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The DC can be devastating, but I find the stars have to align too much to justify their price tag. And putting expensive gear on one wound models seems insane in 8th ed. I have to rely on my opponent to overreact to the DC to get good value out of them. I don't like that.

Martel732 wrote:
The DC can be devastating, but I find the stars have to align too much to justify their price tag. And putting expensive gear on one wound models seems insane in 8th ed. I have to rely on my opponent to overreact to the DC to get good value out of them. I don't like that.

How have the Inceptors been working out, if you're still using them? I haven't gotten any games in recently, but have some more on the table to be painted...

The inceptors are stronger vs hordes but still weak vs other marines. The inceptors really butcher hordes making a SG strike turn 3 very doable. I can also deep strike them turn 2 if it's not clear where I need them at the beginning. They can also redeploy and shoot enemy off an objective. They just don't live vs marines.

 Voidwraith wrote:
Those opinions may not make sense to you, but maybe their local meta is different than yours. Maybe they play on planet bowling ball...or with heavy line of sight terrain.

Then Martel should explain these things instead of just saying that something cannot work without explanation.

Maybe the BatRep you just watched wasn't a battle between two evenly competent opponents.

The one we brought up was played at the top table at a GT both players were 4-0 and would have had high scores in those wins. You can't get much more evenly matched.

Maybe the dice played a bigger part than normal...

Read/watch the battle report for yourself and count the rolls.

Martel732 wrote:

" started my DC onboard, but actually charged through a ruin T4. "

How were they still alive?

They sat screened in a backfield ruin for two turn on an objective out of line of sight. My opponent realised that I wasn't coming for him with my units and only tried to score my objectives. He engaged my center board with my SG in a L shaped ruin T3. When I dropped my other SG and counter attacked and T4 I just aligned Lemartes so that I could uwof DC 9" away behind a ruin and bolster my presence in the center and clear his threats along with my characters and alive SG. Took his teeth in melee when he eventually brought his army in the center. It might have been different game if he would have tried to take the center board T1/T2, but he waited my aggressive charge and tried to maximize the overwatch strat, but I didn't fall in that trap.

Fyi, we play with very dense urban terrain, which helps BA greatly.

So opponent had no indirect fire at all?

"It might have been different game if he would have tried to take the center board T1/T2, but he waited my aggressive charge and tried to maximize the overwatch strat, but I didn't fall in that trap."

You beat BA by making them be aggressive because they are glass cannons. You WANT them charging you. You WANT them to commit their expensive units so you can destroy them with cheaper units. You line up your units in the order you want them charged, and then play normally. You don't sit around and wait like that.

He only had eliminators for indirect shots. I played the long game and was winning on points so he needed to engage the center more than me. I won that game against a good opponent. Mission cards etc affect a single game much, but going second and forcing your opponent to make those big moves helps. Our meta must be so different.. I have a role for my DC in my list if you don't like them, just don't use them. The point of this threat is to discuss whst has been good/mvp in your games and for me board control, target saturation and massed melee has worked for me. Needs practise, but is satisfying when you get the win or even a good game.

No one leaves home without gak loads of indirect in my meta. HIding is a cute idea for fragile units, but doesn't work for me. I really want to like DC. They were so boss in 3rd ed. Probably too good, really. They've been nerfed every edition, though. Wulfen are the new DC, and have been for some time now.

Your list sounds a lot like the one Stephen Box won with. I like assault, I guess I don't like it as much as you guys.

Martel732 wrote:
No one leaves home without gak loads of indirect in my meta. HIding is a cute idea for fragile units, but doesn't work for me. I really want to like DC. They were so boss in 3rd ed. Probably too good, really. They've been nerfed every edition, though. Wulfen are the new DC, and have been for some time now.

Your list sounds a lot like the one Stephen Box won with. I like assault, I guess I don't like it as much as you guys.

If they have a lot of indirect fire then they must have it castled up on the board somewhere or it's minimally screened. If it has minimal screens then that means you should be able to clear them or use them to slingshot and wrap and trap the indirect fire models. If it's castled up, take the board and win on objectives.

