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Yes, as would most people as it makes alot more sense, but that wasnt the topic title was it?

Subject: So, has anyone actually played a Paladin army?

Was just dropping in input from what ive seen.




also, by dropping in closer you take a turn of massed melta fire and anything else they can bring to you.
The movement also means they can simply shift away and set-up a firebase elsewhere.

True, but you get to shoot them first. Plus, Servo-Skulls are a must. Pincer movements would also help to surround and kill isolated parts of an enemy army.

To be honest, I think that this army type will have a unique learning curve, because it comprises of some of the most powerful units and characters in the entire game; however they're only elite in the sense of "we can mash stuff in close combat hurrr" unlike Eldar jet bike lists; which are elite in the sense of mobility (well, so is the whole codex.. but y'know what I mean).

Land Raiders really are a must for Terminators; even moreso with Paladins. But they just cost too much.

Moral of the thread: leave your Paladin God Marines at home except for the newbie induction days at GWs - then you can have some real fun.

In all seriousness, the Paladin list just isn't viable in a competetive environment because it isn't Mech, and if it is (Raiders), then you'll have so few guys it won't even matter because you'll have an entire army shooting at one or two vehicles and then you're slogging it.

I played against drago + 2 squads of 5 paladins and an allied blood angels drop army. I turtled in a corner and blasted anything that came near me. My Salamander TH/SS termies ate paladins (IK means your 2 wounds are rubbish) and vulkan he'stan ate half a squad by himself.

It didn't help that drago mishaped and I put him in the far diagonal corner ^^

I would say that they are quite tough but lack hitting power. They are also not very mobile. They do get scouts and stuff. Also with all the FNP plasma might make a comeback and eat you.

Phototoxin wrote:
I would say that they are quite tough but lack hitting power. They are also not very mobile. They do get scouts and stuff. Also with all the FNP plasma might make a comeback and eat you.

There's a difference between "lacking hitting power" and "plowing through TH/SS terminators like nobody's business"...

I played my first game with them, 2k points vs my friend's BT. I won in turn 6, all he had left was a immobilzed Rhino and immobilized Land Speeder. I had Draigo, 5 Paladins, and 2 Psyriflemen Dreads alive.

S6 I10 Paladins rerolling 1s to wound = win.

I played against one, it was a 5 man pally unit with a psyker and Drago, made me go and cry in a corner.

lunarman wrote:My DoA would be screwed. I guess, I would do what I normally do against CC armies, try to draw them out, and not put myself in assault range unless I can charge and win.

I would multi charge with 20 marines and a priest and hopefully a libby too, but even that isn't a sure win. It would be 50% of my army in one combat.

Why only 20 marines? In DoA, you're all jump guys, so charge with everything. They can't catch you, you can set it up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Darkvoidof40k wrote:
In all seriousness, the Paladin list just isn't viable in a competetive environment because it isn't Mech,

That's just fallacious. Plenty of non-mech armies are competitive.

Well, there are effective non-mech armies, but those non-mech armies aren't also small unit count armies that are slow as molasses.

Even Deathwing ought to have at least 2-3x as many units as a Paladin army and can be more aggressive about deepstriking with squad costs of only 235 pts a pop.

I played a game against it with a buddy proxying the paladins. My dark lances just gobbled the paladins up and I played the range game the whole time. After that he decided he was going to go the Purfier route.

Ive played paladins once so far.

Its a sort of fun army, but it is rock paper sizzors-y
in my game, my opponent brought tons of ap3 weaponry and dropped 1(?) paladin before I was mulching his squads in close combat.
With a whole paladin army, I see the need for multiple assassins to take out sources of s8 ap2 weapons.
Also I would fill my FOC chart with units of 1-2 pallies for suicide deepstrikes, but you can only take 4ish of them! =(

@ Darkness Eternal - Competitive, but not as competitive as mech armies; such as mech vets or Razorspam Angels.

I mean yes, with good play and experience, a DoA for foot Eldar could easily trump a top list like either of the above mentioned, but mech players have the advantage from the get-go due to vehicles' resilience.

This is another debate for another thread though; so I'll leave it at that.

A Paladin army can work. DE have mobility as you pointed out, but paladin squads can carry two psycannons per unit, which are lethal to DE vehicles - which is where the lances usually are. Splinter fire can be shrugged off with 2+ armour saves.

Uniquely equipped paladins that can allocate and spread wounds, a daemonhammer in each, and two psycannons....and I think you're in business.

