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Hi

How does a high save high saturation list function? Like dreadnoughts and leman russ battletanks. Could a list like that function?

I know inbfantery spam is the name of the game, so many lists would have dud weapons. Or do they just crumble under lascannons?

Usually those models cost more in points, so you’ll have fewer models. They’ll hold up to massive fire. The problems with these lists:
-Scoring objectives
-If they get tied up in combat many of these models may not be able to fire (if that is their strength, Leman Russes for example)
-if they don’t have lots of offensive weapons they may not be able to control hordes

I think it would depend on the models in question. This does seem a pretty good way to run Leman Russ in particular. You can easily field 10 of the things in a 2k list, plus some bubble wrap for them.

It’s also likely to be how Custodes work. They all have T5 and a 2+ save, plus invulnerable saves. They are pretty resistant to most kinds of shooting, but can’t do too much damage themselves at range. The Leman Russes are different because they have immense firepower, whereas the Custodes have almost none. Maybe it would work to run the two together.

Right now, 8th edition is a game of board control. When you can pin-point a deep strike without risk, the only way to mitigate being alpha'd in that way is to fill space with duders.

Cheap infantry are very good at filling space. Consider that if you put 3 units 12" apart, in a triangle, you can basically prevent deepstrike / outflank in a quarter of a board. Maybe not literally, but functionally? Yes.

So with lots of cheap units, you can lock your opponent into a "frontal assault" where they have to chew through your chumps at the front, to get to the juicy stuff at the back. Like chess, you can force your opponent to "trade down", while you can "trade up" in value.

An army of "only big guys" can not do that effectively. Your front line is your juicy stuff, so you lose high-value targets right away. It would have a fair fight against similarly built lists, but would have an uphill struggle against a list capable of breaking through the line, so to speak.

What alpha strike units can chew through leman russes and dreadnoughts?

Melta's are nowehere to be seen. Alpha strike units are plasma drops, devilgaunts / hive tyrant, chaos berserkers, stealer shock with swarmlord. Am I missing something?

 Niiai wrote:
What alpha strike units can chew through leman russes and dreadnoughts?

Melta's are nowehere to be seen. Alpha strike units are plasma drops, devilgaunts / hive tyrant, chaos berserkers, stealer shock with swarmlord. Am I missing something?

I'm not dead certain, but I'm convinced that berserkers with VotLW stratagem can chew through normal tanks and dreadnoughts while the tanks can do nothing really and Dreadnoughts don't have nearly enough attacks to have significant impact in melee against the berserkers.

One good "chaff" replacement/substitute could be the use of Flyers which can't be charged, they would frontline to stop or at least control alpha strikes to some level. Good example of this kind of flyer would be Fire Raptor, which is a must include anyway already for both normal and spiky marines, and especially a must in this kind of high T high Sv -type of list.

As long as they are t8 rather than t7 I'd be interested in seeing this tried out (that 5+ vs 6+ to wound will make a big difference against hordes of s4 attacks and will really help against eldar/over charged plasma s8 shooting)

Plasma and las-cannons would cause you problems but I think it would be a really good off-meta list (like pask + 5 russes and 3 iron-clads lead by a salamander chaplain dread or bjorn or a blood angel libby dread).

Hell do a couple supreme command detachments and have all tank commanders and character dreads. Bring a drop-pod(is there a tougher/cheaper deepstriking non-character unit?) and drop it out of LOS turn 1 and make your enemy shoot that (closest) before they can shoot anything else in your army!

 Niiai wrote:
What alpha strike units can chew through leman russes and dreadnoughts?

Melta's are nowehere to be seen. Alpha strike units are plasma drops, devilgaunts / hive tyrant, chaos berserkers, stealer shock with swarmlord. Am I missing something?

I mean the only thing I need to do to Alpha strike a Leman Russ is charge it before it shoots. Can't fall back and shoot and then if I have enough stuff I can keep tagging it out or get a heavy hitter to bring it down.

Ghorgul wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
Good example of this kind of flyer would be Fire Raptor, which is a must include anyway already for both normal and spiky marines.

This bothers me so much. This damned model is soooo good and GW thought it was a good idea to drop the price on it. I feel like an idiot for constructing any competitive list (for games that allow FW) without it.

 Niiai wrote:
What alpha strike units can chew through leman russes and dreadnoughts?

Melta's are nowehere to be seen. Alpha strike units are plasma drops, devilgaunts / hive tyrant, chaos berserkers, stealer shock with swarmlord. Am I missing something?

As for Leman Russes, anything can deal with them in CC. They have ws 6+. Charge them with termagants/gretchin/anything, have the tank fall back, and then charge it again. They are very vulnerable without the screen. Dreadnoughts are a different beast, of course. They can rip in CC, but T7 models are also a lot more fragile than T8 models. Genestealers will happily tear Dreadnoughts apart, and even a squad of Boyz can destroy a Dreadnought on the charge.

But the real problem for these kind of armies is mission play. To win on mission in 8th edition you need either lots of models, speed or deepstrike. Or a combination of the three. A dreadnought army is slow, so you will often find yourself in the wrong place, especially when playing Maelstrom or ITC missions. A tank army is faster, but it is fairly difficult to contest six objectives with 10-11 models, and using them in such a way discards one of their main strengths: Their long range fire-power.

Mortal Wounds make High Toughness high Sv useless. So those army that can spam mortal wound attacks with cheap costs like Nidz will destroy you easily. So do those who can spam smite.

 Niiai wrote:
Hi

How does a high save high saturation list function? Like dreadnoughts and leman russ battletanks. Could a list like that function?

I know inbfantery spam is the name of the game, so many lists would have dud weapons. Or do they just crumble under lascannons?

