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Okay, I got another loss with the Ultramarines.

Heres what I took, this was all in prep for an Amatura campaign that I am going to be doing with some mates:

HQ -

Praetor, Paragon, Iron Halo with sword breacher

Master of Signals

Legion Herald with sword breacher

Elites -

Contemptor Talon, 1 kheres and 1 with a lascannon.

10 Invictari with 4 plasma in Phobos with AC

Troops

20 sword breachers. Serg has fist.

20 sword breachers with fist

20 tacticals with ccw and fist

20 tacticals with ccw and fist

10 volkite rifles

10 volkite rifles

Heavy Support

Sicaran Venator

Deredeo with auto and ailios missiles


From memory my Night Lords opponent took:

Sevatar with 19 tacticals with ccw in a storm eagle.

4 10 man terror squads, one with volkite carbines. The one with volkites was in a dreadclaw.

1 raptor squad with jump packs

20 assault marines

2 squads of 10 Cataphracti1 squad of 5 in a land raider phobos

Predator squadron with plasma annialators (if I had known he was taking these I would have brought the Sicaran Arcus and not taken swords since its not a friendly game at that point)

He also had another storm eagle but I can't recall what he had in it.


Scenario:

One where you have five objectives which can provide negative victory points at the end of the game and deploy in adjacent squares.


Deployment: I kept my praetor with 20 swords in reserve as I didn't want them on the board until plasma was gone. Rest of army deployed in a crescent to push forward and take centre and opposite area. My two dreads were deployed for a denial attack on another objective. My heavy stuff was at the rear.

Opponent keeps several tanks by a line of hills that form a "bowl" around the central objective. He then infiltrates two of his terror squads close to the objectives outside of our deployment zones in LOS blocking cover.

Turn 1 Night Lords:

He brings in the Dreadclaw, the Deredeo fails to kill it with interceptor. 4 of my tacticals die to the jet burst. He fires his plasma at the lead breacher squad, "only" ten die because I had the rest hidden behind a land raider.

Turn 1 Ultramarines:

Volkites squad which can see and my sicaran fail to destroy the Dreadclaw. LOS blocking terrain stops the second volkite squad and lascannon team doing anything. My land raider and dreadnoughts converge on the plasma predators and destroy one of them with shooting.

Turn 2 Night Lords:

Reserves arrive. 2 squads of terminators teleport in. One close to my dreadnoughts, the other reinforcing the terror squad near where the dreadclaw has landed. The volkite terror squad disembarks. The two plasma predators withdraw behind a large LOS blocking hill. Both storm eagles come in. My Deredeo uses interceptor on one of them and takes some hull points off.

More breachers in the centre are killed by the opposing land raider. The volkite terror squad destroys half my volkite rifles, then charges the squad. They lose a few men to overwatch which is BS2 from my RoW. I pass my morale check which prevents me from shooting at them in my turn 2. Some tacticals supporting my volkite rifles are lost to the approaching night lords and I lose a hull point on the Deredeo.

Turn 2 Ultramarines:

Dreadnoughts move away from terminators to support defence of the centre where the planes are. The tactical squad supporting the volk rifles kills a few approaching terror marines. My breachers in the center move to claim the central objective. My Invictari assault and kill the 10 Kataphracti, losing one to a power sword. All the fire in the center from my lascannons, siciaran and volkites fails to stop either of the storm eagles. My praetor and 20 breachers arrive from reserve. They move towards the terror squad attacking my volkite rifles. In my assault the terror squad wipes the last of the volkite rifles. The Sicaran finishes the Dreadclaw.

Turn 3 Night Lords:

Assault squad and Raptors arrives. The raptors land near to my breacher team in the centre.

Terror squad and the other supporting two terror squads and cataphracts destroy the 20 man tactical team with shooting and close combat from the terror squad. Sevatar lands with his 20 and destroys the second tactical blob. The plasma preds destroy my Invictari squad.

Turn 3 Ultramarines:

Praetor and blob continues to advance towards Night Lords (BTW the big fight with that terror squad is about 2 foot away)

My volkites, contemptor dreads and breachers fire on the raptors killing half of them. What is left of my breachers and herald charge killing the raptor squad. My Deredeo shoots down the storm eagle. My land raider kills another predator. (For the rest of the game the Land raider and this predator and my foes land raider shot eachother until by the end of turn 5 the land raider was on one hull point)

Turn 4 Night Lords:

Night Lords fire on the advancing breachers killing many of them. The volkite terror squad finishes off the Deredeo whilst Sevatar destroys the heavy weapons team and master of signals. My volkite rifles take heavy casulaties. A storm eagle destroys a dreadnought. His 10 man terminator squad assaults and destroys my breacher team and herald. The assault squad moves in to the center.

Turn 4 Ultramarines:

My breacher team starts to move around to get to Sevatar. The Sicaran fails to blow up the Land Raider.

Turn 5 Night Lords:

Volkite terror squad moves up to Ultra and shoots them killing several more. Sevatar and co destroy the Sicaran. Assault squad destroys volkite rifles.

