'Ard Boy Report: Black Templars

[Dzan]

So I played mech BT at my 'Ard Boys. About half the field was out of towners who had never been to our LGS so it was definitely a cool experience playing them.

 

Here is my list...

 

HQ:

Marshal

-Dual Lightning Claws

-Terminator Armor

-Tank Hunter

-4 Man Terminator Command Squads

-2 x Asscans

-Tank Hunters

-Deep Strike

 

Emperor's Champ

-Accept Any Challenge

 

Elites:

Terminator Assault Squad

-4x LC, 2x TH/SS

-Land Raider Crusader Smoke

 

Troops:

15 man squad

-Power Fist

-Flamer

-LRC w/ Smoke

 

15 man Squad

-Power Fist

-Flamer

-LRC w/ Smoke

 

10 man Squad

-PF

-Meltagun

-Rhino w/ extra armor and smoke

 

10 man Squad

-PF

-Meltagun

-Rhino w/ extra armor and smoke

 

A pretty simple list, but a lot of AAC bodies, a deathstar CC Termie unit, and an HQ squad that can tear through any armor that isn't a monolith with ease in shooting or CC.

 

The general idea is to rush them with the land raiders with rhinos hanging back on objectives in my zone, or following behind the raiders playing clean up. Simple.

 

Scenario One. Jeff playing Mech Tau

 

Jeff is a regular at my LGS and we have played several times. It's hard to be a competitive Tau player now but his list is improving as he changed from gunline to mech. The game went according to plan, rush the raiders up, popped smoke first turn. Second turn the raiders spit out their cargo and PotM Asscan took down two devilfish to spill out the baddies inside who got charged by the 15 man squads.

 

He made a deployment/movement mistake by keeping his crisis team 6 inches from his broadsides, because it allowed my assault terminators to charge both of them, and wiped each. That was where the tide definitely turned as he lost a lot of his firepower before either got to take a meaningful shot.

 

Next turn the nearby Hammerhead shot at the terminators, killing one, they zealed 6 inches towards it and on my turned charged it bringing it down with thunderhammers. My Terminator marshal deep struck in with his tank hunters and blasted the rear of his other hammer head with Str 7 Asscans blowing off all of it's weapons. From there on with his heavy stuff gone it was clean up. I won in a massacre with 3 objectives and at least a dozen more kill points.

 

Second Scenario - Matt Witch Hunters

 

Matt was not a local and played a pretty interesting gunline SoB army. I have not actually ever played against Sisters due to the rarity of people willing to buy 10 metal sisters at $35 a box. His army consisted of a cannoness, 120 sisters with bolters, meltagun and heavy flamer in 20 man squads, three exorcists, and an allied DH inquisitor with mystics (to kill daemons or drop pods) with heavy weapon servitors.

 

This mission was straight kill points so I was worried about how my 50 or so bodies were going to kill 130 or so bodies.

 

To be continued...

 

...

 

Matt deployed first putting two squads right on the middle of the board so I'd be stuck on the back six for my deployment. The rest of his army would walk on turn one. I deployed my two 15 man squads in their LR 18 away from his girls. I stole the initiative and got a first turn charge on the squad with his cannoness in it. I killed 8 or so of them taking one neophyte casualty. They had wargear which allowed them to use the cannoness leadership unmodified, but they still rolled an 11 on the test and I ran them down. Six kill points on the first turn is not so bad.

 

On his turn his stuff walked on and his Exorcists took some ineffectual shots at my LRC. Second turn my Assault termies in their LRC assaulted the other forward deployed 20 man sister squad and killed them to a lady. Everything else moved forward. On his turn his exorcists popped my Land raiders with 15 men insides. Quite good rolling, 6 to pen for a glance and then 6 on the chart to wreck with AP1. My guys inside deployed and got rapid fired on by 20 strong sisters units, who used faith to get AP1 on sixes to wound. Those squads were each reduced to about 5 men left.

 

My third turn my assault termies reembarked into their LRC and it rumbled forward 12 and popped smoke. My tank hunters teleported in, took some mystic enabled sister shots which killed two of them thanks to AP1 on sixes. They then blasted apart an exorcist with assault cannons. My 5 remaining initiates from the original 15 men charged the mystic and retinue, slaughtering them to a man. The other 5 men charged headlong into a 20 man sister squad, killed a few and then got killed back by strength 5 faith powered sisters.

