Is a Landraider really neccessary for assault units

[Captain Idaho]

Simple discussion really, I would like to start a discussion on the usage of Landraiders and whether it really is neccessary for assault units to be mounted within a Landraider.

 

My position has always been that an assault unit benefits greatly from a Landraider, but it isn't essential to have a Landraider to deliver them. Power armoured assault units like Honour Guard and Vanguard are compared to Assault Terminators rather unfairly in my opinion, as they have the virtue of saving you 210-215pts by placing them inside a Rhino or Razorback.

 

Whilst it has been debated elsewhere whether Honour Guard are useful in assaults and I don't want to go over it too much for fear of de-railing the thread before it begins, the Honour Guard can potentially fulfill a role that assault Terminators don't. But the poor old Vanguard lack the killing potential of Honour Guard and certainly the defensive capacity of Terminators, but they are versatile to achieve elements of both and also have the virtue of being borne in transportation that is much more affordable.

 

But therein lies the point of contention. If we use a cheaper transport for our assault units, what options does that leave us with? The omnipotent power of a Landraider (slight exaggeration but hey you get the point) grants a greater chance of delivering the assault unit to it's target (amongst other things). Often it is Assault Terminators, but for comparitive purposes we judge other assault units to be around 200pts).

 

It is also a single point of failure in your army though, with the bare minimum cost being 550pts (Terminator assault squad or 200pt equivilent assault unit) plus 100pts for the cheapest HQ choice available. That's a total 650pts minimum.

 

On the other hand the virtue of using a Rhino or Razorback is being cheap, the minimum price of an assault unit being 335pts or in the case of Honour Guard 430pts (Chapter Master with Relic blade/Storm Shield + Chapter Banner, Relic blade on Champion and 5 in the squad Honour Guard - the optimum configuration).

 

That is a cost difference of 215pts or 120pts. That is a big difference.

 

We come now to the main problem though. Is the Rhino really that survivable to ensure the assault unit makes it into combat? I say yes. It only requires a single move to be able to assault an opponent from the Rhino, which you are highly likely to get, with a little thought at least.

 

I normally put the transport with Honour Guard behind another Rhino and sometimes flanked by a 3rd. This grants it a cover save and makes it difficult to remove without a concerted effort or just bad luck.

 

Point is, because I'm not writing a tactica but trying to promote discussion on the matter, is that the loss of the assault unit to enemy fire due to a destroyed transport won't ruin your game as much if that combination doesn't represent half your army. Also, the opponent will not have a single obvious threat to deal with, making achieving it not always worth the effort. Consider the difficulties in taking out a Landraider, well it's worth it generally because the vehicle is such a threat on it's own whilst the the unit inside represents a similar threat. When the transport is a meagre Rhino like the other 2 or 3 in the army, things become less cut and dried for opponents as they know that you have other units on the table top just as important.

 

So what other points would people like to raise on the matter? I know for definite that some people have differing opinions, so let's discuss them!

[Koremu]

The short answer is that if your battle plan revolves around the Assault unit in question getting into combat with a choice target, then the Land Raider is essential.

 

If your battle plan revolves around other things, and your Assault unit is only there in support ef those other things, then a regular Transport may be OK.

 

Obviously, there's the Terminator Question too.

[greatcrusade08]

from my own experience, everyone and their mum takes enough fast melta to deal with a single land raider.. if you have (like my calgar/HG list) a 500+ point unit sitting in a raider it will get shot down very quickly.

 

I agree with your points about honour guard, a small unit with a Chapter master isnt going to cost the earth and if they die then they have drawn heavy weapon fire away from other choice targets.. i like the way you use them alongside the other rhino borne units in your army, adds a little cohesion and throws some counter attacking ability to your tacticals.

[Captain Idaho]

from my own experience, everyone and their mum takes enough fast melta to deal with a single land raider.. if you have (like my calgar/HG list) a 500+ point unit sitting in a raider it will get shot down very quickly.

 

Indeed, it is always a risk. This is the main reason I don't use a "Landraider Rush" list, rather use a Landraider as a strategic reserve and pound away with my Lascannons. I also use it as bait.

 

Which is a fair tactic of course, but the risk is much reduced if you use AV11 transports. Who wants to sacrifice their anti-tank units to melta attack a Rhino when there will be other stuff on the board those anti-tank units will be needed against?

 

I agree with your points about honour guard, a small unit with a Chapter master isnt going to cost the earth and if they die then they have drawn heavy weapon fire away from other choice targets.. i like the way you use them alongside the other rhino borne units in your army, adds a little cohesion and throws some counter attacking ability to your tacticals.

 

Thanks. No unit is an island in a Space Marine army, at least it shouldn't be. Which is why I don't like Terminator Assault units in Landraiders, they just run independently to the rest of the army most of the time.

 

The short answer is that if your battle plan revolves around the Assault unit in question getting into combat with a choice target, then the Land Raider is essential.

 

If your battle plan revolves around other things, and your Assault unit is only there in support ef those other things, then a regular Transport may be OK.

 

Obviously, there's the Terminator Question too.

