BFG Chaos fleet - 1500pts

[Kythnos]

Hi guys,

 

I'll be participating in a small BFG-tournament in 3 weeks and am currently working on my army list for that. As I haven't had any real playing experience since more than a year and even back then it was only one match, I might get stomped to death there, but it's for fun, so I don't care that much. On the other hand, of course I'd like to put up a decent fight, so that starts with the fleet list. I read, that chaos fleets rely a lot on ordnance and long range weapons, so under that assumption, I came up with the following lists. One thing to keep in mind is, that for every capital ship, I also have to have one escort as ruled by the tournament organisers. The second thing is, I play an Iron Warriors fleet fluffwise, so I'd like to keep marks out of the list.

 

I hope you can help me, to develop a working chaos fleet :P

 

List 1 (Gothic fleet list):

 

Desolator

+Warmaster (Ld 8) 350

 

Devastation

+Lord (Ld 8) 240

 

Devastation

+Lord (Ld 8) 240

 

Carnage 180

 

Carnage 180

 

4 Infidels 160

 

5 Iconoclasts 150

 

Total: 1500 points

 

A lot of long range weaponry, 8 ordnance markers possible and some torpedos to break enemy formations apart when they are closing in seem to be a good mix of options for me. The escorts should act as mobile reserves to my main battleline, to add their support where needed.

 

 

List 2 (Gothic fleet list):

 

Despoiler

+Warmaster (Ld 8) 450

 

Devastation

+Lord (Ld 8) 240

 

Carnage 180

 

Carnage 180

 

Slaugther 165

 

4 Infidels 160

 

4 Iconoclasts 120

 

Total: 1495 points

 

This list should work quite similar to the above, but I have more ordnance and less torpedos (although I might give some torpedos to my Despoiler, if I can save the points elsewhere. The Slaughter is also supposed to help the main battleline as soon as the enemy gets close and tries to counter enemy surrounding manoeuvres with his superior movement.

 

So far for my ideas. Please help me out, if I'm on the right track or not. I read about the tactical description of the cruisers here:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Custom...;s_Tactics.pdf_

 

Thanks :)

[Seahawk]

Your first list is better than the second, but could be better still.

 

Escorts and Chaos really don't mix well...while they support fleet tactics, the Chaos fleet works better as small packs of hunters and don't really use fleet tactics as much as, say, Imperial fleets do. They split up and direct fire, picking off weaker targets and not engaging harder ones unless big numbers can be brought to bear. To this end I usually use the following at 1500 points in my Word Bearers fleet:

 

Desolator

Acheron

2 Devastations (squadroned)

2 Carnages (squadroned)

Slaughter

 

and filler points with lords and the like.

 

The Desolator and Acheron buddy up to flank around the edge of the field, putting in lance shots from long range. The Devastations usually follow behind maybe 30cm or so, doing the exact same thing but also providing attack craft as much as possible. They are squadroned together to maximize their firepower (which is limited but bigger numbers are better) and so that when I need to pass a Ld check to reload, I only need to pass one for both to do it. Plus, the more chances I get to roll their Ld value, the odds improve that one will be 8-9, thus allowing me to not need a lord in there.

 

The Carnages are squadroned together for the same reason. One check on a decent Ld to Lock On with 32FP (ideally) makes something cry and/or die. The Slaughter usually tags along with them (but not squadroned) around the other flank, with both parts of the fleet using their usually higher speed to get around to the enemy's flanks and rear, putting in shots before they can come about and generally disrupting their formations. This doesn't work with all fleets, but Imperials and Orks are usually susceptible...except when they come for you in massive cruiser squadrons...eek!

 

Against Eldar and Dark Eldar I clump up, daring them to risk the massive guns of the fleet. They usually don't.

[Kythnos]

I see. The thing is, the tournament rules say, that I have to use one escort per capital ship. So while I can reduce the numbers there, I can't cut them completely to get another cruiser in the list. Although I'd like to. So there isn't too much room here, except for switching cruisers or battleships.

 

Apart from that though, I'd like to ask about squadroning cruisers together. There is a benefit to adding up weapons und using one roll for two ships when it comes to special orders, I see that. But is there also a drawback, that I can't yet see? And wouldn't squadroned Devastators make for an awfully juicy target? As a second point, you talk about splitting the fleet into two forces against the slower and bulkier armies and staying together against fast armies like Eldar, right? What would be the course of action against Tyranids? They seem a bit special and are already registered for participation.

[Seahawk]

I actually have never played against Tyranids with any of my fleets, so unfortunately I cannot offer you any advice there. Best thing to do is read up on their rules on GW's site I guess. See what they can and can't do. I know they're typically slower, and if you get within boarding range you likely die.

 

Drawbacks of squadrons...they need to stay in coherency to benefit from orders (15cm), and if you fail one Ld it fails for both. Another drawback is if you choose the brace for impact, the whole squadron braces instead of just one ship. Other than that, they have yet more benefits you may not realize. When an enemy fires on a squadron, it always hits the closest ship. If you're cunning, this will allow you to keep rotating your ships (when in larger squadrons at least, 3-4) so that each only has minimal damage.

