Dukeofstuff wrote:
hehe, my post somehow ghost posted twice.

I love demolishers - but my opponents often have forced me to run them as tallarn cause I am forever dashign them up to get in position. Non tallarn demolishers suffer a lot of ballistics if you move them more than 1/2 distance, while tallarn can move 6 inches on top of the 5.9 (less than half) and still doublefire their guns with no loss. Cause orders. If I am setting up to receive this army, I would set my armor way back, and get at least one shot off where its unliekly your armor could range on me. That might mean my baslisik in one corner and the rest in the other corner, so you end up running between them to face both, if might mean creative use of line of sight screening just to force your guys to move 8 inches and lose the grinding advance. Some of this is from the infamous "nova terrain L line of sight blockers" which, if you haven't faced them, make the middle of the board unLOSable at raw start. A typical army you face will have a lot more antiarmor to draw on than you will here, too.

So, final thought, you have THREE separate armies here. Horses, short ranged and no invulnerable save armor, and infantry that is very short ranged compared to most threats you face.

Your big problem is not just the armor getting popped its that your natural progression of stuff coming at the enemy lets each wave in turn be shot apart before it has good effect. Maybe outflanking the horses helps that some, but basically, I dunno, this doesn't feel like its going to be happy on the offense -- and it will get shot apart at range on defense. Dagger of Thjissucks might help, too.
What if you had 3 fewer infantry and 2 mroe horse? What if you had no horse but 3 more leman russ? Pick one of your three concepts and get enough of it that you can overwhelm that aspect of your opponent's forcepool -- right now, you are like the mirror match for a take all comers list.

(That being said, it looks like a fun army to play but it is sometimes hard for me to tell how competitive the advice you want is. Casual game against orcs? likely awesome. tournament play? You would have real trouble with many tourney lists. Especially now, that you can't move after exiting a valkyrie, and you can't get out of a valkyrie less than 9 inches from the foe, its goign to b e real hard to deliver that acidic death weapon on a priority target. Unless there is a special, dkok only rule I am unaware of.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
So first, I would trim what you have now. The chimera, gone. +98 points. Two squads infantry, gone, 116 points. Three tank commanders .. downgrade to conquerer battlecannon tanks in the style of the dkok, with coaxial heavy stubbers. +57 points.

You now have the SAME army, fuinctionally ... the tanks you have are longer ranged and reroll all theri misses out to 36 inches on the turrets. you don't HAVE to move them to use them, just deploy them wisely. Yes, BS4+ isn't impressive -- but with full rerolls, it becomes so quickly.

Now.
You hve 371 points to spread out.
Purcahse 2 more command squads *(66 point) and 12 plasma rifles for the command squads to carry. (or 11, if you wnat to keep that magic flag thingee) (132 points?) You have now 12 infantrymen with 12 plasma rifles you can load into 1 valkyrie. Its -1 to be hit on the first turn, whcih is something (won't stop a marine army but good vs orcs) and it can drop them all out after moving 24 inches safely, or with some risk out to like 45 inches. This should give you 12 to 24 decent plasma shots on an enemy armor target, total suickde squad, but an effective one.
371-198=173 points left.
108 buy that basilisk you already need but didn't think of.
This gives you indirect armored fire suppoprt. Make a detachment for it the artillery wrath column, and you can doubleshoot it (2cp) while rerolling all misses (2cp) and suddenlt it is a threat as great as any leman rus from the far corner of the board.

Now, this doesn't fix ALL your issues, but you have gone from 3 armor which will get shot of the board before they do somethign, to 5 antiarmor threats, which have t8, or extreme corner deployment, or -1 to hit as their protections. Its much toughter for an enemy to kill all of them than to blow up 2 leman russ out of three and cripple the other one .. in one round.

You also still have 65 points left. 12 points to put an extra heavy stubber on each leman russ, and to upgrade theheavy bolter on the front to a plasma cannon. (which I believe is legal) .. you hvve some nice anti-tank out to 36 inches now, and the loss of dakka is offset.

If you cut your horses by one of their number, your 55 points is bounced up to 135 points .. enough for that second valky you dream of.

I dunno if you want to go that far, but even though this army has 14 fewer infantry bodies its GREATLY better able to project damage at range, shooting across the board with basilisk, out to 36 inches with plasma cannon and battle cannon (rerolling misses), and zipping the death kill plasma tripple command squad team in to pounce on the foe.
With a second flyer, the engeneers can come too, or without it, more horses for the outflank.

But you see, I have merely increased one aspect of your army -- targets that tank killing weaponry is used to bring down at longish range -- and even if the enemy has something nasty firing, its easy to kill 2/3 of tank/artillery/flyer, but a LOT harder to kill 2/5 and feel safe.

