Played a game yesterday

[BaronTuman]

Hello all,

 

Back to the forum, and I thought I'd share some thoughts on my experiences.

 

First, I'm primarily a competitive player.  I like strong lists facing similarly powered lists.  I never opted in to the shooty terminator builds and put away my Templars when it was apparent that they could no longer hold their own on the field against the more powerful net lists.

 

The game I played as against an inexperienced player who was fielding blood angels, but he had varied list which gave me plenty of situations to test the various units against.  It was an odd points list (1920pts) because it was models he wanted to field.

 

My list

20 man crusader squad + Powerfist

20 man crusader squad + Powerfist

17 man crusader squad + Powerfist (short 3 neos)

10 man tactical/crusader squad + Gravgun + drop pod

10 man tactical/crusader squad + Gravgun + drop pod

10 man tactical/crusader squad + Gravgun + drop pod

Emperors Champion

3 man Centurion with Grav Cannon and Missile Launcher 

Hunter

Hunter

 

He had

3x 10 tactical, corbulo, librarian and Chapter master (or some such)

10 man Assault squad

Furioso dread with double flamer weapons + drop pod

2x tri-las predators

5 Death company + thunderhammer in rhino

5x THSS deep striking terminators

 

Highlights of the battle:

 

• Assault squad shot then charged my crusader squad using their hammer of wrath on the charge.  EC punked the sergeant hard and the combat lasted 2 round before they wiped out the assault squad.  EC is beastly in challenges, and I no longer hate him, though I'm surprised.
• Running with 2 dice is awesome.  It's almost like having jump packs on the first turn without paying the premium.
• Crusader squad charged the furioso and was run off the table.  Poor choice on my part.  Not sure about the worth of power fists in the crusader squads.  I'm thinking sword brother with melta bombs will be a better choice.  This will mean dropping additional neophytes though because RAW means you can only have 9 neos with your 9 initiates + sword brother (lame)
• Shooty Centurions were ace.  Their missle launchers and grav cannons kill 3 of the 5 deep striking termies (and I even forgot that they get rerolls due to the grav amp)  EC and crusader squad from combat with the assault squad cleaned up the rest of the termies.  Al that and they lost one of their models on the first turn due to a plasma cannon.  They did a ton of damage to Corbulo, but he saved every single one of the shots due to his 2+ FNP.  Against any other army the squad have been  wiped.  Heck he even made 3 cover saves against krak missile shots!  
• Drop pods were cool for blocking LOS vs the predators, and will be useful vs Tau.  He made a mistake by not driving around them, and chose instead to shoot them, doing 2 hull points, but not destroying them, but it shed a light on their usefulness.
• 2 tacticals with grav-guns wiped 1 of his tactical on the turn that they dropped.  Gravguns are pretty awesome.
• I took the hunters because I wanted to see what they would do against a non-flyer list.   Their kills included the furioso in rear armor, and a predator due to the "fast" nature of the vehicle.  Since I'm snap-firing the gun anyway, I might as well drive it 12" ever turn.  Additional utility of tank-shocking troops off of objectives makes the worth inclusion I think.

At the end of the game, he had only corbulo, 1 tactical and the chapter master, and a rhino with 1 hull point.  Certainly it was not the strongest list or player, but it was a nice test drive.  I'm not unhappy with either the fluff nor the power of the list.  Doom and gloom aside, this is a dramatic improvement.  Are they as OP as the new Tau or Eldar?  Probably not.  But with decent terrain, some luck and skill I think the list concept could still beat many of the nastiest spam lists.

[T14]

Tuman! Good to see a familiar face :tu:

Cheers on sharing your impressions with the community. We will need an avalanche of field testing before we can hash out what works well and what works wonders.

[Honda]

Very interesting observations and thank you for sharing.

 

Your last bullet intrigued me, because I too am wondering what the Hunter/Stalker might do for me in non-AA situations. Any thoughts as to whether the volume of fire from a Stalker would have been of any value in your game?

[BaronTuman]

Honda, I don't think so.  With a single shot that is not twin linked, you are essentially paying the full price of the vehicle for statistically one hit in a 6 turn game against non flyer targets.  That being said, if you want to discourage Helldrakes  in your LGS meta, bring 2 of them for a couple months, and you'll never have to face them again. :)