side of the table to take out my basilisks when you have 17 (now 17 cuz of the upgrade from grenadiers to last chancers), BS melta guns take out your obliterators.... though really I'll probably only need around 12 to do it.... 22 plasma guns take out 9.16 of your thousand sons, followed up by 7 demolition charges and the two basilisks targeting your EC and whatever else is left in your army.... and with the inclusion of thousand sons, 2 daemon princes, 6 obliterators, and 2 squads of EC, I'm guessing it's not much.

Your Dark Eldar would die laughing then, as the blood choked them. Boohoo, +6 to my range... must sure be a good thing I have 12" range guns, can deepstrike, don't really care about if I lose a 70 point squad to deepstriking, so I'll put the marker one inch away from you.... if I hit, I lose 3-4 models, but who cares. Combine that wil the fact that your armor 11-10.... on your raiders and you're looking at so many glancing hits that despite skimmer cheese every single one of your skimmers will either be a burning wreck or immobolized. 9.44 glances from the meltaguns, 14.66 glances from plasmaguns, 2.22 glances from plasma pistols, and if I need to, 4.5 glances from ordnance weapons. I'm saying 4.5 cuz I have 9 templates, and because of the shape of DE vehichles, scattering off is about a 50/50 shot. 28.6 glancing hits before your disintegrators fire a single shot=9.53 dead or immobolized raiders/ ravagers.

Tau: Again, you'd be risking a 4/5 chance of losing your crisis suits. The way my basilisks are set up, you scatter to the right more than 3 inches, you'll off the board, to the left more than three inches, you're off the board, towards the basilisk more than an inch (depending on the thickness of the wood), you're dead, backwards, you're behind the wood and can't see me and next turn the basilisk located on the other side of the board is going to fire at them. The only chance is landing directly in the woods. And how do you JSJ an opponent that lands right beside you and throws a demolition pack your way? Tau aren't that hard to get across the table when you have numbers.... now a marine, a couple of bad rolls on your armor save, a few rounds of plasma shooting from the jump suits, and you're toast because you only have 40 models..... 129 is a bit different.... especially when pie plates are falling on your jumping crisis suits.

You two guys REALLY should meet and PLAY against eachother.... LOL
It would be faster than doing that math and writing those great novels for sure....

BOTH armies have impressive math.... who the F... will care about the few extra or less dead marines.... Not the obliterated marine player for sure.....

Just my - un-serious - 2cents....

Angron wrote:
Tyranids: No problem, stealers and gaunts die when I drop, or suffer so many losses they get beaten in combat when they charge. You open up with your MC's..... what do you have 6 Carnifexes, 2 Hive Tyrants? First they'll have to pass their target priority tests to shoot at my special weapon squads, then they'll get to hit on 5's.... how many dead do you think that is? Not enough.... even if all 8 of your squads do everything perfect and kill 8 of my squads, I've still got 17 left to move up and fire at you.

Correction here, a Dakkafex will fire 8 shots that hit on a 4+ and can re-roll misses (Twin Linked and Enhanced Senses). Then they will also get to re-roll failed wounds (Living Ammo).

I posted all my lists...why don't you go look at them before telling me what I've taken or can do?

Close order drill on shooting units? Whatever for? Gonna beat marines in CC, are you? Come on, be serious man.

I already told you I killed 160 of 189 IG that dropped on me with my Eldar. You have less. I'm not impressed with the list, I've beaten better.

All of your comments about how great your army list is versus any of mine doesn't change the math involved.

You keep giving yourself the aggregate statistical probabilities, then assigning them out like they all happen at once.

Since you don't have improved comms, you'll drop piecemeal. If you think I can't kill 40, 50, 60 guardsmen in a turn--think again, I can.

Which is part and parcel of why your army list is inferior, it's ALL about the drop, it's ALL about getting lucky with your drop, and it's ALL about assuming you'll manage even luck or better.

Mine isn't. That's something you should really think about before you start telling me how awesome your list is--because I've played better IG drop lists than yours and crushed them completely. I know you don't like to hear that, but it's the honest truth.

Let's see you kill 160 Guardsmen in 3 turns with only ONE template weapon in your entire army. It ain't easy, but I know I can do it because I've done it.

By the way, everyone can 'deal' with 3 Demolishers and 3 Hellhounds. Since they hide the first turn until I start dropping, then they come out and play--it makes for difficult choices on what to kill when there's 25 Plasma Guns in your lines.

