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Greetings,

Was having some discussion on the viability of Razorwings, and the type of list that would work best with them, and from that a lot of discussion about using them in a list featuring deep strike, Sliscus, and lots of anti-tank in the troop options. Inspired by that I wanted to see if I thought the list would work for me and how competitive I thought it would be, here is my first serious test of it;

The Descending Storm

Duke Sliscus (in my list The Duchess - because boobs make everything better, even Duke Sliscus)
6x Five Warriors with Blaster, Sybarite, Blast Pistol - Raider w. FF (yes, Blast Pistols in a competitive list - the mind melts)
3x Three Trueborn with Blasters - Raider w. FF
2x Razorwing with Dissies and FF
1x Razorwing with Lances and FF

So, wake up early, grab my gear that I packed the night before (make sure you pack your objective markers, and tape measure, and templates, natch). Put on extra layer of underarm deoderant (didn't last - I need to start packing that too methinks) and truck on up to Dark Side Comics and Games - music selection for Dark Eldar is always Sabaton, and the mix has to start with Art of War, it always gets me in a DE mood;





Round 1
Mission - Annihilation
Deployment - Spearhead
Opponent - Nollie's Blood Angels

I've currently misplaced his list (derp!) but going off memory and pictures it was basically this;

Chaplin in Termie Armor with Assault Terms (mix of THs and LCs) in Landraider
10x Assault marines in Landraider
10x Assault Marines w. Priest - jump packs.
10x Devestators w. Missile Launchers
5x Scouts w. Heavy Bolter and sniper rifles
10x Tac squad w. melta, multi melta, combi melta, in drop pod.



The map was desert and provided some reasonable options for DS awesome - I won first turn and gave my opponent the upper left corner to deploy in as I wanted the wide spaces to DS into there. Also featured in this picture (from left to right) my opponent's crotch, a friend of his who was playing at the next table's backside, and my opponent's girlfriend's legs - one of these days I'll manage a batrep at a tournament that doesn't feature about 5-6 crotch/backside shots - I just haven't figured out how.

He, of course, stacks up his Devastators and Scouts in the ruins of the building. The two Landraiders (one with Assault Terms and a Chaplin, and the other with Assault Marines sans packs) deploy on the left and right side of the building respectively. A Sanguinary Priest and Assault Squad with packs crouches in-between a Landraider and the ruins to be ready to counter assault.

One big benefit of an all DS army - Marines with Drop Pod Assault don't get to use their 1st turn Pods to do much of value - he drops into my deployment zone (there is a secondary objective point for this) and occupies another small ruin with his melta heavy squad.

At the start of Turn 2 my first deep strike is...not what was expected. Basically I get one Warrior squad (No Duchess - she proved to be quite content to send in the expendable mooks to soften the enemy before she ever showed up, a true DE general's strategy ) I also get one Trueblaster squad, and all three Razorwings...derp?


Here's my Warrior squad who ended up scattering a little dangerously close to the Drop Pod, just visible above them is the Termie loaded Landraider.

The Trueblasters drop in right on target, drawing a bead on the Assault Marine Landraider.

The Razorwings fly in on flank furthest from the Termies - their goal; murder.

Lining up some bad intentions for the Devastators...also, crotch. There's about four more in this round alone, jeez...

The Trueblasters fire into the Landraider - exploding it and killing an Assault Marine in the process.

The Warriors wreck the Termie Landraider, forcing the walking tanks to...walk...yes!


After this particular missile attack there was serious discussion about how the Razorwing was too powerful.

While dropping Monoscythe Missiles on top of the Tac squad in my deployment zone (there shall be no bonus points ye cur!) there was a slight incident of "friendly fire" that took out all of the Warrior squad but a single Warrior - ah well, the life of a suicide unit.

The Termies plot what to smash as punishment for ruining their ride. Also show off some wound markers they've gained.

The mauled Tactical squad decides to fall back for safety - here we see them so horrified by the presence of a Dark Eldar that the Blood Angels are debating their best course of escape - this is a common occurrence when Marines meet Dark Eldar.

The Chaplin (who is angry) spots a vehicle to smash (angrily) and orders his men to (angrily) advance on the target of his anger (angrily).

The Jump Assault Marines leap over the building while the foot Assault Marines rush out of their crater and advance towards the Trueblasters with bad intentions.

A flamer frags most of the squad, then a dual assault is made, that wipes the Trueborn and shakes the Raider.

