Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Is it good?

The composition, if I'm right, is a HQ tank commander, that comes with his buddy, and 3 Heavy support LR squadrons (which can contain a single tank). So that's 5 tanks at least. Not to forget the solo hydra.

The preferred enemy sounds nice, as it gives you ~3.5BS for everyone, and to wound re-roll of 1s is also nice. Bad part is you need to keep them tight together for it to work. Not sure if it's a good idea to keep a bunch of tanks together, you'll put some couple dozen man around it as bubble wrap, and you have a really expensive formation. While PE is nice, it's clearly not much more than that.

So for the price of having a bunch of tanks closely together, you receive PE. Does it worth it? How to best utilize that gain? And how big battles would you put it?

EDIT: Since nothing preventing you from upgrading the TC in the formation to Pask, you'll get his warlord trait for free from the formation. This way you can have another primary detachment, and you can get your Warlord trait from there.

The best part of Pask isn't his PE (but it can be still very useful at times), so you can have a full blown warlord trait from elsewhere while keeping Paskisher's full potential. What you pay for it is that you need to have 3 more tanks in your army (that's not really a big toll for IG), and the odd Hydra.

Note that the Tank models themselves need to be in 12" range from the TC's hull, nod the Squadrons - squadron distance is measured from the closest model, and all would receive it, here only the ones in 12" receive the buff.

So good! Such an amazing formation, I run it in 1500 point games as such:

Tank Commander in Exterminator with Heavy Bolter Sponsons with Punisher with Heavy Bolter Sponsons

Leman Russ Battle Tank

Leman Russ Executioner

Leman Russ Executioner

Hydra


Comes in at 873 points. I leave the Hydra and Battle Tank backfield, behind an Aegis Defence Line with a Basilisk. The four other Russ move up together and deliver as much pain as possible. In games higher than 1500 points I add a second Punisher with Heavy Bolters to the Command Tank, a second Battle Tank, and Plasma Sponsons on the Executioners.

That's just how I run it. In my mind, the PE is best used on weapons that Get Hot, or have multiple shots.

Which book is this from?

Mavnas wrote:
Which book is this from?

Sanctus Reach: The Red Waaagh!

It's a really good formation. Most armies can't even deal with this much heavy armor. Your opponent rarely will have enough anti tank guns to shoot them down. And even then you have so many tanks that even if your opponent starts assaulting them he will be left there standing ready for you to blow him away with more tanks.

The prefered enemy allows you to pretty much always wound your opponentwith your big guns. Except when your against some monstrous creatures.

It actually seems really good. Especially for a few executioner plasma russ' and a pask punisher HQ.

Bunching the tanks up isn't such a huge deal as long as you have appropriate bubble wrap units to protect them. In a mechanized list it could be more difficult to use the formation properly.

Interesting that the LRs are in squadrons, but the hydra is not a battery but a single tank. Btw what's the problem with Hydras? They aren't expensive (70pts), have 4 skyfire shots with twin-link, so seems pretty nice. Why use quad guns with ADL instead of them? While quad guns by themselves costs 20 points less, you can't take them without at least an ADL, so it's at least 100 pts. It has pretty much the same gun as hydra.

The problem with hydras is that they don't have interceptor, tank hunter, and they are extremely fragile to the shooting of anything that they are good against.

Comparing them to an ADL + quadd gun is extremely misleading as the ADL also gives a 4+/2+ GtG to most of your army, the T7 quad gun is also considerably tougher for most armies to kill (don't forget it has cover!), the gun has interceptor so it can shoot that vendetta/heldrake/nightscythe when it comes on the board, the unit manning it can get orders on them for tank hunters or ignore cover and often the model manning it is BS4 or 5.

I actually don't mind hydras when they are not eating my HS slots. Taking a few and putting them in reserves is a very nice counter to flyers and waveserpents as they come TL and ignore jink. Putting them in reserves and bringing them in ensures you get at least 1 turn of shooting, which is enough to usually earn its pts back. I am actually starting to warm up to hydras as skimmers with jink saves have never been so common nor so strong as they are now.

Zsolt wrote:
Interesting that the LRs are in squadrons, but the hydra is not a battery but a single tank. Btw what's the problem with Hydras? They aren't expensive (70pts), have 4 skyfire shots with twin-link, so seems pretty nice. Why use quad guns with ADL instead of them? While quad guns by themselves costs 20 points less, you can't take them without at least an ADL, so it's at least 100 pts. It has pretty much the same gun as hydra.

Hydra doesn't have Interceptor and is easier to kill (I don't use a quad gun either, but that's why people don't like Hydras).

