Strikeforce Sunray - 1850 tourny & batreps

[Shaezus]

Our club's big annual tourny isn't until next weekend, but I want to put this up early so I can hopefully take on board any tactical advice. But more on that later. Strikeforce Sunray is the name I give to my army wherever and whenever it plays; here it is in current 1850 form

 

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll27/timwoowoo/Mobile%20Uploads/2014-07-11140240.jpg

 

This was meant to be a 'farewell to the old codex' list, before the rumourmill put the date back. So it's not meant to be a tourny winner, I just want to freak people out, man :D

 

Mephiston

 

Corbulo

 

2 x fraggy dread melta magna in pods

 

10 x death company + thunder hammer

 

death coy dread. talons + hvy flamer + magna + melta in pod

 

death coy dread. fists. magna + melta in pod

 

2 x 5 ASM in pods

 

5 ASM + flamer with land raider redeemer MM

 

Meph and corbulo join and hitch a ride in the raider.

 

Now the tactical issue is this: solid intel has it that there are at least 9 wraithknights being fielded - at least one guy with 3, another 3 with at least 2. So I have a cunning plan, and would appreciate any feedback at all :)

 

7th ed rules apply.

 

Basically vs wraithknight armies I can focus the turn one drop on messing up wave serpents, troops and warp spiders (who are lethal vs dreads as they just leap over them and shoot their backsides at S7) or focus on the wraithknights to get them down ASAP.

 

For the latter option, vs 3 wraithknights: meph and corb head towards central wraithknight. Even if the raider is popped T1 mephy should get a furious charge on it T2. Death company drop T1 near one of the flanking wraithknights, whilst the furiosos and fisty drop against the other one.

 

I would obviously need to account for his other forces, but having meph and corbs in the centre will help deter the oppo from advancing there to get rear shots on the dreada. The death company should get the complete attention of their WK, hopefully using cover and spreading out will minimise shooting wounds and even if they don't get the charge the next turn they should still keep it locked in cc for at least three rounds, knocking some wounds off with the hammer too. The DC are already lost, so I see this as a big distraction to help the raider and dreads survive.

 

The three dreads between them have 6 S8 AP 1 or 2 shots plus the frag cannons so that should take at least two wounds off their WK, he will probably kill one in his turn so that still leaves two alive to shoot and assault it, so long as I can protect their rear arcs from the rest of the eldar shooting.

 

Just kind of spinning the idea out there, as eldar seem to be strong in 7th ed and these will be hard battles for me to win, regardless of the missions and however I play it. All suggestions are welcome :)

[Remtek]

Vs tripple wraithknight i think your best best is to template the warp spiders and stop his troops. Wraithknights are so tanky, but are a tad lacking in offense compared to their point cost.  I think i'd have only Meph deal with them, stop wave serpents and spiders and trying to get some pods on objective.  Seems like a tough matchup since wraithknights melt dreadnoughts. I think they are str 10? So he dosnt have to use the nerfed smash.

 

It's gonna be a tough matchup regardless, havent played much vs Eldar so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I feel vs Riptides its better to ignore or tarpit, killing always seems like to much of a time investment.

[knife&fork]

 

 

Meph and corbulo join and hitch a ride in the raider.

 

 

 

What will the 5-man assault squad do then, camp home objective?

 

As for the wraith knights I say deploy aggressively, it's your only chance to catch them. Concentrate on taking out one of them at the time since unlike a vehicle they will be operating at full capacity until they go down. 

 

If possible use LoS blockers or the board edge to protect the rear AV of your dreads. Try to make sure he can only kill one of them each turn, if you can make it into close combat it will hurt him more and you can slingshot with the consolidation move to make up for your slower speed. 

[Red-beard]

In my experience, CC Dreadnought heavy lists do not work well against Eldar mech or wraithknight lists because the dreads are just too slow (and too short ranged) to keep up with the Eldar units. 

 

What I mean by this is yes, it's true you'll get that one good round when you first droppod your dreads into the game. Assuming you don't scatter too far away, you'll get to unload some melta and magna attacks. However, chances are your opponent will either jink (now a 4+) or serpent shield those pens and you'll end up doing nothing more than glancing him some, or at best exploding one vehicle. Against a wraith knight, you might kill him if you get lucky. More likely, he'll take some wounds but survive. 

 

Then, what the Eldar player will do is simply move all his surviving skimmers/jump units away from you such that your dreads find themselves woefully out of position. Then, from a distance he can unload all the lance weapons and other high Strength weapons until your dreads are gone. I hope I am wrong and you do well, but in my experience, CC dread lists just don't match up well against most Eldar lists.