It will probably come as a great surprise to all of you - but the single Warrior and his Raider did not perform well in this assault phase. I blame my bad dice.


Turn 3 - I get a nice drop of vehicles. The Duchess decides things are softened up enough that she should descend - also more Trueblasters and Warriors drop onto the scene, eager to take part in the carnage.


The Trueblasters on the roof were a scatter - though it was not a bad position to end up in. Mostly lining up shots to punish the Blood Angel Termie Death Star.

The Duchess and her men spring out to pour firepower into the Assault Marines.

The Jump Assaulters suffer as well - the Razorwings use their Dissies to good effect and cut huge swaths out of the squad.

The Assault Marines crack under the waves of splinter and blaster fire and choose to tactically withdraw, unfortunately Duchess is along their escape path and will cause them rally problems.



Here's a big lay of the land as it stands at the end of my Movement Phase on Turn 4. (sorry - wasn't taking enough pictures, was hustling to get through turns)

You can see in the upper right that the few Jump packers moved up, and the Assault Marines shot up and flamed Duchess, killing off her squad but leaving her untouched. They then dual assaulted her and her Raider - Duchess quickly killed both Assault Marines with contemptuous ease, killing them before they could hurt her ride, the Sanguinary Priest charged forward and slashed at her with his power weapon, but the lithe Dark Eldar proved too fast and skilled to be hit - they will hold in combat for next turn.

On the left side, the Assault Terms murdered the squad that had disembarked from that Raider - they killed them *very* easily.

The Tac squad has rallied but failed to do much with their shooting. The Scouts and Devastator are holding on and have been trying to stem the DE tide, but don't have the firepower for it anymore.


The Tac squad is torn apart by shooting.
Not pictured, but also accomplished - the Devastator squad is finally killed, and the Scouts are shot up enough that they fall back and end up behind the building before they rally.


Duchess easily dispatches the Sanguinary priest and goes off in search of more victims.


The Terms assault the Raider, and rock it as badly as I was rocking this picture - easy wipe out.

The rest of the game went pretty quickly, but the breakdown is basically this;

Duchess and a Warrior squad stalked down the Scouts and murdered them.
The Terms were targeted by multiple Blasters, Lances, and Dissies and were eventually whittled down and wiped out.

I tabled him - but due to the way the mission was scored I actually ended up in the upper middle of the score card because I didn't manage to get 2x KPs off him as I lost 6 KPs and he only had 10 on board that I claimed all of...derp!

That said, I'm usually pretty content to be in the upper mid after Game 1 - it theoretically helps you avoid the big sharks...or so I thought.
=============================================================
Intermission.

Honestly, "Lunch" happened between Rounds 2 and 3, but I'm making a joke there, so these pictures are going here - just a glance at a few of the other armies that were out there. We had Grey Knights, Blood Angels, Wolves, IG, Chaos Space Marines, Necrons, Tau and Dark Eldar.

DE actually had two players (me and a Venom centric list), so were nicely repped. Only the one Tau and one Necron though

Not represented - Eldar, Orks (at least, I swear I didn't see any, which seems silly, but if they were there I missed them) Vanilla SM (again, this seems silly, but, we had multiple GK and SW, and a BA player and yet I think no Vanilla). Also, no Sisters and no Nids (yeah, giant shock on both of those, huh?)


Some very pretty Tau encounter a very pretty/horrible eyeball head Daemon Prince in h2h combat (spoiler - it ends poorly for the Tau)

John's Nurgle forces rejoice in their first round victory. They would go undefeated during the tourney.

Dakka's own Marcus Scipio's Wolves vs. CSM.

The Grey Knights meat ignominious defeat at the hands of a Necron army (our spammed Str 7-8 shooting, it does very little!)

=============================================================

Round 2
Mission - Capture & Control
Deployment - Pitched Battle
Opponent - Justin's Space Wolves

Njal Stormcaller w. 4 Wolf Guard Termies (TH/SS) in Drop Pod
5 Long Fangs w. Missile Launchers - joined by Wolf Guard in Termie Armor w. Cyclone Missile Launcher
- Laserback
5 Long Fangs w. Missile Launchers
- AssCan Razorback
5 Grey Hunters (Melta, Powerfist) w. Rune Priest (Living Lightning, JoWW)
- AssCan Razorback
5 Grey Hunters (Powerfist) w. Rune Priest (Murderous Hurricane, Tempest's Wrath, MoR)
- AssCan Razorback
5 Grey Hunters (Mark of Wulfen)
- AssCan Razorback
5 Grey Hunters
- AssCan Razorback

Oh well, you know you're going to face a bunch of Space Wolf Razorspam/Longfang things sooner or later in any tournament. Also, I end up on a desert terrain table again - so I guess Duchess was just really excited assaulting a desert planet.

