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POST-GAME ANALYSIS:

Necrons:
When we rolled for missions and got Capture and Control, I knew that I could take this game. My opponent lacked the mobility to get to my objective but I had the mobility to get to his. He also made it easier for me to do so by putting his objective forwards instead of back. My strategy for this game was just like my strategy for my last game against battlewagon orks....take the fight to him and make him fight on my terms, not his. Basically the fight was over his objective. Mine never was seriously threatened. And the reason why I could do this was because of the amount of threats that I could send his way and the amount of pressure those threats created. That is what I feel is one of the main strengths of a hybrid wraithwing/scarab-farm list.

Many people here seems to be concerned about the weak 5-man warrior units so I will address it here. While in many builds, I would normally be concerned about 6-man units (including crypteks) with 4+ saves, it isn't a problem here because:

1) The amount of threats that I have here and the speed of those threats means that my opponent has no choice but to deal with them. Against most armies, you are looking at a Turn 2 assault at the latest. Once I hit mech armies, I can and will cripple them.

2) Solar Pulse & Night-fight. Turn 1 will be night-fight (or Turn 2 if playing Dawn of War). My opponent won't even be able to see those warriors. At the very least, they will have to take a gamble and risk not seeing anything if they try to go after warriors. Then on Turn 2, my dangerous units are already upon them. They'll be too busy trying to fight them off at that point.

3) 6-man units will be in cover and going-to-ground if they are shot at. Know how many splinter-cannon shots it would take to kill off that squad? 54 poisoned shots, or 4.5 venoms shooting at them. Then I've got 4 more squads after that. And if he doesn't wipe out the squad, I've got Reanimation Protocols that should bring back 2 warriors per 6-man unit.

4) Against more dangerous units like deepstrikers, manticores, etc., I can and will leave my warriors in reserves (or some of them at least).

5) MSU-troops is necessary in such a list in order for me to maximize the number of threats in my army. Without it, the list just wouldn't be as effective.


Chaos Space Marines:
My opponent played a very cautious and defensive game. The pressure got to him as he wasn't sure what to do on his Turn 1. After much hewing and hawing, he finally decided to play defensively and sacrificed his land raider to try to get the counter-charge on me. It almost worked as he killed off all my wraiths, my destroyer lord and most of my scarabs. But by that time, it was already too little too late. He just didn't have the ability to get to my objective by then, nor the troops to claim his own.

Which brings me to this point...in order to be truly competitive, your army must be balanced. And in order to be truly balanced, you must have enough units to take objectives. James' list is competitive, but it just isn't balanced enough to take on the really good armies.

Despite his list, my opponent did play well. He used his oblits to support his army rather than leaving them in the ruins to shoot at my guys. He focused-fire on the right units, wiping out both units of wraiths and destroyer lord eventually with shooting and then assault. He refrained from frying my scarabs with heavy flamers and assaulted them instead with Abaddon and oblits. Definitely the right move. He deepstruck his terminators to try to pressure my objective.

What are some of the things my opponent could have done differently? This is probably what I would've done. Start the terminators and Abaddon off in the LR. Try to get the charge off on my scarabs, tankshocking my wraiths if necessary or lashing them away. Once Abaddon and terminators hit my scarabs, his land raider would've been free to head over to my objective and to contest with impunity.

Overall, James made it a challenge when honestly, I thought I would be able to table him.

While I like the report, I dont like the chaos list.

While I prefer 2 lash princes, I admit there is nothing wrong with abbadon+lash prince.

I love the land raider in chaos to go with the termicide. Frees up that heavy slot, and land raiders have a good place in the metagame IMHO.

With only 1 lash, the inclusion of 9 oblits seems very excessive. The list, as played in this report anyway, would have been better served with one big termie block in place of 6 of the 9 oblits, with 2 combi-preds to do static shooting with.

Finally, the troops seem off. While I do love 5 noise marines with a super krak missile equivlent, 1 unit of plague marines and 1 unit of berzerkers belong in almost every chaos list.

In the event of having 1 squad of plaguemarines, they could have tied up the scarabs very well. t5 means 6's to wound, 3+4+FnP means 6 wounds to fail a save. Thus 72 scarab attacks to kill 1 plague marine. The scarabs would be in combat with 5 plagues for much of the game, giving a needed reprieve to the rest of the vehicles.