So any ideas on how to build for hordes AND marines?

Martel732 wrote:
So any ideas on how to build for hordes AND marines?

Take units that are good against both types of list, play to kill hordes and survive elite lists or kill elites and survive hordes, maximize your board position to keep their firepower off your key units.

Martel732 wrote:
So any ideas on how to build for hordes AND marines?

I rarely find too much of a problem against other Marine lists (note, they're still obviously strong lists but I don't think BA are any worse against them than other armies are). Sanguinary Guard and DC are both pretty good units against Marines and our characters are pretty effective at dealing with a lot of the traditional threats Marines pose from powerful characters to things like Repulsors. DC can clear screens against Marines really well and have the added advantage that Marines are survivable enough that you can often wrap and trap against screens.

Aiming to completely kill hordes is often not the approach to take. I've played against Nids quite frequently with BA and often the best play is to hold up the Gaunts as much as possible and aim to reduce them to manageable numbers. Below a certain number a lot of horde units just aren't combat effective. I've found Incursors to be very good in this role. They rapid fire T3 stuff then charge in and can often disrupt enemies enough to give you the space you need to establish board control. They probably die in return but if you can shoot/charge a couple of units, maybe tag one more to force a fall back and then absorb a bunch of firepower in return it's usually a worthwhile trade. My own army also includes no heavy armour, which often means a lot of points in many horde armies go to waste as they have no good targets for AT weapons.

I don't own incursors yet. I'm building 10X autobolters intercessors.

Has anyone else watched Stephen Box?

A group of us were discussing him with you one page ago.

Right. I hadnt looked at it in a while and i forgot. Ive watched several of his matches now and i still dont get how it works with no shooting.

It's basically an entire army based around wrap-and-trap while also taking advantage of ITC's magic boxes to protect units like Death Company. I think the meta before the lockdown was still skewed towards SM with a lot of smallish units of Intercessors who are prime candidates for wrap-and-trap because you can probably kill 5, then grab a nearby unit and pin them in combat to protect your dudes. Given that most SM armies are heavily shooting based the idea was to shut down the shooting as early as possible either by tagging it in combat or staying out of LoS. The SG then provided counter-punch on the turn they come down. Shooting would just dilute the close combat punch too much so it's not required.

The plan seems fairly simple but I have to say I'm a little confused about what the plan is if you don't go first to get Forlorn Fury off. Seems like you're left relying too much on those 8+ charge rolls from DS at that point. Must work though as he's done well with it at a couple of tournaments so there are obviously ways around the issues above.

I guess my question to you would be what role do you think shooting would fulfil in that army? Why do you need shooting over more close combat?

Because I was playing vs a larger variety of foes. I was still facing 120+ models about 1/3 of the time.

Also, wrap and trap with 1W model is easily thwarted by psykers and counter charges. The only mirror match I had after the BA boost I easily won because I killed his DC with a 10 man intercessor squad on a counter charge. My FNP inceptor squad butchered all his little scouts, too.

I guess shooting has no role in Box's list, but it seems like strong screens stop it one way or the other. I also have no idea what it does vs flying screens like Tau.

I think against IG you want to see screens. The plan is likely to kill one unit and wrap the other. If they're not close enough to do that they're not really effective screens. Against opponents who have decent countercharge the plan is probably to do as much damage as possible with the DC, both in terms of kills and disruption, then likely lose them in the next combat phase. That's an acceptable trade-off. Very few armies will be able to Smite enough DC to remove the whole unit. No idea what the plan is against Tau. Maybe charge and kill the screen and spend 3CP to fight against the real targets.

This army is also pretty much exclusively used in ITC conditions where it easily gets things like Engineers and Recon and often gets enough board control to get the Hold More bonus point too. It's killy but I thin kit's the board control that makes it successful.

All shooting IG would have the same weakness as all shooting marines, I suppose. Most IG lists I see have bulls in them though.

1Ksons and GK can both smite DC out of tripoints. I've seen it happen.

If the Tau player places the drones such that you weren't able to get within 12" of good targets, it's GG. At least, that's what I've seen.