I think my opponent actually won turn selection, doesn't really matter, in any case I end up with second turn either by his choice or mine. He claimed the right side of the table and I got the left. His objective went in the building near the middle of the board, and mine went in the bottom left corner.


Long Fangs setting up, Razorbacks spread around them.

There's a Rune Priest and squad in each painted Razorback - Long Fangs and Cyclone Termie Wolf Guard set up on ridge line - they will be a punishing part of his offense.


Njal and some more Wolf Guard drop in via Drop Pod - again, a nice benefit to being all reserve.

Lay of the land at the end of Turn 1.
Turn 2 he doesn't do much besides start hoofing Njal and Terms towards my objective.
Then comes a noise of descending Raiders...

My first reserve roll is...mediocre. I get 2 Troop, 1 Elite, and 2 Razorwings.


My drops all come in pretty accurate though.


A poor decision from me - I decide to try and bust up Njal's unit with my Razorwing (killing him is a secondary objective). That said - probably should have dumped the damage into that Long Fang squad instead - derp!

Njal's squad is down to him and a hammer. You can also see that the Long Fangs in the upper right was also whittled down to 2 (falling back, so they'll spend next turn not shooting as well).
My Trueborn, Raiders, and Warriors manage to take off a couple of assault cannons from the various Razorbacks, but don't pop anything.

During Turn 2 the Space Wolves...more or less kill everything that dropped in. One of the Razorwings survives by just being immobilized (the other is assaulted and smashed by Njal and hammer buddy), and one squad of Warriors is still squatting in cover. I get a...limited drop in again on Turn 3. One Warrior squad, one Trueblaster squad, and the last Razorwing.


Here you can see a rather...interesting scatter on a Warrior squad drop - beads represent Warrior's actual locations - models are protected due to wobbly model syndrome.


Here you can see the Warrior squad from the first drop wave has managed to pop the Razorback and force the squad inside into the open.

The fresh Razorwing blows apart the squad holding his objective - only one Grey Hunter is left holding it.

My other shooting is okay, various vehicles are hampered and squads of Wolves whittled away at. The weak Long Fang squad is killed off, a couple of vehicles wrecked, not a bad turn, just not everything I wanted. I know I'm taking casualties, but I'm focusing on getting him off his objective and being ready to snag mine and his.

In his turn he brings some more fury, though he is somewhat limited due to a lot of his stuff being dead. The Long Fangs on the ridge continue to reap a hefty toll on the lives of my Raiders. Living Lightning and Murderous Hurricanes are thrown around with reckless abandon as Njal's freezing storm (on the desert world) continues to hamper me slightly.


In a fascinating bit of sadness, this assault by the Grey Hunters (with Wulfen) will hold for almost the entire game, as the Sybarite and his squad actually kill one of the Wolves and hold the line for a surprising period of time.

On Turn 4 I roll two 1's on reserve rolls and only get half the units I hoped/wanted to... :(
On the plus side, apparently Duchess finally decided things were right for her to deign to grace the table with her presence - and she and her squad finally murdered the TL Lascannon Razorback that had been annoying me all game.


On his 4 he did some more damage and kept pressing forward, knowing he had to claim my objective. His Long Fangs sadly realized that even though they were murdering vehicles there were so many scoring units it was a questionable value to keep killing them. Still - lack of targets just has them pop the Duchess' Raider and probably something else too. The Grey Hunters running around start trying to rip apart Trueborn and Warrior squads as they strive towards claiming or at least contesting my objective - he still holds his own.



On Turn 5 I finally get my whole army in - joy!
You can note on the left side that I had some focused firepower slice Njall down. I also have some Warriors spread out and basically lock out his Wolves from having any chance of getting in to my objective.



After consolidation protected by cover and holding the objective - The Duchess and her squad had stormed the Grey Hunter's position, and she easily dispatched him with an expert flick of a poison sword. The Game ends with the Long Fang's master of their shooting lane, but lacking the ability to help any Grey Hunters get to either objective.