 

Dang. All my long winded post and you go and put 3 lines up that says the same thing quicker and easier to read! ;)

[Giga]

Well, the way I see it, rhino-mounted assault troops work perfectly in armies that can have lots of them.

 

Chaos Marines can have a bunch of scoring dudes (apart from thousand sons, their troop choices are all good in assault) riding in a bunch of rhinos, with some defilers and daemon princes there to provide target saturation and heavy hitting. Space Wolves, likewise, get mass gray hunters in rhinos and razorbacks, which is another great assault troop choice that can be spammed. Finally, blood angels get assault marines with fast rhinos (plus pretty much everything vanilla marines have, too).

 

In this case, it doesn't matter if one or two rhinos are blown up or immobilized - they have another 2-3 rhinos full of scoring assault dudes to make up for it - their assault power is spread out in their army. Again, the CSM, SW, or BA troops aren't particularly great in assault compared to assault specialists such as th/ss terminators, biker nobz, or warptime daemonprinces, but they're still good enough to be able to go in and dish out some serious close-combat pain.

 

Vanilla marines, on the other hand, don't have such cheap, readily-available scoring assault units. Tactical marines suck in close combat, and scouts can't take rhinos or razorbacks. This means that, no matter what you do, you'll never have 3-4 rhinos filled with assault-oriented dudes. Instead, you'll have one rhino with some vanguard, or honor guard, or maybe with a cc-oriented command squad. Hence, if the enemy wants to destroy/immobilize/stun that rhino, chances are they probably will succeed, and once they do, you got a ~300 point assault unit footslogging toward the enemy and getting bombarded with all sorts of nasty guns, or being counter-assaulted by the REAL badass assaulters.

 

Hence, our assault power is invariably localized into one or two units and we need to make sure we can get those units into a position where they can actually do their job. The best way to go about this, in my opinion, is to get a land raider godhammer with extra armor (and multimelta, if you got spare points or you run vulkan) and take the single most cost-effective niche-filling assault specialist in our codex - a 5 men th/ss terminator unit (or 2 x LC and 3 x th/ss, if you run lysander or calgar with them).

It only requires a single move to be able to assault an opponent from the Rhino, which you are highly likely to get, with a little thought at least.

Would you care to elaborate, please? How do you get a 2nd turn charge from a rhino, and how is it highly likely? Against what opponents?

 

Pitched battle and spearhead deployment means there's, at best, a 24" distance between your rhino and the enemy lines. This means you need to drive 12" forward, then hope a good target will be standing within 14" of your rhino in your next turn, so you can disembark, move, and charge them. This becomes even harder if you keep your rhino hidden behind your other rhinos, meaning it starts further in the back of your deployment zone.

 

In addition, in this situation, the opponents have plenty of space to maneuver pretty much no matter what you do, making it easy for mechanized armies to simply move away from your rhino, out of the 14" assault range. This means you're unlikely to get into assault with a mobile opponent unless you pin him or surround the unit you want to assault to prevent it from moving out of assault range. Either way, this will often give a smart opponent 2-4 turns to deal with your 11 11 10 transport.

 

The 2nd turn charge is also impossible to do in dawn of war deployment, since vanguard, honorguard, and non-bike command squads have to start off the table. So at best it's a 3rd turn charge. More likely 4th turn.

from my own experience, everyone and their mum takes enough fast melta to deal with a single land raider.

Yeah, but if that fast melta is within melta range of the land raider, then that means it's also within assault range of the unit inside the land raider.

 

Also, keep in mind that a rhino is easily killed by meltaguns and multimeltas outside melta range, which is something smart opponents can and will use to great effect (especially with fast multimelta speeders or attack bikes). In addition, it's easily destroyed by just about any anti-tank weapon in the game. The land raider is only truly threatened by meltas and lascannons, and then meltas are rather ineffective outside of 6-12" range.

 

In addition, the land raider brings a whole bunch of other great benefits, such as its own armaments, the fact it draws tons of firepower while being able to retain the same cover save as the rhino (by simply keeping a rhino in front of it, you give obscure 50% of a land raider + it also has smoke launchers), and the fact its an assault vehicle. Finally, being 14 14 14, your LR can actually spearhead your charge, meaning it can move at the front of your army, providing a cover save or completely obscuring some other units, while remaining safe from most anti-tank fire.

Which is why I don't like Terminator Assault units in Landraiders, they just run independently to the rest of the army most of the time.

Umm, no, that's only if you use them wrong. Termies in a LR are a great unit that offers plenty of synergy to the army.

[Odsox]

I wouldn't say a Land Raider is essential to an assault unit. I placed my CC-oriented Command Squad in a Land Raider and it got blown up on the first turn. Didn't fire a shot, didn't move an inch. The Command Squad footslogged it, got shot up a bit, but did run Eldrad off the field and killed an Avatar anyway.

 

It's all about the dice, innit.

 

Od.

[Giga]

I wouldn't say a Land Raider is essential to an assault unit. I placed my CC-oriented Command Squad in a Land Raider and it got blown up on the first turn. Didn't fire a shot, didn't move an inch. The Command Squad footslogged it, got shot up a bit, but did run Eldrad off the field and killed an Avatar anyway.

 

It's all about the dice, innit.

