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.

Hello all!

Please review my list as harshly as possible, it is meant for tournament play.


Gladius:

Khan
Chaplain

Tac squad (5 men), grav-cannon, combi-plasma, Razorback t-l assault cannon
Tac squad (5 men), grav-cannon, combi-plasma, Razorback t-l assault cannon
Tac squad (5 men), grav-cannon, combi-plasma, Razorback t-l assault cannon
Tac squad (5 men), grav-cannon, combi-plasma, Razorback t-l assault cannon
Tac squad (5 men), meltagun, combi-melta, Drop Pod
Tac squad (5 men), meltagun, combi-melta, Drop Pod

Land Speeder, typhoon ML
Land Speeder, typhoon ML

Dev squad (5 men) lascannon x4, Razorback t-l assault cannon
Dev squad (5 men) lascannon, MLx3, Drop Pod

Scout Squad (5 men), bolters
Scout Squad (5 men), bolters
Scout Squad (5 men), bolters


Skyhammer:

Assault squad (5 men)
Assault squad (5 men)
Dev squad (5 men) grav-cannon x4, Drop Pod
Dev squad (5 men) multi-melta x4, Drop Pod



White Scars for the Gladius, as Hit and Run is huge for a shooting army. The Skyhammer could possibly be Ultramarines.
Khan scouts the Razors forward to support the skyhammer and hangs in a pod along with the Chaplain and a tac squad
Devs camp the home objectives and the skyhammer will try to take care of 1-2 big threats the turn they arrive.
Scouts infiltrate on objectives and try to pass unnoticed or draw fire from the rest of the army
Land Speeders for fire support and fast OS objective grabbing
As kitted, the tac squads seem on paper to produce a lot of dakka for 135 pts each: 3 grav shots, 2 plasma shots, 4 tl asscannon shots.

ThoughtS? Comments?

No comments?
Is it that awesome a list?

Seems decent enough on paper. MSU army builds always leave me wishing for more bodies on the table at the end of the day though.

Depending on the meta you're going to you'll struggle against Knight heavy builds, flyer heavy builds, and most Assault centered non death star armies like ad mech spoiler build and Khorne Daemonkin khorne dog builds.

The problem is no real TAC lists exist anymore as there is always a spoiler build out in the field if the tournament is big enough. Still it's a solid, if somewhat squishy, list.

Why does everyone think these grav spam at all costs based lists are good? I know they are good vs high saving throws but against orks, tyranids? IG? Even things like harlequins or lots of eldar hornets... they are next to useless.. quite honestly you would struggle vs scatbike spam with warlocks too.. nothing in your army is actually tough.. and razor backs are a meh


Also if it is a proper tournament I hope they insist you have the officisl skyhammer datasheet. It is illegal to field units unless you have the "codex", and as you know it is not in the sm codex at all but rather on a boxed game minidex sheet

That sort of goes back to my earlier point about no real TAC list exists. Most people build one of the many rock, paper, or scissors lists and hope to not run into their hard counter at any given event.

I prefer to go Grav heavy on 1 dev melta heavy on 2 devs and double flamers on assault squads and take UM as the chapter so you get access to 2-4 turns of the tactical doctrine for twin linked bolter fire. That's another reason I like more tactical squad bodies on the board, for massed and concentrated bolter fire against hordes and Eldar bikes.

Your point(s) are all perfectly valid and are representative of the current list building meta.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ConanMan wrote:
Why does everyone think these grav spam at all costs based lists are good? I know they are good vs high saving throws but against orks, tyranids? IG? Even things like harlequins or lots of eldar hornets... they are next to useless.. quite honestly you would struggle vs scatbike spam with warlocks too.. nothing in your army is actually tough.. and razor backs are a meh


Also if it is a proper tournament I hope they insist you have the officisl skyhammer datasheet. It is illegal to field units unless you have the "codex", and as you know it is not in the sm codex at all but rather on a boxed game minidex sheet

Lol, so only people who bought the formation from GW on limited release should be allowed to play it? What about people who didn't need to purchase the new models or all of them to field the formation? You can only use a formation for models you already own if you're going to shell out a couple of hundred bucks for a piece of paper? Really? Are we playing elitist hammer now?

