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Anyone trying multiple whirlwinds in an otherwise shooty marine list?

The idea is that you take 3, lay down mines, and then funnel your opponent into your guns. I shudder to think what sort of damage nids would take trying to walk across that.

Anyway, anyone actually doing it? It's on my marine "to do" list, right after pods.

I have tried two in my llist a few times with mixed results. It depends on my opponent, most ignore them foolishly or spend alot of the game( and units) trying to get rid of them. I have never tried the mine saturation technique, (havent played many nid players) but I have heard it can be very daunting. Laying two mine fields a turn on a loot counter, objective, or an flanking route and just daring your opponent to get near it.

It doesn't just have to be nids. Any army that wants to move near you is in trouble. Even 3+ save modes die 28% of the time they move over it. Drop it on yourself and dare people to assault you. Every scrum means more dead enemies.

You know, as I am building my assault heavy BAs, I was thinking of things that could seriously affect the way Id have to play them. This is one the things that made me pause when I read that jump infantry was treated normally. I consoled myself because I hadn't seen anybody talking about running multiple Castle Whirlies. Thanks Mauleed.

ive been planing on running 3 castles but have not found anything i could use for the mine field templates. i was trying to find those cd stabilizer rings, but cant find any.

now im thinking about using 1/8" craft foam and cut it in a circle with the ordnnace template, then cut it out for a ring. in yellow with black wraning stripes. foam like this http://www.michaels.com/art/online/displayProductPage?productNum=kd0779

castles would also be great vs any mech armies like tau and guard.

Remember, your own troops don't set them off. You can drop them on yourself, and they have to go over them to assault you.

And the best part is, they don't require you to target a unit, so you can drop them into an assault.

Does the enemy unit have to move over them to set them off? Can a unit just sit there and not be effected? My question comes from an idea of dropping mine fields on a static shooty army and watching them twist as they sit still and fire at my assult units. They would have to break rank and move off the mine field. This could be a great way of disrupting heavy weapon teams. oh wait...is there a rule that you have to drop it on unoccupied ground?

here is an argument i tried to make, but nobody is going along with me on this.
castellans are listed as ordnance barrage. and pg 32 BBB says you take pin test for taking a wound from an ordnance barrage weapon. so taking a wound while crossing the mine field should cause a pin check.

but nobody in my group is willing to go along with that.

You drop it where ever you want as I recall.

But you have to move over it to set it off. So it won't do much good to drop it on a static shooty squad.

Edit: Jeremy, I don't think the rules would support that if we gave it the full YMDC examination. The weapon doesn't cause the wounds, the mine field does. It's got enough special rules to stop you from getting the extra benefits of the ordnance barrage.

Posted By mauleed on 03/06/2006 10:36 AM

You drop it where ever you want as I recall.

But you have to move over it to set it off. So it won't do much good to drop it on a static shooty squad.

Edit: Jeremy, I don't think the rules would support that if we gave it the full YMDC examination. The weapon doesn't cause the wounds, the mine field does. It's got enough special rules to stop you from getting the extra benefits of the ordnance barrage.

Not true.  You can target an enemy unit as usual or you can place it on an open area "such that no enemy or friendly models are under the template".

The best you could hope for with what you want to do is get a lucky scatter, that's it.

Thanks for the correction.

Yeah kind of sad as I'm looking to pick up a whirlwind for my new Marine army.   The thought of dropping the mines on a CC engagement is awesome but I double checked the codex and it's a no go.

I think 3 of those would just be nasty. You could effectively immobilize an enemy force by laying mines all over, and if they are assault-based while you are shooty-based...that's just plain mean.

Of course against static shooters it wouldn't be nearly as effective.

Against static shooters you use the regular S5 AP4 template.

Posted By mauleed on 03/06/2006 11:19 AM
Against static shooters you use the regular S5 AP4 template.



This is what I uaully use and this makes IG players so pissed, and even more so when I tell them I only paid 85 points for 1 of them.

I have playtested the three whirlwind army and found it to be very effective when using mines.Around here most of the tourney missions involve objectives so it is very easy to force your opponent to have to walk into a field. I remember one playtest where I got 6 mine-fields around the objective. My opponent (chaos) couldn't hold it as whenever a squad tried to get onto it would become non-scoring. So yeah they are pretty effective and have other bonuses in a shooty army because unlike predators they are indirect-which means that there is no chance that they will block LOS for your other squads (something I have found to be a pain). Against the static shooty you can use vengenance, but I wouldn't say it is optimal.

I've only done theoryhammer on the three whirlwinds and it looks like fun. I've somewhat seen what two would do. I passed by a table once where one guy had two and while it was early in the codex life, he didn't have actual minefields set up but small markers denoting the center of the template. Well there were 8 little markers down and they seemed to cover a lot of area, and the look of dread that the other guy had as he was trying to manuver around them told a whole story in itself. I was busy at the time and didn't stay around to watch how it ended, but that image has stuck in my mind all this time.

Wow, that seems very unfriendly. I remember that you had considered the 3 whirlies, but ended up going with the preds. Rethinking the decision?

I have a friend that fields this army. It's a DIY army that does the 3 whirlwinds. It seems to be pretty impressive in some situations, I agree. We're in dissagreement wheather the mines are worthwhile that often, but it could be great. I'll try to get back here with the results from the tournaments we go to so you can know what his record was at it.

I faced this army in a 2000pt RTT in San Diego.  It is a very ingenius tactic as long as you sit back in a corner with your dev squads and shoot up all in-comers.  I lost an entire 12 model daemonette squad to the mines, it was rather impressive.

Darrian

For extra fun, combine it with Fear of the Darkness...

I think Johnston, the Marine player, had that ability on his librarian.  Luckily, my army is Chaos and mostly fearless.

Darrian

I think a whirlwind army might be worth a try if you design your army correctly, perhaps instead of using Devastator squads use a couple dreadnaughts with the las-cannon/missile launcher set up so you can have some extra ranged nastiness on anything that makes it through the fields. . .

Also if you use some empty rhino's to block some lines of attack you can create a funnel and drop your mine fields there, I think their are a couple armies that would punish you for trying this though, using alot of skimmers to hop over the area's you don't mine, and then just proceed as normal. . . (Eldar and Tau could be really annoying with the Wave Serpents and Devilfish)

BTW I just checked it and for cheapness factor grab all those AOL coasters we have, and use them their nearly the right size, (like 1/8 inch smaller than the 5 inches for the large template)

@Citadel,

You are aware that a devastator squad can have twice the long range firepower of a dreadnaught, right? (4>2).  The version I faced simply bunched his army up in a corner and sat back and waited.  Rhino's would actually impare his firing lanes and provide me, the attacker, with blindspots to exploit.

Darrian

Well, you can't have any devestator squads if you've got 3 whirlwinds.

So the firepower has to come from somewhere. So he's suggesting dreads.

I prefer termies.

Not like you can put assault cannons in those slots anyway unless you're BA or Heed.

Well, you can't have any devestator squads if you've got 3 whirlwinds.

Actually you can, I think. There is some trait that allows devies to take tank hunter in which case they become elites. Thus the 6 devi squad army. Just subsitute the heavy devis for whirlwinds.

Wait...dont castellain mines affect skimmers? They affect jump troops why not skimmers? I thought nothing was safe from these things...well except your own troops that is.

Skimmers are just as easy to hit as regular armor. Smacks the rear armor with S6 hit. 25% chance of getting a glance (4+ to hit, 4+ to cause a glance) against most AV10 rear armors.

@Mauleed,

Don't your marines "honor your wargear"? Mmmmm, devastators.

Darrian