gainsay Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Is an all death wing force really playable in 7th? Or is it to elite? I know people play them but I don't want to get roasted every game. I've always wanted to start and all DW army and seeing the rumors of a possible new codex this gives me some inspiration to get the models. no elder jetbike massacre comments lol... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaplain Lucifer Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Yes, it is playable. Can it beat top-tier? no. Can it hold it's own against take all-comers? yes! It has a steep learning curve but it is playable as long as you don't swim with the sharks. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gainsay Posted April 21, 2015 Author Share Posted April 21, 2015 I think if I run all DW they will be tactical termies just because I like the models what's the best strat for them? DW assault? Foot slogging? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaplain Lucifer Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 My favourite is footslogging. I can DW assault if I want or I can just start on the board. Ther eis also a popular list with 2 land raiders and 4 terminator squads that involves pushing forward with the land raiders on turn 1 and DS-ing the half the termiantors on turn two (search for march10K list on Army lists forum) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prot Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Is an all death wing force really playable in 7th? Or is it to elite? I know people play them but I don't want to get roasted every game. I've always wanted to start and all DW army and seeing the rumors of a possible new codex this gives me some inspiration to get the models. no elder jetbike massacre comments lol... Here's what I would honestly say. Dark Angel Terminators are too expensive. Period. So right off the hop you're dealing with an inefficiency. Secondly Terminators at this stage of 7th edition are inefficient. Xenos spammy shooting and the plethora of AP 2, including what I call 'lucky' AP2 (IE: Bladestorm, Rending, etc) further put you in the hole. That being said I've always, always played terminators to varying degrees in every army including Deathwing. Right now I play nearly full terminator lists in Grey Knights, and I can better support them with Nemesis Dreadknights. Dark Angels can get a very similar synergy going with Black Knights believe it or not. The reason I'm mentioning this comparison is while I won't say any Terminator list is super strong (you're not going to see one win a grand/national tournament), the Grey Knight variant feels notably better. Why? Because they're cheaper, do more, and have a 'bonus' phase of psychic ability which is flexible enough to either A) add survivability, B ) increase offensive output, or C) create additional force multipliers. Back to Deathwing you have some very cool advantages there, but Belial is your tax. There is no GK tax. However Belial does bring distinct advantages along with your first turn terminator assault, you're sticking wherever you land making the opponent very uneasy. Unfortunately this is very easy to defend against if you know what you're doing. Deathwing Knights are a strange animal. One turn of godliness and great death star survivability. But in an army with serious lack of shooting, these guys can be stuck simply holding their maces in the middle of nowhere if you're not very careful. In the end it's up to you, but this is a very unforgiving build to play with in any army. Stack on top of that the inefficiencies I mentioned, and you have a very difficult army to play successfully in a competitive environment. If you're just playing with friends, and no one is netlisting, or going for the jugular in your games, by all means this will be fun. But otherwise you're going to have to accept a learning curve with it. All those warnings aside, it's a damn fun army to try. Some of my best DA moments are with my Belial lists, however, at the end of the day you may find as I did, that you really will do much better with multiwing support.... which I think is key to playing the army long term and not getting fatigued with its shortcomings. Just my 2 cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stoic Raptor Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 I wish they were as fun and effective as they are in the Dark Angels mod for Dawn of War. Yesterday I had great fun Deep Striking a whole -load of Deathwing onto an Ork base - which was annihilated in seconds, :) Still, Terminators are my favorite thing to paint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dread_Hospitaller Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Deathwing are one of my most played varieties of DA. From my experience, to play Deathwing, you have to break your mindset. It is an army that outright feels an edition or two behind in rules and tactics, and you have to either embrace it or compensate for it. Personally, I embrace it. Here's how my typical Deathwing army looks. Belial, command squad with a banner of fortitude (only takes 2 successful FNP saves to make its cost back in a Deathwing army), knights if I know I'm going to be facing a deathstar (8-man squad is my preferred number), contemptor mortis in a lucius pattern drop pod if I'm going to be fighting flyers, a ravenwing squad or two, then the rest 5-man deathwing squads (usually get 4 or so squads in, less if I include a librarius conclave). Each squad has 2-3 th/ss termies to tank ap2 shots, any heavy flamer squads has some lightning claws to make it an assault group, and plasma cannons are my top pick for weapons, at least 2 squads will carry one. Tactics wise, you play what I call a reverse shell game. Everything but the ravenwing is held in reserve. The ravenwing are deployed in as many combat squads as possible and spread across the deployment zone, zipping up to the center of the board with their scout move. You force the enemy to react; wherever he doesn't clear out the ravenwing is at risk of having all 20-30 terminators coming down. If you go first, then the enemy's been forced to either spread out or bunker up in a corner during their deployment; you're fine either way. Deathwing deepstrike turn 1 (the joke at my GW shop is I loudly announce how secretly I'm marking the turn I'm coming down, then putting a dice facing up with 1 on top of the tallest terrain piece), and pick the area you can crush the most in an alpha strike, maintain the most board control (pro tip: having a nigh unbreakable phalanx of terminators in the center of the board with a 24-36 threat range controls basically all of the board), then roll tide and react based on your opponent; if you use a contemptor and lucius pattern drop pod, the shrouding effect from the pod does a lot to help limit and muddy lines of fire so you can focus on just one section of the enemy army. Against smaller elite armies, you move your phalanx as one group, crushing the biggest threats in turn with shooting and assaults. Swarm type armies like nids are dealt with in a similar fashion; deathwing crush bugs good. Armies like tau, your phalanx becomes a grenade, and your terminators scatter out and tackle individual threats. Only takes one squad to crump firewarriors or crisis suits in an assault, after