 

The rest of the game was clean up, I managed to destroy one of his other exorcists with a multimelta shot from a land raider, and my 5 remaining guys hid behind the wreckage of a Land Raider to not give up their precious kill point.

 

At the end of turn 6 I had 16 kill points and he had 9 giving me a major victory.

 

Scenario three - JD with Daemons.

 

JD is another regular at the LGS who had beating his first two opponents pretty badly and I wasn't looking foward to this battle. He had Fateweaver, Bloodcrushers, and 2 nurgle daemon princes that formed a nigh unkillable ball of CC death. He also had two squads of 6 Screamers of Tzeetch, which arent normally a great choice, but they happen to scare me since I have three land raiders.

 

I did not rush him at all, my land raiders stayed back at 22" away and took shots at things outside of the fateweaver bubble. I killed a squad of Fiends of Slaanesh early and a squad of screamers and one of the daemon princes as he rushed ahead of Fateweaver to try to get to one of my LRC.

 

I shot to death two of his Slaanesh heralds. This was a puzzling choice, I asked him why he took them rather than a GD and he said he wanted the ability to Pavanne twice per turn on objective missions and to pull units towards his Fateweaver bubble.

 

By this point we were on turn 5 due to quick turns and defensive play by me. His bloodcrushers left the bubble to assault a rhino. They failed to pop it. My assault termies and a 10 man squad assaulted into fateweaver and a daemon prince. I took heavy losses and put all my attacks onto Fateweaver. I wounded him about 25 times and he saved all but 1 leaving him with one wound. I passed my fearless saves and we were locked in.

 

In retrospect I should have put all my attacks onto the Daemon prince as he was more killy and would only have a 5++ save rather than 3++. On turn six I shot his bloodcrushers with a LRC and 23 bolt pistol shots and a flamer and a melta gun. Managed to killed two of them and put a wound each on two of the remaining 3. I charged them with 25 Templars and slew them.

 

My termies couldnt kill fateweaver again despite getting several wounds, his re-rollable 3++ was just too good and his rolls werent poor. The prince slaughtered the rest of my crusader squad.

 

On his turn 6 he turboboosted his Screamers to contest my objective, a huge mistake on my part. I had it surrounded by a 15 man squad but they were packed too tightly. I should have spread them out so he couldnt get 3" near it. Huge mistake on my part.

 

He beat me 1 objective to 0, and I beat him 6 kill points to 5 for a draw. He got a bonus point for killing all my HQ and another bonus for having scoring units in three table quarters.

 

So I ended with 50 points, which was the most at my store. The Daemon guy I drew with ended with 49 for second place. Luckily, the tournament was pretty anemic, and no one ran away with 3 massacres. Everyone took at least one draw and most others a loss somewhere.

 

See you in Orlando for the semis.

[Tonoshi]

I placed 3rd at my store with 43 points (Massacre Win, Massacre Win, Got Massacred). I went even more basic on my army list.

 

Emperor's Champion (AAC)

 

Terminator Assault 4 Lightning Claws, 3 Thunder Hammers, Furious Charge in a LRC

 

Terminator Squad 2 Assault Cannons, 3 Stormbolters (possibly had Tank Hunter on these, can't remember today)

 

Crusader 1 - Powerfist, Flamer, 8 BP & CCW, 10 Neophytes, Frags and Kraks

 

Crusader 2 - Powerfist, Flamer, 8 BP & CCW, 4 Neophytes, Frags and Kraks in a LRC

 

Crusader 3 - Powerfist, meltagun, 8 BP & CCW in a Rhino with Smoke

 

Crusader 4 - Powerfist, meltagun, 8 BP & CCW in a Rhino with Smoke

 

Venerable Dreadnought - Assault Cannon, DCCW with Heavy Flamer, Extra Armor, Smoke, Tank Hunter

 

Round 1

 

BT vs Chaos Game ended after 4 turns. Lots of infantry to move and shoot on both sides. Nothing really exciting until the last turn. On Turn 3, he left one of the objectives and started moving a small squad toward it. He needed a run roll of 3+ to get the small squad there...a 2 was rolled and there was much rejoicing (for me at least). 2-1 on objectives and 6 to 3 on kill points.

