3k Terror Assault - LD fun

[SkimaskMohawk]

So this is a list I'm bringing to a game tomorrow against my buddies BA. It's a few different experiments kind of jammed into one list, and is pretty rough, but it should be interesting at the very least:

HQ:

Centurion w/vigilator 

ELITES:

Contemptor w/2x fist, 2x grav, pod 

1xRapier w/quad launcher, shatter, incindiary 

1xRapier w/quad launcher, shatter, incindiary 

5x contekar w/volkite 

TROOPS:

5x night raptors w/4x double claw, 1x melta, 1x glaives, artificer 

5x night raptors w/4x double claw, 1x melta, 1x glaives, artificer 

5x recons 

5x recons 

8x scouts w/melta bombs, 7x chainswords, 1x shotgun 

15x terror marines w/15x volkite, artificer  

FAST ATTACK 

2x javelins w/2x multimelta, 4x hunter killer 

5x seekers w/augury scanner 

3x outriders w/3x twinlinked plasma, artificer 

HEAVY SUPPORT 

1x Vindicator w/las, preysight 

PRIMARCH 

1x Konrad Curze 

 

So, the general strategy is to really be unfun with leadership and night fight. Curze can run 20" to set up his fear aura for all the pinning in my army, and for the combo of "get really close, break the unit with shooting, charge the broken unit and instant kill them when they fail to rally".

The raptors can start in deepstrike or on the board as required; terror marines and outriders are similar but in outflank. The latter twos guns are very much meant to break units and then run them down, or harass some light vehicles.

The scouts are purely for outflank harass on the back lines with melta bombs, and the shotgun is there to proc concussive for any charge.

Contekar are almost always going in deepstrike assault with the pod, as their guns are....very hard to use on foot.

Vigilator adds another source of ranged pinning, with a very nice shell shock bonus. He's also a great interceptor as a result.

Seekers are mainly because I finished painting them and want to try them. They do add another marked for death unit to grant a reroll against, and are another pretty good interceptor unit, especially for free.

Rapiers and javs fill a nice flex spot with anti tank and pinning capacity, as well as flaks on the javelins now.

Curze and the dread should provide decent anti-multiwound; on average curze can one-round a contemptor solo.

The biggest obvious weakness this list has is its own scoring. I'm hoping to have enough predatory elements that I can just hang my opponents objective holders and try and contest any left overs. Any leadership stuff like stubborn will really sour the plans, but thems the breaks. Either I'll get hard countered out by a wall of crimson paladins and day of revelations fearless/day of sorrows stubborn, or the game will be incredibly unfun with the amount of pinning and leadership stuff I'm going to be dishing out.

Wish me luck!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mana]

So how did it go?

Curious about recons and seekers!

[SkimaskMohawk]

36 minutes ago, Neilthran said:

So how did it go?

Curious about recons and seekers!

Unfortunately it didn't, we had to reschedule super last minute.

It did give me time to realize raptors get 3" coherency and more opportunity to really take advantage of the deepstrike. 

I'm interested about the seekers too, but the recons are just objective fodder in this list. Variants with snipers or chainswords and bombs will be a bit more interesting.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Finally had that game, and I lost!

There was a bit of fiddling with the list and redistributing points, so ended up with 4 bikes, no shatter. This kind of mattered, but kind of not.

My opponent had a day of revelation list with sang; very much a good guy reflection of my list. We played hammer and anvil, with two objectives ending up in one deployment, one in about the middle, and the last in the other deployment; I picked the deployment zone with two...oops. I started all the raptors in deepstrike and the scouts, terrors and bikes in outflank. We screwed up and put the DoR marker down after the armies were set...oops again. It was set close to my deployment and he chose turn 3 to come in (and to go first, since he deployed first too).

Game started well with him doing a wound to a javelin and losing a sicaran and 4/5 of sniper scouts on the first game turn. The second, I wanted to try return fire, so I did on his arcus with my javelins. He squeaked just enough wounds to wipe them and I failed to kill it with 4 hunter killers, 2 cyclones and 2 multimeltas; even if we had traded, it would have been better to evade and keep a javelin alive. My reserves came in; deepstrikers positioned to give myself options for the outflank, which then disrupted and got shoved into his back corner (I had marked the middle of his table edge). This meant about 23 models trying to fit in their movement value behind his Scorpius, and that I basically had to avoid an explosion when killing it. I also, after kind of setting up to burn down his contemptor, decided it'd be really fun to kill a rhino, make the tacs flee and catch them. This entire turn of reserves coming in and shooting resulted in:

- shooting the volkite from the terrors to kill the scorpius 

-shooting the vigilator and laser vindi to take 1 hull point from the arcus (now with 2 left)

- shooting the grav fists, volkite, twinlinked plasma, frag quad rounds and finally a melta gun to kill the rhino. It exploded and killed two raptors, causing them to flee; the tacs passed the pinning test and morale test from losing guys.

I charged the arcus with my second raptor squad (killing it) and the tacs with my 4 bikers (getting overwatched and losing 2, including the seargent, then dying to the perdition axe. 

Night ended on turn 2, meaning it was now turn 3 and his units came in. They weren't disrupted, and broadly positioned 2x 10 assault marines and 1 tears+zephon in my back line, with sang and dawn breakers arcing towards the rapors close to the dead arcus. I failed all 5 pinning tests on my back line, preventing intercepts with the vigilator and seekers, and my back line basically got cleaned up as a result. I tried to advanced reaction the contekar back and play some movement games to get curze that direction too, but the objectives were too far apart, I failed my 2+ saves too much and lost models, and his contemptor beat mine in the fight by passing 7/9 invuls.