At the end of this game I breath a happy sigh that I managed to take apart a Razorspam list.
As stands going into the final match I am currently in 3rd place - and I'm aware that at least two of the other top armies are Chaos Space Marines (a player whose very list I'd played with this army and stomped handily - huzzah!) and a fellow DE player (using Venom Spam - a list I think my list is quite well built to punish and kill)

So, with spirits high at an easy final we head for the final game...

==============================================================

...and I get to fight Space Wolf Razorspam again. Huzzah!

Round 3
Mission - 5 Objectives
Deployment - Pitched Battle
Opponent - Marcus Scipio's Space Wolves

Rune Priest (Living Lightning, Murderous Hurricane)
Wolf Guard Pack (split up amongst his Hunter squads)
- 2x P.Fist and Combi-melta
- 1x Combi Melta
- 1x Power Weapon and melta bombs
- 1x Power Weapon
- Razorback w. H.Bolter
2x Dreadnaught w. H.Flamer and Autocannon
2x 8 Grey Hunters w. Wolf Standard, Meltagun
- Rhino
5 Grey Hunters w. meltagun
- Rhino
5 Grey Hunters w. flamer
- Laserback
5 Grey Hunters w. flamer
- H. Bolter Razorback
2x 5 Longfangs w. Missile Launchers
- Las/Plas Razorback
5 Longfangs w. Missile Launchers
- Laserback
2x Landspeeder w. H.Flamer and multimelta

Basically I'd fought this list (or close to, he changed it to be slightly more aggressive losing Bjon and gaining the Landspeeders, maybe some other stuff but that's all I really recall as a change) the previous Thursday and had lost a tight battle. I'd told myself the reason I'd lost was that I hadn't started on the board when I'd won the dice off - so this time, when I won first turn again, I did. He went full reserve. I debated and discussed just flat outing and blocking off his side edge but didn't (partly because I didn't actually think I had enough mech to pull it off, I'm nice, but I still might have gone for that in another situation. Note to self: actually test out and see how many Raiders it takes to cleanly block other side of board )


The board - the Bolter Beaach markers are objectives, so is the pile of sandbags and the crater (you can all help me mock him for forgetting to bring objective markers )

Here's my initial movements;








He had a soft showing Turn 2 (only 3 things came on)


Here's a landspeeder that DSed in - failing to scratch the paint on the Razorwing.

The Lazorback I...think managed to pop off a Dissie from the Razorwing, he might have hurt this Raider too, I don't recall. Not much damage at all, and with only three things out...well;


The Rhino is wrecked, and the Lazorback (with Long Fangs still inside) is immobilized, shaken, and has had its lascannon blown off) The gone to ground Librarian is all that remains of the 11 man squad that had disembarked from the Rhino after it was wrecked.

...then basically his whole army rolled on Turn 3 and this happened;


This picture shows an event he changed, he switched out the Rhino with a Razorback and disembarked that squad instead (I gave permission)

The left side of his line.

There's the Razor situation.


DE do not approve of this!

I passed that leadership test after eating the flamer.

Trueborn get punished by a flamer as well, and Long Fangs hustle into a position to hopefully do...anything.

On my turn...well...when in doubt, keep attacking



Okay, not a lot of pictures of my attack, though I did do some solid damage, dropping some Razors, the Landspeeder, and shaking and stunning a few things. At the end we actually only swung 4 Turns (I lost track of time, and thought I'd get a 5th turn - derp! Too much chatting and joking, not enough playing)
At the end of my 4th I was winning (holding one objective to zero) - but he asked for another turn and I gave it to him because that would be 'fair' (in retrospect - since no one could attack till his Turn 2, functionally I gave him an unfair advantage because he got three turns and I got really only two - something I hadn't thought about till after I got home and was writing stuff up - derp again! I was unfair to myself! I need to remember to be a bit more cutthroat when I want to win )


In any case, end result was he managed to edge it into a tie on objectives (basically by just driving that one Rhino forward - he didn't knock me off it, so we both contested - and that allowed me to pick up a small win via an edge in Victory points (huzzah!) Though, as an asside those VPs were...complicated. I think neither Marcus or I should ever do taxes for anyone - it went from a near tie in VPs, to me winning by 300, to me losing by 200, to me winning again by some other amount (about 150?)