Anyway, list advice aside, you mentioned twin linked multimeltas a lot in the report. Oblits only have twin linked meltaguns. I assume either they were confused on the twin linked or they were within 12 inches?

Finally, as for playing the game, it seemed the lash prince targeted the wraiths instead of the scarabs. While its hard to know from the pics, was it because the wraiths blocked the scarabs in preventing them from being moved? Were I the cron player, I would most likely have gone full reserve. Abby in the raider with the termies, oblits deepstriking off of the icons in the 3 vehicles. Risk of piecemail versus guarenteed threat range of 20.5 inches from the entire board edge with abby in raider--more if you also get your lash on the board. As seen, abby alone beats the entire scarab unit, so giving the scarabs time to grow while you are in reserve does nothing negative for the chaos player.

I do have cron questions also. What did the 4 extra destro crypteks do for you? I am still on the fence for 4 s8 ap2 shots for 140, despite having a great metamatchup with 9 oblits on the field in this game. Also, do you find paying for both your HQs to have 2+ armor save pays off? I always saw the 2+ armor save kinda useless for the way I planned on using the HQ units. Finally, what did the init1 upgrades do for you this game on the wraiths?

Sorry for the book!

Yea, I was confused by the chaos players list and tactics as well. I hate saying "this unit over that unit" in regards to whats competitive as I believe the player can make any list competitive but I have no idea why he would pair one lash prince with 9 oblits. Further more tactics whys I have no idea why he lashed the wraiths when he could have pulled the scarabs forward for the kill with his shooting and Abadon for the tarpit.

I also have to disagree with jy2 that his list was competitive when he himself refers to it as imbalanced... :? But semantics aside you need more then 2 troops in 2000 points if you want to win primary in C&C and seize ground.

Thanks for the compliments guys. I'm glad you enjoyed the report.

Archibald_ Buggerfingers wrote:I can't help but wonder how that Cron list would do vs DE or Mechdar though. Those 5 man warrior squads are just Scannon/Scatterlaser bait. Especially vs a War Walker list the scarabs would also fold up pretty quick. Great rep though.

I think I will have trouble against them but only because of their high mobility. I am not as concerned about their flak fire as my scarabs would most likely have 3+ cover thanks to stealth and I have resiliency to boot. Overall, I think my necron build will give the 2 eldar armies a tough fight. It could be anyone's game.

DevianID wrote:While I like the report, I dont like the chaos list.

While I prefer 2 lash princes, I admit there is nothing wrong with abbadon+lash prince.

I love the land raider in chaos to go with the termicide. Frees up that heavy slot, and land raiders have a good place in the metagame IMHO.

With only 1 lash, the inclusion of 9 oblits seems very excessive. The list, as played in this report anyway, would have been better served with one big termie block in place of 6 of the 9 oblits, with 2 combi-preds to do static shooting with.

Finally, the troops seem off. While I do love 5 noise marines with a super krak missile equivlent, 1 unit of plague marines and 1 unit of berzerkers belong in almost every chaos list.

In the event of having 1 squad of plaguemarines, they could have tied up the scarabs very well. t5 means 6's to wound, 3+4+FnP means 6 wounds to fail a save. Thus 72 scarab attacks to kill 1 plague marine. The scarabs would be in combat with 5 plagues for much of the game, giving a needed reprieve to the rest of the vehicles.

Great insight into the Chaos army. I agree for the most part, though if I dropped 6 oblits, I'd probably use the points to get 1 or 2 vindicators and more troops. It's just a preference thing.

Also, while most competitive chaos lists use beserkers and plaguemarines, I actually like the noise marines. A great unit that is often under-utilized, I feel that noise marines complement this list well with their sonic blasters, blastmasters and doom siren. Basically, his list is a shooty chaos list with 11 lascannons and 2 blastmasters. Then he's got 9 plasma cannons/heavy flamers, sonic blasters and an AP3 heavy flamer for anti-infantry. Abaddon is mainly a counter-assault unit in this type of army. Noise marines work well with lash because of their doom siren. I've lost entire squads to that blasted flamer before.

Plaguemarines are just solid and one of the best troop choices in all of 40k.