Why does hydra ignore jink?

And why is T7 harder to kill than AV12?

How does IG get BS5? The best spare BS I can find is the BS4 of the PCS' commander.

Putting them in reserve seems like a pretty nice tactic.

Zsolt wrote:
Why does hydra ignore jink?

Wow, I forgot they lost that from last edition. Never mind and I retract my warming up to them.

Zsolt wrote:
And why is T7 harder to kill than AV12?

The T7 cannot be one shot by anti tank weapons, has a 3+ save, and a 4+ cover save (because the ADL). It also intercepts so often the flyer has to jink to minimize damage thus forcing it to shoot at BS1. It also helps that the most popular flyers are nightscythes right now which will half kill a hydra on average but do not even average a wound on a quad gun. The sad part is that it is bad when you assume the opponent will shoot the front armour but IME I often get the side armour as you can come on at an angle with the flyer, that or they are out of range/LoS and I beta strike them.

Zsolt wrote:
How does IG get BS5? The best spare BS I can find is the BS4 of the PCS' commander.

Lord commissars and Commissar Yarrick. Commissar Yarrick is an incredible addition to most gunline style lists.

Zsolt wrote:
Putting them in reserve seems like a pretty nice tactic.

It is the only way I have ever seen them accomplish anything. AV12 10 10 open topped is just not very survivable.

The problem I had with bringing a lot of Russes were cc troops berzerking me. Since I rolled terrible on every scatter dice roll. Especially against my friend's Space Wolves and his super cc units with their crazy invuln saves.

Gamerely wrote:
The problem I had with bringing a lot of Russes were cc troops berzerking me. Since I rolled terrible on every scatter dice roll. Especially against my friend's Space Wolves and his super cc units with their crazy invuln saves.

With Executioners you have 5 Heavy plasma to try again scattering. You have 1/3 chance to hit, and you catter -1 to 9". 5 of that and you have pretty nice chance to hit. S7AP2 is pretty nice against MEQ. I'm not sure how good is gatling against MEQ but 29 shots tend to fail some armor saves however good they are.

Zsolt wrote:

Gamerely wrote:
The problem I had with bringing a lot of Russes were cc troops berzerking me. Since I rolled terrible on every scatter dice roll. Especially against my friend's Space Wolves and his super cc units with their crazy invuln saves.

With Executioners you have 5 Heavy plasma to try again scattering. You have 1/3 chance to hit, and you catter -1 to 9". 5 of that and you have pretty nice chance to hit. S7AP2 is pretty nice against MEQ. I'm not sure how good is gatling against MEQ but 29 shots tend to fail some armor saves however good they are.

This is why I prefer a Punisher - 20 shots with preferred enemy? NOBODY can roll so bad that the enemy isn't at least crippled, if not dead.

 tomjoad wrote:

Zsolt wrote:

Gamerely wrote:
The problem I had with bringing a lot of Russes were cc troops berzerking me. Since I rolled terrible on every scatter dice roll. Especially against my friend's Space Wolves and his super cc units with their crazy invuln saves.

With Executioners you have 5 Heavy plasma to try again scattering. You have 1/3 chance to hit, and you catter -1 to 9". 5 of that and you have pretty nice chance to hit. S7AP2 is pretty nice against MEQ. I'm not sure how good is gatling against MEQ but 29 shots tend to fail some armor saves however good they are.

This is why I prefer a Punisher - 20 shots with preferred enemy? NOBODY can roll so bad that the enemy isn't at least crippled, if not dead.

The problem with Punisher without pask is it can hardly damage anything except infantry. It can't even glance AV12 and AV14 won't even take the effort to laugh at it. At least it can damage up to T8, and 20 shots have a nice chance to get through any armor/fnp/iwnd/whatever.

It's always helpful to get a good mix of the different russ variants.

If preferred enemy gives re-roll to scatter, than LRBT and other scatter to oblivion variants become viable. LRBT would be awesome if you could consistently hit your target with it.

Unfortunately it does not give rerols to scatters. It allows you to reroll 1s when rolling to hit. However when rolling to hit with 'Gets Hot' blast weapons you are supposed to roll a single d6 along with the rest to determine Gets Hot. That one can be rerolled...

konst80hummel wrote:
Unfortunately it does not give rerols to scatters. It allows you to reroll 1s when rolling to hit. However when rolling to hit with 'Gets Hot' blast weapons you are supposed to roll a single d6 along with the rest to determine Gets Hot. That one can be rerolled...

