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 flandarz wrote:
I want to help you out more, but what will be best for you will depend on how you play. However, just based on which option has the most competitive options, you should go with #1. Smashas are just fantastic AA for the pricetag, and Dakkajets are one of our best options for screen clearing.

Option A contains megatrakk scrap jets, not dakka jets. Sprry for the confusion.

Ah. My bad. I still think it's probably your best option to go with. Smashas are just really good.

Yikes played a game tonight and got to experience plaguebearers the durability of plaguebearers for the first time. My opponent basically had plague bearers + thousands son supreme command + deathguard misc units. He managed to win by just swamping the board with plague bearers, tying things up in melee or using the psychic phases to smite them.
My list was something like:


I've basically been dabbling with triple naut and triple SAG but I haven't had a chance to play it against any real threatening lists and this was the first time I hit a wall with it.
My gut says that boyz are the answer to plague bearers but also curious what other people think.
I'm planning to re-work the list massively as it is. The intention behind triple SAG was to try and stack the odds to get more consistent results but I'm not convinced that the extra 160 points is worth it when it could go into something more consistent. Freebooters I'm not 100% certain if I'll keep. I chose them because they're a kultur that scales well and I'm trying to keep my list relatively simple. I'm pro keeping triple nauts because shooting twice with a naut has paid off a lot already. They also lower the model count which assists me with playing faster, which is something I am practising.
Badrukk was just me experimenting in that list, he's been okay so far and has mostly gotten value out of buff Flash Gitz and chipping away at armour.
Flash Gitz are a new addition for me and I've been experimenting with swapping Dakka Jets with Flash Gitz. I'm expecting more space marines to populate my meta and they seemed like a natural choice with their anti-primaris stats. Furthermore they've also done some reasonably good work in the AT role through their sheer volume of fire.

So I guess my general question is how do I deal with plague bearers? Any general list advice?

The discussion on runtherds a few pages back got me curious about the average number of grots you can expect a runtherd to save. For a given number of gretchin in the unit at the start of the turn, and a given number of casualties taken during the turn, the table shows the average reduction in morale losses if there is a runtherd with squighound present (i.e. the average number you expect to lose with no runtherd, minus the average number you expect to lose with the runtherd). Each entry in the table is the result of 1,000,000 simulated rolls.

I only went up to unit sizes of 10, to keep the table readable. It seems clear that a runtherd is never going to be point-efficient if you run gretchin in units of 10, since at most you can expect him to save 2 models from each unit per morale phase. On the other hand, if you run squads of 30 then a runtherd seems like a good investment. If a squad of 30 grots takes 15 casualties, then a runtherd will on average stop 12 of your grots from running away. (Though bear in mind that this is the ideal case - the runtherd is less efficient with more or fewer casualties.)

Do people max out on Squig Bombs for their Tankbustas? Seems like they up the consistency of the unit by crazy amounts, even if they can only fire once (and if bad moons, basically hit 35/36 of the time). Given that Tankbustas likely only survive one round of shooting, seems to be very tempting.

Yeah, I take squigbombs when possible. That 2+ to hit is juicy, and it works with DDD.

Never taken them, i usually have a transport limit problem or i need to shave a few points, and being a 1shot they go first for me.

I play against mainly armies with skimmers which bomb squigs can't target, so I don't really use them. I also don't really use tankbustas atm, smasha gunz are just too good.

 Quackzo wrote:
Yikes played a game tonight and got to experience plaguebearers the durability of plaguebearers for the first time. My opponent basically had plague bearers + thousands son supreme command + deathguard misc units. He managed to win by just swamping the board with plague bearers, tying things up in melee or using the psychic phases to smite them.
My list was something like:

Spoiler:

battalion 1:
Freebooters
weirdboy w/ da jump
badrukk + ammo runt
3x10 gretchin
1x10 flash gitz

battalion 2:
Freebooters
2x SAG
3x10 gretchin

battalion 3:
Freebooters
Dreadwaaagh
1x SUSAG w/ big killa boss
1x biker big mek on warbike
3x10 gretchin
2x Gorkanaut
1x Morkanaut

I've basically been dabbling with triple naut and triple SAG but I haven't had a chance to play it against any real threatening lists and this was the first time I hit a wall with it.
My gut says that boyz are the answer to plague bearers but also curious what other people think.
I'm planning to re-work the list massively as it is. The intention behind triple SAG was to try and stack the odds to get more consistent results but I'm not convinced that the extra 160 points is worth it when it could go into something more consistent. Freebooters I'm not 100% certain if I'll keep. I chose them because they're a kultur that scales well and I'm trying to keep my list relatively simple. I'm pro keeping triple nauts because shooting twice with a naut has paid off a lot already. They also lower the model count which assists me with playing faster, which is something I am practising.
Badrukk was just me experimenting in that list, he's been okay so far and has mostly gotten value out of buff Flash Gitz and chipping away at armour.
Flash Gitz are a new addition for me and I've been experimenting with swapping Dakka Jets with Flash Gitz. I'm expecting more space marines to populate my meta and they seemed like a natural choice with their anti-primaris stats. Furthermore they've also done some reasonably good work in the AT role through their sheer volume of fire.

