BA Today

[Charlo]

MK4 Librarian Dread !!!

[The Unseen]

Just a bit of hard-won advice. Beware the Space Wolf Relic "The Armor of Russ".

It's the 2nd thing in 8th I called broken, the first being pre-nerf ynnari shining spears.

[Panzer]

Just a bit of hard-won advice. Beware the Space Wolf Relic "The Armor of Russ".

It's the 2nd thing in 8th I called broken, the first being pre-nerf ynnari shining spears.

Pretty useless advice/warning without telling us what it does lol

[Charlo]

Just a bit of hard-won advice. Beware the Space Wolf Relic "The Armor of Russ".

It's the 2nd thing in 8th I called broken, the first being pre-nerf ynnari shining spears.

 

Doesn't seem overly broken? It's only opponents within range of the user, so I don't think it would be full units.

 

 

 

Just a bit of hard-won advice. Beware the Space Wolf Relic "The Armor of Russ".

It's the 2nd thing in 8th I called broken, the first being pre-nerf ynnari shining spears.

Pretty useless advice/warning without telling us what it does lol

 

4++, forces an enemy within melee range of the wearer to fight last in the Fight phase.

[Panzer]

Ah that one. Strong but definitely not broken.

[Indefragable]

Armor of Russ is an incredible tool in the tool box for sure. Especially when combined with the "free" 6" Heroic Intervention it's bearer gets for being SW.

 

Like any tool, it's usefulness is proportional to the skill of the user, but it definitely has the making of an incredible ability, especially in 1:1 engagements.

[The Unseen]

Combined with the 6" heroic intervention, a character with the armor of russ hiding behind a melee unit can totally shut down an enemy unit's charge.

You charge in, the character intervenes, and then you swing last.

The melee unit he was hiding behind then butchers whatever you sent in.

In my case, a unit of DC coming out of reserves got wiped between the wolf lord with the armor and a squad of thunder wolves.

They "should've" wiped the wolves and possibly the lord.

And you can't use countercharge strat either, no way around it.

You go last.

 

So basically, to take out say, a wolf lord on thunderwolf, to kill him in cc, you have to send in 2 complete units both capable of killing him in one go, or that's tough enough to take 4 nearly auto hitting (hitting on 2s rerolling 1s) thunderhammer attacks to the face.

And that's if he's alone.

 

And Charlo, it's a "unit" within 1", so if you have a single model within 1" out of a whole squad, that whole squad goes last.

If it was models within 1", it'd be fine.

[Panzer]

About as broken as our 3d6 charges I'd say. It just hits some people harder than other. Most armies wouldn't even notice the armour of russ because charging space wolves is suicide for them.

[Spagunk]

Except 3d6 charge still means double tapped overwatch which could stifle a charge or in some cases complete denial of said charge.

 

Our moves are good and in some cases they are fantastic. But you can't "pish pah" away the fact that a lot of other tools are frankly better than the good tools BA have. Nothing we have forces someone to give up whole phases of anything. Best we have is a relic that prevents overwatch for one charge worth and it's tied to a sacrificial character. Said sacrificial character requires many many command points to use.

 

Tl:Dr BA tools cool, just not the best.

[Panzer]

Except that overwatch is rarely much of an issue unless it's a unit with sick amount of shots and that my argument wasn't to highlight that our stuff is broken as well since I obviously don't think it is.

 

The JP relic also doesn't require to sacrifice the model nor to pump it full of CP. Those are choices you make.

 

Also the armour of russ doesn't force anyone to give up a whole phase. It just requires a bit more ressources to deal with than using a single unit of Deathcompany ... shocking!

[Spagunk]

I've lost 15 assault marines to overlapping overwatch in a single phase so it's been a big factor in my games.

 

3d6 for a single unit is nothing. Especially for a unit that can't do first turn deepstrikes. A "permanent" set of armor that denies a unit the ability to successfully fight when they charged is a much bigger issue. really hard to deal with that since we're now throwing loads of 17-20pt models at a single unit to have them rebuffed and dead because they now have to survive being smacked around by marine killing monsters.

 

Whatever, it doesn't matter anyway.

