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Long story short, infantry squads are out, grenadiers are in and quad launchers are worth taking. So, time to take a look at 1500, and also to decide if I should drop the chimeras and replace them with a Russ and some more plasma guns or not.

CP:
- battalion refunded
- special detachment, Emperor's Wrath -1
- 2 extra relics -3
- Field Commander -1
- Extra Tank Ace -1

7 CP starting round


HQ

Marshal
- Memento Mori, Laurels of Command, Hotshot Lasgun, Chainsword, Warlord (no trait): 45 points

Tank Commander
- Demolisher Siege Cannon, Hull mounted Heavy Bolter, Kurov's Aquila: 190 points

Tank Commander
- Demolisher Siege Cannon, Hull mounted Heavy Bolter: 190 points


Troops

10-man Grenadier Storm Squad
- Plasma gun: 80 points

10-man Grenadier Storm Squad
- Plasma gun: 80 points

10-man Grenadier Storm Squad
- Plasma gun: 80 points
- Dedicated Storm Chimera with Heavy Bolter and Autocannon: 95 points


Elites

10-man Combat Engineer Squad
- 70 points
- Dedicated Storm Chimera with Heavy Bolter and Autocannon: 95 points

Death Rider Command Squad
- 60 points

Master of Ordnance
- Field Commander Emperor's Wrath Artillery Company Lord of Ordnance, Agripinaa-Class Orbital Tracker: 35 points


Fast Attack

8-man Death Rider Squad
- 120 points


Heavy Support

2 Basilisks
- Hull mounted Heavy Bolter, Tank Support Aces with Fulm Payload: 250 points

Heavy Quad Launcher Battery, single quad launcher
- 110 points

Total points: 1500



[/b]Thoughts and concerns[b]
Let's get into it.

I am a bit... not really worried per say, bot pondersome or stuck-in-thought on wether or not a total of 4 infantry units will actually be enough. It's good that the smaller, denser boards favours the grenadiers, they are fun to use and brings a better save, gun and balistic skill than regular guardsmen. As somebody who hasn't played in 10 years, it feels as if I'm getting to field a core of Kasrkin squads.

However, 30 grenadiers and 10 engineers, no matter how excellent the units or how tough the chimeras just feel... small and fragile. It's a big world out there, and the world has the Blast keyword.

With my 7 CP, I could potentially try to field a second unit of Engineers and just deep strike my Death Rider squadron. Would however need to drop both the Master of Ordnance and my Deathrider Command to do so, freeing up 95 points.

These could then be spent to get 1 squad of engineers, up the Death Riders to 9 and then put pintle mounted heavy stubbers on both chimeras (also moving the grenadier chimera to the new engineers).

This would also free up even more CP, as the absolutely ravenous Master of Ordnance eats 9 whole points in order to be both a field commander and carry the third relic of the army.

But what do I do with 3 extra cp? That's 10 at the start, down to -1 if I decide to deepstrike the death riders. Leaving me a solid 9. But again, haven't played since 4th so I'm not really sure how valuable CP's are, all I know is that I want to use them to double tap my Earthshakers (and depending on errata, my heavy quad launcher) and that's pretty much it. Rerolls and extra movement is nice as well I guess?


On the other hand, I could also go the other way with infantry and transports, I could drop the chimeras to invest in a third Rus, and with 190 points available, that does buy me a Punisher if I wanted to, or I could just go for a Demolisher.

Fun fact, either way, I can still drop the DR Command squad and fit another 10 engineers in, deepstriking the riders on their own using CP, however, all of my infantry would be on foot in this configuration, but there would be a third Rus to soak damage and offer cover as my grenadiers and engineers take up defensive positions in ruins and hills. Waiting until later battle rounds to move up to try to flush enemies from objectives under heavy artillery support.

So what are your thoughts here? The new points did shake some things up, but I feel as if I am fairly happy with the list right now, however, I do need to tweak it a little bit to reach that level of "yes! That hits the spot" and world-nuclearization that would trigger happt gasmask noises.

Thank you for reading this and being part of such a wonderful community as the Dakkadakka forums! Love you all, heretics, xenon and abhumans alike!

can't stormtroop grenadiers be in groups as small as 5?
That could (by splitting groups down small) give you less vulnerability to enemy burst, and you could maybe pair a command squad in with the 5 storm troopers, giving you 2 units small enough to hide in a lot of terrain, with up to 4 special weapons per chimera. I don't know if that would help in 9th at all, but its potentially twice as many bunches of infantry to throw into an objective (you may lose 5 one turn and 4 the next, rather than 10 in one turn.)

