Indomitus Crusaders

[Subtleknife]

Nice write up. Think it highlights the design flaw with marines in general. A

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Imo it’s really hard to win with a monobuild for SM against most monobuild xenos armies.

[Ishagu]

This is just a case of Orks bring very, very good.

 

I've always struggled against Orks and Dark Eldar in particular - I'd say these are the strongest mono books.

[Panzer]

Not to mention that a vehicle/walker list is always tough to deal with when you're playing an all-comers list. Even more so when you invest so heavily into troops ... then you can't do much else than trying to play the objectives while he tries to stomp you before the game ends.

You had two games against odd lists now. I'd really like to see how it fares against a "normal" list. ^^

[Charlo]

Orks are a bit like Guard in that they can do everything all at once:

• Tough Vehicles
• SHOOTING
• Hordes that can't be ignored
• SHOOTING
• Aura synergy
• DID I MENTION SHOOTING?

Though I think Orks just got an absolute gem of a codex while marines languish with a half baked and not too interesting book.

 

Marines are billed as generalists and they are, but Orks can be a generalist army made up of specialists, if that makes sense? They can bring so much variety in so much numbers that they always have an answer. Their shooting now is just GROSS too, I can see Orks getting a lot of points or CP hikes in the Spring FAQ as they are super efficient right now.

[Panzer]

 

Marines are billed as generalists and they are, but Orks can be a generalist army made up of specialists, if that makes sense? 

 

It makes a lot of sense and is the reason why those Codexes work better. It's better to have a unit who excels at only one thing and another unit that excels at a different thing than having two units that are okay-ish at both things.

I've learned that early with T'au. The books alway show them with ridiculous weapon loadouts and new player always copy that just to have the first feedbacks in forums be "don't mix those weapons on your Crisis Suits". ^^

 

If you specialise in only one thing you have to absolutely destroy your enemies with that thing or you're getting easily countered (example: T'au and Daemons), if you can do everything with every unit but none of them do anything well the enemy doesn't have to think too much about countering you because he can just do whatever and be better (example: Marines) but if your army can do everything but with the tasks being devided between different units it's much harder for the opponent to deal with everything and you are much more flexible with your list building.

[Tamiel]

I am planning on running a 1,500 pts list with Indomitus Crusaders, also Ultramarines.

This is the list I will be trying:

>>>Batallion

>Troops:

-6x10man Intercessor Squads, all with standard bolt rifles. For secondary weapons, the Sergeants have:

      -2 sgts have power fists

      -2 sgts have power swords

      -2 sgts have bolt pistols

 

>Fast Attack
-1x5man Inceptor Squad with heavy assault bolters

 

>Elites:

-1xPrimaris Standard Bearer with the Standard of The Emperor relic

>HQ:

-1xPrimaris Captain with Power Sword and Master Crafted Bolt Rifle
-1xPrimaris Leuitenant with Power Sword and Bolt Pistol


I do not expect to win with this list at all. But I do want to see how such a bizarre list performs. By making an entire list of intercessors, I can observe them a bit better in isolation. These games are an experiment more than anything. My answer to big units (such as vehicles and big monsters) is pretty much nothing. I will likely ignore big units and focus on what I can actually kill. Enemy troops in general shouldn't be too hard to kill. Even if I face Necrons, I have a feeling I can take out Necron troops. By taking out whatever troops my enemy brings, I might be able to contest objectives better.

Also I find it hard to believe that anyone will create a list geared towards taking out 60 intercessors. That's 120 MEQ wounds, all with obsec.

 

I will upgrade one or maybe two of the power first intercessor squads to veterans. I expect those two squads to be close to the enemy anyway, so the +1 attack as well as access to the rapid fire 2 stratagem (thus giving me 4 shots per bolt rifle prior to charging in) might be good for them.

Why take 10man intercessor squads instead of 5man MSUs? I want to make it hard for my opponent to earn multiple kill points per turn. In Maelstrom missions, you will sometimes get cards that say "Kill a unit, get 1 point. If you kill 3 units, get D3 points". 10man squads should also make first blood harder for the enemy to earn. Finally, because we are Ultramarines, we can use the Ultramarine stratagem that makes a squad of intercessors (or tacticals, but that's not applicable here) reroll all failed misses. This will probably be used at least once, since I will have to leave a squad behind to hold an objective and it might not be within range of my Captain.