[Panzer]

When you talk about overlapping overwatch I assume you're talking about T'au? Well each unit can do that only once per phase and then doesn't have any overwatch for itself that turn anymore so charging with multiple units is key here. That's an exception tho. Not everyone can do something like that.

On top of that many people play that ability wrong and decide on the fly which unit joins in for the overwatch while they actually have to declare all the units doing the overwatch at one regardless of whether they actually get to shoot our not.

Also 15 Assault Marines? The fact that you have so many Assault Marines in your list shows that you have a whole lot other problems. I can barely imagine something worse to take these days.

 

3d6 charge is nothing? I'm sure many people would like to heavily disagree there. It almost assures succeeding with the charge and is even stronger in combination with the repositioning stratagem.

 

Armour of russ is hard to deal with, yes. Not broken. Charge with multiple units. One has to strike last and the other one still gets to strike first. Also shooting. Blood Angels aren't Daemons who can't do anything else than melee and armour of russ doesn't help much against getting all units around the wearer getting shot to bits.

 

Again I'm not saying it's not strong. Just that it's not broken.

People often complain about lack of strategical depth in 40k aside of list building and alpha strikes but as soon as they have to do more than throwing a single strong unit at the problem it's too much lol

Edited January 8, 2019 by sfPanzer

[Majkhel]

About the Armor of Russ - an ability to Strike First (like in Speed of the Primarch) kinda negates that rule. You loose the ability, but otherwise the unit can be chosen fight first as per the charge rules for example.

Also I wouldn't really compare the 3D6 charge to that particular relic rule as 3D6 charge can still fail even with re-rolls (I know from experience :P ). Armor of Russ is definitely incredibly strong against our charging units.

Some things that come to my mind if I would have to deal with it (apart from multiple units charging, which was already mentioned):
- Speed of the Primarch (although it's painful to take an otherwise useless WT just to potentially hinder one particular ability)
- having Standard of Sacrifice close by, so that slain models can at least potentially fight back. Keeping in mind that Standard works on models not units of course.

[Brother Crimson]

Armour of Russ, It’s a good counter but there are a couple of similar abilities like dark angel mind worm and tyranid paroxysm. I find it to be particularly nasty with Tyranid, even if it’s a psychic power.

 

All of those abilities only work on a single unit so more incentive to run multiple small units.

 

I know I’ll might get a bit of anti soup argument but armour of Russ and or mind worm can be included as a secondary detachement in blood angels too. I had some good games with Angels of death casting mind worm and charging with smash captains.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Brother Crimson

[Charlo]

It's strong as heck, but it's one character in the whole army that has it. He can only be in one place at a time. Admittedly due to the HI it's a large sphere of influence, but you can play around it.

[Indefragable]

It's strong as heck, but it's one character in the whole army that has it. He can only be in one place at a time. Admittedly due to the HI it's a large sphere of influence, but you can play around it.

 

Yea, but how many people run multiple units of DC or SG or VV or etc.... ?

 

A good SW commander will shape the battlefield so that the Armor or Russ is where he wants it to be when he wants it to be there, just like a good BA player will shape the battlefield to get a DC blob or such where they want it to be when they want it to be there.

 

Why Armor or Russ is arguably broken is that it directly negates an opponent's abilities. A more comparable option would be if the Angel's Wing was a 6" bubble of No Overwatch/re-roll Charges to friendly units (hmmmmmm) or if the 3D6 charge Strategem was 18" auto-charge no-need-to-roll from DS.

[neonmole]

I guess we are lucky a BA Smash Captain is a better character than anything SW can field, Armour of Russ or otherwise.

[Ornithologist]

On the subject of overwatch, I had in a recent game Mephi take 4 Lacannons to the face at the same time and die during overwatch on his charge. 

[durdle-durdle]

I’m not sure where to post this, and I don’t think it deserves it’s own thread. I’m going to complain about blood angels, so skip if you don’t feel like reading that.

