SMM's LI Thread

[SkimaskMohawk]

Alrighty, so if you've seen the hobby thread or maybe some Facebook, obviously I'm keen on the new LI. I've never played the previous editions of epic though, so there might be some things I discover or find out that's really apparent to veterans of the system lol.

 

Not going to repost the stuff I've put up in the hobby thread, but I do got some new pics (shot by my opponent Crablezworth) and stuff to talk about since I had a game on Friday night.

 

We did 1000 on this board:

 

It has a lot of large, solid LOS blockers, a civitas structure by each objective, the tar pits are dangerous and the palm tree stands were difficult. The focus was mostly on staying out of LOS and moving at the proper moment rather than stacking modifiers to hit. Our scoring was also a bit different in that the objectives only scored at the end of the game (similar to one of the white dwarf missions), but you could tag the objectives with your units to sticky them instead of having to camp them. Objectives are normally worth 3VP, ones in your opponents deployment are worth 4VP, and then there were some minor secondaries like kill anything on turn 1 for 1vp, HQ kills 1vp and...maybe something else?

 

Anyways, here are our lists, with mine on the right:

 

It was basically a demi-company with two full units of terminators and an armoured company with MSU sicarans and Kratos. Here's the more detailed breakdown:

Spoiler

 

Iron Warriors

List total: 987 points

Main faction: Legiones Astartes

Formation 1: Legion Demi-company, 327points

Formation Strength: 35

 

Break Point: 18

 

Compulsory:

HQ: Legion Command Squad (1), 25pts

Core: Legion Tactical Detachment (8), 65pts

2 Additional Plasma Support

2 Additional Heavy Support

Core: Legion Tactical Detachment (6), 47pts

2 Additional Tactical Legionaries

Support: Legion Assault Detachment (4), 30pts

Optional:

Support: Legion Terminator Detachment (8), 80pts

4 Additional Terminators

Support: Legion Terminator Detachment (8), 80pts

4 Additional Terminators

Formation 2: Legion Armoured Company, 660points

Formation Strength: 12

 

Break Point: 6

 

Compulsory:

Battle Tank: Legion Predator Squadron (4), 150pts

1 Additional Predators

Battle Tank: Legion Sicaran Squadron (2), 105pts

Heavy Armour: Legion Kratos Squadron (2), 150pts

Optional:

Battle Tank: Legion Sicaran Squadron (2), 105pts

Heavy Armour: Legion Kratos Squadron (2), 150pts

Kratos were battle cannon and all las, Preds were autocannon and las, sicarans were two autos, two plasmas and all las.

 

My opponents list was a sub cohort and an armoured company, the the Russes part of the cohort. He had a lot of ogryns and some veltaris, so I was a bit scared of the melee.

 

Here's some random shots of the game; unfortunately the LOS blockers blocked a lot of angles on my army lol, so it's a little piecemeal:

 

Here's the breakdown of the game:

 

It ran super smooth. Like, if we didn't stop for like a ton of breaks throughout the evening, we would have zoomed through it, which is great for learning a new system.

 

Turn 1 was mostly just us moving, as neither of us wanted to expose our tanks and wanted to get into position for when they were in range.

 

Turn 2 we got some combat going with some charges; my assault marines lurking in picture 3 charged across the butte onto his sentinels, but themselves got charged by ogryns. Due to the impassable and small footprint, my guys lasted longer than they should have as the ogryns couldn't bring many bases into contact. He killed the dudes in contact, and suddenly we weren't engaged any more and those ogryns were vulnerable to shooting. I brought one unit of Terminators down to threaten his objective. Being able to assign activations while in deepstrike but decide not to bring them in is a pretty versatile tool; keeping them unactivated until the end of the phase gives you a ton of options and can keep your opponent guessing. I also used some march orders on the sicarans to try and dodge around los blockers and survive the vanqs, and the point defence heavy bolters at least gave them something to do before they got blasted. The termies low-rolled a tercio in the building with 2 hits out of the 16 rerolled shots lol, but on the other hand, my autocannon Preds scooped a unit of malcs with some good luck.

