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Fellow Generals

Tommorow I'm playing a first game of the second round in a Planetary Empires campaign, that my group is running. So far I've been (reluctnatly) playing as SM, but my long absence from this faction and wrongful notion of building a "fun" list, instead of an OP one, resulted in catastrophic failures, against all opponents. My mates, being the best of all, practically forced me to drop the Pauldron Boys and grab IG.

Now I need to create a list of 1850 with a single entry from Forgeworld allowed. We're playing with allies, formations and what not. The only things banned are super heavies and more than a single model from Forge World.

My opponents run a completely SAVAGE lists, with the Tau player that I'm facing tommorow, having two Riptides and Hunter Cadre, one SM player fielding the Clan Raukaan-Fist of Medusa based army with WS "get out of the vehicle, shoot, get in vehicle" bull and their famous, unkillable Chapter Master with Gorgon Chain, and, finally, the second SM player bringing the Raptor Wing and Skyhammer Annihilation Force. The Nid plaeyer, who also kicked my ass, has a reasonable list, with nothing OP, but the rest... I don't know where to even start.

I was thinking about building my army around the Rampart Shield Wall and a mass infantry with two flyers - Vendetta and the Avenger Strike Fighter. Should I take any tanks or arty? What about Psykers?

The last time I've played against the SM player with Skyhammer, he deepstriked everything at turn two and set upon my mechanised SM with a vengeance. I don't want to see my tanks get glanced to death by a 10-man Assault Squads with 30 S-4 attacks each, or getting blown up by two Stormtalons, guided by a Landspeeder.

Not to mention the Gorgon Chain-wielding Chapter Master...

having a unit of conscripts with a priest would really slow down that chapter master as well as allowing you to bubble wrap any important units you could attach a pysker but its not necessary

My suggestion if they're playing competitive armies, is use the most competitive one you can build yourself if you have the models. Use an emperor's wrath artillery formation, multiple infantry/conscript blobs with priest to keep the deep strikers far away from your artillery. You can then insert your flavor of emperor's blade assault company or just plain ole melta vets in chimeras. Just make sure everything has a vox to make all those arty shots TL on top of ignoring cover.

And thus why banning Super heavy enables death stars to run rampant and unchecked.

Agitating for you to say the least. I agree with the Emperors wrath formation, it is nasty along with max wyvern. Screen I guess nowadays they call it bubble wrapping your artillery with conscripts or infantry platoon. Pask is still nasty with his punisher gatling cannon.

Edit: I would almost consider running a Demolisher naked as Pask Wingman, I've lost centurions that way before after I killed Pask. Very nasty.

You can put like 300 guardsmen on the table. No way that chapter master is doing anything significant when he kills 4 conscripts a turn.

AM is an aged codex where many of the units are overcosted and not worth taking. There's some good ideas in here though, Emp's wrath looks good on paper but I'm not entirely convinced of its power. I've seen one battle report with it being used and it did okay. I honestly think Emp's wrath is an extremely fragile list that relies on terrain being in the AM player's favor. Basilisks are not hard to kill.

Wyverns seem to be the only unit in the AM dex worth taking anymore if you're facing opponents that want to min-max. Too bad you can't bring Imperial Knights as that would have been the first thing I would recommend.

See if they'll let you bring a Hellhammer or a Baneblade. I rarely see those anymore and are fluffy for Guard.

Just out of curiosity, how do the Planetstrike rules interact with the WH40K rules, in general? Do you get the same 1850 points list for all battles? Or is it variable sized forces from time to time?

Your FW unit should be a Vulture if you have it, no questions asked. Like the above poster, I am not convinced of the effectiveness of the Emperor's Wrath formation (having run it several times myself), mainly because you can do the exact same thing for far cheaper by issuing orders to artillery emplacements. They are also more survivable.

Really, as was mentioned above, you don't have many good options for min maxing. A good unit is a 40 man blob with a priest or 2, supported by a Xenos inquisitor with rad/psychotroke grenades. This unit is surprisingly devastating in melee and you will probably catch melee heavy lists off guard, at least once, when they charge your unit and are butchered, since most people are not familiar with how a xenos inquisitor interacts with 40 guardsmen (or psychotroke grenades for that matter). If possible, stick Coteaz in here as well to thwart deep strikes within 12" of your lines.

Put them behind an ADL and give them as much artillery as possible to defend (Emperor's wrath will actually be your best bet if FW artillery carriages are not allowed) . Run a Vendetta and Vulture for mobility, placing your platoon command squad in the vendetta for a late game objective grab. Forget about moving anything other than your flyers. Hold the line and hope for the best.

SYKOJAK wrote:
Just out of curiosity, how do the Planetstrike rules interact with the WH40K rules, in general? Do you get the same 1850 points list for all battles? Or is it variable sized forces from time to time?

I've had additional 200 points. I've bought a second Demolisher and purchased carapace armour for my CCS squads.

Ok so he claimed moral victory (2 points more than me) and in the end I had nearly half of my army, and he had only a single model left! Vulture and Vindicare destroyed both Riptides. LR's didn't do much, as they were huge firemagnets, but the artillery... Daaaaamn. At least 3 infantry units, a ton of drones, a few Crisis suits and a tank got destroyed by their combined firepower. Also a single Chimera with 10 vets inside blasted a Devilsfish and two Crisis Suits with its Multilaser. One of the best games I ever had and immensely fun too. Thank you for your support and advice guys!

Oh and the Ordo Malleus Inquisitor deep striked right next to a Riptide and tried to Psychic Scream it to death. He failed and got rekt. XD As it turns out, you can't take psy bolt ammo on your Psycannon...

Put them behind an ADL and give them as much artillery as possible to defend (Emperor's wrath will actually be your best bet if FW artillery carriages are not allowed) . Run a Vendetta and Vulture for mobility, placing your platoon command squad in the vendetta for a late game objective grab. Forget about moving anything other than your flyers. Hold the line and hope for the best.

We've agreed not to play with any fortifications. Also if we'd allow Super Heavies, then this would turn into a Knight fest and our Nid player would be boned. He dosen't have any super heavy units in his possession, sadly.

No fortifications, even an ADL, sounds like your "buddies" are fething with you man. I wouldn't stand for that.

If your win rate is worse than 40%, your opponents are very competitive or douche bags.

ultimentra wrote:No fortifications, even an ADL, sounds like your "buddies" are fething with you man. I wouldn't stand for that.

We agreed on that, since only one player has ADL in his possession and he's playing maxed out SM. Can you imagine what would happen, if he'd brought it to the table?

Martel732 wrote:If your win rate is worse than 40%, your opponents are very competitive or douche bags.

A mix really, but they're still my pals, so I'll go with competitive.

 Xathrodox86 wrote:

ultimentra wrote:No fortifications, even an ADL, sounds like your "buddies" are fething with you man. I wouldn't stand for that.

We agreed on that, since only one player has ADL in his possession and he's playing maxed out SM. Can you imagine what would happen, if he'd brought it to the table?

Nothing? Because ADLs aren't competitive at all and really only useful for a gunline? Which Space marines are not a gunline army? Space marines are one of the most mobile armies in the game if you are running one of the two best builds, Gladius and bike spam.

Bike spam is absent. Only the IH players uses CS bike squad with Chapter Master/Gorgon Chain/Apothecary combo.

We already have plans for another campaign, this time without SM. Only Xenos and normal humans are allowed. Maybe we'll add fortifications in that game, who knows.