 

I’ve been getting more and more depressed with my blood angels since 8th came out. They don’t do anything I really like any more. I got them during 6th, because I liked going fast and deep striking with marines. I miss drop pods and flamer/melta tactical marines being useful (for me, anyways). Now I feel bad when I take troops, because i’m Just unimpressed with them all. Combat scouts are okay, but I really hate the idea of taking a bunch of those. I miss my deep striking flamers and meltas on assault squads being useful. I miss fast vehicles, especially the beast that was my fast vindicator. Outflanking baal predators used to be one of my favorite things, especially when they were fast attack, so I could blitzkrieg my army between drop pods (with Dreadnoughts!) and tanks and encircle my opponents. Smash captains are great and all, but more and more when I play, it seems like my army plays second fiddle to trying to jam an assassin captain/mephiston in where he needs to go to kill the big threat. I really love the lore and look of blood angels, but I just don’t find myself enjoying playing them any more. The 9” deep strikes are so annoying, especially because the prevalence of horde armies around where I play. I always end up having to put my dudes in front of the enemy’s entire army and charge into chaff, if I even make a charge. Most times, I make a single charge thanks to descent of angels, and everything else fails. The amount of times my combat units gets stuck in too, and my opponent just backs up and shoots it all to bits is so frustrating. I didn’t think I would say this a year or so ago, but I miss 6th and 7th edition so much. The rules are better, but the way I enjoyed blood angels is so much worse.

[Slothysaur]

I understand your woes; I played drop pod BA in 7th and I still miss it. I have 7 drop pods that, with the exception of one (before the Mephiston/Wings FAQ), have been packed up since 7th ended. My flamer tacs, meltacide ASM, fragioso have likewise been in the gulag this whole time. I've been playing mostly Primaris as a sort of compromise. It's not my old BA, but a new BA. Bonus points to Primaris, Floating Tank Army is just super fun.

[Panzer]

Well everytime the change between editions makes some people happy and some people unhappy. In 7th it was all Drop Pods all the time because every other form of deep striking was super risky and unreliable which more likely than not ruined your whole game. I'm extremely glad non-Drop Pod deep striking is a thing again, tho the design philosophy clearly changed. Now deep striking units aren't supposed to be the spearhead that comes in first and wrecks face so the rest can follow up. Instead deep striking is supposed to be the follow up that supports the units that got stuck in where needed. Now you might say "but that's not the way of the Blood Angels!" and you are right hence why GW gave us the 3d6 charge Stratagem to use on one of our units (or all if you don't play Matched Play). That's fine with me to be honest. The game is way too focussed on alpha strikes and throwing one strong unit at the problem to win the game in my eyes anyway.

 

That being said there really are some issues that still need to get fixed.

One is as you said that Drop Pods are rather useless currently. I can think of a few approaches how to give them a purpose with the new way how reserves work.

Another is the no-brain screening with chaff that can just fall back. My solution for that would be that a unit falling back requires to pass an LD test. That makes LD itself more important again (another issue currently) and makes chaff less reliable to be used like that. Such maneauvers should be done properly by well trained soldiers, not by cultists that just got decimated to 3 man. That way we could actually spearhead with Sanguinary Guard (the LD debuff would make tons of sense there even!) or similar using the 3d6" charge stratagem and follow up with the rest of the army.

 

Then there are units that are just poorly balanced. Namely Vindicators, Baal Predators and Assault Marines

Vindicators are just too expensive for what they do. 1d3 shots that are against most targets just like Lascannons anyway is pretty meh. I already wasn't convinced by Vindicators during 7e and not much changed. The switch from templates to random number of shots isn't even the issue here for me tho I feel like GW was a bit too careful with the translation ... maybe they forgot that we still have to roll to hit after determining the amount of shots we're getting or whatever. I think I'd rather take Hunters these days. They cost 45p less but only have 1 shot instead of 1d3 shots ... however that one shot re-rolls the hit roll on its own and gets +1 against units with FLY keyword which is worth a lot.

Baal Preds would be a fantastic unit if GW would just point them accordingly. I guess we have to wait another year to see if it happens this time.

