'Ard Boyz Army Comp.

[BrotherTim]

As I'm sure your all aware, Ard Boyz is fast approaching. I have opened this thread to discuss some of the hammer units those of us who are planning on participating are taking. We all know that there will be some insane hammers out there as well as the expected spam, but what are your plans? Personally I plan on using one storm raven loaded with 10 DC (4 PW, 2 PF, 4 BP+CCW), Lemartes (sorry if the spelling is off) and a DC Dread. Its a lot of eggs in one basket, but when moving on from reserve has an assault reach of 20" or can move these two killer units to the middle of the board where they should be good from there anyway. Even if you don't plan on playing in Ard Boyz, what hammers do you commonly use when running 2500 points?

 

In case your wondering, the rest of my list can be found here

[Morticon]

Its closer to 17/18" with the DC moving in from reserve.

 

Remember you measure movement from a skimmers hull. Thats usually 3" or so in front of the base.

 

And you'll be disembarking from the base.

 

I think this is a killer unit, but its so so so tricky to use. (assuming no raven sized cover) You MUST deploy it into reserve if you dont go first. And if you don't go first, it means youre either going all into reserve, or you're going to be fighting your opponents 2500 point army with your 1700 point army.

 

AND theres only a 50% chance you'll be fighting his army with your full army in the 2nd turn. Thats a 50% chance that 2 turns youre out in the cold holding your proverbials!

 

Its not a great investment of points sadly as its not resilient like other hammers. Its a glass cannon.

Either trim a lot of the fat off of it, or rework it some how to become more effective and syngergised with your army. At the moment, it just takes too much away from it.

 

800 points in one AV12 target is not cool.

[SamaNagol]

The bigger the points game, the better the Storm Raven becomes, as you can saturate the board with more targets.

 

Link it up with alpha striking units that can reduce the anti-armour threats of the enemy in turn 1 and you have a much more effective delivery system.

[BrotherTim]

Its not a great investment of points sadly as its not resilient like other hammers. Its a glass cannon.

Either trim a lot of the fat off of it, or rework it some how to become more effective and syngergised with your army. At the moment, it just takes too much away from it.

 

800 points in one AV12 target is not cool.

 

Very True! But if you look at my army, I think it will work. With so many other possible distractions dropping right in my opponents face I'm sure the raven will be able to deliver the DC close enough to do a lot of damage.

[Sokhar]

Leaving 4 guys with pistols and chainswords is just going to allow your opponent to play wound allocation shennanigans and pile up multiple power weapon wounds on the same models. Re-rolling to hit and wound you're going to score a bunch, but the extra non-powered wounds will end up hurting you. You'd probably be better off dropping 2 of the Death Company to make it 6 guys with power weapons and 2 with fists. That'll give you three "steps" of initiative where your opponent can't play games with wounds and you'll mash people (with Lemartes hitting first, then power weapons, and then fists clean up any survivors).

[JMac]

Hmm interesting. This unit was what got me to play BAs in the first place. I've built all of it and everything, but sadly never use it anymore. Morticon makes a great and valid argument that you may be fighting the battle with only 1700 points of your army. While you may have other targets, 2500 pts of guard, space wolves, eldar, or and other gunline army will have plenty to shoot at you and you can bet your culo that any smart player knows to take down that deathstar turn 1.

 

With that said, you already have your mind made up and I wish to encourage you. So here is something to chew on, that dreadnought of yours in the stormraven has fleet, extending your charge range B)

[dadieau]

Well my hammer unit is RAS with a Priest and Chaplain/Librarian. This gives me 2 PW at WS 5, a fist and 5 melta type guns, usually at Int 5 and Str 5. Two of those and 2 Furioso Librarians with Wings and I'm set to go.

[Black Memories]

SR with dc/assault terms/honor guard etc is fine, but not in the list you're wanting to run. Your list isn't very tough to begin with,and while it has distractions--those distractions are relatively easy to kill. If you're gonna run them, run 2 at 2500. If you only run 1 you need to run a DoA list but I'd be hesitant to put more than the DC in it. Putting a Furioso in it with a DoA list is asking for anti-tank fire to find you.

 

My experience with ravens is that they run very well in tougher hybird lists and they run well in tandem with landraiders. People tend to try and blast one or the other but not both. They're great vehicles and I think they're very competitive, but you need the proper list setup to use them. My advice is get some practice games in with it. Only actually running the ravens will teach you how to run a raven in your list.

 

The other thing to remember is how effective it is for your local meta. To advance in 'ard boyz you have to win locally first. Your first list shouldn't be as all-purpose as your final lists that you are going to play nationally with (assuming you make it). It's ok to tailor the list with local flavor for the first round.

[Grimtooth]

I don't place much faith in Storm Ravens as it seems my Long Fangs pop them out of the sky on a very regular basis. With just one, I will probably look at firing all my Long Fangs at it until it drops, especially with that payload.

[Black Memories]

If you actually sit down and the the rolls it takes a significant amount of missles on average to bring down a flat out stormraven. They can of course be lost to a single shot like anything else, but usually it takes a lot of shots. You only have an 11% chance to pen per missle from your long fangs if the SR turbo boosts, and only a 6% chance to actually wreck it, per missle and that's including the chance to glance and immobilize it (which wrecks it going flat out).. SR's are deceptively very very tough to bring down when going flat out.

[JMac]

If you actually sit down and the the rolls it takes a significant amount of missles on average to bring down a flat out stormraven. They can of course be lost to a single shot like anything else, but usually it takes a lot of shots. You only have an 11% chance to pen per missle from your long fangs if the SR turbo boosts, and only a 6% chance to actually wreck it, per missle and that's including the chance to glance and immobilize it (which wrecks it going flat out).. SR's are deceptively very very tough to bring down when going flat out.

