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So my 12 year old son and I have been playing the same battle for the last year and he has yet to win. I keep giving pointers and even go so far as to tell him my strategies real time to help him decide his moves. I am starting to wonder if the army list are the problem. Below are the units we both own. The question I have is have his Blood Angles lost before we even start the game because of a poor list? What can we do to make his army list better? We play 1500 points. What is the strongest list he can build against my Bad Moons? Is there any hope or should I field an army of gretchin to give the poor lad a chance?

Orks (List vary but this is what I own)
HQ:

Big Mek w/ kff
Big Mek w/ sag
Warboss w/ PK & attack squig

Elite:

12 Tankbustas (they ride in the looted wagon)
5 'Ard Nobz (3 with PK)
12 Lootas
12 Burnas (usually stick them in a truck)

Fast:

Dakkajet

Troops:

12 Shoota Boyz in a Truck
30 Choppa boyz / 12 Choppa w/Truck (Depends on the mood)
11 Gretchin w/ defense line and quad gun

Heavy:

Looted Wagon (with or without boomgun)
3 Killa Kans

Blood Angles (I only know what he tells me about this army)

HQ:

Dante
Librarian
Captain

Elite:

5 Terminators (1 assault cannon)

Fast:

Ball Predator
4 Bikes (he hardly ever plays these so I don't know what they have)

Troop:

10 Marines w/ rhino (1 rocket , 1 flamer)
10 Marines (1 plasma cannon, 1 plasma rifle , 1 plasma pistol)
5 Death Company w/jet packs (1 hammer)

Heavy:

Stormraven (Plasma cannon, rockets, heavy bolters coming out everywhere)
Dreadnaught w/ las cannon
Dreadnaught w/ blood talons
Death Company Dreadnaught w/ blood talons

Think you need a mod to move this to the army lists section.

Damn. Messed up my first post. I have asked the mod to move to the list forum.

Yes, the list is the problem. Your lootas alone will be able to delete a unit a turn with almost no issues. Plus the sheer number of power klaws means that if you get into close combat, even with his dreads, you stand a good chance of wrecking face. Plus he's using Dante, but with no jump troops aside from death company which kinda wastes Dante's benefits.

Some ideas of what the BA side could do to help this situation :

- more death company, but no jump packs, just bolters and maybe a power fist or two.

- Put the Assauilt Cannon back on the stormraven. Your orks dont have enough AP2 to make it needed vs the overall number of shots.

- Dreadnaughts, these are not terribly effective in close combat vs orks, they will kill some, but very very slowly (aside from blood talons of course). maybe redo these as riflemen (2x TL autocannons).

- Lose all plasma pistols. For the number of times you will ever get to shoot one, you are better off with a combiplasma or nothing.

Just some ideas since I also play (and lose) to orks quite a bit. Your milage may vary of course, but these are changes that I could see being fairly easy to do and bring a fair bit more effectiveness.

¨^ what he said.

as for the the rest..
he can skip 2 dreads skip the one deathcompany squad go for more jump marines w/ flamers
Baal pred is awesome outflank it with heavy flamer

Also, you have too many HQs for a singe FOC

The blood talons do seem to tear through my poor boyz kinda fast. So I tend to just use the trucks and stay away. What about his bikes? Are they any good in a BA list? One of the major advantages I seem to have is my trucks. I drive to where I want the battles to take place and his army gets spread out trying to keep up. At which point I pick them off in order. Could the bikes help with this? Also what are some of the basic strategies for blood angles? Are they suppose to be a shooty army or an assault army? They seem to be split between the two and fail to do either. As for Dante I have advised him to drop him and use the librarian in the 1500 point list. He is a lot of points and I am able to easily tie him up with minor units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also the list is everything I own NOT everything I take. Usually I bring the two meks for HQ because I like da toyz.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Also, you have too many HQs for a singe FOC

it's not a list he listed what he have.

 Gideon999 wrote:

- Dreadnaughts, these are not terribly effective in close combat vs orks, they will kill some, but very very slowly (aside from blood talons of course). maybe redo these as riflemen (2x TL autocannons).

I have no idea about the Blood Angels codex. Do they have Iron clads? If so one in a drop pod with double heavy flamers under it's arms might do quite good.

Mine tends to do quite well against orks and their paper armor on the boys. I usually tend to put them up so they hit the Powelklaw Nobs/boys first

Never heard of an iron clad (other than the real thing). I have thought about picking him up a drop pod for the dreadnaught. I think he would have a better chance if he could get to the lootas before they make swiss cheese out of his army. I guess as a general rule I feel that the faster your army the more control you have over the game. I encourage the use of the rhino but he thinks it is a boring unit and it tends to just give me first blood.