I end the Tournament in 4th place (only 3 points from 3rd place, and 5 points from 2nd...though about 12 from 1st) If I'd ended on my turn in the last game it would have equated to an additional pile of points that would have put me in scoring position. On the flip side, at least I probably got decent sportmanship scores for being a pleasant pushover, which also keeps my blood pressure down

So, final results;

1st Place - Dark Eldar
2nd Place - Chaos Space Marines (Nurgle)
3rd Place - Grey Knights (oh, I dream of knocking you out of that slot sit)
4th Place - Dark Eldar
5th Place - Space Wolves.

Not a bad Xenos showing, with CSM probably being the only shock up there. I also went the whole tournament with straight wins (which not everyone placed above me managed) - but the scoring was totally based off the Battle Points, so W/L record didn't matter. My downfall was just not quite eking out any superlative wins which could have netted me more points.


FINAL THOUGHTS ON VIABILITY OF LIST

1. I want to do more testing.

2. It suffers a bit in KP missions just because it's a little slow off the starting line. I always felt like I didn't table people as well as I do with my other competitive lists - DE don't really want extra handicaps vs. Annihilation Missions.

3. Sometimes it *is* a good idea not to do the Deep Strike. A lot depends on the enemy army, and also whether or not you win the first turn roll. But the army can do a solid alpha strike from starting on table - I think the DS strategy benefits if the terrain favors it, and if the enemy army is one maybe too capable of laying out too much of your army at once, because then the limited stuff on the table can actually be a benefit.

4. I weep for the lack of assault potency in it. Pretty much it's just the Duke and that's it. Yeah, the Razors are good, but...dang...sometimes you just want to be able to assault stuff and know you can win as opposed to just hopefully hug them for a few turns.

5. I honestly think that I want to dump the lances off that last Razorwing and run it as all Dissie. Generally speaking - I found the list as I built it to suffer a bit for lack of anti infantry (egads!) Anoth possibility is to run a few Venoms (2-3 I think) in the list. Downside to that is it can blunt your anti tank initial strike.

Basically, for anti-infantry, the Razors did *great* with the missiles, but after that (especially vs. MSU) you just wanted to be able to pump some shots into a 5 man squad - and usually I was doing that with Blasters and stuff, because I lacked any real anti-infantry tools. Blasters are great, and will kill stuff, they just do it slower than Venoms or Dissie Razors do. There's a really delicate balance here, I think it will take some toying with to make it feel really optimal.

6. I basically think this army is markedly less competitive to a fine tuned Kabal army that is focused on alpha strike. I would also tend to suggest that a Raider Rush Wych Cult is probably more competitive as well. I think this list is *substantially* more competitive than WWP and any COven that I've ever seen or created in my own head. So, does this list redefine competition level DE? No. Does it show that there are competitive builds that can still be created without going Venomspam+Haywire Wyches - yes, there are other options still out there to be found, especially as the meta continues to evolve.

Great report. Pretty tough to win all your games and not place, but I guess that happens in 3 round tournaments.

I definitely think this build is competitive, Deep Striking gives you plenty of options and importantly gives you range for your anti tank units turn 1. I definitely agree with 3, but I'm not sure how you can get around 4 with this kind of build (might just be a personal preference thing, its certainly possible to play lists with no assault units). For the anti infantry ability I tend to agree as well, you have insane burst damage from the missiles but after that you probably need something more. Either swapping to Dissies or changing a couple of Raiders to Venoms would do the job.

Regarding it being less competitive than a standard Kabal list; this list really doesn't seem that different to a standard Kabal list tbh. You exchange Ravagers for Razorwings (anti tank for anti infantry) and Venoms for Raiders (anti infantry for anti tank) and your net firepower seems pretty similar. The main difference is that you have more options for when you are going second, which is never a bad thing.

Powerguy wrote:I definitely agree with 3, but I'm not sure how you can get around 4 with this kind of build (might just be a personal preference thing, its certainly possible to play lists with no assault units).

Yeah, I mostly felt it facing MSU - at that stage the burst was still good - because you do basically want 4 Missiles to eat 10 MEQ, but sometimes there's just 4-5 MEQ standing there - you want to fire your weapons at the vehicles still laying around, but also realize a way to deal with them is that it would be swell to assault them. Maybe I just need to train myself to fire lances first - which goes against how I like to play, but would leave the Troops open to at least fire at infantry which they would be okay at working over.

