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About 2 months ago I spoke to Stelek via the meebo chat on the blog. He gave me some good suggestions on how to optimize my Iron Warriors list a little more. I played what he suggested in a game against Crimson Fists, I lost the game just about. My opponent held one objective and contested the other. Some mistakes were my own like getting out of a rhino, firing bolt pistols and charging into combat instead of wasting a 5 man squad with bolter fire. Another was leaving my daemon prince to be singled out and taken apart by a dev squad. Any way lesson learnt.

Any way my main problem with the list was my chaos land raiders - i ran two each with a unit of 4 terminators, though one raider had a prince behind it and the other had a chaos lord with the terminators. For obivous reasons imperial raiders are better, thing with the chaos raider it can be either one or the other, troop transport or tank hunter. Unlike the imperial one it cannot move and shoot and split fire. So I have to deliver my deadly cargo and then blast away so I loose a few turns of shooting and hope the land raider holds out (infact one didn't, it got immobilised and my termies had to foot slog it). If going tank hunting the heavy bolter can be wasted depending on what side fo armour your firing at. So I made a new list your comments would be appreciated:

btw - the list before was nearly indentical except had two land raiders and a chaos lord. They have been replaced with more termies, oblits and another daemon prince.



Iron Warriors - 2,000 points

HQ

1 x Daemon Prince - mark of tzeentch, doombolt & wings

1 x Daemon Prince - mark of tzeentch, doombolt & wings


Elite

5 x Terminators - 1 x chainfist, mark of slannesh & 4 x combi weapons

5 x Terminators - 1 x chainfist, mark of slannesh & 4 x combi weapons


Troops

10 x Chaos Marines w/ rhino - 2 x meltaguns & chaos icon - champ w/ power fist

10 x Chaos Marines w/ rhino - 2 x meltaguns & chaos icon - champ w/ power fist

10 x Chaos Marines w/ rhino - 2 x plasmaguns & chaos icon - champ w/ power weapon

Heavy Support

3 x Obliterators

1 x Defiler

1 x Defiler


The DP's will take cover behind each rhino armed with the meltaguns and support them in combat. I know mark of tzeentch isn't in the IW's back ground but its more for game play, better save.

The Termies I've kepted armed with chain fists as Stelek suggested to tackle any pesky walkers or any vehicles, I also checked out some of his other lists and suggestions and added combi weapons for those foot slogging moments in form of plasma and melta for any vehicles. I would have added a icon of khorne but not enough points .

The chaos marines with the meltas will support the princes and provide cover with the rhinos. It annoys me I have to pay 15 points for a chaos champ just to access the armoury, one champ has a power fist for walkers the other two melta bombs. The plasma guns I'm not sure about I don't get along with plasma so is it worth making them meltaguns as well and putting the spare 10 points else where?

The oblits replace the land raiders in terms of fire power. The raiders had two heavy bolters and four lascannons between them, the oblits have three lascannons between them and then other weapons for different roles.

Defilers are there really for back ground reasons plus can tear up units good in combat providing they have no power fists or melta bombs the battle cannon can be useful as well

Ok I really didn't read all your words on why you made this list. I'm just going to respond to the make up.

Ok Termies are not going to make it into combat very often. A way to fix that is to give your DP's the Lash. This way you get a better chance at HTH with them.

Regular CSM suck. If you can drop a squad of Termies and give them something cool that be better. Maybe khorne or nurgle.

Heavy choice is ok.

You spoke with Stelek about this list? I'm disappointed.
The list looks quite bad.
Normal CSMs suck, small Termie units suck, and Defilers suck, too.

First off, normal csm don't suck and neither do defilers. However, small termie units do suck becasue they are too easy to kill.

As for the list. IMO, I think MoT and doombolt are wasted points. Instead of trying to shoot with the DP, give him lash so he can more easily get into cc, and help other squads do the same. Also, I would take all the icons out of your csm squads and give the squads an asp champ and powerfist. This then leads to being able to take out those melta bombs since you'll now have a powerfist in each squad. The meltagun setup looks good though. Your heavy support setup looks good too. Two defilers are really annoying for the opponent.

I would also suggest making those three termie squads into one squad of 10. This should leave you some extra points to play around with.

stelek looked at a variation of this list. csm do not suck, they have more attacks better leadership and can take two special weaps over tact squads. far from sucking.

I trie lash before and I wasn't impressed. the ap3 of the doombolt it what attracts me.