 

Turn 3 had me in control of the middle and left flank, and terminators charging the garrisoned tercio, but my own objective on the right being very exposed as the Russes gunned down my other unit of sicarans. I sacrificed my last assault marine to try and tie up a baneblade on first fire and he got over watched (but this allowed my Terminators not to eat it's overwatch). They beat up on the tercio and took the structure.

 

Turn 4 i brough my other unit of terminators in to scoop his other backfield objective. His one baneblade killed the structure the terminators had taken from the tercio, while his other baneblade survived two Kratos using the 10" battle cannon shots and all their las; killing one and causing the second one to flee off in the end phase. He grabbed my right-hand backfield objective with a malcador.

 

Turn 5 had my sole Terminator from the structure charge his baneblade on the objective in a gambit to survive and hold the point, my midfield tactical squad marched out to block the road to the objective, and my las Kratos got revenge for it's brothers by killing the second baneblade. My Terminator lived against the baneblade and the game ended 15-4.

 

General thoughts time. Marines feel like theyre not as straight up powerful as solar aux in terms of unit output, but they have way more flexible tools like assault marines, deepstriking terminators, and mega-fast tanks. The Russ vanqs are really mean, and them being on a turret prevents marching to their rear to avoid the shot, unlike with malcs. The Kratos is very good; the 2+ and 2 wounds lets them tank a lot of hits. A big unit of Preds really surprised me, though I'm going to fully admit it was heavy luck. 5/8 hits from the autos and 3/4 failed 3+ saves is far from average.

 

One thing we're worried about is formations breaking as the game scales up and people start adding formations that have duplicate detachments and muddy the easy division of formations. A good example is solar aux needing to take a pioneer to have access to rapiers or tarantulas, and that immediately duplicates an hq and veltaris to maybe mix up. Our best solution that doesn't eat up a bunch of space off the board is just to simplify it; break point for your entire army, not just per formation. You just have to track your total lists model count and when you hit half, the list is broken. A little punitive overall, but you also can't target down a formations weak points to break them really early. Not perfect by any means and we'll see how it goes. 

 

 

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by SkimaskMohawk

[Burni]

Great write up, really helpful for me as I move towards getting everything ready for my first game.

 

Any chance of some close ups of both armies? They look amazing.

[SkimaskMohawk]

58 minutes ago, Burni said:

Great write up, really helpful for me as I move towards getting everything ready for my first game.

 

Any chance of some close ups of both armies? They look amazing.

 

Unfortunately not really, but I'm trying to line a game up tonight and I'll get some more pics.

 

Pretty excited too for this one, going to go up to 1500 and have some air support and knight allies on both sides.

 

[Valkyrion]

We've reached the same conclusion, and solution, as you regarding formations and break points - we're just going to break point the entire army, not counting Flyers or Titans. I can't remember off hand if Knights are subject to break points; if they are then they will also be excluded from the main army. 

 

Maybe when more formations land we'll reassess, and if we add allies (or, Knights if break points apply) we'll use different break points for each force when it's easier to tell things apart.

 

How important is/will be garrisoning terrain? This is an aspect of the game we're unsure about as no other game we've played really uses terrain in this way. 

I'm not having my first game til over christmas and was wondering whether it is more or less mandatory in the big picture of the game, or if its just a cool little feature that could be ignored. The rules seem to lean toward the former, but they would. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

57 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

We've reached the same conclusion, and solution, as you regarding formations and break points - we're just going to break point the entire army, not counting Flyers or Titans. I can't remember off hand if Knights are subject to break points; if they are then they will also be excluded from the main army. 

 

Maybe when more formations land we'll reassess, and if we add allies (or, Knights if break points apply) we'll use different break points for each force when it's easier to tell things apart.

 

How important is/will be garrisoning terrain? This is an aspect of the game we're unsure about as no other game we've played really uses terrain in this way. 

I'm not having my first game til over christmas and was wondering whether it is more or less mandatory in the big picture of the game, or if its just a cool little feature that could be ignored. The rules seem to lean toward the former, but they would. 

 

Knights do have break points, though theirs is calculated by total wounds in the formation rather than models. Part of our issue is sideboard clutter too, so we're just going to go with the single break point for the army to avoid dead pile management.

