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Nemesis Strike Force

HQ

Librarian, Mastery Level 3

Troops

5 Grey Knights

Elites

10 Purifiers, 2 Hammers, 2 Staves, 2 Falchions

10 Purifiers, 2 Hammers, 2 Staves, 2 Falchions

10 Purifiers, 2 Hammers, 2 Staves, 2 Falchions

Space Marines CAD

HQ

Librarian, Bike, Level 2

Librarian, Bike Level 2

Troops

3 Bikes, 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav

3 Bikes, 2 Grav Guns, Combi-Grav

Elites

Command Squad
4 Veterans, Apothecary, 4 Grav Guns, Bikes

Fast Attack

Drop Pod

Drop Pod

Drop Pod


The plan is to put the purifiers in the drop pods, drop them and combat squad then use the 1d6 + 20 warp charge to push through as many of the Cleansing Flames as possible. Use the grav to take out vehicles.

I've been turning something like this over in my head as well. Its really strong against infantry armies, but Im struggling to work out how it deals with AV12+ vehicles. What to do about Knights, or Wave Serpents or Annihilation barges?

Imagine you were up against a wave serpent army (admittedly less likely under the new codex). He would deploy everything in serpents, reserving anything that wasn't in a metal box, and spread out. He would position the serpents so you couldn't get your cleansing flame into rear armour. Two pods would come down turn 1 with nothing to do. Your bikes might kill 2 serpents with a bit of luck (although it would be pretty easy to keep out of range of your grav guns) but that happens after you get a chance to cast cleansing flame, so it doesn't help the purifiers. The contents of the dead serpents then kill your purifiers, and any serpents that remain simply move out of assault range of the purifiers, and kill the bikes.

His turn 2 all the scatter bikes come on and kill the purifiers, with no chance they can retaliate because the bikes will be way out of range. The 3rd purifier squad might do a bit of damage, but if he spreads out his bikes, it won't do much. Same thing happens with Necrons (providing they are in barges).

To make it work you need something to pop transports before the purifiers come on, which means you also need to be abel to delay the purifiers by a turn. So a first wave of 3 pods that deal with vehicles, allowing the purifiers to come on in the 2nd wave (you don't need to roll for the purifiers first turn). The benefit of this of course is that if your facing a mixed army, you could bring in all 6 pods on turn one (taking Tigger in the CAD helps with this, as he would preroll reserve rolls for the pods, as they are Ultra Marine pods, even if they have purifiers in them).

Problem is I can't think of anything in the Marine Dex you could put in a pod which deal's with wave serpents or Annihilation barges, that fits into 1850pts along with all the purifiers.

Mostly you don't see Wave Serpents or Anni barges in the meta and, if you do, a wave serpent now has to be close to kill the bikes as it won't manage it without the shield (the command squad I mean).

You can also fish for Molten Beam or Vortex of Doom on your 7 powers from librarians.

With regards to knights its about using the purifiers as roadblocks whilst bringing the grav to bear. Also any combat squaded purifiers that can charge a knight will take a hull point or two with demon hammers before they die.

Lastly Krak Grenades can help, your pruifiers can throw 6 a turn, which will strip a hull point off A12 fairly frequently and if you can get into a rear arc that plus storm bolters are dangerous to A10 rear vehicles.

Fully A12 Meched/Knights is by far the hardest match up for this list, however it isn't the best of lists itself, so you will not face it often.

An alterante list if you are worried about such threats is to take the same Grey Knight contingent and as Marines take:

Librarian, ML 2 (on foot)

Scouts

10 Space Marines, Grav, Combi Grav, Grav Cannon, Pod

3 Drop Pods

5 Devastators, 4 Grav Cannon, Pod

If you want to take Tiggy you can remove the combat weapons on the Purifiers.

Very true – I suspect the days of Multiple Knights and 5+ wave serpents are over, and everything has a hard counter these days.

Another thought I had after I posted last night was to take a Skitari detachment for the haywire vanguard. It would need 3 detachments, but if you also brought along the Flesh Tearers Strike force you could do something like

Grey Knights

Libby

10 Purifiers
10 Purifiers
5 Purifiers

Strike Squad

Dread Knight, Teleporter
Dread Knight, Teleporter

Flesh Tearers

Libby

Scouts

Drop Pod x 6

Skitari

5 Vanguard, 2 Arc Rifles, Arc Pistol, Omniscope
5 Vanguard, 2 Arc Rifles, Arc Pistol, Omniscope
5 Vanguard, 2 Arc Rifles, Arc Pistol, Omniscope

Would need to jiggle points around to get to 1850 ( I was building towards 2000pts), but the vanguard could certainly deal with armour, with 5 haywire shots per unit, at BS7, deducting 1 from any cover save. And the dread knights can punch stuff!

