Prot Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Hey guys, Kind of pressed for time, and since I was looking for some ideas for a pending campaign, I wanted to ramp up some lists to 1850 based on the 750 ideas we had talked about. BTW: people who keep mentioning Vindicators... I'm just not a fan of them. I think they die far too easily, and to be frank I hate ordinance because the junk always scatters on my stuff. These games I kept an eye on 'how would a vindicator do' and I don't think very well because again, we play Maelstrom, meaning there's an excellent chance I'm killing my own stuff...... moving on: My list: Azrael in a pod with 8 vets. Vets with Fist, axe and melta gun (I always take him when I can. I think he's probably one of the best force multipliers in an objective based game for Dark Angels.) Libby on bike with... PFG (for one game) With: 5 man Ravenwing bike squad with RW banner, Apothecary, Co. Champion, RW GL. 1 squad of 5 Tacticals with a Missile launcher, 1 Razorback with Las/plas. 1 squad of 10 tacticals. Drop Pod, Melta gun, combi melta. 7 Assault Marines, Vet Sarge, 2 x flamers 1 Venerable dread. Melta, Hvy flamer, Pod. Whirlwind Sicaran tank w/ side lascannon sponsons dozer blade. Game1: Vs Nids. Maelstrom; the type where you start with 6 objective cards in turn 1, and it goes down 1 card every turn thereafter. A pic of my army: Excuse all the proxying. I just made the Assault Squad the night before,and pieced together the Libby Bike from a spare couple of pieces... I'm sorry I don't have many more pics but his army was well balanced for Maelstrom: - Flyrant - Hive tyrant -3 of shooty bugs with 2 x strength 8 indirect shots each that ignore cover Hive guard I think. - 3 of the bugs that give cover... really, really annoying unit.(I've played against it many times, but it's worth mentioning in a bushline table top, these things are giving 3+ cover.) - Tervigon (a birthing machine that was on steroids) - 4 man warrior team in reserves - Gaunts in a pod. (those new pods are sick.) - 3 of the psyker bugs... can't remember.. ugh the things with the fat heads and warp blast. - a squad of 2 Carnifexes! - 1 squad of gaunts. The Game: Short version coming up here: - I won first turn and took it. Cards were about 50% useless... challenge cards were hard surprisingly. - He had incredible numbers of me. Which is normal. - My Fail-barian, first turn, tries an psychic attack, fails to wound anything on his beam attack, perils, takes a wound. Next turn he would fail one save, and the FnP and die, giving my opponent First Blood. - Azrael as usual took the objective Feel No Pain Warlord trait and he was very hard to take apart. My opponent saw this when he tried to swarm me with 20-30 gaunts and got bounced after shooting/assaulting.... We were neck and neck for a long time.... - The Relic Sicaran was a hero. Denying cover from its main turret was big. It opened up some bloody gashes on the Carnifexes.... the carnifexes did not want to leave the comfort of the 3+ cover they had, but the Sicaran put a bunch of wounds in them. But they did soak up a LOT of fire power. - His pod lands in, deep and steals an objective and scores a line breaker. - His Pod is multi shooting at 2 squads, and moving... it had 6 wounds and it felt like trying to chop a tree down with a rope. - His Tervigon would not stop! In 4 turns his Tervigon birthed exactly 45 Gaunts before rolling doubles! Ugh. Everytime I drew a card to get close, he would poop out another squad of poo-flingers and it was just that much harder to get close. - My Ravenwing bikes kept their distance... but they kept getting hit by a psychic power... can't remember the name, but it took D3 BS and WS away from them for a full game turn. Aside from my turn 1, my Ravenwing either has Weapon Skill 1 / Ballistic Skill 1 or 2 for the whole game. It basically neutered this squad but I could not move it too far away (and hide) or I risked giving up objectives. - The Flyrant finally comes in, but Azrael has s skyfire point and puts a melta shot into the flying jerk (who has shot the crud out of the Vets, but FnP has me only lose 2..) He passes his grounding test. - Assault squad is semi-useful this game, they land and deviate very close to the cluster.... oddly enough I have most of the table to myself, and I have to risk a few marines because the Psyker bugs are chucking lances at my Sicaran which is really starting to bug him now.... I have one marine left on that flank, he rushes into the brain bugs to stop the shooting. - We have to call it after 4 turns. It was a very long game.... and so much blood shed. We tied, at 10 total points each.... but I gave him the win because if it had truly ended, he had line breaker and I did not.... - Assault squad lands into a mess of cover saving bugs. - - Azrael's squad pushed back gaunts and defends a marker against a Flyrant. Endgame: - I held my own but the star players and the duds were obvious: - superstar is not from the codex unfortunately: Sicaran tank. Denying cover, even at AP4 is nice against Nids which a lot of is living off the cover. Using Machine Spirit to crack of a lascannon every once in a while is nice too.... It actually earned it's points back. - Another star is probably the only expensive Dark Angel unit that always