 

As for structures, idk. I think the best defence is not being able to be shot at, so los blocking and transports probably do the best initial job. If you do need to sit in the open/on an objective, then ya, structures are very important to keeping infantry alive. I'd say structures are probably more important to the solar aux gameplan than marines as well, as they have worse saves and much fewer movement/transport options. It'll depend heavily on the terrain you guys have and how rigid the lists are.

 

 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

LI_Iron Hands from the core box:

 

https://ibb.co/album/WnVmV6

[SkimaskMohawk]

Alright, got the game in!

 

It was 1500 and largely an expansion of our previous lists. I had 2 separate xyphons and a lance of 2 double-melee questoris; he had 2 separate thunderbolts, 2 arvuses, and an acastus with las and anti-air missiles. We both had some slight reconfiguring with the units to get what we wanted in, and I ended up having to lump all the Kratos together.

 

 

It was also broadly the same board, though Crablezworth had managed to paint a lot of the civitas ruins he had gotten so it was a little more dense for LOS and allowed more leapfrogging; we played them as impassable still. 

 

 

Turn 1 had a lot planes come in and die. He shuttled a tercio to the middle objective fine, but only 1 thunderbolt survived out of our combined offensive Airforce, with the Preds picking up his and the acastus getting both of mine. That one thunderbolt easily burned down a squad of sicarans, so the mass overwatch was warranted. Not much else happened except me marching infantry into the middle structure to contest it from his air troops.

 

 

Turn 2 I brought my Terminators in as I needed to pressure him with the loss of my air units, and they went right back to his backfield objectives like last game lol. In the middle he charged his tercio and ogryns into the building, but i countercharged my knights in as well to make a huge melee that killed off my tactical, but also reduced the ogryns down to 2 bases . I also ambushed a squad of Russes with my assaults. I overwatched the last thunderbolt with an omega array and killed his sentinels with the predators, while my Kratos took a casualty from his baneblade after killing a malc. Both his malc and surviving Russ failed their respective LD tests and ran away.

 

 

Turn 3 had the center combat resolve, me charge his left structure with terminators and his freshly rallied malc on the right flank; he charged my assaults with ogryns in return. I managed to burn down his acastus with both the Kratos and sicarans, but the vanquishers in the middle killed another 2 Kratos who then failed his morale check. Preds somehow one-shot the baneblade over on their flank.

 

(This is where i ran out of pics). 

 

Turn 4 had the knights charge the Russes in the middle and the last unit of ogryns charge the knights. I suffered another wound, but due to some very favourable rolling, was able to pick up everything and then shoot the survivor that wasn't engaged with the second tactical squad that had been moved to the center structure (with missiles and plasma). The last Kratos and sicarans teamed up and killed his baneblade in the tar and we called it there as he had a single arvus left (the first picture of the board).

 

More general thought time.

 

Planes are fragile and can seemingly get blasted with ease. But its usually a larger amount of points being invested comparatively, and the planes can torch detachments of vehicles no problem. Jink seems a little superfluous unless you bump it with white scars.

 

Marines have some really, really good support units. Terminators, assault marines, missile launchers; all excellent. They're super limited on space to bring those units outside of tacs since they compete so much with each other. And I haven't even tried dreads yet to have an opinion on them lol.

 

The mobility from arvuses is really excellent. It's a shame that you only have so many flyer slots and so many units to realistically out in them.

 

Looking at the marine flyers in comparison, the storm eagle is really strong and can dump rapiers up the board as well as smaller units of marines. Sadly, they're a bit clunky to do air-cavalry with properly since they're so expensive to buy with money. Oh also, the marine heavy bolters on their flyers are messed up; they're all light. Now, that's consistent with how they normally are, but you look at the solar aux flyers and their flyer-mounted heavy bolters are Light AT (and even the avenger rear stubber). 

 

What else? The Preds consistently perform very well for me and are very cheap. I'd be scared to see what the las turret option does. The Kratos are also similarly very good with a ton of shots and high durability (hide them from the vanqs though!). Sicarans finally got to do something this game and actually worked out very well, though the plasma turret is a bit underwhelming. Questoris saved my bacon from the ogryn menace. 