So I guess my general question is how do I deal with plague bearers? Any general list advice?

I would use your flashgitz to target the plaguebearers instead of armour. You should have enough anti tank with the 3 SAG and morkanaut, but if you don't I think you should maybe drop a couple of SAG for some mek gunz. Mek gunz are great for freebooterz because they can proc the +1 to hit but already hit on 4s.

The 2 damage isn't wasted when shooting models with disgustingly resilient, for each shot that gets past their armour they will need to roll 2 DR and If they fail one the model dies.

tulun wrote:
Do people max out on Squig Bombs for their Tankbustas? Seems like they up the consistency of the unit by crazy amounts, even if they can only fire once (and if bad moons, basically hit 35/36 of the time). Given that Tankbustas likely only survive one round of shooting, seems to be very tempting.

I use two units of 5 tankbustas and 1 bomb in a trukk.

When it comes to Boyz is it just Sluggas and head for melee at all haste or can massed Shoota Boyz be useful? Always loved the gunner models more.

Shootas are actually doing better than Sluggas right now. Capitalizes on Dakkax3 better, and since Boyz are already good in CC, you're not losing out on much. If you're running Goffs and Skarboyz, Sluggas might be better, but otherwise go with Shootas

I don't know. In my recent games against marines, slugga boyz have been way better for me because they can actually clear out a unit of primaris meatshield, while a unit of shoota boyz has no chance of getting past a unit of intercessors or infiltrators.

Assuming you get to fight with 20 boyz, a unit of slugga boyz just barely manages to kill them, a unit of shootas simply wont.

As for scar boyz... I ran three units of 30 scarboyz on sunday, the extra strength did next to nothing. Against most targets, it simply doesn't make a difference (most T5 units get crushed under the weight of attacks) and they still suck at wounding T8 - even with Thrakka and Waaagh! Banner they just barely manage to do 5 damage to a PBC.

Instead of upgrading the three mobs, I should just have fought twice at some point during the game.

So follow-up question. How are the clanky war machines doing?

Ork Dreads, Kans, Nauts, Stompas are all some of my favourite 40k mecha.

In that order? Ok-Bad-Good-Terrible

Dreads work ok as assets you can tellyport in, but you need to properly time that.
KANz simply shoot too little for their costs and moral has a chance to backfire on you.
Both variants of nauts are decent, but you need to tellyport them in. Otherwise they get shot to pieces during your first turn. The Gorkanaut is slightly better due to the synergy between his main gun and his extra attacks it doesn't want to waste on chaff.
Stompa is for when you want to try beating 2000 points with 1400 points.

Quackzo wrote:Yikes played a game tonight and got to experience plaguebearers the durability of plaguebearers for the first time. My opponent basically had plague bearers + thousands son supreme command + deathguard misc units. He managed to win by just swamping the board with plague bearers, tying things up in melee or using the psychic phases to smite them.
My list was something like:

Spoiler:

battalion 1:
Freebooters
weirdboy w/ da jump
badrukk + ammo runt
3x10 gretchin
1x10 flash gitz

battalion 2:
Freebooters
2x SAG
3x10 gretchin

battalion 3:
Freebooters
Dreadwaaagh
1x SUSAG w/ big killa boss
1x biker big mek on warbike
3x10 gretchin
2x Gorkanaut
1x Morkanaut

I've basically been dabbling with triple naut and triple SAG but I haven't had a chance to play it against any real threatening lists and this was the first time I hit a wall with it.
My gut says that boyz are the answer to plague bearers but also curious what other people think.
I'm planning to re-work the list massively as it is. The intention behind triple SAG was to try and stack the odds to get more consistent results but I'm not convinced that the extra 160 points is worth it when it could go into something more consistent. Freebooters I'm not 100% certain if I'll keep. I chose them because they're a kultur that scales well and I'm trying to keep my list relatively simple. I'm pro keeping triple nauts because shooting twice with a naut has paid off a lot already. They also lower the model count which assists me with playing faster, which is something I am practising.
Badrukk was just me experimenting in that list, he's been okay so far and has mostly gotten value out of buff Flash Gitz and chipping away at armour.
Flash Gitz are a new addition for me and I've been experimenting with swapping Dakka Jets with Flash Gitz. I'm expecting more space marines to populate my meta and they seemed like a natural choice with their anti-primaris stats. Furthermore they've also done some reasonably good work in the AT role through their sheer volume of fire.

