New Codex Reflections

[Dr. Clock]

Well - first game with new Codex last night and I was well pleased with it. Faced new DG, and opponent made some deployment mistakes so that I was able to terraform everything and then just keep pushing him back so I had like 50 points by turn 3 and he had 15.

 

Berzerker Warband list (We play 2100pt games with a mandatory extra non-Epic character):

 

Khârn

MoE (Glaive)

2x10 Berzerkers

2x Rhino

2x Spawn

2x Jahkals

2x Forgefiend

2x Maulerfiend

2x 8Bound

1x Goremongers

1x Helbrute (ML / autocannons)

 

Unit analysis:

 

Spawn - The very finest trading piece. One pair got wrecked by a cannon drone, but the other one suppressed a Rhino turn 1, and then killed it in turn 2. Blunting his expansion for 85 points was key. I was ready to trade Zerks over there, but I didn't need to in the end because the Spawn kept him at arm's length.

 

Maulerfiends - The speed on these was clutch for staging and hiding in round 1. While one kinda bounced on a daemon Prince, in opponent's turn Mortarion flubbed his attacks charging into one and it slapped him for 24 damage, putting him down to 2W remaining after FnPs. Solid.

 

Forgefiends - Opponent sort of accidentally gave these are a harder target than I'd have preferred - Nurgle Daemon Prince. For all that, stripping any wounds off of big stuff is a big help when Maulers are around, and anything without an invulnerable save is gonna catch heck. Should have likely considered occasionally not shooting the closest thing, but it's still lots of fun to have SOMETHING to do during shooting phase.

 

Helbrute - Ok. I was threat overloading enough that he never caught a bullet and just stripped some Rhino wounds and then sat pretty on left flank. I may try a triple Brute list at some point, or a different loadout, but next list I'll do something else with the points.

 

Zerks - real good in Warband anyway. I missed the opponent's Fights First on the first thing I charged with them, and adding a solid Overwatch to that, I only had 4 guys attacking 7 Plague marines... S6 Lethal and Eviscerators got it done though, so that Khârn could punt the smelly character into the sun. Next turn I CP re-rolled the last guy's save so that I could Surge Khârn on to his rear Plagueburst. They're still a bit fragile, but they HIT, even at small numbers.

 

8Bound - Good, but hard to protect. First three just died to Plagueburst and drone fire, other 3 mulched some Spawn and hauler before disappearing to a second hauler's melta. They certainly seemed like a candidate for punching up, but their problem is positioning and resilience. Feeling like Invocatus leading 3 for a DS play might be better than the 2x3 rolling solo.

 

Jakhals - Yes, always. They did nothing but score points, which is something we desparately need so that we don't need to stop for actions.

 

Rhino - Same, pretty much, as well as a good way to protect Zerks obviously. MoE and friends never even left the bus lol.

 

What have others found so far? My opinion of the book definitely went up based on this, and I'm excited to run them again, but will likely do so swapping Helbrute and 1 Spawn to 2 characters for the 8bound, and possibly trying the Exalted for DS instead of trying to push Scouts. With all the Zerks mounted, the 8bound feel too vulnerable as obvious bullet catchers in turn 1, whereas a little Rapid Ingress and Battle-lust could get them right where they need to be for turn 2/3 charge.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

Edited May 17 by Dr. Clock

[MadEdric]

Thank you for the write up.

How did the Goremongers work out? I'm interested in getting a unit when I can. Cheaper action monkeys are going to be needed, like you mentioned.

I think Invocatus would be a great addition to the 8bound. Gaining DS and the ability to move through terrain could lead to some cheeky rapid ingress and charges through a wall.

[Dr. Clock]

2 hours ago, MadEdric said:

How did the Goremongers work out?

Great!

 

Turn 1 Terraformed, then sat pretty on my right for a turn before taking Deathshroud in the face. 1 each Jakhals + Goremongers + Spawn is mandatory minimum IMO.

