First Game with New Points Changes, and New Detachment

[Prot]

Hey folks, I just want to make this quick so it appeals to a wider marine player...

 

My friend brought is Word Bearers which is a real tough nut to crack... with AoC. I brought my White Scars... bottom of the barrel White Scars, down there with Imp Fists, UM's, etc.

 

Right away I should say I play iconic units in my Scars so a LOT of stuff got cheaper for me since a lot of it is junk. (ATVs w/MM's, Outriders, etc) All pretty bad, the Thunderstrike etc.

 

I was rushing to get my points right, and I thought what the heck, I'm going to put 3 Eradicators into a fully kitted out Repulsor.

 

Long story short, I went first. I did not want to give his 10 man termie brick anything to climb up on. It's still a rock but it's now well north of 400 Points! He always uses Mark of Nurgle (which really works well against marine armies), stacked with the Rune. VERY hard to shift.

 

On my side the only hard to shift unit I had was a 4 man squad of Bladeguard with Apothecary in tow. As well as the Khan (to help offset the MoN/Rune).

 

Essentially with first turn I hung back in the middle, and tried to press hard on one flank ,while planting banners (sticky-fying objectives) on the other.

 

He took a lot of casualties. Surprising l took 4 Termies off the table with shooting. The 3 ATV's with MM's felt good, but it all disappeared....

 

His turn removes almost everything I poked out. Like I said with 6 ruins on the table there were lots of places to hide, but the extra... 280ish points I had made a large foot print.

 

He was disappointed in all the casualties he took, because his list got smaller... and the loss of AoC was deeply felt. But that said, he hit me back very hard, I lost every ATV, Thunderstrike Speeder, some troops, and half the wounds on the Repulsor. 

 

To make this short, I almost tabled him. He just did not have the survivability in the rest of the list. But I lost a ton of stuff, I just had more of it.

 

I had to play cagey because the Word Bearers hit far harder than White Scars, especially pre T3. I probably had just enough extra volume of fire power to make the difference. Literally when either one of us stuck a unit out, it was vaporized. I let him have the middle, and our only two notable, lasting units were my Bladeguard Vets, and his Termies. 

 

I do think Chaos got hit too hard on the competitive level, especially all those lists with Abe/Creations of Bile, and the Termies on top of losing AoC.

 

Marines have (potentially) a LOT more stuff, and the loss of AoC is also strongly felt. Some of my notable take aways:

- Less troops is good. They still do very little, except hold and actions.

- Extra HQ and the shift of Elite Characters in the Detachment is good... but you lose those extra points you gain if you're not careful!

- Some units still stink. Like the ATV's.... I want to love those, but a vanilla Attack Bike is still far better value.  Outriders still disappear super fast, and still pretty much last as long as first born bikers. 

- I think the superior options on First Born still make them a better choice in a lot of circumstances.

- Lascannons... ugh I still hate them. Poor Repulsor finally gets pulled out of the closet and was far less effective than I wanted. (Back in the closet for you...) At I think 250 loaded, you still just have a lot of crappy low end firepower, and 3 lascannons that are less effective than a Chaos pred.

- Some areas I do think Primaris got a notable boost: Aggressors. The added AP actually means something again, and a lot of armies do have some advantage in different ways, making these guys decent. Bladeguard are definitely back on the menu (maybe except with my Wolves). Eradicators (if you can move/shoot effectively) definitely a bit better. And although I didn't use them, I wish (especially for White Scars) I had at least 3 Plasma Inceptors.

 

The rest of the Primaris line still feels lethargic in the current high damage/low survival meta that we sit in. Lots of more playtesting to do though.  But the biggest take away is how apparent it became I got used to AoC. I know it had to go, but wow I truly am completely unsure if (in my case) 280 points makes it all better. That said, while this might breathe new life into some Marine lists, Chaos got hit pretty hard by all of this.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Prot

[Lemondish]

16 minutes ago, Prot said:

Less troops is good. They still do very little, except hold and actions.