I salute you sir. You sure did a whole lot of research and playtesting before reaching your conclusions. :P

[Captain Idaho]

I wouldn't say a Land Raider is essential to an assault unit. I placed my CC-oriented Command Squad in a Land Raider and it got blown up on the first turn. Didn't fire a shot, didn't move an inch. The Command Squad footslogged it, got shot up a bit, but did run Eldrad off the field and killed an Avatar anyway.

 

It's all about the dice, innit.

I salute you sir. You sure did a whole lot of research and playtesting before reaching your conclusions. ;)

 

:lol:

 

Vanilla marines, on the other hand, don't have such cheap, readily-available scoring assault units. Tactical marines suck in close combat, and scouts can't take rhinos or razorbacks. This means that, no matter what you do, you'll never have 3-4 rhinos filled with assault-oriented dudes. Instead, you'll have one rhino with some vanguard, or honor guard, or maybe with a cc-oriented command squad. Hence, if the enemy wants to destroy/immobilize/stun that rhino, chances are they probably will succeed, and once they do, you got a ~300 point assault unit footslogging toward the enemy and getting bombarded with all sorts of nasty guns, or being counter-assaulted by the REAL badass assaulters.

 

The way I play it, when making an attack on an opponent (not literally) I would still use the Tactical Marines alongside that assault unit. They might not be as scary in assault, but I doubt people really want 10-20 Tactical Marines on their doorstep, unscathed (assuming the assault unit was taken out in preference to them).

 

Would you care to elaborate, please? How do you get a 2nd turn charge from a rhino, and how is it highly likely? Against what opponents?

 

Sure.

 

I failed to elarborate this I noticed, for which I apologise. :confused:

 

What I meant was most opponents will be moving forwards to you, unless they are Tau/Imperial Guard/Cowards :P . So if they have moved into position also, firstly their firepower will be lessened and secondly they will be closer.

 

Although I don't need to tell you, for anyone else reading this thread looking for guidance, a Rhino can move 12" in one turn, disembark the next turn 2", move 6" and assault 6", for a total 26".

 

So odds are good something will be in charge range turn 2. However, I do concede a clever player would likely be in a transport or what have you, so turn 3 is also pretty likely for a charge. I should have perhaps used less enthusiastic wording, my bad.

 

Point is, even if the Rhino is taken out by the opponents fire, you are not left stranded miles away from everyone. If the opponent went 1st, you could be looking at a single turns movement, but I have rarely found good opponents concentrate on my Honour Guard to the exclusion of everything else. The Rhino has a 4+ cover save from smoke launchers so won't be so easy to go down without disprotionate resources from opponents.

 

If it's DOW, then most opponents are moving onto the table too, so firepower will be reduced all round.

 

If an opponent manuveres away from the Honour Guard, they are doing a good enough job anyway, granting me an advantage.

 

Umm, no, that's only if you use them wrong. Termies in a LR are a great unit that offers plenty of synergy to the army

 

I most probably have been looking at them wrongly, but that won't matter to me anway. My army is geared to kill hard targets with it's various firepower, so Terminators don't really fill the niche that they do in other armies. That's why I like the Honour Guard, as they fill the anti-infantry vaccuum.

 

(by simply keeping a rhino in front of it, you give obscure 50% of a land raider + it also has smoke launchers),

 

Same principle applies to Rhino transports protecting Rhinos and Razorbacks.

[Tanhausen]

Quick thoughts:

 

1.- No, its not necessary.

 

End of thoughts

 

+++

 

;)

 

Now seriously!

 

2.- The main factor for a LR is it being an assault vehicle (beside the obvious AV14): that means that you don't have to start worrying about the 2 inches disembarking and so on... If you deploy within 60 cm of your opponent and he is a drooling fresh blood frenzied being (aka CC only), assume he goes first, moves and runs... he is whithin say 23 cm (15 cm + 8 as average for running)... 37 to go... you move your LR 15, plus 5 disembarking.... 17 to go... damn, you only charge 15! And that is assuming you didn't shoot a single round at your enemy so he couldn't remove casualties!

 

I don't think LR are the best idea to simply throw at your opponent wrecklessly... Usually its quite more effective to play a 2 or 3 LR list, playing to being obscured and snipping away with the lasscannon... and when something nasty in CC comes for you, out goes your unit to deliver some love ;)

 

3.- For an assault oriented list, if possible spam assault marines... which are not a very good option unless you are a BA.

 

If you use C:SM, I'd go for drop pods... but that usually means give away Kill Points... but so does Rhinos/Razorbacks.

 

I really think it's more of an issue to tackle list by list than a "cookie cutter" solution. (note: I learned that expression today... funny :P We call them "autoplay" in spain haha Just hit the big red button and let the list run by itself).

 

Hope it helps!

[Race Bannon]

I would agree: no, it is not necessary.

 

But I am of the school of thought that recommends a plan surrounding one tactic or unit is a failing plan. Assuming you play with a 2,000 point army, to devote 10% of your points (actually 10.25%) into one unit ... nay, one model as the core of a strategic plan is taking an unacceptable risk. Now add another unit taking an additional 10% (at average minimums) to put into it and 1/5 of your army is devoted toward a "single unit" to do one thing: assault. The fact that the army is designed around this one process is almost insulting to the army as a whole and myopic gaming at the least. If anything, it's a "one-trick" pony that employed as a general stratagem for your play-style is easily overcome by game 2 or 3.

