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This was an exciting batrep! From a Necron perspective would a Doom Scythe have been of any use? Congrats on the hard fought win !

 Red Corsair wrote:
I find the "in depth" discussion on imaginary tactics hilarious. These games have degenerated to a form of Yahtzee. "I dump a ton of dice and things die.... My opponent dumps his half ton of dice and moar stuffs dies!" IDK, it's neat that their is an easy mode available for 40k when your on a whiskey bender, but I really don't see much depth in analyzing this stuff.

How is this different to 'normal' 40k? In my last game my opponent randomly rolled a warlord trait that gave him 3 infiltrating units, I failed a 4" charge, had to roll to see when my reserves came in, had to roll to see what table edge my outflankers came in on, etc. etc. Only tactics evident to me in 40k is what list to bring and target priority. The rest is just randomness.

More importantly though, this game looked like a lot of fun. Whatever you think about Escalation, seeing a Phantom titan on the table is pretty sick. Thanks for posting!

Im wondering if the only armies that are able to compete in Escalation based games are armies that are able to field 6 super fast troop units? If this is the case then how would IG, SoB, Nids, and pretty much any other army who lacks these cheap units compete in this style of meta?

Well Sisters don't even get a superheavy in standard Escalation, so unless you allow the forgeworld Lords of War...

IG get a great flyer and cheap troops to throw into it. They also get a great LoW (warhound), cheap skyfire/interceptor (sabre platforms), and cheap chaff (Infantry Squads).

SM get bike squads or TAC squads in stormravens (very nice vehicles for escalation).

SoB can do MSU in transports very nicely and can spam melta weapons like no ones business. Honestly escalation didn't really change that much about SoB lists as D weapons are not that great against troop spam MSU armies. Stronghold made SoB a great deal more viable as void shield gens and warhounds are great additions to SoB lists. Now they just need decent AA...perhaps allied IG or avenger?

Nids get a codex soon and the haridan list Jy2 used in another batrep doesn't seem bad.

That game seemed pretty fun. Phantom titans are terribly wasteful in their firepower (4 shot D weapon? Only a LoW could possibly require that) but whatever they target disappears...until a void shield blocks it.

And the Orks solution? Dont tell me a Stompa because that thing would never make it across the table to get into hand to hand with a Phantom. 3x15 Lootas could mess it up but they would be incinerated really quickly. Trukk boyz with maxed out power klaws everywhere is about the only realistic thing I can think of. Jim looking forward to more reports from you.

There is a decent ork LoW. If I remember correctly the Kustom Stompa has a decent ranged D weapon and can do the HP regeneration gimmick. I am still not entirely certain if ork green tide might not be an entirely decent choice once you have something to handle hellstorm template platforms. Honestly even a revenant would be poor at killing off a green tide. Otherwise the ork bikka units are not bad but somewhat limiting. The other option would be a bunch of kult of speeds cheap transports behind void shield generators (which would be great to protect your LoW and the pipes could buff your burna boyz hugely). I didn't mention orks because I don't play them and rarely see them. Jy2's take on them will be much more reliable than mine.

Naw wrote:
I wonder if playing Agile correctly would have made a difference.

It definitely would. The difference between 3+ and 2+ cover means that the nightwings were twice as likely to survive. My guesstimate is that at least 1, maybe even 2 of my flyers would have survived my opponent's Turn 3 shooting.

Alas, it's my fault for not knowing my own rules well enough so I accept the consequences. I assumed Agile was an USR that was in the BRB. Well, it wasn't. Lol.

macexor wrote:
Wouldn't taking 2 Revenant titans instead of 1 Phantom titan be a better choice?
This way you can delete up to 4 units a turn and not only 2. Leftover points could be spent on more troops/anti-air.