Then the formation gives us all the second chapter tactic for one turn. To be fair, I don't think it will be worth it at all.

So, in short, I will hog objectives, kill nothing other than troops/hordes, try not to take losses, and see how it goes. My expectations are very low, I'm expecting to lose one Intercessor squad per turn and losing out on many opportunities because I just can't kill anything. Keep in mind this is 1500pts though. At 2000pts, I would be able to add 20 more Intercessors and a Tigurius in a patrol detachment, bringing us up to 80 intercessors. That's 180 MEQ wounds with obsec, and some psychic powers on top of everything else. I might even have some more wiggle room to drop the Inceptor squad and add more intercessors for even more obsec. I haven't actually made a 2000pt list with this philosophy so I can't speak on that yet.

If I get a game with my friend, I'll leave a short summary here. Maybe it will be useful,or entertaining to someone. And for those of you wondering "How the hell do you have so many intercessor models?", I will be playing through Tabletop Simulator, which is basically a physics engine with custom 40k models. My real life army has nowhere near that many intercessors, so tabletop simulator is good for experiments like these.
 

[Captain Idaho]

I'd be interested to see how it works with such large numbers of troops like that. A horde of Ultramarines.

 

Personally I think 30 Intercessors and the points for the other 30 on Hellblasters as the extra hitting power is ideal.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Make sure to take auxiliary grenade launchers.

[Lemondish]

@Prot, I really appreciated your battle reports on the specialist detachment. One question I had was that it seemed you focused almost exclusively on the Stratagems in your breakdown, but didn't really mention anything about the relics or the extra warlord trait. Did you find those to be fun or useful?

 

@Ishagu I'd very much like to hear what you have to say about the crimson fist detachment once you get a game or two in.

[Prot]

I always use the Relic banner, and use Calgar to recoupe the spent CP so I can't really comment on those items. :)

[Lemondish]

I always use the Relic banner, and use Calgar to recoupe the spent CP so I can't really comment on those items.

 

You could have both Warlord traits for but 1 CP with Field Commander, in case you get the hankering to try any of these detachments again ;)

 

I definitely don't see much value with that relic banner over the other one, so I see your hesitation to even try that one as well. Thanks for the insight anyway!

[Tamiel]

Just had a 2k game with the following army, it was pretty surprising:
 

 

>>>Chapter: Ultramarines

 

>>Batallion (INDOMITUS CRUSADERS)

>Troops:

-2x10man Intercessor Bolt Rifle Squads (with 2 grenade launchers)

-2x10man Intercessor Bolt Rifle Squads (with 2 grenade launchers, Power Swords on each Sgt)

-1x10man Intercessor Bolt Rifle Squad (with 2 grenade launcher, Power Fist on Sgt) (((This Squad will be upgraded to Veteran Status for 1CP)))

-1x5man Intercessor Bolt Rifle Squad (with 1 grenade launcher, Power Fist on Sgt)

 

>Elites:

-1xPrimaris Standard Bearer with the Standard of The Emperor relic

-1xPrimaris Apothecary

>HQ:

-1xPrimaris Captain with Power Sword and Master Crafted Auto Bolt Rifle
-1xPrimaris Librarian with Force Sword

 

>Transports:

-1xRepulsor with:

    -5xFragstorm Grenade Launchers

    -2xKrakstorm Grenade Launchers

    -1xIronhail Heavy Stubber

    -1xOnslought Gattling Cannon

    -1xTwin Lascannon

    -1xLas Talon

 

>>Super Heavy Auxiliary Detachment:

>Super Heavy:

-1xRoboute Guilliman

I took my 1500 army and added Guilliman and a Repulsor while dropping 5 intercessors. I also shifted some things around (the lieutenant got replaced with a librarian, an apothecary was added). This list has 55 intercessors, which translates to 110 obsec toughness 4 wounds with 3+ armor save. Surprisingly, the obsec didn't matter as the game mode we played boiled down to killpoints.

