Fresh-Faced New User
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This is a very interesting army, and was great to read about. Myself I'm starting my first marine force, and my list is pretty strong so far imo at 1500pts, and reading something like this was a great chance to pair it up with a carefully thought out list and work out how I would handle it, as well as gave me some good inspiration on what I should add when I move up to 1750pts, and 2,000pts. Happily, while I can say it'd be a honest challenge, I think I could match a list like this toe-to-toe with my own marine list(at a 1750pt setup). Looking at what I take in my list however(which includes a max termie squad and 2 dreadnaughts as my elites), it made me notice the one biggest challenge/weakness that your list has;
You're basically boned against armor once you've exhausted those melta shots. Against 3 vehicles that are in the open, sure, it works. But what happens when your opponent drops in with a Land Raider Redeemer, -and- Ironclads, -and- terminators? Sure, the SG can drop any one of them, but now you've got a problem: The Meltas aren't guarenteed to succeed. You have to decide how many you'll use before you fire them, so you have to decide "do I use more meltas and guarentee death, or try to ration my meltas but risk not destroying my target?". If you burn off all the meltas on a single target, you're screwed if there's still heavy armor on the field once your melta's all gone. Krak is great, but it's not decisive, and not reliable. But the alternative is almost just as bad. If you're close enough to make your 2d6 with the melta on a redeemer, Ironclad, or terminators(the termies in particular), what happens when you fail to destroy it? There's no way the SG will survive a blast from a redeemer's cannon and still be combat-effective. An ironclad that wasn't destroyed would likely break the squad in the resulting close-combat, and a smart player would have positioned himself between the SGs and the table edge so that the retreating SGs have to run through the ironclad, and with consolidation, the odds of the dread being within 6" of the squad during their next turn is very likely, then what happens? they just keep running, because the librarian can't use Gate, he's -forced- to use his movment fleeing with his squad. Then the Ironclad keeps chasing them, and with running ontop of that, can easily run them right off the table without ever allowing them to regroup.
As for the termies, 8 meltas won't kill a 10-strong anyways, if they've split into combat squads then you might kill one half, but get charged by the other, and odds are a charging termie squad will butcher the SGs in close combat. Even if they do get out with gate, you'll have lost so many of them that all you're doing is delaying the inevitable, especially if you've burnt those meltas already(remembering that you do have to keep track of who still has their meltas, so you might lose some before they even get to be fired).
I can't see this army fairing well against an armor-heavy force that can actually take those meltas and keep going, since you can only fire at so many targets, and only have so much odds of succeeding. No matter what you do, odds are only about half the melta shots will do something, when you add the SG's normal marine BS, and the low(but still existant) chance of failing to wound. Then of course there's the fact that it can be rendered even less likely if the squad is getting cover saves as well. Ironclads have smoke by default now. How many meltas would you bet on an armor-13 target with a 4+cover save(immune to Null Void)? Would you actually risk not firing them all and having the vehicle survive? If you're close enough to get the 2d6, you -will- get wiped out by anything that survives. The Land Raider is an even bigger threat, both because it's armor is higher(it also gets smoke), and the fact that if it does survive, there's no way you'll ever put it down with krak weapons. It's very hit-and-miss, and even with that many melta-guns, a high-armor list would still be very hard to simply destroy outright. And even in the case of being the first-turn-slaughter, a smart player will deploy with cover anyways. Even a land raider will get cover from being in forest area terrain.
I can also see any mechanized army being a problem. A crapload of skimmers moving fast, or or battlesuits negotiating cover would be hard to drop with the meltas alone, and once the meltas are gone, you don't really have anything left to deal with anything stronger then a marine. Anything with a 2+ save is more-or-less invunerable once your melta is gone, since you lack the number-to-point ratio to apply massive amounts of small-arms fire. Vehicles with an armor of 11 or higher are basically only threatened by the 2 missile launchers as well.
Then, of course, for myself, my 1750 will include Vanguards, and a heroic intervention generally means an SG goes splat from the close-combat version of their own tactics.
Ultimatly, even if the other player's priority wasn't to kill the SGs, just surviving the meltas with heavy armor can make or break the game. And after breaking it all down, surviving meltas is not too hard with any kind of cover around. It just seems like way too much to bank on something that could go so easily wrong. This isn't even consitering what you do if your drop pod scatters out of the 2d6 melta range and you can't get that extra d6 anyways(making firing the weapon at all against even an armor-12 vehicle a gamble).
I wouldn't play a list like this personally. It tempted me to get Sternguard, but since my list includes 3 tactical drop squads already, I'd perfer the speed/CQC of assault marines or Vanguards. I'm glad to see it, because I honestly had not really given the Sternguard much consiteration before now, but seeing this gives me a clearer picture on how powerful they really are, and marks them as something I'll have to really look out for, as well as that clever Lib+beacon trick, I'll definatly have my eyes open for that. Though powerful as it is, everything has a weakness, and making the army revolve around the Sternguard is just too limited, even with their incredible range of firing options. I might consiter adding one squad some day to my list for the added firepower, but never more then one(especially since I like my dreads and termies, and without them I have no heavy durability.)
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