That could actually really be worth some consideration.

Not only would splitting them into smaller squads give me more potential for special weapons (4 plasma guns or meltas jumping out of a chimera is a classic as old as the guard), but if I could find the points for it, could actually have a chance of increasing melee potential through power-weapons (mauls, fists or axes) on the watchmasters.

Problem is the price on special weapons on BS3+ models mostly, with Plasma being 10 points. So say I cut one squad down in size to save on points, that's 35-45 points, which is just barely enough to fully kit the chimera team.

It might be a sound investment however, as that would give them a stronger effect as a shock-unit to either roll up the field or plug emergency holes (like the engineers).

The remaining, somewhat understrength unit could just hang around the 10-man squad to basically make it a 15-man group with a total of 2 plasmas between them. At higher points, all units could be split into 5's and equipped with double special weapons.

But, Dukesofstuff, I would assume that you are on team-chimera in that case, rather than trying to fit 1 more Rus.


One final chain of thought:

I could (potentially) drop the Master of Ordnance to free up points and CP, then drop the chimeras and Deathrider Command Squad AND downgrade a Tank Commander, I might need to tweak something else.

But basically, this would give me enough points to field 2 additional Russes.

I could then move the Tank Commander and the three normal russes (2 new ones + demoted tank commander) into a Spearhead detachment to give them Obsec and use the saved CP to pay for the detachment (and pick up the Relic Battle Cannon on the Tank Commander).

This could also be done with a patrol and only 1 bonus rus by splitting a grenadier unit into 2 groups of 5 (moving 1 group to the patrol) if I only want the special detachment + battle cannon, rather than trying to force obsec on the tanks.



Edit: hmmm... I COULD drop 1 chimera, the MoO and the Rider Command and actually fit 1 demolisher rus.

Still keeping 1 chimera. Then splitting one squad of grenadiers and running Emperor Fist patrol on the side. It doesn't completely take away my infantry mobility yet still gets me 3 russes and good countercharge or flanking

I think tank commanders are going to be much more valuable than normal russes, I don't even think I would bother with the normal ones.

But don't you need a death rider squadron commander in order to take the rider command squad?
EDIT: I checked the rules and I can't find a requirement like that anywhere, so it maybe it's not a rule in 8th/9th. I don't know, I never use command squads in my small guard army and I might be thinking of an older rule.

I believe there was a faq at some point which prevented the spamming of command squads (an elysian and scion trick up to that point). So maybe if you can find that faq, it will discuss the different subtypes of Dkok com squads.

Thanks, I found it:

Page 56 – Death Korps of Krieg Army List
Add the following:
‘Matched Play Rule: Command Squads
If you are playing a matched play game, then in a Battle-forged
army you can include a maximum of one Death Korps of Krieg
Command Squad or one Death Korps Death Rider Command
Squadron in a Detachment for each Death Korps of Krieg
Officer in that Detachment.’

It says nothing about needing a death rider officer; so you are good, OP.

Thank you, and yeah, that's the number I was going for, 1 squad per HQ choice (although pure raw could be argued that marshals and tank commanders technically aren't officers)

Now to decide on if I use 2 chimeras or 1 chimera, lose the master of ordnance and grab a demolisher rus.

For 2k, I'm probably gonna include a separate detachment with a Marauder Destroyer modeled as an armored zeppelin with all the guns pointed at the grund. That's currently 420 points so can do some fun stuff with either extra grenadiers, death riders or maxed out infantry plasma for tje rest

I think for early ninth edition its wisest to use as many different types of combat unit and tactical unit and strategic unit as possible. Basically, its a new game ruleset and seeing how an army's little pieces works .. .maybe the leman russ demo tanks will rule. Maybe a chimera will be more useful, I don't know. So I would start my new army with something that had melee, shooty, indirect, droptroop, transports, psykers, and flyers, in an effort to judge what is going to work in ninth. Some MSU elite troops, some herohammer, some pseudohorde.

So yeah, I would probably (oddly) council you to go with just one chimera but to load it with good stuff, and try to have perhaps even a valkyrie in your arsenal -- they are pretty awesome transports, much, much harder for enemy to kill, and the ability to step out and fire immediately at short range with plasma weaons is nothing to laugh about.