My opponents list was, if I could remember from memory:
1 Mortarion

2 Blight Drones kitted out for melee

2 nurgle daemon princes with wings

1 Plague marine caster unit wearing power armor (forgot its name)

3 Plague crawlers

2 5man plague marine units with plague launchers (or a weapon of similar name)

I may be missing some stuff, but that's roughly what he had. The mission we picked was "Hold your gains" from the newly released Vigilus campaign book. The mission roughly stated: One player (the one with a higher Power Level total in their army) should be the defender, while the player with the lower power level army should be the attacker. Although we were using points, we added up the Power Levels of our armies and I was ahead by about 10, so I ended up being the defender. My deployment zone was a small circle in the middle of the map where I could deploy 1/3rd of my army, and the mission stated that the rest of my army would be in reserves. The map was suggested by my opponent, who thought fighting over a hill would be cool. This is what it looked like after I set up roughly 1/3rd of my army in terms of power levels on the center of the map:

The attacker, as you can see, got to set up his units within 12" of the short table ends. He went for a pincer attack instead of keeping his units all on one side, and this ended up hurting him in the long run. In the middle, I had 4 ten-man intercessor squads. Two had power sword sergeants, two had sergeants with no melee weapons. At this point, I was thinking to myself that the game was already over. With the unique deployment zones, Mortarion was uncomfortably close to my intercessor squads. Things did not look good. On top of that, all of the following units were sitting in reserves (the mission forced me to leave 2/3rds of my army in reserves!):

 

Here are some more pictures from before the first turn of the game:

 

Here's what the first turn looked like after he moved:

 

My opponent's army had very little shooting in it. Aside from the three plague crawlers (which had expensive D6 damage weapons geared towards taking out tanks and big targets), not much was threatening within the shooting phase. His plague crawlers also had really powerful flame weapons, but I was making good armor saves. In the psychic phase just before the shooting phase, he put a bunch of buffs on Mortarion that I kind of lost track of, and he debuffed one of my 10man intercessor squads to have -1 attack per guy. Intercessors have 2 attacks each (with 3 on the sergeant), so that squad's melee potential was basically halved.

What happened next was... a bit better than what I expected. I didn't take a bunch of pictures because things started happening at this stage (the psychic powers, shooting, charging, overwatch, melee), but when the dust cleared, Mortarion was left standing next to... two squads of intercessors with about three men each. The plague drones failed their charges, and the fight boiled down to Mortarion cleaving his scythe through my 20 intercessors. He killed about 15 of them. I tried hitting him back. Nothing. 

At this point, I had very low expectations for this army. I wanted to keep playing just to experiment with the army, so I didn't make a big deal. At least I could do some science. My opponent, too, felt that the game was already over before I got to play my first turn. In an act of kindness he said "Hey you should bring your whole army in next turn without rolling for it, just to see how far this fight can go." I said "Alright, what the hell, let's see what happens." We both wanted to see Guilliman and Mortarion go toe to toe. Here's the beginning of my turn two:

 

Guilliman, the 1.5 Intercessor squads (one 10man squad of Veteran Intercessors and one 5man squad of regular intercessors), the group of primaris characters which I will refer to as the Council Astartes (Primaris Captain, Primaris Standard Bearer, Primaris Librarian, Primaris Apothecary), and an empty Repulsor with a load of weapons on it... showed up.

Although I thought at the time that the battle was over, I still wanted to see how far I could push this bizarre army. My opponent had split his army in two, so all of my units came close to the right side of the map (far away from Mortarion's side). If I could clear out the right half before Mortarion got over there, I could maybe put a dent in his army.

 

 

All I had to kill was one daemon prince, and one Plague Marine caster unit wearing power armour. I fired everything at these two, and then charged in with Guilliman and an intercessor squad to finish it up.

 

 

The repulsor finished off the daemon prince. Guilliman killed the plague marine caster unit with the Sword of The Emperor. A small group of Plague Marines took cover in the woods on the far right side.

