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Would the +1 to hit for terminators work in overwatch ? IIRC you can't modify the roll to hit in overwatch ?

 godardc wrote:
Yeah, is the Finnish meta famous for being flyers heavy ? The tournament is full of flying models !
It is weird to see so many AA guns in so many IH lists

Every competitive list I've built has started with 3 stalkers. For their points, they're fantastic and flyers are everywhere at the moment. Eldar jets, jetbikes, riptides, repulsors etc.

For 510 points you can get three hunters and three stalkers. That's 66 wounds on T8 chassis, three Str 9, AP -3, D6 shots and 18 Str 7, Ap -1, D2 shots that all hit flyers on 2+. That's a lot of anti-air that's not bad against other targets too, plus a lot of wounds on the field. Sure it blows against Daemons, but you've got repulsors/redemptors for that.

Since I play Crimson Fists I’ve been thinking about the units that might benefit a lot from the rumoured IF/CF rule of +1 damage vs vehicles and buildings for heavy weapons. This is obviously unconfirmed so might be a total waste of time. If that bothers you, skip this post! I just noticed that Tor Garadon has this rule baked into his rules for all his attacks, so that might either confirm or negate the rumour.

Anyway if it’s true, the obvious things to look for are heavy weapons with lots of shots. Taking this a step further, you want to look beyond just the number of shots and look at the likely number of wounding hits you’ll cause, after saves. That number x1 is the amount of extra damage the rumoured super doctrine will do.So an autocannon might turn out to still do more damage on average than a heavy bolter, for example, because more hits go through.

Here are some options for things that look like being able to throw out a lot of heavy weapon shots:

Centurion devastators, either with heavy bolters or grav. Grav probably does more damage to most vehicles, though with shorter range. Heavy bolters and missile launchers might be a non-insane option. Fists will have dakka elsewhere.

Stalkers have a respectable number of shots for their cost. A pretty high proportion of vehicles you might be shooting at have the fly keyword at the moment. These guys won’t have a great time vs repulsors though and there’s no point pretending they will.

Stormhawks and Storm Talons – though they’re penalised for moving.

Land Raider Redeemers. Bit of a leftfield choice here, but 2D6 D3 flamer shots could be useful and it can carry 4 centurions. Twin assault cannon too, obvs. Intriguing option against stuff like Eldar planes.

Redemptor dreadnoughts. These look like a decent all-round choice for Crimson Fists. The +1 to hit big units should offset some of the penalty for moving. They have 18 heavy bolter shots and other weapons besides.

Invictors have a lot of heavy weapons, once you factor in the stubbers. Penalties for moving, though these don’t apply to the 2D6 hit heavy flamer.

Either kind of repulsor. I don’t know why you’d run a non-executioner repulsor any more, but they still exist.
Assault cannon razorbacks of course. I’ve never been a fan of these but their damage looks respectable.

Mortis dreads with either quad heavy bolters or autocannons.

Fire raptors. Oh the humanity! They are fragile for their price so you might want to see if there are ways to improve their durability. Or just take two. Tor Garadon can make it hit on a 2+ once, but he obviously can’t keep up with it. A Chaplain riding after it on a bike and shouting at it would be funnier.

Leviathan dreadnoughts get 20 nasty shots. Not as immortal as an Iron Hands one, but 50% more lethal.

The Deredeo might actually be a big winner here, particularly since you might well want its bubble to protect some of the rest of this stuff. The autocannons and heavy bolters combine to do pretty serious harm.

TFCs. These are great anyway so it’s not hard to see that making them D2 might come in handy.

The problem with the rumoured IF super doctrine is it's just so much worse than the IH/UM one, especially when IF want to be in tactical doctrine since they are the bolters extraordinaire chapter.

Not to mention there's this new kid on the block that will be popular in tournaments and basically negates that ability. Albeit necrons will hate them

Duh hunters and stalkers. I'l work on subing out my predators for some of them, can afford thunderfires cannons with the extra points.

The choice is tough. Stalkers will do better vs things that don't have T8 modesl like tau and eldar.

It's debatable whether Iron Hands negate Crimson Fists. You could argue that the opposite is true.

