Fun, spicey and cheeky combos post Balance Dataslate June 2022

[Captain Idaho]

This should be a nice bit of fun and we can hopefully pool our collective grey matter to better cull the lesser races.

What sorts of fun new things can we do now we have access to all these rules amendments?

What springs to my mind first and foremost due to them being a favourite unit of mine is super strength Skorpekh Destroyers!

Whirling choppy death

Protocol of the Hungry Void (all game now), a Plasmacyte and Disruption Fields means a whopping +3 to Strength in melee in a single turn!

So Hyperphase Threshers, the weaker of the weapons but more attacks, will hit on S8 with 5 attacks! The Hyperphase Reap blade is S10 at this point with 4 attacks!

Using Novokh as the Dynasty of choice we can even give this unit +1 attacks with further Strategum support and simultaneously benefit from +1 AP and going to +2 on wound rolls of a 6!

If we can get a full unit of 6 charging off with this for a turn, we'll kill almost everything we hit. Even Death Guard infantry will dislike this killing power.

[Lord_Ikka]

I'll be running three full units of Novokh Skorpekh in the next couple of weeks- love the extra strength/AP that they get with the dynasty/protocol buffs. Skorpekh have always been one of my favorite units and my normal opponents hate them with a passion, so having them even deadlier is quite amusing for me. My current list leaves out the plasmacytes, because I want to see how mobile the destroyers are without the little meth-dealers slowing them down. The tradeoff of not getting the extra strength/attack is that the destroyers will be faster and not have the possibility of killing off one when they get injected. 

[Malakithe]

They both have the same movement plus the little guys can deepstrike. Should be able to keep up until they charge. They use the ability at the start of the charge phase and it lasts all turn so I dont see how they would slow down the Skorpekh

[Lord_Ikka]

37 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

They both have the same movement plus the little guys can deepstrike. Should be able to keep up until they charge. They use the ability at the start of the charge phase and it lasts all turn so I dont see how they would slow down the Skorpekh

You are absolutely right and I've been playing them wrong all damn edition! I thought they were Movement 6 for some reason, and never really looked at that characteristic again. Now I feel really dumb- I could have used them much more effectively than I have been. Ugh. That's a lesson. 

 

Edit- I'll still probably drop them out of my current list due to points constraints, but we'll see. Maybe losing a Wraith is worth it to have 2 of the meth-dealers...

Edited July 3, 2022 by Lord_Ikka

[Malakithe]

4 hours ago, Lord_Ikka said:

You are absolutely right and I've been playing them wrong all damn edition! I thought they were Movement 6 for some reason, and never really looked at that characteristic again. Now I feel really dumb- I could have used them much more effectively than I have been. Ugh. That's a lesson. 

 

Edit- I'll still probably drop them out of my current list due to points constraints, but we'll see. Maybe losing a Wraith is worth it to have 2 of the meth-dealers...

What do the wraths bring other then movement? They have worse melee profiles and need a baby sitter to make them as good as Skorpekhs. In my lists I was bringing a Technomancer to revive lost models

[Anticontrarian]

Rad-Wreathed Isolationists can now have the +3" Auras at all times, so any Rapid Fire guns within 4" get both -1 T and +1 Str!

Not necessarily the greatest of ideas, but Tomb Blades under this end up wounding Marines on a 2+ with their Gauss Cannons.

Which amuses me oh so much.

 

[Lord_Ikka]

40 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

What do the wraths bring other then movement? They have worse melee profiles and need a baby sitter to make them as good as Skorpekhs. In my lists I was bringing a Technomancer to revive lost models

Movement and their invuln save- they can be surprisingly resilent both in cover (for grabbing midfield onjectives) and as a tarpit for certain enemy units, especially stuff like vehicles or backline ranged units. They don't kill a lot of stuff for me, but they are so fast and annoying that a lot of people target them right iff the bat which allows the slower Skorpekh to get in and really wreck face. They are a very good utility unit, as they can do either the Ancient Machineries action or RnD and will occasionally be able to take down a character or two.

 

I always take a Technomancer, but I rarely use the Control Node- I find that unless I've got Sypders I want him to pair up with he is too slow without the cloak, as I will sometimes need him to rush up near the Skorpekhs rather than stay with the Immortals/Lychguard.

[Captain Idaho]

I'm sure we've all heard but the Core keyword going to the Silent King created a rules issue that probably needs fixing as with a Technomancer behind him and the selection of The Protocol of the Undying Legions as the permanent Protocol means he'll be unkillable.

The Canoptek Cloak the Technomancer can heal the Silent King each turn, The Protocol of the Undying Legions means Living Metal heals +2 wounds a turn, then we have the resurrection of his Menhirs, he just won't die...

Extra obnoxious points if you boost the Silent King with Szeras as well...

[Lord_Ikka]

True- since I'm assuming a FAQ is incoming to address this issue, I'm not playing the SK as if he is CORE so that I don't get used to the broken rules.

[Captain Idaho]

How they miss these things I don't know.

[Ahzek451]

It sounds like most of the big tournaments are allowing all of the silent king interactions except resurrecting the meniers from rites of reanimation. The general consensus is that they feel that this was the one new interaction that tipped the scales and feel this is what GW will eventually FAQ. And that the meniers do not have "reanimation protocols", so cannot benefit from rites. Take that for what you will. 

[Galron]

Its not broken. If you manage a single damage on the SK then until he recovers them he has to take all remaining damage no matter how many Menhirs are rezzed due to the main book rules. Is he hard to take down, well yeah, he should be next to impossible but he isnt all that. FTR, I dont actually own the model, I just dont see the OPness that others do. miniwargaming also agree with me. You simply have to concentrate fire on him. 

[Ahzek451]

It was being said that the Meneir allocation rule supersedes the allocation core rules. Since codex trumps main rulebook. So it leaves wonky stuff like ressed meneirs needing to die even with the king having some damage on him. 

[Malakithe]

13 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

How they miss these things I don't know.

Yeah its crazy. I mean with all the play testing they do you would think....

oh wait...

[Ahzek451]

Yeah it's nuts. For as long as I've been in this hobby I've learned the simple fact is: This game is exceedingly large and complex. My heart goes out to the men and women that keep track of and work on the rules for this game. It's daunting. But the other truth is, of course they could do better but it comes down to what resources the company wants to put into the rules dept. And GW has been known to NOT invest as much as they could in this dept. to make a "tighter" game. They don't see a monitary reason for it. If the game starts to get screwy, they do the same thing they have always done. Rest to a new edition. Mixed in with a cruise-ship size slowness to adapt and change practices (moving to more digital and getting away from waiting on a 6+ month long book release window), there are a lot of gears that manipulate the machine that cause things to be the way they are. 

[Lord_Ikka]

Very true. GW will have to adapt or die- while they are the biggest miniatures company out right now, the rise of readily available 3d printers is going to cut into the miniatures market as a whole soon. Finding some sort of balance, whether that is licensing stl files, doing a digital rules subscription that is tightly-written and updated frequently, or really putting a full-fledged effort into creating a media division (Warhammer+ has not been great, for various reasons), will be key to them remaining a viable business.