 

In my experience, single ships make for juicy targets. Squadrons are usually prickly, as now you have double to sextuple the amount of firepower looking back at you. To be successful at attacking a squadron of cruisers, larger amounts of enemy need to combine to devastate it. I've personally loved using squadrons over single ships.

 

Egh, that sucks about the escorts thing. I'd suggest going for a different fleet where they're actually useful, like Imperials, Space Marines, or Orks then...heh. But obviously that's not an option, so then I'd try to squeeze in the Acheron still if you could, and then load up on torpedo boats. The firepower escorts aren't as good because their purpose is redundant; the Carnages do everything better than them.

[Kythnos]

Ok, thanks for the input. I'll try to work out an updated first list tomorrow :turned:

[Kythnos]

So, I was able to squeeze in the Acheron, but to make it fit, I still had to take 3 Iconoclasts, so the list looks like this:

 

List 1.1 (Gothic fleet list):

 

Desolator

+Warmaster (Ld 8) 350

 

Acheron 190

 

Squadron 1:

Devastation 190

Devastation 190

 

Squadron 2:

Carnage 180

Carnage 180

 

3 Infidels 120

 

3 Iconoclasts 90

 

Total: 1490 points

[Seahawk]

That looks pretty decent. You could scratch one Iconoclast and add an Infidel, bringing you up to 1500 even, but that definitely reduces the effectiveness of the Iconoclasts.

 

Most importantly, try some practice games (with other ships you own, or other people) to see if you like squadrons. Plus simply learning how to use them before the tournament is a good idea too.

[Vaaish]

Chaos ships don't really benefit as much from squadrons as do IN ships. Things like devastations don't really need to be squadroned unless you get bad LD for one. Carnage's do benefit being all gunnery based so it helps concentrate fire and avoid BM shifts.

 

The one escort per capital ship really kills the competitive chaos builds while doing nothing to tone down the worst Tau and Eldar builds. It's effectively crippling chaos and IN and boosting Eldar which doesn't need the help.

 

The best thing I can say here would be to try out an adjusted PK build...

2x Carnage

2x Devastation

Planet Killer

5x Iconoclast

 

It's unfortunate that you lose the torpedoes and armor by taking the iconoclasts rather than infidels, but it does make a legal list that's pretty competitive. Against nids, make sure they aren't allowed to use the Evolution of the Hive mind refits for hte tournament. If they can, you will be facing their wonderful 6 shield 14 hit Hive ship monstrosities which will be practically impossible to take down.

[Kythnos]

The one escort per capital ship really kills the competitive chaos builds while doing nothing to tone down the worst Tau and Eldar builds. It's effectively crippling chaos and IN and boosting Eldar which doesn't need the help.

 

Well, Eldar and Dark Eldar need to take a capital ship for every 3 escorts in the tournament, so I guess that balances the drawback for Chaos and the IN. I could be wrong though. Would that fact change the list you proposed?

[Vaaish]

Not really. The list I proposed is a solid all around list and the core of an anti-eldar list is still intact as is the ordnance support of the devs. It's not quite as solid as an all cruiser chaos build, but you have some serious firepower to throw down. In essence you trade six 60cm lances for the armageddon gun. Eldar get hurt most if they have to take a capital for every three escorts.

[Seahawk]

Vaaish knows whats up most of the time, his advice is good :). I just happen to like me squadrons so much.

 

Kythnos I'm curious; are the rules for this tournament posted anywhere online and if so, could you link them? I'd like to see all their various limitations.

[Kythnos]

Sure:

http://www.tabletopturniere.de/t3_tourname...=0&tid=6567

 

Roughly translated, it would mean the following:

1500 points will be played.

 

Necrons aren't allowed.

 

IN, Chaos, SM, Eldar and Orks 1 battleship (space hulk) max, Tyranids two hive ships max, Tau three battleships max.

 

For every ship, which has more than one structure point, you need to include a ship of the escort class.

 

Eldar and Dark Eldar need to include one capital ship for every three escorts.

 

Painting is strongly desired, but will have no direct effect on the score.

 

Ar least 3 games will be played.

 

 

Back to the actual lists. So using the Devastations as squadrons isn't that neccessary and might even be a disadvantage, right? Can I wait for that decision, until their leadership has been decided? And of course the huge amount of weapons on the Planet Killer is intimidating, but does it really do as much work, as more smaller cruisers and battleships will do for those points? And that's quite a lot of points, in my opinion, even without a warmaster on the ship.

[Vaaish]

Under most circumstances, no. The reason for this is that if squadroned, they will be an easier target to supress since bracing one will brace the other as well leaving you with two cruisers unable to reload ordnance. The good bits about being in a squadron is that you can maneuver a damaged ship so that an undamaged one is closer to prevent an enemy from shooting at the damaged vessel. It also means you can fire WB together and not lose dice because of BM shifts. Since both vessels share special orders, you only need one roll to reload ordnance and you can launch all 8 AC in a single wave.

 

You can choose what is squadroned after the LD rolls so it also helps to squadron if you roll poorly on a carrier to help it RO more easily.