1-damage weapons like heavy bolters won't be as good against Iron Hands than they would be against everyone else, but 2-damage weapons will be twice as good.

In the WD index thingy, Crimson Fists had a strat to get +1 to hit characters. Things like eliminators could be pretty good for removing whoever's holding the Ironstone.

Iron Hands remain the Marine army to beat though, clearly. I guess we haven't seen the fists' relics and stuff yet, so they might have something as absurd as the Ironstone, or the stone might get nerfed. Without it Iron Hands are somewhat reasonable - though still fantastic.

If that mortal wound stratagem from Vigilus makes it to the IF/CF then you don't need big guns to take down IH. Just disintegrate them with bolter centurions.

Thunderfire canons are stupidly good in IH armies. They basically auto hit (miss once in 36) and you can slow the enemy down for more shots and can target the stuff hiding from your ridiculous gun castle.

Yeah the TFC for Iron Hands is just a perfect bit of synergy. You're going to be in devastator doctrine and you need to be able to kill objective-holders that your repulsors can't see. The Techmarines can even repair damaged tanks.

The IH bonuses are pretty much perfect synergy for everything, that’s the silly part. Every RG list iteration I’ve done I’ve looked at it after and been like, okay, this isn’t a bad list per se, but I could flip the chapter to IH and lose nothing as I trade one durability bonus for another and what I lose vs chars I gain in all those spread out units getting free reroll 1s and move and fire. And these are lists with almost vehicles, vehicles just make IH versions even better.

I am surprised your ravenguard list and your ih list look the same. My ravenguard list would not work as ih, too much infantry moving up and deploying in the "free" zone like centurions. I think the general list ih will be best, but if your looking at a different army it becomes a case of "what can these guys do better than ih?"

I’m no saying my ideal IH list looks like my ideal RG list, I’m saying I think I could take my RG list and flip the chapter to IH and it wouldn’t lose that much, cause it’s bonus covers so many units that aren’t even thought of as IH. Eliminators/scout snipers keep their ap and get reroll 1s, Invictors get rerolls and the vehicle buffs, etc. There aren’t many units that are bad in IH and good elsewhere. Ex, other chapters do Aggressors better, but even an IH Aggressor is still a decent unit as it’s tougher to kill and provides some anti horde the rest of an IH list might lack.

I own a ton of White Scar models from back in 7th. I was building up a Gladius Strike Force when 8th hit So I have a lot of white bikes, some stalkers, a hunter, some scouts, various flyers, rhinos, a vindicator, a predator, a couple of land raiders, razorbacks and a bunch of tactical squads. Just no primaris models. When 8th hit I dusted off my guard and have been playing them religiously. Now that the SM have a decent book and GW seems to be pumping out a new SM chapter book a month I'm considering jumping ship. IH seems to be top-dog at the moment from what I'm hearing from my SM buddies at my flgs but I'm concerned it'll get FAQ'd out of existence and I'll be stuck with a bunch of black models that will be tough to repaint. Are White Scars at all decent? Should I sit it out for another 6 months and see what the next couple of codex expansions look like? Can a non-primaris army be competitive?

That’s true about everything working as Iron Hands. Also, a lot of the RG benefits look less good now there’s vanguard stuff everyone can access.

So for example the RG warlord trait to infiltrate with a unit is fantastic. You bring 6 devastator centurions and go to town. But actually anyone can now have invictors, incursors and so on do this, and IH invictors are amazing.

I’ve actually been looking at RG and finding their core traits don’t really make that much sense with their strats and stuff. They have these great bonuses for when they are far away and in cover, combined with all these tricks for getting into close combat with stuff. Isn’t that a bit odd?

It might make more sense to play a successor of some kind with melee traits. Maybe space sharks. Give them traits like +1 to advance and charge and +3” range, then proceed to burn everything. You could soup the army without much trouble if you wanted.

It’s a bit of a shame to lose Shrike but he’s not that great really. The model might make a good smash captain.

@necron99, I’d say wait until we see what Imperial/Crimson Fists are like. We ought to see them pretty soon along with salamanders, and black templars not long after.

Mandragola wrote:
That’s true about everything working as Iron Hands. Also, a lot of the RG benefits look less good now there’s vanguard stuff everyone can access.