So I guess my general question is how do I deal with plague bearers? Any general list advice?

I am personally very supportive of this list, I am myself switching back and forth between an almost pure mech freeboterz (30shoota+5*10 grots= 90 models total) and the horde Vercingetorix have posted here (190 models!). Freeboterz NEED the gunz to proc the +1 for the Nauts and the SSAG. So many times you have a single nurglins left or 2 infantry and that smashas is gonna save your ass helping the whole army. I had like 50% of my matches vs those Jim Vesal lists with 60+ PB. Most of the people cant play it. Just focus one unit with all you got and bring it to under 20 models and than charge with the G-naut. 18A S8 D2 is good stuff. Just stay out of range of his casters and let him came at you.
Never tried 3 nauts but i think it is a great thing. dakkajet are really fast but without wazbomb babysitting they go down fast.

Ditters wrote:The discussion on runtherds a few pages back got me curious about the average number of grots you can expect a runtherd to save. For a given number of gretchin in the unit at the start of the turn, and a given number of casualties taken during the turn, the table shows the average reduction in morale losses if there is a runtherd with squighound present (i.e. the average number you expect to lose with no runtherd, minus the average number you expect to lose with the runtherd). Each entry in the table is the result of 1,000,000 simulated rolls.

I only went up to unit sizes of 10, to keep the table readable. It seems clear that a runtherd is never going to be point-efficient if you run gretchin in units of 10, since at most you can expect him to save 2 models from each unit per morale phase. On the other hand, if you run squads of 30 then a runtherd seems like a good investment. If a squad of 30 grots takes 15 casualties, then a runtherd will on average stop 12 of your grots from running away. (Though bear in mind that this is the ideal case - the runtherd is less efficient with more or fewer casualties.)

Thanks for that. I was exactly wondering that.

 Eldarain wrote:
So follow-up question. How are the clanky war machines doing?

Ork Dreads, Kans, Nauts, Stompas are all some of my favourite 40k mecha.

Stompas and kans aren't great, in fact Stompas are considered to be one of the worst units in the book.
Dredds can work if you run Evil Sunz + Trike, deffskullz (with KMB to make the most out of the trait) and/or teleportation.
Nauts work like dredds, but you can probably run the morkanaut without teleportation as it comes with a 5+ invul

My Morkanaut gets degraded into nothingness whenever I deploy it on the board. Unless you want to draw fire from battlewagons or buggies, I suggest reserving it.

I have a crazy thought - Wouldn't Burnas be plausible (I'm not sure if viable is the right word. This is a thought experiment, after all) in a deffskullz list? Not because of their burnas, god no, but because of the KMB and the rerolls? You can have like 3 KMB per squad.

You can just field a mini-mek with a KMB for less with character protection...

 Jidmah wrote:
You can just field a mini-mek with a KMB for less with character protection...

Mini-meks can only have the pistol though, which has a range of 12".
The extra range from a proper KMB is nice.
You can get about 2 shots from a KMB off by the time a KMS gets in range.

They could be MORE viable, but not necessarily a competitive choice, no matter what you do with them.

 flandarz wrote:
Ah. My bad. I still think it's probably your best option to go with. Smashas are just really good.

After debating it and tinkering around, I have decided to do option B,the 3 individual shokkjump dragstas. However, instead of the kommandos and the wrecking ball for my trukk, ill spend the points on 1 unit of 3 smashas.
It reduces me to 13 drops, gives me a hard backline of guns, while still providing an escort for my biker boss that can mop up anything the smashas left after they shoot.

Thank you for your insight.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
You can just field a mini-mek with a KMB for less with character protection...

Mini-meks can only have the pistol though, which has a range of 12".
The extra range from a proper KMB is nice.
You can get about 2 shots from a KMB off by the time a KMS gets in range.

They can take an index KMB. I have one per truck of Boyz with rokkits for re-rollable punch.

So warhammer legends sounds like the deathknell of all the index options.

It’s the final book for them where they get points and rules that will never be updated again.

They are removed from competitive play and basically become narrative only if your opponent agrees.

So say goodbye to warboss on bike, Mek on bike, warboss in mega armor, burnas on kommandos, bombs on deffkoptas, painboy on bike, big Mek with kff and not mega armoir, and big guns... also no idea if the forgeworld stuff that is still in that index is becoming legends or not.

Only real things we'll miss are the KFF Mek and Biker Boss. Fortunately, the Wartrike is only slightly less point efficient, so not a huge deal there (aside from the lack of Killa Klaw), but now all our KFF options are prohibitively expensive.