But Dash, If for some reason, your opponent puts the Palladins in a Landraider, just either wreck or blow up the landraider and make them walk. And be sure to stay the hell away from them.

Hmm, my brother has bought 20 Pallys and Drago, though he does run Draigo in a raider and drops the rest. Basically, I've found that my regular list does even better against pallies than it did against his Loganwing, namely because he no longer takes two landraiders followed up by rhino/razors. Because my usual playing buddies all go Termie heavy, I play with at least one full unit of Plasma Devs, and usually a Command squad of 4 Plasma vets. That was pretty much all the firepower I needed surprisingly. Their 4++/5++ invul just doesn't cut it against plasma spam. Admittedly I only got caught in three combats with them, and lost all three spectacularily.

I think that a stormraven would be a better transport for paladins than a LR, quite frankly.

Greater capacity than a vanilla LR (And that's what I would want. I have anti infantry firepower and CC in spades already. I don't need hurricane bolters or flamestorm cannons as much as I need more AT.)
Cheaper
No 2D6 melta penetration (Ask the monolith users how absolutely awful it is to have this perk.)
You are no worse off against lance weapons
You have very shiny AT capability, and can move 12 and use both primary weapons.
24 inch move out of reserves and the accompanying cover save more than once per game if needed, deep striking if you are feeling like living dangerously
Moving while ignoring terrain is never, ever a bad thing.

Has anyone, during all this talk of countering paladins with lascannons and meltas and darklances, actually bothered to take the 4 wound, eternal warrior, stormshield equipped IC that is presumably going with the squad into account? As someone who was just in this situation, and had 3 multimeltas, a pair of twin linked lascannons, two foot based meltaguns in his 1000pt marine army to use on this EW stormshield character, you may just find yourself thoroughly underwhelmed with how it all works out. It's all spread out, rather than concentrated. Let me put it this way:

You have a gunline of 5 darklance raiders. You shoot them, one at a time, at my Draigostar. Each time, assuming you hit, assuming you don't woundroll a 1, you now have to pass a 3++. You must do this 4 more times before you even -Begin- to hit paladins. This is not the same as a ravager giving me a darklance broadside. You will be disappointed countering Draigostars with one lance/LC/Melta here, one there. You need multiples from a single unit. These are also the units that my Vindicare and dreads will be tearing down ASAP. This is also something to keep in mind.

On a similar note "Just hit em with plasma!" runs into the same brick wall. You are not going to do much with one plasma gun from this squad, one from that squad (Though my vindicare WILL thank you for the attempt!)...You need to hit me with plasma mechvets, or a 4 plasma command squad, and then you have to factor in that you need to hit, wound, and bypass ++ saves at LEAST 6 times before I start taking models off the board. Even with plasma cannons, as Dash and a few others are fond of pointing out: If i want to make your PCs hit only one model at a time, I can. At worst, and you down the stormraven and they are all clumped up, they just might have cover in the crater/wreck.

The best "counter" to Draigostar that I can think of outside of the mythical vacuum where Your whole army is up against this single unit is...Stormshields and thunder hammers or the deciever. You can allocate attacks to the squad directly, and those attacks will hurt should the paladins not wipe you out before you strike.

I think that a paladin list won't be too bad, I think a "Paladins to the exclusion of all else!" list will be bad. Remember that while you are focusing your whole army on this one threat, the dreads and vindicare in the back are going to be saying Hello in the form of infantry extracted from vehicles with great efficiency and followed up by the important bits inside those squads removed. The other grey knights in the list are also going to be attempting to extract infantry from vehicles, and then internal organs from infantry while all this is going on.

SOFDC wrote:I think that a stormraven would be a better transport for paladins than a LR, quite frankly.

Depends.

I've played using paladins delivered by both methods and, very reluctantly am actually coming round to the view that against most armies, LR Redeemers are the better choice.

Certainly, 'ravns are faster and their resistance to melta is very pleasing. But they are more fragile and a paladin-heavy list can't really start all in reserve because a paladin list arriving piecemeal spells doom more often than not. If you get first turn then yes, 'ravens combined with deploying the paladins via 'Skies...' (which is a wee bit risky but keeping them in 'ravens, even Shrouded, flat-out ravens, is riskier against lots of AT) is great. And you can deliver venerable assault-cannon, psybolt, doomfist, heavy flamer with the 'ravens to add close-support and distract some AT fire.

