Future of semi competitive Dark Angels players after FAQ

[RayJ]

 

To me a 10 man Terminator squad is more valuable to come in late, play mind games with your opponent, doing damage and then being an unmovable object sitting on an objective for the rest of the game that your opponent won't want to assault rather than coming in Turn 1 kill bubble wrap and have a 27% chance to make a 9" charge (just under 50% with a command re-roll).

 

Now I'm not saying that my style of play is for everyone and it can be hard to pull off, but, I think it is the better option than T1 terminators because you can or that's the only way other people play them.

 

This game is still heavily dependent on how well you deploy your army and this is the part that not a lot of people master.

 

 

This isn't a bad use for terminators. Using them well doesn't make them ideal options, though. The fact that they cannot reposition well after hitting the table, and the fact that 108 points or more in a 10-man squad are spent on melee weapons that will probably never be used just limits their ability to impact the game.

 

If we were only paying for defensive stats and guns, terminators would be fairly well costed. Their impact per cost would be appropriate.

 

The unit is OK for mid-game board control over a small area. The problem is the cost you pay for that. It's very easy to get units that can meet that need for less. 400 points to sit on an objective is a tall ask at 1/5 of a 2000 point list.

[Trunkello]

 

@ Valorousheart - A quick note, I think his list should stay the same, except he needs to split his big blob of bikes, terminators and Hellblasters into two squads. This will give his opponent headache as he has to allocate firepower to multiple targets, rather than just one big blob. Hence what I mentioned earlier, Aggro management.

 

Sammael is quite useful in the sense he is fast, still buffs regular greenwing with reroll 1s, and can zoom anywhere on battlefield for objective grabbing or support whichever unit needs it, whether it is the deathwing or the bikes or the backline hellblasters, even keep up with the Dark Talon for some much needed rerolls.

 

Oh yeah those Tartaros Power fists? Get rid of them, lightning claws and add a sprinkling of plasma blasters and volkites is better and cheaper. Only bring Powerfists if you have Belial.

 

Leftover, as Valourousheart mentioned, another source of rerolls. Maybe instead of flamers, give them plasma or meltas.

 

On your first point were are essentially saying the same thing, we are just getting there in a different way.  You want him to split the 10 man teams into two  5 man teams.  I'm saying take the points from dropping some units that are not optimal in the rest of the list and spend those points on more copies of the units that are optimal.  So we both want him to have more of the infantry units.

 

His army is battle forged DA and so has Grim Resolve.  In order for Corvex to give the reroll of 1s, he has to be within 6 inches of a GW unit that moved.  Any turn they don't move is a turn he doesn't need to be near them because they have Grim Resolve.  And any turn they do move, it will only be 6 inches, and his speed is wasted because a captain stationed nearby could do the same thing with fewer points.

 

Corvex moves 14 inches a turn, the Dark Talon moves 20-40 inches a turn.  Corvex will not be keeping up with the Dark Talon unless you hover.  Hoving removes a lot of the protections the Dark Talon has and is not advisable if you want it to be a headache unit.

 

But really my concern is the makeup of the RW portion of the list which accounts for 50% of his points.   The rest of the list is essentially a boat anchor that requires the RW portion to pull back and play defense.  But the RW units that he picked are exclusively for playing aggressively.

 

Trunkello could try running the RW half in a smaller game and then run the other half of his list in another game to get a better feel for how the 2 halves perform.  Then he could make tweaks according to the results of those games.

 

I think he'll find in the GW/DW game that he starts making different choices on where to teleport the DW because he knows that the GW won't be able to get there if they are dropped in too remote of an area.

 

I know in the RW game he'll find that 1000 point game is too small to run Corvex, Talonmaster, a Darkshroud and a Dark Talon.  And he should draw some parallels for why that smaller list doesn't perform well with problems he faced in the larger game.

 

Sorry for not responding in time. My work just overwhelms me. Good that our posts doesnt fade away.

So i want to talk about some of my intentions with this list, maybe it will explain some things why its like this.

 

It was made against a necron army wich consisted of ton of necron warriors and immortals with some buff characters and doomsday arks. We played maelstorm of war missions with objectives.

 

So intercessors were for holding objectives and giving me battallion 3cp. Staying still will grant them reroll 1s so they dont need to be within hq range.

1 intercessor would also get the buff from the chapter ancient.

Chapter ancient and hellblasters were for the WFTDA. My intentions for them were to get rid of vehicles with quantum shielding. 20 s7 ap-3 2dmg rapidfire shots could have kill one easily.

 

And my overall big blob of elites:

10 deathwing for the DWA strategem. 80 shots can kill 20 warriors for sure. Max units of bikers can also kill 20 warriors and also can benefit from the speed of the raven strategem and charge the remaining warriors or immortals, or just tie up some heavy hitters for the next turn.

So ravenwing advancing forward into the enemys face + deathwing teleporting into the enemys face. Now sammael gets into the picture: rerolling charge ranges with his warlord trait and granting rerolls for ravenwing and reroll 1s for deathwing. Talonmaster giving the wound rerolls and maybe cover removal while darkshroud giving them -1 to hit for the next turn. As bikers were deployed 12" from the table edge i placed the dark talon far behind i could so it wont overfly my darkshrouds range.