I could make those termies into a unit of 10 and I could add fists to the rest of the squads along with combi meltas. I will work it out and see on that one. possibly tool up the termies too with single claws and mark of khorne

Khornate termies sound scary

I guess shooting with a DP can be kind of good since the doombolt is assault and the DP has BS 5. But the bolt is only Str 4, which isn't too good against the opponents who actually have armor 3. So you might not end up wounding too many with that power. That's 30 points towards something that may only kill one or two marines. That may make the point trade off equal, but you should try to maximize your point trade off.

Termies with 3 attacks and can re-roll to wound, sounds good to me

The strength of the doombolt isn't good, but its the ap I'm after as mentioned.

What about switching one DP out for a general with MOT, termie armor and Tzeentch demonweapon?

He can join ur termie squad and that shootie demonweapon fits perfectly into the Iron Warrior theme

Chaos Lord isn't as good as a prince. The lord would come to roughly same points but isn't as strong nor has as good weapon skill.

Okay. Since you said you're playing Iron Warriors, I'll critique how this list should look more like.

Daemon Princes are fine but get rid of the MoT. It's useless besides the better Invul Save on those and the +1 difference won't matter.

Your termies have NO IDEA what they are doing. Firstly, you NEVER give them different combi-weapons. Before the match, decide what they'll all have and stick with it. When I run termies, I deep strike them from a CSM icon and rapid fire plasma guns or shoot 5-10 melta shots on a land raider. They always earn back their points this way. You DO NOT give them combi-weapons AND CC upgrades. This sounds stupid but look at it this way: Give those bad boys MoS. Now, you deep strike them in. They shoot what they need to. If it's a tank, the thing is dead. If it's a horde, you just got off a TON of flamer shots. If it's a MEQ squad, then you rapid fired an AP weapon. They charge you or you charge them. You strike first with Init 5, 2 power weapon attacks each. The opponent won't get a chance to strike. Period.

Your chaos marines are geared perfectly. CSMs do not suck, in fact, they are the best troops out there that have the proper bang for their buck.

Your heavy support is just WRONG. You're playing IW for gosh sakes. Get rid of the Oblits. Get rid of the defilers. Throw in TWO chaos land raiders and you're back to where you need to be. You don't use them as transports, you use them as the monolith/tank killer. Done.

Seriously though, that's what my opinion is. Those termi's need to be in two squads of 8 if you can afford it.

I diagree on the invulerable save, the prince is only t5 and can be taken down with mass fire or low ap weapons. I would rather take the tzeentch mark than the others as its far from useless, its the best mark for the prince.

the termies I could run two squads of 8 and see how it goes. the slannesh mark does seem good to get those hits in before other i4 models. the combi weapons guess depends what army im against.

the defilers and oblits are right up the iron warriors alley. defilers for the siege like weapons and oblits def spot on. chaos land raiders I think are a waste. they are geared up to do two jobs but can only do one at a time. this is the whole reason im dropping them

Dropping the LR's is a good choice. I would probably go with a vindi over a defiler, its smaller and its got more punch. Giving it DP is an option that would also make it unstoppable unless outright killed.

Whatever Stelek said to do is probably better than what most people on this forum will tell you. The DP's look fine.

The vindicator might have that little more punch (s10 ap2) but the defilers other benefits out weigh it:

* Much longer range
* Better side armour
* Can be used in combat

Vindicator has 30" range compared to the defilers massive 76" and has weaker armour on the sides and rear. In combat against a walker the front armour is always used.

Stelek told me to swap the chaos lord for a prince - I agree on this because the chaos lord is crap. I changed it originally for a DP. Its was just the ££ cost for a second but I have bitten the bullet.

He said to add chaos icons to the CSM and drop the champs. I've kept the champs because I want power fists and I did suffer in combat without them due to no power weapons. Though paying 15 points to access the armoury is old skool codex.

He mentioned the defilers were fine and fitted the army and said to tool up the termies with each a chain fist and combi meltas. If on foot give mark of khorne and plasmas so a threat on foot, which is damn straight. He also mentioned to add oblits which are now in there.

That list above is more or less what Stelek suggested, except without the champs.

What you have to remember about defilers is that they are expensive, have low armour and have a massive foot print. Killing a defiler is easier than killing a dread because its so much harder to put them in cover. In comparison to obilts the glaring failures of the defiler become even more apparent. Two plasma cannon/Lascannon/multimelta are incredibly superior to a single battlecannon shot and two obilts wont die to a single high strength shot. Single large blasts dont compare to multiple small blasts for anti-horde and battlecannon are terrible in an anti-tank role. Oblits also fit your iron warriors theme but have the advantage to being just better for the same points.

