Heavy Hitters: How to slay? List C&C

[Dr. Clock]

Game vs CSM under new points/rules regime last night... My first with the faction in 10th. Was up by a few points every turn until 4 when the Servo Skulls swing slammed down. That mission is just wacky... my first time playing it as well, and didn't seem to favour us without supremely cagey play. All told an excellent game, but I was struggling to even hit stuff and a Maulerfiend rolled way too many 5+ saves in Turns 1/2.

 

Anyhow - Main thing that occured to me was that I didn't quite have the hitting I needed at the top of the game to push back on things like the Daemon Prince or Possessed without giving ground to them all game?

 

So the main question: what do you all use to bring down the big gribblies as quick as possible? Am I missing something?

 

My immediate inclination is that double Primus is almost mandatory to get a pair of Perfect Ambushes off... and it seems like 20 Neophytes are the obvious Bodyguard for them, but the idea of 10 Acolytes re-rolling hits on BS4+ Demo charges is intriguing, if CP intensive

 

I also had the sense that 1) GSC want to go second because Cult Ambush works better for us that way. A potential extension of this is: actually take 1-2x5 genestealers over Acolytes just to have something for Turn 1 No Man's Land play without sacrificing a Goliath, or relying on early advance rolls?

 

I think my first mistake was breaking up my Goliaths. I take 2 Rockgrinders and a truck, and having no Infiltrators I pushed one to contest all the Objectives in Turn 1 when I clearly should have just denied centre and pushed the Rockgrinders right and Goliath left as I netted 5 Secondary even without the centre. So my plan going forward is to use 2 Rockgrinders and a laser Runner to pick one flank to joust on, using Jackals for early trade on centre, and Infiltrate 5 Stealers for trade opposite the vehicles. I always used to get best results from Rockgrinders running the pair close together so that I get at least one proper charge / demos, and get some Acolytes in early as well... I appreciate that full horde is likely more effective than the vehicles, but they're basically my favorite part of the army even though they do almost nothing offensively about half the time.

 

New list for C&C:

 

3x Primus because I'm a coward (Iconward + Meticulus Planner is an option instead of 1 I guess, but Primus re-rolls are kind critical, no?)

2x5 Acolytes (2x5 in Rockgrinders - 1 demo + 1 mining each - ideally die turn 2 lol)

1x5 Acolytes (2 mining - utility Deepstrike chaffe - might punch up)

1x10 Acolytes (Primus 1: 2 demo + 2 mining)

20 Neos (4 laser 4 grenade - Primus 2: home campers)

20 Neos (4 seismic 2 grenades 2 webbers - Primus 3: Tunnel Rats!)

10 Neos (double seismic / flamers - Utility Deepstrike)

10 Neos (Seismic / webbers - Goliath Squad)

1x5 Genestealers (Turn 1 trade)

1x5 Jackals (Turn 1 trade)

 

1x Goliath (mobile Neo fire support / second wave)

2x Rockgrinders (Incinerator up front for Overwatch, protects and sets up Seismic to its flank)

2x Ridgerunner (Laser for armour jousting)

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor

 

[Rogue]

I've had success with big units of neophytes. 20 neophytes with 4 heavies, 4 specials, Primus, Nexos (for the free stratagem), fire support from a ridgerunner (for -1AP), deep strike for sustained hits and ignores cover, Perfect Ambush for +1BS and -1AP, and maybe Coordinated Trap for +1 to wound (although that's more limited now if we want it for free, unless we have multiple Nexii). My preference is to pair seismic cannons with flamers (for infantry), and mining lasers with grenade launchers (for armour). 

 

The other option, as you mention, is acolytes with demo charges. I'm still painting some, so can't speak from experience, but math-hammer suggests that they're our most dangerous unit for a single alpha strike (when tooled up, as above). Their issue is that they need to come in real close, so burn extra CP and will always risk being overwatched. But they should delete pretty much anything.

 

Regarding going first - both have advantages. If we go first, our reserves arrive earlier (after just one turn for our opponent, instead of two), so remove things earlier before then can act again. If we go second, then we can move units into reserve at the end of our opponent's turn and bring them back in our turn one, earlier than usual, and still benefiting from the detachment buffs. For that reason, I'm inclined to deploy some of my big hitters on the board (out of sight), so that I can take them off and bring them back. Even if we go first, it'll still work at the end of the opponent's turn, so we don't lose anything.

 

And if you want to make an early play for the centre, consider Inscrutable Cunning to infiltrate a unit up the board. I like doing it with aberrants - ideally, somewhere out of sight where any units moving towards them could get charged next turn. But even if you can't fully hide them, we can still drop One with the Darkness to reduce any incoming firepower. (Plus, my experience so far is that aberrants will kill whatever they get into combat with, eventually. They're not the most destructive, but they're very hard to kill, and have ground other units down over a couple of turns. So that gives you another (non-shooty) option to put into the big stuff, or just as a counter-charge threat to avoid giving ground so easily.)

 

I hope that's useful. 

[Dr. Clock]

3 hours ago, Rogue said:

For that reason, I'm inclined to deploy some of my big hitters on the board (out of sight), so that I can take them off and bring them back. Even if we go first, it'll still work at the end of the opponent's turn, so we don't lose anything.

I didn't think of that... An excellent gambit!

 

3 hours ago, Rogue said:

Nexos (for the free stratagem)

Quite - seeing how hungry we are for Strats I'll be sure to include one!

 

3 hours ago, Rogue said:

Inscrutable Cunning to infiltrate a unit up the board

 

Aberrants - yea... Feeling a bit too expensive points-wise for me - they kind of fill the same role as the Rockgrinders...? Although the idea of Aberrants pinning something in the centre that then gets flattened by an incoming Rockgrinder is pretty spiffy.

 

I do like the idea of not running 3 Primus - it's kinda boring. Dropping 1 Primus and 1x10 Neos gets me Nexos, Iconward and Saboteur? Feels pretty good...

 

Brainstorm: Saboteur in the Goliath using its Firing Deck and/or jumping out on to Objectives with the Neos inside? It's cool, if nothing else. Could do Locus instead I guess? Or second Iconward even?

 

Cheers.

 

The Good Doctor.