 

The lists that I find do well against Eldar are lists that have either a LOT of long range !tank firepower (devastator spam, predator spam, LC/MM storm ravens, etc.) or lists that are very mobile and can keep up with the Eldar movement (melta/power fist assault marines with jumppacks, sanguinary guard with melta, Dante deep-strike lists, VVs, Baal Predators, bikes with melta, etc.).

 

Wraithknights have high toughness and are normally difficult to wound. However, they only have 3+ armor saves. So if you can wound them, they are vulnerable. For this reason, I find that poison spam is very very effective against Wraithknights. You may consider some stern guard veterans with their special issue ammunition. If you can get them in rapid fire range, you can really mess a wraith knight up with some poison. 

 

Some TH/SS terminators in a LC/MM SR can also be very effective.

[knife&fork]

  I hope I am wrong and you do well, but in my experience, CC dread lists just don't match up well against most Eldar lists. 

 

Yup, a list like this has almost 0 chance to pull off a win against a tough Eldar list. What he can try to do is attacking the eldars means of attacking him (the wraithknights are the worst here). Hopefully avoiding a really bad loss (turn 3 wipe is possible depending on reserve rolls) and taking that far shot at a victory in case your dice is hot and the opponents are cold. 

 

This seems to be what he want's to bring though, not a completely different list.

[Shaezus]

Hi guys, thanks so much for the feedback :)

 

The list is already submitted, I had to make do with what I have due to being out of work for a while, and I'd sold my baal and two vindicators to raise cash :( So yep, this is what I've got and granted it will maul the pants off some of the other armies there but there is a sudden baby-boom of eldar it seems.

 

I agree that I will be lucky to even survive against them, barring cagey deployment and 'playing not to lose' which is a sure way to lose anyway.

 

The 5-man ASM from the raider will camp an objective while meph and corb steal their motor.

 

If I'm going to go for the WK, it does indeed all depend on if I can hog the board edge and get favourable scatter. If turn one goes well it is possible to dominate his board edge over subsequent turns, if he dashes his units towards my lines and all the WK are tied up or dead, I still have the blender dread in reserve plus a little mobility with the raider, maybe nip back and get rear armour shots with PotMS. Either way, as you say I'll need good dice and for him to get poor dice. I think they tend to take eldrad and a farseer, so they'll be very shooty. All good fun eh? :D

[Red-beard]

Will be interested in the results. Let us know how it goes .

Remember....the only good Eldar is a dead Eldar.

[Shaezus]

Not a terribly bad start, two crushing victories but one crushing defeat. 51 points out of max 75. First game vs Tau, quite an inexperienced player though so I tabled him turn 4. Game two vs the defending champion and his 3 wraithknight force, and I had a plan which would have got at least a draw if it weren't for, quite honestly, the worst luck I have had in the first game turn. Scatter wasn't too bad but all 6 of my melta and magna shots missed at 3" to 5" range, then I failed 6 4+ cover saves where if I passed just one, one dread would have assaulted his wave serpents next turn. Then he pops the raider with first shot at it - S10, rolls 5 to pen, I fail another 4+ cover and he rolls 6 on the damage chart, AP2. Meh. Then turn two my blender dread scattera a full 12" in the perfectly wrong direction leaving him in the open for his warp spiders to warp in and shoot his rear. Thanks only to sacrifice by the death company and a desperate flanking roll-up by meph and corb, I managed to keep the game in the balance until I rolled 1's for consolidations and runs so was just outside of contesting his home objective. Anyway a very good game, pleased with how things pulled around but sorry the score did not reflect this.

 

Game 3 vs a mixed guard list with coteaz, two other inquisitors plus blobs, pask squqdron, heavy artillery and vendettas - great result because the presence of coteaz meant I had to totally change my game. It paid off though and despite again having the raider effectively nullified I managed to seize the relic and claim most of the objectives.

 

Up against eldar / DE beastpack with two wraithknights next. He's using invisibilty on his beastpack. Missions are big guns and purge he alien, hammer and anvil setup. Will probably need to adapt again, as if he locks my dreads in cc with the beastpack, I will have no chance. Looks like I'll need to drop them onto objectives, get cover and leave the wraithknights for mephiston. Any suggestions welcome :)

[Red-beard]

Glad to hear it's going well so far.

 

Beast packs are mean in CC and best shot from a distance. Bird flocks have 5 wounds but are only toughness 3, so they are prone to instant death. Your TL assault cannon, TL las cannons, melta, and Frag cannons should be able to insta-kill those birds.  Khymaera are only one wound, so easy to kill. Clawed fiends are a problem as they have 4 wounds and T5. Beast master's are only leadership 8, so if you can force a morale check, they may break. Terrify is a great ability to use against beast packs, although I doubt you'll have Meph rolling on Telepathy =p.