The infantry are footsloggers -- so you never really needed a chimera to get their officers to keep up with all the infantry, as all the infantry has to walk anyway.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
Remember conquerer with old grudges in platy can also (for the highest priority enemy) reroll all wounds, as well.

aha, about those command squads, I screwed way up. Turns out you could run a 10 man eng squad (with 2 plasma in it) and 1 5 man eng squad with 2 melta, and 1 command squad with 2 melta AND The Banner of Extra Attack.
The eng squad secondary troops(3 of them) get the supershotgun carcass attacks, and since you have 4 melta and yarrik;s plasma and the priests's plasma gun (see below), you can potentailly rip open a lot of transports and dump the infantry on the ground -- and then loose the larger engineers on them.
but there ismore.

Losing one command squad of the three gives you a few more points, enough to ...
(a 5 man eng squad with 2 melta is 68 points, fyi. So this consolidation into 10 eng /pl,pl and ,5 eng /me,me and 1 command squad (me,me, banner) saves you 41 poitnsj, costs you 3 lasguns, and gains you 1 combat shotgun (net).
41 points buys a 7 point plasma rifle (or if you prefer 5 point pistol) for the ministerium priest that is probably stepping out of the away team flyer beside yarrik and the smaller engineer group and the command squad. It also buys back 1 heavy mortar squad, and one extra power sword to pass out to a sgt somewhere (possibly in the big eng. squad)

Troops.
I doubt you will get great use out of the voxcasters as you have them, simply because you have so many orders to pass out and not so many troops to get them. You might consider losing 3 voxcasters and buying 5 grenade launchers to sprinkle around, as a compromise. Stay close to any one of the squads and keep a squad close to each of the other 2, and you can get most of the effect of the vox's with a bit more midrange dakka.

Finally, (althuogh if yarrik is with the away team I can see him as right now your only source of orders for the engineers) strongly consider old grudges for the warlord trait (probably on that 38 point guy).
That would give you a powerful augmentation, any way you slice it, to the basilisk and the 3 tanks.

A more radical change would be to drop all 6 troops into being stormtroopers, letting you trim squad sizes and prices a bit, cause each such group can take up to 2 special weapons. Now you can give out 12 grenades (so your dakka is about the same, actually, but grenade launcher heavy infantry is acutely less requiring of orders to provide "field support" dakka. You would have 54 poitns to spend, enough to get a second mortar squad AND an extra 23 point kommand guy (dkok field commander) ...
That frees up your warlord trait from yarrik and gives you old grudges (to stack by your armor) while adding back significant mortar firepower to your list, which I suspect you were sad to see go.

Although 12 grenade launchers isn't "real" anti armor, its not insignificant when fired at things like eldar bikers, and all 12 of them together can often get a hit on even a heavy target for that last, critical, d3 wounds. Stormtrooper heavy dkok is probably a bad idea for some reason, but if they skulk a bit in cover, you are rocking 3+ saves on your troops, which should help.
(Although you could swap only 3 troops that way, and keep 3 vox casters, and not get the mortars, and be in the same spot.)

You have 3 vectors to play with here. An army with all the infantry and vox you now have, but only 1 mortar hws, vs one with up to 6 storm/2grenade and 2 mortar and an officer, vs one with 6 stormtrooper, 2grenade each, 3 mortar squads (that's all nine mortars back) but no officer, and no plasma gun on the ministerium priest.

Each has a subtly different infantry playstyle. The loss of troop wounds is somewhat offset by an increase in mortar teams (which are also bodies) and an increase in armor (storm in cover is 3+).

I figure you got some solid options here, cause if you can get a second mortar squad, you can get a second detachment, and that critically lets you use the basilisk full power AND lets the tanks be emperor's fist.

Whew.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
Actually, I couldn't. I don't really know if this army is "better" than any other -- for example, your point on the overwhelming firepower of demolishers is a very good one. Some units and things to consdier for you as this army grows and evolves will perhaps include :
taurox base model (72 point transport with 10 capacity)
mole launcher (a combat eng upgrade weapon that ignores LOS)
rough riders (because you can take nonDKOK units without penalty to your dkok, and the RR can also carry a bit more oomph in the horse charge. Even if they are rather weaker, they can shoot plasma as well, or grenades, to clear chaff.
hades drill and veteran squad. at 125 base points, this puts a "droppod like" unit of veterans smack dab in the enemy's face.
The drill can actually fight, too, and vets of course can be equipped with a variety of special weapons in addition to the obvious (sadly vanilla) shotguns. Hades combat drills are an ungodly expensive forgeworld model that is, in fact, a tube about 3 inch wide and 7 or so inch long, with a grindey looking front to it. (Think steampunk journey to the center of the earth). The 10 vets in it are simply 10 vets. So if you can modify an old pringles box heavily, I think you are in business.

I confess I spent a LOT of mental effort here, thinking about dkok, because I really wanted to find a way to make my elysian army better -- by perhaps adding some cheaper, but effective, dkok armor units, and maybe a few others as well.