1K Campaign Batrep follow up DA vs 50 Shades of Grey

[Prot]

We had some discussion concerning what to do with my Dark Angels in the campaign I'm in.

Basically I was trying to work on a unique angle that only DA could do (or else why play them?) and that angle was going to be based around a RW CMD SQD with Fortitude Banner, and I was forced to use an Elite slot last week.

At 1K I realized my elite options were limited, however I personally felt strongly motivated to take Deathwing Knights to compliment the army since the RW CMD squad could teleport them into play in turn 1, in a sweet spot. My model count was horribly low and I had to proxy.

What does 1K of such an elite list look like:

+++ There is a proxy here. The marines on the right are mimicing the Scouts on the far left. Also they each have a missile launcher. I never use scouts any more so I had to dig deep to find even 5.

The assault squad has 2 flamers. Command squad has the Libby with PFG. And of course the Whirlwind of mediocrity.

What does 1K of DE Look like: Enter evil craftworld: 50 Shades of Grey:

I know my army was going to be tiny, and a lot of it would be inconsequential due to the mass firing I would face, but seeing all the grey crap on the table was certainly a sobering moment of clarity: DA Elite isn't the way to go at 1K.

The Game:

It was a simple kill point mission with 3 objectives. I had a combination of poor luck and not going first....

There are few shots of this game because it was so short:

1. He got first turn. On the right side of the table (we are playing 4x4 for 1K). Luck and numbers were definitely on his side. He has wargear to get cover saves on his boats, and he always wants to roll for Nightfight since he can ignore it. So he got first turn, and nightfight.

He could see a tiny window on my Whirlwind. I really thought I set it up right, but his big boat moved a bit and claimed he could see a good portion of the WW. It lost a hullpoint and was stunned in turn one. I could not increase my 5+ cover save due to his ignoring night fight.

I lost count, but in a recap I added together that he had 52+ poison shots at my army. Plus 6 lances, and a handful of blasters.

Some counts were gone, the Assault squad was almost dead. Half the bikes took so many saves, that FnP was of no consequence. I was down to the Libby with one wound, 2 other bikers.

Keep in mind I hid the bike squad behind the centre structure but he had high ground on one side, and his boats simply formed a giant horse shoe formation and most had LoS after the move.

+ My half of turn 1, I have to get an objective, the missile scouts shoot, forcing him to jink. He has cheap wargear on his boats giving him cover jinks.... and with Nightfight I think his army pretty much at 3+ jinks mostly. The missiles from scouts did no damage but did cause a boat to jink which would be all the breathing room I would get.

I realized cover did nothing against such a fast army that simply flanked and pew pewed. So I had to stick my neck out.

The DW Knights came down, and ran up. Stupidly I forgot about his poison which ignored all the T5 models I had on the table anyway.... so I'm paying points for something that has zero effect in this game: Namely termies and bikers.

I shoot his other lance boat, but he 3+ jinks all the plasma. I fall short of the charge, and am just sticking out of cover.

Turn 2:

Whirlwind takes another hullpoint,and is re-stunned thus preventing any movement or firing again.

Assault squad is finished off. Bike squad is down to Libby with 1 wound, lost Fortitude banner, scouts in ruins.

I shoot my two missiles, he jinks both, I can't do anything else so i have to concede because my next game would be with my chaos instead and I could see no salvaging this as he had zero casualties and his turn 3 would have most assuredly erased everything I had left except maybe the scouts which weren't doing anything.

Conlcusion:

It sounds bad. It was bad. Night fight, 52 poison shots a turn at 36" really sucks ignoring T5. 8-10 Lance shots also was way more than a few bikes can handle.

This is what really blows my mind about GW's pointing system. The DE in this game were more survivable than my DA and I'm paying a boat load for marine armour and T5. He's got an army that jinks at 3+ and has Feel No Pain that gets better by the turn. But his stuff is far cheaper because it has AV10 and poor armour saves. The problem is cover and FnP is actually better than the crap he's putting on the table so it's deceivingly survivable.

At 1K, my DA list did not work. But honest at 1K I don't think much would have because you will never have the feet on the table a cheap Xenos army can and a basic game like this is all about shooting.

Honestly I would take this core in a 1500-1850 list easily though. At 1K the core is the same as if it were 2K. That's the problem... at 1K I can't take full advantage of the Fortitude banner. But I could see with a stronger cluster of models around the banner, it would have been much harder for him to just focus on one unit. Heck I could have had a cheap Shroud giving the command squad a 2+ jink, and that would force some very tough decisions on any opponent. But at 1K the model count is just way too small.