Anyway, list advice aside, you mentioned twin linked multimeltas a lot in the report. Oblits only have twin linked meltaguns. I assume either they were confused on the twin linked or they were within 12 inches?

He probably made a mistake, or maybe I misheard him. Anyways, his oblits were all in short-range when he fired so I think it was alright.

Finally, as for playing the game, it seemed the lash prince targeted the wraiths instead of the scarabs. While its hard to know from the pics, was it because the wraiths blocked the scarabs in preventing them from being moved? Were I the cron player, I would most likely have gone full reserve. Abby in the raider with the termies, oblits deepstriking off of the icons in the 3 vehicles. Risk of piecemail versus guarenteed threat range of 20.5 inches from the entire board edge with abby in raider--more if you also get your lash on the board. As seen, abby alone beats the entire scarab unit, so giving the scarabs time to grow while you are in reserve does nothing negative for the chaos player.

He didn't lash the scarabs because:

1) My wraiths were blocking them. I'm not sure if he could find an optimal position to lash them with the wraiths in the way.

2) I believe his LR was blocking his rhino's LOS to searchlight them. So even if he lashed them, his oblits would have to test for Night-fight.

3) He probably felt that the wraiths were a bigger threat.

4) He probably thought Abaddon alone could take out those scarabs.

Why would I, the cron player, go full reserves? Or do you mean if you were the chaos player, you would have gone full reserves? It would be risky to divide up your forces against the full brunt on my army on the board.

I do have cron questions also. What did the 4 extra destro crypteks do for you? I am still on the fence for 4 s8 ap2 shots for 140, despite having a great metamatchup with 9 oblits on the field in this game. Also, do you find paying for both your HQs to have 2+ armor save pays off? I always saw the 2+ armor save kinda useless for the way I planned on using the HQ units. Finally, what did the init1 upgrades do for you this game on the wraiths?

Sorry for the book!

Crypteks didn't do much this game. I don't really expect them to excel in every game. This is probably more of a typical game for them, but I feel more secure with a little high-strength shooting. The 2+ was just an optional upgrade I wanted to try out. I do think that it is necessary on the destroyer lord though. This is so you can allocate missile launcher shots and other flak fire on him so that the wraiths can better survive the enemy's shooting. Whip coils helped in the combat against the noise marines. Otherwise, they didn't do too much against I1 units.

I figured chaos should have reserved. I think I ment to say 'were I up against the cron player,' but instead said 'were I the cron player.' Messed that up, sorry. Everything in chaos can now come on from the entire edge or ds, allowing more flexibility, plus he had the land raider assault going for him.

As for the noise marines, like I mentioned I do love them, but I usually mix 1 noise 1 plague and 1 berzerker squad together before looking to add a second of one cult type.

Sad to see my prediction was on the money. But yeah, this chaos list was a bit aimless. I don't get using the chaos Land Raider as anything other than an assault vehicle for zerkers/Abbie/Termies. Otherwise, it's just the game's most expensive pair of lascannons, especially against an army with great anti-AV14 power like necrons.

Still, great report!

DevianID wrote:I figured chaos should have reserved. I think I ment to say 'were I up against the cron player,' but instead said 'were I the cron player.' Messed that up, sorry. Everything in chaos can now come on from the entire edge or ds, allowing more flexibility, plus he had the land raider assault going for him.

As for the noise marines, like I mentioned I do love them, but I usually mix 1 noise 1 plague and 1 berzerker squad together before looking to add a second of one cult type.

If I were him, I would've just left everything deployed. His was a shooty chaos army. You could kind of say that it was a chaos "gunline" army almost. Anyways, I feel that in order for his list to work, he'd have to have all his guns on the table ready to shoot. Reserving his army would only hurt his offensive potential IMO.

Besides, reserving would be giving me the advantage. I have the speed to pick off the units he has on the board.

But these are just my opinions. Who knows? If he had reserved, maybe things might have turn out differently. Can't really say until you cross that bridge.

Sephyr wrote:Sad to see my prediction was on the money. But yeah, this chaos list was a bit aimless. I don't get using the chaos Land Raider as anything other than an assault vehicle for zerkers/Abbie/Termies. Otherwise, it's just the game's most expensive pair of lascannons, especially against an army with great anti-AV14 power like necrons.

