A way to make Dark Angels 'not suck'?

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**the_wraith**

Posted By Longshot on 04/05/2007 9:02 AM
The number of all Av12+ skimmer armies in this edition has made lascannons necessary. You're shootin yourself in the foot having more than one or two plasma cannons. Period. Even with one and a partial, that's only 50% more effective than a lascannon at killing guys but infinitely worse than a lascannon at taking out AV12 (the benchmark).

Winning often isn't hard. It's playing against good players with good armies and winning often that's hard. I have lost zero out of 40 or some-odd tournament games in the last couple years because frankly most of the people who play 40k are scrubs.

You won't have enough to deal with the following common lists in my area anyway:
Drop pod dreads.
Mech eldar
Mech tau
Mech marines (5 razorbacks, 3 predators, dreadnoughts)
Mech Sisters (3 exorcists, tons of rhinos)
Mech guard (5-6 chimeras, 3 hellhounds, 3 leman russes)
Godzilla nids (wound my gunfexes on a 4 v. wound my gunfexes on a 2. thanks for making the +1 toughness worthwhile)

Perhaps your local metagame is different but over here there's either a ton of vehicles or none, mostly, in good lists. And no I'm not counting your cousin's blood angels.

I am light on all of those except Mech Eldar and Mech Sisters. So far I have not lost to either of those two though. I have seen mech Tau, but I doubt I have seen it in the hands of a good player. They never win

Out of what you mention the ones I would worry about are the Eldar, guard, and nids. With the guard being the worst match up. These I do feel at a disadvantage with the list I proposed. Glancing on fours is enough for me to be happy. I should fear the dreads list, but I have never seen one be effective either.

I cannot claim such a lofty record as yours for I have lost games and I do not keep track. Though I know I win many more than I lose in tournement play. Your are right, most people are scrubs in tourneys, but that makes it more fun in the later rounds when you play better people.

The wraith

**5thelement**

Ya actually with lascanons id rather have autocanons with tank hunter or even just autocanons, lots of assault canons and lots of melta heck with the expensive las canon. I do take them against cron but really not to many in my regular list.

**Longshot**

Two things make lascannons better that autocannons or assault cannons

1. 48" makes everything better.
2. AP2.

Lascannons can be used to reliably kill monsters, armored troops and any tanks anywhere on the board roughly, terrain willing. Can't be said about autocannons or assault cannons, which are range limited and not reliably AP2.

Obviously I don't think every gun you take should be a lascannon but you need a minimum to be able to deal with certain threats that can and do come up.

p.s. I'm not bragging about my tournament record. If you played against the lists we see down here you'd never lose either.

**Mannahnin**

And if you played against the lists I saw at Adepticon, you'd swear by the lascannon. Seriously. It was amazing. I've never seen that many tight/maximized lists at a tournament.

At the team tournament I fought...

Round one: Infantry-heavy Blood Angels x2, with three jump pack squads (including two DC), a pile of guys, a Dread and a Pred for extra fire support. This was probably the softest list of the weekend.

Round two: Godzilla nids with Genestealers for support and meiotic spores.

Round three: Footslogging Ork Horde with two Demolishers, tons of Rokkits, and Grots to screen the Mobs.

Round four: Godzilla nids with Genestealers for support.

On Sunday I faced...

Footslogging Death Guard horde with summoned Plague bearers, Defiler, Pred.

The most optimized Mech Tau list I've ever seen- three Devilfish, three Rail heads, two Pirhanas, 4 Crisis in three units, 2 Crisis ICs.

Webway Dark Eldar Raider Assault with four shooty warrior squads (two DL each) and three Ravagers. This was the only army all weekend against which Plasmacannons might have been good. Still, do you prefer two hits, glancing on a 3+ or 4+ (Ravagers), or auto-glancing once (or 2+ for the Ravagers)?

**mughi3**

The most optimized Mech Tau list I've ever seen- three Devilfish, three Rail heads, two Pirhanas, 4 Crisis in three units, 2 Crisis ICs.

similar in some ways to my list. but mine is more of an armored company so allmost all my points are tied up in the vehicles and upgrades-5 fish (pathfinder/firewarrior) 3 hammerheads and a tank hunting tooled out HQ crisis suit at 1850.

and contrary to the previous post i do win with it, quite alot, as long as i am not fighting necrons

**Orlanth**

Longshot: "Two things make lascannons better that autocannons or assault cannons"

I agree with a lot you have posted, but not that lascannon are better than assault cannon. Have some advantages over yes, but not better than - which is something else entirely.

**ender502**

Lascannons vs. assault cannons are apples and oranges. One is either a slow or static weapon and the other is meant to be moving fast or busting out of a pod. Each have their uses but I wouldn't put a lascannon in a pod or think that a static assault cannon was a good idea.

ender502

**skyth**

Posted By Longshot on 04/05/2007 12:01 PM
Two things make lascannons better that autocannons or assault cannons

1. 48" makes everything better.

Autocannons do have 48" range, and are usually only taken in Havok squads where they are definitely more points-effective than lascannons.

In infantry squads, definitely go with lascannons

**Sarigar**

What about a 9 Rhino armylist? It fits easily into a 2000 point army. You can have Powerfists and Melta Guns in every squad (Vet squads getting 2 Meltas). After playing against certain Mech Sister and Mech Marine builds, it seems the DA's could pull it off pretty well. I would think this could actually succeed at Recon.

**Longshot**

Posted By Orlanth on 04/05/2007 2:44 PM
Longshot: "Two things make lascannons better that autocannons or assault cannons"

I agree with a lot you have posted, but not that lascannon are better than assault cannon. Have some advantages over yes, but not better than - which is something else entirely.

I guess I should have worded this more like:

"There are two things that make lascannons preferable to assault cannons."

Having played with tons of assault cannons in various lists, I know they're good. But they're also short ranged and not always AP2. The latter is really not that important statistically but it feels important when I play that my assault cannons always roll a ton of hits and no 6's

**ColonelEllios**

Is it possible that simply nobody will admit that the vanilla marine codex is omfg-stupid-overpowered? What happened to the give-and-take that existed before the trait system and stupid-broken assault cannons in every other unit?

Is it a bad thing that DA can't field more than 1/2 dozen assault cannons easily? Or scare half of an army off of the board because of one stupid and horrendously undercosted librarian?

Don't misunderstand me--I haven't lost a game with my Eldar to any flavor of Marines yet in 4th edition. But the sheer number of scoring units that Dark Angels can field has me slightly nervous about upcoming tournaments...

If anything the new DA book is stronger than the vanilla 'dex because of the potential mobility of the list. The main weakness of vanilla marines is that they are undergunned if they go mech, and easy to avoid/assault if they go gunline. The new Dark Angels codex has a good chance of mopping the floor with most vanilla variants, if played by a competent general. Too bad all of *those* are too busy winning with armies that are actually cool...

EDIT: all of the above assertions were made assuming a tournament environment with proper amounts of terrain and objectives more complex than "kill as many bad guys as possible"

**Asmodai**

"Is it possible that simply nobody will admit that the vanilla marine codex is omfg-stupid-overpowered? What happened to the give-and-take that existed before the trait system and stupid-broken assault cannons in every other unit?"

No, it's quite fairly balanced against Chaos, Eldar, Tau, Tyranids and the other major armies. You can make competitive and not so competitive lists with any of them. They're all in the same bracket.

(Which isn't to say some tweaking would be a bad thing - but the people that want to rip the soul out of it and abandon the trait system really seem to just be expressing venom towards Marine players rather than a balanced view of the Codex's merits and flaws.)