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Fellow crusaders, are you sick of tau and eldar sitting smgly in their deployment zone all game as you spend 3+ turns slogging towards them? No longer, there now exists an answer to these filthy xenoes.

It all begins with the humble Bastion, somehow our techpriests have found a way for us to use it to allow us to increase our movement range by nearly a factor of four. They call these strange contraptions "escape hatches." And they allow us to disembark 12" away from said bastion then another 6" from that folowig disembarkation rules.

Next we want an inquisitor ready to help us kill these filthy xenoes. Or do Xenos seems most fitting and most practical, Give him Rad grenades to soften your enemies skin, Psychotroke grenades to drive them insane, a Plasma siphon because we will be in the midst of their lines and nothing is better than BS1 tau and lastly a Liver heresium to scout forward and whatever other rules you may need. Now while there may be benefits to bringing a psyker into this squad to buff it we suffer not the unclean to live, so in the case of this write up that will be ignored.

Now there is the priest necessary to keep the crusaders dedicated. In this case the Astra militaurum priest will be best,hatred removes some of the temptation of prescience. Fearless is always use full, and depending on what you're fighting a rerollable armour save or to wound could both be valuable.

Lastly the crusader squad, I reccomend a meltagun to take advantage of splitfire from the liber heresius, a Power maul on the sword brother (most beneficial weapon for Templar with challenge special rules) and a hidden power Axe. Fill out the rest with neophytes (but make sure you keep the squad INCLUDING IC's under 20 models or you won't fit in the bastion.)

Now deploy said bastion 6" outside of your deployment zone with the door facing your squad, and the emergency hatch as close to the enemy army as possible. Pre first turn you use scout to scout into the bastion and turn one you disembark (and hopefully fill the newound space with another squad of crusaders ready to be launched.) This puts you 29" from your deployment zone, more than close enough for all effective purposes. (6" scout, 5" bastion width, 12" hatch, 6" disembarkation. This should allow you to get a turn two charge any neuter any plasma your opponent may be packing. Turn two you can pull the same move with the second sqwad you loaded into the bastion. This seems to work well with other units getting turn two charges so drop pods also synergize well.

Let me know thoughts on this or ideas on how to improve it.

There's at least a couple of holes in this strategy.

I'm pretty sure you have to load all of the Crusaders into the Bastion first by getting all of them within 2'' of an access point, which needless to say probably isn't going to happen with 20 models on turn 1, you can't really do this in great shock and awe fashion with 2 squads even if the strategy was functional to begin with since you only get 1 Bastion, and thirdly you can't charge out of that escape hatch so Tau and Eldar are just going to wet themselves with excitement since you've put a terrible Deathstar that has to sit around for a turn in their firepower sweet spot.

Basically, all the Dire Avengers, Serpents, HYMP Broadsides, Riptides, etc and the like are immediately going to rip the entire blob to pieces before it moves again. And then they'll repeat the feat without breaking a sweat when the next blob comes through.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

If you want to get your Crusader blobs in the thick of it quick without taking fire, your only realistic option is attaching an IC with Scout to it. You have two ways to do so:

1) Allied detachment with Raven Guard IC HQ and Techmarine (both give Scout + Outflank to a Crusader blob)

2) Cypher, since he gives infiltrate (which you don't get specifically, you get outflank as a result) amongst several other extremely useful benefits to the Crusader blob like Shrouded and Hit and Run.

So the plan is to have a squad stand right infront of an entire enemy army, alone, and hope some of them survive until the next turn?

Remember drop pods were mentioned, and they already have a scouting IC from liber heresius. The con's of sitting in front of an army are partially mitigated by the plasma siphon and the hatch is shown after deployment so you can start on a flank so you don't take a whole armies fire. Also vanilla scout is 6" to the 29 I demonstrated.

Cool concept, but the holes mentioned are a real drawback. My advice would be to do something like this with terminators, who have a good chance of soaking up that insane volley of shots that is coming towards anything that steps out of that escape hatch. As a tau player, if you put a squad right on my front door turn one, I am going to put my full firepower (rapid firing 80% as well) on that unit, and probably killing, or seriously crippling that unit, before advancing a throw away unit in front of you to lock you in place for another turn. A counter strategy is to put an infiltrating unit inside the bastion. As the bastion just has to be on your table half, put it as close to the enemy as possible, and infiltrate into it (since there is no los into the building that puts you 12 inches away from their deployment zone in most missions). Turn 1, use the escape hatch to pop in 6" inside their deployment zone, which will often times be behind some of their heavier armor, giving you the turn 1 rear armor kill, crippling their strategy. Cheesy, sure, but potentially very effective.

