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Alright, so obviously I fell in love with the short story about Barabas Dantioch in the HH.
I'd like to, inspired by that story, put together a Heresy Era Iron Warriors Loyalist army that castles well and remains somewhat competetive, not like tournament winning gak, but good enough to win a few friendly games in my arena.

For those of you aware of the fluff:


It dawned on me that not everyone will know what the hell I'm talking about. So instead of focusing on the iron warriors aspect, I'll just ask -

If you were building a Predominantly defensive SM list, that could answer the four major threats (Hordes, Mech, elite armies/MC armies, and Death Stars) featuring at least 20 Power Armor dudes, how would you do it? 2000 points, best defense possible?

Vindicators would fit the fluff... otherwise I'm not sure, depends just how fluff-centric you want it to go.

But personally I'd say leave out the scouts, and avoid landspeeders.

Oh, BT might be a good option as well, now that I'm familiarizing myself with the codex; but they seem more suited to flat out aggression rather than pure defense. Thoughts?


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Vindicators are a great choice, but with the 24" limit on the gun I'm thinking it gets reserved in a defensive list or deployed out of Los. Correct? Fluff-wise Im not trying to adhere to the force in the story, but I definitely mean to have an "anti-siege" list. A single vindicator makes a nice killer app.


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Alright, To get the ball rolling, here's a quick and dirty list with VSM as a base.

HQ
Barrabas Dantioch (Counts as Vulkan He'Stan) (190pts)

Elites
Ironclad Dreadnought (170pts)
DCCW, Hammer, Meltagun, Flamer, Deathwind Drop Pod

Ironclad Dreadnought (170pts)
DCCW, Hammer, Meltagun, Flamer, Deathwind Drop Pod

7xSternguard (305pts)
4x Combi Melta, 2x Meltagun
Sgt W/ Powerfist, Combi-melta
Deathwind Drop Pod

Troops
Tactical Squad (235pts)
10x, Sgt W/Pfist, MM/FL, HB Razorback

Tactical Squad (235pts)
10x, Sgt W/Pfist, MM/FL, HB Razorback


Fast Attack
10x Assault Squad (235pts)
2x Flamer, Sgt W/Pfist

Heavy Support
Devastator Squad (245pts)
3xML, 1xLC
Las/Plas Razorback

Thunderfire Cannon (100pts)

Vindicator (115pts)

Anymore info. about the heresy fluff. I wrote a pretty Iron hands list recently it may fit the fluff.

Vulkan upgrades short ranged weapons not sure he is right for you.
Black templars make the best gun line, this will be nicely defensive. They have shooty things in each FoC slot you just pick a selection. Also their techmarines are good if it is fluffy.
If you like footslogging Blood Angels could make an interesting and for BA unusual list, lots of marines with heavy weapons and FNP -sternguard and dev. squads, scouts and even tactical squads!
Space wolves could be good, maybe look at that Iron hands list, it feels defensive and has servitors and techmarines.

For me defensive means 3 thunderfire cannons and this adds to the cyborgness. This leads to the following list:
HQ 100
Librarian

Elite 375
125 rifledread
125 rifledread
125 rifledread

Heavy 300
300 3 thunderfire cannons

Troops 960
185 tac squad with melta and lascannon(10 marines)
75 razorback with TL lascannon
175 tac squad with melta and ML(10 marines)
75 razorback with TL lascannon
175 tac squad with melta and ML(10 marines)
75 razorback with TL lascannon
200 Telion, rocket, the 8 others with sniper rifles

Warsmiths are tech marines essentially. The master of the forge list, Imperial fist type lists etc all kinda fit the IW feel since really the if and iw are mirror images in a lot of ways.

Well, IF and IW are supposed to opposites, right? IF are the siege army and IW are the Anti-Siege, correct?

Black Templars gunline? I've never come across it. How does that work?

Blood Angels and Space Wolves are very much in the running - FNP devastators seem awesome, as do Grey Hunters as a defensive line.

Vindicators, basilisks, war smith(tech marine) etc are all very iw.
The bt gunline uses the heck out of tankhunter so their cml are str 9. One good thing too is they get potms etc. SO maybe not entirely defensive but very killy. BA and SW arent exactly defensive but do have so very good suriviability tricks. BA spamming fnp makes small arms fire pretty useless vs them.

@mfletch, that was a nice iron hands list.