 

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

Another 1500 last night. Unfortunately not much changed in my list due to us playing fully painted and me being busy painting other stuff, so knights out for a double Vulcan warhound. Crabelzworth had 8 sentinels but otherwise just did some unit shuffling to make the points come out even. Pics as always are by him.

 

 

We played on a pretty sick tropical table he made. Houseruled the water as pseudo difficult; -1 if fully in, cut the movement value in half if you had to go into it at all, but infantry only double move on march (otherwise they still lose half speed). It made us really not want to stray into the water, though we of course had to. 6 objectives total, all on the land areas. 

 

 

Turn 1 was mostly our planes coming in and me losing one to overwatch, though his russes passed his three saves, while my sicarans had no hope against the wing missiles. Also lost a kratos to the acastus, though my warhound lit up the sentinels with 10 hits, killing 4 but making them fall back.

 

Turn 2 had me do a charge maneuver with my full kratos squad to clog the bridge. It kinda worked, but I steamrolled the russ in base and was subsequently out of engagement range and got blasted (if my armoured company was blood angels I could have reengaged lol). The brightside was that I overwatched both of his planes out of the air so our air forces were both gone. Both units of terminators came down in the backfield as well and started to go to work on the units nearby.

 

 

Turn 3 had his ogryns charge my assault marines and beat them up, my terminators charge his russes and beat them up, preds shoot the victorious ogryns and fail, and kratos ambush his other russes on the bridge side.

 

 

The game was close to wrapping up at this point. I charged the ogryns with my terminators and shot down his arvuses trying to flip my objective with the preds. He charges the kratos with a tercio from the building and took it down. My warhound put 10 hits on the baneblade but he passed them all, while it took a wound and lost both voids (1 came back up).

 

Turn 5 I moved the preds to be in position for a turn 6 march to the middle objective, and the warhound got 17! hits on the acastus...and he only failed 2. My warhound dying and him picking up some of my infantry broke my army (since we decided to play with one single army wide breakpoint), preventing me from marching on the possible turn 6 and locking the score.

 

 

More general thoughts time. I keep on suggesting he puts the ogryns in the backfield structures to prevent terminator flips, but he wants to use them aggressively instead so I can keep on deepstriking.

 

The VMB load out on the titan is probably the most actively fun one, but it's not exactly good and the acastus shows how much better shooting you can get for way less.

 

The water was a fun gimmick, but we agreed it was probably a bit too much in terms of the small landmasses and the nebulous start area of the water. 

 

The thunderbolts gave a bit of foreshadowing to air wings and how it's easy to skew games with AI collections. The lightnings and marauders can just load up on hellstrikes and simply come on within 30" on the first couple of turns just to dump them into tank formations and out range most overwatch. Or the triple bombing run bombers that dump 7 dice per model on 4s -2 during the movement at like, 85 points a plane. If your opponent doesn't have an AI fleet of their own and doesn't have access to printed AA (so, just what you can actually buy that's in stock), it probably won't make for very even games to bring out all the flyers.

 

Kratos continue to be super good and probably the most obvious good marine unit. Great armour, tons of guns, multi wound; no complaints.

 

Looking through both marine and solar aux lists, were kinda dreading mass access to rapiers. You can get 9 per unit in SA, for 120, and they have infiltrate because that formation is the only way to take them. You plonk them in the middle of the board in a structure and either just bomb infantry with the quads or burn down any armour formation with 18 4+ -2 shots. A cynical commander, min veltaris and 18 rapiers is 290. They all get infiltrate, they're all very good units, and there's honestly no reason not to take multiple pioneer companies (especially since it gives access to 2 flyer detachments...). Marines are similar with raven guard demi company formations, though you pay more and get fewer rapiers.

 

This also kinda led us to talk about how formations basically don't restrict anything. They're very comparable to 8th Ed 40k detachments in that there's no downsides to taking them, and often pure benefit instead. Legion carnivals with EC for initiative, DG to annoy movement, Scars planes and RG infiltrate has no game-detterant. Solar Aux pioneer spam is also fully encouraged.

