Is Ghazghkull hard to kill for you?

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**Jidmah**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Blackie wrote:

If you need distractions for vehicles just bring more of them! Ghaz is the cost of 3 buggies, which can soak much more melta shots that him, as each vehicle act as a single unit once deployed (so no eradicators' double tap among other things). And typically ghaz doesn't match very well with vehicles, he's mostly played as the leader of a greentide. One of the reason behind that is that he doesn't really tank that many melta shots to provide enough saturation for other vehicles.

Well, to elaborate a bit more it would be vehicles and trukks and an attempt to run small boyz units.

It becomes a matter or priorities. They might ignore buggies for BBs, but they probablywon't ignore Ghaz for BBs.

I have no time using him so I couldn't say if that psychology works out.

I tried it a couple of times, and it kind of works like blackie says. Thrakka doesn't really synergize with a vehicle list (his auras don't matter to them) and adds nothing to target saturation since he really only eats 1.5 successful wounds that would otherwise have been aimed at a buggy. He is 300 points though, so you could just bring a morkanaut, two planes or three buggies instead, all of which provide actual long-range support and draw vastly more damage from other buggies than Thrakka ever could. If your opponent just ignores Thrakka, in a vehicle army he really is just a slower version of warboss on warbike with da biggest boss.
It's also worth noting that vehicle lists have no incentive to ever be goff, so not only would Thrakka lose an attack on average, there also is no way to heal him. Small boyz units also aren't really a danger to anything (especially as more codices get updated) you mostly use them like you would have used gretchin in past editions, except the occasionally manage to murder objective campers even weaker than them (not anything that's MEQ).

So it doesn't make a difference how psychology works out, either way you would always benefit more from spending those points elsewhere.

That said, throwing Thrakka in such a list isn't going to cause you to auto-lose, but he is definitely a handicap as you are not getting something worth the 300 points you invested.

**yukishiro1**

ccs wrote:
yukishiro1 wrote:
Why would anyone set up Ghaz where he can be shot except by LOS-ignoring stuff and/or charged T1? That's beyond dumb.

On getting charged on T1;
Well, he wasn't expecting that....
*I'm known for my dislike of melee in my 40k. If I want melee action I'll generally play Sigmar or something.
*That said, I do know how to play this game & do include {some} melee options in most of my forces. In this particular list my melee was limited to 1 Skorpek Lord + a full unit of Lychguard (with shields). And I'd already deployed both towards the other end of my DZ, apparently in response to several mobz. It looked like I was planning to use them as a response team depending upon where my line was hit/maybe wich objectives were taken.
*A Skorpek Lord + a full unit of Lychguard are a solid threat. Ghaz was nowhere near them. Or anything else that'd ever want to charge him for that matter. The worst that might've occurred would be him eventually tar-pitting himself vs a blob of Reaper warriors if he tried to clear them off an objective.
My foe didn't even consider that this SkorpLord might be packing a Veil of Darkness.
So the T1 sneak attack + successful charges came as a surprise. CCS initiated the melee attack? In 40K??

Now, before you go on about how he should've known about the Veil, etc?
In casual games between friends we don't go over our lists pre-game. It's written down. We know we're within the agreed upon pts. Our weapons are all WYSIWYG. Beyond that? We'll find out through play what dirty tricks the other guy has up his sleeve this week concerning wargear/traits/special rules/new units etc.

Well, that certainly fits my description, so thanks for illustrating my point I guess.

**ccs**

yukishiro1 wrote:
ccs wrote:
yukishiro1 wrote:
Why would anyone set up Ghaz where he can be shot except by LOS-ignoring stuff and/or charged T1? That's beyond dumb.