I always build with only 2 detachments as very few tournaments currently allow more than 2.

I was looking at using the Flesh Tearers detachment before the new Marine book came out. Its a good alternate choice, but even worse at dealing with armour.

If going with 3 detachments I'd be tempted to squeeze the Skyhammer in there.

Something like

GK As above

Flesh Tearers: Libby,Scouts, 3 Pods

Skyhammer: 2x Min Assault Squad, 2 min Dev squads, one with Grav, one with Multi Melta

You cold also drop 5 purifiers to get 2 pods and a upgrade or two, but I'm not sure losing 2ML is worth it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One last option would be to tone down the Marines and add Psycannons to the purifiers, giving them 12, but that is 180 points so you are taking a serious hit to the marines, losing a Libby and downgrading troops to Scouts instead of Bikes I think is the cleanest way to do that.

You are doing too much here I think. I don't like the bikes or the libbies or the command squad. You need something a little tougher than bikes to back up these puris. Maybe a few DK and go for some LSS with melta and combi melta scouts for your troops. For marine HQ jsut put Tiggy in your term squad and beef it up to 10 man with 2 psy.

Melta scouts might work, but DK are less tough than the command squad and I need the mastery levels from the librarians.

I mostly agree with Xeno. Drop all the bikes, bring Tiggy. For Troops I'd bring some Objective Secured marines with Drop Pods so you can launch all your purifiers on turn 1 if you wish and have objective grabbers later. Give them a meltagun and you might be able to use them to crack open a transport. Then use the rest of the points for Dreadknights.

Drager wrote:
Melta scouts might work, but DK are less tough than the command squad and I need the mastery levels from the librarians.

DK is way tougher than a command squad unless you throw a 185 point captain in it. Dk are also ML 1 so they help with psychic somewhat. Tiggy is ML 3 - gives you reroll reserves which is important too for your NSF. He also gets the best warlord trait. I consider him auto include in this type of list. IMO the bikes will just get focused down easy without EW sheilding - with stuff like...bolters then you are stuck with a big group of immobile purifiers getting smoked from every direction mostly by stuff they can't even hurt.

Oh sure the DK is tougher against bolters and other things that aren't very threatening. Its less tough against grav/melta/D and the things that I'm more concerned about.

I really don't rate DK at all and won't be taking them, they are not a good solution to AV12 and Knights, which is where the purifiers are weak, and they are a unit that I mostly just see removed from the board without contributing against a strong list.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's another version with Sternguard/Tiggy instead of bikes.

GK NSF

ML 3 Librarian, 5 Man Strike Squad, 3x 10 Purifiers (no upgrades)

Space Marine CAD

Tiggy, 3 Pods (for Purifiers), 2x 5 Sternguard w/ 2 Melta + 3 Combi Melta + Melta Bombs + Pod, 2 x 5 Scouts w/ Missile Launcher

That gives me 5 pods Guaranteeing 3 drop and because of NSF I can roll for the others on T1 if I want everything. Tiggy for the rerolls as suggested by Xeno (thanks for that).

I like the new list. 5 pods and tiggy gives you much more flexibility with how you deploy your purifiers, and the sternguard can eliminate 2 transports on turn 1 if your opponent decides to hide in metal boxes. It's a shame you don't have points to give your purifiers hammers in case they run into something nasty in cc but I'm not sure where else to get the points. At least with Hammerhand and Force you will be able to deal with T6 creatures. Wriathknights may be a problem.

Zimko wrote:
I like the new list. 5 pods and tiggy gives you much more flexibility with how you deploy your purifiers, and the sternguard can eliminate 2 transports on turn 1 if your opponent decides to hide in metal boxes. It's a shame you don't have points to give your purifiers hammers in case they run into something nasty in cc but I'm not sure where else to get the points. At least with Hammerhand and Force you will be able to deal with T6 creatures. Wriathknights may be a problem.

Wraith knights can be dealt with with Cleansing Flame and melta (as if WK are about the melta won't have better targets). The 10 melta shots on the drop will take off ~2.5 wounds (assuming 4+cover), then Cleansing Flame takes off ~0.25 per casting (both low balled slightly), which means 14 castings to remove the last 3.5 wounds with no help from anything else. I should be able to get off 14 castings.

In combat if I use HH and Force instead of CF then each GK that gets to swing does 0.375 wounds (on the charge) so if we assume the WK kills 3 (a generous assumption) then a single 5 man squad charging will do 0.75 wounds, Meaning I need to charge with 5 squads, luckily I have 7 plus sternguard.