Maybe you should read the Last Chancers rules and see why standard 10 man squads with 1 plasmagun really aren't a threat to anyone, but the Last Chancers are.

So long as you have all those units in your army, I won't think much of it--standard IG are a joke, and if you still think they are awesome tell me why the lists aren't competitive and placing high at GTs?

Hooray! The more points you put on your carnifex... the more points I get when they get roasted by melta/plasma
However I do understand the problem this represents. The likelihood of them being able to whipe out one of my small squads goes up here and that's no bueno. Yup, I'll agree, with this configuration and a bunch of gaunts to prevent me from deepstriking close by to the 6 or so carnifexes would be an extremely tough game. Can't you only take 3 dakkafexes tho and the other 3 have to be something else? or am I thinking wrong. It's been awhile since I played against nids, as our two resident nid players both switched to tau.

And actually LordofMuck, I'm unfortunate enough to live in the one college town without a gamestore that actually lets you play there (though we do have places you can buy the stuff). So whenever I get the urge to crush little plastic army men beneath the heel of my mighty boot, I have to drive the hour and a half back to my hometown and up to our "Game Club" (we don't go to stores anymore, as we didn't like the fact that they started kicking us out at 10 and entirely cutting off any prize support at tournaments, instead we rent a 3 room office in a storage facility that we are able to fit 5, 4X6 tables in and the owner is a nice enough guy that he lets us use the warehouse when we have a tournament so we can fit 15 tables in. The great thing is, we come and go as we please, it's 18 and up only, we ca actually play "beer and pretzel" games like bloodbowl.... while drinking beer and eating pretzels.... and at our tournaments we have more prize money to give away to the winners, as a "game store" isn't getting any of it. Also, because we've got around 20 members, our dues are relatively low. But back on topic,) after I get there I have to spend an hour or so being hassled by my friends about what I've been doing and when I'm going to graduate etc, then they're all hungry (us college boys have learned to starve.... more money for "liquid courage") so we have to go out to eat which takes another hour, then we get back and I finally get a game in which takes 2 and a half hours (less time if I beat the poor git quicker ) then it's thirty minutes of listening to my buddies whine about how cheesy I am, then it's back in the truck for the hour and a half drive home.

Therefor the total time necessary for me to get a game in is around 8 hours.

Doing the math and writing that incredibly long post only took 30 minutes......

Why do you think I post on dakka anyway? I'm bored....bored....bored...bored....

My Carnies cost less than you think. 113 is standard.

I can do 6 dakkafexes, but then how do you kill tanks (or at least, stun them)?

I have 3 dakkafexes, and 3 half dakka/half gun fexes (think those are 143 or 148).

The Tyrants are also dakkafexes, with more shots but lower strength...they have 12 shots BS3 S4 re-roll hits/wounds.

Good luck killing them all before you die.

Hooray! The more points you put on your carnifex... the more points I get when they get roasted by melta/plasma

Dude, hitting on 4+s, rerollable, and rerolling wounds are standard Dakkafex capabilities. The whole thing costs barely over 100 points.

Can't you only take 3 dakkafexes tho and the other 3 have to be something else? or am I thinking wrong.

You can take 6 dakkafexes if you like, but no one does. The other three (assuming there are three, and not two and a squad of Zoans) will usually be gunfexes (VC, strangler, +BS, +W).

The close order drill is nice for two reasons
A) It's FREE!
B) When you deepstrike, all your bases are (belong to us) already touching, so you might as well get +1 Leadership and +1 Initiative if you get charged. A 10 man infantry squad certainly shouldn't beat a 10 man space marine squad, but you'll kill a lot more if you attack at the same time.... which means you won't be as outnumbered.... this combined with the +1 leadership means you're more likely to stick around, letting your other units either get far enough away that when the marines beat you and consolidate, it won't be into another squad, or, charge the marines and put enough attacks on them that they die...... you'd be surprised what 30 charging guardsmen can do to 10 marines.

I'm sure that you did kill 160 of his 189 guys. I'm also sure that when you did it, he wasn't able to damage your vehicles. This combined with the fact that he has more men than me causes me to assume that he had much fewer weapons than I do. (if he had to the same or more, and 189 guys, he was cheating!)