So for example the RG warlord trait to infiltrate with a unit is fantastic. You bring 6 devastator centurions and go to town. But actually anyone can now have invictors, incursors and so on do this, and IH invictors are amazing.

I’ve actually been looking at RG and finding their core traits don’t really make that much sense with their strats and stuff. They have these great bonuses for when they are far away and in cover, combined with all these tricks for getting into close combat with stuff. Isn’t that a bit odd?

It might make more sense to play a successor of some kind with melee traits. Maybe space sharks. Give them traits like +1 to advance and charge and +3” range, then proceed to burn everything. You could soup the army without much trouble if you wanted.

It’s a bit of a shame to lose Shrike but he’s not that great really. The model might make a good smash captain.

@necron99, I’d say wait until we see what Imperial/Crimson Fists are like. We ought to see them pretty soon along with salamanders, and black templars not long after.

Exactly my thoughts. A chapter with lots of charge bonuses couples so odd with long range protection. I know the intent is to help protect them as they close, but then there’s so many scout/deep strike deploy options that it’s less relevant. And the new book makes it crazy binary if you go all in on the charge route, you win first turn and those Cents/Aggressors will wreck face or go second and half your cool strats are now worthless. Why is there barely any midgame tricks/bonuses for them? And yeah going RG successor with 2 of +3 range, +1” charge, whirlwind, or stealthy seems best.

I was thinking the way RG is intended to be played if not banking on winning the first turn is you deploy, see where your opponent deploys, then pay a boatload of cps to infiltrate your army to only face off against half their list while the other half is out of range or taking the 12” penalty...The flaw being so many armies are either hyper mobile (flyers) or super long range so they’re still hitting you.

Im hoping Reece does a write up/podcast on RG soon, see how he suggests. I heard him say a few times that RG was the chapter he was personally looking forwards to the most and since he played tested these presumably he had some ideas in mind of how they function without being inferior IH (shooty) or inferior White Scars (cc).

What about Rapier Carriers (with Quad Launchers) in an Iron Hands list?
They provide much the same utility as a Thunderfire Cannon. Worse AP by 1, worse durability, no stratagems, and only 3+ BS are all noteworthy downsides, but it's slightly cheaper than a TFire and comes with an incredibly useful 4-shot, 24" missile launcher alt-fire. (It's 3 damage instead of d6, but if anything I consider that a boon rather than a downside over missile launchers.)

Hiding behind LOS-blocking terrain, and popping out only when you need to use the anti-tank shot compensates for the lower durability, and that's a lot of high S shots which will have AP-3 for less than 90 points.

I expect the Raven Guard chapter tactic to help my support elements, not my assault elements. The Scouts and Eliminators will be harder to remove while they scurry around picking off characters and objectives. Meanwhile the opponent's focus should be monopolized by the units that I'm cramming down his throat, Genestealer Cult style.

Agreed, Raven Guard seems to work well with shooty support infantry in a castle or gunline, then either an in your face assault element, or just some generally disruptive elements to cause problems for your opponent as he tries to shoot-assault your shooty force out of position.

But Raven Guard appears, in this version, to be much more about giving benefits to infantry rather than vehicles.

I’m dusting off my devastators with missile launchers and lascannons. Three hunky squads of devs in terrain, supported by characters (maybe even a standard and/or apothecary) can lay down solid firepower from outside the range of the currently-popular 24” and 30” primaris vehicles for a couple of turns before anything would even have the chance to shift them. True, they don’t get any particular anti-armor bonus or anything, but chapter master rerolls, litany of fire, and the usual stuff should make them pretty good at blasting stuff.

Then there’s the current meta: Played a tournament last Saturday where every one of my opponent’s armies was built around layered buffs from characters standing in the open, and/or characters with more than 10 wounds. I wish I had been playing my Raven Guard. I would have done much better.

Then even more when you look at the list in the context of actual missions and scenarios, the ability to disrupt the opponent’s plans with shadowstepping characters all over the table, infantry dropping on objectives in the backfield for 1 CP (no pod required), sergeants sniping out characters with the funky pistol...
It’s not all about dropping in and assaulting. There’s also dropping in a character with the Reliquary of Gathalamor in a place where it will disable the opponent’s psychic phase, doing a psychic phase fire-and-fade with shadowstep, putting models where your opponent has to send something to deal with them, even if they just sit there, where they can score you recon points every turn, and then when somebody gets close to them, shadowstepping to the other side of the table.