 

As for the invisibility, it is a nasty power, so hope he doesn't roll it. However, if he does, it is level two. That means he needs to put more dice into the roll to guarantee more successes, so possibly he'll roll two 6's and peril. Also, don't forget that you can use your deny the witch rolls to deny his blessings in 7E. You'll need 6's, but it could be worth trying if he passes it with just two successes.

 

If he brings venoms, take them out early. They are super fragile, but pack quite a punch against infantry and are assault vehicles. If you allow them to fire into your troops, you're in trouble. Blow them up early, don't ignore them. Also, any DE troops inside will be low toughness models with poor saves, so you may get some added benefit of an explosion killing the troops inside. 

 

Against the wraith knights, they die to a multitude of wounds, just like any other model. They only have a 3+ armor save so if you can wound them a bunch, they'll fail some saves. The problem is that damned T8 and 6W. Meph can hurt them (and is probably your best bet), but the problem is that they are AP2 so can also hurt Meph. Meph will attack first, so you'll likely take one out, but you will take some wounds. Hope you get lucky on some FNP rolls. 

 

With all those beasts and wraith knights, he may be light on objective secured troops. In the big guns mission, use that to your advantage. Deploy tactically to capture objectives and play a points game. Resist the urge to try and table him. In the purge match, you're going to need some luck.

 

That's just my two cents....good luck!

[Shaezus]

Ugh, bad second day. Two eldar lists, one 25-0 loss and one 17-8 loss. Still came 8th out of 16 and did what I went to do - have a blast with the forces at my disposal and freak people out! The defending - and retaining - champ even came over afterwards and said our game had been his toughest and that if it weren't for my hideous luck on turn one, he wouldn't have kept 1st place. He nominated me for most sporting too so happy days :)

 

Don't think it's worth bothering with full batreps unless people are interested, so just a quick run-down and summary here.

 

The beastpack eldar: everything fell into place for me at the start. I got first turn and managed to drop 3 dreads close to his farseer, with the death company covering their flank. All I needed to do was kill the farseer and then the pack would lose fearless. So the beasts around the farseer were cleared by frag cannon, which meant three melta, three magna, two frag and a heavy flamer all on the farseer.

 

1st dread: miss with magna, rolls 1 to wound with melta

2nd dread: miss with melta, rolls 1 to wound with magna. frag wounds LoS'd onto beasts and saved.

3rd dread: hit and wound with melta and magna and heavy flamer. All 3 LoS'd onto beasts and two saved (4++).

 

So that fell pretty flat really. Not sure what the odds are but all I needed was one melta, magna or frag wound and he was instagibbed.

 

Next turn I shot and charged one wraithknight with two dreads. Put a rending wound with frag and two from both magnas so he's down to three. He rolls 6 on overwatch to hit, then rolls 6 to pen, then rolls 6 on damage, AP2.

 

I got peed off at this point and went for a smoke while he moved. When I came back, the wound dice had fallen off his WK. He assaulted DC fisty, who put three wounds on him first as he was attacking through cover. Oppo then put wound dice back on with one remaining. We both genuinely forgot I had taken a wound off him with the frag cannon. Guess I deserve it for being peed off and dozy, but that was another game changer. Also mephy failed an 8" charge with fleet reroll so I couldn't get the other WK. Next turn this WK rolled a 6 to wound mephy with his D weapon. Mephy rolls 1 on his LoS, and to top it off his sword snaps off when I pick him up. One of those days? :D It ends with oppo holding 3 obj to my 2, and winning on kill point mission thanks to his WK mopping up drop pods.

 

Final game vs two wraithknights, 4 wave serpents, seer, 10 wraithlords five with each D weapon, plus dire avengers.

 

I mullered him in turn one but again, 4+ cover and AV 12 / 13 is no protection to non-missing twin-linked wave serpent fire so my dreada fall in three turns. Thanks to him casting invisibility on one WK mephy took an extra turn to kill them. He then rolled 1, 2, 2, 1 for difficult terrain and run in the next two turns. I forgot the fleet reroll..and corbs was blasted by an overwatch D-shot from his WK..6 to hit and 6 to wound again :(

 

There was nothing I could do against his sheer accuracy and volume of wounds and in the end we drew on emperor's will and he won on kill points.

 

Will post some more thoughts later. As I said I wasn't expecting to win at all, still if any one of those critical dice failures had gone the other way. First thoughts are that pods are a boon as super scoring but a loser in kill point games. Also, this seriously appears to be the age of the eldar. Invisibility is stupid broken.

[Red-beard]

Dang, that stinks man. Sorry to hear it went that way.

 

I agree with you; Eldar are easily the best codex in the game right now. 