I wouldn't do it unless that unit had fly. If assault makes the unit useless - the unit is useless for a spam list.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
Hi

How does a high save high saturation list function? Like dreadnoughts and leman russ battletanks. Could a list like that function?

I know inbfantery spam is the name of the game, so many lists would have dud weapons. Or do they just crumble under lascannons?

I wouldn't do it unless that unit had fly. If assault makes the unit useless - the unit is useless for a spam list.

On that note, I've had great success with an Eldar Grav tank list, with mostly Fire Prisms, Wave Serpents, Flyers and a Super Heavy, then just characters and 3 min troop squads to fill out the detachments.

Denial of an enemies firepower is a powerful way to play, with the AP system in 7th edition you could do similar things (eg: by taking all 2+ armour save units you invalidate all of their expensive AP3 guns). Of course that is not how you would do it now, but instead use the flexibility of the detachment system to give your opponent only 1 type of target to deal with (either really hard or really squishy). This will make half of your opponents firepower operate highly inefficiently assuming they have brought a TAC list.

To the Leman Russes in particular, as other people have noted, once they're in CC they're pooched. Fall back, can't shoot. If half your army is assaulted, sure, you can shoot with the other half, but that's not going to save you.

Dreadnoughts? Maybe. But they're relatively slow, and they're easy to shoot down before they get to CC, and don't pack the firepower to be deadly, otherwise. Part of their points needs them to get to CC.

Again, without the board control elements of the infantry getting in the way, the LR suffers the same weakness it has always had.


I have Melta in my meta. Salamanders use it. Frankly, they're a short ranged Missile Launcher you can move and shoot, and sometimes you get a bonus roll out of it. I haven't given up on them, because I try to WYSIWYG as much as I can, and I use those models with Meltaguns.

Short ranged Rapid Fire plasma is scary. Infantry can push it back outside of 12, but if you don't have those infantry... nope.

Something like a Knight will run up, grab it by the turret, and pull a Hulk / Loki deal. "Puny Russ."


I don't want to rain on the parade. If you're in an elite-focussed meta, where board control is less of an issue, then you're bringing paper to a paper fight. But if you run into horde infantry, you've brought paper to a scissors fight, and you're probably going to lose.

My high T saturation list with orks has 3 BWs, a gorkanaut, 4 KMKs, two biker characters, and the infantries embarked. Eventually a couple of lone skorchas.

It's mostly a fluffy one since its tactics is to have the naugt soak the anti tank while the embarked units advance towards the enemy. But since those units can do the same job, probably even better, by using footsloggers the list is not extremely competitive, but very fun to play because I hate the green tide style.

Neophyte2012 wrote:
Mortal Wounds make High Toughness high Sv useless. So those army that can spam mortal wound attacks with cheap costs like Nidz will destroy you easily. So do those who can spam smite.

I keep hearing this thing about nids, but all they do have is a model that for 40 points inflicts half a mortal wound per turn and a big model with an electromagnetic weapon. I see more mortal wounds in my games with DA than the ones with nids.

A list with several LRBTs is working atm.
One of our players here fields 1 Baneblade, 4 LRBTs, 3x30 Concripts, 2x5 Ratlings, and some Sentinals.
Its 2000 pts and not easy to take on.

You can run high T saturation well with bubble wrap of your own, but it's mostly crap without bubble wrap. That's pretty much all you need to know.

Leman russ spam recently won a local tourney. He also ran a bunch of 10-man ig squads as bauble wrap. It's quite boring to play with and against as it's just a huge almost immobile gunline blob but it's got excellent firepower.

That's the point I'm trying to make. 90 infantry take up space. Keeps you from being drop-Squaded, forces your opponent to meet you head on, creates predictable avenues of advance / firing lines. Without those board control elements, units could outflank or deepstrike in positions that block Los to all but the target.

Spoletta wrote:

Neophyte2012 wrote:
Mortal Wounds make High Toughness high Sv useless. So those army that can spam mortal wound attacks with cheap costs like Nidz will destroy you easily. So do those who can spam smite.

I keep hearing this thing about nids, but all they do have is a model that for 40 points inflicts half a mortal wound per turn and a big model with an electromagnetic weapon. I see more mortal wounds in my games with DA than the ones with nids.

Smite, psychic scream, spore mines, sporocysts, carnifex on the charge, biovore, shockguard, harpy, crone, mawloc all generate mortal wounds. Along with some less competitive options like the maleceptor, toxicrene, malanthrope

In addition, many of the Big Bugs have very decent wound rolls / damage against vehicles, and the vehicle's only defense once assaulted is to fall back, preventing firepower.

The "fast" little bugs also tie up the Tanks.

Now, if the big bugs charge 70 points of upgraded Infantry Squad, and something lives to fall back, you can then pound away with your 150 to 200 point tanks... plus you might have a couple dudes left over to screen a second time.

C4790M wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Neophyte2012 wrote:
Mortal Wounds make High Toughness high Sv useless. So those army that can spam mortal wound attacks with cheap costs like Nidz will destroy you easily. So do those who can spam smite.

I keep hearing this thing about nids, but all they do have is a model that for 40 points inflicts half a mortal wound per turn and a big model with an electromagnetic weapon. I see more mortal wounds in my games with DA than the ones with nids.

Smite, psychic scream, spore mines, sporocysts, carnifex on the charge, biovore, shockguard, harpy, crone, mawloc all generate mortal wounds. Along with some less competitive options like the maleceptor, toxicrene, malanthrope

Yeah there's a lot indeed, i suppose that they never get used since as i said, apart from the ones i listed (and the psychic ones, but that's true for all factions), you are unlikely to meet those, maybe sometimes mawlocks and the occasional fex charge. There is a lot of potential for mortal wounds, but it just doesn't come up in games. Maybe just a local thing.