Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Dakkabots are pretty comparable to Dreads, actually. Only they kill <T7 targets best.

Anyhow, I am not sure why anyone would spam Dreads when there are so many better Marine options these days.>

I am not sure why anyone would spam Dreads when there are so many better Marine options these days.

Fluff, actually. Iron Hands fluff was that they were a Dreadnought heavy faction. They had so much augmentation that they'd likely survive incapacitating damage, and then entombment into a machine body was an aspiration rather than a last resort.

To your point about outplaying such lists on objectives, I've often found there's a certain point where you can abandon fighting their anti-tank and essentially sacrifice your vehicles to kill their scoring units. Most tanks/anti-tank are terrible at scoring or attacking scorers, which eventually makes them a liability.

We can actually see this in the latest tournament result from the Your Hobby Place GT. The Goff Horde didn't really have dedicated anti-tank, just 2x3 MANz in trukks, Ghazz, and a Mega Big Mek; they're incidentally strong enough to mulch tanks, but not exclusively. Likewise, the 3rd and 4th Chaos lists had 2 Plague Burst Crawlers each, and a couple monstrous creatures, but otherwise no anti-tank.

He’s actually not a cutting edge meta chaser like I am haha

He just picked a theme cause he liked it and has had good success so far. He’s not been back into 40k long but he’s a better player than i so doing something right

Ah. Yeah. Nobody who understands how 9E works is planning on fighting tank battles. They're figuring out how to clear 400 points of Tactical and Gravis Armour on turn one.

 Suzuteo wrote:
@

@Vineheart01
I just mentioned that in my response to Octovol. Not sure if Raiders will change much. The Robodogs are much more flavorful IMO, but both seem meh to me in comparison to Boat Priests.

@Ideasweasel
It's true that when you play with Dakkabots, you need to be very cognizant of sight lines. But the problem with the Grators is that they cost 150 points and no longer punch hard enough to justify their

So a single.unit of Boatpriests can net you 13 Sulphurhounds or 15 Raider. That's quite a bit to chew through even at T3 3W. 20 wounds at vehicle profile versus 39 at the nice 3W sweet spot. Not saying better or worse but not a clear cut choice as you make it seem.

I have had fantastic experience running 12-18 dogs. They can get to an objective and punch people off of it because of their firepower. I play a lot of Marines because my local meta is always what is obviously powerful (Indomitus Marine stuff) and they kill Intercessors, chip wounds off Impulsors, dart in to kill key characters, and if my Skystalkers are dead they are an alright target for Wrath of Mars as their mobility allows me to place those mortals exactly where I need them.

I always see people complain about how "this unit gets blown off the board turn one!!1!1!!" The rule of Warhammer has always been, if you want one, bring two, if you want two, bring three.

Also my exact opposite expierence about the Grators. Ive played about 9 games with them and while they are expensive for their survivability Grators still hit very hard, especially considering they are only 25pts more than a single Kastelan, all that needs to be done is to give them the premium obscuring terrain piece in your deployment zone. A lot of lists you're going to see and that we are seeing are running Indomitus marines, two of the most egregious are 3W models. This makes the Grator with the Ferrumite a very solid choice. The Belloros is nice but I find the -1AP just lacks the punch to get through Marine armor. And let's not kid ourselves, we should be designing our lists to kill Marines, Harlequins, Custodes, and Death Guard.

Had my first game of V9 today, so long after release ! Was a friendly 1000 pts game against T'au, it was both our first time playing 9th and his first time playing T'au. I played what I had fully painted 'cause it's my resolution for this edition, so didn't optimise the list. It was:

- Dominus
- Daedalosus

- 3x 5 Vanguards
- 1x 5 Rangers with 2 Arquebuses + Omnispex

- 3 Sulphurhounds with Carbine
- 5 Infiltrators with Swords

- Onager with Icarus
- 3 Kastelans Robots with Fists and Flamers

All in Lucius. Got to say the +1 invulnerable save canticle is awesome. Popped it turn 1 because he got first turn and it made my Onager 4++ and helped him tank most shots going his way, turn 1 and turn 3. Also repaired a lot in three turns too. The dogma wasn't really useful because he didn't have a lot of AP-1 but it's nice to have.