Turn 5 Ultra:

Praetor and handful of breachers kill the terror squad. Last contemptor dread assaults assault squad and is destroyed.


I think the final score was 20 - 4 or something like that.



So I had a few take aways from this:

* Blocks of breachers are utterly worthless. Each of these cost me 460 points. For that I could have took two sicarans, or two Deredeos or a full heavy support squad. I do obviously want to use them in the Amatura campaign we are planning but the World Eaters have just as many insane buffs as the Night Lords in close combat. I had thought it would be too much and unfluffy to take Apothecaries and a Deredeo with an atomic pavise but I am now utterly convinced that has to happen to make them even remotely able to survive. The other idea I had was to use a Spartan.

* Interlocking tactics doesn't even remotely come close to compensating for legion rules. I think I got a handful of extra wounds because of this special rule. Whereas the Night Lords rule meant they were hitting on 2's and wounding on 3's with basic infantry. Literally every single fight that didn't involve the Invictari came down to them being better in every single way.

* Should have taken the Sicaran Arcus. That would have wrecked those plasma preds and killed his storm eagles. I had considered it to be too broken a unit. But honestly I'am getting very sick of taking troop heavy armies and getting screwed because I have terrible legion rules which means my basic infantry can't compete.

* I've had more success taking a more mechanised list with land raiders. I am increasingly feeling with heresy that its a bit of a whack a mole game. You are so vulnerable to just getting obliterated by guys dropping out in front of you and there doesn't seem to be anything you can do.

* I think I have a serious problem with how I do my deployment. There were so many times in this game where some of my units weren't able to fire at the units they wanted to. Whereas he was constantly able to fire at my units with impunity.


Do you have any suggestions on how I can solve this problem I keep having with the Ultramarines? I hate going into games and feeling like every unit that isn't Invictari is rubbish and can't compete. I don't have this problem with my Emperors Children. I certainly don't have it with my Imperial Fists. They win fights, they win battles. I don't feel like I ve got a handicap when I play those legions.

If I had to rate all my units:

Breachers - Overpriced in the extreme, weak against terminators, poor armor and invulnerable save. 1000 points of dead weight.
Tacticals - Utter garbage. Failed to do anything. 500 points of dead weight.
Volkites - Killed a few guys, barely worth it. Enemy was in my face before they could do anything.
Invictari - Only unit that actually did its job.
Land Raider - Thing tanked everything and kept Invictari alive
Sicaran Venator - Utter garbage. Only managed to blow up a dreadnought despite 4 turns of unhindered shooting.
Deredeo - Failed to stop that Dreadclaw. Failed to stop a Storm Eagle in time. My opponent talked about the thing like it was this monster that would delete his storm eagles instantly. All I saw was something modestly chipping away hullpoints.
Contemptors - They look cool but they cannot deal with any threat on the battlefield.

I don't want to have to go to the fully mechanised army coz is doesn't feel very Ultra and I like my infantry focused armies.

In all honesty, you have way too many points in Troops. I don't think Volkites compliment your list, you'd be far better off with either melta or plasma marines, so you can at least threaten vehicles/wreck infantry. Power sword breachers are horrendously expensive I'd dump one squad and put the other in a Spartan. I'd drop the master of signals and put those points towards something anti tank.

One Venator in a list with virtually no AT is pretty pointless as any player worth their salt will make sure it dies turn 1. If you have an Arcus I would take that but also back it up with another tasty vehicle so it doesn't become a bullet sponge.

If you dropped the MoS you could maybe replace it with some landspeeders with mult meltas, which would go you some much needed manoeuvrability and anti tank punch without changing the character of your list too much.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
In all honesty, you have way too many points in Troops. I don't think Volkites compliment your list, you'd be far better off with either melta or plasma marines, so you can at least threaten vehicles/wreck infantry. Power sword breachers are horrendously expensive I'd dump one squad and put the other in a Spartan. I'd drop the master of signals and put those points towards something anti tank.

One Venator in a list with virtually no AT is pretty pointless as any player worth their salt will make sure it dies turn 1. If you have an Arcus I would take that but also back it up with another tasty vehicle so it doesn't become a bullet sponge.

If you dropped the MoS you could maybe replace it with some landspeeders with mult meltas, which would go you some much needed manoeuvrability and anti tank punch without changing the character of your list too much.

The last time I took a meltagun squad it got deleted before it really got to do anything.

I mean I want to make the foot slogging army work. I feel like that's what the Horus Heresy is about. Its these huge blocks of marine infantry crashing into eachother, not two squads in rhinos, a terminator squad in a Spartan, some quad phosphex, a Sicaran and some dreadnoughts backed up by a Primarch.

My problem was that he was able to drop his planes/dreadclaw right on top of my lines and pick his fights. So his metal boxes protected his units from my shooting and then he wrecked me in my turn. My Deredeo didn't do anything to prevent this and all the intervening LOS blocking terrain seriously limits my field of fire.