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...or do people not bring it anymore due to fear of Necrons?

 D6Damager wrote:
...or do people not bring it anymore due to fear of Necrons?

For the historically uneducated, what's a leafblower?

Leafblower was technically AR12 tank spam (chimeras' hydras, manticore, etc) with Daemonhunter allies, although it is a term used for any ole mech IG list. Taken to ard boyz tournaments back in early 5ed and BoLS coined the term leafblower to describe the army -- which stuck.

Idea was point for point you could fit more shooting and durability in the army if you ignored the russes and in 5ed transports and tanks were king.

Meta shifted and figured out how to deal with it (multi-assaults, missile spam, psydreads, etc), then hull points came along with various other changes and releases and it fell out of favor.

To answer the question, no it is not really a thing outside of a few hardcore players. Chimeras no longer allow vets to fire all the specials out of the hatch, hydras snap fire everyone other than skimmers and flyers, manticore AP4 is a hindrance in 6ed/7ed (made no diff in 5ed). Along with a host of meta changes like tau and eldar which outshoot and out last such an army

Hull points and massive chimera nerfs killed it. Also point increase for manticores. The list is no longer feasible against anyone prepared to take on vehicles. Mass S6-7 on xeno armies and necron gauss doesn't help either. If you can't already tell, yes I am mad.

Pure IG leafblower lists certainly dropped into obscurity due to shifts in the meta, but the concept may still work.

Reduced chance of explode results as well as scoring vehicles mean that an AV12 mech list got better in 7th.

I've been having success with inquisition rhino and chimera spam, using multiple FOCs with minimum squads of special weapons, acolytes and HB servitors. The number of transports and MSU help to counter Str 7 spam, and the sheer number of psychic dice helps to counter a lot of invisible shenanigans.

Add some allied artillery, or some IK, and the list will act as a modernized leafblower imo.

As for Astra Militarum, I have no preference over blobguard, mechgaurd or leaf blower lists really.

Renegades and heretics are best at this job now. They have a ton of cheap tough artillery, cheap numerous bodies and daemon allies to cover fast mellee aspect and magic shenanigans.

mtwain wrote:History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

 koooaei wrote:
Renegades and heretics are best at this job now. They have a ton of cheap tough artillery, cheap numerous bodies and daemon allies to cover fast mellee aspect and magic shenanigans.

QFT. Sooooo much shooting, it's awesome.