Don't ever take Danté. In my opinion he's one of the worst Chapter Masters, you're much better taking Mephiston (woo! A libby with the stats of a Monstrous Creature!). Also, more Death Company Dreads with Blood Talons.. They're just kick-ass

Any thoughts on the viability of BA bikes and transports? Worth the points?

Is it possible the problem is that he's a twelve year old playing a complex game against a grown man?

Obviously the years of experience make some difference. But I would expect that in a game with so many dice it would still work out like baseball. Everyone wins a third, everyone loses a third and the difference between success and failure is in what you do with the last third. After all my age doesn't change my BS or WS.

The thing is younger players often don't have the ability to think out their strategies properly, which is an especially large problem against orks. Orks can and will crush most space marine armies into the dust if they're allowed to get into close combat en masse. He needs to be focusing on ranged superiority and preventing the orks from bringing their full weight of numbers to bear. Also consider making a codex leap to standard Space Marines, a few years of codex creep have left it with cheaper units across the board. Other than that however, maybe finding your son someone of the same age to play against would be a good move.

Thanks for the feed back. I will work with him on all the ideas posted.

Can he take thunderfire cannons?

Johnnytorrance wrote:
Can he take thunderfire cannons?

Not as BA.

Some other thoughts as I was looking at this again :

- Transport (or lack thereof) is a huge issue for the BA. That Rhino sure will give up first blood quickly, but if he runs one for each tactcial squad and then gets a few drop pods for the dreads that will help his flexibility a lot. Right now with 3 transports and the kanz on the ork side they can run circles around him, and considering the ork strength in close combat, this is a bad thing for him.

- AV13 spam - this is one of the things BA does well. If you run those dreads as furioso's, and run them with another baal, you would have a viable option there. Vindicators are nasty too although I see you dont have the model you could proxy. The idea here is to provide enough heavy armour that the orks can't focus down any significant amount of it before it gets to shot the pants out of them.

- Death Company - these are fantastic. I once played a game against a blob of about 24 of them led by Corbulo to tank the wounds (2+ feen no pain is amazing). All they had were boltguns. They wrecked everythign they touched.

- Mephiston - again if you are going to play an expensive HQ, he is far and away better than Dante. His powers give him wings (same movement as a jump pack), along with huge combat potential. And with the ork list having no 2+ armour, the AP3 sword isnt a problem for him.

Really the issue most marine builds suffer against orks is a lack of shooting to do enough damage before they hit your lines and eat you, or a lack of numbers to absorb casualties. Most of the time when I beat orks its by winning the mission, not by inflicting casualties.

Hope that helps!

Sounds like solid advice. I think we will pick up some more death company and a few drop pods to start. That should help him be more mobile and have the CC he needs with the two Dreadnaughts with Blood Talons he already owns.

Assault marines over tacs every day of the week - especially against orks. But he should focus on one flank with his speed - not just charge headlong into the horde. They can definitely keep pace with the trukks no problem, couple of meltas then he can charge your squads afterwards.
Podded furiosos with frag cannons should do a number on orks.
Flamestorm baals should cause you serious problems too. But he needs more than 1 or it will go down quickly.
Cheap jp libby to save points or the already mentioned mephiston, although orks is one of the dexes hes weakest against.
Termis are pants unless assault termis. As are normal dreads.
Corbulo leading some assault termis up through the centre could cause problems simce you are mainly footslooging, as you will not have the firepower to put a scratch on them, although they probably wont be doing anything until turn 3 at best. Proxy the normal termis before buying any to see if it works.
I never run bikes with BA but on paper they don't look so hot, especially when you can get their mobility plus scoring for cheaper on assault marines.

I can highly recommend drop pods. They have served me well over the years, although defensive deployment on the part of the orks will mitigate that to an extent (and the fact that dreads can't assault out of the pods). If you do pods, I would highly recommend getting 5, that way you can drop all 3 dreads on turn 1, which causes huge threat saturation. The orks might shoot down one of them, 2 if they are REALLY lucky, but 1-2 of them should live to get stuck in the next turn.

You mentioned about bikers as well, and I will say that I am curious to see if anyone else has advice here. I have never used bikers myself so I am not sure of their effectiveness, but they seem best used in this situation as a mobile, late game objective scoring unit. Though those lootas would likely delete the whole squad in one volley....

Very effective tactic ^ but make sure you fill the later pods with cheap assault marines or you will be diluting your first turn points total on the board too much.
Also bikes are only scoring for BA 1/6 of the time.

Taking a load of assault marines with flamers could be useful in addition to the dreads, also having 3 baal preds with the flamers can be sick vs foot sloggers.