(Another) Ultramarines GT report

[Brother Sergeant Scarus]

Hello everyone!

I went to another GT this weekend (Stonehammer - UK). 50 players, 2 (!) Ultramarines and an awful lot of Chaos. 

First of all what I would say is that if you're UK based, definitely consider a Stonehammer event. The guys are great fun, the events are entertaining and they bring a decent terrain pack.

I travelled across from Leeds on the Friday, with two of my club mates (Farsight Enclaves and Behemoth Nids) and on the Friday I had a practice game against my friend's Farsight Enclaves.

Mission - The Scouring - Score: 95-32 to me. My friend had gambled by not taking Exemplar of Kauyon in his list. When I won the roll to go first I was then able to kill both Sunshark bombers, kill some Kroot with one of my incursor squads, and then just managed to keep scoring.

On to my list.

A variation on the last list I ran (which was designed for UKTC terrain), the Glasshammer map packs have all ground floors as blocked off, so I replaced one contemptor with three plasma inceptors leaving me with this:

Guilliman
Tigurius - Veil of Time, Might of Heroes, Psychic Fortress
Primaris Techmarine - Rites of War and Seal of Oath

5 Infiltrators
5 Infiltrators
5 Incursors
5 Incursors

Plasma Redemptor
Plasma Redemptor
Relic Contemptor with two Twin-volkite Culverins and Cyclone Missile Launcher
2 Victrix Guard
2 Victrix Guard

3 Plasma Inceptors

3 Eliminators, 2 Las-fusils and an Instigator Carbine
3 Eliminators, 2 Las-fusils and an Instigator Carbine

2000 points, 6cp, gives up 10 for Assassinate, 6 Bring It Down, 8 for No Prisoners (including bonus).

I'll give a brief run down of my games, but if you have any questions please let me know.

Round 1: The Scouring - Creations of Bile - 85-76 Win
Round 2: Death and Zeal - Deathwatch (AoR) - 86-77 Win
Round 3: Data-scry Salvage - T'au Sept - 66-63 Win
Round 4: Tide of Conviction - Emperor's Children - 42-82 Loss
Round 5: Tear Down Their Icons - Ynnari - 80-72 Win

4-1 overall, and I finished 8th out of 50. Very happy with that, and my only defeat was on table 1 to the undefeated player who finished 2nd. So can't complain too much! That game was closer than it looks via scoreline alone, at the end of the game all that was left was my dreads and his characters and remaining termies. But going 2nd on a domination mission against his list was a tough prospect. A few key dice went against me, just to make sure I couldn't claw my way back. But I'm certainly not blaming dice for the defeat! More that they stopped me saving some score-line dignity.

They came back around for my game five, that's for certain, when my contemptor fired all it's guns at the Yncarne and (keeping in mind I'm wounding on 5s) inflicted 12 wounds before saves with just the volkite alone.

Seal of Oath, what a gem.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Brother Sergeant Scarus

[Emperor Ming]

Impressive results BSS

 

Taking down two sunshark bombers in a single turn with marines is decent

 

Or getting decent scores atm with marines is impressive in itself atm in general

 

Did girlyman do well?

 

I always preferred Calagar for a cheaper alternative

 

How many cp do you start with the relic dread 3? not alot

[Brother Sergeant Scarus]

23 minutes ago, Emperor Ming said:

Impressive results BSS

 

Taking down two sunshark bombers in a single turn with marines is decent

 

Or getting decent scores atm with marines is impressive in itself atm in general

 

Did girlyman do well?

 

I always preferred Calagar for a cheaper alternative

 

How many cp do you start with the relic dread 3? not alot

Thanks :) Rapid Redeploy helped me put the dreads and Guilliman into positions where they could take out the planes, the AoE re-rolls Guilliman gives are great there. So far, in my four games against Sunsharks, they've only survived one turn on the table vs my army each time. 

Guilliman is just great - people don't account for his reroll 1s at 12" aura a lot of the time, or that he gives +1 to advances and charges. He also hits very hard when he needs to - killed virtually the entirety of an indomitor kill team in one go vs Deathwatch. 

I start on 6 cp with this list. 

6 base, spend 1 for Seal of Oath, spend 1 for Hero of the Chapter: Rites of War on the techmarine, Spend 1 on Martial Legacy for the Relic Contemptor. I don't take Guilliman's warlord trait and he gives me +3cp so I go back up to 6. 

It's very nice to have

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Well done and congrats - very impressive yet again !!

[jpwyrm]

Great job! I've read your posts on Reddit and I'm really curious about your general game plan/strategies with the list. I see you don't have any str8+ weapons to deal with vehicles or monstrous creatures, do you struggle to deal with lists that bring a lot of those? You also mentionned Shock Tactics as a good objectives for Marines and yet you don't field that much fast melee units to trade on objectives and score Shock tactics. Though this could be me being used to play RG successors with lots of MSU trying to score action based secondaries...