And that tactical squad from the rhino passed another two more leadership tests from my laser vindi lol.

So aside from standard bad luck, what were the issues? 

1. Picking the wrong side of the board. You usually want to be the aggressor with drop lists, and I decided to try and hold 2 objectives in my backfield with a total of 2 scoring units.

2. Deciding to "try things". I wanted to try a big outflank. I wanted to try return fire. I wanted to try an elaborate LD instant-kill. None of these helped me win, and all were really inefficient choices that snowballed.

3. Taking bad units. I really didn't realize the outriders were 1 wound. I confused them with jetbikes that have 2, and they're simply way too squishy at 85 points for 3 t4 wounds and basic bolters and chainswords is awful. 15 terrors with volkite is already a conciet, and are extremely unwieldly on outflank. And I can't spend 480 on both terrible units.  Contekar are also of dubious value for what's essentially an attempt at the shoot-break-and-charge instant kill combo; destroyers with serpentas are 45 points cheaper for basically the same result. The lack of shatter really came to haunt me as I tried to kill his tanks with everything else, and without the javelins either, I had to commit the deepstrikers to the units they shot.

Tldr: I lost because I played a lot of aspects poorly, on top having 1/6 of the list devoted to silly units.

 

 

 

 

[Brother Sutek]

Bikes losing that point of toughness hurts. We've been spoiled for many editions with it and my Ravenwing already is nervous. It feels like all bikes are less useful this edition which is unfortunate as I love my Ravenwing and as it was what got me into Dark Angels in 2nd edition all those years ago.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Alright, so I got some new models and trimmed the fat (read, outflankers) for a new 3k version. Still terror assault, still trying to cripple armies with leadership.

HQ

-Vigilator

ELITES

-quad gun w/ shatter and fire

-quad gun w/ shatter and fire

-contemptor w/ double fist and grav, pod

-contemptor w/ big melta and fist

TROOPS

-5 raptors w/ artificer, 4 double claws, melta,

-5 raptors w/ artificer, 4 double claws, melta,

-5 raptors w/ artificer, 4 double claws, melta, 

-5 recons w/ snipers, augury

-5 recons w/ snipers, augury

-5 recons w/ snipers, augury

FAST ATTACK

-javelin w/ melta, cyclone, 1 hunter killer

-javelin w/ melta, cyclone, 1 hunter killer

-5 seekers w/ augury

HEAVY SUPPORT 

-leviathan w/ drill and claw, phosphex, volkite

PRIMARCH

- the primarch

 

I just finished playing my buddies blood angels, and oh boy was it one sided. He was doing day of sorrows with sanguinius, and it was a bit of an attempt to keep the jump pack archetype in that last. I just got to go first and: sniped seargents out of squads and pinned them off the objectives, sniped the command squads banner, blew the scorpius launcher off the tank with a javelin, caused angel tears to fall off the board, and shook his sicaran. He was left with sangs unit, the jump dread, Dawn breakers with chaplain, a javelin and a Spartan to return fire and position up the board. Then my reserves came in, and I body blocked the Spartan with the dread, mopped his assault marines with raptors, killed the sicaran, and beat up on his jump dread with curze. We talked it out and planned his counter stuff, and it ended with me losing one unit of raptors total.

Snipers are brutal when combined with night and fear/shell shock. They also help link dread wounds and hull points when the infantry aren't in Los. More than 2 dreads is a bit much, and resulted in sang and his unit getting hammer-and-anvil'd between a leviathan and  curze and a contemptor. The shatter rounds and speeders do a lot for mid range anti tank, with melta contemptor and snipers helping finish things. Night fight is oppressive for 3 turns, kind of no matter what; even just the -1 BS is huge. The 3" coherency with raptors allows for some really degenerate deepstrike chaining.

[Brother Sutek]

Just got in a game, finally,  and was hit with night fight vs raven guard for first three turns. Painful is a good word for that.

[Rksanders]

How do you give deep strike to raptors?

[Brother Sutek]

12 minutes ago, Rksanders said:

How do you give deep strike to raptors?

The jump packs give them that rule.

[SkimaskMohawk]

On 9/5/2022 at 9:15 AM, Brother Sutek said:

Just got in a game, finally,  and was hit with night fight vs raven guard for first three turns. Painful is a good word for that.

Ya night fight is very oppressive; my buddy almost cried when it carried over to turn 3 in terror assault. Curious how the ravens got it to turn 3, I was under the impression that only terror assault brought it that far.

[Brother Sutek]

Thought it was roll till you fail and then it goes away? New to this edition and first game in, we might have made a mistake. As an aside I truly hate how the books are set up and the lack of a real appendix to find things. I know I'll get it once I've played more but good Lord the page flipping was ridiculous,  I've never had to search this much.

[SkimaskMohawk]

15 minutes ago, Brother Sutek said:

Thought it was roll till you fail and then it goes away? New to this edition and first game in, we might have made a mistake. As an aside I truly hate how the books are set up and the lack of a real appendix to find things. I know I'll get it once I've played more but good Lord the page flipping was ridiculous,  I've never had to search this much.

Normally it carries over to turn 2 on a 4+, but stops there.

And ya, the organization is terrible. Search functioning on a digital version saves a lot of grief, but I was having trouble going back to the hard copies yesterday lol.

[Brother Sutek]

I'll have to read the rules again. So many changes, no night fight on turn three would be less oppressive.

I'm not a big technology guy so despite it being better I will put stickers in my book for reference.