Powerguy wrote:For the anti infantry ability I tend to agree as well, you have insane burst damage from the missiles but after that you probably need something more. Either swapping to Dissies or changing a couple of Raiders to Venoms would do the job.

Yeah - going forward I think I'd run the third Razor with Dissies and not Lances, definitely. We'll have to see how the balance works after that - usually I saw that my opponents seemed to favor shooting the Dissie Ravagers, and I think it was an awareness (concious or not) from them that they didn't like what those Dissies were doing to their exposed infantry.

Powerguy wrote:Regarding it being less competitive than a standard Kabal list; this list really doesn't seem that different to a standard Kabal list tbh. You exchange Ravagers for Razorwings (anti tank for anti infantry) and Venoms for Raiders (anti infantry for anti tank) and your net firepower seems pretty similar. The main difference is that you have more options for when you are going second, which is never a bad thing.

It's hard to put into exact words the difference. It's one of pacing mostly.

Functionally I'm bringing the same amount of firepower - but I'm trying to kill my opponent in approximately half the time since I'm really not getting my army on board till really Turn 3. Yeah, he has less time to kill me but it's an equal exchange. Imagine playing a regular Kabal list and always having the game end on Turn 3-4 and I think you'll grok my issue there more fully.

I actually think this list would do very well versus a regular Kabal list - because one way or another the regular Kabal is pretty much ceding initiative to the Duke's forces...the flipside is I think there are some builds that a regular Kabal will do better versus than this list, the joy of the paper/rock/scissor meta game currently.

One thing I would suggest is taking Night Shields on the Razorwings, even if its in place of the Flickerfields (finding the points for both is hard). Because the missiles have 48" range they are the only unit you have which can reasonably expect to actually out-range Missile spam/Autocannon spam lists for a turn, which is a incredibly valuable. Completely avoiding being shot > 5++ if you can get your positioning right. This means you only have to worry about units which push forward into the midfield with long ranged shooting (not that many around) or Outflanking/Deep Striking type threats (which you can't do much about either way and you can usually quickly remove them in return). Against MSU this would let you drop 2 missiles in your first round of shooting and another 2 the following turn (probably combined with a 12" move forward to get into range with the rest of your weapons), rather than having to dump off all 4 in a single turn against 5 Marines to make sure they get used before you die.

Your list was not one I wanted to have to face... I was suprised that there were no wyches when you took the duke, but after watching some of your games, it played very well! Congrats on your 3 wins, and i am glad i played chaos last round instead of you!

quite an interesting list there Thor! Good reps

Powerguy wrote:One thing I would suggest is taking Night Shields on the Razorwings, even if its in place of the Flickerfields [snip] Against MSU this would let you drop 2 missiles in your first round of shooting and another 2 the following turn (probably combined with a 12" move forward to get into range with the rest of your weapons), rather than having to dump off all 4 in a single turn against 5 Marines to make sure they get used before you die.

That is, of course, the niggle with the Razor - you have to get those missiles off before death or you failed in taking advantage of the value of the unit.
I think you have some good points with the NS suggestion...I'm not sure if it works for a DS list though. Most opponents with a few braincells attached will advance forward at least enough to try to gak with your ability to deepstike safely - bringing most of their weapons into threat range of the bulk of the map. I could see it slowing down AssCan spam pretty functionally.

I'll take it into consideration - I do have 120 points tied up in Flickerfields and I'm still debating with myself if that's the best use of those points or if I should be using them elsewhere (S.Cannons on Razorwings, more troops with Duke, ect. ect.) - that's certainly the slush fund of points on the list though.

Anglacon wrote:Your list was not one I wanted to have to face... I was suprised that there were no wyches when you took the duke, but after watching some of your games, it played very well! Congrats on your 3 wins, and i am glad i played chaos last round instead of you!

Chris, right? Awesome, another local Dakkite!

Yeah, I *wish* I'd faced either you or John's Chaos (if nothing else, I wanted to play another of the fully painted armies, your Warp Beasts looked amazing ) - my list would have been in a much stronger situation than versus Razorspam as I out-saturated John, and I think my higher level of anti-tank would have been a strong advantage versus your list, which couldn't de-mech me as effectively I think. Still, congrats for taking 1st, if it wasn't going to be me I'm happy it was a fellow DE player. I'd love to have Wyches, but I just don't see how they work with DS tactics - I think the Duke does so much that sometimes people get overwhelmed and try to use all his abilities at once - in my opinion it's better to focus on 1-2 of them and let those work for you.