Two Robots died T1 against 3 Crisis with overcharged Ion guns so that hurt, but the last one managed to lock a unit for a turn and kill some guys, I made him explode too. He returned 3 MWs on a single volley from the 10 Breachers shooting at him that was nice.

The Sulphurhounds got a charge turn 1 but failed to kill the unit of 5 FW on the charge (they shot at something else before) but eventually claimed the objective and killed them later so that was good. Not sure if Raiders would've been as lethal against T3. I like having speed in AdMech it's refreshing.

I won because he conceded T3 as I killed most of his army and was good on points. Still have to learn how to pick the right secondaries though, Erosion is useless and I would've scored Kill the Warlord only on T4.

@Goldenemperor
IMO that sort of efficiency argument is the biggest trap in 9E. Yes, Raiders are efficient and difficult for many codexes to deal with. But they cannot compete with Marines, Harlequins, Custodes, or Death Guard in a big midboard scrum. (They are good for staying out of melee, but not slugging it out in melee.) In a competitive setting, we pretty much need to specialize in shooting options that allow us to kill the best elite infantry in the meta from outside their threat radius. Especially if we go second. In my experience, Raiders aren't it. It's the Elimination Volley combo of 4-5x Dakkabots and 4-5x Grav Destroyers that can do this.

100% agree that the durability argument is dumb. Bring redundancy instead.

Grators do not hit nearly as hard as a Dakkabot against the key targets while costing 20% more. And yeah, Ferrumite is underrated, but I still prefer high volume high AP or high volume mortal wounds. D2 Autocannons also become more relevant against W2 Marines, Nurglings, etc.

Obscuring terrain is a false promise. There is not enough of it in the recommended guidelines.

 Suzuteo wrote:
@Goldenemperor
IMO that sort of efficiency argument is the biggest trap in 9E. Yes, Raiders are efficient and difficult for many codexes to deal with. But they cannot compete with Marines, Harlequins, Custodes, or Death Guard in a big midboard scrum. (They are good for staying out of melee, but not slugging it out in melee.) In a competitive setting, we pretty much need to specialize in shooting options that allow us to kill the best elite infantry in the meta from outside their threat radius. Especially if we go second. In my experience, Raiders aren't it. It's the Elimination Volley combo of 4-5x Dakkabots and 4-5x Grav Destroyers that can do this.

100% agree that the durability argument is dumb. Bring redundancy instead.

Grators do not hit nearly as hard as a Dakkabot against the key targets while costing 20% more. And yeah, Ferrumite is underrated, but I still prefer high volume high AP or high volume mortal wounds. D2 Autocannons also become more relevant against W2 Marines, Nurglings, etc.

Obscuring terrain is a false promise. There is not enough of it in the recommended guidelines.

I'm sort of coming round to a lot of this, my biggest problem is this advice only exclusively works at 2k points. Even 1500 is not enough for us to have all the tools we need to deal with marines. So picking and choosing what I can fit in my 1000-1500 im finding extremely challenging. I've resolved that 2 x 5 Raiders is the most I'll likely ever need, they're almost sacrificial lambs that conditionally race to objectives, just so my oppoent does have free ranged to just drop on them or move onto them without a challenge. they're cheap, fast and flexibile. I dont have to move them up straight away, but the option is there.

I'm kinda hoping there's an update to Autocannons in the marine codex. I'm excited for a change to Lascannons, but I havea feeling it'll include an uprate in points as well. It's almost a shame that most of our weapons are specifically named and not generic imperium weapons as we're going to benefit not a lot from the global updates. 12" cognis flamer would be nice though.