Can DKOK even take them? I don't know. Also think about that wacky centaur transport, if you just want to run a command squad with 4 meltas and an officer up to try to blow an enemy tank. That might be a thing in 9, even, with meltas being so cheap.

Perhaps it would even be wise to lay in a heavy weapon mortar squad. I know they are out of fashion lately, but its not a buttload of points, and in a map where things hide so very well (as I keep hearing we are about to face) maybe that would be a good augment beside your engineers, who, of course, should have a mole launcher.

Cause if people are stuck behind cover not shooting at stuff, but you can fire your 5/-1/1 shots indirectly, that's a good unit for 9, from what I gather, a lot of people are still having trouble protecting offciers well, and if someone's officer is uncovered and you have a mole launcher midboard, well, maybe you just killed a psyker primaris or a company commander.

So yeah, I really don't know what is gonna work or not in 9, its back to the drawing board (which is why I made an army of catachans, artillery, and scions as my first test army).

Yeah, I actually kinda feel like I'm on somewhat even footing, I'm coming in from fourth so been looking at a lot of battlereports and reading a lot of rules to try to understand the whole command points stuff etc and I'm learning. But for army comp and field tactics, it feels as if I'm pretty much on par with the people I'm going to be playing.

If I do go the route of single chimera, that does mean dropping some stuff to fit that normal rus in, but that does free up points to split one grenadier squad into 2 groups of 5 and kit both of them with double special weapons, allowing me to run a melta-nuke or plasma-storm sitting in that chimera ready to roll up the field.

Thankfully, chimeras are cheaper and easier to get on the field than malcador-conversion russes are, so I might start with both, because a Rus can always find a spot in a larger list, whilst demoting one chimera to the shelf won't really hurt the wallet too much.

As for valkyries: Krieg cannot take them unfortunately, so just like the Marauder, it's gonna have to be a completely separate detachment of some sort.

I think it basically comes down to this: Do I want to run a Master of Ordnance and a Death Rider command squad in 1500?

If yes, I keep them and go 2 chimeras.

If no, I drop them, buff up the Death Rider squad (and deepstrike them for 1 CP), and field a Demolisher whilst adding special weapons to the remaining chimera riders.

As for enemies out of line of sight: although a bit overkill, I CAN drop a basilisk round, or 4D6 quad launcher rounds on whomever is hiding out there, and those too are 5/-1/1 shots

I don't mean to say that the basilisk is a bad option -- its 125 points you paid for and if you go "emperor's wrath" and blow a few cp for deetachment and strategem, you can even shoot it twice while rerolling all misses.

BUT.

I never find I have too many basilisks. Nor too many ways to get a few heavy bolter shots on an enemy officer who was incautious, and given that you already paid for 10 engineers, the marginal cost of the mole launcher is a small investment. If it means your basilisk is not busy killing officer bob who wasn't protected, then you can also, maybe, kill an enemy tank with the basilisk, and if not, as long as the engeneers are midfield, the odds are great that even if they don't have line of sight to ANYTHING they can still plink away with their underground weaponry.

So I think its potentially a good weapon for your team.

Anyway, that's the thought I had. Not that it was going to outperform the basilisk -- the basilisk can hunt and possibly bring down things like enemy basilisks on the back row, though, while that little mole launcher wipes a platoon commander, or even just puts its shots into a pile of marines with no cover save helping them.

Anyway. Off to work I go, but it seems like you have a solid little army. Perhaps a scions and valkyrie detachment could give you a "special forces" group at 2000, with a valkyrie in it, a scion tempest, a scion command squad, a scione 5 man squad and an astropath (or a lord commisar with a powerfist and plasma pistol). That' comes in at 385 with the astropath (assuming you have 2 plasma pistols, 6 plassma rifles, and the valkyrie has a lascannon (I like em this way) and 2 multirocket pods and 2 heavy bolters.

That little monster gives you a t7, -2 to be hit (that's what the astropath does for the valkyrie) strike group that can dump its entire load of 14 plasma shots right next to a target (5.1 inches away) and fire all of them at +1, meaning you will get a LOT of hits. Mind you, its a cp intensive little group, but it would give your army a big boost in mobility -- and it would also leave you the option of loading your own men into the valkyrie to deliver them that way, while deepstriking the scions beside them, and bringing up the chimera full of engineers as well.