 

I'm no math major, but 11% per missile x5 (5 ML in a long fang), isn't that like a coin flip? That is just ONE unit of long fangs, the typical SW lists I run into unsually have 2 or 3 on top of their las/plas razorback. Plus Living Lightning that can take down a SR fairly easily if it gets 4 or more shots. Space Wolves are a bad match up for the SR, IMO. Then again, as I've said before any gunline army is a bad match up against SRs. Unfortunately for the SR, a lot of competitive armies out there nowadays seem to go this direction.

[Sanct]

Personally i wouldn't put dreads in the storm raven.

If you're going with 10 DC maybe drop in 2 droppods of DC dread. (Add a 3rd somwhere so they arrive T1) As Blackmemories said you tack on another hammer unit in a land raider and you have a fair bit of killcrazy. (it is blood angels....)

 

As far as the actual DC unit design in the above i'd go 10, lemartes, 2-3 PF/TH and the rest pistols (maybe 2-3 with boltguns for your own wound mixes)

Why no PWs? Well each one costs nearly as much as another DC so unless they're hitting a unit of FNP guys (those usually play the messed up wounding game anyway) shrinking the unit size for more power attacks is dangerous.

The dreads could deal with FNP types.

[Black Memories]

If you actually sit down and the the rolls it takes a significant amount of missles on average to bring down a flat out stormraven. They can of course be lost to a single shot like anything else, but usually it takes a lot of shots. You only have an 11% chance to pen per missle from your long fangs if the SR turbo boosts, and only a 6% chance to actually wreck it, per missle and that's including the chance to glance and immobilize it (which wrecks it going flat out).. SR's are deceptively very very tough to bring down when going flat out.

 

I'm no math major, but 11% per missile x5 (5 ML in a long fang), isn't that like a coin flip? That is just ONE unit of long fangs, the typical SW lists I run into unsually have 2 or 3 on top of their las/plas razorback. Plus Living Lightning that can take down a SR fairly easily if it gets 4 or more shots. Space Wolves are a bad match up for the SR, IMO. Then again, as I've said before any gunline army is a bad match up against SRs. Unfortunately for the SR, a lot of competitive armies out there nowadays seem to go this direction.

 

Math wise you're over-estimating how good long fangs are. Keep in mine that against an armor 12 vehicle the LF squad only has a .333 chance to penetrate instead of an assault cannon's .1667 chance to pen. This means that 5 longfangs with missiles is only marginally more effective against a stormraven than a single TLAC. Most people don't look at it that way, but the math isn't far off. (Yes the LFs are better, but that aren't an automatic death sentence).

 

When you use 5 missiles its actually a binomial distribution so you don't exactly multiply the single missile percentage by 5 (a bit more complex). That said in terms of simple math, which should be close enough in this situation, the important number here is 6%. 6% x 5 missiles is still only 30% chance to wreck the raven. The reason 6% is more relevant is because in this scenario that includes immobilization as wrecked. What that means if if they do penetrate the raven and fail to at least immobilize it, they have caused AT BEST superficial damage. The way I've played ravens competitively is once they delivered their cargo, they've done their job. Anything they blow up on the way in is house money.

 

Odds are with 3 LF squads, yes they will be expected to blow that raven out of the sky, hell it could happen after 1 missile, but that isn't very likely. If my raven blows up from the 3rd LF squad, fine. It's soaked so much firepower that the rest of my army probably isn't even scratched. Also consider that almost no one actually fires all 5 missiles at a single SR. Really you're looking more at 3 from each squad (maybe 3, 3, 5). In that situation the stormraven could be expected to survive.

 

The stormraven is a distraction unit, and should be used as such, but in an assault-based blood angels army that has it's place in spades. In a shooting-mech based army not so much. If you don't play assault heavy you probably don't see it as a useful element because it lacks the resiliency and 130 point "who cares if it dies" factor that most mech armies rely on for wins. In my lists I tend to lean towards heavy assault elements backed up by extensive long ranged firepower. If you're too busy smashing up my raven to take out my predators/razorbacks/LR with your other shots then you won't have your razorbacks and LF squads for very long if you don't shoot it down in a hurry. Sometimes all you need the SR to do is give you some breathing room, and it can do that.

[Tanhausen]

I'm not a math guy either (though the above post sounds serious and all :) ) but I've faced many times the SR with my doublewing (terminators with CML, melta bikes, speeders with TML).

 

And it falls the turn it comes in around 75% of the games.

 

And taking into account that people usually come in zooming to get the 4++, that means the DC and the dread are dead.

 

That being said, I like the idea of an 800 point brick thrown at the enemy... but I think it only works on a JP heavy army ("sure, target the SR... while 40+ JP with a couple priests and the odd Astorath/IC gets closer... enjoy turn 2 assault!!") or razor/pred spam ("I just bought 1 turn of survival for my tanks... darn expensive, better make it back!").

 

Just my experience ;)

[Black Memories]

Oh mine doesn't survive forever. You simply cannot take that much anti-tank punishment on an armor 12 vehicle and expect to survive, mine usually ends up wrecked. That doesn't mean it's easy to shoot down though.

[Fortunate Son]

I like the SR+Reclusiarch+foot-sloggin DC (2 powerfists)+DC Dread (blood talons) option.

But I don't deepstrike or reserve it. I just keep it in cover as best I can first turn.

You only need one turn to deliver your payload where it needs to be.

 

And I typically run enough other armor that the Raven isn't always target priority number one.

[Black Memories]

Funny. Even with a significant amounts of other armor including deathstar assault terms in a LRC and only meph and dread in the raven it still takes an insane amount of shots.