 

3 hours ago, MadEdric said:

Invocatus

 Yep - He'll probably show up in game 3 alongside a Slaughterbound and 3 Exalted for the double DS threat.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Prot]

I had a big issue vs. Blood Angels. Essentially I took the possessed detachment and he took 3 Vindicators. It was nasty... but got worse when I thought I was 'home free' after getting the Vindicators stuck in close combat, and then he proceeds to read off the rule that Vindicators can not only shoot normal in CC, but they can do so with Blast Weapons as well. Ouch.

 

Next game I took the same detachment and barely took out Votann.  Points wise I hammered him but that's because I was across the table quickly and he just couldn't reliably get out of his quarter to score without risking close combat.

 

I have to admit it was a bad first game, but it was this second game that even though I won, I felt like the Dataslates are quite lethargic. This is where I was very disappointed.

 

I ran into a plain jane squad of Votann troops. T5, 1 wound... plebs. With an HQ and they had a FnP rule. I charged them with 10 Berzerkers with a character (I think in this case it was Kharne but this happened multiple times in the game.) 

 

I proceed to kill 3 models all said and done. His HQ (and squad) return back and kill 4 marines. This goes on until he has Berzerks come in and slaughter my squad. 

 

Like I said this happened again, and again, and I was quite miffed because hey, I'm the close combat guy. Not my height challenged, bearded little friends. So I found the fact he had those annoying tokens on me (giving him +1 to wound and hit) and being T5 to my lethargic S4 was extremely annoying.

 

After a few games, I've decided to go back to Warband. Which really sucks because... well I've been playing the Index detachment for a long time. My feeling, as I write this anyway, is that the codex is written for Warband.... why do I say this? Because while we have a detachment rule that gives you +2 strength to any Dataslate, you design the dataslates keeping in mind they may receive Plus 2 S.  This sucks, and limits the design and I think it's a poor choice by GW. 

 

I think Berzerkers should go back to S5, and the Warband back to +1 S. It would make the other detachments far more troop friendly. Anyway, for the time being I'm going back to Warband because I have Deathguard in our group as well so... no thanks to that match up with S4. 

 

 

[Dr. Clock]

19 hours ago, Prot said:

the codex is written for Warband

Kinda, yea... It's not amazing to feel like you need to stack 2 or more buffs on Zerks to make them hit proper. Basically if you're in a detachment that's not doing anything directly to support Zerks, they kinda just become disposable forward objective grabbers rather than the true buzzsaw we might expect. That and maybe they don't need to be 180 pts if we're forced into 10 minimum, but that's a question for a later date; they are worth it in Warband and that's enough for now. I'd agree that putting them back on S5 base would be ideal, but that kinda removes '+1 to wound' as a lever you can use on them because they'd suddenly be wounding T4 on 2+ coming out of Rhinos in Goretrack or whatever. 

 

So yeah - definitely need to play the buff stacking game to make Zerks hit, and Warband is the easiest 'bottom layer' to acquire, and also has the benefit of making everything ELSE in the army better by default instead of focusing on narrow parts of the list. It's a classic GW detachment canard at this point: detachments that buff a specific unit type only make sense if you really focus on those things. 

 

I guess I just don't rate blood surge so highly on 8Bound, in no small measure because they are overcosted to start, and the minimum squads too easy to eliminate before their surge even achieves anything.

 

Basically if you want to take more than just 10 Zerks + Khârn (who probably do still show up in every list), you probably are best off with Warband... Then if you want more than 2 transports, Goretrack starts to make sense MAYBE, and if you want Skarbrand, obviously Daemonkin has some legs. Cult is interesting, or would be if I had a Lord of Skulls, but I'm not really ever going to have enough 8Bound to make Possessed work right.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[MadEdric]

I just need to get this off my chest. Bezerkers losing S5 is just stupid. 

It would be like Plague marines losing T5, and getting only one or two detachments that boosted their resilience.