On getting charged on T1;
Well, he wasn't expecting that....
*I'm known for my dislike of melee in my 40k. If I want melee action I'll generally play Sigmar or something.
*That said, I do know how to play this game & do include {some} melee options in most of my forces. In this particular list my melee was limited to 1 Skorpek Lord + a full unit of Lychguard (with shields). And I'd already deployed both towards the other end of my DZ, apparently in response to several mobz. It looked like I was planning to use them as a response team depending upon where my line was hit/maybe wich objectives were taken.
*A Skorpek Lord + a full unit of Lychguard are a solid threat. Ghaz was nowhere near them. Or anything else that'd ever want to charge him for that matter. The worst that might've occurred would be him eventually tar-pitting himself vs a blob of Reaper warriors if he tried to clear them off an objective.
My foe didn't even consider that this SkorpLord might be packing a Veil of Darkness.
So the T1 sneak attack + successful charges came as a surprise. CCS initiated the melee attack? In 40K??

Now, before you go on about how he should've known about the Veil, etc?
In casual games between friends we don't go over our lists pre-game. It's written down. We know we're within the agreed upon pts. Our weapons are all WYSIWYG. Beyond that? We'll find out through play what dirty tricks the other guy has up his sleeve this week concerning wargear/traits/special rules/new units etc.

Well, that certainly fits my description, so thanks for illustrating my point I guess.

So beyond dumb because the Ork player A) had to account for terrain in deciding where to place, B) doesn't memorize every piece of wargear in an army he doesn't play* AND C) isn't really expecting to see me (specifically me) launch a melee strike?
*He is very aware that the Veil is a thing now though & will likely take that into consideration the next time he sees my S.Lord.

But tell me Oh Enlightened One, where would YOU have placed Ghaz?
You, not being a friend, just rando shop opponent, will have seen my list &/or you just know everything anyways.
We'll assume you'll screen Ghaz if you choose to.
You're general choices are:
1) Safely out of sight - even though barring some orky tricks this will delay Ghaz from being effective until turn 3.
2) In LoS to plenty of guns
3) In LoS from the least amount of firepower.

**yukishiro1**

Letting Ghaz get charged T1 because you didn't know a necron player takes the relic that every necron player takes is beyond dumb, yes. People play casually and that's fine, but just because you're playing casually doesn't mean that doing something dumb isn't dumb, it just means you didn't know how dumb it was. Everybody does dumb stuff now and then, it's not the end of the world, but it's still dumb.

You put Ghaz wherever makes the most sense, it all depends on how much damage your opponent can do across phases. You need to know your opponent's army very well to use a model that can only take X wounds per phase intelligently. If you don't, they're almost always a waste of points.

**ccs**

yukishiro1 wrote:
Letting Ghaz get charged T1 because you didn't know a necron player takes the relic that every necron player takes is beyond dumb, yes.

Not every Necron player uses the Veil.
My Orky foe? He's only ever met two Necron players. Neither of us had used the veil against him until this battle. AND, I'll repeat this as it's a key factor, he was playing me. I'm not known for doing 40k melee.

yukishiro1 wrote:
People play casually and that's fine, but just because you're playing casually doesn't mean that doing something dumb isn't dumb, it just means you didn't know how dumb it was. Everybody does dumb stuff now and then, it's not the end of the world, but it's still dumb.

Believe it or not, he has other things to do in life than study the Codex of forces he's not using. Most of us in this group do.

yukishiro1 wrote:
You put Ghaz wherever makes the most sense, it all depends on how much damage your opponent can do across phases. You need to know your opponent's army very well to use a model that can only take X wounds per phase intelligently. If you don't, they're almost always a waste of points.

So you're saying you'd have placed Ghaz where my foe did? Where I could only bring one squad of Deathmarks to bear on him vs roughly 90% of my firepower?
As for needing to know your foes army very well.

. At most, for non-tourney play, a passing familiarity will suffice.

**Canadian 5th**

ccs wrote:
Not every Necron player uses the Veil.
My Orky foe? He's only ever met two Necron players. Neither of us had used the veil against him until this battle. AND, I'll repeat this as it's a key factor, he was playing me. I'm not known for doing 40k melee.

Your friend is a scrub. He likely plays like a bottom 40th percentile player due to his lack of knowledge and games played. He's expected to make mistakes like this but that doesn't make them anything other than a mistake and a rather obvious one at that.

