UM 9th Ed Experiment Batrep (Some pics)

[Prot]

Hey guys,

I just want to preface this batrep (which will be point form as I'm in a crunch for time) by saying a few things:

First off I have been having weird results with my Marine armies. There are a lot of armies I am simply hammering. Why is this happening? We play fairly dense terrain.... Is it the Marines themselves? Is it the Xenos I've been facing? I'm not sure.

What I can tell you is I've been severely beating some armies with my White Scars, and my last couple of Ultramarine games have been closer, but still I consider them rather decidedly Ultra victories.

The difference is: the White Scars give the opponent very little time, and come from everywhere, applying very potent CC pressure in a very short time. While this would not be horrific to a close combat opponent, most 9th ed builds I am seeing are shooty, and fragile.

The UM on the other hand are not as good at board control as WS. But they do a "mid-table castle" very well. It is vulnerable to a few counter strategies, but with terrain it can be a tough nut to crack as well. While it may not apply pressure as fast as WS, it does a better job at being a ranged threat.

Now that we have that out of the way, this is the experiment as a result of the above:

- In order to try something new, and to give my opponent a better experience, and hopefully a closer game, I took a list without any Transports... no vehicles at all in fact. I also took out what I consider some of my stronger units (many are vehicles) and took some units I really haven't used in 9th.

+ My list as mentioned is a bunch of infantry with only 3 Outriders for some sense of speed. I think I had 4 squads of Troops, including 5 Assault Intercessors. New units I am trying: 5 Cataphractii in deep strike. 3 Centurions with Grav and a combination of 2 missiles and one hurricane bolter. I tried an Ancient for the first time, and a Chief Apothecary with the WL trait. I'm still taking Eradicators to keep some sense of anti tank on top of the Centurions.

+ My opponent is Scions. He has about 4 flyers (2 with las, 2 transports). Two tank type vehicles Taurox's? Tons of drop infantry with lots of shots. He's using the PA ability to add AP to his shots. Most of his hot shot guns will be -2 AP! Lots of plasma, some melta squads, etc.

The Game:

- I forgot the name of the mission, but we played quarters deployment and he goes first. He takes the mission Secondary (own mid objective for 3VP, own your opponents objective as well for 5 VP). And he takes Engage on all fronts (flyers), and Assassinate since I have Calgar/Tigurius/Apothecary/Lt./Bladeguard Ancient (total of 15 right there.)

- I take Engage on all fronts, Thin their ranks, Bring it down.

- He goes first, I deployed very defensive behind obscurring ruins:

And he is using his flyers to his advantage, but was perhaps too aggressive in movement... he would end up very aggressively in my zone, I guess setting up for grav chute insertions! The Taurox move to center for claiming that point.

- Scions would move up... take the mid, and start shooting.

+ I take a bunch of shooting, but since I went deep with my Incursors on an objective, he only sends one flyer there, whereas he needed to get on the far side of the Ruins to start tagging my Eradicators. One would die, and I'd lose a squad and a half of dudes.

+ He gets a decent first turn score with 4 quarters, and mid board objectives.

* Key Note: He may have killed the Eradicator, but it got to shoot before going down, taking 5 wounds off a flyer!

+ I try 2 times to resurrect the dead Eradicator, and still fail. I push forward with the whole blob, poking through terrain, but trying to get to mid table. Using Gravatic Amplification I barely take out the wounded Flyer, and get a second flyer. Unfortunately I just get one Taurox within 1 Wound of blowing up! (Shouldn't have split fire, I had too much faith in rerolls ).

* Key Note: He had a flyer he gave a pregame ability: It gets +1 to hit when it hovers, and yet even though in hover mode, it is still -1 to hit. This is the flyer I targeted with Seal of Oath. Amazingly, I fail to fully take it down with 3 wounds remaining. In desperation my Outrider squad takes full advantage of Seal of Oath and puts 8 wounds on it to blow it up.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

- In his turn he drops a bunch of stuff which results in my in cover using, infiltrating Incursors (7 man big). They die horrifically with overkill to be fair.

- His move to the center objective gets even more aggressive... perhaps too aggressive. I lose 2 of three bikes as a result. He has a good scoring turn. Oh, I also lost 4 of my 5 Assault Intercessors.

* Key note: Tiggy making the last 2 Eradicators -1 to hit hurt him quite a bit. This caused me to keep the last 2 without a casualty, and still save everything he poured into the Cents.

- My turn gives me huge results: I deepstrike the Cataphractii.

- A point of interest here; I put the catapractii 9" away from the Scions in ruins, but as you can see they are elevated. This means I only need an 8" charge to get to them since engagement is 5" verticle, I only need to make the base of the ruins.

- The cataphractii shooting is lethargic, only killing 2 Scions in the open, but this charge easily kills the Scions deep in his zone, taking his home objective.

- My shooting is very good... with only 2 flyers, I take down the last 2 flyers, and one previously injured Taurox which blows up causing 3 of his squads to take 2 mortal wounds each!

