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Hi all I've been considering running a list that has a lot of TL- Lascannon Sabres behind an Agies line. The rest of the platoon will be loaded with Flamers and put into Vultures for objective grabs. The rest of the army will basicly be Manticores for anti horde I might even try and squeeze in a Colossus for some anti-MEQ.

The idea is to have only T7 or AV12+ on the board turn 1 all placed at a distance from my opponent. I haven't decided on weither to run a CCS (For Orders, Astropath, OoF & Standard) & Primaris for Biomancy (To go for Iron Arm to cast on CCS) or just run 2x Commisars and ignore orders and use the Sabres as pure gun line. The Vultures are there to take out Infantry

Has anyone run a list like this if so any tips for list building or Army tactics would be awsome thanks.

Vultures are not transports.

Well thats an interesting fact I just always thought that people ran them empty against me. My rule book is still in the mail lol so I don't know the full rules just yet should be here friday. Could possibly run vendettas instead or even Valks. Or I could put the Infantry on the ground as an expendable screen to protect the Sabres and take one Vendetta and 2 Vultures and just shove the PCS in the Vendetta.

So your idea is aircav? You innovative person!

 Griddlelol wrote:
So your idea is aircav? You innovative person!

Thanks I'm the new Guru on the subject. Any questions feel free to send me PM and I'll let you know anything you need to know.

For the rest of us lets move forwards. Any one know any good units that have synergy with Sabres and Flyers either Vendettas or Vultures. And how do most people tool up the Infantry Squads and PCS that come with the Sabre so they are not a complete waist of points. Any Ideas Welcome.

I'm aiming to build a solid take all commers list and get some ideas on how it will operate o the table top.

Common builds I face are:
DA Deathwing Assault
Blood Angels or Vin SM Drop Pod Assaults
Necron & or CSM Flyer Spam
Mech Dark Eldar with Eldar Allies (Usually the Fire Dragon Phoniex Lord that ignores Cover on a Quad Gun)
Vendetta Spam
Vin SM Flyer Spam with BA Flyer Allies (7 Flyers, 4x Storm Ravens 3x Storm Talons)

I'm expecting to face some Tau and Daemons as well soon due to the new Dex's and I'm selling my old Nid Army soon so I'm expecting to face a lot of Biomancy Spam as well.

As you can see I face a lot of Armies that rely heavy on reserves so the Sabres are a Hard Counter to this that can also be effective against armies that set up completly on the table. Maybe this will help push this thread in the right direction.

I looked at this a couple weeks ago and got some nice advice from Peregrine and the other posters. This thread is what came out it.

In short, Air Cavalry are generally pretty vulnerable to anti-air artillery platforms. Those units are themselves vulnerable to the kind of high-strength low-AP pie plates that the Imperial Guard are so fond of throwing around. On top of this, Artillery Carriages come at a 40%/25% discount relative to their vehicular codex counterparts. Sabre Platforms go nicely with the Artillery Carriages because of their homogenous defense profile, and that goes a long way toward justifying the investment in an infantry platoon. While the PIS units are not stellar by any stretch, they can provide some degree of bubble wrap, and the PCS is a cost-effective mobile scoring unit. The mandatory HQ selections allow me to issue orders to my artillery and bring their leadership score up high enough to make those leadership checks reliable. And by selecting the Lord Commissar as my Warlord, I can hide that unit in a squad with effective majority T7 against shooting attacks.

There are certainly some issues. There are no credible assault threats, and it is completely lacking in both melta and psychic defense. But overall, I like it.

Just checked out your thread. It was everything I was looking for. I never even considered the Earthshaker platforms its almost like having 2 Baslisks for the price of one. I will run the CCS & Commisar combo for my HQ. I won't be running Allies though as my list has less points and I want to more Sabre platforms. I'll probley run about 10 TL-Lascannon Sabres, 3 Vultures & a few of the Earthshaker Platforms in the HS slot and that should get me around the 1850 points mark.

Is there any kinds of armies I should watch out for when running a list like this?