Still, great report!

Agreed. I used to run LR's but not anymore. But I can definitely see why he chose the LR for his army. Makes Abaddon much more of a threat than if he were to footslog or even deepstrike.

The title made me think the CSMs would win. But no. Victory to the 5th edition!

Loved this!
I just wonder why the noise marines were kitted out that way. but I guess there is always a lot of contention on that front.

Their +1 I isn't really helping in this battle is it?

nice rep and afterthoughts. Less proxies is also good

Lucre wrote:Loved this!
I just wonder why the noise marines were kitted out that way. but I guess there is always a lot of contention on that front.

Their +1 I isn't really helping in this battle is it?

I think it is because he wanted to play a shooty list maybe. It seems as if the general consensus are plaguemarines are #1 and beserkers are #2. Personally, I think noise marines are better than beserkers, especially since the grey knights came out, but I've always advocated more shooty armies.

Against an army that is entirely I2, the noise marine's I5 didn't make a difference.

SevenSins wrote:nice rep and afterthoughts. Less proxies is also good

Working on it. Will get there eventually.

DevianID wrote:While I like the report, I dont like the chaos list.

While I prefer 2 lash princes, I admit there is nothing wrong with abbadon+lash prince.

I love the land raider in chaos to go with the termicide. Frees up that heavy slot, and land raiders have a good place in the metagame IMHO.

With only 1 lash, the inclusion of 9 oblits seems very excessive. The list, as played in this report anyway, would have been better served with one big termie block in place of 6 of the 9 oblits, with 2 combi-preds to do static shooting with.

Finally, the troops seem off. While I do love 5 noise marines with a super krak missile equivlent, 1 unit of plague marines and 1 unit of berzerkers belong in almost every chaos list.

In the event of having 1 squad of plaguemarines, they could have tied up the scarabs very well. t5 means 6's to wound, 3+4+FnP means 6 wounds to fail a save. Thus 72 scarab attacks to kill 1 plague marine. The scarabs would be in combat with 5 plagues for much of the game, giving a needed reprieve to the rest of the vehicles.

Anyway, list advice aside, you mentioned twin linked multimeltas a lot in the report. Oblits only have twin linked meltaguns. I assume either they were confused on the twin linked or they were within 12 inches?

Finally, as for playing the game, it seemed the lash prince targeted the wraiths instead of the scarabs. While its hard to know from the pics, was it because the wraiths blocked the scarabs in preventing them from being moved? Were I the cron player, I would most likely have gone full reserve. Abby in the raider with the termies, oblits deepstriking off of the icons in the 3 vehicles. Risk of piecemail versus guarenteed threat range of 20.5 inches from the entire board edge with abby in raider--more if you also get your lash on the board. As seen, abby alone beats the entire scarab unit, so giving the scarabs time to grow while you are in reserve does nothing negative for the chaos player.

I do have cron questions also. What did the 4 extra destro crypteks do for you? I am still on the fence for 4 s8 ap2 shots for 140, despite having a great metamatchup with 9 oblits on the field in this game. Also, do you find paying for both your HQs to have 2+ armor save pays off? I always saw the 2+ armor save kinda useless for the way I planned on using the HQ units. Finally, what did the init1 upgrades do for you this game on the wraiths?

Sorry for the book!

First off I would like to also say that this was an excellent BR!

I agree 100% that that Chaos list was terrible.
Most of the problem with the list lies in the poor wargear choices for the noise marines.
With the points that could be saved there a 3rd squad of troops could have been added to help turn the tide.
Also I agree that 3 squads of Oblitz is a little much. trading one squad out for a defiler or a vindicator /w daemonic posession would have provided some large template destruction that would have vapo'd Scarabs.... thos damn things are annoying ~

Thanks for the BR!

jy2 wrote:

Lucre wrote:Loved this!
I just wonder why the noise marines were kitted out that way. but I guess there is always a lot of contention on that front.

Their +1 I isn't really helping in this battle is it?

I think it is because he wanted to play a shooty list maybe. It seems as if the general consensus are plaguemarines are #1 and beserkers are #2. Personally, I think noise marines are better than beserkers, especially since the grey knights came out, but I've always advocated more shooty armies.