If your going Skyhammer I would change at least one of the Scout Squads for a Scout Biker Squad somehow. Bump them up to five men and add a Homing Beacon to them. Maybe reduce the devastators to 3 heavy weapons or something to fit that in.That way you have a fast moving annoying unit that can guide your Skyhammer down where you want it.

A) Your Assault Marines will benefit from the Homing Beacon, meaning you can put them down only inches away from their target for smooth sailing.
B) A Homing Beacon will almost guarantee that you will be within Melta-range, or any other range (exactly 23" away from that Wraithknight f.example), when you come down in your Drop Pods.

Terrible things do happen, and this gives you more control over your game I feel.

I don't know about elitist hammer but I think it is totally reasonable to expect your opponent to have a gw published ruleset if he wants to field something not in the codex or brb. It is totally unreasonable to expect people to just take your word that you know all the rules perfectly and won't improve your situation because of bias. Especially at a tournament.

That being said I think it is very squishy. Anything with significant interceptor, like a tau firebase support cadre would kill your entire sky hammer, of most of it before it fired a single shot. ths rest is pretty standard MSU marines although I like to play to table so not really my kind of list.

Epartalis wrote:
I don't know about elitist hammer but I think it is totally reasonable to expect your opponent to have a gw published ruleset if he wants to field something not in the codex or brb. It is totally unreasonable to expect people to just take your word that you know all the rules perfectly and won't improve your situation because of bias. Especially at a tournament.

That being said I think it is very squishy. Anything with significant interceptor, like a tau firebase support cadre would kill your entire sky hammer, of most of it before it fired a single shot. ths rest is pretty standard MSU marines although I like to play to table so not really my kind of list.

Are you saying you would not accept a printed out copy?

Soooo many kill points

I would accept a printed out copy or anything really for a friendly game, although it starts to get into fuzzy territory with a tournament. The only reason I say that is because I have seen some serious bs on the tournament scene and I wouldn't put it past a guy who was trying to use gi joe artillery for basilisks and little plaster puppy dogs for flesh hounds of Khorne to do something equally gakky when it comes to rules. Such as doctor a gw document and then print out versions that look official but in fact have overt or even slight variations on the rules. Assuming you show it to the tournament official before hand and he verified the rules then I suppose I don't have a problem with it.

Call me super anal if you want but the way I see it it is the responsibility of the player bringing the modles in question to also bring an official set of rules for the game. if you can't get the up to date rules don't bring the models or make sure the person you are playing is cool with it.

I play tau and I bring the up to date rules for the tetras I bring to every game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I don't have ia3 Taros campaign but I do have the most recent gw FAQ and I am always happy to show the website should a player need verification.

This needs some optimization IMHO.

Grav cannon spam is much better done on bikes than tac squads.

And you are white scars....

so drop the Gravs in tac squads (replace with plasma guns: which btw are by far the best choice now with the ability to re-roll all misses via the two Tac re-roll turns you earn via the formation)

Drop the two Speeders.

add 2 bike squads with 2 grav+combi Grav.. (if you want grav back, if not, spam plasma here too)

Thank me later as you are wrecking face.

cotez with a squad of plasma cannon servitors will wipe out your skyhammer. and then youll get skyhammerd back and just those 2 things are 860pts. i still have 990pts left to my army to deal with a few 5 man squads. if your going competitive you have to think outside the box. my list is a 660pt skyhammer that comes down first turn while 2 d-cannons hold my objective. and then turn two i have 2 hemlocks and about 20 bikes doing clean up.