Bezerkers, outside of Warband, are worse than Legionaries with chainsword/pistol. They have the exact stats/weapon loadouts (2 heavy weapons/3 plasma pistols) but their abilities are in stark contrast. Bezerkers can run into combat and then get no benefit, where CSM get reroll wounds of 1, or all if opponent is on an objective. 

CSM can be taken in squads of 5 or 10, making them useful in all aspects, combat punch or action monkey, take the size you want. 

Bezerkers being size 10 or 20 is no comparison. A squad of 20 is very unwieldy and unless you are lucky, will never reach the enemy at that number.

I'll still play my WE, but sadly Bezerkers are just additions now, not the core of my army.

[HeadlessCross]

8 hours ago, MadEdric said:

I just need to get this off my chest. Bezerkers losing S5 is just stupid. 

It would be like Plague marines losing T5, and getting only one or two detachments that boosted their resilience.

Bezerkers, outside of Warband, are worse than Legionaries with chainsword/pistol. They have the exact stats/weapon loadouts (2 heavy weapons/3 plasma pistols) but their abilities are in stark contrast. Bezerkers can run into combat and then get no benefit, where CSM get reroll wounds of 1, or all if opponent is on an objective. 

CSM can be taken in squads of 5 or 10, making them useful in all aspects, combat punch or action monkey, take the size you want. 

Bezerkers being size 10 or 20 is no comparison. A squad of 20 is very unwieldy and unless you are lucky, will never reach the enemy at that number.

I'll still play my WE, but sadly Bezerkers are just additions now, not the core of my army.

You definitely bring up something I mentioned on Reddit, and it's how Berserker Marines are the only Cult Marine you can't justify taking as an ally. Noise Marines are basically Havocs on steroids without the Pacts, Rubric Marines have decent durability and the Flamer loadout is really good, and Plague Marines have half the Pacts built in to 90% of their weapons and have that neato T6.

[Dr. Clock]

17 hours ago, MadEdric said:

Bezerkers are just additions now, not the core of my army.

It's an interesting discussion - I tend to make allowances that the 'core' of an army is not usually the hammer as well, though other Cult lists do seem to go that route whether through lack of diversity or otherwise. 

 

I also agree that if you ignore (or lose) the army rules there's really not much to commend the basic unit, but we should not forget the added 2" of move, which is honestly a pretty big deal.

 

17 hours ago, MadEdric said:

losing S5 is just stupid.

I totally understand this feeling and somewhat share it, especially if we compare to other Cult marines. If we're comparing straight data-sheets between Plague Marines, Noise Marines, Rubrics and Zerks, the Zerks definitely struggle, although weirdly enough it seems GW has added Infractor/Tormentors as the ones we're 'supposed' to be including in that rather than NM as 'the Battleline MeQ', and in that comparison we end up with Rubric and Plague Marines as the 'superior attack profile' guys while EC and WE have the 'mainstream marine' profiles. But then EC gets NM and we get... jakhals? At this point they've somehow finally made all the Cult marine lists feel really different indeed, and more different than they've ever been, I believe. So I kinda like that part, even if it seems like Zerks specifically get the short end of the stick a little bit.

 

So yea - it still does feel like Zerks need a little something even if it's not as signficant as a whole pip of S. 

 

However, I'll also suggest that this issue is strongly connected to the lack of 'general support/buff' characters for WE. MoE is fine for what he is now: a glorified Sgt. with a sick sword. Khârn is great but you can only have 1. Juggerlord is cool, but doesn't actually help you hit (all positioning and move but also forces you out of transports). Invo again is interesting, but unique and doesn't do anything for unit protection or DPS. I guess what I'm saying is that there's a 'Generic foot lord' sized gap in the list I'd want to see closed before we consider a global +1 S on Zerks and the added 20 points that would likely entail on that sheet. CSM and Space marines both have '+1 to wound' buff characters... I don't understand why we shouldn't.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.