Point for point terminators are less durable than nearly any unit in the game so that's a bust. 90% of tau guns are shut down by the siphon.

Infiltrate would be cool, but I would need thepat special rule which is contentious and even I'd ruled legal there is no cheap way to get it to the squad.

Honor guard may work, as their biggest weakness (plasma) is mitigated drastically, and unlike terminators they are more durable than marines against volume of fire whilst being ultra Lilly, and refillable 2+ armour is always fun.

Jakobokaj wrote:
Point for point terminators are less durable than nearly any unit in the game so that's a bust. 90% of tau guns are shut down by the siphon.

Infiltrate would be cool, but I would need thepat special rule which is contentious and even I'd ruled legal there is no cheap way to get it to the squad.

Honor guard may work, as their biggest weakness (plasma) is mitigated drastically, and unlike terminators they are more durable than marines against volume of fire whilst being ultra Lilly, and refillable 2+ armour is always fun.

The Siphon has a 6'' range. Pulse Rifles have a 30'' range, and double tap at 15. Its basically useless unless your opponent is an idiot beyond belief.

I was under the I!pression it was 12" though I could easily be mistaken. I remember it as blocking rapid fire,

Interesting, and a follow up question: could this be used to provide an extra boost to centurion squads?

Yep, as long as it fits in a bastion it'll work.

Yeah, I think this plan works a lot better with a shooty squad that is devastating at short range but has some trouble getting there.

If you want your squads to get into combat, you take land raider crusaders (it's in the name!) or better yet, Spartan assault tanks with ceramiite shielding.

The way to make this work is to place the bastion as far forward as you can and the escape hatch back towards your deployment zone. Infiltrate a unit inside, like a small 5 man Scout Squad. This will 'reveal' the escape hatch.

Then on turn 1, move the Scouts to the roof and embark a unit into the Bastion through the escape hatch.

Next turn move out ready to assault, and move another unit inside.

By Turn three the rest of your army should be up the bastion anyways.

I used this once with a Fortress of Redemption and Lysander against an Escalation list. My opponent marched his Fellhammer up to the FoR, Lysander and 4 Terminators popped out and killed it in one round of combat (with a little help from the Icarus Lascannon). And the explosion comletely missed Lysander though it killed the rest of his squad. Thankfully the other 5 Terminators were ready to come out the FoR next turn.

If you were going to do something like this, I'd also use a bunker over a bastion.
It's cheaper, and has 3 access points, making it easier for a large squad to embark.

Use th/ss termis with corbulo tanking the mass anti-personal shots. Or death co with corbs at the front.
I like the idea!

The Eldar Corsair Prince laughs at this, since he gives any 3 units in your list Deep strike for free, and can make it night fight on the turn they come in as well. No Bastion or escape hatch needed.

I have been meaning to try this with a 10 man unit of D-Scythe Wraithguard, Eldrad, and couple Spiritseers.

Durandal wrote:
The Eldar Corsair Prince laughs at this, since he gives any 3 units in your list Deep strike for free, and can make it night fight on the turn they come in as well. No Bastion or escape hatch needed.

He would be secretly working for the Tau then because that will just bunch you up for S8 blasts AND you cripple your own long range shooting.

Im definatly going to try this out with centurions and Issodan from FW. It sounds so damn mean!

Jakobokaj wrote:
Point for point terminators are less durable than nearly any unit in the game so that's a bust. 90% of tau guns are shut down by the siphon.

Infiltrate would be cool, but I would need thepat special rule which is contentious and even I'd ruled legal there is no cheap way to get it to the squad.

Honor guard may work, as their biggest weakness (plasma) is mitigated drastically, and unlike terminators they are more durable than marines against volume of fire whilst being ultra Lilly, and refillable 2+ armour is always fun.

How does a plasma siphon hurt anything that isn't plasma rifles?

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Jakobokaj wrote:
Point for point terminators are less durable than nearly any unit in the game so that's a bust. 90% of tau guns are shut down by the siphon.

Infiltrate would be cool, but I would need thepat special rule which is contentious and even I'd ruled legal there is no cheap way to get it to the squad.

Honor guard may work, as their biggest weakness (plasma) is mitigated drastically, and unlike terminators they are more durable than marines against volume of fire whilst being ultra Lilly, and refillable 2+ armour is always fun.

How does a plasma siphon hurt anything that isn't plasma rifles?

From the GK FAQ:
Q: What counts as a plasma weapon for the Ulumeathi Plasma Syphon? (p62)
A: All Plasma weapons, as well as Eldar missile launchers firing
plasma missiles, burst cannons, starcannons, all Tau pulse
weapons and any weapon described as using ‘plasma’ as its
effect or in its special rules.

because fluff = rules