 

Of course that is my opinion. :unsure:

 

Also, using a Land Raider as an assault delivery vehicle, although possibly an obvious choice, leads to an arms race that devalues the game into who has the bigger guns. What happens is this:

its quite more effective to play a 2 or 3 LR list

That's 25% to 30% of your army in 2 to 3 units. It's an average tactic that requires little effort or thought to use. For the opponent, they just need to either counter with the same or find the tools to remove the LR(s) with ease.

 

It is my perception that GW is attempting to create a "whole game" process where individual units mean less and less over the grand scheme of the game. Yet players are still wanting (needing?) to dissect each unit's effectiveness as if in a vacuum. But placed within the context of the whole army, each unit becomes better than itself. Maybe that's obvious, but several posts show otherwise.

 

Having said that, again, the Land Raider is not necessary. It is, at best, an alternative to units such as Drop Pods and Rhinos. But as the primary unit of choice - or unit of necessity - no. If anything for the sake of keeping the game less formulaic.

 

Unless you are trying to make a one-list-to-rule-them-all, like a tournament list. :angry:

[Justicar Valius]

I'm not walking my termies acorss the field certainly not my PAGK either. Shot so quickly, so very quickly. Whenever they are able to be shot they are destroyed, the raiders give a certain degree of protection.

[rat of vengence]

Yeah, but if that fast melta is within melta range of the land raider, then that means it's also within assault range of the unit inside the land raider.

I will swap 2x landspeeders/attackbikes for your landraider and a now walking assault unit anyday :)

 

Eggs in one basket is an inherently risky proposition any good opponent will exploit. It is also boring as batcrap.

 

RoV

[minigun762]

I subscribe to the idea that one is a Target and two

Are needed to get the job done. Luckily codex land raiders are flexible enough to serve a purpose beyond just assault transport especially the standard pattern. This way you can have your assault unit and pack some pong range firepower in there too.

[Giga]

What I meant was most opponents will be moving forwards to you, unless they are Tau/Imperial Guard/Cowards tongue.gif . So if they have moved into position also, firstly their firepower will be lessened and secondly they will be closer.

This idea doesn't really hold up in my experience. Mission objectives, deployment, and strategy means that no, my opponents won't always be moving toward me unless they're playing things like tyranids, khorne CSM, or orks (ie. the sort of armies I don't want to engage head-on anyway). Even when we're "evenly matched" (like when I'm fighting another vanilla marine army) I won't necessarily want to meet them head-on - it depends on how beneficial that course of action would be to achieving victory, really.

 

However, let's assume an opponent I actually want to assault/rapid fire as early as possible (sisters, guard, tau, thousand sons, etc.) is rushing toward me. He can still dictate what units I can or cannot assault simply because my assault capability is limited to a 14" bubble around the rhino. This gives him an innate advantage over me, which is coupled by the fact my expensive assault unit is held in a 11 11 10 transport which, despite having a 4+ cover save, can still be reliably blown up or immobilized with just about any anti-tank gun in the game.

Point is, even if the Rhino is taken out by the opponents fire, you are not left stranded miles away from everyone. If the opponent went 1st, you could be looking at a single turns movement, but I have rarely found good opponents concentrate on my Honour Guard to the exclusion of everything else.

You may not be left stranded miles from everyone, but you're still in for to a turn or two of getting shot up. The opponent also doesn't need to focus his whole army on honorguard - a single sternguard unit with a bunch of combimeltas, or a command squad with 4 plasmaguns will wipe a small honorguard unit out or cripple them in a single shooting phase. An assault from a fast-moving monstrous creature such as a warptime daemon prince, a flyrant, or a bloodthirster will have a similar effect. Hell, my tactical squad dude with a plasmacannon can decimate such a unit with a singe lucky shot, cover saves or no cover saves.

 

Vanguard and command squads suffer even more because, unlike honorguard, they're also heavily owned by AP3 stuff, str8 stuff or higher, and suffer more from weight of fire due to having a worse save.

 

The point of all this is that blowing up a rhino and killing a unit of power/artificer assaulters doesn't require an entire-army effort to pull off. The cool thing about th/ss termies is that, in their case, it usually DOES require an entire army's effort to put them down, simply because one can't rely on them dying to low AP weaponry, hence needs to focus disproportionate amounts of firepower (or attacks in close combat) to make sure they don't bother him any more. Hence, even if their LR gets blown up and they themselves die before killing anything, they've still absorbed a whole lot of shooting and possibly assault power from your opponent.

If an opponent manuveres away from the Honour Guard, they are doing a good enough job anyway, granting me an advantage.

That depends a lot on mission, objectives, opponent's army, deployment and terrain. It may or may not be an advantage.

I will swap 2x landspeeders/attackbikes for your landraider and a now walking assault unit anyday

If your opponent is dumb enough to launch his LR straight into your speeders and attack bikes without any tactical reason, then yes, I say you should definitely swap your speeders for his terminators.

