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How are they on the table?

1- I see the tomb stalker as a decent anti tank unit for the necrons, but most importantly a scary looking target that the opponent will want to shoot at, letting the bulk of the army move into place to deliver the real firepower. Aside from being a distraction unit, what else can id do, and how should I use it to make it an effective heavy support choice?

2- The problem I see with the Achilles is it's indecisive armament, with it's thunder-fire cannon sticking out the front (making it look like the tank equivalent of the A-10 thunderbolt) doing lots'o anti-infantry/ MC fire from long range and its close range tank killing sponson mounted TL multi meltas. This makes it difficult for me to decide how to use it, but I suppose it's great defensive abilities offset this a bit, any tips?

I'm not sure about the tomb stalker, although it is quite a nice model, but I can talk about the Achillies.

The achillies is a complete pain to kill, as well as having the armour of a standard Land Raider it is also immune to many of the standard ways in which you could kill a land raider. The best way to kill the thing is to hit it in close combat with a monstrous creature or maybe get lucky with something of high strength. The only issue with this is that if your CC unit doesn't kill the achillies, it is going to be reduced to paste by the Thunderfire and the Multi-meltas, and so they basically have one shot to kill it, or die trying.

So what you can do, is stick a cheap troops choice inside the achillies, park it on an objective, and watch as everything bounces off it.

Hope this helps.

The Tomb Stalker looks cool, Deep Strikes, can take a punch, and will brutally murder heavy infantry and vehicles in close combat. Use it to hunt down pesky artillery, Broadsides, Devastators, Dark Reapers, etc. hiding on the other side of the table.

The Achilles is a horribly tough piece of light artillery; Rampage up there has the right of ideal uses for it. If you find yourself on the receiving end of one, get up close to it as fast as possible and hit it with power fists and Haywire attacks. Or ignore it, if the terrain is situated in such a way that you can manage to; the Achilles is the sort of thing you're not killing without expending a lot of resources. Alternately, combine fire from a load of Fire Prisms or shoot it with an orbital bombardment.

The Achilles is a wonderfully difficult piece of equipment to kill on the table. I've got a list with 3 of them, each carrying 5 tactical marines and a tech-marine with a Harness inside of it who fixes it while he rides, making them both self-repairing and scoring.

The mix in armament is actually wonderful, mostly because of the Power of the Machine Spirit. You can Machine Spirit your Thunderfire Cannon at some Infantry, and then put your multi-meltas into a tank.

The coolest part of the Achilles is that you can slap Siege Shields on the front of them, so that they really can go anywhere they like, ignoring everything and driving for their targets.

Panzerboy26 wrote: I've got a list with 3 of them, each carrying 5 tactical marines and a tech-marine with a Harness inside of it who fixes it while he rides, making them both self-repairing and scoring.

Not sure you can do that, only superheavy vehicles may transport two different squads (as the techpriest isn't an IC, he can't join the squad). So either the techpriest or the marines are going to have to get out and hoof it.

The achilles is no doubt very hard to kill or disable when there is a tech-marine with servitors inside it. But after paying all those points for those units, is it really worth dropping ~450+points for a self repairing thunderfire cannon and two multimeltas? That's 450+ points of units your enemy will be taking (nearly the cost of a Baneblade or three Leman Russ tanks yikes!) that will be attacking the rest of your army.

So whilst it's undeniably good, it's also so expensive that it's almost not worth taking....

Snarky wrote:

Panzerboy26 wrote: I've got a list with 3 of them, each carrying 5 tactical marines and a tech-marine with a Harness inside of it who fixes it while he rides, making them both self-repairing and scoring.

Not sure you can do that, only superheavy vehicles may transport two different squads (as the techpriest isn't an IC, he can't join the squad). So either the techpriest or the marines are going to have to get out and hoof it.

The achilles is no doubt very hard to kill or disable when there is a tech-marine with servitors inside it. But after paying all those points for those units, is it really worth dropping ~450+points for a self repairing thunderfire cannon and two multimeltas? That's 450+ points of units your enemy will be taking (nearly the cost of a Baneblade or three Leman Russ tanks yikes!) that will be attacking the rest of your army.