 

Also, like Emperor Ming, I tend to lean towards Calgar instead of Guilliman. DO you think the army would struggle without it's Primarch?

[Brother Sergeant Scarus]

15 hours ago, jpwyrm said:

Great job! I've read your posts on Reddit and I'm really curious about your general game plan/strategies with the list. I see you don't have any str8+ weapons to deal with vehicles or monstrous creatures, do you struggle to deal with lists that bring a lot of those? You also mentionned Shock Tactics as a good objectives for Marines and yet you don't field that much fast melee units to trade on objectives and score Shock tactics. Though this could be me being used to play RG successors with lots of MSU trying to score action based secondaries...

 

Also, like Emperor Ming, I tend to lean towards Calgar instead of Guilliman. DO you think the army would struggle without it's Primarch?

Thank you!

In terms of ranged anti-tank, the Macroplasmas are S9, and the Krak-missiles/Las Carbines and Plasma Inceptors are all strength 8, so there's some decent ranged fire (at the weekend my plasma inceptors, using Sons of Guilliman, and a pair of Eliminators teamed up to take out a hammerhead - and that's fairly reliable, mathswise). There is also respectable melee punch vs vehicles in the shape of the redemptors and Guilliman. With Guilliman's re-rolls the list puts out a pretty withering amount of damage I find.

The most vehicle heavy list I've faced was probably the Custodes list I mentioned in my previous report; that had 6 dreadnoughts and 2 caladius. At the end of the game there was 1 dread and 1 caladius left, and that 1 dread had been very lucky - making 3/4 saves vs a redemptor fist, and then making 4/4 5+ saves vs Guilliman. 

I faced a T'au list with 3 hammerheads and 2 sunsharks at the weekend just gone, and managed to kill all of them. So it can handle a reasonable amount of armour - it might struggle to kill something really, really tough but most of those lists tend towards slow-moving bricks (for the most part), which all the forward deploy units I have help me slow down.

I haven't ran into Knights playing this list as of yet, so we'll see how that goes; though I guess the armigers are roughly equivalent to custodes dreads in resiliency terms, so it might be OK. I used to run 3 Heavy Eradicators instead of the Eliminators, and whilst the Eradicators hit-hard they move out, shoot, and then tend to get focused down. Whereas the Eliminators put out 4 S8 AP3 Damage 3 shots (if you use both squads) and the BS2+ and Ultramarine Super-doctrine make them very accurate. But critically they can then hide back behind terrain, and their damage across the game tends to add up. 

What I do find is quite common at the moment, thanks to CSM, is a lot of elite infantry and T4 3W models like terminators, and the list is very good at killing those.  I killed all the terminators, posessed and chosen (as well as all the obsec) in my game against CSM game 1, killed the vast majority of the Deathwatch (which is all infantry) game 2, killed all the vehicles and chaff verus T'au in game 3, all the noise marines, posessed and cultists game 4, and in game 5 my Ynnari opponent ended the game with just a Shadowseer. It's a surprisingly dangerous army, Guilliman just makes everything very efficient (more on that later).

For Shock Tactics I find that typically the mix of shooting and melee, combined with all the small disposable units, is enough to flip an objective. And units like the Victrix Guard are great for forcing the issue. I will say that all of my games are either UKTC or Glasshammer terrain packs, as I'm UK based, I don't have any experience of using the list on GW terrain. 


Finally, as for Guilliman vs Calgar, before the points changes I definitely feel Calgar was the better choice. Now, at 300 points, Guilliman is definitely viable again. He's still strangely squishy (and very vulnerable to bad save rolls) but he brings a lot of great benefits to the army. The AoE rerolls is great for the redemptors (and they also enjoy +1 to charge), but the re-roll 1s for things within 12 comes up all the time. With multiple dreadnoughts in my list, and by using Wisdom of the Ancients, I can cover a vast amount of the table with re-roll 1s to hit and wound, and then re-roll all hits near to Guilliman. +1 to advance and charge also comes up all the time, usually helping my smaller units get onto objectives or the victrix guard getting into enemy chaff to clear it (they also really enjoy re-roll 1s whilst within 12 of Guilliman). Plus Guilliman himself is a very solid counter-punch unit, especially with Might of Heroes and Veil of Time. His damage 4 fist is something people seem to forget about a lot.