 

However, the LR godhammer itself has more then ample weaponry to deal with things like speeders & attack bikes, and it also has the range on them. I usually use this to keep my LR a bit in the back (not too far in the back, though, just far enough to make it hard for them to get into melta range, but close enough to serve as a juicy bait), and take advantage of the fact most people seem to think that killing a LR and a unit of assault terminators will result in my entire battleplan toppling (which, sadly, seems to happen to many vanilla players).

Eggs in one basket is an inherently risky proposition any good opponent will exploit. It is also boring as batcrap.

Naw, badass dudes with uber weaponry, riding in huge tanks and scaring the bejesus of your opponent, are much more fun and in the 40k spirit then a bunch of faceless mooks killing each other by rolling a ton of dice and hoping the enemy will fail a ton of saves. :rolleyes:

 

As for eggs in basket being a weakness, they are such only if you don't know how to utilize the psychological effect they have on the enemy.

[rat of vengence]

I will swap 2x landspeeders/attackbikes for your landraider and a now walking assault unit anyday

If your opponent is dumb enough to launch his LR straight into your speeders and attack bikes without any tactical reason, then yes, I say you should definitely swap your speeders for his terminators.

However, the LR godhammer itself has more then ample weaponry to deal with things like speeders & attack bikes, and it also has the range on them. I usually use this to keep my LR a bit in the back (not too far in the back, though, just far enough to make it hard for them to get into melta range, but close enough to serve as a juicy bait), and take advantage of the fact most people seem to think that killing a LR and a unit of assault terminators will result in my entire battleplan toppling (which, sadly, seems to happen to many vanilla players).

Cool, I keep my FA in cover and wait for your LR to get bored. 450+ points kept out of the fight is 450+ point advantage to me.:mellow:

Eggs in one basket is an inherently risky proposition any good opponent will exploit. It is also boring as batcrap.

Naw, badass dudes with uber weaponry, riding in huge tanks and scaring the bejesus of your opponent, are much more fun and in the 40k spirit then a bunch of faceless mooks killing each other by rolling a ton of dice and hoping the enemy will fail a ton of saves. :)

You do have a point, but when the LR/Termie unit becomes ubercommon, then it becomes boring. "Oh, another one?" *yawn*

 

As for eggs in basket being a weakness, they are such only if you don't know how to utilize the psychological effect they have on the enemy.

As opposed to the psychologial effect of it dying/being immobilised first turn? Works both ways :rolleyes:

 

RoV

[Koremu]

What I meant was most opponents will be moving forwards to you, unless they are Tau/Imperial Guard/Cowards tongue.gif . So if they have moved into position also, firstly their firepower will be lessened and secondly they will be closer.

This idea doesn't really hold up in my experience. Mission objectives, deployment, and strategy means that no, my opponents won't always be moving toward me unless they're playing things like tyranids, khorne CSM, or orks (ie. the sort of armies I don't want to engage head-on anyway). Even when we're "evenly matched" (like when I'm fighting another vanilla marine army) I won't necessarily want to meet them head-on - it depends on how beneficial that course of action would be to achieving victory, really.

 

However, let's assume an opponent I actually want to assault/rapid fire as early as possible (sisters, guard, tau, thousand sons, etc.) is rushing toward me. He can still dictate what units I can or cannot assault simply because my assault capability is limited to a 14" bubble around the rhino. This gives him an innate advantage over me, which is coupled by the fact my expensive assault unit is held in a 11 11 10 transport which, despite having a 4+ cover save, can still be reliably blown up or immobilized with just about any anti-tank gun in the game.

If you are using a primary assault unit as your main "killer" unit, then fine. The point is that a dedicated assault unit isn't always an armies primary killer, and in a Rhino they are a perfectly adequate counter unit. I use Captain and Command Squad in Razorback as my counter assault unit in mech lists - anyone who wants to come close enough to engage my tanks puts themselves into range of the unit.

 

Also, when using Rhino-chassis tanks en masse, you can roll the Rhino directly behind a Vindicator or similar, and get a 3+ Cover Save - very hard to kill (in fact most people don't bother, and chose to fire at my Land Speeder Outriders or something easier to kill.

[Giga]

Cool, I keep my FA in cover and wait for your LR to get bored. 450+ points kept out of the fight is 450+ point advantage to me.

Is that supposed to be an argument? I said nothing anything about the LR "getting bored" or being "kept out of the fight". If an opponent was doing that out of fear, then yeah, that'd be a good thing for you, but why would anyone do that? Also, speeders & attack bikes being kept in cover will makes them easy to take out (they may have cover saves, but they're still AV10, or they get insta-killed by str8 or higher).

 

Again, the mission, deployment, table, etc. are all factors here. It might be a perfectly valid and victory-inducing strategy to stay "out of the fight", hence keeping the LR in the back might also be a good idea.

You do have a point, but when the LR/Termie unit becomes ubercommon, then it becomes boring. "Oh, another one?" *yawn*

Naw, it's still a hell of a lot more fun & epic having to deal with a common big threat like nob bikerz, swarmlord+guard, or th/ss termies in a LR, then just seeing a bunch of nondescript dudes or vehicles.

