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Xirax wrote:
Are you sure master-crafting a weapon doesn't make it a relic? If I were a TO, I think I would say it is.. well needs a FAQ.

Master crafted weapons (using the special issue wargear Master Crafted option, not innately Master Crafted weapons like MC Boltguns) are relics for rules purposes.

What are players thoughts on veteran intercessors. I think it is flavorful but the cp's are better spent elsewhere. Is this correct or am I missing something.

russellmoo wrote:
What are players thoughts on veteran intercessors. I think it is flavorful but the cp's are better spent elsewhere. Is this correct or am I missing something.

While I'm sure it can be built around, I'm not sure spending the CP out of an already tight pool (for such a CP-hungry faction) is worthwhile. Between Shock Assault, Savage Echoes, The Sanguinor, and Unleash Rage, I don't think the extra attack is necessary. Not to mention if you really wanted it, just take the Death Company Intercessors I think, a 6+++ is better than an extra leadership, especially as Astorath is worth taking these days, and can help mitigate that morale anyways.

I fail to see the point of DC intercessors. They are priced the same as regular intercessors, they have the same wargear, same stats, 6+ FNP, but only LD7, no sarge, one less attack for the unit, and no obsec. Stratagems are the same for both units, except for the 5+ FNP for DC intercessors. Why should i ever use DC intercessors ? They are elite, so i cant use them to get CP for a battalion. Why not use the CP gained from regular intercessors to make them veterans ?

"If you really wanted it", as in if Intercessors with +1A was important to the person.

I don't understand how spending the CP to improve Intercessors improves anything. You're only going to gain 1CP over a Vanguard of DC Intercessors doing that, and again, Astorath can eliminate Morale worries for the turn it matters.

I like troops with 3A base. Too bad we can't get the extra shooting from vigilus.

 Larks wrote:
"If you really wanted it", as in if Intercessors with +1A was important to the person.

I don't understand how spending the CP to improve Intercessors improves anything. You're only going to gain 1CP over a Vanguard of DC Intercessors doing that, and again, Astorath can eliminate Morale worries for the turn it matters.

If i get 5CP for a battalion and i spend 3CP for veterans i have 2CP left.

 p5freak wrote:

 Larks wrote:
"If you really wanted it", as in if Intercessors with +1A was important to the person.

I don't understand how spending the CP to improve Intercessors improves anything. You're only going to gain 1CP over a Vanguard of DC Intercessors doing that, and again, Astorath can eliminate Morale worries for the turn it matters.

If i get 5CP for a battalion and i spend 3CP for veterans i have 2CP left.

"Over a vanguard".

I think that DC inters would not have a lot of use, maybe if you want to go full primaris, but if so, nowadays BA are not the best pick

Guess they are more of a fluff option. Lore wise it's a big thing that Primaris can fall to the black rage as well. I think it's nice from GW to give us the option to represent this on the battlefield even while not the competitivest choice. On the other side they get +1A when charging, have a 6++ (5++ with strat) can be forlorn furied and get access to Lemartes buffs and so on. All that for the same price as regular Intercessors. They will not see any tournament tables, but I guess they could bring some fun.

So played 2 games this weekend with my new BA's first true outing with them. Both games were 1500 and in both games the game was over by the end of t2.

First game was vs Deathguard, 2nd was vs Death watch.

In my first game my death company, mephiston, and smash death co captain all got into cc t1. Smash captain killed the enemy lord of contagion warlord, death company killed a large 15 man plague marine squad, and Mephy didn't actually get to swing at anything cause they were all dead. 2nd game was even more brutal, with my death company getting into cc with a land raider achellies, a venerable dread, a master of the watch, and 5 hellblasters on my t1. Once the company swung all that was left was 1 hellblaster that made it out alive. Granted my smash captain also charged the land raider and helped kill it so that happened.

I was running 15 men, all with jump packs, 3 with thunder hammers, 3 with power fists and hand flamers, rest with chain swords and hand flamers.

I will say these guys are freaking nasty. They kill whatever they hit and they hit so hard..... but they die directly after. Even with the 5+++ they are still only 1w t4 models. Is this really how they should work? They kill something dead then die themselves? Or am I missing a different trick that I dont see? I was buffing them with a sanguinary priest but was thinking a lib may be needed to cast unleash Rage + sanguinius shield to help them / would be better?