So whilst it's undeniably good, it's also so expensive that it's almost not worth taking....

You could slap two MotF in there instead. Of course, then you are looking at an even heftier price tag.

Sounds like an incredibly boring army to play against for any opponent, and when you meet those 9 broadsides or the 3x shunting dreadknight army, you are screwed.

Snarky wrote:

Panzerboy26 wrote: I've got a list with 3 of them, each carrying 5 tactical marines and a tech-marine with a Harness inside of it who fixes it while he rides, making them both self-repairing and scoring.

Not sure you can do that, only superheavy vehicles may transport two different squads (as the techpriest isn't an IC, he can't join the squad). So either the techpriest or the marines are going to have to get out and hoof it.

The achilles is no doubt very hard to kill or disable when there is a tech-marine with servitors inside it. But after paying all those points for those units, is it really worth dropping ~450+points for a self repairing thunderfire cannon and two multimeltas? That's 450+ points of units your enemy will be taking (nearly the cost of a Baneblade or three Leman Russ tanks yikes!) that will be attacking the rest of your army.

So whilst it's undeniably good, it's also so expensive that it's almost not worth taking....

The bolded part is correct but the part in italics is incorrect. The teachmarine is indeed an IC.

400 pts for a rock hard objective camper is quite a nice investment really. It still puts out more dakka than 2 tactical squads which would cost more. If things changes in 6ed and you have to disembark inorder to claim an objective it will not be worth as much.

tedurur wrote:

Snarky wrote:

Panzerboy26 wrote: I've got a list with 3 of them, each carrying 5 tactical marines and a tech-marine with a Harness inside of it who fixes it while he rides, making them both self-repairing and scoring.

Not sure you can do that, only superheavy vehicles may transport two different squads (as the techpriest isn't an IC, he can't join the squad). So either the techpriest or the marines are going to have to get out and hoof it.

The achilles is no doubt very hard to kill or disable when there is a tech-marine with servitors inside it. But after paying all those points for those units, is it really worth dropping ~450+points for a self repairing thunderfire cannon and two multimeltas? That's 450+ points of units your enemy will be taking (nearly the cost of a Baneblade or three Leman Russ tanks yikes!) that will be attacking the rest of your army.

So whilst it's undeniably good, it's also so expensive that it's almost not worth taking....

The bolded part is correct but the part in italics is incorrect. The teachmarine is indeed an IC.

Argh.. I was thinking of the IG techpriest

damn adeptus mechanicus! they bamboozled me again!

I'm a very competitive player, and I'm not terribly inclined to cater to people who don't like to play against competitive lists. (Thankfully, it hasn't been a problem so far.)

A list with three LR Achillies is just gross to me, and I wouldn't play against it. It just makes the game stupid. I still have to tip my cap to Panzerboy for his excellent bastardry skills, especially with for the Techmarines to up the frustration coefficient.

My bastardry skills are indeed second to none .

The list at 1500pts is:

Master of the Forge

Tech-Marine w/ Servo-Harness

Tech Marine w/ Servo-Harness

10 Tactical Marines w/ Multimelta & Flamer

5 Tactical Marines

Achilles w/ Dozerblade

Achilles w/ Dozerblade

Achilles w/ Dozerblade

1500pts on the nose.


While the points invested into each Achilles is hefty, and the killing-power for that investment isn't exactly super, the list is a nightmare simply because there is nothing to shoot at but Achilles, as that's all that's deployed, 3 Achilles and what rides inside of each of them. It boils the game down to what few weapons the opponent has that could possibly hurt the Achilles taking shots at them, and me focusing firepower to remove those weapons, after which I simply kill what I like because nothing can hurt the Achilles.

It's far less bastardly in 2,000pts, simply because there is stuff outside of the Achilles to kill. Also, having played it a few times I can say that Railguns and Necron Scarabs eat the list for lunch, so it's not something that I would bring to a tournament that I was seriously trying to win, what few events allow FW units in the first place. I mostly bought them because I love the Salamanders, and got a bunch of FW and CH bitz to bling them out all chapter specific.

And yes, Techmarines are ICs, so they can join the tactical squads.