Dman137 wrote:
cotez with a squad of plasma cannon servitors will wipe out your skyhammer. and then youll get skyhammerd back and just those 2 things are 860pts. i still have 990pts left to my army to deal with a few 5 man squads. if your going competitive you have to think outside the box. my list is a 660pt skyhammer that comes down first turn while 2 d-cannons hold my objective. and then turn two i have 2 hemlocks and about 20 bikes doing clean up.

That's a pretty unfair and biased statement, I'd argue. Oh, don't bother playing skyhammer because Coteaz w/servitors kicks its butt... Except, wait! Coteaz with servitors sucks at everything else! Oh, and wait! Also except that any idiot would land at least 13" away from him upon hearing his intercept is a 12" bubble! Much useless - so avvoid. Wow...

And why wouldn't his Skyhammer wipe the floor with Coteaz and his unit, or the rest of your army for that matter? And who says he goes first? - You might instead, after all. And good luck Skyhammering Razorbacks. There's just no way you can take out all of his 4 Grav-Cannon guys in a sea of Space Marines with one Skyhammer Assault - remember you charge after you shoot so he would just disembark a wrecked vehicle away from your Assault Marines. Then your skyhammer would take Grav-Cannons to the face in your next round. No pinning for them if they clear their leadership test (on a 2d6 for a wrecked vehicle). And you don't just "wipe up" 77 Meq models with Hit-and-Run and 12 Vehicles with 34 Hull Points (Yikes... Nice job on the list spartiatis! ). Just, no. Your take on how you'd "kick his ass" just doesn't make sense.

Besides even if I you say: "yeah, but..." and point out counters to the counters there's just too much happening in his list for you to be able to roll over him.

Better luck next time.

 Corvus_corax wrote:

Dman137 wrote:
cotez with a squad of plasma cannon servitors will wipe out your skyhammer. and then youll get skyhammerd back and just those 2 things are 860pts. i still have 990pts left to my army to deal with a few 5 man squads. if your going competitive you have to think outside the box. my list is a 660pt skyhammer that comes down first turn while 2 d-cannons hold my objective. and then turn two i have 2 hemlocks and about 20 bikes doing clean up.

That's a pretty unfair and biased statement, I'd argue. Oh, don't bother playing skyhammer because Coteaz w/servitors kicks its butt... Except, wait! Coteaz with servitors sucks at everything else! Oh, and wait! Also except that any idiot would land at least 13" away from him upon hearing his intercept is a 12" bubble! Much useless - so avvoid. Wow...

And why wouldn't his Skyhammer wipe the floor with Coteaz and his unit, or the rest of your army for that matter? And who says he goes first? - You might instead, after all. And good luck Skyhammering Razorbacks. There's just no way you can take out all of his 4 Grav-Cannon guys in a sea of Space Marines with one Skyhammer Assault - remember you charge after you shoot so he would just disembark a wrecked vehicle away from your Assault Marines. Then your skyhammer would take Grav-Cannons to the face in your next round. No pinning for them if they clear their leadership test (on a 2d6 for a wrecked vehicle). And you don't just "wipe up" 77 Meq models with Hit-and-Run and 12 Vehicles with 34 Hull Points (Yikes... Nice job on the list spartiatis! ). Just, no. Your take on how you'd "kick his ass" just doesn't make sense.

Besides even if I you say: "yeah, but..." and point out counters to the counters there's just too much happening in his list for you to be able to roll over him.

Better luck next time.

MSU marines gets walked all over. A good player will now how to deploy against it, and pick apart the units one by one, the skyhammer will take care of 4 tanks turn 1 then you have to deal with marines in your face. You out Cortez in a bunker AV 14 you have to blow up and then he deploys behind it or comes out the escape hatch 12" away. And your forgetting about the 3/4 of the army. MSU marines just isn't as good as you think. It's fun to play with but not competitive. Get some cents in a drop pod and then your talking. Drop pods with skyhammer is a better way to go, deploy nothing and your opponent is looking at empty space, then you pick your locations and strike.

Would you be willing to drop the skyhammer force in exchange for a storm wing formation? It would give you some much needed anti-air and will aid in armor killing and MC hunting.