Mindless Spore Mine
112 Bastian Rd, Battle Mountain, Nv,
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To deal with flare shield Spartans before turn two; ugh, that's a tough nut to crack, if at all possible. Here's a couple of ideas I've thought about to solve that issue.
1: 9-manThallax with Destructor (grants Tank hunter to the unit), 3 photon thrusters (R48", S6, AP2, Heavy 2, Lance, Blind, Gets hot), melta bombs (S8, AP1, armorbane) and finally 6 lighting Guns (R18", S7, AP5, Heavy 1, Shread, Rending). Tank hunter will allow you to reroll your penetrations/glances to more easily disable the damned Spartan. Rending adds another D6 on a penetration roll of 6 to you lighting Guns, and Lance makes the armor facing AV12 instead of 14, and armorbane adds another D6 flat out. The way to make this work is if you have first turn, keep the 9 man Destructors in reserve. On Turn two, deploy them within Lighting gun (or if you're feeling lucky Melta bomb) range of the Spartan in the rear arc (this is to bypass the Flare shield). Then your 6 S6 Lance shots and your 6 S7 rending shots at BS4. You should, according to probability, land with 4 of each type of shot (2/3 chance of hitting the target across 6 shots=4 hits, two misses).
So you have with your lances have to roll 6s to glance even with the rear armor, but you get rerolls should you fail the first time! Make use of this, and you should get 2, maybe 3 glances. the lighting guns have to roll 6s again, but if they do they also glance, but can pen with the extra D6 on 2+. Again, 2, maybe 3 glances/pens. If you were in Melta bomb range, pray you hit with it, and you should damn nearly auto-pen the Spartan (strength 8+average of 2D6 of 7=15, enough to pen AV14).
If you want something a bit more close range, risky, are willing to be apart of the Dark mechanicum, and want to kill the horde of bees inside, might I suggest this idea for a Deathstar unit.
1 Archmagos Draykavac, (WS4, BS4, S4, T6,W3, I4, A2, LD10, 2+/4++, Wargear Paragon Blade, Machaniator Arry, Djinn Skein, Mechanicum Protectiva, Coretex Controller, Graviton Gun, USR Stubborn, Fear, Battlesmith, Liquifractor, Relentless, Precision Shots, Warlord Trait Death of Flesh,) with Abeyant (+1Wounds, Move through Cover, Very Bulky, Hardened Armor, IWND), and 4x Cyber Occularis.
2:9x Ursarax with Powerfist
3: 3x Vorax-class Battle Automata with Frag Grenades, Enhanced Targeting Array, bio-corrosive rounds,, 3x Irad Cleanser
4: For gaks and giggles, 8x Scyllax class guardian automata with frag grenades and enhanced arrays.
So let's start with the HQ choice Archmagos Draykavac. When all is said and done, his stat line, when all upgrades and weapons are considered, is this (WS4, BS4, T6, W4, I4, A2, LD10, 2+/4++). With a Paragon blade, he gets a S6, AP2 Murderous Strike (rolls of 6 become Instant Death), but for phase one this isn't important. What is important is his Liquifractor, which against a Spartan is evil. Roll 2D6 and then minus the result with AV 1/2. The remainder are now all automatic glancing hits resolved at AP2. So to pen the Spartan you need to roll a 7 or higher to start penning the vehicle.
So how likely is it to get 7 or higher; very easy. You have, at bare minimum, a 58.34% chance to get 1 pen. Its works like this, 2d6 rolls of 7 is 16.67%, 8 is 13.89%, 9 is 11.11%, 10 is 8.33%, 11 is 5.56%, and 12, which will remove the Spartan completely before seeing the vehicle damage chart, is a mere 2.78%. You are likely to strip at least one, more than likely 2 or 3 HP from the Spartan. But here's the catch; its done at Initiative 1, so what about your other guys?
The 9 Ursarax all with powerfist will be bloody expensive yes, but you get a grand spanking total of 18 (!) S10, AP2 attacks at initiative 1, your 3 Vorax have 9 S6 Ap2 Rending attacks at Initiative 4, along with their 3 HoW attacks at initiative 10. Your Scyllax won't be of much worse against the spartan, but they are their to handle the nest of bees that will come crashing out. So All of these guys have WS4 going up against the Vehicles Ws1, so your Ursarax should hit with 12 hits, your Voraxs with 6, and then you need 4+s with your powerfist, and 6/2+ with your Vroax's rending attacks, so you should be able to crush the damned Spartan in the assault phase disgustingly easy before relying on Draykavak.