Guilliman and Mortarion locked eyes. There was only one way this battle would end: the two brothers fighting face to face.


 

 

Turn two. Mortarion leapt into the sky with his putrid wings and charged the blob of 20 intercessors pounding on the plague crawler (and doing no damage to it). His last remaining Daemon Prince and the rest of his plague crawlers and drones followed in suit, ready to clean up the two previous Intercessor squads that had fallen away from Mortarion after losing so many brothers.

Once again, I was surprised by the resilience of ten-man intercessor squads. He cut down two ten-man intercessor squads, leaving just about a handful of men when he was done. But those two to three marines in each squad held strong, and their brothers did not die in vain. While Mortarion was carving through these intercessors, Guilliman had neutralized the right side of the map.

I did not keep Guilliman back. I did not set up a gunline. Mortarion had to die, and the only thing in my entire army that could take him out was The Sword of The Emperor. Even my lascannons would do nothing against Mortarion, since his invuln saves were so strong. The Emperor's Sword, however, could penetrate invuln saves on rolls of 6s. No, the thought of keeping Guilliman back did not even seem like a sane idea. The sane idea was to charge Mortarion. Guilliman had to do as much damage to him as possible, and if the Lord Commander of the Imperium died in the process, then so be it.

At this point, for the first time since the start of the battle, I thought: I can win. I may take grave casualties, but I can win.



The council astartes, try as they might, could not make the charge into Mortarion. There was no way for them to get through the brothers ahead of them. But they knew that, should their Primarch die, they would be last ditch effort to end the Daemon Primarch's life. The librarian failed his psyhcic checks, but that mattered little. The time had come, all of the intercessors that had been in combat with Mortarion fell back, and my entire army unloaded into Mortarion. The veteran intercessor squad (shown at the left in the picture above) used the stratagem that made their weapons "rapid fire 2", giving me 4 shots for each one. 40 shots from that squad alone, and about 30 shots from all the other remaining bolt rifle squads put together, lascannons and other repulsor weapons, bolt pistols from the Council Astartes (save for the Captain, who had a Master Crafted Auto Bolt Rifle), Guilliman's hand of Dominion. The sounds experienced in that battlefield must have been euphoric enough to please Slaanesh a divine gift from the Emperor to those with faith.

But Mortarion stood. He rose from the ashes of bolterfire, still alive, although visibly wounded. There was only one thing left to do.

 

 

 

FOR THE EMPEROR

 

The Burning Blade and the Putrid Scyhe Clashed. Although his armour was cratered by bolterfire, and blood and mucus alike leaked from every orifice of his body, Mortarion was a Daemon Primarch in the flesh. I'm not going to pretend I am a good enough writer to narrate the combat that took place, so just imagine a Dragon Ball Z episode but with the Primarichs instead of Goku and Cell or whatever. When the fight was over, Guilliman stood victorious.

 

The nauseating corpse began to bloat and grow larger, as if it were a fleshy-balloon being filled with unspeakable fumes. The corpse of the Daemon Primarch exploded in a shower of muck, coating the loyalists and taking out a few of the primaris marines in the process. But mortarion was dead, and Guilliman stood victorious.

"To admit defeat is to blaspheme the Emperor."

 

That was the end of my turn. What followed after was the furious remaining Daemon Prince, who had swooped in to take Mortarion's place, literally and figuratively. Perhaps he wished to avenge his master's death. Or perhaps he saw this as an opportunity to win Nurgle's favour.

 

Meanwhile, a plague drone targeted the Council Astartes. Its eyes set on the Primaris Captain, its nightmarish weapons came to life.

 

I can't remember whether it took one turn or two turns. But what followed after was not only the swift execution of the Daemon Prince, but the death of my Primaris Captain as well.

 

But, with his final daemon prince gone, and the dawn literally rising for him in real life, my opponent conceded.


