Fixture of Dakka
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I had reason to jot down the thinking that went into my DE fleet, which I'm taking to Adepticon next week. I've never played DE before - this is pure theory. I thought I'd share, in the hopes of stimulating some activity in this forum. Feedback is welcome; debate is more so.
1) DE are too expensive, ship-for-ship, to play a “conventional” BFG game. Your cruisers cost more then most comparable ships, and the escort-to-cruiser requirement means you can’t try a cruiser fleet. Your escorts are pricey for what they do.
2) Given #1, let’s ponder the strengths of the DE:
a) Shadowfields: still vulnerable to battery fire (especially with no normal shields), but relatively safe from lance fire.
b) Speed: your cruisers are faster (and more maneuverable) than most races escorts; your escorts are a little faster still.
c) Ordnance: you won’t have overwhelming launch bays, but you have better-than-average things coming out of them (hard to hit assault boats & bombers, resilient fighters).
d) Impalers: a couple good crits can essentially neuter a capital ship; a crit destroys an escort. Impalers are hard to shoot down with turrets (6’s req’d), and resilient to fighters (survive on a 4+). These can be mounted on escorts.
e) Leech torpedoes: I’m not sure about these yet. The problem is I can’t see where I’d fit them into fleet composition. I see two potential uses:
i) Separate your target from its packmates. For example, hit a battleship with a few leeches (and a blast marker or two), and it can’t keep up with the minimum movement of its escort/cruiser bodyguards.
ii) Break up enemy formations into staggered waves. Instead of 4 fast cruisers arriving on the same turn, now you have 2 showing up, and 2 more 20-30cm behind.
f) Mimic engines: Reposition a portion of your fleet before the game starts – excellent for various tactical formations, e.g., setting up a “refused flank” scenario. Except against Tyranids and Necrons, they are also great at letting you get the first shot. In large enough numbers, you can (try) to make that first shot a knockout punch.
g) Phantom lances: it’s not a pulsar, but a 1/3 chance of 2-for-1 hits is nice. Kinda weak on cruisers (2 phantom lances means you have maybe comparable lance firepower to a lance-armed Dauntless), but solid on escorts.
3) Weaknesses?
a) Numbers. Most opposing fleets will have more hulls, more hitpoints, more ordnance, and more guns.
b) Resilience. DE armor is comparatively weak, and shadowfields are imperfect protection against battery fire.
c) Firepower. In order to cripple or destroy a cruiser or battleship, you’ll need more hulls on-target than most other fleets.
d) Fire arc. ALL of your guns are forward arc only, which means you have to be VERY careful with your approach vector, or you seriously reduce the advantages of your shadowfields by giving your opponent a closing aspect shot with his batteries.
4) Okay, so given all of that, what tactics or strategies can we use?
a) Crippling first strikes (mimic engines). Mimic engines mean you can get the first shot, and you can do it from point-blank range. Moreover, you may be able to manage “locked on” as well. I think it’s too expensive to do your entire fleet this way, but a bunch of phantom lance-armed escorts diving through the heart of an enemy fleet “locked on” could do significant damage. If you choose the right vector, and pick your target very carefully, you might be able to drive right up the middle, mug the rear-most ship in their fleet, and let their minimum movement carry most of their guns out of arc. If necessary, “All Ahead Full” is available on turn 1 to close range as well.
b) Target selection. This one is huge. Ships with long-range, multi-arc batteries must die quickly; unfortunately, these are typically grand/battle cruisers or battleships, and fairly hard targets. Battery-armed highly-mobile ships need to die too (these are often escorts, and so easier to kill). After that, your choice of carriers (to gain ordnance supremacy, if you have enough carrier support yourself), or decreasingly mobile ships.
c) Mobility. The idea is to use your mobility to set up situations where you have local superiority – they have more ships on the table, but the only ones that matter in a given turn are the ones that can bring guns to bear on you. Geometry & special relations are going to be crucial here – you need to be able to look at the enemy fleet, and quickly determine where the various “cones” of weapons coverage both ARE, and where they are COULD BE next turn. Misjuding and eating a broadside from a Dominator will rip up a Torture quickly, where a shielded cruiser might not take any hull damage at all.
d) Boarding actions. Don’t try (unless truly desperate) a full-on boarding action. Mobility is life, and locking yourself in place to grapple with another ship isn’t a good use of your speed. But your hit-and-run attacks (both assault shuttles and teleport attacks) are boosted; make as much use of those as possible! Escorts die to the first critical – send out assault shuttles, 1 per escort, and rely on the “6 to hit” requirement to get most of them through the 1 or 2 turrets an escort has available. Mass shuttles to hit cruisers and inflict multiple crits, shutting down weapons systems and potentially starting fires. Teleport attack whenever possible (make sure to knock down shields in the shooting phase).
e) Disengaging. It's not glorious, but it may be crucial, to deny points to the enemy. If a ship/squadron is "trapped" by the enemy, disengage it. If you can pick up a quick 300 pts in a 1500 pt engagement, something mimic engines make entirely possible, and disengage with no VP-sacrificing losses suffered, you win by 150 pts. And remember the board edge - "Come to New Heading" is free for DE, and their ships are fast enough to make board edge feasible across a surprising amount of the board.
That’s most of my thinking. I have another strategy/tactic in mind, but it’s so risky I’m not sharing it at present (though my Adepticon fleet will rely on it) – I’ll let you know if/how it works out.
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