All terminator army?

[Time of madness]

Anyone had success running an almost all terminator army?

 

Has anyone come up with all terminator lists?

[TheTrans]

I feel termies are just lacking in ability and number. Also call me a proxying bastard, but you'd be better just running custodes termies as a full blown counts as I reckon. You can have the modeling fun, with the rules that Termies should naturally have! 

[Minsc]

It can work vs. certain lists and opponents, but in general I'd say it's a pretty weak army that lack the tools to deal with specific threats. 

Regular SM-terminators are probably the worst of the bunch to do this sort of list with.
You'll probably be better of with Thousand Sons/Grey Knights/Custodes, etc. 

 

[Jolemai]

I run themed lists quite often. The key is to get the right balance between the theme and usefulness as the more you play to your theme, the more one dimensional it becomes.

 

A Terminator list requires CP so you'll need a Battalion to generate them. Scouts (i.e 1st and 10th Company forces) have been talked about by GW (well, in a few older White Dwarfs) since 3rd edition, but it's up to you.

 

Are you taking transports? Only they will eat up your points. How will you support them to plug the holes in your list? More points gone...

 

Personally I'd look to a Battalion and then a Vanguard for the Terminators, with the characters in TDA too (not necessary but it meets the theme). Maybe a Dreadnought too if I'm taking a Stormraven for delivery.

[HighMarshalAmp]

In case of the Custodes, the upgrade in points from regular Guardians is worth it - and not all that expensive since a Guardian is so darn pricey in the first place.

 

A C:SM Terminator is 21pts with a mandatory 9pts for a Fist and 2pts for a Storm Bolter.

Cost of the weapons aside, a Veteran costs you 14pts. So what do you get for the 50% price hike upwards?

Deep Strike, a 2+, a 5++, a second W and -1" of movement.

 

I think that's ok for 7pts. It's a nice upgrade from a Veteran.

Only you'd never put Fists on a full 5 man Squad of Veterans, and here's where the problems start:

Termies die to the ubiquitous multi-damage weapon like flies. You don't have the '5 Fists on 10 Wounds'-balance that way. 

And for all the 7pts buy you, they still don't fix the inherent problems of C:SM: bodies too expensive, guns have but little volume of shots and even less tank-hunting capabilities.

 

So basically, running Terminators is a choice you make for fun, not to win.

Running an ALL Terminators army is something you do for uncanny amounts of fun, but not to win.

 

If you manage to get the 50% of your points you need on the table in the enemies face undamaged, DSing the other half and trying to get into Melee asap might be viable. You'd need Metal Bawkses 'cause a Terminator is still only T4, but if you commit to decimating your enemies numbers to keep him from scoring, you might have a fighting chance.

 

Overall, I'd recommend having a Battalion at least. As much as I like trying to table my opponent (Nope, hardly ever works, why are you asking?), it's Objectives that win games in the end and - I've written that somewhere already just yesterday - if your Termie Squad has 3 guys left and there's 3 cultists nearby, that objective is theirs.

You need some Troops, especially in the backfield, 'cause you don't want over 150pts worth of Terminators sitting on a backfield objective doing nothing.

 

I've got two boxes of Termies waiting to be painted, I'll have to get to it one of these days. I love the models, ugly as they may be, and I really want to run them. Screw winning, fun's where it's at 

And hey, we might score a few wins after all...

 

Have you thought about what Chapter you want to make them? Me, I've decided to add my Termies to my Templars just because re-rolling a Charge seems like a good idea to prevent my expensive unit from slacking off, especially if I DS them in...

[Captain Idaho]

Let's not talk about Custodes here, stand in or no.

 

I'm a purist. Terminators build a theme that is still popular to this day and one day I WILL build an all 1st Company force.

 

I think an all Terminator army is a challenge we should strive to support as much as possible. Let's do it here!

 

Now, terms...

 

Are we counting vehicles and Dreadnoughts in all Terminator armies? That opens up many an option but is it pure enough for folk here?

 

You can get quite a few Terminators into a 1750pts list with no vehicles in the list. I suspect you'll need plenty of characters to support them though as it increases your damage output.

[HighMarshalAmp]

Well, with Terminator Captains, Librarians, Chaplains, two Terminator variants AND the HH patterns on top of that, you could legally take far more Terminators than 2000pts could hold

For me, that means that a *pure* Terminator list should have nothing but Terminators.

 

I too feel that it might be wise to forgo a tad of fluff though and have at least one Captain join the first company Captain for that fight (old brothers in arms?) and maybe spam every other support character to have more buffs going on across the table.

[Stickeh]

There’s a thread in the Ultramarines forum dedicated exclusively to 1st company armies. I tried for a while at the start of 8th to get it to work, but they were never very successful. Maybe with points drops from CA and beta bolters they’ll be more effective.

[Captain Idaho]

Something to review ;)

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I tried it at the beginning of this edition with a Spartan and couple Contemptor dreads... it was not competitive at all tbh.

[MARK0SIAN]

They’d shine if GW ever updated the Zone Mortalis rules for 8th. Until then I think an all terminator list will look cool and might be fun but it’s hard to imagine a list that can’t beat it.