POST GAME ANALYSIS:

55 intercessors. That's 110 wounds, all wearing power armour, all toughness 4. Although Mortarion was dividing his attacks up between two 10man squads evenly, and killing roughly 75% of each squad, the intercessors held ground. I think the unsung heroes of this game were the bolt rifles. Since Mortarion has 3+ armour and Toughness 7, he's actually not that strong against massed bolterfire. Things like lascannons are easier for him to deflect with his 4+ invuln save, but massed bolterfire was wittling him down faster than expected, especially with Guilliman's aura. That one veteran intercessor squad had lost one member, which was brought back by the apothecary. At full 10man strength, that was 40 shots into Mortarion from that squad alone.

Guilliman definitely carried the game on the offensive side, but once my opponent began losing his first daemon prince and later Mortarion, he had no realistic way of dealing with the still ~20 intercessors that were left remaining.

The biggest advantages I had were a combination of my opponent splitting his army in two, and generously letting me bring in the rest of my army on turn one without rolling for it. That being said, though, if he kept his plague crawlers away from my intercessor squads, then I would not have been able to tie them up in melee, rendering the plague crawlers effectively useless. He got too close to my intercessors in order to use the flame weapons on the plague crawlers, but this allowed me to charge in. Although I did no damage to the crawlers, the crawlers could not shoot.

Finally, I will admit that my dice was flaming hot the entire night. With the exception of the psyhic phase and the repulsor, everything in my army was pulling work. One intercessor squad withstood multiple attacks from plague crawlers, and even psychic attacks, losing very few men thanks to the unnaturally high amount of 6s I rolled for them. My opponent and I dubbed this squad "The Resilient Ones".

This game was by no means a competitive game, but both my opponent and I had a blast, especially when Mortarion and Guilliman went toe to toe. We were both taking screenshots like crazy at that time. And this list, while I will still admit was especially weak in terms of damage output, was quite resilient. No one builds a list to take on 50+ primaris marines.

 

[Subtleknife]

Nice write up

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Great report thanks !!!

[Captain Idaho]

Good to see how it worked out. I've always maintained Guilliman was built this edition for Primaris. Neither can go inside transports (oddly enough) in any practical sense and those Bolt rifles love his rerolls.

 

I'm still dubious as to the effectiveness of the Specialist Detachment outside Guilliman but that to me works how I expected - lots of Intercessors on the table.

 

A Captain and Lieutenant might make such a list work more effectively too.

[Panzer]

Well it was also a weird mission where the DGs big guns couldn't do anything besides killing Intercessors and then Guilliman and the Repulsor got the drop on the DG so they could deal with Mortarion and lock the tanks in melee. Also partly a problem with the DG list having such a low model count I'd say.

 

I'm still waiting to see a representative batrep to judge the specialist detachment properly, but keep it coming. If anything it's entertaining to read. :D

[Lemondish]

Well it was also a weird mission where the DGs big guns couldn't do anything besides killing Intercessors and then Guilliman and the Repulsor got the drop on the DG so they could deal with Mortarion and lock the tanks in melee. Also partly a problem with the DG list having such a low model count I'd say.

 

I'm still waiting to see a representative batrep to judge the specialist detachment properly, but keep it coming. If anything it's entertaining to read. :D

I think it'll definitely have to come from an Ultramarine force since they have access to special characters that pump up their CP, something no other codex force has access to (yet...?).

 

For example, bringing Guilliman basically makes that whole detachment with two vet units free compared to any other codex chapter. That's before you even factor in his effect on their shooting.

 

Really need to get some better special character rules for the other codex chapters lol

[Panzer]

 

Well it was also a weird mission where the DGs big guns couldn't do anything besides killing Intercessors and then Guilliman and the Repulsor got the drop on the DG so they could deal with Mortarion and lock the tanks in melee. Also partly a problem with the DG list having such a low model count I'd say.

 

I'm still waiting to see a representative batrep to judge the specialist detachment properly, but keep it coming. If anything it's entertaining to read.

I think it'll definitely have to come from an Ultramarine force since they have access to special characters that pump up their CP, something no other codex force has access to (yet...?).

 

For example, bringing Guilliman basically makes that whole detachment with two vet units free compared to any other codex chapter. That's before you even factor in his effect on their shooting.