Maybe....maybe not. Yeah, 2 revenants could target more units. However, they are also more susceptible to necron firepower as well. Keep in mind that the 2 C'tans took off 9 HP's from the Phantom, and that was with AV13. If it was the Revenant, they would have killed one on Turn 1 and Eldar firepower would have been severely weakened (cut in half). Not to mention that revenants are vulnerable to night scythe firepower. So on Turn 2 with the night scythes coming in, necrons would have most likely kill off the 2nd Revenant with the combined firepower of the 2 C'tans and the incoming night scythes.

In terms of a TAC Eldar build, 2 Revenants is definitely more balanced than 1 Phantom. However, the Phantom is much more durable than 2 Revenants and will do better against certain armies (like this necron build) than a Revdar build. It will also do worse against certain builds. It all really depends on what the Eldar go up against.

 Therion wrote:
Arguing Phantom vs 2 Revenants in a vacuum is kinda ridiculous, since 3 Revenants are closer to the points value of the Phantom than 2. If you take double Revenants you got 700 points left over to buy AA with if you like, for example a Tau Firebase Support Cadre and a Commander. They'll obliterate a couple of flyers when they enter play. The Phantom has very few things going for it compared to 2500 points worth of Revenants (2,78 Revenants). One advantage might be that it won't die in a single turn so it gets to fire once. 3 Revenants won't die in a single turn either but you probably already knew that.

Of course you'd have to play Triple-FOC to get 3 Revenants into 1 list.

It'll be hilarious seeing double-Revdars going up against Be'lakor FMC-daemons.

 Riddick40k wrote:
Damn that phantom is ridiculous! Did they not playtest these rules at all??

The Phantom was never meant for regular games. It's ok in, say, 5K+ Apoc games but it was never meant to be balanced out for regular games. That's why I don't advocate running titans in regular games. I'd only bring my titan in games of Escalation or only if my opponent wanted to try to take on a titan with his regular army.

 Eldar Vampire Hunter wrote:
I think all three nightwings going down so early was the deciding factor, without the firepower and protection of the Night Scythes many more jetbikes would still be alive. Curious to see if the Phantom can pull a win out of the bag from here, suspecting the game ended turn 5 and jy2 is just teasing us.

Agreed. Taking out all 3 of my flyers in 1 turn was game-changing. Had even 1 survived, Eldar would have had a much better chance of winning. Still would have been a close game though, only the outcome would have been more up-in-the-air.

 Commander_Farsight wrote:
Dang! That was an awesome game. Way to go Imotekh. I think that you were totally right jy2 when you explained the difference between the focus of a casual and competitive player. I was really surprised that you lost that game. I think that taking the Phantom was not a great idea if you Really wanted to win the game, but like it has been discussed in your report against Grant's Seer Council, this was a casual game, a game for fun. I think that the second turn I believe it was, was very brutal for you. My only question is that, if the Phantom was a scoring unit, why did you not let it sit on an objective? That would virtually eliminate the possibility of the objective being captured by your opponent, and it would have gotten you more points. It seems to me like the Phantom can protect itself pretty darn well (it better for that point cost ). I believe it was also mentioned above, but IMO taking two Revenants would have been a better idea (again if you were truly trying to win the game from the beginning). Then if William got control of one of them for a turn, you would still have the other. Also the Revenant is really fast, so it would have made it easier for you to shoot at all of his hiding models early on. I think that it was great that you were able to get your awesome Phantom on the table for a game, and I appreciate you sharing your experience with the community. Thanks again for a great report!

LOL! You don't take the Phantom just to win, although that usually comes with the territory. You take the Phantom when you want to annihilate any and all enemies on the ground. I like him for his sheer destructiveness. But if there's any army that can beat the Phantom, it would be Necrons or Daemons...or any Imperial army running double-FOC with 2 Reaver Battle Titans. Lol. That's 16 Strength D guns!!! In terms of sheer destructiveness, double-Reavers is probably the worst....until they go up against Be'lakor daemons.

I put the Phantom back for a number of reasons:

1. To stay as far away from the C'tans as possible. I didn't want him to get stuck in combat with even 1 of the C'tans. That would have been auto-lose for me.