Yes, they are an example of glasscannon, they enter-kill something and then usually get focused. You may try to "capture" model in order to your enemy to not me able to fallback (in your second example, if you manage to wrap the final hellblaster with your consolidate movement, it wont be able to fall back and you will only suffer from enemy melee).

Azuza001 wrote:
SI will say these guys are freaking nasty. They kill whatever they hit and they hit so hard..... but they die directly after. Even with the 5+++ they are still only 1w t4 models. Is this really how they should work? They kill something dead then die themselves? Or am I missing a different trick that I dont see? I was buffing them with a sanguinary priest but was thinking a lib may be needed to cast unleash Rage + sanguinius shield to help them / would be better?

No, that is pretty much how Death Company work. They are a glass cannon that tears a big hole in the enemy line for the rest of your army to exploit. Lack of survivability is kinda fluffy seeing as these guys are looking for a clean death in battle. Boosting their resilience to 5+++ can be handy now and then if you really need them to hang in there but most of the time I treat them as expendable. That is why I normally only support them with Lemartes and then let them get on with the job. His rerolls to Hit and Charge are golden and the addition of a Litany now is just gravy. Any more than that is overkill IMHO.

If you want a survivable jump pack unit, you are better building around a big unit of Sanguinary Guard. I would buff these with the following characters in this order of priority.

1. Sanguinary Ancient with Standard of Sacrifice (2 wounds and a 2+/5+++ save is pretty durable).
2. Sanguinary Priest with Jump pack. Heals, resurrects and +1S. Very nice.
3. Sanguinor for a +1A bubble. Less needed than he used to be thanks to Shock Assault and Savage Echoes but still useful, especially as he got a points drop in CA19.
4. Librarian with Jump Pack and Unleash Rage. Again, not as needed as he used to be but getting each SG up to 6 attacks on the charge if you get all these buffs working together is just insane. Even Knights and Death Guard daemon Engines can't withstand that kind of punishment.

A maxed out pf SG squad with max buffs deals ~145 damage to t8 3+ if fighting once.

T3, Priest, Librarian, ancient, Astorath and Sanguinor is all that you need

Might be useful if the opponent were to line up 10 knights close enough on the other side of a ruin so you can charge all 10 with one model each and be within coherency and then somehow all survive and use fight again strat so each 30pt Sanguinary guard model can kill a knight on its own.

Are those dmg with PF or Sword?

I don't think the glass cannon concept works at the DC's price point. Any hole they open can be sealed immediately on the opponent's movement phase. Your best bet is to tricorner the enemy so they don't get shot to pieces, but this isn't reliable. Their cost per W is just staggering. Mortals are also the kiss of death.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't think the glass cannon concept works at the DC's price point. Any hole they open can be sealed immediately on the opponent's movement phase. Your best bet is to tricorner the enemy so they don't get shot to pieces, but this isn't reliable. Their cost per W is just staggering. Mortals are also the kiss of death.

They cost one point more than Vanguard Veterans but get an extra +1A on the charge, a 6+++ and access to Lemartes. I normally run a 10-man squad with Lemartes and they put in great work most games.

Between Descent of Angels, Forlon Fury and our new +1" on the charge, getting them into melee with something valuable is usually possible (if not exactly easy). Even if they don't get to kill high-value targets, they can still be game winners. In my last game, my AM opponent tried to flood the centre Objective with bodies on T3. My DC killed 35-ish models across 2 turns. Very messy. Not exactly high value but when you need to clear hordes, DC, can make a big mess in a short amount of time.

It was actually one of the few games I have played where they survived more-or-less intact. My opponent didn't pay them much attention because Smash, Mephiston and a bunch of Scouts assaulted into his deployment zone on Turn 1.

Define "work great". Killing a bunch of 4-6 pt models with 18+ and then having them die to throwaway fire is not my idea of great. I don't want to sink a bunch of CP into getting glass cannons into combat that they can't sustain. It's so much better to shoot hordes/screens imo.

