DA Battle Reports from Luth

[luthhero]

Hey folks!  So I had the chance to play in a 1500pt tourney last weekend and it has some unique restrictions:

- No formation over 500pts

-No Super Heavy/Gargantuan over 8 Wounds/HP

-No Unbound.

-At end of game subract the loser's VPs from the Winner's VPs and that is the Winner's total.

 

So I decided to take the Lions Blade Detachment as I have been itching to put it on the table.  My group and I came back from Adepticon really pumped to play clean and well thought out games so this was our first event back from that event and it was 12 players strong.  

My list was simple.  I knew I wanted to play the Silence Squad as everyone seems to mostly disklike our flyers or think they are underpowered for the cost.  I think they look awesome and the mega bolter variant on the Nephilim puts out a ton of shots with strafing run.  

 

Lion's Blade

2x Battle Demi Companies with Chaplain and Company Master (no upgrades)

All Squads were just marines with bolters/bolt pistols because it came to 500pts but 20 ob sec units felt awesome

Each company had all razorbacks with 3 special weapons per comapy (3 Las/Plas and 3 TL Las)

Ravenwing Silence Squadron

 

RD 1 vs Ultramarines

Mission was Eternal War Scouring with Vanguard Deployment

His list was the SM flyer Squad, with a CAD of Land Raider w/ Chronus, Cpt. Sicarius, terminators, 2 kitted out Tac Squads.

I went first

 

From the get go he was outgunned and outmanned.  I hit the Land raider early on with 2 HP and so he dropped his Terminators out on foot so they wouldn't get stuck.  Poor Sicarius was not connected to a Squad for some reason and thus ended up with a lascannon to the face.  There were tons of ruins on the board so his foot marines hid and lost a couple guys over a few turns but he never had the firepower to really get my guys out of metal boxes.  I ended up killing everything but the landraider and Chronus and scored 11 VPs at the end after all was said and done.  The Silence Squadron came screaming in and killed most of his foot stuff and wrecked 2 of his flyers.  They were really amazing in this game.

 

RD 2 vs Orcs

Eternal War with Dawn of War Deployment.  

He had 2 flyers, Battlewagon, 2 Trukks, Scorcha, 2 killa cans and a def dred.  Mad Doc was there as well as warboss a bunch of boyz and some nobs in eavy armor some grots were in deepstrike

Orc goes first.

 

He rushes most everything up into my face for the turn 2 charge.  On Killa Can stays way in the back with the grots on a far objective and the other plus the Def Dred move up the board as fast as they can. 

I move up and just shoot at some stuff, Kill one of the Kans I can see and wreck the Def dred.  I blow up one trukk, Immobllize another and put some damage on the Battlewagon.  I kill some orcs and just move around to some objectives.  

He opens some razorbacks and assaults some guys.  His jets come in and do some crazy things with the bombs as well as shoot some stuff.  His scorcha comes in and does nothing.  He kills some guys but loses a lot on overwatch (Full BS bolters doing work!).  

I gain some massive advantage here as he is out in the open.  My planes come in and force his to jink or killed a lot of dues in the open.  At this time I for some reason decide to focus on the grots in the back with a 3+ cover like a moron instead of just killing everything in my face.  learned my lesson.  I move onto some objectives and guys who lost their boxes run into cover or move over to other areas to contest control

He gets some sweet assaults in but mostly just kills vanilla dark angel guys with bolters.  He was getting discouraged at this time because 50 power armored marines plus 10 free razorbacks is highly annoying.  

My jets do more work and the Dark talon drops a Str 10 ap 1 on his warboss and makes him disappear into the void.  

Game is called and I get 9 vps because I screw up the grot location and allow Mad Doc to do things he couldn't do

 

This game was weird as for starters we have dubbed this player "cheater" paul beause of the last event he showed up to (his first) where he just made rules up.  I'm an old 40k player returned after 6 years out of the game so I'm very rusty and don't know everything so I took his word as truth and later found out he just made things up for his benefit.  So he did similar things in this game and I was so far ahead and just satisfied I was crushing him I let him get away with crap and in hindsight......I was hurting our community as much as he was.  I should've called him on it and just had the judge DQ him but that was on me.  But for instance I blew up his Battlewagon with Mad Doc in it and he moved 6 inches away from the spot.........instead of being in the middle in the open where he would have died to combined las fire.  Anyways on to my fav game of the day.