2. To stay out of range of Anrakyr and his Puppet Master-like ability.

3. To try to find a position with the best LOS to almost every other target out there. Unfortunately, that wasn't where the objectives were.

4. I thought that 6 hiding jetbikes would be enough scoring.

5. I could have gone after 1 objective, but instead, I went after his Warlord. Why? The objective was worth D3 VP's. However, by killing his Warlord, I would have denied my opponent a guaranteed 3 VP's - 1 for the Warlord, 1 for killing off the troops with him and 1 for denying him Linebreaker.

2 Revenants are good. However, as I explained above, it would lose in this game and probably even worse.

 Red Corsair wrote:
I find the "in depth" discussion on imaginary tactics hilarious. These games have degenerated to a form of Yahtzee. "I dump a ton of dice and things die.... My opponent dumps his half ton of dice and moar stuffs dies!" IDK, it's neat that their is an easy mode available for 40k when your on a whiskey bender, but I really don't see much depth in analyzing this stuff.

Only with D weapons, you don't need to dump a lot of dice. They just die.

Analyzing is ok. You can learn from any game as long as you keep an open mind, especially in a game where David beats Goliath.

 Anpu42 wrote:
I may have to give this a try with my group

You definitely should. Just start off slow and set limitations within your group. Then when you've grown your collection of Lords of War units as well as gain more experience playing with/against them, then you can begin to loosen these restrictions. The last thing you want - and it would make for an awful experience - is to show up to a game of Escalation with a baneblade....only to see your opponent sitting across from you bring a Revenant or Reaver.

macexor wrote:

I find the "in depth" discussion on imaginary tactics hilarious. These games have degenerated to a form of Yahtzee. "I dump a ton of dice and things die.... My opponent dumps his half ton of dice and moar stuffs dies!" IDK, it's neat that their is an easy mode available for 40k when your on a whiskey bender, but I really don't see much depth in analyzing this stuff.

I suppose that this is the very reason why people play Escalation.

I myself prefer normal (non Escalation) games.
When it comes to diversity in tactics I'd wait for the nids and orkz codices.
This should repair our (or anyones) problem by bringing back Assault Phase back.

I never knew the Assault phase left in the first place.

But I agree that Escalation belongs more in fun, casual games than in competitive, tournament play.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
This was an exciting batrep! From a Necron perspective would a Doom Scythe have been of any use? Congrats on the hard fought win !

Can't really afford to fit in a doom scythe with my titan and flyer troops. But yeah, the doom scythe could be useful, though I'd only run them if I weren't bringing any titans.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
How is this different to 'normal' 40k? In my last game my opponent randomly rolled a warlord trait that gave him 3 infiltrating units, I failed a 4" charge, had to roll to see when my reserves came in, had to roll to see what table edge my outflankers came in on, etc. etc. Only tactics evident to me in 40k is what list to bring and target priority. The rest is just randomness.

More importantly though, this game looked like a lot of fun. Whatever you think about Escalation, seeing a Phantom titan on the table is pretty sick. Thanks for posting!

You're welcome!

 y0disisray wrote:
Im wondering if the only armies that are able to compete in Escalation based games are armies that are able to field 6 super fast troop units? If this is the case then how would IG, SoB, Nids, and pretty much any other army who lacks these cheap units compete in this style of meta?

No, you don't necesarily need super-fast troops. MSU works as well. Then there are other methods of transportations such as:

MSU mech - rhino-rush, speed freak orks

Drop Pods - any marine army

Deepstriking troops - crisis suits, soladins, daemons

Flyer transports - stormravens, vendettas, necron flyers

Troop generation units - tervigons, Portaglyph, Aetaos, Pedro Kantor

Horde infantry - green tide orks, zombie apocalypse Chaos, multiple IG blobs, just make sure you constantly advance with them




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shandara wrote:
Well Sisters don't even get a superheavy in standard Escalation, so unless you allow the forgeworld Lords of War...