Also, understand that what you see in a game and what is mathmaticly correct can be two different things.
-I've seen four guardsmen with lasguns shoot a 4 wound/feel no pain, khornate daemon prince to death in one round of shooting (I'm still bitter about it), and I've seen my own 10 man unit of infantry guard kill a bloodthirster in two rounds of combat, and a 5 man veteran squad with a vet serge with a powerfist kill a squad of harlequins and a solitaire, (back when harlequins were ubber), and the harlequins charged....... Just because something happens in the game doesn't mean that it should.

I realise that I'm assuming things with the math, for instance all of my guys dropping down at once. There's a reason for this. It makes things simple. I could go into all the "well what if only this squad drops" math, but then that would take all day. And I'm sure you can kill 40,50,60 guardsmen a turn..... I even did the equations for you to prove it. But then you're making the same assumption that I'm making in that everything is happening at once. You're forgetting that when those 40,50,60 guardsmen drop, they're going to be destroying your tanks, killing your infantry, etc. so you won't have as much left to fire back, reducing the number of guardsmen you can kill to around 30,40,50. Then the next turn when 40,50,60 more guardsmen drop, and your ability to kill my guardsmen gets dropped to 15,25,35, men a turn, then the next turn when 29,49 more drop, and your ability to kill my guys a turn drops to around 5,15,25 guys a turn.....

As for the tactic of hiding the demolishers and hellhounds until you start to drop.... why is the enemy deploying within 30" of your demolishers? Also it shouldn't be a hard choice at all. Template weapons and small arms fire into the guardsmen, lascannons into the tanks.

I've read the last chancer rules.... that's why I have the last chancers.

Want to know the reasons I have the 3 infantry platoons in my army? Bodies. Despite the fact that Last Chancers are able to deliver a better payload, 3 of them are the same points as a squad of 10 guardsmen..... and they still die just like guardsmen. While the name of the game IS killing the other guy, you still need enough bodies at the end of the game to claim objectives and make sure it's not a draw. Those 75 infantry squad guardsmen= 27 last chancers, (you can only have 20, and I already have 13).... that's only a little more than 1/3 of the bodies on the table.

Also, as far as the math goes, when comparing the combined shooting of my entire army to the combined shooting of your entire army, my army kills more.
When comparing the close combat ability of my entire army, to the close combat ability of your entire army..... my army kills more . (more bodies= more attacks= more kills) Last chancers might have 2 attacks a piece, but you only have 7 more of them than I do, which doesn't even compare to the model count difference
When comparing the survivability of my entire army vs. the survivability of your entire army.... my army is more survivable......

Wait a second.... how is your list more effective?

tegeus-Cromis wrote:

Hooray! The more points you put on your carnifex... the more points I get when they get roasted by melta/plasma

Dude, hitting on 4+s, rerollable, and rerolling wounds are standard Dakkafex capabilities. The whole thing costs barely over 100 points.

Can't you only take 3 dakkafexes tho and the other 3 have to be something else? or am I thinking wrong.

You can take 6 dakkafexes if you like, but no one does. The other three (assuming there are three, and not two and a squad of Zoans) will usually be gunfexes (VC, strangler, +BS, +W).

And? Is my statement false? The more upgrades you buy, the more points I get when it's dead :-P

I'm just messing with you here.

Stelek wrote:My Carnies cost less than you think. 113 is standard.

I can do 6 dakkafexes, but then how do you kill tanks (or at least, stun them)?

I have 3 dakkafexes, and 3 half dakka/half gun fexes (think those are 143 or 148).

The Tyrants are also dakkafexes, with more shots but lower strength...they have 12 shots BS3 S4 re-roll hits/wounds.

Good luck killing them all before you die.

Like I said, the nid list would be difficult if you had enough guants to prevent me from dropping close by to the big nasties. If however I am able to get close enough to drop and fire on them, they're toast. If I can't get close enough and you don't roll well enough on your return fire, they're toast. If my army comes in piece meal, they're toast, as the remaining units will tag them down after the first units have sacrificed themselves to whittle away the gaunts. Putting 4 wounds on a carnifex isn't very hard when you're using meltas and plasma. Yay for no invulnrable save and only needing 2's to wound with melta, and 3's to wound with plasma. Tyrant is only a little harder, as they can take a psychic power to give them a invunlrable save... but it's only a 6+.

Either way, against nids, I think it would be a close game.

It's more effective because it crushes marines of all types.