You should look up "drop specialist detachment" under the heading "scions" as well as "advanced countemeasures" (which is nice for valkyries in eighth and probably not terrible in ninth).

Anyway, looks good, and off I go.

Neknoh wrote:
Thank you, and yeah, that's the number I was going for, 1 squad per HQ choice (although pure raw could be argued that marshals and tank commanders technically aren't officers)

No, they are both officers, they have the keyword. There is no debate.

Neknoh wrote:
I think it basically comes down to this: Do I want to run a Master of Ordnance and a Death Rider command squad in 1500?

If yes, I keep them and go 2 chimeras.

If no, I drop them, buff up the Death Rider squad (and deepstrike them for 1 CP), and field a Demolisher whilst adding special weapons to the remaining chimera riders.

Strategic reserving your Death Riders cost 2CP since you have more than 5. And keep in mind that that ability is much worse than the command squad's outflank, not having access to them for 40% of the game.

I personally am very bias against non-commander LR going into 9th and decked out chimera passenger suicide squads. Not for a very good reason really, Commanders got off lightly in the 9th points hikes and those kinds of suicide squads don't seem to make their points back; but I know these aren't very practical ways to think about things. In fact with move move move still being pretty OP, I don't see much of a reason to have transports as guard, I do fine without them in my small army. You could drop one and use the points on that 3 order characters dkok has (if he is still in the game) as well as some other upgrades. It would save you a CP on the relic too.

I do like your take on it, it's a quick way to free up 75 points (Karis is 20 points more than my current marshal)

For the remaining points, I could either spam some special weapons and buff my death rider unit (10 points per plasma gun and 15 or 30 points for more death riders)

Or I could consider swapping the Master of Ordnance for more engineers. The more I'm looking at him, the more I'm questioning if he's really worth rerolling 1's on targets far away and giving +1 AP on wound rolls of 6. Thing is... that is ONLY for the basilisks, he does not affect anything other than basilisks, manticores and wyverns, no carriages, no medusa, nothing. Same goes for his ignore cover bonus, only the basilisks.

And he's currently eating up 3 command points to do so. (Field commander 1, third relic, 2, 3 total)

So that would be 110 points and 3 command points total, which allows me to field 1 squad of engineers and still have 40 points left over to either pay for special weapons, or potentially mole launchers for each engineer squad (20 points each)

So 20 points for Karis and 30 points to max out the death riders are must make moves imo.

So that's what that relic does? It's pretty useless with the native AP-3 on the basilisks. Too many armies have easy invulns to negate that, that and ignore cover are only good against SM and maybe other guard armies and sisters.

I would ignore the mole launchers since you give up two engineers to take it and their guns are pretty good. You still have 60 points though. I don't what models you have access to or especially like, which is what I would start asking myself when I get to a point like this. I don't even know if you necessarily want more special weapons since FRFSRF is still so good. As I understand it, the dkok don't have access to much else beyond what you have listed.

Krieg actually doesn't get FRFSRF, also, as far as I can tell, the weapon team doesn't actually replace their shotguns, but it's been a long-standing debate wether or not heavy weapon teams lose their guns as far as I've come to understand it. The closest is an errata specifically on the Astra Militarum Heavy Weapon Teams that specifies that they have ONE lasgun between the two of them.

This is likely the ruling we would be running at our games. And I completely agree with you on the relic, the hope was that we would see the errata correct the complete miss that Masters of ORDNANCE and the Emperor's wrath ARTILLERY COMPANY do not affect ARTILLERY carriages.

Boy was I wrong. This lad is taking up points and an elite slot and not really giving me anything back for it whatsoever.

So, dropping the Master of Ordnance, 35
Dropping chimera 95
130 total.

Upgrading to Karis, -20
110 total
10 more Engineers -70
40 points left
2 more death riders feels fairly obvious to take here -30
10 points.

I could just equip both of my tank commanders with heavy stubbers, augur arrays or hunter killer missiles (any of these three options being 5 points per tank commander)

Or I could give both of my engineer units a Demolition Charge, and this might honestly be the winner here.

So in this final list, I end up with only 1 chimera and 2 tank commanders for visible vehicles, but my flanking force grows to 14 strong and I'm running 20 engineers where both units have a demo-charge.

In addition, things are looking the same, Kariss Vener instead of a marshal, 3 squads of 10 OR 6 squads of 5 for the grenadiers (but only 3 special weapons still).