 

Uh what else? Direwolves have the best conversion beamer weapon in the game and can leverage it with infiltrate. Apocalypse launchers on titans are pretty insane, especially on the warmaster where you get two separate ones to split fire easily. The iconoclast basically can't be taken on in melee by anything conventional; 4d6+18 averages 32 and even something like max dice ogryns at 6d6+6 only average 27, or double melee questoris averaging 29 when they hit 6 dice. Psi titan is frankly insane at collateral damage when you give apocs and use the sinistrum due to structure+occupant blow through. Watch out for those titans the second you get into their ally thresholds (2250 for the psi, 2500 for either warmaster).

 

Next game I should be playing another of our at buddies in a kinda exhibition, not fully painted, match so we'll see how it goes. I got a lot of stuff that's built and half painted so it really opens up the options.

 

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by SkimaskMohawk

[SkimaskMohawk]

Got these two painted up for a game later today. Really happy with how the scheme translates to vehicles, but I might need to do some actual highlights on models this large lol. Maybe could have done larger white stripes too, now that I think about it. 

 

 

I was a bit hesitant to finish these since flyers (especially solar aux ones) are quite strong, and this is going to put me at 5 fully painted, with another thunderhawk and xiphon still on the slate. But then one of my buddies got another 12 or so printed up, and I was also told I was going to face a warlord in today's 2000 point game. So I figured I needed all the help I could get. 

 

Also, small preview of the table, set up and photod by Crablezworth:

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

So the game was pretty brutal and unfortunately impacted the pics as it was called at the end of turn 2, so I'll add them in tomorrow as they're more moody than good turn by turns.

 

So first up, my opponent who commonly goes by Desc on the Internet; he's good at GW games. He played 5th and 6th, and titanicus; he can usually put together some nasty stuff and pull it off in game. He's also not usually surprised by interactions as he goes over the rules quite often and peruses Facebook groups and reddit where these things are usually brought to light. But, we play with fully painted and his are still in progress; crabelzworth has been lending his collection so we can all get a feel, and desc has focused on marines with Titan support. Our last game he genuinely beat my ass in our one foray into secondaries, but that was before my massive painting slog a few weeks ago, and this time he wanted to use a warlord. And the results were unfortunately very one sided.

 

But, some cool things/observations from this game first. I didn't realize blasts and flame templates didn't actually really declare targets, and the blasts can easily shoot stuff that's engaged and pinned. Considering the rarity of both, I think it's pretty cool. Marine flyers can carry solar aux. The restriction on same-faction is tied to the transport slot, and I don't think you can start deployed in them, but they can pick up and dump out ogryns. 

 

That's really it for those. So, the game. My fears earlier on today were proven pretty correct when I was able to flyer spam him down. Due to the warlord and my kinda msu style, I had way more activations to burn than him, and I was able to wait for his flyers and gank them with my own (hawk on 1, eagle on 2), and just snipe his tanks out with armourbane missiles and the turbo laser. Two full blocks of pioneered tarantulas helped do some early damage in his movement phase, and I also got him off guard with the master tactician charge from a full 12 man tac squad in rhinos. His warlord was able to do some big damage to my infantry and dreads on turn 1, but by the end of the turn I was 6 models away from breaking him out of his combined points of 28.

 

So ya, the flyer spam with 30" guns is really dumb. Honestly the points cost on tarantulas (and the inevitable rapiers) are really dumb too with 16 22" 5+ -1 shots for 61 points, especially with infiltrate from pioneer company. He definitely made a bad list as well though; crabelzworth's raven guard are mostly tank focused and vulnerable to all the planes I brought. His solar aux has a ton of ogryns and veltaris, as well as a very large number of vanquisher russes and malcs, aethons, some tarantulas, and a couple of thunderbolts. It could have made for a much better primary force for the titan to support, or even a primary force for marines to be allied to. Anyways, hope he finishes his dark angels soon, and that he goes back to more evenly distributed lists. 

 

And after all my statements about flyer spam, I thought I deserved 6 bolter fire raptors to fill things out a bit. And a storm eagle so I'll be able to run a minimum aerial assault down the line. At least these are...pretty much the worst flyers in the game currently, so it's not just 6 lightnings or marauders for fewer points.

