First 8th ed Templar experiances

[Closet Skeleton]

Haven't seen a thread like this.

 

Returned to loyalists for my 3rd and 4th 8th ed games yesturday.

 

List

Battalion Detachment

Chaplain in terminator armour (crozius, storm bolter)

Techmarine with servo harness and power axe

 

Crusader Squad

8 initiates with chainswords inc power maul and meltagun, 1 sword brother with power fist, 5 neophytes with combat blades

 

Crusader Squad

9 initiates with chainswords inc power sword and meltagun, 1 sword brother with power fist, 5 neophytes with astartes shotguns

 

Crusader Squad

4 initiates with 2 bolt guns, rocket launcher and plasma gun, 1 sword brother with power fist and bolt gun, 5 neophytes with bolt guns

 

Rhino with storm bolter

 

Land Raider Crusader with Multi melta

 

Land Raider Crusader with Multi melta

 

Vanguard Detachment

Captain with Storm Shield and Relic Blade (which is illegal now but I only noticed that later), warlord

 

5 Assault terminators (2 claw pairs, 3 hammer/shield)

 

Company Ancient (bolt pistol)

 

Apothecary

 

Played two 2000 point Maelstrom games both cut short to 90 minutes by tables being booked.

 

First game against a Knight Acheron (warlord), Knight Gallant and one knights with gatling cannon and one with thermal cannon.

 

We deployed on the short table edges, so I put my rhino and its squad 24" forwards on one side of the battlefield and my two land raiders full of stuff right at the back on the other side. This ended up making turn 1 almost uneventful and kept the knight with thermal cannon almost entirely out of the game and gave me a turn to fight the gallant by itself.

 

Managed to kill the Gallant and the Acheron, she didn't get any objectives. Lost the rhino and 2 crusader squads with the remaining squad being reduced to just 4 guys.

 

Acheron butchered the rhino and its squad on turn 2 (losing 3 wounds to an explosion but shrugging off the plasma gun which overheated on 2 1s and the rocket launcher) got to survive on 1 wound after turn 3 and 4s shooting and turn 3's assault from a big crusader squad, so my captain, techmarine and both landraiders charged it but the techmarine managed to kill it with a servo arm before I needed to roll with anything else.

 

I beat the Gallant down to 4 wounds with two land raiders shooting and a charging crusader squad and captain. It withdrew to let a fresh knight in to wreck that crusader squad so I deep struck my terminators behind it and finished them off.

 

Multimeltas did nothing until turn 4 when they helped bring down the Acheron. The S4 bolters and chainswords didn't cause a lot of wounds but the ones they did cause were necessary.

 

With half her army dead and no victory points other than first blood and only 10 minutes left before the table had to be given over she conceded.

 

2nd game against Necrons only lasted 3 turns due to the table also being booked. Spoils of War Mission

 

Enemy had 10 immortals with gauss and 10 with tesla, 20 warriors with gauss, 2 squads of 10 deathmarks, 2 heavy destroyers, a big scarab unit, the nightbringer and a bunch more characters including 2 special characters.

 

I charged in my terminators into the tesla immortals on turn 1 in order to get an objective and stop the necrons from taking it due to spoils of war. The immortals overwatch did 3 wounds, but they failed to do anything over 3 rounds of close combat so my 3 remaining terminators managed to butcher all of them. The Chaplain failed his charge so he got shot at by deathmarks, but survived on 2 wounds to get charged by scarabs, who only did 1 wound thanks to a command point reroll on my 2+ save. Then a crusader squad charged out of their land raider and rescued the chaplain, only for another round of deathmark shooting him dealing 1 wound which got past his save but no mortal wounds, so I spent a command point to reroll the regular 2+ save which kept him alive.

 

I made the mistake of thinking that the crozius was still +2 strength so probably shouldn't have killed that many scarabs but I doubt it affected things much since the crusaders would have killed them anyway.

 

Rhino Squad didn't do much except kill a few warriors and gauss immortals before getting reduced to 2 men by deathmark shooting. Then I spent my last 2 command points on insane courage to deny my opponent a maelstrom card.

 

The warriors moved forwards right in front of two land raiders to shield the C'tan. This got them charged by a big crusader squad, my marshall and my ancient banner bearer. The C'tan got first blood splatting the ancient with 1 attack, so throwing him in was probably a mistake, but the Marshall's storm shield kept him unwounded for the whole game. After two turns of land raider shooting and not enough reanimation rolls the warriors got obliterated by the charging crusaders on what was coincidentally the same turn I cut down the scarabs and the terminators finished off the tesla immortals and I had No Prisoners in my hand, putting me very far ahead on victory points.

 

With a big crusader squad about to go rescue the chaplain again from the deathmarks, the other deathmark squad threatened by a land raider crusader and a big victory point advantage to me thanks to no Prisoners and stealing a capture point objective card that was right under one of my land raiders, the necrons conceded.

 

Thoughts;

 

Company ancients look cool but don't do much. I think I'll give mine a combi-melta and keep him out of combat from now on.

 

Land Raider multimeltas are unreliable but power of the machine spirit probably keeps them from being wasted points on a suboptimal platform. Rerolling 1s with land raider crusaders are very reliable but the 1 damage on the assault cannon limits them to more of an anti-infantry roll than they were when they had rending. I was holding out on a points drop to make taking 2 crusaders viable again and to my surprise I got a points rise and they ended up actually quite good somehow.

 

Similarly Assault terminators got a prise rise but are still worth it. I'm not sure taking the Chaplain with them is reliable enough but the chaplain is okay on his own. I should make a bit more room in the crusaders to give me the option of hiding him in there and reduce how many deployments I have to put down.

 

Crusader squads are quite good mechanised. If you think you can ignore troops and just cope with 2 less command points I'm not sure you've played much 8th ed (not that I have either).

 

Relic blades are quite good, but you can't actually take one and a storm shield (which are as amazing as ever) any more so thunder hammers are probably just outright better.

 

Apothecaries don't do a lot much every terminator he brings back or character he saves is making his points back so I think its a toss up on whether or not to take one.

 

Taking out multiple knights is very possible with most armies but there's nothing you can throw against one and not be taking a big risk.

 

Death marks are scary but if I were a necron player I'd use them for objective grabbing and consider the sniping a bonus because it just isn't reliable enough for a 1 turn kill. Not having any rend unless they trigger mortal wounds hurts them in the necron army which is full of rends.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Closet Skeleton