I'll have to try running dakkabots again, but i'm sort of limited to 2 or 3 of them at most in that points bracket. I just cant rationalise in my head how 9-18 ap-2 1d shots cuts any kind of mustard for the 125pt price tag. it seems like loads. I'd likely have to make my balistarii lascannons instead of autocannons to cover my bases. 2-3 las ballistarii and 2-3 dakkabots would be my entire firebase. Everything else needs to be scoring points. 2k almost feels like cheating, you really dont have to consider your options too much with that amount of points available.

 Suzuteo wrote:
@Goldenemperor
IMO that sort of efficiency argument is the biggest trap in 9E. Yes, Raiders are efficient and difficult for many codexes to deal with. But they cannot compete with Marines, Harlequins, Custodes, or Death Guard in a big midboard scrum. (They are good for staying out of melee, but not slugging it out in melee.) In a competitive setting, we pretty much need to specialize in shooting options that allow us to kill the best elite infantry in the meta from outside their threat radius. Especially if we go second. In my experience, Raiders aren't it. It's the Elimination Volley combo of 4-5x Dakkabots and 4-5x Grav Destroyers that can do this.

100% agree that the durability argument is dumb. Bring redundancy instead.

Grators do not hit nearly as hard as a Dakkabot against the key targets while costing 20% more. And yeah, Ferrumite is underrated, but I still prefer high volume high AP or high volume mortal wounds. D2 Autocannons also become more relevant against W2 Marines, Nurglings, etc.

Obscuring terrain is a false promise. There is not enough of it in the recommended guidelines.

Completely disagree having tournamented last weekend your horses are not meant to win the scrum they are meant to block your opponent in their deployment zone so you can grab the middle.

@U02dah4
While that makes some sense, you would only need one unit of them for that use case; they need to block just long enough for better melee units to arrive.

Bringing more seems to be a risky plan that is easily foiled if they bring anything with Scout deployment.

Octovol wrote:


I'm kinda hoping there's an update to Autocannons in the marine codex. I'm excited for a change to Lascannons, but I havea feeling it'll include an uprate in points as well. It's almost a shame that most of our weapons are specifically named and not generic imperium weapons as we're going to benefit not a lot from the global updates. 12" cognis flamer would be nice though.

.

they said all equivalent weapons will get an update including tau and eldar so here's hoping


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Suzuteo wrote:
@U02dah4
While that makes some sense, you would only need one unit of them for that use case; they need to block just long enough for better melee units to arrive.

Bringing more seems to be a risky plan that is easily foiled if they bring anything with Scout deployment.

2 units of 5 is where i found my sweet spot.

all i can think of is infiltrators w/ powerswords being S5 now...

 Vineheart01 wrote:
all i can think of is infiltrators w/ powerswords being S5 now...

i was literally just coming here to comment about that. Not sure if it pushes them but its definitely interesting

its basically my only beef about them, they wounded everything i wanted them to attack on 4s or 5s so they never did enough damage.
Now they wound on 3s/4s (T4/5 targets).
Priests even if they dont roll 6s still shreded things for me because they were S5 AP2, so they wounded reliably regardless of the mortal potential.

Without charge aids, it feels meh.

More worried about the new 42" S5 AP2 D3 guns on their Heavy Intercessors...

 Suzuteo wrote:
Without charge aids, it feels meh.

More worried about the new 42" S5 AP2 D3 guns on their Heavy Intercessors...

thats one per 5, so most likely a single guy. the squad is ooonlyyy D2, kek. Just makes me want to take more grav destroyers

at this point ive stopped paying attention to the cheese marines get. Most of the time the "op nature of the army" goes to the player's head and they do something stupid anyway.
Got several guys that play ultrasmurfs around me that almost never win because they have 0 idea what theyre doing, theyre just fielding the powerhouse units lol. Funny thing is some of them play nonmarines and wreck face so its not just theyre noobs.

Legit, i keep running across people running those plasma flying gravis armor guys (i always forget their name) and overcharging them/firing at a T7/8 high wound model. And as a result, self-nuke 1-2 dudes lol.
Im like "Why are you sending that crap after my big tanks? Those are elite killers not antitank weapons" and they just scoff at the idea of "overkilling" my elites....