 

Sammael and the dark talon (equipped with heaven fall blade) were to kill any characters or multiwound badasses. Also they could have kill or cripple a doomsday ark. Or a C'tan.

 

I didnt want to split my big units because this way i get to use the strategems to the fullest and also i counted on going first because of my low unit count.

I won the match btw but my plan failed. I only killed 1 full squad of warriors and 1 5 men immortals. Killed about 13 warriors from the other unit. I charged into his overlord with my ravenwings but their pourpose was to kill t4 warrios with poor save so they couldnt harm his t5 overlord. Next round i pulled out my remaining 1 ravenwing biekr and charged in with sammael and talonmaster to kill his warlord for d3+3 vc. Sammael only wounded him with 1 hit (What the hell) but the darktalon killed him. Then necron trickery happened and his overlord resurrected with 1 wound at the end of the phase so i lost my 3+d3 vc. I tried to consolidate into his remaning warriors but because of my poor positioning his cryptek were the closest.

 

Long story short: sammael getting shot to death by doomsday arks. deathwing getting swarms by scarab swarms, a kriptek and the nightbringer. They killed everyone leaving nightbringer with 2 wounds. Later a lone primaris intercessor killed the nightbringer on overwatch. He got a postumus promotion. I had about 13 vc while he only got 2 so i fell back and waited for turn 6. the game ended and i won.

 

What i learned: primaris despite not looking so much better than regular marines are great. The 2 attacks each really counts so does the 2 wounds. In cover they are great and so is their weapons. The ancient was bad. I only managed to resurrect like 2 guys out of 15. Darkshrouds -1 to hit is excelent and is a must. Talonmaster is also good as hell. ( this was the first time i used a talonmaster).

 

I plan to change my list and buff my ravenwings backs with  3 shieldcaptains on jetbikes. They are great overall and with the character keyword my bikes can bubble wrap them. Also heroic intervention must be great with 5 fix hits with s6 ap-3 d3 dmg.

[ValourousHeart]

Well, it sounds like everything went according to plan.

I guess I miss read your earlier posts, I thought you were struggling against this Necron list.

 

Let us know how your next games turn out.

[Solrac]

 

 

To me a 10 man Terminator squad is more valuable to come in late, play mind games with your opponent, doing damage and then being an unmovable object sitting on an objective for the rest of the game that your opponent won't want to assault rather than coming in Turn 1 kill bubble wrap and have a 27% chance to make a 9" charge (just under 50% with a command re-roll).

 

Now I'm not saying that my style of play is for everyone and it can be hard to pull off, but, I think it is the better option than T1 terminators because you can or that's the only way other people play them.

 

This game is still heavily dependent on how well you deploy your army and this is the part that not a lot of people master.

 

 

This isn't a bad use for terminators. Using them well doesn't make them ideal options, though. The fact that they cannot reposition well after hitting the table, and the fact that 108 points or more in a 10-man squad are spent on melee weapons that will probably never be used just limits their ability to impact the game.

 

If we were only paying for defensive stats and guns, terminators would be fairly well costed. Their impact per cost would be appropriate.

 

The unit is OK for mid-game board control over a small area. The problem is the cost you pay for that. It's very easy to get units that can meet that need for less. 400 points to sit on an objective is a tall ask at 1/5 of a 2000 point list.

 

 

I agree.

 

My argument wasn't the Terminators are good, rather that if you wanted to use them, Turn 1 deepstrike wasn't the best choice most of the time anyway meaning the Turn 1 deepstrike nerf didn't affect them as badly as a lot of people made it out to be.

 

I still pull them out for friendly games and this is what I do with them. I can't remember the last time I used Terminators in a Tournament list lol.

[Kasper_Hawser]

@ Trunkello - good on you, looks like you had a good plan after all. Just wish you had shared with us earlier as most of us thought you had lost the game and was thoroughly demoralised, Seriously though, not that i want to sound harsh, but it looks like you were whining just because of the BETA tactical reserves rules. Now you are telling us you actually won?

 

I'm confused on what advice I should give. Ultimately I want you to have fun and have a fair chance of victory through STRATEGY rather than strategems and rules.

[Trunkello]

@ Trunkello - good on you, looks like you had a good plan after all. Just wish you had shared with us earlier as most of us thought you had lost the game and was thoroughly demoralised, Seriously though, not that i want to sound harsh, but it looks like you were whining just because of the BETA tactical reserves rules. Now you are telling us you actually won?

 

I'm confused on what advice I should give. Ultimately I want you to have fun and have a fair chance of victory through STRATEGY rather than strategems and rules.

Terribly sorry for the cliffhangers. The match was before the FAQ so my problem was that i cant do this combined DW RW stratey anymore as this is supposed to be an alpha strike. Also if i wait for the DW to arrive in the second turn i leave my RW open for the enemy to fire them. My problem was that with the reserve rules now i have to drop my deathwing completly and rely only on the RWs alpha with the speed of the raven. So my plan is to drop the DW for 3 shield captains as they are roughly the same points and can dish out about the same shots but with 2+ bs with rerolls. Also they are better in melee , can keep up with the RW and the RW can provide cover for them. I also plan to get some attack bikes as i can buff 1 more rapidfire 2 boltguns into my RW unit.