It feels like a finesse army, with options that will still be viable when the infiltrator/incursor box finally comes out and the omni-scramblers make 9” drop+assault a thing of the past.

Mandragola wrote:
Since I play Crimson Fists I’ve been thinking about the units that might benefit a lot from the rumoured IF/CF rule of +1 damage vs vehicles and buildings for heavy weapons. This is obviously unconfirmed so might be a total waste of time. If that bothers you, skip this post! I just noticed that Tor Garadon has this rule baked into his rules for all his attacks, so that might either confirm or negate the rumour.

Anyway if it’s true, the obvious things to look for are heavy weapons with lots of shots. Taking this a step further, you want to look beyond just the number of shots and look at the likely number of wounding hits you’ll cause, after saves. That number x1 is the amount of extra damage the rumoured super doctrine will do.So an autocannon might turn out to still do more damage on average than a heavy bolter, for example, because more hits go through.

Here are some options for things that look like being able to throw out a lot of heavy weapon shots:

Centurion devastators, either with heavy bolters or grav. Grav probably does more damage to most vehicles, though with shorter range. Heavy bolters and missile launchers might be a non-insane option. Fists will have dakka elsewhere.

Stalkers have a respectable number of shots for their cost. A pretty high proportion of vehicles you might be shooting at have the fly keyword at the moment. These guys won’t have a great time vs repulsors though and there’s no point pretending they will.

Stormhawks and Storm Talons – though they’re penalised for moving.

Land Raider Redeemers. Bit of a leftfield choice here, but 2D6 D3 flamer shots could be useful and it can carry 4 centurions. Twin assault cannon too, obvs. Intriguing option against stuff like Eldar planes.

Redemptor dreadnoughts. These look like a decent all-round choice for Crimson Fists. The +1 to hit big units should offset some of the penalty for moving. They have 18 heavy bolter shots and other weapons besides.

Invictors have a lot of heavy weapons, once you factor in the stubbers. Penalties for moving, though these don’t apply to the 2D6 hit heavy flamer.

Either kind of repulsor. I don’t know why you’d run a non-executioner repulsor any more, but they still exist.
Assault cannon razorbacks of course. I’ve never been a fan of these but their damage looks respectable.

Mortis dreads with either quad heavy bolters or autocannons.

Fire raptors. Oh the humanity! They are fragile for their price so you might want to see if there are ways to improve their durability. Or just take two. Tor Garadon can make it hit on a 2+ once, but he obviously can’t keep up with it. A Chaplain riding after it on a bike and shouting at it would be funnier.

Leviathan dreadnoughts get 20 nasty shots. Not as immortal as an Iron Hands one, but 50% more lethal.

The Deredeo might actually be a big winner here, particularly since you might well want its bubble to protect some of the rest of this stuff. The autocannons and heavy bolters combine to do pretty serious harm.

TFCs. These are great anyway so it’s not hard to see that making them D2 might come in handy.

Hellblasters with heavy plasma incinerstors will be nice. on the over charge they're basicly las canons that deal a straight 3 damage. grab a ten man squad of them and go to town.

Okay, new RG question, let's start by assuming I want to put 12 Aggressors into my RG list (whether I need 12 or if Cents are better are open questions, but I happen to own 12 Aggressors and 0 Cents). What is the best way to break them up?

I'm thinking 1 unit has to be 6 guys as the prime Master of Ambush pull. That many in the face or midfield and in range to double tap from turn 1 is a serious threat.

But for the other 6 that will very likely be deep struck, does it make more sense to run 1 large unit or 2 small? 2 gives another free sgt, twice the chance of making a charge roll, harder to tie up, and can threaten more board space since you aren't risking over-committing a giant death ball to a corner cause you need to kill 5 guys on an objective. The upside to all 1 unit is having enough bodies to still push through serious melee damage after 1-2 losses and is less likely to be struck back.