As far as demon princes go, unless you have taking a lash prince, mark of nurgle is the best mark to chose. The biggest threat to a demon prince is low S high AP weaponry, which every army has in abundance. The increase in toughness will let them weather your enemies shooting much better than the better inv save, especially if you put him in cover. The only reason to take MoT is if you plan on using 2 psykic powers, but this has the disadvantage of increasing their cost dramatically. For general non-lash use MoN is superior. (as an asside 3 S5 AP3 shots is NOT better than being able to move any non-vehicle unit 2d6 in any direction and into any formation you like. That grouping will let your oblits kill far more infantry in a single game than doombolt will let you in 10 games).

Now that you have dropped your LR your terminators need more firepower on the turn they DS. Drop the melta bombs on the CSM (between DPs, terminators and meltas you shouldnt be having any trouble with walkers) and use the points to get some heavy flamers. You can use the icons to DS without scattering so your terminators are in a good possition to use it.

Now CSM do suck. In actual fact they have worse Ld than SM (Ld 8 and atsknf beats Ld 9 every time) and free weapons, combat tactics and combat squads beats the ability to take two specials. The only thing that CSM have over SM is the ability to take icons, which are all obscenely expensive. But these arent even the greatest reasons not to take them. In the same slot, for a few extra points, you can have fearless troops (almost as good as atsknf) with a better statline, better weapons and better special rules. Cult troops supass CSM in everything they do. This is why CSM suck. Unfortunately your iron warriors theme means that you can take any of these cult troops, so you are stuck with CSM.

Defilers are hard to cover, but they have same armour as dread so just the same to kill. The battle canon and high number of attacks do it for me. I think its a unit you either like or don't like.

My princes go into combat and I want best chance for them to survive against power weapons etc. Being T5 means wound on 5's and t6 on 6's for S4 models. Anything above won't make much difference on the toughness. So better invulnerable save for the time being at least.

I don't need heavy flamers on the termies. As they are deep striking they need to be close to the enemy, chances are they won't be. Combi plasmas are a more of a threat than a 9" template. Though as I'm picking combi's in general I can change from game to game depending on what I'm up against. If its a horde like guard or orks, then yes, flamers might be better.

Chaos champ has ld9 if I remember right. Chaos Marines don't suck at all. They just are more expensive compared to imperial ones and that everything in the new marine codex is better. If you put a fiesta next to a jag doesn't mean the fiesta sucks, its just not as good .

mercer wrote:Defilers are hard to cover, but they have same armour as dread so just the same to kill. The battle canon and high number of attacks do it for me. I think its a unit you either like or don't like.

AV12 and a 4+ cover beats just AV 12. Defilers are easier to kill.

mercer wrote:
My princes go into combat and I want best chance for them to survive against power weapons etc. Being T5 means wound on 5's and t6 on 6's for S4 models. Anything above won't make much difference on the toughness. So better invulnerable save for the time being at least.

Do you mean powerfists? Mathhammer suggests that the increase in toughness is superior to that of the Inv save against S4 powerweapons (11.1% chance to cause a wound per hit as opposed to 16.7%), but slightly worse against powerfists (55.7% per hit as opposed to 41.7%). I would propose that due to the limited number of attacks that powerfists actually get (usually only around 2 attacks), combined with the better durability against ranged weapons (it will take you at least 2 turns to get into combat) MoN is still better for the same points.

mercer wrote:
I don't need heavy flamers on the termies. As they are deep striking they need to be close to the enemy, chances are they won't be. Combi plasmas are a more of a threat than a 9" template. Though as I'm picking combi's in general I can change from game to game depending on what I'm up against. If its a horde like guard or orks, then yes, flamers might be better.

What you do is DS them off your icons, which prevent them scattering. Since your icons are in rhinos you'll be pretty far up the board by the time your terminators come in. This means that you can possition your deepstriking terminators in a way that lets them best use their heavy flamer. They can be near the enemy because you can make them be near the enemy. Its also preferable to do this because it eliminates the chance of a DS misshap. Now im not saying that combi-weapons arent good, they are, its just since not all your terminators have them and you can scrap some needless melta bombs then a heavy flamer is a couple of squads is a no-brainer. It better against everything except MCs and vehicles as long as you get into the right position, which you can.

mercer wrote:
Chaos champ has ld9 if I remember right. Chaos Marines don't suck at all. They just are more expensive compared to imperial ones and that everything in the new marine codex is better. If you put a fiesta next to a jag doesn't mean the fiesta sucks, its just not as good .