 Vineheart01 wrote:
at this point ive stopped paying attention to the cheese marines get. Most of the time the "op nature of the army" goes to the player's head and they do something stupid anyway.
Got several guys that play ultrasmurfs around me that almost never win because they have 0 idea what theyre doing, theyre just fielding the powerhouse units lol.

This is true. It's almost never "make a good list." It's "practice your list until it gets good."

From the game I've played the other day, Infiltrators still feel really lackluster. They don't have enough attacks. I charged a unit of 5 (with Swords) at 2 Crisis and a few T'au Breachers and two died on Overwatch (5+ Overwatch still hurts) and then they killed two Breachers and just got shot the turn after. It's anecdotal evidence I know, but from my maths they're still not really good. In the end they still allowed me to block the Crisis from firing a turn and clean a bit around an objective, but I'd rather have had 10 Hoplites for that role. Or Ryza Ruststalkers with the AP-1 canticle, as they're cheaper and have more attacks.

Anyone tried Hoplites competitively? They seem just on the cusp of being a solid pick, only to get smacked down by their lack of Forgeworld keyword. I would really like to see them back on the table, their rules are just hindered inexplicably.

 Goldenemperor wrote:
Anyone tried Hoplites competitively? They seem just on the cusp of being a solid pick, only to get smacked down by their lack of Forgeworld keyword. I would really like to see them back on the table, their rules are just hindered inexplicably.

They're great as a defensive pick. But right now, I think Fulgurites are better for the meta because of how important fighting in the midboard is, and once you get the invulnerable save plus the Acquisition buff on them, they are absolute monsters.

breacher spam list came in 3rd at a 59 person event in Norway. Ran a trans node FW with 5x5 breachers and a dominus with genator backed by a mars spearhead with cawl, 3 robots and 2 onagers.

Surprised it did well but I believe this might be the best showing for admech so far in 9th?

Very surprising. Breachers worked in a meta dominated by vehicles. In this meta, they are outgunned and outmanned by every other army's elite infantry.

 Suzuteo wrote:
Very surprising. Breachers worked in a meta dominated by vehicles. In this meta, they are outgunned and outmanned by every other army's elite infantry.

It's not that surprising, 4+ BS aside, Heavy Arc Rifles are solid multi-wound infantry/non-vehicle killers. 2 x str 6, ap-2 D3 damage on any target. And exploding hits on a 5+ gives you a good chance of getting another shot on target. They're about as durable an infantry unit as we have and obsec as well. If you go all-in on them with trans node and genator you substantially increase their effectiveness. Plus adding aquisition to them makes them a 2+/5++/5+++ with your warlord nearby. I almost did this myself, almost wish I didn't have 15 doggos tbh, overestimated their usefulness I think. They're still better than barebones rangers and vanguard overall but pricier and not infantry, but you cant half-arse the use of trans node, it's an all or nothing kind of approach.

Octovol wrote:

 Suzuteo wrote:
Very surprising. Breachers worked in a meta dominated by vehicles. In this meta, they are outgunned and outmanned by every other army's elite infantry.

It's not that surprising, 4+ BS aside, Heavy Arc Rifles are solid multi-wound infantry/non-vehicle killers. 2 x str 6, ap-2 D3 damage on any target. And exploding hits on a 5+ gives you a good chance of getting another shot on target. They're about as durable an infantry unit as we have and obsec as well. If you go all-in on them with trans node and genator you substantially increase their effectiveness. Plus adding aquisition to them makes them a 2+/5++/5+++ with your warlord nearby. I almost did this myself, almost wish I didn't have 15 doggos tbh, overestimated their usefulness I think. They're still better than barebones rangers and vanguard overall but pricier and not infantry, but you cant half-arse the use of trans node, it's an all or nothing kind of approach.

If my math is right each breacher squad with cawl re-rolls and exploding 5's kills average of 2 gravis models a turn. So 10 models a turn from 5 squads. Against regular 2 wound marines its a little better at 5 per squad. It's not..terrible? And they are relatively tough. I cant see myself buying 15 more breachers to try it out though.