 

To each his own, I guess.

 

(though it does confuse me where the entire "it's common, therefore boring" idea comes from in competitive games, seeing as by that logic then EVERY game would get boring after a little while - for example, in 40k, every battle against marines will inevitably include a bunch of marines in rhinos/razorbacks, and while there are differences most of these marines play the same, why then shouldn't every battle become boring?)

As opposed to the psychologial effect of it dying/being immobilised first turn? Works both ways

How does this happen, do say? The only times I see LRs/monoliths being killed first turn is when someone gets ultra-lucky with their lascannon/orbital bombardment rolls. The fast melta can't even reach the LR turn 1, unless we're talking things like droppoded sternguard or alpha strike LSS with scouts, and then there are ways to prevent these things from happening (the easiest of which is reserving).

I use Captain and Command Squad in Razorback as my counter assault unit in mech lists - anyone who wants to come close enough to engage my tanks puts themselves into range of the unit.

How do you do this?

 

Do you keep all your tanks bunched up in a 14" bubble? I can see this happening with a land raider (since the termies inside get a 20" charge range, due to assault vehicle rules), but how do you do this with a rhino-mounted squad?

 

EDIT:

Also, when using Rhino-chassis tanks en masse, you can roll the Rhino directly behind a Vindicator or similar, and get a 3+ Cover Save - very hard to kill (in fact most people don't bother, and chose to fire at my Land Speeder Outriders or something easier to kill.

Doesn't fast melta, outflanking, and barrage mitigate this? Not saying it's a bad strategy, but it's not like there's no way around it.

[Captain Idaho]

Thing is Giga, you are making assumptions that the opponent will be able to target my transports with impunity, but this doesn't take into account my own firepower and movement placement. If I stun a Dreadnought here, destroy a Landspeeder there and take out a transport or two, then return fire will be reduced and opposing mobility with it.

 

My experience tells me that opponents can remove a Rhino each turn (by that I mean imbolised or destroyed), but more is pushing it in 1,500pts. I can easily hide a Rhino behind one of my own Rhinos, or even a Dreadnought, gaining cover saves and reducing line of sight.

 

This idea doesn't really hold up in my experience. Mission objectives, deployment, and strategy means that no, my opponents won't always be moving toward me unless they're playing things like tyranids, khorne CSM, or orks (ie. the sort of armies I don't want to engage head-on anyway). Even when we're "evenly matched" (like when I'm fighting another vanilla marine army) I won't necessarily want to meet them head-on - it depends on how beneficial that course of action would be to achieving victory, really.

 

However, let's assume an opponent I actually want to assault/rapid fire as early as possible (sisters, guard, tau, thousand sons, etc.) is rushing toward me. He can still dictate what units I can or cannot assault simply because my assault capability is limited to a 14" bubble around the rhino. This gives him an innate advantage over me, which is coupled by the fact my expensive assault unit is held in a 11 11 10 transport which, despite having a 4+ cover save, can still be reliably blown up or immobilized with just about any anti-tank gun in the game

 

But it is true that you won't always want to meet opponents head on even with a Landraider. Sure the firepower it has is good, but then it's not as if the firepower on the units the points you have saved won't be good either!

 

And there are always opponents who want to move towards me, and of the ones who don't, well they can kill my Honour Guard in exchange for my Tacticals hitting them hard and descisively.

 

The only times this might not be the case is when fighting opponents with decent firepower that are equal to my own Tacticals and Dreads in assaults/bolter shock range. Assuming those units don't have anything I want to counter assault, they will be as few in number as my own army (I'm not going to get outclassed by hoards of Guardsman after all). So this is circumstantial, but in not taking a Landraider meant I could take a Typhoon squadron and other stuff in support as an equaliser for my Tacticals.

 

As an example, I have lost my Honour Guard and their Rhino to concerted firepower from the usual Dual Lash DP Chaos Marines list over the course of 2 turns at range. However, it required the firepower of an 2 Strong Obliterator squad firing over 2 turns plus supporting fire from other elements of my opponent's army (2 Plasma Cannons in a single turn won't finish 5 Honour Guard and a 3+ Chapter Master without alot of luck), which meant there was only a single other Obliterator squad targetting the other units, Rhinos and Dreads, plus my 2 Typhoons. These units fire away and put as much damage on the Chaos army as I have suffered, as I have the heavy weapon edge at range.

 

When my Tacticals do end up close and personal with those Plague Marines, things can be in my favour as I can be sure my fire support has put mauled the opponent more than I have suffered. A Typhoon squadron can put a world of hurt on a squad before they go toe to toe with my Tactical Marines and their bolter shock.

 

Anyway, like you said, it depends on the mission, opponents army, the circumstances etc, but I really don't see an assault unit having to have a a Landraider to operate effectively. Remember, it might be the only assault unit in the army, but it probably won't be the only unit in the army in a transport, so the target saturation is still in practice. They might not be assault units, but 20 well equipped Tactical Marines are still just as important as that Vanguard or Honour Guard assault squad in your army.