Against an army that is entirely I2, the noise marine's I5 didn't make a difference.

SevenSins wrote:nice rep and afterthoughts. Less proxies is also good

Working on it. Will get there eventually.

Thats an interesting point, I have always liked Noise marines, they just need to have a champ with a doom siren to be effective and that gets costly. If you buy all their upgrades it's really a wash because you are using the blastmaster for AT generally, so then you are not using the sonic blasters. I due agree that as a sonic blaster fire team I have had some success, I think they would work well against purifiers it's just a shame they cost the same about lol.

I think berserkers are still favored even with all the GK because of furious assault. They basically go first, (aside from the halberds) and due to the sheer volume of attacks at high strength, still dominate combats. Their main issue is land raiders are a must and currently with its capacity of 10!?! which is so dated, it makes for an expensive ride. You can use rhinos but it never seems to have the impact on the field that a zerker raider squad has.

But I think any of the cult marines can be fielded in combinations to be effective, the plague marines are just much much easier to use with everything else.

Yeah, I agree that beserkers are still more widely used out there. They were great before, but then furiously charging Blood Angel marines and then halberd-wielding grey knights came out. They've changed the meta somewhat as I've seen some people switch to slightly more shooty builds to deal with the grey knights and DE players started dropping Incubi off their lists.

Personally for me, I've always preferred slightly more shooty armies to assault-oriented ones (with my wraithwing-crons being one of the few exceptions). That's why I've always preferred Noise Marines over beserkers. IMO, assault-based armies are only viable if they have the mobility to get to where they need to quickly. Though noise marines can get expensive, I like their tactical flexibility. Just like my own grey knights, they can shoot if needed, or they can assault and will usually overcome normal MEQ's due to their higher initiative (and doom siren).

jy2 wrote:

Personally for me, I've always preferred slightly more shooty armies to assault-oriented ones (with my wraithwing-crons being one of the few exceptions). That's why I've always preferred Noise Marines over beserkers. IMO, assault-based armies are only viable if they have the mobility to get to where they need to quickly. Though noise marines can get expensive, I like their tactical flexibility. Just like my own grey knights, they can shoot if needed, or they can assault and will usually overcome normal MEQ's due to their higher initiative (and doom siren).

Plague marines still do all of this better and cost less though. Noise marines only shoot well after upgrades which makes them 25pts instead of a PM at 23! Which is why you see plague marines as the anchor and Berserkers as the hammer, ideally you just use plague marines as they are better and more tactical then Berserker as well, KB are just used as small counter assault units generally.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Though I will concede to the fact that NM are awesome and characterful and this is more the reason I like them still. Tournament talk wise though they are still solid but not the 1st pick for my taste. That's all I meant.

Taking a land raider and abddon are huge point sinks. IMO he should replace these with a 10 man lascannon chaos glory squad and a squad of berserkers. Chaos land raider is decent but he had nothin to go in it

The chaos player was way too agressive for how few troop choices he had. this game would have been an auto draw if he had just placed his objective further back and kept his troops there. You could say go for the win and not the draw, but from where he placed his objective he wasn't going for the win with how outnumbered he was. I'm not saying he's a bad player he just got overconfident and underestimated your ability to tar pit him.

Defeatmyarmy wrote:Taking a land raider and abddon are huge point sinks. IMO he should replace these with a 10 man lascannon chaos glory squad and a squad of berserkers. Chaos land raider is decent but he had nothin to go in it

That may be, but Abaddon in LR is serious fun and also serious hurt for some armies. The last time my opponent played his list against the Grey Knights, Abaddon himself took out almost 20 grey knight terminators!

He may not be the most efficient unit in the codex, but he sure is fun to play IMO.

bagtagger wrote:The chaos player was way too agressive for how few troop choices he had. this game would have been an auto draw if he had just placed his objective further back and kept his troops there. You could say go for the win and not the draw, but from where he placed his objective he wasn't going for the win with how outnumbered he was. I'm not saying he's a bad player he just got overconfident and underestimated your ability to tar pit him.

That usually happens the first time someone plays against my list. They really don't know what they are getting into. I believe his normal tactic is to play aggressively with Abaddon and advance him. That's why he would put his objective forwards. Unfortunately, that just played into my favor. People will learn though.