I want to avoid spam, like 3x Riflemen 3x TFC; while It may be effective, I feel like a savvy player could take one look at my list and come up with an effective counter. I'd rather have a lot of tactical options that work well together.
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In terms of spamming it is just a question of target saturation and giving units to help razorbacks and units to help the 5 man missile groups.

Grey Hunters are short ranged which leads to going forward, unless you go for razorbacks.

BT gunline works by sitting back and shooting. You have a variety of assault units and potms vindis but you can just bring units to bombard the enemy.

This could fit the fluff (that was an awesome story! Post some pics when you're done!) while staying semi-competitive, you can sit back and turtle up or make a forward push with pods, bikes and razorback.

HQ:
MotF, combi-plasma, TH, bike
Captain, SS, LC, bike
Command squad, champion, 1LC, 1SS, bikes

Elites:
Ironclad, DCCW, seismic hammer, pod
Ironclad, HF, DCCW, hurricane bolter, pod

Troops:
Tact squad, chainsword, plasma gun, ML, razorback
Tact squad, PW, flamer, ML, razorback
Tact squad, PF, meltagun, ML, pod

Heavy:
Vindicator
TFC
Devastator squad, 3xML, 1 lascannon (use with signum)

Total: 2000pts

MFletch,
With you so far, trying to get the hang of BT listing. It's a bit confusing, also none of the HQ choices seem to be a good fluff choice. I do really like all the techmarine options though. Still, no devastators, no artillery to speak of, limit 1 venerable dread; the mechanic with BT seems to be charge forward; where I'm looking for a list that fights with its back to a wall.

Blood angels might actually be a better choice, I don't like the low leadership on space wolves for a defensive force. What about dark angels, should I bother?

Phoenix - I've never used a bike command squad before, if I'm going to use a bike capain, shouldn't I be running bike troops too, instead of ML/FL troops?

If I were going to lose the Sternguard, I'd probably want to replace them and the assault squad for a vanguard vet squad.

Have you though about Blood Angels?

They can field a bunch of Dreads, fast vehicles, and have the Stormraven!

I threw in the bikes for extra mobility and to create a decent close combat squad, while troops on bikes would fit tactically, they wouldn't fit in with the fluff.
You could scrap the bikes, captain and command squad and throw in a well-equipped vanguard either with jumpacks or in a transport, the equipment options would allow you to gear them out as you wish, create a good assault unit and still fit the fluff, maybe throw in a chaplain for good measure (forgeworld has some cool Mk V Heresy armour for both tactical and assault squads).

Cheers.

I like Kantor and scoring stern guard with special issue ammo and 2 heavy weapons and combat squads.... couple this with a MOF to get heavy support Iron cads and bolster defenses and your golden....

What was the point cap?

Is this form over function or the reverse? Your later ideas for BA SW don't seem to fit IW at all is why I ask?

Yeah, I fully plan on taking advantage of Forgeworld for this army; Forgeworld, Chapterhouse, and shapeways...

Blood angels, which HQ, just a terminator captain, huh? I guess Death Company make sense as a firewall, 2 Fast Vindicators seems nice, anda devastator squad? 2 furioso dreadnoughts and a trio of priests? Maybe a Death Dread as well? Troops I guess remain basic tac marines, Melta/ML ? Maybe one assault squad, or a vanguard vet squad? I'd need some more Long Range Armor cracking.
I don't know,How do you castle with blood angels? I don't think it fits.



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Red Corsair wrote:I like Kantor and scoring stern guard with special issue ammo and 2 heavy weapons and combat squads.... couple this with a MOF to get heavy support Iron cads and bolster defenses and your golden....

What was the point cap?

Is this form over function or the reverse? Your later ideas for BA SW don't seem to fit IW at all is why I ask?

I'd rather have a good defensive army with few aggro tricks rather than compromise by trying to cram an aggressive army into a defensive mold. I just don't want to rule anything out in case I'm missing something.
The truth is, I think that C:SM is probably the best fit, thanks to MotF / TFC, and Ironclads. I'm just not super familiar with BA, SW, BT, and DA except what I've played against; being a GK player is Spehss Marines enough for me.

2000 points is the goal, ideally I could scale it down for 1850 or 1500 Without making it useless, but 2000 is the target.


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It could be cool to play Pedro Kantor as Tauro Nicodemus and MotF as Warsmith Dantioch

This might be kind of off topic, Though, I could see why vindicator but if you wanted to get a bit more interesting maybe a...