I believe 15 doggos is too much. I like 10 right now but could see myself going down to a single squad. Only time I'd take 15 is as allies for knights.

I mean, 15 Breachers (525) deal 26.67 wounds to Gravis per turn. 4 Dakkabots (500) deal 38.5 wounds. This includes Cawl rerolls, HO WLT, and Wrath for the Dakkabots. If we give the Dakkabots +1 to hit, it goes to 45.63 wounds.

They are, however, much more durable:

T5 45W 2+
T7 24W 2+/4++ (5++ after rooting)

They also have ObSec, so the old strategy of just shoving 15 of them into the midboard and laughing is still valid. Albeit much less powerful without the ability to give them all 5++ and resurrect potentially two per turn.

That said, the king of anti-Gravis is still Grav Destroyers. 12 of them with Cawl rerolls deals a whopping average of 58.33 wounds! With +1 to hit it is 69.14 wounds.

Hence why my list features the Elimination Volley combo. It's riskier for sure, but I won't fall behind and lose just because I go second. Which is a huge problem right now.

 Suzuteo wrote:
I mean, 15 Breachers (525) deal 26.67 wounds to Gravis per turn. 4 Dakkabots (500) deal 38.5 wounds. This includes Cawl rerolls, HO WLT, and Wrath for the Dakkabots. If we give the Dakkabots +1 to hit, it goes to 45.63 wounds.

They are, however, much more durable:

T5 45W 2+
T7 24W 2+/4++ (5++ after rooting)

They also have ObSec, so the old strategy of just shoving 15 of them into the midboard and laughing is still valid. Albeit much less powerful without the ability to give them all 5++ and resurrect potentially two per turn.

That said, the king of anti-Gravis is still Grav Destroyers. 12 of them with Cawl rerolls deals a whopping average of 58.33 wounds! With +1 to hit it is 69.14 wounds.

Hence why my list features the Elimination Volley combo. It's riskier for sure, but I won't fall behind and lose just because I go second. Which is a huge problem right now.

TBH 15 breachers, 5 destroyers and 4 dakkabots seems like a list i wouldnt mind running.

Throw in some Lascannon Ironstriders and you've got something, for sure. You don't even need them to be Mars since they barely benefit from Mars effects.

 DarkHound wrote:
Throw in some Lascannon Ironstriders and you've got something, for sure. You don't even need them to be Mars since they barely benefit from Mars effects.

cawl, daedalosus, manipulus, 15 breachers, 5 destroyers, 4 dakkabots, 3 lascannon ballistari, 5 raiders and a fusilave are 2000pts on the dot.

The math bears out that Breachers with Arc custom trait are better than Cawl and the Mars canticle against most targets. More-over, Daedalosus, Extermination Volley, and a Dominus/rr1s canticle are the same as Cawl. Ultimately, Mars is only better if your Breachers are shooting T7 vehicles, and significantly worse against any other target.

The tournament list in question was something like:
Battalion, Custom Forge World, Data-hoard, Arc weapons
Dominus, Learnings of the Genetor, Autocaduceus
Daedalosus
25 Breachers, Arc Rifle, Arc Claw
Fusilave, Command Uplink

Mars Spearhead
Cawl
5? Raiders
3 Dakkabots
2 Dunecrawlers, Icarus Arrays

Mars is applying to all the important stuff that need the +1S to meet anti-tank breakpoints. It's pretty clever, honestly. I could only think of ways to make the list different, not better. It knows exactly what it's trying to do, and is very good at doing specifically that.

Amusingly, the Arc buff also applies to the Claw, and they end up being surprisingly formidable in assault. Give them re-roll 1s canticle, switch Learnings to the melee buff, and each Breacher inflicts 1.13 wounds to Gravis, or a lot more to anything T3 or worse armor. They're still not principally melee units, but they're more than equipped to finish off anything they've been shooting at.