 

Really need to get some better special character rules for the other codex chapters lol

 

 

Oh I don't mind it being Ultramarines and I don't mind Guilliman either. This is the Ultramarine subforum after all. ;)

For example with Blood Angels (if they could take it) the situation would've looked very similar, maybe even better since they could wound the tanks better in melee.

The issue was with the mainly the mission making the DGs turn way less efficient (no proper targets for anti-tank stuff), the opponent allowing everythign to arrive at once so it could get the drop on the only important things to kill in the opponents list (Mortarion and the Princes, the rest was not as much a thread or could be locked in melee easily) and partly the opponents list itself (way too much big stuff and not enough mass on the board even for a Marine army).

 

To the mission itself, I'm no fan for pickup games. It's a narrative mission that requires knowing the mission and whether you're attacker or defender before writing your list or else you're screwed since splitting your army and then have the rest coming in little by little makes it way too easy for the attacker with all-comers lists. You need something in the middle that can endure well enough until the reserves arrive and then reserves that are capable of pulling their weight without relying on others too much because you don't know what else you'll have on the board when they arrive.

[Tamiel]

The formation itself didn't seem that strong, but then again I only spent 3 CP total on it. Well, 4 CP, since I spent another CP on making the Captain a Field Commander in order to get the Indomitus Crusaders warlord trait alongside having Guilliman as my warlord. The second chapter tactic I used for one round was the Black Templars one, which is weird now that I think about it. My opponent had so much melee, and yet I picked the chapter tactic that let me reroll failed charges. I'm a big proponent of rapid firing an enemy and then charging in to finishing them off. Seems like Space Marines were kind of designed for this playstyle compared to other armies.

That 10man veteran intercessor squad though. If you can keep their numbers up at 10men (apothecary helps), you get 40 shots in rapid fire range. Not to mention the whole squad gets +1 A and +1 Ld for when they eventually make it into combat. So on top of those 40 bolt rifle shots, you get ~31 melee attacks afterwards, with 4 of those being a power weapon if the sergeant has one. If you can both leverage the rapid fire bonus and the subsequent charge, assuming the vet sergeant has a power weapon of some sort, I would argue that 2 CP is worth it. This doesn't take into account the other CP you spend on unlocking the formation and having a field commander, though.

[Tamiel]

I had another game with the same list as before (Guilliman, Repulsor, 55 Intercessors, Primaris Capt, Primaris Lib, Primaris Apoth, Primaris Standard Bearer). It was a very casual game against a friend who wanted to play.

 

I told my friend ahead of time exactly what list I was bringing and told him he could bring whatever he wanted with that information. I didn't do this to be "cocky", but rather, for the sake of testing this list and science, I wanted to put this list through the harshest challenge I could find. This was my friend and he already knew a part of my endeavors with the primaris list. So I told him my list and specifically asked him to counter it as much as he wanted to. I didn't know what he was going to bring. Anyway, this was his list in the big reveal:

 

Apparently he brought the baneblade because my Intercessors couldn't damage it. And, well... he was right. He also had a tank commander for orders. The rest of his army was comprised of about ~25 Custodes. Since he said he didn't have the most time in the world (sadly he did not know the joys of battlescribe so it took him about 30 minutes to make his list), we decided to just fight to wipe each other out with no objectives. Once again, my army's strength of having 110 Obsec wounds did not come in to effect.

This is what the deployment looked like:

 

The repulsor was also carrying 10 primaris veteran intercessors inside it. He had a squad of 5 custodian elite guys in deepstrike. Here's another pic:

 

He had first turn, and I used the 2CP stratagem that makes all of your non-titanic units have cover on turn 1 if you're going second. Thankfully, the demolisher cannon on his baneblade was out of range, so he could only shoot my repulsor with his main Baneblade cannon and some lascannons. He rolled terribly with both weapons, and I was surprisingly able to make all saves.

The rest of his weapons (mainly the rest of his heavy bolters on his baneblade, and all the weapons on his tank commander with the punisher gattling cannon) fired into my intercessor squads, killing about 5 in total. His custodes units were moving in from the right side of the map, but it would take them ages to get here.