Zid wrote:quite an interesting list there Thor! Good reps

Thank you! I'm hoping to show that though the common DE builds are indeed amazingly good, that our Codex does have more depth to it than Venoms+Ravagers.

I don't see why you would ever Deep Strike the Razorwings. They have a massive footprint for one thing so getting them in safely is hard, but more importantly they have 48" range and an entire board edge to work with so can already hit anything they want to the turn they arrive. With 12" range any LOS blocking terrain has to be pretty massive to avoid them completely.

Personally I wouldn't drop the Flickerfields entirely. They are particularly helpful in this list. Due to the nature of reserves you will often get small chunks of your army turn 2 so with a couple of lucky Flickerfield saves you can negate or at least partially negate your opponents initial counter punch and then snowball as the rest of your list arrives turn 3.

I'm not saying to DS the Razorwing (I'm not sure if you can really tell - but I never did, they always went in regular reserve)

What I'm saying when I call it a DS list - is that with 1-2 turns of movement the enemy has substantial time to claim a midfield position. Reference game #2 in this batrep - his assault cannon Razorbacks moved to a place where they would have very functional targeting capability on my Razorwings pretty much regardless of where I brought them on. So, with the DS list I feel NSs are weakened as far as avoiding long range anti-mech firepower.

Great rep's Thor; good amount of details, pictures and narrative - very nicely balanced. Cheers man, was a pleasure to read. All interesting games too!
Great humour as well, particularly in the ever-present crotch shots.
Interesting list too, I'm impressed by how well it performed and hopefully people will begin to respect Razorwings a bit more...
Great reports Thor!

Crotch shots? Is that why he kept asking me to stand there and "block the overhead light"? Very shady...

Minor quibble, in that I didn't end have an "extra" turn, just the bottom of the game turn...

That being said it is a very nice list and provides a scary match-up. I do believe there is not enough anti-infantry in the list however. Once the razors have discharged their missiles (which hurt a lot), I think you struggle to kill guys. If we played turn 5 and maybe 6 or 7 think you would of been falling back strafing my guys as I tried to box you in. That being said I'm not sure what the answer is. The most obvious would be a few venoms instead of raiders, but that detracts from the power of the alpha strike....

While after the first game we played you probably thought the flicker fields were a waste of points, I do think they proved their worth in this game. Would not be so hasty to throw them away.

Just Dave wrote:Great rep's Thor; good amount of details, pictures and narrative - very nicely balanced. Cheers man, was a pleasure to read. All interesting games too!
Great humour as well, particularly in the ever-present crotch shots.
Interesting list too, I'm impressed by how well it performed and hopefully people will begin to respect Razorwings a bit more...
Great reports Thor!

Thank you very much!

Marcus Scipio wrote:Crotch shots? Is that why he kept asking me to stand there and "block the overhead light"? Very shady...

No, that's why I asked you to perform pelvic thrusts to help me gauge focus.

Marcus Scipio wrote:Minor quibble, in that I didn't end have an "extra" turn, just the bottom of the game turn...

You definitely just finished out a Game Turn - but here's the breakdown of what I meant.
Both of us Turn 1 - nothing.
Me Turn 2 - nothing.
You Turn 2 - shooting me.
Me Turn 3 - shooting you
You Turn 3 - shooting me
Me Turn 4- shooting you
You Turn 4 - shooting me

You got to shoot at me three times, I got to shoot at you twice. That's the "extra" in extra turn.

Marcus Scipio wrote:Once the razors have discharged their missiles (which hurt a lot), I think you struggle to kill guys. If we played turn 5 and maybe 6 or 7 think you would of been falling back strafing my guys as I tried to box you in. That being said I'm not sure what the answer is. The most obvious would be a few venoms instead of raiders, but that detracts from the power of the alpha strike....

Yeah, I felt that too - I could kill Marines on foot, but it was a chore. Definitely want Dissies and not Lances on that third Ravager. I could pack in some Venoms, but, yeah, that increases the chances of doing something like 2x Venoms and 3x Razorwings for my first reserve roll, and that would be obnoxious. There is a good balance in there somewhere though, I just need to find it - more Dissies will help because I'll no longer have that weaker vs. infantry
Razorwing, but I think I probably need to puzzle out at least one more thing...

I wish Wyches could still take 2x Blasters