Manticores are not artillery still. They are AV10 vehicles still, as of IA1 2nd edition (newest FW book).

While the army isnt exactly innovative, its effective. Only things it really has problems with are harlequins and battlewagon spam. Harlequins can get 2+ rerollable cover and can spread out easily due to the ability to ignore cover. Lack of things on the board to deal with them would mean they reach your line and literally walk through your arty. Vultures are annoying(and flat out broken for the cost, hell they were broken at AV11, but got a free armor upgrade in IA:A), but Nightwings blow them out of the air quite quickly(lascannons? hah! 2+ cover save w guide to mitigate jink and 3 of them), and 6 on the divination table really makes precision reserves easy. Battlewagons are just an AV14 5+ cover wall that stationary defenses struggle to break. Even when you do, there are 3+ more behind that. Maybe some bikes too. AV10 doesnt last long to Lootaz either, making those manticores go down first turn (especially with the MANZ warboss+lootas combo.

Battle Wagons go down easly to Barrage Weapons. Ordnance is 2D6 Armour Pen and take the highest and Barrage always hits on Side Armour. Sure they get the 5++ cover from the Big Mek but more often than not they will fail 1 or 2. My second Army is Orks so I can counter them to a resonable degree. Lootas have good range but if I position wisly they shouldn't be able too see the Earth Shakers and if they shoot at the guns they need 4+ to wound and I can G2G for a 2++ behind the Agies line. Next turn Get back in the Fight and I'm back too shooting. Manz die fast to Lascannon fire and I can give the order to force them to re-roll cover saves. If the Warboss is upfront he will have to just take all the wounds and Die or look out sir them off to guys which will suffer ID.

Harlies I can see being a pain though not sure how to counter that just yet. Haven't seen anyone latley using Harlies latly though so I might not have to worry. Yet

If orks get first turn, the manticores never fire. If they get 2nd, the manticores get 1 shot to down a battlewatton. Not only do they need to hit with each set of blasts, they need to pen (on 3+ so still failing 1/9), then need that 6 to kill since they will be stripping HP then.

3 Manticore platforms vs battlewagons:
Lets say 2/3 hit since its large blasts. Lets also be generous and say each hits 2 battlewagons.Also 2 blasts per missile for averages.

6 Blasts
4 hit *2 targets
each target gets 3.5 pens
2.3 pens after saves
1/2 chance of killing each of 2 vehicles, no battlewagons dead from HP stripping.

So 1 battlewagon dead. Thats even being generous that no scatter hits front armor and each blast hits 2 vehicles.

No, manticores are much less scarry vs vehicles than they used to be.


We arent talking earthshakers here, we were talking manticore platforms. If we were talking about earthshakers, halve the damage to battlewagons (so 1/3 battlewagon dead, at that rate). Also, killing the CCS is priority then. Once the CCS is down, the heavy arty guns are LD7 and the guns are destroyed if they run. With orks, you should be able to dakka what is essentially 5 terminators (CCS behind ADL G2G) between big shoot battlewagons and lootaz.


Edit: Actually, NM, i forgot that manticore platforms cant even take Stormeagle rockets. You are using Manticore missiles then. S9 AP2, 7" blast but no barrage and only 1 hit. 2/3 pens, 5+ save, 1/2 chance to kill, 2 hit per, meaning ~40% chance of killing a single battlewagon. Yeah, not so effective here.

Wait, so if you're using IA rules, it's legal to field the 7" blast Manticore missiles in a non-Apoc game? I thought everything that used the Apoc templates was prohibited in normal games.

I don't think that matters, honestly. If the unit were an apocalypse unit, it would be labeled as such. Keeping 7" blasts out of normal games is more an issue of convention than anything else.

Just make sure to bring the appropriate template with you if you're going to field that model. Simple?

Sorry if there was some confusion. When I said Manticore I was refering to The Manticore in codex IG. I want to fields at least 2 to deal with Hordes but I'm now considering taking Earth Shaker Platforms I can take 2 for 10pts less than a Manticore for better AP and lower Strength. Might still take a Manticore though to deal with Nob Bikers etc.