[Koremu]

Also, when using Rhino-chassis tanks en masse, you can roll the Rhino directly behind a Vindicator or similar, and get a 3+ Cover Save - very hard to kill (in fact most people don't bother, and chose to fire at my Land Speeder Outriders or something easier to kill.

Doesn't fast melta, outflanking, and barrage mitigate this? Not saying it's a bad strategy, but it's not like there's no way around it.

There are way more important things for the enemy to be firing Melta weapons at, very few armies mass enough barrage weapons to worry about, and Outflanking is chancy both in terms of turn of arrival and board edge.

 

Between Predators, Vindicators, Whirlwinds and Land Speeders I usually mass enough priority targets that dealing with the Rhinos and Razorbacks takes a back seat... and if the enemy does go for the Transports, they get pounded into slime by all the stuff they ignored.

[nurglez]

No, its not necessary to take a landraider for an assault squad, as said earlier, it depends on what else you have in your army.

 

Me, I play chaos, nurgle chaos with only plague marines as my troops, I have 1 squad in a landraider, and they use it to assault.

 

Being a chaos landraider, mine has daemonic possession so very rarely shoots, If I'm using its lascannon's something has gone rather wrong along the way...

 

However, I use the landraider to provide a mobile wall, and also a high armoured threat to my opponent, By keeping my squad in after I have moved to almost assault range, I now force my opponent to either deal with the landraider, or have a squad within 20 inches tied up in combat next turn.

 

My usual opponents are Imperial guard (he's still a bit noobish with them and isn't playing them to their full strengths), orks (these poor guys just cant pop a landraider at range :tu:), blood angels (also a noob) and chaos/daemons.

[Grey Mage]

Simple discussion really, I would like to start a discussion on the usage of Landraiders and whether it really is neccessary for assault units to be mounted within a Landraider.

No, its not "necessary". Nothing forces you to take a landraider.

 

Is it a great boon to the unit its assigned to? Oh yes- an AV 14 bunker with guns that can move and shoot. Thats a decent unit in and of itself actually.

 

The reason you see them Sooooo often however has nothing to do with wether or not the unit riding in it is capable of doing the job on its own. Its entirely down to the mentality that you have to have a guarantee- and a landraider is as close to a guarantee as possible when it comes to getting a unit where it needs to go.

 

The fact that its a liability in many matchups doesnt seem to come into the equation. The fact that 1 in 4 rail rifle shots will kill a landraider and most of those kills will be explosions doesnt come into peoples heads.

 

AV 14 is only tough against conventional armor penetration- such as that used by other marines. The plain and simple is that there are plenty of other races out there that have no such issues with busting high armor- Tau, Eldar, Necrons, and in many ways IG and to a lesser extend Tyranids. If these are heavy in your local Meta then a Landraider is an over priced paperweight in most games.

 

But, on the reverse marines are one of the most widely played armies in the game.

[Giga]

Thing is Giga, you are making assumptions that the opponent will be able to target my transports with impunity, but this doesn't take into account my own firepower and movement placement. If I stun a Dreadnought here, destroy a Landspeeder there and take out a transport or two, then return fire will be reduced and opposing mobility with it.

This is an internet forum discussion. We always make assumptions here. ;)

 

We can go into an entire "but if terrain was set up like this and I stunned your dreadnought and you targeted my vindicator etc." thing, but we'd achieve nothing except spamming the forum with lots of useless theoryhammer that would in no way be educational to people who visit this forum looking for tactical wisdom.

 

Hence, in a way, we HAVE to compare the units on a 1-to-1 basis, listing their weaknesses and strengths, and sometimes explaining how these things function within OUR OWN battle plans. The trick is in keeping these discussions out of the theoryhammer land.

But it is true that you won't always want to meet opponents head on even with a Landraider. Sure the firepower it has is good, but then it's not as if the firepower on the units the points you have saved won't be good either!

Well, it'll prolly be good, but... Where else in the vanilla dex you can get dual twin-linked lascannons that can both shoot at different targets? On an AV14 platform, no less? The LR is hardly to be underestimated.

 

The LR offers the flexibility of being able to sit back and shoot your little heart out, being able to rush forward and precision-deliver the passengers into assault, and serving as a mobile LOS-denying wall, all while providing one heck of a lot of target saturation and having the ability to absorb tons of damage.

The only times this might not be the case is when fighting opponents with decent firepower that are equal to my own Tacticals and Dreads in assaults/bolter shock range.

You mean, things like other vanilla marines? What do you do when you have to dish it out with things like space wolves, chaos marines, or blood angels, all of whom are just plain harder then us in the assaults/bolter shock range? Tacticals just don't cut it in those situations, I think, unless you completely control the battle.

As an example, I have lost my Honour Guard and their Rhino to concerted firepower from the usual Dual Lash DP Chaos Marines list over the course of 2 turns at range. However, it required the firepower of an 2 Strong Obliterator squad firing over 2 turns plus supporting fire from other elements of my opponent's army (2 Plasma Cannons in a single turn won't finish 5 Honour Guard and a 3+ Chapter Master without alot of luck), which meant there was only a single other Obliterator squad targetting the other units, Rhinos and Dreads, plus my 2 Typhoons. These units fire away and put as much damage on the Chaos army as I have suffered, as I have the heavy weapon edge at range.