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Land_Raider_Ares#.T0AEHvEgcSo

It's not something the IW made, I'm not sure on the time line ether but as far as tactic's goes I think the IW would buy into one of these. Depends on how serious you are on actual fluff or tactical fluff I guess. But you wanted Anti-Siege and that's what came to my mind. I think the Rifle dreads and Thunderfire cannons are great for this too. Just throwing it out as an idea though hopefully the list works out for you Junk. Love the fluffy lists...

-Sincerely Viri

That Ares does seem perfect. I was hoping to keep this Core though, I don't have many arenas to play with loose rulesets.
Still, seems bad ass. Thanks!


Would I have to run 3x each of tfc and riflemen to make that work? I think I'm going to commit to at least 1 devastator squad just to get those models and heavy weapons in there (although I don't mind heavy weapons on the sternguard) 3 TFC's just seems silly. And Riflemen just seem toothless in CC, I think I'd definitely want 1 DCCW in the event I need to battle back or deploy forward to stall. Also, the Ironclad itself is so 'iron' that I don't think I can't play at least 1 to represent the character Vastopol.

I don't hate scout bikers either; it's a nice siege-breaking unit - infiltrating and scout moving for a first turn melta-bomb or combi-melta/power fist.


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Thinking about a stern-pod with Lysander and Kantor as Dantioch and Nicodemus, flanked by 2 Pod-Ironclads.

Lysander kind of works as Dantioch because of his 'Bolster Defenses' and bolter-drill seems really good for sternguard.

Kantor allows the unit to be scoring if I choose to use his chapter tactics, but otherwise turns the entire unit into a sort of deathstar when combined with lysander.

Also, I like the idea of an orbital bombardment.

What about HKM spam? Viable?

With 3 razorbacks and a vindicator that's 4, and the ironclads can have 2 each for 9.

With a TFC and Lysander I can bolster two ruins, stick the devastators in one and the TFC in another. Combat squad my tac squads to add 1 more ML to each ruin, and put the other half in the razorbacks to race to objectives.

I'm thinking with the sternguard uber-squad and 2 ironclads up front, I can keep the fight out of my deployment area.

I'm typically a very aggressive player, favoring elite lists, so building this 'castle' army is not in my wheelhouse.

Any thoughts on Red Corsair's suggestion to use Sternguard w/ Heavy Weapons + Pedro Kantor/MOTF, keeping the SG in the back ranks to sit objectives and instead use the HS slots for IronClads? I like the idea of scoring heavies.

I suppose i'd run them with razorbacks instead of pods, right?

BT would work well, in my opinion--the ability to take PotMS vindicators, 2 wound techpriests (taking up elites slots, however--but there's something beautiful about a techpriest on a bike with a storm shield and tech servitor or two. Completely johnny on the spot with repairs, although his movement is slightly hampered by the Blessing of the Omnissah rule.

I'm trying to work my way through the BT codex at the moment to see if it would make a good option; Any suggestions for a 2k build?

In the meantime, has anyone run Kantor and Lysander together? Would having them attached to a SternPod be a good deathstar or is it just a suicide squad?

Defensive with a lot of dreads for 2k you say...

BA would work
1365 incomplete list, so about 735 points to play with
Relusiarch in power armor
5 nakid Death company
Death company dread
2 Furioso dreads
3 nakid priests
3 Dev squads with quad ML
3 Baal preds

735 points to add troops. Camo cloak scouts, tac squads, or even assault squads would work. Might also have points for 5 more death company + another death company dread.

If the BA army out guns the other side the death company and death company dread can avoid rage by waiting in reserve as a counter assault unit.

A guy at my local game shop made a list using normal marines based off of Imperial Fists, and he would pile up on one piece of terrain and just shoot. I can reverse engineer his list because I don't own a Sm codex, but he had I think he said 75 marines in a 2500 point game. a Techmarine to fortify the terrain, 6 tac squads, a Librarian, 2 dev squads, a thunderfire cannon, 2 rhinos for stealing objectives, and something shooting terminators, sometimes assault marines.

The best units to castle up? Providing you have enough ruins (and that you are playing C:SM

- Thunderfire Cannon
- Snipers w/ Camo
- Sternguards w/ 2x Lascannon
- Dreadnought w/ TLAC TLAC

Then around those guys put as many as you can fit into your points
- Predator
- Vindicator
- 5-man tactical squad with Razorback LasPlas

The point is to have lots of armour around the perimeter where your 3+ cover save is going to pump out high-strength weapons.