From 74 big mek to 114. We lost 3 HQ, 2 of the most used ones. They are out of their fething mind

I guess Big Meks will just disappear from games and be replaced with Wazbomms.
Or they will give the MA Big Mek a proper point cost to make him viable.
Or the green tide archetype just dies.

But good thing they at least give points to the legends. One of my criticism in the Big Survey was that all those fun narrative rules are useless because everyone is using points and thus you can't use them even in friendly games.

Had a game vs space wolves a couple of weeks ago. Can't remember exact lists, but roughly:


set up on long board edges. He got first turn. Big guns never tire (d'oh!).

his turn 1 he killed 3 mek guns, getting 4 VP (first strike, 3 heavy supports). rhino & flier moved forward. all focus was on killing the guns for VP.
My turn 1, all rush forwards, big charge on the rhino to get extra distance. shooting pips most of a longfang squad, last guy with lascannon spends VP to become a character. Rhino dies, and the surrounding mob of trukks kills 2 dudes as they try to get out (if I had known better about the method of disembarking I would have positioned my trukks better!). FLashgits do some killing on the flanks to clear his token unit off the objectives (I set up heavy on one side as I am faster than he is!)

His turn 2 sees a trukk blow up, killing his runepriest, 2 wolves, 2 marines, 1 boy and wounding another trukk. lascannons finish off the mek guns and everything else fires at the lootas - Grot shields, deploy! even so 4 lootas die and the 5 remaining grots run off.

My turn 2, the grots who were being charge shields for the mek guns fire some shots at the flier - there's only 13 left - and chip 2 wounds off! Flashgits are still in range so don't move and wipe out the token squad with terminator champion. Meganobs get out and charge the super-shooty dudes, killing 2 before getting mullered in response. the remaining 1 gets made a champion as well with the stratagem - damn that stratagem! Boys in truks kill off all but a terminator champion - guess what? he becomes a lone wolf! - another tukk goes and finishes off the last dude from the longfangs, by standing right next to him and firing a KMB into his face. scrapjet shoots everything (except anti-tank missiles) at the character-who-used-to-have-wolves, chipping 2 wounds off. Then charges and kills him with the ram. He then fights me back (stratagem or something), blows me up and kills off my last meganob! :( gretchin get another wound off the flier!

His turn 3, wolfen dudes walk in off the sidelines. Dudes get out of flier to deal with gretchin, for reasons unknown. not much of mine dies.

My turn 3, wartrike slams into wolfen with the ramming speed strat, killing 3, who then kill him in return, which means I pop the stratagem to fight again, which kills the rest, who would have liked to kill him some more but he was already dead by then. boys move to secure an objective and shoot lots at the terminator and the shooty dude - shooty dude dies. Flashgits move closer and kill the longfangs.

it's 11pm, so game wraps up here. We agree that I would have won, as I had the majority of my army left, and would easily take 3 objectives.


Points I found out:

MSU with deffskulls is a very good combo
Trukks overperformed as he didn't focus on them - it's not that trukks are good, it's that the opponent ignored them.
flashgits in a trukk are pretty ace. turn 1 move to a central ruin, and stay there until the trukk pops and you can loot it (didn't come up this game).
Burnas in the trukk with the Meganobs was decidedly meh, I think they did 1 wound all game. In future I will probably swap them for Tankbustas. I did enjoy the 2-units in a trukk approach. gave the trukk something to do once the MANs-missile had disembarked. also saves a meganob from a roll of a 1 when the trukk dies.
SAG did naff all, all game. Lootas were pretty cool, but I held my CP back for defence rather than popping more dakka on them, so they could be better with more CP to play with.
Invuln! I remembered it in turn 3, until then none of my units used their 6++.

All in all a good, fun game, which I'm chalking up as a draw as I didn't officially win.

Next things to test:

wartrike + walkers. I have so many dreads & kans, and I'm just thinking about the idea of move, advance & charge. Having a unit of 5 killa kans move 7-12", then popping "ramming speed" to roll 3D6 for charge could do a hefty amount of damage. I'd give these skorchas or rokkits for the ability to shoot after advancing and also as they will be in the enemy areas, and 5 skorchas is nothing to sniff at!

Meka-dread could be cool too, with the ability to move 16+D6", then a 3D6" charge. that's back of field territory! 378pts for 2 monsters behind enemy lines on turn 1. That's an average of 30" movement for the meka-dread, without rerolling any charge dice. Da jump something else scary in to increase the pincer manoeuver and away we go!


So to summarise plan: 1/3 of army to be scarily/surprisingly fast & stompy, 1/3 of army to be fast and scary, 1/3 of army to be still & shooty. first 1/3 will get around/behind the enemy, second will pressure them from the front, third will provide covering fire.

List in spoilers or we ll krump ya