BRB, Blast weapons, Blast Weapons and Re-rolls:
"If a model has the ability to re-roll its rolls To Hit and chooses to do so after firing a Blast weapon, the player must re-roll both the scatter dice and the 2D6."

Preferred enemy gives possibility to re-roll to hit rolls. Another wonderfully underdefined rule by GW.

EDIT:
Gets Hot and Re-rolls
"If a model has the ability to re-roll its rolls To Hit (including because of BS6+ or the Twin-linked special rule), a Wound is only suffered if the To Hit re-roll is also a 1; it may also re-roll Gets Hot results of 1 for weapons that do not roll To Hit"

Preferred enemy talks only about rolls to hit, while scatter dice and gets hot rolls of weapons that do not roll to hit are not rolls to hit. Imo Preferred enemy and Prescience or Blast and Gets got should have explicitly stated if the re-rolls apply to them or not. Until that we are left with RAW and opinions.

Zsolt wrote:

konst80hummel wrote:
Unfortunately it does not give rerols to scatters. It allows you to reroll 1s when rolling to hit. However when rolling to hit with 'Gets Hot' blast weapons you are supposed to roll a single d6 along with the rest to determine Gets Hot. That one can be rerolled...

BRB, Blast weapons, Blast Weapons and Re-rolls:
"If a model has the ability to re-roll its rolls To Hit and chooses to do so after firing a Blast weapon, the player must re-roll both the scatter dice and the 2D6."

Preferred enemy gives possibility to re-roll to hit rolls. Another wonderfully underdefined rule by GW.

EDIT:
Gets Hot and Re-rolls
"If a model has the ability to re-roll its rolls To Hit (including because of BS6+ or the Twin-linked special rule), a Wound is only suffered if the To Hit re-roll is also a 1; it may also re-roll Gets Hot results of 1 for weapons that do not roll To Hit"

Preferred enemy talks only about rolls to hit, while scatter dice and gets hot rolls of weapons that do not roll to hit are not rolls to hit. Imo Preferred enemy and Prescience or Blast and Gets got should have explicitly stated if the re-rolls apply to them or not. Until that we are left with RAW and opinions.

So everyone go to gw's page, find out where you can email them about rules issues. And if a lot of people shoot an email asking if prefered enemy grants rerolls to scatter then maybe they will realize it and put out an FAQ. If no one has emailed them about it then they won't do anything about it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also in the steel host formation I do tend to use standard LRBT's because with s8 you pretty much need 1's to wound anything and with rerolling 1's you should almost always wound. Except for some high toughness units.

 tankboy145 wrote:

Zsolt wrote:

konst80hummel wrote:
Unfortunately it does not give rerols to scatters. It allows you to reroll 1s when rolling to hit. However when rolling to hit with 'Gets Hot' blast weapons you are supposed to roll a single d6 along with the rest to determine Gets Hot. That one can be rerolled...

BRB, Blast weapons, Blast Weapons and Re-rolls:
"If a model has the ability to re-roll its rolls To Hit and chooses to do so after firing a Blast weapon, the player must re-roll both the scatter dice and the 2D6."

Preferred enemy gives possibility to re-roll to hit rolls. Another wonderfully underdefined rule by GW.

EDIT:
Gets Hot and Re-rolls
"If a model has the ability to re-roll its rolls To Hit (including because of BS6+ or the Twin-linked special rule), a Wound is only suffered if the To Hit re-roll is also a 1; it may also re-roll Gets Hot results of 1 for weapons that do not roll To Hit"

Preferred enemy talks only about rolls to hit, while scatter dice and gets hot rolls of weapons that do not roll to hit are not rolls to hit. Imo Preferred enemy and Prescience or Blast and Gets got should have explicitly stated if the re-rolls apply to them or not. Until that we are left with RAW and opinions.

So everyone go to gw's page, find out where you can email them about rules issues. And if a lot of people shoot an email asking if prefered enemy grants rerolls to scatter then maybe they will realize it and put out an FAQ. If no one has emailed them about it then they won't do anything about it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also in the steel host formation I do tend to use standard LRBT's because with s8 you pretty much need 1's to wound anything and with rerolling 1's you should almost always wound. Except for some high toughness units.

gamefaqs@gwplc.com

The problem with LRBT is not wounding but hitting. And that it can't blow up vehicles nor reliably damage AV14, neither does it ignore cover.

But hitting could partially be solved if prefered enemy allowed rerolls with the scatter. It may not be ignore cover but the only russ that does that is the eradicator which also can't blow up vehicles reliably so. The LRBT just had a better chance at penning vehicles that most other variants. And with s8 insta killin most infantry having the preffered enemy could really knock them out faster.