[FlamingDeth]

I've played Deathwing for decades and while it can be fun the only time it wins is out of shock value. Sometimes people make stupid mistakes because they aren't expecting it but they're only going to do it for one or two games before they remember that terminators die to weight of fire, and antitank weapons will melt them.

 

If you really want to do it DA have a leg up due to having fancier terminators and the Deathwing Assault stratagem. You aren't going to have a lot of CP (probably four if you're running pure Deathwing!) so you get one good shot with DWA, so you have to make it count. If you can crush two units on the drop with it that'll be your game changer.

[PeteySödes]

Loganwing for SW is decent with the Logan/Arjak wolfguard buffs and various loadouts like SB/SS. Same issues largely apply though.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I highly dont recommend buying lots of new models.

[HighMarshalAmp]

I highly dont recommend buying lots of new models.

So do I.

But I've never been one to heed my own advice... 

[Captain Idaho]

We're all in the hobby and know full well buying of lots of new models is likely the thing that we all suffer from... :)

[TheTrans]

Would it maybe be more viable under deathwatch? Or do their HQ's not get access to TDA? 

[HighMarshalAmp]

Would it maybe be more viable under deathwatch? Or do their HQ's not get access to TDA?

Deathwatch SIA makes any Bolt weapon more viable - it's just that while the DW have Termie Caps, Chaps and Libbys, they can only take a max of 30 more bodies in TDA.

Yeah, I don't think you'll ever fit all of those in a 2000pts list either ;)

[TheTrans]

 

Would it maybe be more viable under deathwatch? Or do their HQ's not get access to TDA?

Deathwatch SIA makes any Bolt weapon more viable - it's just that while the DW have Termie Caps, Chaps and Libbys, they can only take a max of 30 more bodies in TDA.

Yeah, I don't think you'll ever fit all of those in a 2000pts list either

 

Hmmm...

 

Could you be sneaky (and deal with 'alas' some power armoured bodies in veteran squads and fill them with termies?

[Panzer]

Well Terminators were considered unusable before CA18 due high point costs and even now that they came down in points you don't really see them around. I'd ask Custodes players how well it works for them to play with basically just the basic foot slogging Custodes as those are going into a very similar direction as Terminators but I guess I already know the answer.

Terminators just aren't flexible, durable or killy enough to carry the game on their own unfortunately. ^^

[HighMarshalAmp]

Well Terminators were considered unusable before CA18 due high point costs and even now that they came down in points you don't really see them around. I'd ask Custodes players how well it works for them to play with basically just the basic foot slogging Custodes as those are going into a very similar direction as Terminators but I guess I already know the answer.

Terminators just aren't flexible, durable or killy enough to carry the game on their own unfortunately. ^^

It works a helluva lot better - T5 means they shrug off what feels like more than an additional 1/6 of all the 401 hits.

It takes a lot longer to kill them and they're Troops on top of that. I was surprised how not terribly they had done...

 

Terminators however push every issue Marines have to the next level, it feels.

[Panzer]

 

Well Terminators were considered unusable before CA18 due high point costs and even now that they came down in points you don't really see them around. I'd ask Custodes players how well it works for them to play with basically just the basic foot slogging Custodes as those are going into a very similar direction as Terminators but I guess I already know the answer.

Terminators just aren't flexible, durable or killy enough to carry the game on their own unfortunately. ^^

It works a helluva lot better - T5 means they shrug off what feels like more than an additional 1/6 of all the 401 hits.

It takes a lot longer to kill them and they're Troops on top of that. I was surprised how not terribly they had done...

 

Terminators however push every issue Marines have to the next level, it feels.

 

 

I completely agree. Just saying that since we aren't exactly seeing Custodes lists like that being played successfully it's unlikely for a Terminator list to be successfull.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

You can have one or two squads be viable but not an entire detachment.

[GreyCrow]

Agreed with all above posters saying that you can't have a full detachment and be efficient.

 

As 8th edition goes, I'm getting more and more the feeling that you need meat on the table.

It seems that each army has been designed with the mind of : fill your Troops slots for your detachment as much as possible, fill up the rest with support units.

 

That gives you sustain and meat. With the goal of ending the game turn 6 with still enough models (not points) on the table.

 

Terminators have 2 weaknesses to be centerpieces imho:

- Super expensive point per model, meaning you can only field 23-24 at 1000pts with an HQ

- Hard countered due to high AP weapons and :cuss invulnerable save

- In the case of Assault Terminators, no range capability and half of them having to be on the board in matched play rules, so you'll get mowed down piecemeal.

 

Now if you have 10 Terminators as support for 30 Tacticals + HQ, that's actually an interesting choice.

 

Your Tacticals can tank a few turns of shooting before popping the Terminators quite aggressively Turn 2 or Turn 3 to mess with the ennemy's battleplan. Some Terminators may die, sure.

But they are a big threat that they have to deal with.

Placed smartly, you divert 2 turns of shooting from the opponent away from your Tacticals which is that much time to buy for the objectives.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Terminators are super slow too.