Most people who play Escalation would consider the Forgeworld addendum to be official, but my personal opinion is to always check with your opponent to see if it's ok (or rather, if he's ok with playing against it).

 ansacs wrote:
IG get a great flyer and cheap troops to throw into it. They also get a great LoW (warhound), cheap skyfire/interceptor (sabre platforms), and cheap chaff (Infantry Squads).

SM get bike squads or TAC squads in stormravens (very nice vehicles for escalation).

SoB can do MSU in transports very nicely and can spam melta weapons like no ones business. Honestly escalation didn't really change that much about SoB lists as D weapons are not that great against troop spam MSU armies. Stronghold made SoB a great deal more viable as void shield gens and warhounds are great additions to SoB lists. Now they just need decent AA...perhaps allied IG or avenger?

Nids get a codex soon and the haridan list Jy2 used in another batrep doesn't seem bad.

That game seemed pretty fun. Phantom titans are terribly wasteful in their firepower (4 shot D weapon? Only a LoW could possibly require that) but whatever they target disappears...until a void shield blocks it.

Whereas some may see the Phantom as terribly wasteful, I see it as horribly efficient (at killing what needs to be killed). Don't forget he's also got 4 S7 skyfire shots and 4+2 S8 shots that can target different units or that can be used to knock down a few Void Shields before the D does its work.

BTW, nice analysis and spot-on. You don't necessarily need super-fast troops to be able to play Escalation.

 y0disisray wrote:
And the Orks solution? Dont tell me a Stompa because that thing would never make it across the table to get into hand to hand with a Phantom. 3x15 Lootas could mess it up but they would be incinerated really quickly. Trukk boyz with maxed out power klaws everywhere is about the only realistic thing I can think of. Jim looking forward to more reports from you.

The combination of a Stompa backed by some Void Shields actually makes for a viable Ork Escalation list. Now orks may not necessarily be the best army in Escalation, but they aren't totally lost.

At 2K, this is probably what I would run if I were running orks.


Stompa

Big Mek - KFF, 3x Grot Oilers 100

5x Lootas - 3x Meks, 2x Grot Oilers (in Stompa)
3x Meganobz (in Stompa)

12x Ork Boyz - PK Nob, Trukk
12x Ork Boyz - PK Nob, Trukk
12x Ork Boyz - Nob w/Big Choppa, Trukk
12x Ork Boyz - Nob w/Big Choppa, Trukk
12x Ork Boyz - Nob w/Big Choppa, Trukk
10x Gretchins - 1x Runtherd (in Stompa or reserves)

Deffcopta - TL-Rokkit
Deffcopta - TL-Rokkit
Deffcopta - TL-Rokkit

Void Shield Generator - 3x Void Shields

I was really guessing Eldar would take this one. Good to see that someone could stand up to the Lord of D.

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

 dementedwombat wrote:
I was really guessing Eldar would take this one. Good to see that someone could stand up to the Lord of D.

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

Spoiler:

LOL! I play Yu-Gi-Oh too. Thats an awesome custom card! I think that I'm going to make one of the Manta with the name... Coffee Table.

 jy2 wrote:
But if there's any army that can beat the Phantom, it would be Necrons or Daemons...or any Imperial army running double-FOC with 2 Reaver Battle Titans. Lol. That's 16 Strength D guns!!! In terms of sheer destructiveness, double-Reavers is probably the worst....until they go up against Be'lakor daemons.

Tau can get strength D on an aircraft for ~700 points... at double force org for 2 lords of war that's 2 str D weapons the opponent's titan can't even touch. I haven't played nearly enough escalation (i.e. none) to know if it could really do it, the holofields would probably mess things up a lot., but non-blast flying D for under 750 points is a pretty unique combination.

The Tigershark AX10 is the best choice that you could take for Tau, and even then it doesn't match up to the competition well at all. If I was going to play game of Escalation with Tau, I would just make my army more anti-super heavy/gargantuan creature. Tau has a lot of recourses that can be used to take out the big D models. You could also just take monkeys and with their digital weapons you can just choose lascannon every time. Throw them behind a void shield or two, and you're good to go. Thats just my two sense.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I was really guessing Eldar would take this one. Good to see that someone could stand up to the Lord of D.