I just don't understand what the logic of ordnance affecting a LRBT was. The sponson gunners are dedicated to their guns which means they shouldn't really be affected by the main gun firing. But logic isn't really in 40k.

 tankboy145 wrote:
I just don't understand what the logic of ordnance affecting a LRBT was. The sponson gunners are dedicated to their guns which means they shouldn't really be affected by the main gun firing. But logic isn't really in 40k.

Picture this;
You are a gunner shooting his pintle mounted machine gun. Suddenly the entire tank shakes like a bucking horse and you need to lock your knees and arms into place to keep from being thrown entirely out of the tank. How good is your aim?

Notice in the fluff when a LRBT fires it's gun the entire tank bucks. Anyone in or on that tank is going to be holding on for dear life. Now my question is why the does the LRBT not have a recoil dampener.

 ansacs wrote:

 tankboy145 wrote:
I just don't understand what the logic of ordnance affecting a LRBT was. The sponson gunners are dedicated to their guns which means they shouldn't really be affected by the main gun firing. But logic isn't really in 40k.

Picture this;
You are a gunner shooting his pintle mounted machine gun. Suddenly the entire tank shakes like a bucking horse and you need to lock your knees and arms into place to keep from being thrown entirely out of the tank. How good is your aim?

Notice in the fluff when a LRBT fires it's gun the entire tank bucks. Anyone in or on that tank is going to be holding on for dear life. Now my question is why the does the LRBT not have a recoil dampener.

As far as I know in previous editions LRBT could fire both ordnance and regular weapons at the same time without penalty.

Zsolt wrote:
As far as I know in previous editions LRBT could fire both ordnance and regular weapons at the same time without penalty.

Yeah when I started playing every weapon could fire at whatever target was within it's LoS and range. You could also hide troops behind other troops and block LoS...dated myself there. I personally thought the weapons on a LRBT should be able to fire at separate targets but that was pretty broken OP, even in that edition.

Now my question is why the does the LRBT not have a recoil dampener.

It has one.

Guard Logic -
Hey, we have a cannon on this tank. With recoil dampener, it doesn't even shake the tank. Well, we should probably get a bigger gun then!

And that's how the battle cannon was born.
The End.

 ansacs wrote:

 tankboy145 wrote:
I just don't understand what the logic of ordnance affecting a LRBT was. The sponson gunners are dedicated to their guns which means they shouldn't really be affected by the main gun firing. But logic isn't really in 40k.

Picture this;
You are a gunner shooting his pintle mounted machine gun. Suddenly the entire tank shakes like a bucking horse and you need to lock your knees and arms into place to keep from being thrown entirely out of the tank. How good is your aim?

Notice in the fluff when a LRBT fires it's gun the entire tank bucks. Anyone in or on that tank is going to be holding on for dear life. Now my question is why the does the LRBT not have a recoil dampener.

I understand how a tank works lol I am a tanker on an abrams and it does indeed kick lol.

My logic is the gunners in the sponsons are in their own positions. Now when the gun fires its only for that split second that the whole thing jumps back. That shouldn't be enough to throw all weapon systems off completely. I mean my tank commander is still able to engage enemy targets at the same time with his 50 ca.

But unfortunetly it is the way of the game and I wish lumbering behemoth or the heavy rule offset ordnance. I mean the tank is also heavy! There can't be that much kick! Lol

I LOVE this formation. It's a blast to play. Here is my 1850 list.

Pask w/Punisher, Camo Netting
2x Executioner

3x LRBT
3x Vanquisher w/lascannon
3x Eradicator

Hydra

It's a really simple list, comes out to 1850 exactly. It's a good TAC list. Pask is great for pretty much everything, including aerial targets. He prevents the Exec's from taking heat damage, and the camo netting gives him a bit more survivability.

I then took 3 squadrons of Russ variants based on different threats. I have the LRBT's for MEQ, the Vanquishers for vehicles, TEQ, and MC as well as a few pot shots at aerial targets if they are too great of a threat. The Eradicators are for units hiding behind cover.

The weakest part of this list is the single Hydra, as if the enemy has fliers that becomes a very good target. Fortunately it's amazingly easy to hide a small hull behind 12 Russ hulls. The Hydra usually stays alive, but if it can't kill the target I still have Pask with PE and the Vanquishers with PE.

Thats actually a pretty awesome list and maximizes all the russes lol I might copy that one time lol.

You can't take Pask in the Steel Host formation because he's not a Tank Commander