 

 

RD 3 vs Ravenwing (or Fallenwing?)

Eternal war Purge the Alien (I think?)

He has Sammy, Libby, Black Knights (5 man), Support Squad with Dark Shroud and Typhoon speeders, 2 5 man bike squads with grav, Attack Squad with 3 bikes with meltaguns and another Typhoon speeder.  

I go first and reserves everything but the support squad and the attack squad.

 

We both joke at the beginning of the game that he will just be jinking unless otherwise stated for the course of the game.

I move up with everything going cruising speed except the few Lascannons I want to force his guys to jink since everything is in reserve.  I can't see his 3 man unit of bikers due to terrain but he isn't planning on them moving until the rest of his army came on on turn 2.  My jets come in with nothing to really shoot except to make his guys jink.  At this point I'm not sure what to do as I have nothing to do but position.  I will say I position poorly as I should be moving my guys flat out to get to great areas but  I don't an keep a gunline.  I also have a complete brain blank and forget he can outflank from the sides and so I tilt my rear armor the wrong way and on his turn....well he kills a lot of razorbacks

 

All the ravenwing come in and I lose some razorbacks.  I'm not suprised but I think he is as though he blew up lots of tanks....I just have way to many objective secure units for him to really handle.  

 

At this point the details aren't important as basically he just keep grinding dudes off but with no objective secure and just not enough guns to do serious damage plus NO answer to my flyers pecking away at everything he just grabs a few points and I win again.  

 

At this point I'm feeling good as I have 32 Victory points and then.....My friend who got tabled RD 1 vs the Orc Player tables his next 2 opponents for 20 pts apiece and ends up winning.  I get 2nd which is sweet and I have a great time besides the Orc player.  

 

Things I learned:

-Massed Ob Sec is just groovy.  Doesn't matter if you don't have bells and whistles on your squads.  Power armor and bolters just win games.  I killed more guys with overwatch bolters than I anticipated and it was just I was rolling hot it was just overload of shots.  Now granted as the points scale up (and not formation restrictions) I will have special weapons which seem even sillier with full BS overwatch.  

- The Flyers were all stars.  Yes they are probably more expensive than they need to be but man they killed so many things and made up points in 2 games.

- Like you didn't know free things are good.  Free Razorbacks are better.  Ob Sec and heavy weapon box...can't say enough about it

- Ravenwing Support Squad might be the best per point cost Formation in the game.  I play ravenwing as well and took it to the Team Event at Adepticon and people underestimated and honestly....it out performed everything there that I saw.  I wish I had taken it instead of the flyers simply for full BS overwatch when people tried to charge it.  

- Always look to improve the community even if you find it uncomfortable as cheaters make any game not fun to play and if no one says anything they will always do that and just kill a gaming group

 

 

It was an awesome day and I look forward to tinker with the Lion's Blade force even more.  I see reason to run some of the razorbacks as rhinos especially with the Devs since you can overwatch from the firepoints and 10 full BS overwatch Grav Cannon shots just FEEEEEELS legit.  Something I will toy with.  Anyways hope you guys had a chance to read it and I would appreciate your thoughts.  

 

Also I will be just updating this post with future battle reports as we are planning on do many MANY more games in the coming days/weeks/months and I will have a slew of lists and such popping up here.  Hopefully next time with pictures.  Right now I am in the process of airbrushing the army so various stages of painting will be on display.

[DarkAngeal]

Thanks for taking the time to write this out for us! I have been eager to run the lion's blade at full power, but I don't have enough transports to make it all the way worth it.