 

Since my opponent wasn't familiar with all rules and stats, his turn one took quite a while. And, on my turn one, I also took quite a while because we had to look up the toughness and saves on a lot of his units. Unfortunately this meant that he had to go soon, so we kept playing as quickly as we could. This was my turn one's end:

The custodes on the left were wiped out, and the repulsor had brought the tank commander on the left to the lowest tier, so the tank commander could only hit on 6s. This meant that I could effectively ignore his tank commander for the rest of the game. His baneblade, however, took only a handful of wounds total from my entire blob + guilliman. I can't remember, but I think he had taken like 3 or 4 wounds total from all of those bolt rifles. That being said, some of my bolt rifles were taking out his custodes squad I mentioned on the left, so I didn't get to fire all of my shots into his baneblade.

On his turn two, the same thing happened again, except his tank commander was uselessly hitting on 6s, and the rest of his custodes army was still footslogging across the map. His baneblade poured all of its anti tank shots into my repulsor and killed it in one turn from max health. Only one Intercessor Veteran died while emergency disembarking. The rest of his anti infantry weapons went into my intercessors and killed two more.

The blob was still strong. At this point my opponent decided to concede because Guilliman and the Blob were getting really close to his Baneblade, and the poor massive tank didn't really have anywhere to go thanks to the terrain. He decided to call it for the night, and we said goodnight, but just to test things I played one more turn by myself just to see how my 2nd turn would have turned out (and... I wanted to play more than one turn). With the repulsor gone, I could do no anti-tank damage, so I just aimed 2/3rds of my Intercessor squads into his custodes. One of these intercessors was the Veteran squad, which pumped 40 bolt rifle shots by themselves, pretty much killing a 3 man custodes squad instantly. The rest of my bolters either went into the baneblade or his other custodes.

 

Sadly Guilliman could not charge the baneblade at the end of turn two... but it seemed like, had there been a turn three, he would have gotten in for sure with like a 4" charge needed.

My opponent had already left so I had no idea what he'd do with the remaning of his custodes and one baneblade, but just for the hell of it I decided to play out the melee combat between Guilliman and the Baneblade.

 

By himself alone (without even the Might of Heroes buff from the librarian), Guilliman did 15 unsaved damage to the baneblade. This, combined with the earlier damage I had done with some bolt rifles across the turns before was enough to bring the baneblade down to the "hitting on 6s" tier of wounds. 

All that would have been left after that were a handful of custodes. Anyway, shame we couldn't finish the game, but I did learn two things from this game. Repulsors die really fast, and Guilliman is good anti-tank even by himself.

I have to say, I'm really enjoying this list. It's such a care-free list where you just walk forward and shoot until you're in charge range, and then charge in and roll melee dice. I almost feel like an Ork player. Best part is, this list has no complicated things for either you or your enemy to keep track of. There's no complicated shenanigans, there's no big combo. It's just straight forward and almost relaxing to play with so much Intercessors. Even if the enemy starts wiping out a whole squad, you're just... zen. You have nothing to fear. It's a really nice change of pace from playing armies where your whole strategy revolves around one irreplaceable unit or combination of irreplaceable units.

 

And I can't speak for my opponents, but the fact that I'm bringing no complicated rules for them to keep track of must be nice for them as well. Everything is super easy to explain to my opponent before the game starts and my psychic phase is basically just Might of Heroes on Guilliman. I don't know about you guys, but I always get lost when an enemy has a really complicated psychic phase with lots of spells, and I begin to lose track of what's going on. But I just cast one spell and that's it (sometimes I cast Null Zone on top of Might of Heroes). I'm not doing crazy combos, I'm not doing things where we have to spend a long time looking through the rulebook or anything. I'm just moving forward, casting one spell, shooting, charging, and that's it.  My turns are over super fast, too. I just have to roll a lot of dice, but I don't have to look up anything or think too hardly about anything.

 

It might not be competitive, but I'm starting to really like this list.

[Captain Idaho]

Are you playing Vassal?