For example against Deathguard Terminators I always swing with the fist. Hits on 2s, wounds on 2s, has enough AP to put them on their invulns and -1 damage doesn't make a difference as the fist goes down to three and still kills with every failed save. 
The AoE re-roll all attacks is great on dreadnoughts due to their number of shots, and it also makes them remarkably good at the Defensive Focus overwatch. And sometimes just the threat of that can deter people from making certain charges.  I don't like to "Gotcha" people, so in my game 5 my opponent was lining up to charge my eliminators, who were on the central objective, with a unit of scorpions. I reminded him that both my redemptors were within 6 of the Eliminators, and that Guilliman was stood just behind the Redemptors. So he decided to move behind a wall, which was further away from the Eliminators, to attempt the charge. But the extended distance made it a failure.  But had he gone in, I was reasonably confident I could have done a lot of damage between two redemptors and Guilliman over-watching. As hitting on 6s is a lot more likely when everything re-rolls. It also means the dreadnoughts are very efficient in the shooting, overwatch and fight phases - and you need that multiple phase presence from them, as marine units are very expensive. 

My main problem with Guilliman is that he's a Monster (he should just be infantry), and he needs a different defence mechanic. His 4+ resurrection was designed for 8th when you could re-roll it. Now I'd prefer it went to a 2+ like so many other mechanics, or if he exchanged it for something else like a protection against mortal wounds, damage reduction or phase cap. Anything really! 

Sorry for the long reply, but I have a lot to say about Ultras 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I don’t think your list will have much problems versus Knights. And yes plasma Inceptors are just amazing - they are a staple in my army list… the strat to reroll 1s is perfect for super charging.

[jpwyrm]

Thank you for the indepth response, I really appreciate it. I have been playing Raven Guard Successors for a long time and I find most of my lists lack either staying power or killing power, sometimes both. I want to try something like your list or the dreads and drop pod Iron Hands army that has seen some success this year. I can see why you like Guilliman so much, it looks like he brings a lot of reliability for the list. I guess I just need to swallow the pill and play with the Primarch.

 

I'm a fan of Eradicators, especially with heavy melta rifles and full reroll to hit. I tend to agree with you though that they get focused fire very often. Plasmaceptors with reroll 1s stratagem is a perfect combo for them and a very good replacement for Eradicators.

 

I guess I need to give the list a try and see what works for me and what doesn't. Hopefully, I'll come back with some after action report too.

[Brother Sergeant Scarus]

7 hours ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

I don’t think your list will have much problems versus Knights. And yes plasma Inceptors are just amazing - they are a staple in my army list… the strat to reroll 1s is perfect for super charging.

I certainly feel like my list should be fine coping with Knights, there's quite a few tools I have to help in the match up. Whether it's move-blocking with forward deploy units, or efficient shooting and melee from Guilliman and the dreads. Seal of Oath also helps a significant amount too, as it pretty much guarantees one knight will die very quickly. 

The Freeblade Lance is a bit more worrying than 3 big knights, just as it's a lot of obsec and armour to deal with. But I'm sure I'll face that soon enough.

People were definitely surprised by plasma inceptors, but they're very good as Ultramarines I've found. So many ways to get re-roll 1s, able to fall back and shoot - dropping in to get at enemies hiding from the dreads, or digging enemy obsec out of objectives. All in all just a very handy unit to have! 

[Brother Sergeant Scarus]

7 hours ago, jpwyrm said:

Thank you for the indepth response, I really appreciate it. I have been playing Raven Guard Successors for a long time and I find most of my lists lack either staying power or killing power, sometimes both. I want to try something like your list or the dreads and drop pod Iron Hands army that has seen some success this year. I can see why you like Guilliman so much, it looks like he brings a lot of reliability for the list. I guess I just need to swallow the pill and play with the Primarch.

 

I'm a fan of Eradicators, especially with heavy melta rifles and full reroll to hit. I tend to agree with you though that they get focused fire very often. Plasmaceptors with reroll 1s stratagem is a perfect combo for them and a very good replacement for Eradicators.

 

I guess I need to give the list a try and see what works for me and what doesn't. Hopefully, I'll come back with some after action report too.

Good luck with your testing, the Iron Hands army also looks like a very powerful use of dreadnoughts, but I think Ultramarines have some real strengths for the list that people don't expect. 

I've honestly been really impressed with every single unit in the army, and there are a few cute things you can do such as, advancing the eliminators, the sergeant fires his carbine at something (as it's assault) and then they move again. With Guilliman's +1 to advance that one unit can go 18" in a turn (if you max the advance roll and don't want/need to fire the las fusils) and with Rites of War in the list you can pull off some long distance objective snatching. And if they die? Well, it's a 75 point unit. Which can be well worth the loss if, for example, it scores shock tactics and/or denies the enemy some primary. 

Definitely let me know how you get on, there are totally variants of the list you could run that do a very similar thing. There's probably an argument for a third redemptor, rather than inceptors (for example) but I really like this variant and will keep testing it out.