performs for me: Azrael and Vets. In a Maelstrom mission I don't know why more people don't use him. He's a great force multiplier. The problem is getting him to the show in the right position. Duds: - Ravenwing LIbby. Wow this guy was an intergalactic turd. Useless... just useless. The PFG has no real use, and is just a point sink. If you can't jink or 3+ it, then at least you still have FnP. I don't see any use in this list for the PFG unless you want to confer a 4+ invuln to nids that are assaulting you. - Ravenwing. Bad game? Perhaps, but grenade landed once without over scattering, the rest of the game I don't think they caused one casualty.... at BS 1 it's pretty hard. Game 2: Against Dark Eldar: (Sorry no pics!) This was reverse of the last Maelstrom where you start with 1, and increase your Cards by 1 per turn. We deployed on short table edges which was good... I needed the space. He got first turn. - His list was all boats, one shooty squad, those little speeders with a TON of firepower, and 2 flyers. Quick review: - He gets nightfight, and his army ignores it. So he loved this... - I deployed VERY deep in my zone. It didn't matter, he was within a few feet after moving everything flat out over 2 thirds of the table, covering about 4 objectives. He takes an early lead.... - He greatly fears the sicaran because he's living off of cover... he has cheap junk everywhere, BUT it is ALL getting a 3+ Jink!! Truly annoying... and potent. - In my turn the Sicaran shoots through a bushline and wrecks his HQ's boat, sending it crashing. I land my Dreadnought and flame another boat roasting 4 guys. We do the random thing and it turns out that includes the sarge and his special weapon guy. - I don't know the Dark Eldar HQ's very well but it's on foot and has the 2+ bubble... he gets that invuln until he fails it once. He is going through my tactical squads like butter, he kills 3 combat squads alone on foot.... I can't do anything about it. - His 2 flyers come in, lance my Sicaran to death in turn 2. - I get one Lucky shot with a cover denying Whirlwind shot and kill 5 of 7 of his bikes, they break... but too late, the sicaran has given up first blood. - He deep srtikes a non scattering unit and haywires my Whirlwind before I can do anything about it. - I hit the rest of his boats with Melta, plasma, my razorback, and the squad of Ravenwing. I counted 13 saved Jinks by turn 3. THIRTEEN. He's getting 3+ on some, 4+ on most.... - The only way I can crack his boats is to assault them... A combat squad of marines krak grenades one to death.... a Dread pounds another one, but Witches get out, assault my Ravenwing and I lose two, and hit and run away.... I can't kill anything in close combat, his drugs are giving him army wide Furious Charge I believe, and at this stage in the game he has a 6+ fnp. I can't believe how many FnP's he has.... it's a far more resilient army than I thought. It looks like paper, but the toys keep it alive.... - Turn 4 we are both very deciimated. My HQ lands deep and a Typhoon (I forgot to use this in my previous game) come in and I land them deep because he has a heavy weapon team with lances that are pinning my vehicles. Azrael's Vets shoot them up and kill them to finally grab my first victory point. The Typhoon did nothing, and spent the rest of the game jinking from multiple skimmer fire. - I conceded the game at this point. The score was 11-1 for Dark Eldar. His flyers were fine, he had 2 speeders alive, and his HQ was a wrecking ball. I was down to the Apothecary, all vehicles were blown up all marines dead except Azrael's squad which was out in no man's land. Very disappointing. The army did what it could but it's just not working against the opponents I'm facing now. The best parts of the army are the Sicaran tank (not a codex item) and by far Azrael's squad. This game I did give him a fight but never had a chance on the cards as he owned too much real estate too quickly. My army was slow moving, and pinned by superior firepower and his jinking was incredible at 3+ army wide for that first turn.... By then he was all over me. I needed the Sicaran to last one more turn at least, but his flyers were lancing me pretty good. Both games I felt greatly outnumbered, and out survived. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaplain Lucifer Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 I have lots of comments but short time. Will pick your brains later. Cheers and thanks for the reports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isiah Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Prot maybe DA is no longer for you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prot Posted March 6, 2015 Author Share Posted March 6, 2015 Maybe... Maybe after a several (4?) solid years of marines I might be ready for something else as a main army. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Captain Arkley Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Maybe... Maybe after a several (4?) solid years of marines I might be ready for something else as a main army. That sounds like heresy :)... Nah man you seemed to have a rough time? Did you enjoy the games? Have you thought of 30k? I think if I played again I could not see me playing anything other than Marines (SoB if they get plastic) None of the xenos really make be think OOOoooo collect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prot Posted March 6, 2015 Author Share Posted March 6, 2015 Maybe... Maybe after a several (4?) solid years of marines I might be ready for something else as a main army. That sounds like heresy ... Nah man you seemed to have a rough time? Did you enjoy the games? Have you thought of 30k? I think if I played again I could not see me playing anything other than Marines (SoB if they get plastic) None of the xenos really make be think OOOoooo collect. This sounds bad... but 30K is a little too one dimensional for me. I also like competitive play... so anything can happen. I do find a lot of very 'pro-marine' people don't actually play that often. I personally feel Marines are at (nearly) the bottom of the food chain. There are some VERY good builds, don't get me wrong. However I just looked at all the Vegas pics and couldn't believe the armies with Relic Sicarans, Fire Raptors, and multi Knights.... I'm thinking what army are these people playing? Knights and spin the wheel on your troops? Xenos have the advantage. I'm okay with that. But toys are out... Toys make you lose games. Unfortunately toys are fun, but inefficient for competitive play. This is why I do better with Ultra's, because it's largely a tactical squad based army including the Chapter traits. Dark Angels have a lot of super fun builds though, unfortunately most are not very efficient... so you see a lot of people going 'outside' the codex for help... Knights, Sicarans, Fire Raptors, etc... I had the tactical edge on a lot of my opponents. I kept telling them in 7th they were still playing 6th. I'm known for being very tactically oriented player, but everyone has caught up. They stopped playing 'pew pew' and starting playing objectives. :) The balance of having enough bodies, survivability, and assault for Maelstrom is a very steep challenge for marines. I don't want to play the Captain America build so that's out... I do have some limits to what I'm willing to do. I personally have never been a fan of going outside the codex..... I saw a guy take half blood angels, an empty pod, filled it with Grav Centurions (Ultramarines can't even do this), add Tigurius to make it legal.... mix in the strongest elements of two marine codexes and now you can compete.... I just can't do this. lol I'm a purest to my own detriment and I accept that as a tactical weakness. I'm fine with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Captain Arkley Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 A man after my own heart :)... When I played in 2nd and 3rd My Ultramarines never took to the field without 6 Tactical Squads... I loved the looks on my opponents faces setting up 6 Tactical Squads. They were my backbone and if I played again I would use the same number... I agree to with that last comment I could not be that dirty :S... But some can the need to win trumps fair play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaplain Lucifer Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Prot, some food for thought: Considering you were DS-ing the assault squad, How about trading jump packs for a DW drop pod and adding combi-flmer to the sgt? I would take certainly one of those. How about a Fortitude banner to RW command squad instead and apothecary can be dropped. That way you will have FNP in more units of your army that the RW BK are supporting. I noticed your list is a bit different from your previous one that was more sinergetic. This one has cool units but they seem to lack sinergy the other one have. Or maybe DA is codex is finally exhausted and the only way to keep up is to Ravenwing and not much else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prot Posted March 7, 2015 Author Share Posted March 7, 2015 I don't know what to say... This isn't just negativity talking but I am having trouble seeing marines overall as being competitive, and DA in particular having it just a little bit tougher due to limited motivation for Tacticals. Every army I'm playing against has numerical superiority. Granted they are given this because they are allegedly not as resilient, and perhaps can't hit as hard. But here I am running Ravenwing which is quite pricey up against 12 man Nob Biker squads... sure I have some toys, but at the end of the day, they're jinking a 4+, and have FnP and slamming into me with a Strength 10 Warboss fist that is autoblicking me, and he's toughness 6. I look at the Dark Eldar guy I just played who even with my 'economic' Dark Angels is massively out numbering me. Yea his boats are cheaper because hey Rhino's / Razorbacks /tanks are so resilient and powerful? Really.... I'm getting pen'd by lances that treat everything as AV12. He's taking cheap boats, and with 5 pt wargear getting 4+ jinks army wide.... It just isn't really making sense to me. His HQ is running into my HQ which his is cheaper because again it's just eldar... he's got a 2+ invuln, an AP 2 Stregnth 6 blade, and he's rick rolling everything he runs into.... AND has FNP. Everything 'cheap' has fnp which extends it's survivability immensely. I have no idea how to compete against this without going outside the codex. Lately my 'star player' in my marine games has been a Sicaran