 

Round 2

 

BT vs Tyranids Game ended after 5 turns. I spent most of this game concentrating my firepower on single targets. I lost 18 out of 21 men on a turn 2 genestealer assault, but the EC and a Rhino squad came through on the next turn to clean up the genestealers. The next couple turns were spent shooting until they reached the frontline. The terminators handled everything that hit my frontline in Assault. End Game. No Templar unit was fully destroyed. Lots of Tyranids were killed.

 

Round 3

 

BT vs Necrons. We went the full 6 turns with time to spare. The blessing of the dice gods left me in the 3 game. I do admit to one huge mistake on my part. I split off part of my army to go after one of the objectives when I really should have stuck together. I think I passed 2 leaderships in the entire game. I won 2 out of 5 assaults (against Necrons....ok, some were Pariahs...but still NECRONS!!!!). On turn 6, he was able to get a squad close enough to my objective to contest and win by holding the other. Many lessons were learned.

 

I had 43 points total for the Tournament. 2nd place was Chaos Daemons. 1st place was Necrons (who I graciously gave 21 or 22 points). I had fun and thats all that matters.

[reaver13]

Congrats on advancing Dzan! I'm sure in the semis your HQ squad of tank slaughtering doom is going to have plenty of targets.

[ninjalawyer]

Good show! I ran a Land Raider heavy list and it could have gone better for me.

 

My list was:

EC w/ AAC with 9/4 squad in LRC

Marshal with 9/4 squad in LRC

7/1 squad in LRC

5 man las plas squad in Land Raider

6 man Assault Terminator Squad in LRC

 

First game was against Chaos Daemons, it was close, but due to an unlucky (and highly questionable) scatter roll, he was able to contest one of the objectives I thought was safe, and turned a minor win on kill points into a major loss on objectives.

 

Second game was against Chaos Marines, which I really built my list to beat. I massacred my opponent and got 23/24 battle points.

 

Third and final was against mech IG, and I had real trouble destroying his transports and scored very few kill points. He pushed me off the objective on his side of the table effortlessly, and edged me out on my side to contest the second objective at the end of the game for a massacre result. He wound up taking third.

 

Overall, I suspect that three LRCs is optimal, and more than that means you won't have the firepower you need to win. And new Guard is scary-- my opponent had at least one heavy/special weapon for every marine I brought to the table and five STR8+ large templates.

[Dzan]

What I learned:

 

1. Tank hunting HQ doom squad is insanely good at killing transports or anything armor 12 or less. Unfortunately for me, the meta here didn't support that. Two of the three armies I faced (SoB and Daemons) were foot sloggers. The unit rather underperformed in those games, however against the mech tau they were amazing. I suspect that the semis will be loaded with mech armies so I will feel confident bringing them. The only draw back is they are a major liability in the kill point missions, 5 for the Marshal and 5 for the squad is really bad if they have a poor deep strike roll or they get pie plated. I will likely walk them on rather than deep strike, or put them in one of the LR if there is a similar mission in the semis. I suspect my opponents will be too good at that level to allow 10 kill points in 5 bodies to live long. The other option is to cashier the command squad and go with a second terminator assault squad in LRC and kick one of the troops in LRC down to a rhino.

 

2. You have to overkill to be successful, especially in kill point missions. I am really good at quick mathhammer, so if I figure it will take 10 marines to kill the ork unit between shooting and CC I always send 20 marines. I'd rather have huge overkill than play it close and have bad luck. All good in theory, but how did I apply it in practice? My two 15 man squads in LRC ran as a pair and the rhinos ran in a pair. The 30 men and 2 LRC always went for the toughest targets and the 20 in rhinos went for the softer ones. Not once did I separate the pairs and it was very successful, especially against armies with tough CC because killing them before they hit back is the way to go.

 

3. From a purely competitive tournament standpoint, Black Templars are better than any other flavor space marines lists except Vulkan Drop pods.

[Tonoshi]

I think our command squad plus HQ was worth less than 10 kill points in that 2nd round. I think it was 8 total.

 

I may continue to play it safe and just run the EC as my HQ, and use the extra points for more men. My only bad game involved lots of below average rolls.