We have a guy like that in our gaming group, nicknamed "Jimmy the D" by our T/O. Everyone is pretty wise to his ways now, but he still tries to push around any new players

[luthhero]

Thanks for leaving a comment!  I have increased my playing time dramatically (mostly because I sold any other ccg/minis game/board game except 40k) because having a family makes you focus so its been nice kicking off the rust and rolling a pile of d6s again.  As far as "That Guy" is concerned I think there comes a point in every community's growth that you need to basically trim the tree.  That can take many forms: No one plays against the guy outside of events, ask him politely to stop coming until he shapes up, get him DQed from every event (I don't really like this as it puts a cloud over a tournament) I'm sure there are others.  Or just call him out on everything.  One of my friends has said he will start measuring and moving the models for that guy to make sure he is fair.  As I mentioned above I am miffed at myself that I didn't say more during that game as then the gentleman thinks he can keep doing what he is doing.  The frustrating thing of it is that at the end of the game I myself moved a unit of guys into some terrain, rolled my dice and moved them.  I then moved all my other stuff and entered shooting phase.  This particular unit had nothing to shoot at so I just said "I'm going to run these guys".  The other player gets frustrated and is like "You've already run them sir".  I had to think for a second as I had run some guys as there are a ton of models on the table but I'm 99% sure I didn't move these guys.  I just shrug and say...."Ok" and move on.  After the game there were 3 or 4 people watching and they came up and said "You never ran that unit btw"  I just look at them and them and mention they could have said something since they were bystanders.  Its not like this is the finals at some major event. 

 

I say all that to reinforce that it takes the whole community to make your FLGS environment friendly, competitive and clean.  So its something we are going to work on as I learned a tremendous amount about sportsmanship, clean play and just play fun ways to run events from Adepticon.  Anywho thanks again for reading!  There will be a ton to come!

[Chaplain Lucifer]

Nicebattlereport.

 

Sorry about your second game, but I think the day itself was worth it.

I am particularly interested on the Silence squadron. Do you feel they justified the points? Could you managed with just 2 flyers (2 DT's/Nephilim/one of each)? 

[luthhero]

So I am still torn on the Slience Squadron.  The best thing about the formation is that fact all 3 come in on one roll that is rerollable.  That has been my biggest complaint about flyers or reserves in general.  To many times I don't get them on turn 2.  I know that a Skyshield could have the Dark Talon start in play but I got this formation in every game on turn 2 due to rerolling the reserve roll.  Or in my case I would just throw 2 dice to speed up the process.  The Nephilims were all stars as they forced my opponents into bad situations because of either running for cover since that plane ignores all of the Orks armor or the space marines just dying to weight of fire.  It reminds me of a more mobile Dakka Predator that I used to run.  Its also by far the most survivable flying because of the reroll jink and Armor 11 with 3 HP.  I'm actually more disappointed with the dark talon.  Yes it did get me a Slay the Warlord and it can get a large of amount of wounds with the hurricane bolters/stasis bombs but I only was able to use the bomb once because I dropped into hover mode an needed to get some good positioning more so that bombing something long range.  Now granted the one time I did bomb I got a ton of ork wounds and they got wrecked and failed leadership so that was awesome.  I can see it being really good forcing saves on other armies.  I will be testing the squad as a whole more.  The chance of getting that miracle warlord kill with the stasis bomb is so small that I don't even count that as a formation bonus for the extra d3 VPs.  

 

So imho the Nephilim may still be "slightly" overcosted buuuuut one thing to note is that it has a lot of extra rules that are important.  Missile Lock, Strafing Run and Unrelenting Hunter are all amazing.  Case in point the Space Marine 3 flyer formation only has strafing run on the big flyer if the other 2 are alive and all of our flyers have it plus Missile Lock.  Rerolling all kinds of items is fantastic.  I suspect the new technomany Psyker power will be really interesting on our flyers.  Over all I never lost a flyer all day despite fights 2 flyer armies (at 1500 pts no less) and they killed tons of stuff.  I suggest giving the Formation a go.  

 

I think if I could have run the 2 Nephilims by themselves I would have to answer your last question but because it was a Lion's Blade I had to pay for the Dark talon since it was the Aux choice.  Maybe in a CAD or in the Ravenwing Strikeforce (though there are issues there as we all know) I could've just run 2 but its all or nothing when you bring the blade!

[SnakeChisler]

Thanks for the report

 

When I take Flyers I fetch them with Ravenwing Strike Force T2 Auto rule with a Librarian on a Bike (solo + Shroud)

 

Saves on messing especially when most people roll on Strategic for Warlord traits these days and you could end up with -1 to your reserve roll.

[luthhero]

Very true Snake.  But Alas I was in the Lions Blade and the points where tight.  I could have just run 2 flyers and maybe the min scouts I don't know the points off the top of my head but I think it would be somewhere equal.  I believe I could have gotten some other gear on the Libby as well or the scouts.  Maybe I will try that next time since it does allow me some psyker stuff.