Which in tournaments, is the golden standard.

Yours, imho, doesn't.

129 guys and 2 basilisks, no matter how well played they are, are going to take down 80-90 marine armies.

You just don't have enough power to do it.

yeah lots of people play 80 marines at 1500-1850

Let's keep it polite, folks. You know who you are (if you don't, I'll point it out for you).

Longshot wrote:yeah lots of people play 80 marines at 1500-1850

I do. :p

Stelek wrote:It's more effective because it crushes marines of all types.

Which in tournaments, is the golden standard.

Yours, imho, doesn't.

129 guys and 2 basilisks, no matter how well played they are, are going to take down 80-90 marine armies.

You just don't have enough power to do it.

You realise that the math I worked out was just from one round of shooting....... with average rolls...... with killed 70 marines..... one round, 70 marines...... AVERAGE rolls..... Now I'll admit that killing70 marines in one round of shooting will probably not happen because not all of my guys will drop at once...... however killing 80-90 in 5 turns of shooting, when the army is capable of killing 70 in one round........ doesn't seem like much of a challenge. The fire power is there, as has been pointed out through the math. So until you have a better argument for why your army is better other than "Because my army crushes everything" speech, your argument is flawed and therefore you have lost. Show me some actual numbers, and then we can consider restarting this debate, until then, my army kills more, survives longer, and has more objective grabbing units. Those are the only three things that are of importance, and I win all three. Do some math, show your work, and provide some numbers that prove otherwise, and then we'll talk.

Stelek wrote:

Longshot wrote:yeah lots of people play 80 marines at 1500-1850

I do. :p

And what the heck does DCM mean?

Angron when any of my units drop, the other guy loses guys to my superior shooting vs your shooting, which may or may not kill as many guys. You realize your units aren't balanced equally? If you really think 18 flashlight shots and 1 PG shot at BS3 are going to take down as many marines as 6 BS4 PG shots, you better look at your dice again. And those are my *weaker* units. I have 8 such shots from my Last Chancers units.

Btw, if 40k was an all numbers game, people wouldn't bother playing it. They'd just match cards on a flowchart, and say GG.

If you look at DCM in your question, it tells you what it is....

Stelek wrote:Angron when any of my units drop, the other guy loses guys to my superior shooting vs your shooting, which may or may not kill as many guys. You realize your units aren't balanced equally? If you really think 18 flashlight shots and 1 PG shot at BS3 are going to take down as many marines as 6 BS4 PG shots, you better look at your dice again. And those are my *weaker* units. I have 8 such shots from my Last Chancers units.

Btw, if 40k was an all numbers game, people wouldn't bother playing it. They'd just match cards on a flowchart, and say GG.

If you look at DCM in your question, it tells you what it is....

Again, this is the difference.... it's not 6 BS 4 PG shots compared to 1 PG shot and 18 flashlight shots..... Yes, your three models are able to kill more than those 10 models. Do you really want to know where your list gets hurt? Your list loses mathmatically.... and this is important, because of your tank selections. Hellhounds suck, I showed you the numbers.... what, they kill 2 marines a turn with all of their shooting and are around 110 points? But without the hellhounds, the demolishers won't survive long as they're the only three tanks. If you really think that people will choose to shoot your infantry as opposed to your tanks (something I would never do.... guardsmen with plasmaguns do a pretty good job of killing themselves if you ask me), then just drop the hellhounds and get something better. And by something, I mean "anything in the codex is better than a hellhound point for point". Shoot, drop the hellhounds, and take 2 infantry platoons, that'll be 70 more guys, and you'll have 14 more plasmaguns........ which can kill a whole lot more than 3 hellhounds killing 2X3=6 marines a turn, and they have a lot more survivability as well.

Also, 40k IS a numbers game. While luck can certainly play a factor when it comes to the dice, and strategy can certainly affect the outcourse of the game, building the most powerful list ultimatly is more important to winning that strategy. And when two equally matched armies and generals match up, then it's just luck.

And heck, even "luck" involves numbers.... after all, how else do you know what you rolled on the dice?

But as I said before, provide concrete evidence of your lists superiority instead of just generalized statements that have absolutly no merit, (and frankly, this last one (your first sentence) doesn't even make any sense) and then we'll continue this debate, until then, I'm considering the topic locked.

LAUGH! You declared victory?

Stunning.

Enjoy.

Iorek!