[knife&fork]

Yeah, don't beat yourself up with it. There's a lot of things to keep in mind at once and sometimes we forget, happens less with more experience. 

Seems like you did well with the list you brought.

 

A thing I've noticed on tourneys is that you have a slight edge playing BA. Sure we are well aware of every strength & flaw in our codex but to the average player a very aggressive BA list is something unusual to face, and quite stressful to deal with the first couple of games. Since we've been a low tier codex for so long even the top players never seem to bother with practice games. Most of them probably haven't looked at BA since 6th dropped and have little understanding of how we play. 

[Shaezus]

Five out of the sixteen players there had eldar and each of them had a different list. 1st and 2nd place went to the two most competitive players, 3rd and 4th are also competitive guys whilst the other guy is more into other games but is clever enough in 40k. He came 5th.

 

They're very strong at range, very strong in the psychic phase - able to cast and deny multiple powers with ease - their flyer is so versatile it can stay in zoom mode and use heavy firepower without having to leave the board, and taken with a beastpack they also dominate the assault phase. I forgot that wraithknights are jump MC also.

 

Their psychic powers combined are staggering to behold, but invisibility on its own is a game-killer. Way too powerful - should be warp charge 3 IMHO. The guard guy I played against, well I had his conscript blob locked in cc on his flank and was ready to rip through them and into his line when he made them invisible - and that power alone literally stopped his whole army from being savaged. Spent turns 2-5 locked in that combat. Way, way too powerful.

[Shaezus]

Yeah, don't beat yourself up with it. There's a lot of things to keep in mind at once and sometimes we forget, happens less with more experience.

Seems like you did well with the list you brought.

 

A thing I've noticed on tourneys is that you have a slight edge playing BA. Sure we are well aware of every strength flaw in our codex but to the average player a very aggressive BA list is something unusual to face, and quite stressful to deal with the first couple of games. Since we've been a low tier codex for so long even the top players never seem to bother with practice games. Most of them probably haven't looked at BA since 6th dropped and have little understanding of how we play.

You're dead right there, and I reckon las-plas spam with a couple of ravens and the ASM with flamers would give shooty eldar a run for their money.

 

And yeah, it's surprising how quickly we can become rusty without practice! Small details can sometimes be crucial, it pays to keep the old eyes open eh!

[knife&fork]

If you want to tailor vs eldar you should probably bring 2 5-man squads of vanguard veterans with melta bombs. Almost every weapon in an eldar list can pen or glance a razor and the las-plas doesn't quite have the volume of fire to deal with the serpents. AV12 that downgrades pens to glances on a 2+ (with a 3+++ jink if upgraded) can swallow unreal amounts of shooting. 

[Shaezus]

 

Vanvets would be awesome for the job.

 

That's probably it for me for a while. There's a competetion vs another club in october or november but I'm looking ahead to the caledonian open in january.

 

Depending on when we get our new dex and how good it is, I'm saving up for either 'new' units or forgeworld stuff. A couple of sicarans and other things.

[Chaplain Admetus]

Yeah, don't beat yourself up with it. There's a lot of things to keep in mind at once and sometimes we forget, happens less with more experience. 

Seems like you did well with the list you brought.

 

A thing I've noticed on tourneys is that you have a slight edge playing BA. Sure we are well aware of every strength & flaw in our codex but to the average player a very aggressive BA list is something unusual to face, and quite stressful to deal with the first couple of games. Since we've been a low tier codex for so long even the top players never seem to bother with practice games. Most of them probably haven't looked at BA since 6th dropped and have little understanding of how we play. 

 

Quoted for truth. Not commonly played armies (BA aren't a common tourney sight) have a reasonable advantage because nobody knows what they're capable of. Hell, half the people I play against forget that our assault squads are troops (probably because I can't remember the last time I saw non-BA assault marines on the tabletop, and that's not an exaggeration... The tournament I played in a few months ago, nobody was prepared for the damage my beta-strike BA list could put out. Even the broken Tau list nearly got caught on the hop (tabled him apart from his even-more-broken-than-usual Farsight Bomb).

 

Further anecdotal evidence about uncommon armies coming up trumps, played against the cheesiest, unfun High Elf list I've ever seen on Friday and managed to eke out a win because my opponent had literally never played against Bretonnia before, and didn't know what was happening until it was too late.

[Shaezus]

And just to add further proof, the guy who won our tourny travels all over the UK playing tournies - don't think he goes for rankings though - yet he still had to ask me what a frag cannon is and what does it do. IMHO it is the best template weapon in the game and I'm not afraid to say this to people.

[Shaezus]

Oops. Ahem. Sorry, posted on this by accident. Post moved to the proper blog thread thingy.