all. Basically, with Deathwing, if you're going to play them, you stack them up and use every advantage you can get. Deathwing Assault to get to the center of the board beginning of turn 1 what would take you 2-3 turns by foot (seriously, foot slogging deathwing? Foot slogging is just a slow way to die). Vengeful strike to make the most of your limited heavy weapons. FNP on as many terminators as possible to mitigate the effects of loads of dakka. Fearless, as one terminator can hold an objective just as well as a squad, and obsec ftw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aura_enchanted Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 It can be played yes but can anyone learn to play it quickly like some other lists? No prepare to take lots of bruising before you come to grips with it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dread_Hospitaller Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Dude, you're playing 40k. No army worth playing comes without taking a couple severe beatings first while you learn the ropes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prot Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Dude, you're playing 40k. No army worth playing comes without taking a couple severe beatings first while you learn the ropes. While that's fairly true... I think what Aura is saying is that this is perhaps a higher learning curve kind of army. "Playing 40K' as you say with a little Deathwing army (for our example) has a far longer line of 'severe beatings' than I would say... Necrons would. I think that is probably what he's saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomber Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 The hardest part about pure Deathwing is simply model count. Volume fire at a squad and you will roll ones and lose models. (My other army is Tau...volume fire is always on my mind). That said Deathwing is still fun. I'm by no means a win at all costs player. I play for fun...and honestly haven't had opportunity to play in a while. As long as I have fun, that is all that matters. Even if I lose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultra Magnus Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Deathwing make great units but a poor army for all of the reasons that Prot and others have listed above. If you enjoy Terminators by all means use them but I think you would do better, across the broad spectrum of Maelstrom and other mission types, to use a more traditional list and incorporate your Deathwing Terminators as a hammer unit to augment the list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gainsay Posted April 21, 2015 Author Share Posted April 21, 2015 Thanks for all the advice. Its a bummer how bad terminators are right now in comparison to pretty much every unit after 4th edition. My hope is when the new DA dex comes out they become a thing again... I'm not overly competitive I like to play fluffy armies and have fun... that said I don't like getting my face smashed in. I think DW assault is the way to go but against armies like tau and the elder jet bikes from hell I couldn't possibly see how you could win. I think I miss the assault cannon nostalgia! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultra Magnus Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Yup the extreme prevalence of AP2 shooting has ruined tactical Terminators. They would be totally worth it if the vast majority of your opponents actually had to roll against that 2+ save, but with every tactical and bike squad sporting plasma/melta/grav in multiples, a 5 man unit will get prematurely gunned down by a squad costing 1/2 - 2/3rds it's points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shubniggurath Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 I pretty much stopped playing Deathwing at 1850/2000 pts. While I do enjoy a nice challenge, it's just brutal. I was getting stomped again and again by my friends. Like Prot said, it's too damn expensive. I'll still play them in big games (like 4k, 50/50 Deathwing and Ravenwing) and Apoc (nothing cooler than a :cussload of bone-white terminators dropping in turn 1), but right now I'm having lots of fun (and success) with my Ravenwing. Good luck to anyone still playing pure Deathwing...! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlamingDeth Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 Complaining about point costs and AP 2 doing stat comparisons is all well and good in a vacuum, but its hard to put a price on deep striking and vengeful strike. In an army comprised primarily of DWT squads and black knights you have the tools to take out nearly anything and some pretty insane alpha strike potential. The trick is just to make sure you take full of the teleport homers and Belial's scatterless DS, and make sure you keep an eye on firing lanes. It can be tricky but it's definitely not impossible, and like everyone has been saying, there's a learning curve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lokil Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 Cardinal Virtue, while you do have a pointin saying that it is hard to put a value on veangeful strike it is not hard to put a value on 4 Strength 6 shots... But since we all know that we lose the army comparisons (most armies to most things better than we do) we should focus on the things we do well, even if there are armies out there that do it better... Other than that I cannot add anything to the DW debate as everything has been said imho in the posts above. Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dread_Hospitaller Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 Again, this is why I advocate focusing on what we have others do not. For one, the ability to freely mix stormshields with our heavy weapons. Face the shields towards the big scary ap2 stuff, and laugh. Banner of Fortitude, making your ball of terminators an unkillable block of ceramite since before it was cool to bitch about our codex. Plasma cannons, oh jesus plasma cannons, have you guys actually run them on your deathwing? Its amazing. Really. A religious experience, almost. Also, there is nothing in the game (short of flyers) that can't be killed by throwing enough terminators as it until it goes away. Preferably by throwing 2-3 squads of terminators at it at once, to knock it down in one turn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master Sheol Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 I like DW with a passion and i own about 45 terminators of various kind (including a Squad of old metal DW terminators) but i must admit that terminators of any kind excluding GK are overcosted now and DW ones pay a tax For special rules on an already overcosted template... This is why i usually Field just one DW Squad or two (sometimes DWK) in a regular multiwing army... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Truckin Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 For what it's worth - I've been following this guy's battle reports on youtube (tabletop tactics). He uses all Deathwing - Belial with 3 Land Raiders and a Dread. Might give you an idea(s) - and it's pretty cool to watch. Deathwing vs Space Wolves https://youtu.be/y2f3L5oW_FU Deathwing vs Iron Hands https://youtu.be/s0Ro1QMW4dY Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.