 Flavius Infernus wrote:
Agreed, Raven Guard seems to work well with shooty support infantry in a castle or gunline, then either an in your face assault element, or just some generally disruptive elements to cause problems for your opponent as he tries to shoot-assault your shooty force out of position.

But Raven Guard appears, in this version, to be much more about giving benefits to infantry rather than vehicles.

I’m dusting off my devastators with missile launchers and lascannons. Three hunky squads of devs in terrain, supported by characters (maybe even a standard and/or apothecary) can lay down solid firepower from outside the range of the currently-popular 24” and 30” primaris vehicles for a couple of turns before anything would even have the chance to shift them. True, they don’t get any particular anti-armor bonus or anything, but chapter master rerolls, litany of fire, and the usual stuff should make them pretty good at blasting stuff.

Then there’s the current meta: Played a tournament last Saturday where every one of my opponent’s armies was built around layered buffs from characters standing in the open, and/or characters with more than 10 wounds. I wish I had been playing my Raven Guard. I would have done much better.

Then even more when you look at the list in the context of actual missions and scenarios, the ability to disrupt the opponent’s plans with shadowstepping characters all over the table, infantry dropping on objectives in the backfield for 1 CP (no pod required), sergeants sniping out characters with the funky pistol...
It’s not all about dropping in and assaulting. There’s also dropping in a character with the Reliquary of Gathalamor in a place where it will disable the opponent’s psychic phase, doing a psychic phase fire-and-fade with shadowstep, putting models where your opponent has to send something to deal with them, even if they just sit there, where they can score you recon points every turn, and then when somebody gets close to them, shadowstepping to the other side of the table.

It feels like a finesse army, with options that will still be viable when the infiltrator/incursor box finally comes out and the omni-scramblers make 9” drop+assault a thing of the past.

I agree with everything you just said there but I must point out the 9" drop assault isn't going anywhere thanks to the drop pod. Scrambles say you have to drop outside 12". So 12.1", no problem. Drop the drop pod in there, guys get out. Guys have to get out outside 9" from enemy units and within 3" of the pod(thats the drop pods deployment rule). That's still putting you just outside 9" with your guys because they are not affected by the scrambler rules. How useful this actually is, now that's debatable, but its definitely something to keep in mind.

I am finding I am putting dev squads in drop pods now, 1 grav team and 2 las teams. This makes up the bulk of my alpha strike anti tank and seems to work incredibly well with my ravenguard. Centurions take the brunt of the enemy fire with an apothecary that deployed them up, dev teams drop in, snipers cover the map and do their thing, and primaris troops make up the bulk of my anti infantry. Throw a thunder fire cannon in out of Los and an exterminator team or 2 and well, you have a lot of troops and very little good targets for those enemy anti tank weapons.

Agree on the devs and RG tactics, but the deployment question might be one for YMDC. Omni-scrambler rule refers to “Enemy units that are set up on the battlefield as reinforcements.” I’m not sure units disembarking from a drop pod don’t fit that description.

 godardc wrote:
Would the +1 to hit for terminators work in overwatch ? IIRC you can't modify the roll to hit in overwatch ?

Have to correct you a bit here.

You can modify overwatch as much as you like, but only natural 6's hit. Tau drones with penalties to hit (againgst flyers and such) only hit on 6's even if their trait lets them hit on 5's.

BrianDavion wrote:

Mandragola wrote:
SNIP

Hellblasters with heavy plasma incinerstors will be nice. on the over charge they're basicly las canons that deal a straight 3 damage. grab a ten man squad of them and go to town.

Heavy hellblasters are still awful, even for Fists. It’s just always worse to have one shot instead of two, especially when you’re trying to score a lot of wounding hits. It’s a shame they didn’t do something to fix the heavy and assault hellblasters as they did for bolt rifles. Only rapid fire hellblasters are at all useable for most chapters. Assault hellblasters might work for ravenguard – a friend of mine did well with some at the beginning of 8th and they’re decent in an infantry list with high target saturation and penalties to hit.

