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You can get 9 naked LRBT for less then 1500 points and that seems like A LOT of AV14 to put on the board. Sure its only viable in 1750+ games but how would you make this work competitively? Would you want Chimeras for more armor saturation or would they allow your opponent to use those S6-8 weapons that would normally be wasted on AV14? In that case would it be all infantry hiding in cover?

As far as the tanks themselves, I feel like the LRBT would be the most common but Demolishers bring that tasty S10 and AP2 for Terminators or other AV14 to support the Battlecannons so maybe 6 LRBT and 3 LRD? Would you bother with Executioners?

Do they not suffer vs MSU? Or can they target seperet targets?

Niiai wrote:Do they not suffer vs MSU? Or can they target seperet targets?

You're correct, you'd only be able to target 3 units, one per squadron.
Its one of the major drawbacks I can think of, along with the whole immobilized = dead change.

Seems like a fun idea...
Competetively it probably isn't a great idea.

You could probably figure out a way to make it competitive, but not against all-comers. LR squadrons could be mildly competitive if you used them right, but they'd have to work synergistically with other HS choices.

Lance-spam is going to paste it. The Terminator-heavy builds are also going to manhandle it pretty badly.

On the other hand, DoA armies would get beat up pretty badly, Green Tide lists would be in trouble, etc.

Doing the math, 9 bare Russes are what...1,350 pts? If you drop it to 8 you could probably smash it into a 1,500 list with minimum troops choices.



If you already have 9 Russes give it a try.

greentide might actually perform well, especially if they have a KFF or 2.


the main problem with the russes is that if ANY of the orks make it into CC there dead as they can't afford to bubble wrap the russes sufficiently.

I think that 3 pairs of russes would be a far better choice. You get enough firepower that something will hit each target, allocation ability and "armour facing fun" without sacrifycing the rest of your army. Some blobs or chimera to fill it out, maybe some hellhound/vendetta fun or stormtroopers.

A pair of demolishers and a couple of pairs of standard come to somewhere around 1k, any more than that on heavies is not really improving your army, it is making it worse.

Trickstick wrote:I think that 3 pairs of russes would be a far better choice. You get enough firepower that something will hit each target, allocation ability and "armour facing fun" without sacrifycing the rest of your army. Some blobs or chimera to fill it out, maybe some hellhound/vendetta fun or stormtroopers.

A pair of demolishers and a couple of pairs of standard come to somewhere around 1k, any more than that on heavies is not really improving your army, it is making it worse.

Thinking about it more, I came to the exact same conclusion.
Three is just too many but a pair gives you some redundancy when firing.

Specifically a pair of LRBT seem like the best combo. Still fairly cheap but most targets could use a second BC shot to help cover more guys, account for cover saves or penetrate that tank.

I'm actually thinking of using a 2 demo/2lrbt/manticore list in my next game, with a few chimera, blobs, sents and 5 riders mixed in. I'm just trying to find the right amount of troops and troop based hwt to get it to work. I'm thinking a few heavy squads and a single 20man blob, 3 chim with vet/ccs.

I run a 2k list that contains 2xDemo w/MM-sponsons, 2x LRBTs (still haven't decided on whether I'm keeping their HB sponsons or not), and 1xExecutioner w/PCannon sponsons. I doubt it'd do uber-well in a tourney, but I'd give it a shot. Locally, it works just fine - there's a hella lot of marines around, which get pasted by just about everything the tanks fire at them, and can't deal with the amount of AV14. First time I played it was against my mate's Space Wolves (many longfangs! HANDLE IT!) and he panicked, bounced a bunch of missiles off the front armour, and got swiftly removed by the 2's-to-kill no-armour-saves weaponry.

The tanks themselves are about 50% of the points in the list - the other 50% is made up of 3 platoons, a CCS and about 200 'spare' points that I generally use to experiment. Sometimes it's stormtroopers, sometimes it's hellhounds, etc. The platoons themselves contain (in total) about 90 guardsmen of varying types, and having 90 models that can claim is handy when your opponent has 2 or 3 10-man troops squads, at most.

Drachii wrote: First time I played it was against my mate's Space Wolves (many longfangs! HANDLE IT!) and he panicked, bounced a bunch of missiles off the front armour, and got swiftly removed by the 2's-to-kill no-armour-saves weaponry.

Hahaha excellent reference. I love that video/guide. Someone should make a 40k equivalent.

Trickstick wrote:I'm actually thinking of using a 2 demo/2lrbt/manticore list in my next game, with a few chimera, blobs, sents and 5 riders mixed in. I'm just trying to find the right amount of troops and troop based hwt to get it to work. I'm thinking a few heavy squads and a single 20man blob, 3 chim with vet/ccs.

I like where you're going. You have 3 S10 weapons as well as 3 long range (72"+) blasts which give you good redundancy backed up by some other decent units.

As someone who used to run 7 russes in 2000pt games, I can say that squadrons suck. The immobilized=wrecked rule is a killer and the one bonus of being a squadron rarely comes up. Granted, the amount of AV 14 makes you mostly impervious to a lot of weapons that aren't 100% dedicated AV 14 killers, but a squad of fire dragons will have a field day on your squadrons.

However, there's nothing like putting 9 small blast templates on a bunch of termies and watching your opponents deathstar go up in a puff of plasma-y goo.

Yeah, the fact is you are limiting yourself to 3 targets, and making yourself too vulnerable. Quite apart from the squadron damage table changes, which are punishing enough, the things leman russes are really afraid of (fire dragons or other 4+ meltagun squads, massed powerfist assaults) will cripple a squadron as easily as they kill a single russ.

I would be interested to see a battle report with this line up. I think they would either win big, or get pasted.

nevertellmetheodds wrote:I would be interested to see a battle report with this line up. I think they would either win big, or get pasted.

Very true, which I guess is another reason not to worry about it as I don't like those kinds of lists where you can determine the outcome prior to the start of the game.

My preferred 1850 IG list has 2 bare LRBT, 2 Demolishers with PC sponsons, and 2 bare executioners.

The pairs work a lot better imo. The three groups of three eat up a lot of points and since you have to target the same unit with all the tanks in the squadron the effectiveness of each tank lessens as the number of them in the squadron increases.

I then take 4-5 Vet squads in Chimeras or A Lord Commissar and Infantry Platoon bubble wrappings and no chimeras. It just depends on what I am feeling like running for chaff.

Am I the only one who actually thinks squadrons can help you survive longer?

You can make it so that most things have to shoot your front armour. You can have one tank as the unlucky one who gets all the damage allocated to it, and in the case of multiple glances and pens, one can get all the glances and the other the pens. You could even leave the damaged one behind a building and you get cover saves.

Sure, immobilised is a bit bad but there are things you can do to compensate. A couple of games ago my sentinels lasted much longer in a squadron as on took all the damage off the other, taking weapon destroyed multiple times and dying but saving the other.

I tried it awhile ago, The general consensus is 3 pairs of russes. Then mechvet spam is good, for the sake of more tanks, but you can also go with nice blobs with mass special and heavy weapons to defend your russes.