If the Bulls charge your DC, great. You can countercharge them with SG. I'm pretty sure the BA list in question defeated a Tau gunline on its way to winning a tournament so there's clearly a path to victory there.

I think your problem is that you keep throwing out reasons why something won't work and don't seem to consider the ways it can work. You've obviously made your mind up about the army and, honestly, discussions with you about it basically devolve into a back and forth where one person tries to explain how something works and you just throw up a bunch of scenarios where it won't It's kind of frustrating, TBH, and not something I have much interest in continuing. Suffice it to say, BA are a viable tournament army able to beat any other viable tournament army from what I can tell. They have bad matchups, like many armies, but nothing they can't overcome..

Martel732 wrote:

1Ksons and GK can both smite DC out of tripoints. I've seen it happen.

True but the Psychic phase happens after the movement phase. Even if the manage to smite away the lock, they will not be able to withdraw from combat on that turn meaning the BAs can't be shot and will get to attack in melee.

Also neither 1KSons nor GK were exactly rocking the meta before lockdown. PA4 may well change that but we have not had a chance to really judge its effects on the meta properly yet. I have only faced GKs once since PA4 and I stomped them much the same as I did before.

I never said they werent viable. I just think there has to be a viable list with no dc.

GK always slaughter me in cc, so its a hard matchup. And that was before their buff. For a cc chapter, ba are shockingly inept at it vs real cc units.

I was really hoping the ba tourney players saw something i didnt. I have no interest in playing codex:tripoint.

Can anyone explain to me the new rules for BA - specifically the red thirst & savage echos.

I'm looking to have a detachment of tanks from Astra Militarum + a deatchment from Blood Angels. Would this prohibit savage echos but red thirst still works? Am I missing anything else or do I have that wrong too?

A general summary of any major changes would be grand too? Is Mephiston now on par with a Smash Captain?

Thanks guys

Red Thirst is your Chapter Tactic. So long as you're running a pure BA detachment it'll be active.

Savage Echoes is your "super-doctrine". You will only have that active if your entire army is made of BA detachments.

Hey y’all, what do we think of Quake Bolts as a relic? I’ve been mulling over the idea of giving it to a Captain with a JP, given his movement he can follow around DC or SG and give a +1 to hit plus rerolls. I thought about a Storm Shield as well to keep him alive longer but maybe going cheapest is the best.

What do you guys think about this? Fairly cheap at 93 pts, 103 if you take SS, to make every single unit in our army even better a combat, obviously not at once but I think playing slow, strategic ripping and tearing, is the best method for us BA. I was thinking he could be run with some cheap JP units to screen him as well, maybe 5 Assault Marines or so. That way he could be in the fray providing his reroll bubble but not be dependent on his 3++ to save everything.

Sorry if this has gone over before I looked in the past few pages and didn’t see any talk of it.

I like them. Haven't gotten a chance to try them yet, but on paper, they seem useful.

I think they have some strong potential, I’m struggling to find the right way to run it as I’m unsure if this is something to build a list around or if this is just a side note and a bonus factor to the army’s goals. The fact that it’s only one shot per turn makes me think this isn’t anything to focus on too hard as only 1 unit will be getting the debuff. Maybe just something to help kill more and guarentee a unit wipe when SG or DC charge in

I like the look of Quake Bolts. I would be tempted to take them on a Phobos Captain dedicated to buffing my shooting units. His ability to snipe Characters meaning you can pick out dangerous targets like Daemon Princes without having to get close to them.

trevant wrote:
I think they have some strong potential, I’m struggling to find the right way to run it as I’m unsure if this is something to build a list around or if this is just a side note and a bonus factor to the army’s goals. The fact that it’s only one shot per turn makes me think this isn’t anything to focus on too hard as only 1 unit will be getting the debuff. Maybe just something to help kill more and guarentee a unit wipe when SG or DC charge in

Or to make weaker units more effective. Piling on more overkill seems silly. Especially when half the charges intentionally kill nothing. They don't go in a current BA list. They go in a future meta where we must bring shooting to compete and therefore weaker CC elements.