So WK can be dealt with in a variety of ways. The list can probably handle 2 if played well, with 3 squads charging simultaneously and thus getting off 12 Purifiers worth of attacks (assuming 3 killed by WK before they strike) you'll do ~4.5 wounds with Force/HH due to Force denying FnP and doing d3 wounds coupled with AP3 the 6's to wound aren't so bad.

Sure, what you have will be able to handle 1 WK, maybe 2 if you're lucky... but that's only possible if everything goes your way and there's aren't other big threats. I was just pointing out that having a Daemon Hammer in each squad would allow you to ignore that Wraithknight in the shooting phase and deal with him in combat. The Concussion special rule still works on Wraithknights, and with Force and Hammerhand you can take him out with just a few hammers since each hammer (without the charge) has an 83% chance of dealing d3 wounds. If you get the charge with just 2 hammers and both powers active, you can kill it in 1 turn. The first unit he charges will be sacrificial, maybe you'll get lucky and inflict a wound with Concussion so that the next squad to charge him will strike first. Then you'll have taken out the Wraithknight with minimal loses and freed up your shooting phase for other targets.

Oh I agree just trying to figure where to shave points for hammers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Right, new build.

Nemesis Strike Force

HQ

Librarian, Warding Stave (Goes in pod with Tiggy and 5 man purifiers)

Troops

5 Strike Squad PAGK

Elites

10 Purifiers, 2 Hammer, 4 Psycannon

10 Purifiers, 2 Hammer, 4 Psycannon

5 Purifiers, Warding Stave

Ultramarines CAD

HQ

Tigurius (goes with 5 man Purifiers and GK Libby in pod)

Troops

5 Scouts, Missile Launcher

5 Scouts, Missile Launcher

Elites

5 Sternguard, 2 Melta, 3 Combi Melta, Pod

5 Sternguard, 2 Melta, 3 Combi Melta, Pod

Now that gives me 10 melta shots, 8 Psycannons, 4 Hammers and 16 Warp Charge. 4 Warp Charge less than the first build but still enough to push through the crucial 3 Cleansing Flames without needing the d6 roll, possibility of getting a 4th with a decent roll. (21 hits per psychic phase will do nicely).

I used to play this list with blood angels. Out of ten games, I averaged four hits per cleansing flame on the first turn. Great alpha potential, but it can skew the game in their favor with poor dice rolls faster than any other list.

Drager wrote:
I should be able to get off 14 castings.

I count 19 WC in your list if you Combat Squad the Purfs. Average 4 extra dice from the Warp, giving you 23WC total in a phase.
How the are you planning on harnessing 28 WC with only 23 dice?
To get a 69% chance of passing a WC2 power, you need to throw 4d6 at it. I like to raise my chances to 81% and use 5d6, but then I'm at 20% chance of Perils.

Don't ever expect to cast Cleansing Flame 14 times in one turn!

 Elric Greywolf wrote:

Drager wrote:
I should be able to get off 14 castings.

I count 19 WC in your list if you Combat Squad the Purfs. Average 4 extra dice from the Warp, giving you 23WC total in a phase.
How the are you planning on harnessing 28 WC with only 23 dice?
To get a 69% chance of passing a WC2 power, you need to throw 4d6 at it. I like to raise my chances to 81% and use 5d6, but then I'm at 20% chance of Perils.

Don't ever expect to cast Cleansing Flame 14 times in one turn!

I meant over the course of the game. Which is the time required to kill the wriathknight....

Ah yes. Well, it seems I overreacted

That's 2-3 successful casts per turn for 5-6 turns. If you use only 4d6 per cast, you'll pass 2 of the 3 attempts; so you'll have to use 5d6 per cast, leaving 8d6 for the rest of your powers: Force, HH, Invisibility, Prescience, Shriek, Sanctuary, etc. That's not a lot of dice for a Libby and Tiggy to play with

Libby and tiggy are not really there to cast, just to generate warp charge for the purifiers. I'll mostly just cast Cleansing Flame unless I think Force or Hammerhand will serve me better (which they will against WK) the point was it was kill-able even just spamming CF.

How doust thou not rate the dread knight? Yousa foolish mesa thinks.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Tiggy is ML 3 - gives you reroll reserves which is important too for your NSF. He also gets the best warlord trait. I consider him auto include in this type of list. IMO the bikes will just get focused down easy without EW sheilding - with stuff like...bolters then you are stuck with a big group of immobile purifiers getting smoked from every direction mostly by stuff they can't even hurt.

Tiggy's prescience now only benefits units from his own detachment... I'd still take him over the other HQs too though...