So for now, I have put away the Dark Angels. At 1K I don't think any marines are at an advantage in the era of shooty xenos, but the DA feel particularly handicapped. The difference is the options afforded vanilla marines at low levels can help a bit more I find... I think DA excel and specialize a bit more in the elite area, which doesn't really play well at 1K.

Thanks for reading. And here's hoping all these rumours actually amount to something for DA!

[Shubniggurath]

I feel your pain, brother...

 

I myself don't play my DA at 1k. It's a bit sad. There's just not much we can do, but that's true for other chapters as well. It's definitely not the sweet spot for marine players...!

[Varizel]

If you don't mind me asking Prot, why not put the Assault Marines on Drop Pod? Since the list seems to favor infiltrating scouts with deep striking Knights and scouting bikes for mean alpha strike, with the knights for counter assault on 2nd turn... unless i'm mistaken about it? Why banner of fortitude too instead of devastation to augment the scout shooting? Just wondering. 

[Prot]

There is a longer thread on how to deconstruct the Dark Angels for a 1K game. In it we discussed ways to make up for the prohibitive costs of our units. 

 

Basically I also kept noticing something really annoying; most xenos have access to FnP which is not only extending their survivability but actually making them more resilient than their inherent armour does (6+ save models are cheap, but they tend to hang around with 5+ fnp)

 

So with toughness 5 under my belt, I really thought this might work. I still do actually. I would use this (maybe not the DWknights) as the core of the idea. Just at 1K I don't think it works. I also happened to face a poison army that means all the points we pay for toughness are wasted.

 

++++++++++++

 

Personally, unless it's on a suicide unit, I won't take one pod in a list. 

[SnakeChisler]

Dark Eldar are the shining light of the term "Glass Hammer"

 

What they don't have is ignores cover and what they do tend to do is race around the edges running rings around you, they have long range tank killers by the bucketful but mostly mounted in av10 vehicles. They also as do poison and well poison.

 

In terms of match ups then terminators were probably not such a good idea but I can't see that you could write off DA completely.

 

I would say though that GW have split us into the haves and the have nots

 

There is 1 special rules here which really should be sorted out on a 40k system level

 

Those with ignores cover & Those without

 

By bumping up Jink to 4+ a whole load of skimmers can now get 3+ by various means at quite cheap levels if their army also has ignores cover your dead in the water most of the time. The only real counter SM has is cheap Rhinos & Drop Pods and just flooding the areas.

 

In my recent games the Ravenwing command are still the stars and the Banner O' Spam is getting tattered round the edges from extremely high use, its gone from take occasionally to must have but the bike squads are taking a back seat I just cant get enough bodies on the table and am fielding a lot more tactical marines.

 

Anyways Necrons are the New Eldar they even make Tau look a bad choice

[Prot]

I agree about the ravenwing CMd squad. However after playing it for a year with dakka banner I like to think fortitude is plausible. But nevertheless you bring up a point that reinforces my break from da and that is bodies in the form of tacticals and pods. I just think ultras do it a lot better not just because of chapter tactics but in the form of cheap support and spam units

 

Also the termies were my fault. I always have a soft spot for them in all my armies but admittedly a terrible match up!

[SnakeChisler]

I've spun off some of my force into an SM codex on quite a few occasions mostly to see how it would gel as an ally

 

It also lets me use Legion of the Damned as an Elite choice from Codex SM, I was originally going to build a Sternguard squad but the idea of LOD took over and being able to field them in a number of ways without diving into a Chapter and having a HQ and troop choice made my mind up for me.

 

I'm still thinking of building a small Iron Hands Force though as I've a Tech on a Bike conversion with a custom made conversion beamer and after running it a few times it really messes with my Tau mates head in that if he stays at range and I get say ignores cover with Divination he's gonna get a dose of his own medicine.

 

The other unit I quite fancy is the scouts in the speeder mostley coz we have a cron player in our group and the Dark Talon Blind thing as well as the Nerf bomb is really messing him up, I don't think the Necrons have passed a blind test yet. I know the blast on the speeder isn't that strong but low initiative units are really going to be nerfed by it.

 

The DA Ravenwing Command squad Dovetail with a Marine force quite well especially if you've a load of long range stuff forcing your opponent to come close and deal with it and having the Forge Master join them for the combat run adds a load of power-fist attacks.

 

Anyways let us know how you get on