But, with a few exceptions, AV14 is just so much more survivable. Okay, you can't flat out for 4+, but you can smoke. You can't deliver dreadnoughts, but the paladin-heavy list that uses vehicles struggles to get many dreadnoughts in I find. Melta is very bad news, but it's also short/medium-range, which means he's come into psycannon/assault cannon/holocaust reach.

Ideally, I think one would switch transports to match opponents (so taking Redeemers against Imperial Weaklings, for instance but 'ravens against space-faries) but if committed to one list against a variety of opponents, I think the Redeemer is more versatile.. In fairness I've played less than a dozen games with each variant, and almost always at 2000 points and above (in fact less than half-a-dozen games with redeemers), and when the 'ravens do well, I find they tend to win big.

I like the 'ravens a lot better than the Redeemers, I'm just finding the Redeemers a safer bet.

Aye, you have some good points.

I think I will still be buying and trying the stormraven, I play LRs a lot with my ultramarines, and the non-godhammer LRs always left me feeling underwhelmed. In the case of the ultras I already had wonderful short range anti infantry firepower in the form of libby avenger and a squad of TH/SS rushing out, I didn't need more of it, I needed more lascannons. In this case, that statement is even more true.

To be honest, after the last 10 games I have played in which even my AV10 speeders usually took some dedicated firepower to take down, and my own attempts at taking down AV12...Yes, AV14 would be -better-...but in this case AV12 might be "good enough" to get me to the fight and take something down along the way.

We will see how it turns out when placed on the board though.

I find the 'ravens a lot more fun, and thus I'd recommend them to anyon for that reason alone. And they're not as useless as some people sometimes make out, in fact they can be considerably better than LRs in some circumstances. I'm considering for 3000 pts taking them instead of venerable dreadnoughts as fire-support and delivering the paladins via RR Redeemer but that can't work at less than 3000, I think.

SOFDC wrote:
Has anyone, during all this talk of countering paladins with lascannons and meltas and darklances, actually bothered to take the 4 wound, eternal warrior, stormshield equipped IC that is presumably going with the squad into account? As someone who was just in this situation, and had 3 multimeltas, a pair of twin linked lascannons, two foot based meltaguns in his 1000pt marine army to use on this EW stormshield character, you may just find yourself thoroughly underwhelmed with how it all works out. It's all spread out, rather than concentrated. Let me put it this way:

This is a huge factor in making Paladins work. Combine this with a Librarian casting the Shrouding every turn, and Paladins suddenly become very, very resiliant.

SOFDC wrote: Let me put it this way:

You have a gunline of 5 darklance raiders. You shoot them, one at a time, at my Draigostar. Each time, assuming you hit, assuming you don't woundroll a 1, you now have to pass a 3++. You must do this 4 more times before you even -Begin- to hit paladins. This is not the same as a ravager giving me a darklance broadside. You will be disappointed countering Draigostars with one lance/LC/Melta here, one there. You need multiples from a single unit. These are also the units that my Vindicare and dreads will be tearing down ASAP. This is also something to keep in mind.

And then you will have managed to play against an incompetent DE general.

A *more* likely situation is that your paladins get ignored or maneuvered away from (depending on what they equipped with) while your dreads and vindicare get shot up. Two wound model with 3+ cover and 6+ FNP; 9 wounds should do the trick. That's 2 venoms - who aren't going to waste their time shooting at Paladin 2+ saves when a lone gunman with a 3+ is available. Meanwhile, all those lances are going into your dreadnoughts. Personally, if I deign to notice your Paladins, it will be either because they have threatening psycannons, or decided to deep-strike in my general vicinity. Don't forget that there's going to be a crucible of malediction trying to make your stuff mysteriously vanish from the table and a handy dandy flame template that half of all competitive DE players consider to be a mandatory inclusion into the list that doesn't care how many wounds you have, what yoru armour save is, or whether you have Eternal Warrior or not. 33% chance per model in Draigo's Paladin star to simply remove them from the board. That's right. You can lose your entire paladin star and draigo in one shot.

Then again, Vindicators aren't your friend either, nor IG, nor any other army that thinks deathstar units like that are a wonderful place to drop templates.

And then you will have managed to play against an incompetent DE general.

Well, yes. I believe that was my entire point. That you can't simply go "Oh, paladins? It's ok, my raiders have darklances!" Or "Ah it's not that big a deal, I have meltaguns." ...which is what i've been hearing a great deal lately.