Martel732 wrote:
Define "work great". Killing a bunch of 4-6 pt models with 18+ and then having them die to throwaway fire is not my idea of great. I don't want to sink a bunch of CP into getting glass cannons into combat that they can't sustain. It's so much better to shoot hordes/screens imo.

Which is something BA can do *much* better now. Doctrines make killing screens child's play.

Right. So I want the elite killers in my list like SG and VV. I don't see a place for 1W DC atm. Primaris DC might be better even by using the impulsor.

Martel732 wrote:
Define "work great".

"Work Great" mean killing the enemy units I need killed in order to win the game. Sometimes that is a high value target and sometimes it just means clearing a horde of bodies off Objectives in a hurry to claim VPs.

10 DC did the job faster than any other 300 points of my army could have done (200 if you do not count Lemartes) thanks to the combination of bolters, jump packs and a boat load of melee attacks. I din't actually need to spend CPs on the DC in that game either as it turned out. Smash, Mephy and the Scouts played distraction-carnifex and soaked up a lot of attention. What firepower my opponent had to spare, he wanted to throw at the Tacticals and Intercessors holding my Objectives. This left the DC free to sweep the mid-field.

Always kill the DC. Even if you have to give up a few points. If they were cheaper, I could get behind them. But 18 points naked plus a babysitter is too expensive. Your opponent derped out, that doesn't make DC good. DC die 4 times faster than intercessors in cover to trash fire. There's no reason to try to kill the intercessors first.

Martel, is there any constructive criticism from you ever? You all but say, "Go play something else".

1/3 of the posts the last few pages have been you saying. "dies to easy" or "too expensive". More alternatives would be nice and not only saying "no"

Seriously? I just said I prefer SG and VV. I know DC is iconic, and it doesn't make me happy, but I don't see a real role for them at their price point. Yes, VV also die to throwaway fire, but are at least immune to AP and don't need a babysitter.

I also just said shoot the screens rather than charging expensive fragile melee models into them. If I could guarantee a tricorner every time, I'd reconsider.

Klickor wrote:
Martel, is there any constructive criticism from you ever? You all but say, "Go play something else".

1/3 of the posts the last few pages have been you saying. "dies to easy" or "too expensive". More alternatives would be nice and not only saying "no"

I don't think he's wrong though. In the current environment, 10 slightly tougher Marines are not difficult to kill at range and people talking about how they get them to survive because their opponent shot other things or how they wrecked enemies who failed to screen properly doesn't change the fact that those two situations are more down to bad play from the opponents than any inherent power of the DC.

I've played about half a dozen games with the new codex now, against a variety of different armies, each time using 10 DC with 3 TH and jump packs. Their impact has been somewhere between worse than zero and pretty decent, but unfortunately edging more towards the bad end of the scale. Once they managed to gut some Gaunts and tie up some Tyranid shooting but even then I had Scouts and Incursors ready to help out in the same combat if needed. They died immediately afterward in what I deemed a fair trade - they killed much less than their points but silenced a lot of shooting. In other games they've just died to Overwatch or my opponents have screened well and left me nowhere useful to land even with Forlorn Fury before the game starts. Then there are the games where they start in Deep Strike and everything depends on that 8 for the charge. My experience has been they aren't consistent enough and the kind of targets they're really good against are often units that other elements in your army can deal with. I think an equal points investment in SG or DC Dreads is probably better in most cases as both do a bit more against tougher targets.

We're popping off AP -2 bolt rifle rounds now. Why bother go punch screens or chaff with DC?

Martel732 wrote:
We're popping off AP -2 bolt rifle rounds now. Why bother go punch screens or chaff with DC?

You're acting like shooting and using DC are mutually exclusive scenarios, when you know thats not correct.

I don't want to suicide 18 pt models. Of course they aren't mutually exclusive. But why pay for DC? What are they giving you?

Martel732 wrote:
I don't want to suicide 18 pt models. Of course they aren't mutually exclusive. But why pay for DC? What are they giving you?

Exceptionally blendy infantry that, when supported correctly, have a very high likelihood of making into blending range.

You dont like DC. We get it. Stop acting like its some fething mortal sin to even consider running them.

It's not. I just see a lot of talk about them.

What support are we talking about? There's no way to prevent them from being targeted, unlike say, Reivers.