Schadenfreude, how many scoring units would you reccomend I add to that?

Leohart - I'll keep that stuff in mind and put together another build based on your suggestions and see if it sticks.

Meanwhile, can I get some HQ advice? I'm still trying to work out if Pedro/Lysander is a good investment.

Nope. The HQ for castling up are:

- Librarian - w/ Null Zone + something else
- Vulkan - beef up your melta/flamer for free
- Master of the Forge w/ Conversion Beamer

That's about it. The top choice is always a 100pts librarian with bolt pistol. Null Zone is the best thing for C:SM.

You should aim for 4 scoring units of 5-man or 2 scoring units of 10-man as the base line. Anything smaller will require a lot of tactics.

junk wrote:
Schadenfreude, how many scoring units would you reccomend I add to that?

Leohart - I'll keep that stuff in mind and put together another build based on your suggestions and see if it sticks.

Meanwhile, can I get some HQ advice? I'm still trying to work out if Pedro/Lysander is a good investment.

That really depends on your playstyle, though 735 points can buy a lot of troops in a BA army.

With a defensive strategy my 1 recommendation would be a single squad of scouts with camo cloaks can combat squad into 2 scoring units that can both go to ground for a 2+ cover save 4+ FNP. They are just not going to be shot off an objective if a priest is nearby.

With the rest of the army tactical squads might actually be a good deal. 10 tactical with melta, missile, and a transport=exact same cost as 10 assault with 2 meltas and the exact same transport. In an objective based mission you can combat squad, gain another missile launcher, and the melta + sergeant can go in the razorback. 2 full 10 man tac squads with ML, melta, a pair of AC razorbacks to transport them, and 10 scouts with a ML and camo cloaks would come to 710 points for 6 scoring units.

The other school of thought would be MSU razorback spam with 5 man assault squads + AC, TL LC, or LasPlas razorbacks. You could fit 3 AC/LasPlas razorbacks in along with a fully decked out scout squad with camo cloaks and ML, but I think the tacticals would actually have a better synergy with a defensive army.

I definitely favor Power Armor models over scouts, only because i don't really see Iron Warriors in 4+ armor; that, and I plan on making a hefty donation to forge world for heresy era PA models. It's pretty much just a fluff choice, as sniper scouts with a missile launcher is a nice defense.

I think i'm actually going to stick with C:SM for the rulesets, I really like the idea of Lysander filling the role of Barabas Dantioch. I think it works great with sternguard as far as fluff goes, as well as being a nice midfield unit when accompanied by 2 ironclads.

So what's wrong with devastators? I can run 3ML and 1LC + Signum, with a Lazorback for 245. Two of those squads and a Thunderfire cannon seems like a great heavy support block.

4x5 Tac marines with Combi-melta Sgts and Flamers in Laz/Plas Backs costs 700.

If I did that, then I'd run 2 vindicators instead of devastators I guess. Still leaves me enough to Play Kantor and Lysander with a 9 man sternpod and 2 ironclads. Leaving me enough for 4 HK missiles.

That Dev setup give you 3 Str 8, 2 Str 9 (that will almost always hit)
For the same amount of point you can get:
Two AC Las Pred for 4 Str 7 and 4 Str 9.

AV13 is tough to take down even with Lascannon. Your razorback will get popped the first turn while your devastator will have to keep taking leadership test as they will lose 25% quickly.

Plus 4 Str9 is much better than 2 Str 9 twin linked.

I see the truth of it.
The Preds are cheaper than the devs, but the Dev's brought 4 LC to the table (1 2+ per squad, 1 TL per razorback)

So right now, the prevailing list is 2K
Lysander + Kantor + 7-9 man Sternpod
2 Ironclads + DPs
4x5 Tac marines in Razorbacks or 2x10 with Razorbacks
2 AC LC Preds
1 Thunderfire Cannon
6-10 HK missiles

9 HK missles = 1 Typhoon no? Might be worth it since the Typhoon need to live to the end of turn 5 to make back that 90 points.

UPDATE: actually 10HK missles is 150 pts. You can get a Sternguard w/ 2 Lascannon for 155 points. They will live until the end of turn 5 most of the time.

Anyway, HK might work.