Assault Marines ... well maybe those are closer to the Drop Pod issue as they just don't have a place anymore. See, the Space Marine Codex is really bloated in terms of redundant units. So many Terminator units and so many Jump Pack units that all essentially want to do the same. Assault Marines are just on the lower end of the spectrum. Why take them if you could just take Veterans with better options and and additional attack? I doubt you could ever make them cheap enough (while being reasonable) to give me a reason to take them over Veterans. That's not a Blood Angels issue tho, that's the case for every Space Marine. It's just worse for Blood Angels who have access to two more JP units with Deathcompany and Sanguinary Guard.

[Charlo]

Don't worry guys, I'm in the same boat. 7 pods all in storage and in need of repair but little to no reason to do so. With the points cost they are and still restricted to 9.01" away (no flamers/ melta range) they just fall flat. I'd be happy if it meant we couldn't charge if we could deploy danger close, or you jack up the points of pods considerably but make them do impact hits.

 

The fast paced fire and fury of BA that I enjoyed has been removed and my MSU DC approach of 7th is gone too.

 

But hey, thems the breaks! I've got other armies to use for now until we get some love or I can be inspired to come back (or get my BA fix in a Heresy setting!?!)

[Karhedron]

Just a counterpoint. I have just started playing the new missions in Chapter Approved 2018. The changes look innocuous enough but the game actually plays quite differently. Going first is no longer the advantage it was as points are scored at the end of each battle round rather than the end of each player turn. This means the player who is going 2nd can react to every move the 1st player makes. Sure IG have plenty of big guns to take advantage of a 1st turn of shooting but their squads are fragile and prone to being hosed off objectives before they can score VPs by a canny opponent.

 

Add to this, there are some missions where only certain units can score. Let that sink in for a moment. Knight armies will auto-lose "The Four Pillars" these missions unless they have brough allied help. Now if you can wipe out the Loyal32, the Knight player cannot win on this mission, even if he tries to table you.

 

Exact victory conditions now vary from mission to mission (the rule about only Troops scoring only applies to one scenario but there is another for HQs). But if you randomly generate missions (and I strongly encourage it) a lot of power builds struggle. Elite-heavy armies can no longer win by tabling the opponent. This was driven home to me in dramatic fashion in a game yesterday with my Space Wolves (The Four Pillars). I lost by the end of turn 2, despite only losing 2 smallish packs of Grey Hunters. My opponent was ahead on VPs (thanks to killing a Cyberwolf and scoring First Strike) and had more Troop units than me. Despite being in a good position, it was mathematically impossible for me to overtake him on VPs by the end of the game.

 

This shift is going to place more emphasis on Troop units who can take and hold objectives. Tactical squads in drop pods are actually pretty good in this regard and I can see a bigger role for Intercessors in the future too with their enhanced durability. Scouts are already good for us and will continue to remain so. Hammer units and Flyers are no longer going to be the game winners and I am going to think twice about using my Troops as a screen to protect my more expensive expensive units, particularly if it is a mission where those Heavy/Elite units cannot actually score.

 

I think that dual Battalion is going to be the winning formula in future and Troops that can rapidly take an Objective early on will dictate the flow of the game. OK most armies will not struggle to kill 10 Tactical Marines, even in cover, but the difference is that now your opponent cannot afford to ignore them and kill them later. Every turn they are alive on that Objective, they are scoring VPs and if your opponent simply concentrates on bodycount, they will lose!

 

If you haven't give then CA2018 missions a thorough try-out yet, I recommend them. The game plays quite differently!

[Charlo]

Yet to read through them but thats a good direction if it's how it plays out. Certainly better represents the 41st M hyper war better!

[Karhedron]

Yet to read through them but thats a good direction if it's how it plays out. Certainly better represents the 41st M hyper war better!

I agree. The continuous scoring system (even for Eternal War missions) mean that you have to play the objectives. The "Acceptable Casualties" rule means that tabling your opponent is no longer a route to victory in most scenarios.

 

There are also smaller but also useful changes such as knowing who will go first before deploying (apart from Seizing of course). This allows you to deploy conservatively if necessary rather than gamble everything on an opening salvo.

 

I honestly plan to ditch the BRB missions and play the CA2018 ones as the standard from now on.

Edited January 9, 2019 by Karhedronuk