Edited February 5 by SkimaskMohawk

[Pacific81]

Those are some quite interesting observations there SkiMaskMohawk. I've definitely found the game is quite emphatic in terms of who wins - I think every game I have played except one has been a blowout and only one game went to the last turn.

 

I think because you accrue victory points each turn (rather than a fresh calculation each turn) you can quite often see which way the game is going to go by turn two, and there isn't the possibility for last turn comebacks as you had in Epic Space Marine (which is a shame). And it gives Alpha Legion and Raven Guard an almost hilarious advantage, especially at small point games.

 

It has also become obvious that the game can be quite easy to break by maxing out certain units. I've stopped using a massive missile support squad (I was short of minis and that was the only thing I could use so was inadvertently really beardy!) because it just flattened whatever it shot at in a turn. Similarly, there is no question as to why you would ever take plasma troops in place of missile squads - the only ones you will see are people who painted them up before reading the rules (like me) or feel obliged to use all of the minis on the sprue.

 

It does make you question how much playtesting took place, and it's quite difficult coming to this game considering how well balanced the community versions (NetEpic and Armageddon) are.

[SkimaskMohawk]

3 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

I think because you accrue victory points each turn (rather than a fresh calculation each turn) you can quite often see which way the game is going to go by turn two, and there isn't the possibility for last turn comebacks as you had in Epic Space Marine (which is a shame). And it gives Alpha Legion and Raven Guard an almost hilarious advantage, especially at small point games.

 

We actually play end game scoring lol, it was just that he had almost nothing left in his army by the end of 2. 

 

Definitely agree on the infiltrating advantage in progressive scoring though.

 

3 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

It does make you question how much playtesting took place, and it's quite difficult coming to this game considering how well balanced the community versions (NetEpic and Armageddon) are.

 

I think the issue is this is one of many game sold by GW and it directly overlaps into two others. Titanicus is still pretty supported, so they probably want to keep them from being the allstars of a different game. AI is theoretically supported, but I don't see their hexboards for sale on the site...so it's not really. No sales to eat into there, and the gameplay of LI isn't really dogfighting. So maybe that's why planes are better? 

[DuskRaider]

I was discussing the phosphex pools with Crablezworth over on Reddit and was saying how it would be nice to try and port over some of the environmental mechanics from Titanicus via the Open War cards but it seems it would be a little too complicated. It’s too bad because it would be cool to see some sort of interaction with hazards more than the rudimentary rules that we currently have. Perhaps if missed shots land in the pools, they ignite and cause splash damage to anything close to the edge? 

[SkimaskMohawk]

18 hours ago, DuskRaider said:

I was discussing the phosphex pools with Crablezworth over on Reddit and was saying how it would be nice to try and port over some of the environmental mechanics from Titanicus via the Open War cards but it seems it would be a little too complicated. It’s too bad because it would be cool to see some sort of interaction with hazards more than the rudimentary rules that we currently have. Perhaps if missed shots land in the pools, they ignite and cause splash damage to anything close to the edge? 

 

There's definitely a lack of detailed terrain rules currently, even just comparing it to launch AT. I have this suspicion that advanced terrain rules are going to be sold to us in a supplement down the road....

[DuskRaider]

31 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

There's definitely a lack of detailed terrain rules currently, even just comparing it to launch AT. I have this suspicion that advanced terrain rules are going to be sold to us in a supplement down the road....

Yeah, I remember folks theorizing that we may see hazardous terrain rules in The Great Slaughter. Hopefully we’ll find out soon enough. The boards like great, btw!

[Crablezworth]

I think they just need some sub-types, similar to how obstacles has reinforced obstacles. They do need to fix obstructing terrain imo, and I'd be nice for cliffs to have section of pathways up/ramps up/switchbacks and or elevators. 

 

I think the issue with the game scaling up is nothing forces anyone to build a certain way, I can make like a 3k list that's 77 activations and can end up squaring off with a list with like 30 activations. It gets to this weird place at high points level where you're better off with turn based than alternating because alternating bleeds so much time between complex activations and decision paralysis.