[SnakeChisler]

Suggestion was for when you had some more room 1500 is a tight fit for anything

Not having 3 planes I'd not really checked the formation out much, the added rules are pretty neat especially the no scatter bomb, it only needs to suck someone up once to cause panic every time it comes on, same with the Nova :)

If I'm scrambling for a cheap Aux I tend to use an attack bike or twin 2*HB speeder

The Nephalim is better than its older version at least the missiles are S7 AP3 now with a re-roll, you should be able to upgrade the HB's though to something a bit stronger its still looks more of an infantry killer (opinion).

Auspex on both Characters is the only suggestion I'd say was a must to your list it may only be 12" range but as you don't roll to hit and it has split fire built in it will nerf an opponents Flyers jink save by -1 as well as other stuff

[luthhero]

For sure on that.  I was under a tight restriction though as each formation had to be at 500 pts and I felt the extra Razorback special weapon was more important.  The Neph is much better at infantry killing.  I know the Las is an inexpensive upgrade but losing 5 shots vs a single rerollable shot never felt better.  Plus against other flyers and light vehicles you still have enough punch to drop them.   Anyways the next iteration of this list will be some major overhauls as I move it up to 1850.  I'll post something later on a game I will be playing this week.  I'm also going to revist the ravenwing again and some other thoughts.  I really want to try Prot's Az-Ek bomb in the lions blade as I felt it was built to take advantage of that.  I mean a command squad with 4++ relentless grav guns and the 2 boss monsters in a pod feels awesome....oh and the command squad is Ob Sec with full BS overwatch

[Chmur]

Not to be nitpicky, but how did you fit the upgraded Razorbacks under 500pts? The way I look at it, cheapest Lion's Blade (w scouts) and no upgrades is 495pt. No argument about free transports due to 2x Demi, but each of those upgraded weapons on the Razorbacks puts you 20 pts up, meaning you ran each Lion's Blade at 555? Or is there some hidden math I am missing?

[DarkAngeal]

Not to be nitpicky, but how did you fit the upgraded Razorbacks under 500pts? The way I look at it, cheapest Lion's Blade (w scouts) and no upgrades is 495pt. No argument about free transports due to 2x Demi, but each of those upgraded weapons on the Razorbacks puts you 20 pts up, meaning you ran each Lion's Blade at 555? Or is there some hidden math I am missing?

The Lion's Blade is a detachment made of formations. It is the individual formations that were limited

[luthhero]

Dark Angeal is correct.  The Lion's Blade asks for a single Aux to make it legal.  Each Demi Company is baseline 440 points (Assault,Dev,Tactical Squads + Chaplain/Captain) so that gave me 60 points for upgrades and I opted to just upgrade 3 razorbacks in each Demi Company.  

[Chmur]

 

Not to be nitpicky, but how did you fit the upgraded Razorbacks under 500pts? The way I look at it, cheapest Lion's Blade (w scouts) and no upgrades is 495pt. No argument about free transports due to 2x Demi, but each of those upgraded weapons on the Razorbacks puts you 20 pts up, meaning you ran each Lion's Blade at 555? Or is there some hidden math I am missing?

The Lion's Blade is a detachment made of formations. It is the individual formations that were limited

 

 

 

Dark Angeal is correct.  The Lion's Blade asks for a single Aux to make it legal.  Each Demi Company is baseline 440 points (Assault,Dev,Tactical Squads + Chaplain/Captain) so that gave me 60 points for upgrades and I opted to just upgrade 3 razorbacks in each Demi Company.  

 

Thanks, still new to this whole detachment and formation thingie, now even my math checks out :)

[luthhero]

No worries!  I had skipped 6th edition and only really started playing again once our new codex came out so I was new to it as well and asked a ton of questions.  The Lion's Blade/Gladius (for SM) is one of the more powerful formations out there.  Playing ahead of your opponent by 550 or more points feels really good and people's faces were just dumbfounded at my store to see all the armor.  I see more people talk about this detachment more than I see people actually playing it so it was nice to take it for a spin.  I know of improvements already so I will be posting for everyone to see here.