EDIT: I don't mean to come off saying that your friend shouldn't play 40k. If he has fun with the game I wish him many more hours of rolling dice and moving models in his future.

So you're saying you'd have placed Ghaz where my foe did? Where I could only bring one squad of Deathmarks to bear on him vs roughly 90% of my firepower?

No, I'd have ensured he at least had a screen in front of him to ensure that even an unexpected charge didn't kill ~1/7th of my list before I could react. If you look at how skilled players use Ghaz they keep him screened so that he can only take shooting attacks as smite has to target the closest unit and charges can't reach him through a well-constructed screen.

As for needing to know your foes army very well. . At most, for non-tourney play, a passing familiarity will suffice.

Did it suffice for the Ork player who lost Ghaz for free?

**Matt Swain**

Y'know, this whole "only x wounds per phase" thing is really a love letter to factions with good offensive psykers and a "Feth you." to ones that don't.

it means the psyker users can score x more wounds per turn on anything with it than the shooty races that have no psykers can.

At least necrons have powers of the c'tan to offset this.

**Daedalus81**

Matt Swain wrote:
Y'know, this whole "only x wounds per phase" thing is really a love letter to factions with good offensive psykers and a "Feth you." to ones that don't.

it means the psyker users can score x more wounds per turn on anything with it than the shooty races that have no psykers can.

At least necrons have powers of the c'tan to offset this.

I think they're great. The more popular and plentiful these units the more people will have to lean away from shooting being the answer.

Tau will be the ones that have the worst time, but we'll see what happens.

**yukishiro1**

ccs wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
People play casually and that's fine, but just because you're playing casually doesn't mean that doing something dumb isn't dumb, it just means you didn't know how dumb it was. Everybody does dumb stuff now and then, it's not the end of the world, but it's still dumb.

Believe it or not, he has other things to do in life than study the Codex of forces he's not using. Most of us in this group do.

I don't think you read what I wrote. It's fine to do dumb stuff, especially if you're playing casually. It doesn't mean he's a stupid person, it just means he did a stupid thing in this case.

**Canadian 5th**

Quote instead of an edit.

**SemperMortis**

Matt Swain wrote:
Y'know, this whole "only x wounds per phase" thing is really a love letter to factions with good offensive psykers and a "Feth you." to ones that don't.

it means the psyker users can score x more wounds per turn on anything with it than the shooty races that have no psykers can.

At least necrons have powers of the c'tan to offset this.

Again, I 1 shotted ghaz using 3 Scrapjetz and a single Stratagem. Didn't need to use the psychic phase even to buff myself

The key word here is phase, there are a LOT of phases in 40k now. The old "Assault" phase is broken into several phases now, the charge phase is incredibly important because you can do mortal wounds while charging.

**Jidmah**

Yeah, and it's not like shooting+shooting+charge isn't enough phases to kill him unless there is doc behind him.

Most armies with psykers don't deal 4 damage in one round anyways, because you can dodge them, powers fail and most do random damage.
Not to mention that few armies can cast more than 2 or 3 powers to begin with. Those mortal wounds help killing him, but are by no means required. A unit which is good at firing overwatch is likely to deal just as much damage.

**Blackie**

Well killing him reliably in 2 turns is still very acceptable, and a great result for the opponent of the ork player if it happens. There's no need to one-shot a monster that is not fast, he's melee only and also his buffs are melee only.

**Castozor**

Well I played against him for the first time last weekend but he wasn't very scary for me. Even if we ignore that my opponent played him poorly. DG have all the answers for him. LOS ignoring shooting, multiple ways to deal MW in several phases and a 6" (boosted to 12" because of my Plague Company) anti-charge aura. Those C'tan shards are more worrisome to me and even those I can deal with.
I hope they give the Big guy some love on the next Codex because he doesn't seem overly powerful to me for a 300 point model.
As for the discussion above: that is the exact reason we go over our lists pre-game even when playing casually. Nobody here likes gatcha's, especially not game winning/losing ones. But if that is how you roll there it's fine of course.