Now, the Hornet's nest is awaken; the 10 Firedrakes with Ws5, BS4, S4, T4, W2, I4, A2, LD9, 2+/3++ save with the Dragonscale Storm shield and the big man himself; vulkan, with WS7, BS5, S7, T7, W6, I5, A4, Ld, 10, 2+/3++ save).. Thankfully we can make it easier to win the fire, and this is why we brought the Scyllax and the Vorax's to the party; Radphage. You see, we can knock the Terminators and the their Primarch to T2 and T5 respectively with the Scyllax's Rad Furnace (which knocks the toughness of any unit they are locked into combat with by -1) and the Vorax with its beloved Rad cleanser can, with overwatch, get between 3 to 9 hits, which should chip off at least 1 wound, causing the entire unit to lose 1 more point of Toughness).
So it comes down to this, the big brawl. They will have the following;
20 wounds at Toughness 2 (if the rad-cleansers do their job), with 2+/3++ saves, 21 S8 A2 Concussive attacks at initiative 1 if they use Thunderhammers with their Firedrakes plus 6 wounds at Toughness 5 with the standard 2+/3++ saves, with 4 S10, Ap1, Instant Death, Concussive with Vulkan.
You will have
Draykavac: 4 wounds at Toughness 6, 2+/4++, with the Liquidfractor coming in use again, this time being able to use its 2d6 profile wounds minus target's toughness (which I recall should be the units majority, so toughness 2.)
ursaraxs: 18 wounds at Toughness 5, with 18 S10, Ap2 attacks.
Vorax: 9 wounds at Toughness 6, with 9 attacks at S6 Ap2 Rending
Scyllax: 16 wounds at Toughness 5, with 3 attacks at S4, Ap5, with two special rules; Maelstrom and Dismemberment. Maelstrom takes any combat rolls of 6 and immediately generate another attack at the same weapon profile, with these attacks generating no further attacks. Dismemberment meanwhile sacrifices all the attacks for a single +3S, AP2 attack with the unwieldy (attacking at initiative 1) USR.
But wait, we forgot one crucial, immensely powerful thing going for us; OVERWATCH! Yes, we get with Overwatch;
Draykavac: Fire your Flamer and Inferno pistol, so D3 S4 AP5 WoF and 1 S8 Ap1 Melta.
Ursarax: You get Volkite Incinerator, which are S5, AP5, Assault 2 Deflegrate, so you get 18 S5, Ap5 shots that can generate more wounds, Sweet!.
Vorax: You have the Irad Cleansers, which are D3 S2, Ap5 Fleshbane, radphage, and you have 12 poison 4+ AP6 with your bio-corrosive rotor guns.
Scyallax: You replaced their boltguns for the enhanced array, so deal with the loss of overwatch with these guys.
So, You punch with more attacks, you negate their 2+ armor, and you reduce their toughness by 2, so most of your attacks will be killing them on 2s. you also have one advantage that could be very decisive; FEAR! Vukan and his Firedrake aren't immune to Fear, so make them take the Test (which will be at LD10, dang it!) and if they roll an 11 or 12...they hit at WS1 for this round of assault! And that's if they decide to charge you! If you get to charge you get to add the I-rad clenser's template pattern, Draykavac's graviton gun, and 12 S6 HoW attacks when you do charge!
This Deathstar will be expensive though; clocking in at 1535 points and will be footslogging it the way there, but you got another 965 points to work with to be more well rounded; how about you add some artillery to lighten the hornet's nest up a bit, or build your own Archmagos, throw some Rad-grenades to get another -1 toughness to any units that charge in (toughness 1 Terminators and Toughness 4 Vulkan, drink their tears!) and perhaps, if you are cruel beyond belief, going for a Knight Titan; I'm partial to the Magera with S7 Ap3 Large blast Shred Rending, but hey, pick the one that float's your boat.
This took a while to write up, so have fun reading it!
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