tank... it's a unit that isn't in a 40K codex. Like I said, I look at all the Vegas tournament pics... there's a Knight and/or Fire Raptor, and/or Sicaran in nearly every list. I'm trying to remain positive, but if you put points into specialty units, it MUST pay off because before you even roll a dice, you're in the hole. So if you juice up a squad and it's not going to pay out, it's just making things worse. "Cheap" marine armies that gain all sorts of benefits just don't exist. It's not like the Xenos... heck even the Tyranid player I played extremely tactical against, but it was like hacking a tree down.... 37 extra gaunts by mid game, everything has a 3+ cover... now THAT is value in adding points to an army. When you can take cheap garbage with no armour and give it a 3+ cove save... I'm still mulling it over. The reason my lists look different as of late is because the meta is changing. To take small 'elite' lists is suicide now... unless you can make up the model count immensely with 'trickery'... like let's say Grey Knights, it just does not work. But this is probably the wrong forum for this conversation and I don't mean to come off as bitter. I had an amazing run for about a year with Dark Angels I probably won 8 out of 10 games. Now I probably lose 8 out of 10.... It's just different times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Captain Arkley Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Please correct me if I am wrong Prot... You sound like a competitive player? You want to win? If the DA atm are not giving you the wins due the current meta then yeah you will feel negative about it. The best thing you can do is find something that can give you wins .. Its not like you dislike DA? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prot Posted March 7, 2015 Author Share Posted March 7, 2015 Arkley, Yes I play in a competitive group. We've all won tournaments, and some still compete in them... there are a few though who just bring 'fluffy' stuff whenver they want. I have to assume you're just coming back to the forum? For (more or less) the past year or so I have made batreps and posts on playing Dark Angels in this environment since 7th came out.... I think a lot of people (and I mean a LOT) were playing 7th edition, particularly Maelstrom, incorrectly for a long time. Also other codexes kept getting better... the Dark Angels being one of the first of 7th is ... extremely conservative. I liked that it was a challenge. When I mow someone down, that isn't fun for me, nor the player I play against. I have retired armies for winning too easily far sooner than retiring an army for losing with it. Case and point: Necrons. I've also played them since they came out. I've played a dozen games with the Decurion formation (maybe more?) and I've retired it. I play the Necrons but refuse to use 1) The Decurion as a formation, and 2) the Canoptek Harvest mini formation. Why? Because not only did I beat all these guys that are destroying my DA, they never had a chance. They certainly didn't have any fun. I always feel bad about that. So DA not being 'strong' or 'competitive' is nothing new to me. But it appears the learning curve and 'netlisting' has caught up with me. I can't seem to figure out an angle (wihtout going outside of the codex) and competing anymore. I haven't given up just yet. I'm still willing to concede I could be missing something... I dunno what, but I know I won't be one of those guys with 3 knights or whatever. (BTW: part of why I'm doing this is because I didn't want to just post all my 'glorious' wins. The last months have been a massive slump but I wanted to be fair about reporting successes as well as failures. ( I probably only report 1 out of 3-5 games) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Captain Arkley Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 There is another point I have no clue about the game anymore last time I played was 3rd . I agree tabling someone is just not fun and I did that in 3rd. Although I took great pleasure tabling Elder in 2nd :) Yeah due to RL stuff I have been away for a while so have missed the glory days so to speak ... Well I have to admire your determination man. As you say you might be missing something? Me personally I would want more Tacticals for reasons you already know. The Assault squad do you feel they bring anything to the table? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isiah Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 I would say assault squads from the DA Codex seem a pretty poor option - and have been since 3rd Edition. You want mobile marines you are better off with Vets (or Tacs) in pods or use bikes. What you need in marine armies are bolters and heavy weapons and plenty of both. There are so many ways to be 'tricksy' with Marine armies that sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees. A get back to basics approach might be the tonic you need. Also v most hordes a relatively elite Marine army is always going to be outnumbered and outgunned - that's just a fact of life. My recommendation: play Astra Militarum and get guns, tanks and bodies aplenty - while still being on the good side :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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