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So, there was something I've always wanted to try, but I haven't been able to playtest it to see if it's worth the points. Suppose you have a number of artillery chassis-- say it's an Emperor's Wrath Artillery Formation. By sinking some points into it, you could get these suckers a reliable 2+ cover save with these steps:

1. Buy an ADL. Deploy it around a corner of the board, and camp all of your artillery behind it. That's 4+ to start. Try to take up space so deepstriking behind the wall is impossible.
2. Get camo netting on all of the vehicles. That improves the cover saves to 3+ for each vehicle with the upgrade.
3. Caution: expensive, but maybe worth it? Get a unit of Bullgryns with slabshields. Space them the maximum distance and deploy them immediately behind the wall, with your tanks behind them. The rules for slabshield confer a further +1 to cover, for a 2+ on the vehicles.

Now, here's where (I hope) the beauty of this comes into play. Yes, Bullgryns are a rather expensive unit, but they should be all the bubblewrap you need. If your opponent tries to shoot the Bullgryns down to improve their odds of harming your tanks, you can go to ground and they will get 2+ cover from the ADL. If your opponent tries to assault, they need a few turns to reach your little corner, and then a lot of stubborn T5 4+ wounds to get through, meanwhile your artillery can continue to fire until the Bullgryns are wiped, if ever. Throw in a priest if you want to guarantee they'll stick around, and he'll count as T5, too, since the Bone Ead can take challenges. The best part is since we're talking about artillery pieces with Barrage, your opponents don't get a cover save from the slabshields or aegis because LOS is irrelevant. This tactic could also work with ignores cover units, like Eradicators, Hellhounds, divination, etc. Even stock LRBTs would be quite nice if they had Ignores Cover from a Primaris Psyker.

I have yet to see whether the points costs are worth it, primarily due to the Bullgryns, but I've used similar tactics where Bullgryns stand in front of an advancing Pasknisher with camo for a mobile 3+ rather successfully. I think you can earn back your points by ensuring the survival of your heavy hitters late into the game, as well as potentially getting more points back if your opponent invests too much effort into killing your artillery. Bonus points if the Bullgryns tarpit that scary death star that was preparing to shred some vehicles.

And then the enemy brings markerlights. Yep, targetting stuff that has or confers Ignores Cover might be a good idea to prevent this strategy from being invalidated. Thoughts? Let's hear it!

Probably more effective to work in a bunch of psykers into the army and roll on Telepathy. Which ever psykers roll Shrouding can babysit your artillery and have a 6" shrouding bubble.

Important thing is to balance your investment with the most probable results and also understand what impact this might have on the rest of your army (as in the points spent protecting your artillery could be used to make your offensive part of your army better). Seems like such a waste to use Bullgryns to babysit artillery when they can at the very least be pushing forward and hurting things. A bunch of psykers are probably going to be a lot more useful in the grand scheme of things.

allied techmarine and bolster terrain? Or thunderfre cannon for more artillery

Sqauwky wrote:
allied techmarine and bolster terrain? Or thunderfre cannon for more artillery

Can Techmarines bolster an ADL? I thought they could only do ruins, but I'm not sure as I've never run one. If they can bolster an ADL, I might just try it sometime.

Bolster defences doesn't work on terrain you've bought, sadly. if there's an ADL on the table already that's just hanging around in your deploymnent zone, you can bolster that, but it's not something to build a strategy around.

 Vankraken wrote:
Probably more effective to work in a bunch of psykers into the army and roll on Telepathy. Which ever psykers roll Shrouding can babysit your artillery and have a 6" shrouding bubble.

Important thing is to balance your investment with the most probable results and also understand what impact this might have on the rest of your army (as in the points spent protecting your artillery could be used to make your offensive part of your army better). Seems like such a waste to use Bullgryns to babysit artillery when they can at the very least be pushing forward and hurting things. A bunch of psykers are probably going to be a lot more useful in the grand scheme of things.

I wish it were that easy. Neither Primaris Psykers nor the Wyrdvane (elite choice) psyker squad can take telepathy. Only a CCS that includes an astropath may provide any sort of Telepathy powers, and that's only 1 power plus Shriek. 1/3 of a chance to roll either shrouded or invisibility, but that's still rather unreliable.

 KommissarKiln wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
Probably more effective to work in a bunch of psykers into the army and roll on Telepathy. Which ever psykers roll Shrouding can babysit your artillery and have a 6" shrouding bubble.

Important thing is to balance your investment with the most probable results and also understand what impact this might have on the rest of your army (as in the points spent protecting your artillery could be used to make your offensive part of your army better). Seems like such a waste to use Bullgryns to babysit artillery when they can at the very least be pushing forward and hurting things. A bunch of psykers are probably going to be a lot more useful in the grand scheme of things.

I wish it were that easy. Neither Primaris Psykers nor the Wyrdvane (elite choice) psyker squad can take telepathy. Only a CCS that includes an astropath may provide any sort of Telepathy powers, and that's only 1 power plus Shriek. 1/3 of a chance to roll either shrouded or invisibility, but that's still rather unreliable.

You could try adding Inquisition as their psykers can take telepathy and are DIRT cheap to field with a 3 man squad (1 psyker + 2 grunts) being only 20 points. Henchmen Acolytes (guardsmen) with 1 Psyker in a Chimera are quite good as Inq Chimeras can have 5 guys shoot out the top hatch, can take psyammo so the Chimera's heavy bolters are S6, and each squad can take 3 special weapons (plasma or melta) and you don't need all the extra bodies like you would have with standard guardsmen. Having Servo skulls is also great for artillery as it helps protect against infiltrators, reduce scatter, and make deep strike reinforcements less risky.