- My solo Outrider would kill 2 melta gunners, and then charge a squad of Plasmagunners. Scions over watch... overcharging 2 plasmaguns. They hit! They wound.. the outrider is vaped before the charge...:)

- I take a lot of my Boltrifles in the Tactical doctrine, including even the Bladeguard pistols, and take a lot of infantry down.

- I take a desperate charge: My ONE assault Intercessor sarge, actually makes it to his 2 HQ models and kills one. He fails to hit with a fist as a result.

- My desperate charge at mid table with the Centurions is very good, I end up killing 5 Scions and he would have auto failed moral this turn, but he has a 1 CP strat to stay there.

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The Scions turn comes around and he's not looking too good. He tries shooting, but doesn't have enough left to make a dent in the heavy hitters I have. This results in him conceding the game at the top of Turn 3. The cataphractii have his zone, and I still have my full host of characters, Bladeguard, 3 Cents, 2 Eradicators, and probably about 15 marines.

So there you go. I have decided that with my local group I will be putting away loyalist marines for a while. I may pull them out for Tau as this is a different beast to take on. But otherwise, I think everyone here is getting sick of my marines, and I understand. The games are amazingly one sided right now.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Prot would you please post pictures of your new terminators when they are done ? I love mine !!!

 

Glad to have you back again around here !

[Captain Idaho]

Thanks for the feedback. Very interesting. Terminators seem to be very effective this edition (rumours going they'll be more so).

 

I've been thinking White Scars are very powerful for quite a while, but I also think as the edition goes forward, Ultramarines will increase in effectiveness. Mid game board control will be very important, especially when opponents start taking plenty of infantry to help them control the board etc.

 

My theory.

 

Of course, you played artfully as always.

[Prot]

Thanks guys. I have a lot of work to do. I just wanted to use some traditional units that I haven’t used in ages. 
 

What I gather is Eradicators are a very solid gap filler for this kind of list but I think I could get real mileage out of Assault Centurions. Maybe a mix of melta and hurricanes. Then again the Bladeguard have been fun so far. I’m even thinking of saving 100 points and trying the Bladeguard Captain. 
 

I do like the role of the Cataphractii. Let your opponent enjoy your ‘slow’ advance, them once these guys are in the backfield, they can cause a lot of disruption. 
 

it was an interesting game with zero vehicles!

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Cataprachtii terminators are amazing. They are excellent in melee and even a min size squad is a solid fire base. Pro tip - don’t forget to fire the grenade harness. :D

[Emurian]

If I might be allowed to make a suggestion, when seeing pictures with a bat rep I would like to see one picture of the full table. (terrain wise) With these snapshots you get an idea of parts of the table and how things where positioned but there is no way for outsiders to connect these loose images in their heads: ,,Oh picture B is the terrain 3 inches from picture A.''

With a singe picture you should be able to place the rest according to the shown terrain on it. It might be just me, but it makes thing easier to place them in my head when reading a batt rep.

Had the same feeling when facing my buddy his tau last weekend for the first time in 7 years. We played 2 battles, the first was more or less a roflstomp, me controlling the entire board while exchanging around same amount of pts value in damage inflicted on both sides shooty wise.

2nd battle my group removed some units from the list that seemed to be problematic for him game 1, it went a lot better, we even handicapped ourselves by not having a heavy weapon in the list whereas he has a hammerhead and 3 broadsides. (broadsides soaked insane amount of :cusss with seal of oath rerolls on them lol) That said he still conceded in T3 as my mate (borrowed him my army as he has interest in UM) was hauling in victory points by claiming objectives whereas his somewhat static approach meant he lost board control again =/.

Already asked in the tau forum for some feedback regarding this, have the feeling he needs to do something else like using devilfishes with breacher teams to try and claim objectives because his current approach will result in losses throughout 9th.

[Prot]

Thanks for reading the batrep. Basically these are super light batreps, and things get skipped at times for the sake of brevity, but I'll say the same thing I always say when you don't see a full table shot: Many times I am keeping my opponent's face/personal assets out of the picture, phones, info, etc, whatever. A lot of times I don't ask for permission to take the pictures, and/or report on the game so I figure I should try to keep personal stuff out of photos. But whenever possible, I try to take a whole shot of the table.

 

 

As far as Tau, that is one army I still struggle to beat. I have only beat one of our local Tau players once and that was with White Scars. When I say I am beating all my opponents, it is except Tau. 

 

Tau rule my group easily. They tabled Astra in T1 last game. I saw it happen. 

 

Tell your friend to pick up Psychic awakening. Easy mode is: 3 Riptides. One gets the psychic awakening Relic missiles that each do 3 +D3 damage. Pack tons of indirect. Drones too. Shadowsun for two turns of Kauyon and whatever the other thing is. Marker lights, marker light strats, the character that shoots marker lights. All simple things all Tau players invest in now. 

 

That's about all the Tau advice I dare give here. Frankly it's my least favourite race to play against. They can't really interact with opponents so they just hide, kite and annihilate from the other side of the table. 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Funny thing I usually never have a problem versus Tau’va. I remember looking back just crushing them. They have weaknesses that are essy to exploit.