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

Spoiler:

Nice!

 dementedwombat wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
But if there's any army that can beat the Phantom, it would be Necrons or Daemons...or any Imperial army running double-FOC with 2 Reaver Battle Titans. Lol. That's 16 Strength D guns!!! In terms of sheer destructiveness, double-Reavers is probably the worst....until they go up against Be'lakor daemons.

Tau can get strength D on an aircraft for ~700 points... at double force org for 2 lords of war that's 2 str D weapons the opponent's titan can't even touch. I haven't played nearly enough escalation (i.e. none) to know if it could really do it, the holofields would probably mess things up a lot., but non-blast flying D for under 750 points is a pretty unique combination.

The Tiger-shark may be the best sub-1K super-heavy that the Tau has got, but it is not a very good super-heavy compared to what the other armies have. Sure, being a flyer makes it more resilient against the firepower of the majority of titans out there. However, being a flyer also limits the number of times it can shoot in a game if the opponent has some mobility. You can also limit its firepower by anticipating its movement or with Void Shields.

 Commander_Farsight wrote:
The Tigershark AX10 is the best choice that you could take for Tau, and even then it doesn't match up to the competition well at all. If I was going to play game of Escalation with Tau, I would just make my army more anti-super heavy/gargantuan creature. Tau has a lot of recourses that can be used to take out the big D models. You could also just take monkeys and with their digital weapons you can just choose lascannon every time. Throw them behind a void shield or two, and you're good to go. Thats just my two sense.

Right....but what do you mean by monkeys and lascannons? You're not talking about grey knight allies, are you?

Grey Knight allies is exactly what I'm talking about. Take Coteaz and some Joakeros (idk how to spell it) throw them behind void shields and *voila* you have a great killing force. I wrote an army list of just monkeys behind 9 void shields, lead by Coteaz. Is there something big I'm missing here rule wise, or is it just that people think Grey Knights times have passed?


The list I wrote would be more to try once or to just play in games of Escalation. I would never field a list just like that in a regular game of wh40k.


Also, is there a more effective way to down SH/GC that is out there?

Jokeros are a joke. They are NOT a competitive unit. A competitive army needs mobile firepower. Static armies have been relegated to mid-tier status because of this. All the top-tier armies must be mobile. Tau scoring crisis suits, necron warriors in flyers, eldar jetbikes or troops that can move, shoot and run...that is what makes for a balanced and competitive army. Even rapid-firing units are better. At least they can still move and shoot. But units that can only snapshoot if they move are really not that competitive anymore. And to top it off, Jokeros aren't even that great of a shooter nor do they have the resiliency to survive return enemy fire.

You want good shooting? Bring in some guards and sabre gun platforms. Now that's a good unit, even if it can't move, but that's why you have the guards there for. They make their way to the objectives while the sabre guns sit on a home objective (they are scoring as well) and fire.

To kill another super-heavy, you've got basically 3 options - 1) fight firepower with firepower, 2) ignore it and go after the rest of the army or 3) try to lock it in assault if possible. In any case, how to deal with enemy SH/GC's really depend on what army you play.

 Commander_Farsight wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I was really guessing Eldar would take this one. Good to see that someone could stand up to the Lord of D.

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

Spoiler:

LOL! I play Yu-Gi-Oh too. Thats an awesome custom card! I think that I'm going to make one of the Manta with the name... Coffee Table.

 ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:

 Commander_Farsight wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I was really guessing Eldar would take this one. Good to see that someone could stand up to the Lord of D.

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

Spoiler:

LOL! I play Yu-Gi-Oh too. Thats an awesome custom card! I think that I'm going to make one of the Manta with the name... Coffee Table.

Dude, just yes... so perfect. Did you make it?