Did you not find the sticky objectives useful enough to keep them?

[Prot]

Well I think I'll keep them and experiment more, but both our armies were pretty quick so they never really could leave the objectives (he had 2 squads of Warptalons in reserve as well, and Possessed are extremely quick).

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I had my first game today… was versus CSM and I’m really glad AoC is defunct now. My army had a lot higher killing power.

[Reskin]

yucky lascannons :S worst profile in the game, I much prefer more reliability. Because you know, rerolling the dmg from a 1 into 1 is going to happen.

 

still, cant feel sorry for chaos. They have awesome HQ in Abbadon, and we don't have anything close, that horrible high lord from the SoB is gross, and Trajann is probably the next best killy HQ

 

 

[Khornestar]

There’s more to the army than Abaddon, though. There are certainly strong units powers etc. but loyalists got things to compensate for the loss of AoC. CSM mostly had things taken. Not a matter of feeling sorry for them, but it’s kind of a sorry state of affairs with the lack of parity.

 

Good time to play loyalists though.

[WrathOfTheLion]

7 minutes ago, Khornestar said:

There’s more to the army than Abaddon, though. There are certainly strong units powers etc. but loyalists got things to compensate for the loss of AoC. CSM mostly had things taken. Not a matter of feeling sorry for them, but it’s kind of a sorry state of affairs with the lack of parity.

 

Good time to play loyalists though.

Yeah, the thing that stings there is that they were right at 52% I think, which is basically exactly where GW wants them, and they lost AoC and then had more taken too with little/nothing to compensate. So it's going to take them from near where GW wanted them to probably quite a bit below, where they then would have to buff them back up again soon except that the edition is going to roll over in six months.

 

It's a fine time to play loyalists as you say though. Now that I have more time to play than I did near the beginning of the edition, might get the Dark Angels/Space Wolves back out.

[The Emperors Champion22]

16 hours ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

Yeah, the thing that stings there is that they were right at 52% I think, which is basically exactly where GW wants them, and they lost AoC and then had more taken too with little/nothing to compensate. So it's going to take them from near where GW wanted them to probably quite a bit below, where they then would have to buff them back up again soon except that the edition is going to roll over in six months.

 

It's a fine time to play loyalists as you say though. Now that I have more time to play than I did near the beginning of the edition, might get the Dark Angels/Space Wolves back out.

Some subfactions were way too strong like EC, CoB, WB, and BL. Abaddon is way too good for his cost so he got nerfed, he could probably cost more but we’ll see. The other subfactions that were struggling within CSM could use some buffs like AL, IW, RC, but the nerfs were deserved for the overperforming subfactions.

[Minsc]

I had my two first games with the new update today (against Tyranids) and had an absolute blast.

Fielded two completely different 2000 pts-lists;

One focusing on Vehicle/Dread-spamm;

 

P. Captain
P. Lt.
P. Techmarine

Dread 
Venerable 
Ironclad 
Contemptor 
Redemptor
Invictor

Invader ATV
SS Hammerstrike
Outrider Squad

Gladiator Lancer
Predator Annihilator
Vindicator

Stormtalon Gunship
Hammerfall Bunker

 

And one focusing on infantry-spamm (not just Tacticals)

 

P. Captain
P. Lt.
P. Librarian

5x H. Intercessors
5x A. Intercessors
5x Intercessors
5x Tacticals

P. Apothecary
5x Terminators
5x TH/SS Terminators
3x Aggressors
5x JP/SS Vanguard 
5x Scouts*
5x Scouts*

3x Inceptors
3x Suppressors
3x Outriders

3x Eliminators
3x Eradicators
5x Devastators

 

It felt both satisfying and a bit odd to more or less flood the table with vehicles / marines...

Gotta hand it for GW with this update, for all my issues with the overall removal of cost for wargear, they've made listbuilding with SM much more fun.

(*Scouts are still bad though, they should cost 14-15 ppm, be Troops and have 2W - but I digress.)

Already looking forward to my next game.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Minsc