See, this confuses me and makes me wonder about the quality of your opponents.

 

In this situation, obviously, the honor guard weren't the primary threat, as your opponent's army was hammered by your shooting, whether the honor guard could've - at best - killed a single enemy unit per turn.

 

Why then, didn't your opponent simply use his dual lash princes to keep moving your honor guard AWAY from his forces (with two lashes, he can statistically move them 12-18" per turn, effectively keeping them out of charge range of anything, and hence mostly useless + he'd be forcing two pinning tests per turn), and focused his obliterators on killing your firepower (your speeders and dreads, in this example) while his superior troops dealt with your tacticals?

 

Instead, your opponent focused on shooting his guns into a small anti-infantry specialist, and ended up with the rest of your army weakening him to the point where his plague marines were beaten by your tacticals (lol, that must've been embarrassing). Hell, if he really wanted to kill that honorguard, he could've just used lash to move them into charge range of his daemon princes. This would've been exceedingly easy since his princes have wings (if they don't, he's a n00b) and your honor guard are close (why else would he be shooting them if they weren't a possible threat?), and the I6 daemon princes would slaughter the honorguard before they could so much as sneeze on them, all while remaining in assault with your chapter master, whom they'd prolly kill in the next assault phase, safe from your guns.

 

Overall, to me, that sounds like a bad chaos player who got blinded by a shiny unit in your army and focused his efforts on killing it.

 

(ironically, in the exact same situation, a squad of assault terminators would've been able to absorb more damage while being more then capable of murdering those daemon princes in close combat, thus becoming a much bigger threat that would HAVE to be dealt with, more or less FORCING the opponent to ignore the rest of your army)

There are way more important things for the enemy to be firing Melta weapons at, very few armies mass enough barrage weapons to worry about, and Outflanking is chancy both in terms of turn of arrival and board edge.

I like to pop rhinos from ~24" away with my land speeders & bikes. Multimeltas glance them on 3+. There's no real reason to get close, so one can use them on rhinos a turn before he gets them into melta range of vindicators and such.

 

Barrage weapons aren't massed, but they're present.

 

Vendettas are a popular outflanking choice that can put some serious lascannon fire into side armor, regardless of what side it comes on.

 

But yeh, I agree that your tactic is a nice one. :)

 

 

 

Would you care to answer my other question? How do you make sure your counter-assault unit gets to be able to protect your tanks with its 14" assault bubble? Do you keep all your tanks bunched up in a 14" bubble?

[Koremu]

I like to pop rhinos from ~24" away with my land speeders & bikes. Multimeltas glance them on 3+. There's no real reason to get close, so one can use them on rhinos a turn before he gets them into melta range of vindicators and such.

 

The Vindicator is usually at the point of the wedge, so if you aren't firing something at the Vindicator, your bikes are likely dead next turn.

 

Would you care to answer my other question? How do you make sure your counter-assault unit gets to be able to protect your tanks with its 14" assault bubble? Do you keep all your tanks bunched up in a 14" bubble?

Pretty much. I don't tend to be subtle about my tactics. Identify where the primary Objective is, then roll an Armoured Wedge over it and dare the enemy to stop you. If I need a unit elsewhere on the battlefield, I would prefer to sweep past with a Land Speeder or three than break up the wedge - that's why I call them my Outriders.

[mowglie]

Oh man, I've been waiting for this thread and now I don't have time to post properly :tu:

 

I'll summarise for now and justify later:-

 

I'm not quite with Giga on this one, but I definitely think that using a single 200+ point assault unit in a rhino as an offensive threat isn't an effective tactic. If your opponent correctly evaluates the contents of the rhino to be your #1 threat, he can neutralise it easily.

 

The problem you guys are having at the moment, I think, is that you're coming to the table with totally different sets of assumptions. I'm seeing lots of "1 land raider gets destroyed by fast melta", yet on the other hand "A rhino/razorback reliably delivers the unit". You can see how those statements don't mesh up?

 

You need to establish a tighter baseline for your comparison, rather than meander off into one-sided cost/benefit analysis.

 

You've got a ~200pt assault unit. It is very important to your opponent's battle plan that it doesn't reach assault (and thus very important to yours that it does). How likely are you to pull it off with a rhino? How likely are you to pull it off with a Land Raider? Is the difference worth 200 points?

 

I'll post in more detail when I have time.

[Koremu]

@mowglie;

 

The basic difference between shooting a Land Raider with fast Melta and shooting a Rhino with fast Melta is that... well, shooting the Land Raider gets rid of a Land Raider. No matter how much stranding assault troops is desirable, shooting a Land Raider will always be more desirable than shooting a Rhino.

 

Consider two lists; both have an identical 1000 point core. One has a Land Raider with Assault unit in it. The other has a Rhino with an Assault unit, a Vindicator and a Dakka Predator. If you kill the 'raider, you achieve both the stranding and the threat kill in one shot. Vs. the unit list, if you kill the Rhino, you get shot by both remaining tanks. It takes 3 times as many shooting units to take down the whole group, which in turn reduces shooting aimed at the rest of the force.

 

Putting all your eggs in one basket is not necessarily a good plan.