And bizarrely, suppressors are cheaper. If you’re talking about a heavy weapon you can have one with two shots, -3ap in devastator doctrine and 48” range – though only S7. So you’ll wound tough things a bit less often but never blow up, and do at least as much damage against virtually any target in the game. Against T<7 they’re simply twice as good as heavy hellblasters, with no risk of blowing up and also cheaper. The fact suppressors have also got jump packs is just a bonus – quite a nice one.

For what it’s worth I didn’t include stalker rifle intercessors in my list for a similar reason. One shot each and not a great chance of wounding vehicles or buildings (typically needing at least a 5+) means they just don’t benefit much. Better to just take ordinary rifles or ABRs I think, and have your troops deal with the enemy troops.

In general the easiest way to get a lot of heavy weapons is to take lots of vehicles. This is a bit problematic because it makes them a direct comparison with Iron Hands, whose vehicles are simply better. I could see a Deredeo with a shield being a good way to replicate some of the benefits IH get. Otherwise Devastator Centurion spam with the Vigilus detachment (which is apparently still legal, judging by the latest FAQ) looks like probably the best unique option for Fists.

bort wrote:
Okay, new RG question, let's start by assuming I want to put 12 Aggressors into my RG list (whether I need 12 or if Cents are better are open questions, but I happen to own 12 Aggressors and 0 Cents). What is the best way to break them up?

I'm thinking 1 unit has to be 6 guys as the prime Master of Ambush pull. That many in the face or midfield and in range to double tap from turn 1 is a serious threat.

But for the other 6 that will very likely be deep struck, does it make more sense to run 1 large unit or 2 small? 2 gives another free sgt, twice the chance of making a charge roll, harder to tie up, and can threaten more board space since you aren't risking over-committing a giant death ball to a corner cause you need to kill 5 guys on an objective. The upside to all 1 unit is having enough bodies to still push through serious melee damage after 1-2 losses and is less likely to be struck back.

Larger squads will be buffed better. It will cost 1 CP to Strike from the Shadows, and you can give more models things like Transhuman Physiology or a chaplain +1 to wound buff. They can still split fire if you need to, though the shorter range will hurt you there. For me, units like Aggressors are your hammer while your troop-based units are better for board control.

So just to be sure I'm reading this straight:

If I know I'm going first (as in many ITC missions) and I have some Raven Guard JP infantry, like say Vanguard Vets, I can make this Vanguard Bomb:
1. Use Master of Ambush to redeploy my Vanguard unit anywhere on the table more than 9" from enemy models. (The character with the power can go with them, but doesn't have to.)
2. Use Infiltrators stratagem to move and advance 13-18" before turn one, jumping over terrain, screens, etc.
3. Move and advance normally, 13-18" in turn one, jumping over terrain, screens, etc.
4. Use Strike from the Skies stratagem to charge, with +1 to the charge roll, also optionally using The Raven's Blade stratagem for a charge reroll if I feel like I need it.

If you roll straight 1s on your advance and charge dice, that's a minimum 29" of movement from your starting place 9" from the initial enemy model. With average rolls that's 39" of move & charge. All for 2-4 CP and a warlord power.

Am I missing something? Can this even be screened against? For a big unit of Vanguard with Thunderhammers, is even Fierros safe?

The Iron Father would be safe, as, you're not likely going to be able to get within an inch of him (unless your opponent just doesn't want to wall him off with 3 Repulsors etc.

But yes, you can do this - though i don't think you'll need to worry about using the advance and charge strat.

 Flavius Infernus wrote:

2. Use Infiltrators stratagem to move and advance 13-18" before turn one, jumping over terrain, screens, etc.

You won’t be able to jump over screens with the infiltrator stratagem as you’ll be starting 9” away, and have to end 9” away, from enemy models. You just don’t have the distance. Now if you move faster that 12, you might be able to do it, but it would then depend upon the placement of enemy units.

ItsPug wrote:

 Flavius Infernus wrote:

2. Use Infiltrators stratagem to move and advance 13-18" before turn one, jumping over terrain, screens, etc.

You won’t be able to jump over screens with the infiltrator stratagem as you’ll be starting 9” away, and have to end 9” away, from enemy models. You just don’t have the distance. Now if you move faster that 12, you might be able to do it, but it would then depend upon the placement of enemy units.

Whoops, there's the hitch. Thanks for finding that.