I heard "oh, I have warp cannons" (on wraithguard).

Do those cause ID on a 6? or is it not ID, and some other crazy rule like old NFWs "remove from play"?

Amaya wrote: 2000k
.

2,000,000 points? you do have casch to burn.

There are tons of people picking up the models in my area but I have yet to see one in a tournie.

Wraithguard weapons cause ID on a 6 to wound, and AP2 even if they don't...However, they are 12 inch assault 1. If they don't knock out the paladins or another unit doesn't charge in, next turn the paladins will be able to move, shoot and assault.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Shrouding librarian.

In the past 15 games I have fielded a shrouding librarian every time, and would take him if he came with no other powers. He is the center piece of a combo I like to call "the Shrouded Spear"

For 1177 points, I can get a mixed unit of 5 paladins with master crafted psycannons, coteaz, a librarian with 4 powers, and 6 henchmen squads each with 3 meltas and a chimera. In games of 1850 points or more that leaves 673 points or more to spend on the rest of the army. I personally like to throw a venerable dred and a vindicare in at the back, to really buff up the shooting.

If I can get 1 psychic power off, this combo is a phalanx that can withstand anything you throw at it. Want to shoot at my paladins with your AP1 or 2 guns? Get through 6 tanks and a 3+ cover save on everything first. Want to assault? Go through difficult/dangerous terrain from sanctuary first. Want to deep strike? Deal with Coteaz's "I've been expecting you" first. I can march these units out into an open field and still get my +3 cover from any angle on the board. Single shot anti-tank weapons simply won't get through reliably while I have shrouding and smoke up, and I pity the unit that tries to fight at melta or rapid fire range.

One of the bonuses, is that with a dred at the back of the phalanx, and a librarian in the middle, I also have complete anti-psychic defenses. Want to hit me with JOTWW or some other horrible power? Take a test at -4 leadership followed by another leadership test to see if it works at all.

The 2 weaknesses this tactic faces are capture and control objective games and reliable anti-psychic abilities. In games with spread out objectives, I simply break up the phalanx and have the librarian/paladins steal a ride from one of the henchmen units. As for anti-psychic problems, only eldar can do that from range, as SM librarians will have to be within 24" (tyranids will have to be even closer), which means they are more than close enough to shoot with the entire phalanx, if thats what it takes to put them down.

This is as close to a total defensive and offensive combo as I have ever seen, and the paladin unit hiding the librarian at the center of it is a key reason for that.

SOFDC wrote:Wraithguard weapons cause ID on a 6 to wound, and AP2 even if they don't...However, they are 12 inch assault 1. If they don't knock out the paladins or another unit doesn't charge in, next turn the paladins will be able to move, shoot and assault.

If it causes ID then I am not really worried as I can just put that wound on Draigo and have him save it on a 3+, not to mention I'll already be getting 3+ cover saves from shrouding on my current position.

Bruteboss wrote:I can march these units out into an open field and still get my +3 cover from any angle on the board.

How does this work with no other cover around? are you taking it from the Chimera or something? But I agree, the GK lib is pretty amazing. I used sanctuary on a bunch of genestealers and they didn't get their charge through, massacred them the next round.

Smoke launchers are key, and luckily every vehicle has one.

If I were fighting on an open field, I would deploy them exactly like a real life phalanx, 6 chimeras form a reverse V towards the enemy, paladins/librarian in the center and a dread at the rear. This combo actually has points to spare for 3 dreads, but I prefer units like interceptors to deal with distant problems more. Every turn, the lead tank pops smoke and turns side-on towards the enemy. Each turn after that, you alternate a new tank to the front. If you are threatened from more than 1 angle, simply pop smoke on the tanks that need it, although you should have some terrain cover to make use of in order to avoid doing that.

Grundz wrote:
With a whole paladin army, I see the need for multiple assassins to take out sources of s8 ap2 weapons.

Problem with this is that Vindicare's are unique. So you're only allowed one.

Unless of course you mean to take three different kinds of assassins and even then none of them will probably get close enough before getting splattered.

If it causes ID then I am not really worried as I can just put that wound on Draigo and have him save it on a 3+, not to mention I'll already be getting 3+ cover saves from shrouding on my current position.

The only catch is, that if they give you an AP2 ID -more- than one time in the 5-10 shots the squad will throw in, then things start to sting, but as I said, they're likely to only get once chance to do it with their appallingly short range.