Friday, 30 September 2011

Evolution of an ultimates list part 1



So I have an invitation to Ultimates. It’s set at 1800 points this year and as yet we don’t know the missions to be used.
16 players total, first day will be 3 randomly matched games, second day will be 3 seeded games.
They’ve made it clear players will not play the same opponent twice, regardless of scoring which is a good thing in my opinion.

I have three options for armies to take: Eldar, Chaos Marines and Blood Angels.
At this stage I’ve been planning loosely all year to play blood angels at ultimates, so I’m working on that theory.
At 1800 I can put together an Eldar list that is identical to my 2000 list, minus one serpent full of dire avengers and minus two power weapons on the autarchs. I don’t necessarily dislike that army as a concept, but four troop choices is starting to cut it fine for objectives and the army doesn’t particularly perform well on kill point or victory point missions (depending on whether they are a “Difference” or “absolute” victory point scoring system.)
At 1800 I can put together a terminator heavy chaos marine list, my models mean that I’m limited to a maximum of 14 plague marines, since I don’t wish to buy more stuff for my chaos marines. I’ve got bucket loads of berserkers and a squad of noise marines as well, but they don’t see a lot of action. It will end up as 15 or so terminators, abaddon (Probably, depends on missions) and three oblits, plus a couple of land raiders and some troops in rhinos. Not inspiring but workmanlike and only really ‘good’ in specific missions
At 1800 I can put together a variety of different blood angel lists. I’m only interested in playing jump-heavy, since that’s the entire reason I like blood angels. I started with just five full squads of assault marines and went from there. Three priests, two librarians and a chaplain is the first variant I’m going to try. It’s not what most people on the competitive scene would state as top of the line, but I’m playing with a deathstar unit that is portable and therefore impossible to kill. It’s not the MOST brutal deathstar, but 8 S10 and 12 S5 power attacks followed up with 25 normal attacks at S5, all of which are rerolling to hit, is a pretty solid hit and is death for almost anything short of full paladin/nob squads. It’s also pretty hard to wipe the unit out since it can migrate to any other squad any turn. 9 ablative FNP marine wounds is pretty hard to wipe out in a turn of shooting at 1800 and the migration means you’ve really got to do it in one turn.
If I drop the second libby and the chaplain, then I get 250 to play with, which can be vanguard or sanguinary for example...but I’m not sure it’s actually enough to offset the loss of a seriously solid CC threat.
Other things i may try using are vanguard and dantewing, though I think at 1800 both may simply be too costly. Will get to try the first variant in a couple of games this weekend.