[Tamiel]

No, this is Tabletop Simulator. It's basically a physics engine where people can make/use models and cards for existing games. It's like having a virtual tabletop with a modding community that makes the content. Since my real life army is pretty small, I use this to test larger armies as well as models I haven't bought yet.

[Tamiel]

Just played another game. I think this is the last game I'll write about here, because at this point I'm not "experimenting" with this list anymore. I'm convinced that it is pretty good, especially in metas where people don't even think about countering a primaris horde army. Which I would imagine is most metas. I don't know how the list would do against tournament level players, but hey I'm not a tournament player.

I didn't take pictures nor write up a full battle report. My opponent was Necrons with 2k points. about 900 of those points were spent on two Necron pylon-things. I forgot their actual names. They were two gigantic models that could deep strike but were immobile after that. Each one was T8 and had 30 wounds, and a weapon that had basically infinite range, was artillery, had D6 shots, and each shot was 16 Strength (yeah...) and did like D6+6 damage at -4 ap. Basically, these two things were immobile Knights designed to take out other Knights.

The rest of his army were two command barges, 6 destroyers, 20 necron warriors, a cryptek, and some necron character that gave +1 to reanimation rolls.

I blobbed up my 60 intercessors (dropped the repulsor this time to add a redemptor dreadnought and more primaris intercessors) with Guilliman and just moved down the middle of the map. Turn 1 was bad for my opponent since his two deep striking knight-killers hadn't arrived yet. I mopped up his command barges, and lost like 3 primaris marines from destroyers. I was also moving forward. 

One more thing to mention: I used the Raven Guard chapter tactics on top of my Ultramarines chapter tactics with the field-commander primaris captain. So all my intercessors had -1 to being shot at for a turn. I find that this is the best one to pick unless you are performing an army-wide charge (in which case you can use the Black Templars one).

Turn two, his knight-killers deep striked on the top corners of the map (making it so that I could not feasibly charge both unless I split my army in two. Smart move by him). They shot at my primaris marines, and they were killing about 6 primaris marines per turn. This was because his weapons (he had two of them) were shooting D6 shots. He got pretty bad roles and his two 400 points each units were basically killing 3 primaris marines each. So... yeah.

I wiped out the rest of his necron units until the two knight killers on the opposite corners of the map were remaining. I focused on taking out one, walked up to it, charged it, and killed it. By that time, the game had already gone to turn 6 and my opponent conceded.

So, this game doesn't actually show us anything new. But it did reinforce the fact that most people do not expect a marine horde. When they bring big weapons meant to take out a single huge unit, those weapons end up being a huge detriment for them. The "biggest" target I had, aside from Guilliman who wasn't targetable, was a Redemptor Dreadnought. And that thing costs like ~160 points... that's less than a 10man intercessor squad. Sure, he killed it in one turn when his knight-killers came in, but after that he was killing 6 primaris marines a turn. And I had 60 intercessors alone. So how did my intercessors do? It turns out his massive pylons (which are immobile after they deep strike) make it so that I don't have to roll to hit against him in melee. My power fists (and my intercessors punching normally) were all auto hitting, so even though Guilliman failed his charge, I was able to take out a T8, 30W model. Especially since I was chipping wounds off of it all turn with krak grenade launchers and bolt rifles. If the two pylons (or whatever they're called) weren't placed so far apart, I probably would have been able to take out both before the game ended.

 

TL;DR: Primaris horde does really well against lists that bring mostly anti-knight weaponry.

 

EDIT: I have just realized that all of the games I ran with this list were done in an Annihilation format (meaning kill-points only). Maybe it might be worth doing more testing with objectives this time, but personally, I think I'm still done with testing the games and reporting them here. Mainly because I don't expect the results to be too different with objectives being thrown in. Hell, it might actually be better since we have 60 obsec bodies totaling 120 obsec wounds. Anyway, that's all the reports I'm going to write about the Indomitus Crusaders formation in this thread, at least, so hope this was insightful.

[mel_danes]

Tamiel would you post your army list?

I'd love to see what units besides the Primaris-blob you used.

I've got 40 Interssesors, 15 Hellblasters, various command and elite units to aura them up.

Thanks.