But if you had the choice between a jag and a fiesta, which would you choose? Chaos players do have that choice. They can either have CSM or Cult marines. Cult marines are just better. Even in comparison to other armies troops choices they come out near the bottom. They are worse than SM, IG Vets, Orks, Sisters, bloodletters, plague bearers, stealers and gaunts. Only eldar, DE and tau have worse troop choices, and none of these armies are supposed to rely on their troops. Almost every other army drives a jag and chaos can too. I can understand that you dont want to for these reasons, but that doesnt deny that fact that CSM suck.

Regwon wrote:

mercer wrote:Defilers are hard to cover, but they have same armour as dread so just the same to kill. The battle canon and high number of attacks do it for me. I think its a unit you either like or don't like.

AV12 and a 4+ cover beats just AV 12. Defilers are easier to kill.

In the defense of Defilers:

You should really factor in that Defiler's ignore 1/3 of the Vehicle Damage table. Dreadnoughts do not. Defilers have 5 weapons, Dreads have 3. So you need 6 damaging Glancing hits to destroy a defiler vs. 4 for the Dread. I find Defilers are much more difficult to kill. Even if we agree to disagree and say they are the same (or even give a slight edge to the Dread because it's smaller) a Dreadnought is much more likely to malfunction vs. a Defiler due to its Crazed rule and being vulernable to glancing hits the Defiler ignores.

All that said, at 1000 points I'll run 2 Dreads, 3 Defilers and a Daemon Prince.

Regwon wrote:

mercer wrote:Defilers are hard to cover, but they have same armour as dread so just the same to kill. The battle canon and high number of attacks do it for me. I think its a unit you either like or don't like.

AV12 and a 4+ cover beats just AV 12. Defilers are easier to kill.

mercer wrote:
My princes go into combat and I want best chance for them to survive against power weapons etc. Being T5 means wound on 5's and t6 on 6's for S4 models. Anything above won't make much difference on the toughness. So better invulnerable save for the time being at least.

Do you mean powerfists? Mathhammer suggests that the increase in toughness is superior to that of the Inv save against S4 powerweapons (11.1% chance to cause a wound per hit as opposed to 16.7%), but slightly worse against powerfists (55.7% per hit as opposed to 41.7%). I would propose that due to the limited number of attacks that powerfists actually get (usually only around 2 attacks), combined with the better durability against ranged weapons (it will take you at least 2 turns to get into combat) MoN is still better for the same points.

mercer wrote:
I don't need heavy flamers on the termies. As they are deep striking they need to be close to the enemy, chances are they won't be. Combi plasmas are a more of a threat than a 9" template. Though as I'm picking combi's in general I can change from game to game depending on what I'm up against. If its a horde like guard or orks, then yes, flamers might be better.

What you do is DS them off your icons, which prevent them scattering. Since your icons are in rhinos you'll be pretty far up the board by the time your terminators come in. This means that you can possition your deepstriking terminators in a way that lets them best use their heavy flamer. They can be near the enemy because you can make them be near the enemy. Its also preferable to do this because it eliminates the chance of a DS misshap. Now im not saying that combi-weapons arent good, they are, its just since not all your terminators have them and you can scrap some needless melta bombs then a heavy flamer is a couple of squads is a no-brainer. It better against everything except MCs and vehicles as long as you get into the right position, which you can.

mercer wrote:
Chaos champ has ld9 if I remember right. Chaos Marines don't suck at all. They just are more expensive compared to imperial ones and that everything in the new marine codex is better. If you put a fiesta next to a jag doesn't mean the fiesta sucks, its just not as good .

But if you had the choice between a jag and a fiesta, which would you choose? Chaos players do have that choice. They can either have CSM or Cult marines. Cult marines are just better. Even in comparison to other armies troops choices they come out near the bottom. They are worse than SM, IG Vets, Orks, Sisters, bloodletters, plague bearers, stealers and gaunts. Only eldar, DE and tau have worse troop choices, and none of these armies are supposed to rely on their troops. Almost every other army drives a jag and chaos can too. I can understand that you dont want to for these reasons, but that doesnt deny that fact that CSM suck.

Uhm dreads don't come with battle cannons like defilers, so not good straight away. They do not have the same amount of attacks and also like to tear a new one into your troops. Also defilers don't listen to crew shaken or stunned results Cannot compare a dread to a defiler - totally different kettle of fish.

I would rather take tzeentch for reasons explained. Power fists get less attacks any way.

Yes I know I deep strike them off the icons, it depends where I'm striking them. Most likely 8 times out of 10 they will, but still could be out of range. One terminator out of each unit doesn't have a combi and I no longer have melta bombs, updated the list before you posted this reply

My point is I don't want cult marines! I want normal marines which do not suck! Cult marines are better in different ways but a lot more expensive. I totally disagree on CSM sucking. They are a decent troop choice.