 

Back to the PK. I've faced the PK many times as IN and it's always been a bear to deal with. It's got 4 shields and 14 hits so it can take some punishment. The armageddon gun is extremely useful since it hits everything in a straight line with the same damage as a full NC shot. To be fair, you really aren't trading out that much since you will be forced to take at least 5 escorts if you want to max out on cruisers. If you weren't under that restriction I'd suggest 2 acherons, 2 devs, 2 carnage/murder, and a desolator instead. If you wanted to try that route you would have to take this:

 

Desolator

Acheron

2x carnage

2x dev

6x iconoclast

 

which I think puts you in a much weaker position since you are forced to trade out the lance of the acheron for the weaker iconoclasts. Going with the PK, you essentially keep the firepower of the desolator 2.2.2 fleet and get your self torpedoes and the juiced up NC. Yeah the PK will be the target, but that thing can peg one cruiser with its weapons and lances, plug a hole through or at least drop shields on anything it can get lined up with the armageddon gun, and follow it up with a sizable torpedo spread. That's quite a lot of flexibility.

[Kythnos]

I thought about it a lot, but in the end I'd rather have a few more models on the table, than focussing too much on one uber-ship. At least for now. It's a mindset I carry in 40k and Fantasy and it has always served me well for finding the right balance between power and numbers. Maybe it can't be applied to BFG that easily, but I gotta try :)

 

So in the end, the list I chose and am painting right now is this:

 

Desolator (Warmaster Ld8)

Acheron

2 Carnage

2 Devastation

6 Iconoclast

 

It fits pretty good into the points and I feel, that I'm able to play with it. Might be wrong though and loose terribly xD

 

And one thing I wanted to ask about:

It also means you can fire WB together and not lose dice because of BM shifts.

 

How does that work? I read the rules on squadrons again and it said my ships had to fire seperate if they're in different fire positions (even in squadrons), so the different shifts would still apply, right? Or is there some errata on this?

[Vaaish]

That is not what the rule is saying. Basically squadrons fire at the same time, but range and different facing on the target can cause individual ships in the squadron to contribute different numbers of dice. What that rule is saying is that you work up the number of dice each ship gets individually if they are in different facings or ranges. The last line of the section clarifies that you aren't rolling your dice separately by saying you calculate the firepower individually.

 

For example, normally three swords will just add their FP4 together to get fp12, check facing and add column shifts to get the final number of dice to roll.

 

If two of those swords are facing at a target that is abeam to them and one has the target in the closing arc, you have to look up the S8 batteries for the two that are abeam and then the s4 batteries for the one that has the target closing and add the total number of dice together. In this case, the two abeam get 3 dice and the one closing gets 3 dice so you roll a total of 6 dice.

 

The only shift you get out of using a squadron is the BM shift if you are firing on a target with no BM and that is only due to all the ships in the squadron firing simultaneously. I.e. normally two lunars firing at a single cruiser without being squadroned would give you 4 dice for the first one firing and 3 dice for the second one. if you squadron them you;d get 8 dice.

[Kythnos]

Ah ok, now I understand. Thanks for the explanation :)

 

I'll go back to the painting table now and tell you how it went next weekend.

[Kythnos]

So, the tournament is over now and I scored the 3rd place out of 6 players (including the TO). In the first game, I had to play against an Eldar fleet with one carrier, some light cruisers and 14 escorts, if I remember it right. The problem was, that I couldn't place me fleet in tight formation, because the fleets had to be split into three parts of your deployment zone. So because I couldn't gather my fleet fast enough, the bulk of his ships was finally able to get into the back of my fleet and started to wreak havoc, forcing me to disengage my Carnages to deny him points. He also destroyed my escorts, while I shot some of his escorts to pieces, which resulted in a win, with a lead of 140 VP.

 

The second game was against an IN fleet and we had to attack a space station. The fleet with the highest control value on the space station would win the scenario, so it was important not to get distracted too much in the battles around the station and focus on the objective. I managed to do that pretty well, as I started my boarding attack, while he had already started commiting ships to the space station and I was able to support my boarding parties better. In the end I had the highest control value of all the players in this round. Yay for evil revenge!

 

And the last game was a team-match with three players on each side. Every fleet would count destroyed structure points on enemy ships and the fleet with the highest value would win the engagement. Sadly, the Eldar and Tau were able to gang up on the IN fleet and scored a lot of points without much resistance. In the later game, I got into the back of the Tau fleet and sot them to pieces, but it was already too late, to reach their scores and the two fleets also scored first and second place overall. But I still had the third best score and also made it on the 3rd place in the end, so I'm really happy with how things turned out for me. Even more, considering my lack of experience ^^

 

So thanks for all your help, I appreciate it a lot! :lol:

[Vaaish]

I'm not at all surprised with that result. Eldar are always a pain with their movement rules and massed escorts and tau can hurt pretty bad with the ordnance. You might have been able to do better if you'd had a better deployment against eldar but 14 escorts is still a lot to deal with. Individual bombers and long range guns are the way to go but again getting split up like that hurts. Good job on scoring 3rd.