Quad Launchers and Basilisks provide the heavy hitting where the tank commanders cannot keep up.

So one engineer squad will travel in a chimera, and the other will be on foot? That would bug me personally.

In fact, I would take a dkok command squad with a regimental standard instead. They give you +1 attack to all infanty, basically a better priest at only 33 points.

If you take that, your 47 remaining points can be put towards two storm bolters on your tanks to better use the odd number (41 points left), then go all out with upgrades, special weapons on grenadiers and two hunter killer missiles for the tanks.

I think you might consider proxying in a pair of the mole launchers for a friendly game or two with a buddy just to see if they are worth anything in ninth. My suspicion is, anything indirect that you can set up center board will be worth its weight in gold, cause you can hide them behind terrain there and be unshootable, but have good odds of killing any exposed officer (ie, not next to at least 3 infantry, etc or 1 vehicle or monster, within 3 inches.

From what I hear, that is a weak point in a lot of army design by folk used to 8th character protection being absolute (and silly).

I would think people would learn to avoid that kind of carelessness pretty fast. But considering the smaller board, the 24in range won't be the same kind of problem I thought it was.

I personally doubt that engineers keep their guns since the official model doesn't while the heavy weapons teams do have one lasgun. But you could take one if you don't want more special weapons.

Well, I would probably drop the engineer chimera and instead keep the remaining one on a split grenadier squad with special weapons, not as suicide, but as a sort of close-fire-support for where they are needed.

So if we're looking at the possibilities of the command squad, we have 110 points after Karis

That's 77 points after a command squad with a regimental standard

This seems good on the surface, however, although the squad has a higher balistic skill and weapon skill than basic guardsmen and are, in that manner, on par with Grenadiers, they are actually less survivable, having only a 5+ save. And at 4 models, unless paired with a dedicated screen, they are likely to die a horrible, firery death.

Furthermore, although they do confer +1 attack to all squads within 6" of themselves and +1 leadership when carrying the regimental standard, all this does is grant some level of staying power in melee whilst providing nothing in the shooting phase.

And sure, grenadiers attacking twice on a charge is neat, but that means that they have to charge while still maintaining range to the regimental standard. This means I'll have to advance with the standard before declaring charges, and a failed charge would leave the standard high and dry.

The primary benefit that I could see would be providing some sort of retaliatory staying power when charged, with all infantry squads having 4-up saves, this at least gives them a chance to stay in combat and to strike back if charged by something more melee oriented than they are.

So is it worth the 33 points to make grenadiers a better (although still somewhat soft) anvil or tarpit when charged? Absolutely, especially considering the objective based nature of 9th.

However, is it worth it in THIS list?

at 77 points left, we lose 30 to upping the death riders to 10.

That leaves us 47 points. Splitting a grenadier squad into two and equipping them all with Plasma or Meltas is 30 points, leaving us 17.

So what do I do with 17 points? Stormbolters is a possibility, should also be more worth it than a single heavy stubber.

So 11 points left. Where do I put those?

This COULD potentially be the one situation where Grenade Launchers are still worth taking. Because I can put two grenade launchers on the command squad for 10 points (whereas a single melta or plasma on BS3+ models costs 10 points).

Or I go with the hunter killer missiles.

Or a demolition charge on the engineers and an extra plasma gun in one of my remaining 2 large grenadier squads. Or heavy stubbers instead of stormbolters on the tank commanders and the demo-charge for the engis.

Or Plasma Pistols on the two chimera squad watchmasters.

All in all, these changes would make the army more apt at receiving charges and give me more special weapons to deal with MEQ, but I would be trading that for 10 corpse-shotguns.

I think the key configuration difference here is that I lose out on mole-launchers, but I do get a rapid-response assassination chimera in its place.

It is however a consideration worth testing out before I test the engineers, as the expense of a command squad is a lot less than that of 10 engineers.

I guess the real question is will 9th be all about boys over toys like 8th was, or will it be a bit more mixed what with special weapons going down in cost and models going up.

If it is more like 8th, then go with more grenadiers if you have the models. Especially since corpse shotguns aren't the worst against MEQ anyway.

If not, then I would take storm bolters + hunter killer missiles to get the most out of your tanks, which are going to be pretty good in 9th.

At a 6" range, demo charges are too situational for a unit you don't want getting in melee anyway and GL got a points hike they really didn't need in 9th.